General Arthur and I were still discussing plans on the best way to deal with the undead when shouts erupted from the nearby guards. We ran over to the source of the commotion and found a soldier collapsed, bleeding profusely from a knife wound in his stomach. A dozen other soldiers were wrestling a civilian to the ground as he roared like a beast. the dagger in his hand slashed wildly until one of the soldiers knocked the blade from the civilian’s hand.
“What is going on here?” General Arthur shouted as he ran over.
The civilian lifted a soldier with one hand, gripping his neck, revealing strength far above anything a normal man should have been capable of. He then tossed the soldier like a rag doll, sending him flying across the camp. The remaining soldiers backed away, shocked by the man’s sudden burst of strength.
The rampaging civilian paused as General Arthur approached. An unnaturally large smile was stretched across his face, eyes glowing with an unnatural orange light. The man started laughing in an almost robotic way, sounding like a broken record on repeat. Simultaneously, screams rang out from nearly a dozen other locations across the camp.
General Arthur cursed as he drew his blade. “Seems our enemy stole the march on me.”
The Crystal on general Arthur’s blade glowed as it struck out like a snake. The strangely flexible metal wrapped around the rampaging civilian’s leg before slicing it clean from the body. The civilian collapsed, but no blood poured from the severed leg. Instead, a putrid orange liquid oozed from the wound. A horrible acidic stench filled the air. All the while, the cackling laugh never stopped. He did not even react to the injury or acknowledge it in any way. He just started crawling towards General Arthur while laughing loudly.
A nearby soldier stabbed the civilian through his shoulder, pinning the body to the ground with his blade, but the man did not even slow down as he continued trying to crawl forward. The sharp steel of the blade ripped his skin and flesh as he pulled himself free of the blade, nearly tearing his arm off in the process.
General Arthur frowned as he looked down at the crawling undead civilian. “Determined little bugger aren’t ye? Men, cut off its arms and legs. I want to take this one alive… well as alive as an undead can be anyway.”
The soldiers did not hesitate before they started hacking the arms and legs free from the body. Still, the undead took no notice as it continued to laugh while glaring at the general while trying to wiggle its limbless body forward.
“Two of you stay here with the thing. The rest of you with me!” the general shouted, “This is all a diversion.”
I stared at the struggling corpse for a long moment. It did not even appear to notice me. Its eyes were still locked on the general. I could not help but feel my skin crawl as I looked at it. Something felt off about his undead. The corpse almost felt… familiar, but strangely alien at the same time, but I could not place exactly what it was. I shook my head. There was no time to examine it right now. I left the corpse behind, hurrying after the general and his soldiers.
There had to be at least a dozen different locations in the camp full of screams and the sounds of fighting. However, the direction we were running was completely silent. It was not a good sign. General Arthur managed to gather a few squads to follow him as we ran, but most of the soldiers were running towards the commotion, leaving this section of the camp nearly empty.
General Arthur dashed as fast as he could towards the soldiers tasked with carrying supplies near the back of the army. He left me and many other soldiers behind in the dust, but he was still too late.
By the time we arrived, more than ten soldiers were lying on the ground. Blood poured from wounds on their necks or backs. They never even had a chance to fight back.
Standing over the corpses were nearly thirty soldiers with glowing orange eyes.
Their blades dripped with fresh blood.
All of them were wearing Novus Kingdom uniforms except one. My eyes naturally locked onto the figure. He towered over all the others, easily head and shoulder taller than any of them. Orias had a giant grin on his face as his gaze focused on General Arthur and his approaching soldiers. Thrown over his shoulder were the charred remains of the Demon I had killed.
All thirty undead soldiers started laughing simultaneously, perfectly in sync with one another, as General Arthur looked towards the fallen soldiers lying dead on the ground. His eyes had a dangerous glint as took a step towards the undead. I saw a piece of paper disintegrate in his hand as his blade began to glow with a silver light.
General Arthur spoke with a low, slow tone of voice I had never heard from him before.
“I am going to make you pay for killing them.”
The undead soldiers did not respond as they continued their endless cackling laugh.
General Arthur’s blade swept forward, instantly beheading one of the undead in a flash. They did not even have time to respond before the head rolled to the ground, orange liquid oozing from the neck. The headless corpse did not fall down when its head was cut from its shoulders. It did not even appear to notice as it continued to move in sync with the other undead.
The endless laughing cut off all at once as the undead began to move. They formed a protective wall of bodies that stopped General Arthur from moving forward. All of them except one. Orias did not join the others as he turned and ran away with an unnatural speed far beyond what he had been capable of when he was alive.
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“Stop him!” I shouted.
I tried using the power in my right eye, but I felt nothing. The talent was useless against a corpse.
One of the soldiers had time to fire an arrow, but it did nothing to slow Orias down. He did not even flinch as the arrow sunk into his shoulder.
General Arthur struck out with his blade as well, hoping it could reach the fleeing Orias, but one of the other undead leapt in front of the blade. The unfortunate undead was torn to pieces, but it had served its purpose. By the time General Arthur was able to strike again, Orias was already out of range.
General Arthur cursed as the remaining undead pounced towards him in unison. They surrounded him, blocking any hope of going after Orias. I wanted to run after him myself, but I knew I would never be able to catch up. Undead would never grow tired and Orias had shown speed far beyond anything I could manage. I did not even have time to call for my own undead before he disappeared into the mist.
Another piece of paper disintegrated in General Arthur’s hand as three undead were shredded to a thousand pieces by a wave of silver energy. He looked furious as his blade whipped out and swung in a giant arc, bisecting five more undead at the waist in an instant.
Undead and living collided in a brutal clash of steel. The undead cared nothing for their own safety as they threw themselves forward recklessly. The living soldiers tried to fight back, but no injury could stop their undead enemies.
Their only hope of victory was to hack off the limbs of the undead so that they could not attack anymore.
One undead broke free of the crowd, leaping at me with a sword held high. I shook my head with a sigh as I unsheathed my dagger.
The undead swung at me with his blade, only to find himself holding an empty hilt. The crystal on my dagger glowed as it easily sliced through the steel sword as if it had been made of paper.
The undead wanted to leap at me again. Its mouth opened wide to bite down, but before it could, one of the nearby soldiers slashed the undead across its back. The undead froze. The orange light faded from its eyes, and like a puppet without strings, the body collapsed limply to the ground.
I eyed the undead with confusion. Suspicious, I poked it with my foot. The slash across its back was not even that deep. There was no reason for it to stop moving, and yet it had.
I looked over at the soldiers fighting still fighting nearby. They were barely holding their own against the undeads’ suicidal attacks. Meanwhile, general Arthur was shredding everything around him like a blender.
The fighting only lasted a minute before all thirty undead were nothing more than writhing stumps. I quickly notice a few others that had stopped moving though. All of them had wounds on their upper backs.
“Now this is interesting,” I said, approaching another of the corpses that had stopped moving. The chainmail had been ripped open revealing the corpse's back. Tattooed on the skin in bright orange ink was an incredibly detailed glyph about the size of a palm. “Have you ever seen anything like this before?” I asked as General Arthur approached.
The general shook his head as he crouched down to examine the glyph. His eyes widened as he traced the lines on the soldier’s back. “This is impossible! This glyph is definitely designed to animate the corpses, but a glyph like this should not be stable enough to exist. It should collapse instantly, disintegrating the corpse…”
“Let’s look at a living one,” I said with a glance towards the squirming undead. They were still snapping their teeth towards anything that came close, but they were relatively harmless without arms or legs.
General Arthur nodded. He sent all the remaining soldiers away so that the two of us could have some semblance of privacy while we examined the corpses. General Arthur then cut open the leather armor on one undead soldier’s back, revealing a still shining orange glyph.
“This is incredible. Who could possibly create something like this?” General Arthur asked as he ran his fingers across the glyph. “The glyph itself is incredibly complicated, but that alone should not be enough to animate the dead like this. I think the glyph is more like a relay for something else. Something that stabilizes the glyph and allows the body to move.”
“It is the ink,” I said, narrowing my eyes. The green flames in my chest had flared to life the moment I saw the glyph. I could feel a familiar resonance between me and the glyph. I realized now why the undead felt familiar but somehow wrong. “Someone has used one of my undead as a medium to create this glyph. They ground up its body and mixed it with something to create the ink. I can feel it in the glyph.”
General Arthur paused as he stopped examining the rune to look at me. “Are you able to manipulate them if we are attacked again? I do not like the idea of fighting creatures like this.”
“Let’s find out,” I replied as a small green flame ignited on my fingertip. I let the flame flow into the corpse where I felt it clash with the strong orange energy within. My flame was extinguished in an instant.
The corpse went rigid as it stopped its futile struggle for the first time.
it turned its bright orange eyes to look at me and smiled. A distinctly female voice echoed out of the man’s body.
“Now this is a surprise. Aurielle Aevus, reborn in our little realm once again. I knew you would come back eventually.”
I frowned as I peered back at the corpse. I had not expected the one in control to be able to create such a strong connection.
I felt it during the brief moment my flame entered the corpse. Whoever this woman was, she somehow copied the effects of my flames with this strange orange energy.
I shook away my doubts as I smiled back at the corpse. “They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. How many years did you spend studying my ability to create something like this?”
“Oh, I spent decades mastering this little trick. I am rather proud of it. Do you like it?” the corpse replied with an almost seductive tone, “The only problem is the lack of materials. Finding the undead you left hidden in the world and capturing them is no small feat.
I guess I will not have that problem for much longer now that I have the source.”
“You seem quite confident,” I said, patting the head of the corpse as if it was a child.
The smile on the corpse disappeared as she growled. “I have spent centuries studying you Aurielle. I know everything about you. I know how you think. I know all your plans. I know how weak you are when you get reborn... Now, It is finally time for my revenge.”
“I cannot even begin to count the number of people that want me dead, but just out of curiosity, revenge for what?”
“Revenge for everything you took from me!” the corpse shouted, “My family! My birthright! My throne!
I will take all of it back!”
“Throne…” I muttered as my eyes narrowed when I looked at the corpse. fury ignited in my chest as I realized who I was talking to. “Irene Corvus, honestly I am surprised a member of your disgusting family is still alive after all these years. Did you enjoy hiding like a rat for centuries, constantly cowering in fear that I might one day learn you survived?”
The corpse chuckled. “It is true, I once feared you, but not anymore. When Envy takes you, I will make sure you suffer endlessly, while I retake my birthright as empress.”