Willowcrook was still as the shadows of stone and sod hovels stretched long with the setting sun. Nothing living moved on the packed earth leading to the only all stone building.
Nith skipped and spun his way towards the imposing structure. Each step and kick sent a small plume of dust into the air.
The slowly encroaching dance was watched coldly by dozens of eyes. Many burned with a seething rage. But others contained only a numb vacant detachment.
Nith cared about neither. His tattered robe fluttered with the erratic dance. And unseen ribbons of power spooled out.
The woven animus traveled through the standing dead. Between them it found the cooling bodies of villagers.
The magic had no interest in the mauled and often dismembered flesh. It coiled around the gradually fraying souls that clung to their recent hosts.
Fragile things, alma souls. So beautiful. And so resilient. Yet flawed in such crucial ways. Such fixable ways.
Nith twisted and folded the channels. A stitch there. A redirection of a channel here. And lastly a touch of unlife to coax the source back.
A spark of power snapped back into existence within each soul. The source poured animus into the decaying structure. The altered structure.
Unlife animus flowed out from the spark of consciousness. In its wake the souls solidified along with the changes Nith wrought.
Souls all around burrowed into the flesh and bones they once relied upon. The relationship reversed as dead muscles twitched and contracted.
Where bones were broken and tendons severed bodies snapped back into shape and moved without regard for damage. Even the limbs torn free were dragged to their former homes.
Nith felt the fear and panic of souls awakening to unwanted undeath. For most the last experience before revival was a bloody death at the hands of living corpses.
The necromancer ignored the flares of emotion from his new servants. The control matrix built into them would puppet their bodies as he wished.
He only revived the consciousness to provide power. The villagers' thoughts on the situation made no difference to him.
Only the newly dead radiated horror and denial. His servants slain in battle returned to consciousness with far more subdued reactions. Many had experienced the same process numerous times before.
Nith ran up the back of a lanky teenager as the boy stumbled to his feet. The master-mage kicked off the undead villager’s head and landed at the top of the church steps.
Willowcrook was too remote and inconsequential to appear on any map. The village likely had no consistent contact with the outside world. Subsistence farming being all that kept them from starvation.
Yet the church dwarfed every other structure in both scale and complexity. Nith’s lip twisted in disgust at the sycophance.
His gods might be imprisoned beyond the world. But they had still done more for him directly than any of the gods of these wretches had for anyone in living memory.
The last living souls in the village huddled around the interior. Nith would have to address that.
Rotting bodies parted to make way for four lumbering forms. The more than twenty foot tall corpses carried an iron bound ram between them.
The five va’id were the gems of Nith’s army. He stripped the flesh from the largest specimen and built his throne within the rib cage. But the smaller creatures were still powerful.
Nith jumped to the side and swung his hand forward with flare. The ram crashed into the heavy wooden doors.
Wood cracked and splintered. The next time it caved. And on the final strike boards broke completely.
The brown skinned va’id woman foremost on the ram let go and began tearing the broken door out of its frame. The ashen va’id man beside her joined soon after.
Nith could make out the cries of an infant from within the church. That was not surprising. The young, elderly and those who could not support themselves were often found in places like this.
Children only made slightly weaker undead than adults. And those old or enfermed were usually as fit as any other in undeath.
The dead flowed into the failed refuge. Screams and agony ensued as the necromancer hopped down the stairs and away from the press of animated bodies.
Nith twitched as an arrow thunked into his left pectoral. His eyes snapped to the church roof.
A violent gesture clawed across the space between Nith and the cyan haired archer. Threads of magic severed the bonds between the man’s body and soul in an instant.
The villager’s body seizured and rolled off the slanted shingles. It would physically die quickly as the nervous system fired randomly in the absence of a soul.
Nith began twisting and contorting the captured soul with petulant irritation. The spellwork prevented the archer’s spark from vanishing. The necromancer would bring it back even if it did.
He absently dropped a soul mimicking construct into the man’s body. It had strictly survived the fall. And the false soul would maintain basic biological functions.
Nith kept fidgeting with the captured soul as his servants exterminated the remaining living residence. He absently revived the children and few adults. But he never stopped cutting, stitching and patching the sentient bundle of animus.
The village was left behind soon after. His servants spread out around the thirty foot skeleton Nith reclined within.
He doubted anyone escaped the initial sweep or attack. But still sent out his forces for a final sweep of the surrounding area.
A survivor was unlikely to reach civilization or garner any meaningful support if they did. The untamed lands could swallow people whole.
Those who lived outside civilization recognized that risk and ignored hazards not directly threatening them. Nith was just one more fate that could befall the isolated communities that specled the savage territory.
The necromancer was surprised when a group sweeping the surrounding brushlands returned with less than half its members. Gleaming impressions from their minds gave no clear answers.
The band of a dozen undead swept the region. None of those who returned encountered any living souls. Only a handful of small animals that fled before the intruders to their habitat.
But more than half the group vanished in a specific location. The process of checking the surroundings normally took a few days.
The remaining servants had continued with their task and only reported back after finding nothing. That meant it was over a day since the disappearance occurred.
Nith kneaded the archer’s soul anxiously as his throne walked to the place his servants vanished. The flares of psychic pain and uncomprehending panic helped calm him.
Manipulating souls always made Nith feel more in control. To command the fundamental substance of a person’s existence. What greater proof of his strength could there be?
The skeletal forms of his older and more refined troops encircled the couple hundred foot stretch of brush and grass. The shoddier servants moved in and began scanning the ground for any oddities.
It did not take long to find. The carcass was barely hidden by the neighboring bushes. Nith would have seen it if he had walked his throne anywhere near the suspicious region.
The throne took a knee. Nith hopped from rib to femur and landed on the ground.
It had once been a mare. Not that long ago if the signs of scavengers and relatively early decomposition was anything to go by. But there were two strange things about the corpse.
For Nith the most obvious was something most alma would never notice. The depleted fragments of the animal’s soul still clung to the body.
It was beyond him to gather and repair them at this point. But the nature of that soul was glaringly apparent to the necromancer.
The mare had been undead. The unlife animus in the soul was still perfectly clear. And she was a masterpiece.
Each fragment Nith inspected was evidently flawless even as it crumbled apart. As if the animal had been created whole as an undead by a god capable of true genesis.
Nith could not find any sign of modification. No tears. No scarred channels. No patches of soul transplanted from one purpose to another. Not a single hint of mortal hands in her creation.
The necromancer responsible for the mare was either a genius or had dedicated long careful years to the making of her soul. Nith had to reluctantly admit the mage would be a genius no matter how long they spent on the task.
And that skill was used to make a horse. A completely normal one. There was no enhancement. No greater design. It was just a mare that used unlife animus.
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What sort of frivolous lunatic used this level of skill on a mundane animal? The creature would have been no different than in life, save for the advantages of unlife.
It was like the greatest bladesmith of a millennium choosing to spend their time crafting cutlery. Even Nith’s own soul had more flaws and compromises than he could find in the remains of this animal. And his apotheosis had been a process of decades and countless communions with his imprisoned patrons.
The second oddity was much more physical in nature. The abdomen was torn open.
That was to be expected for a large carcass left out on the plains for several days. But the glistening obsidian fragments that filled the cavity and poured out onto the earth were not.
Nith inspected a piece of the thin glassy material. It looked like a shard of a curved vessel. But the unbroken surface was too even for a mundane glass blower.
He supposed sufficient skill or arcane crafting could make such a thing. But the obviously spherical shape would have been poor for any purpose that came to mind.
There was no sign of an enchantment tied to the fragments. And there should have been residue even if the spellwork failed with their destruction.
The mare had been there for days. But no longer than a week. It was likely the grand necromancer was still near.
Anyone capable of creating an undead of this caliber was a significant threat. But they would also be an opportunity.
Nith would happily supplicate himself before a soul-mage who truly surpassed his own prowess. It would not be the first time he subordinated to a greater power to further his own knowledge.
The soul screamed with a spike of pain as Nith squeezed a little too hard. He quickly patched the damage and returned to absently modifying the structure.
Exploring the surroundings revealed neither magic nor sign of his missing servants. Had another creation of the unknown necromancer taken them?
That did not line up logically. The mare had been truly dead long before Nith’s servants passed by it. There was no reason to leave a broken undead out of the way and put a trap or guard on it.
Nith felt like he was missing key details that would make the situation fit together. But in the absence of whatever those were he had no clear course of action.
Years of avoiding the attention of powers willing and able to destroy him said he should flee at the first sign of danger. Years of seeking forbidden knowledge said he should track down the anomaly’s source.
Swarming dead feet had stomped out any chance at finding more subtle physical evidence. Nith had little ability with non-magical tracking even if the potential tracks were undisturbed.
Caution won out in lieu of any true path to follow. The necromancer set his troops to a hard march. It was certain to leave clear signs of their passing. But hopefully those would have faded by the time anyone looked to follow.
Nith traveled in a random pattern for the next week. Moving through fields and rivers whenever possible.
He spent most of the time working on the soul that had captured his attention. It was nothing special. A bit larger than the average adult. But lacking exceptional talents or arcane ability.
The necromancer fingered the hole in his robe where the arrow pierced it. The flesh below was long since healed without blemish. But Nith had never been proficient in repairing inanimate material.
Maybe a vampire? It had been years since he made one of the more sophisticated undead. The advanced nature of a vampire required many compromises to the soul's structure.
The result was a flawed creature with vulnerabilities only the banished gods knew the exact reasons for. But those were a greater concern for the creature than mage controlling it.
As long as he did not make another water soluble one. He was so proud to have removed the weakness to sunlight, only to lose his most powerful servants the first time it rained.
The strictly living body would make the task much easier. A vampire would maintain the tissue in a living state. But it was tedious to restore dead cells to life and hard to make a soul capable of doing so entirely on its own.
Nith was snapped from his work by a warning signal from one of his troop management enchantments. He had somehow just lost twenty or more of his undead servants.
Just lost may have been an exaggeration. The spell reported that the total number of souls it was linked to had dropped by at least twenty since he last calibrated it.
That was after assessing his spoils from Willowcrook. The losses around the horse carcass accounted for seven of the disappearances. But what happened to the other thirteen?
Nith rose as bands of necromantic spellwork uncoiled. The arcane power multiplied and spread across the rolling plains.
He moved past the trudging souls already marked as his. The simple souls of rodents in the grass and below the earth were of no more interest.
The master-necromancer felt every living thing within miles. From mindless plants down to microbes in the soil. But there was not a single sapient soul outside of his control.
It made no sense. His creations were not trivial to dispose of. They would defend themselves with some proficiency if attacked and report any significant conflict back to him.
And it was not easy to destroy the undead. An attacker would need to damage their body enough to dislodge the soul.
Nothing living or undead was within his considerable range. Could it be a nonliving hazard? What could destroy over a dozen undead discreetly?
Nith sent out the call to gather his troops. The army formed ranks around his throne. Disdaining eyes and empty sockets all faced towards the necromancer.
A chill passed through Nith as the last of his servants left the few thickets of trees obscuring his view. There were only three va’id.
The earth toned va’id woman he revived over two decades ago was nowhere to be seen. His magic scoured the landscape alongside his mundane senses.
Twenty servants out of the few hundred he controlled was a trivial loss. It only mattered because it showed something was able to pick them off without being noticed.
But the va’id were powerful specimens he had poured far more attention and time into. They were stronger and more resilient than their living equivalents.
She had functionally been a simplistic form of vampire. Albeit one without as many compromising trade-offs as he would give a more disposable creation.
A battle between her and anything not of demigod-like martial prowess would have at minimum made itself apparent. That left only a trap or similar trickery.
Or another soul-mage skilled and insidious enough to steal his prised servant out from under his nose. He had not forgotten the flawless fragments lingering on the mare.
“I wish to parley.” Nith’s long unused voice boomed across the field. It carried far beyond its natural reach before being swallowed by the wind.
A long few minutes passed in silence. Nith finally scoffed and signaled his army to search the area. It was not surprising when they found nothing.
Nith extended his forced march another two weeks. The hope of losing his pursuer was slim. But there was a remote chance he could catch the enemy in the act.
An enemy mage would be using magic within his senses. There was no other way to target his troops. Even the most powerful mortals could not hide their spellwork perfectly. And he would catch it.
He did not. The attrition was gradual. Close monitoring revealed a servant vanishing from perception every few days.
It was always at the very edge of his army. He tried grouping up. But there were too many undead to keep within sight while traveling.
One of the stragglers would always disappear. He took to sending his servants swarming towards the location the moment he noticed. But they never found anything.
Did he need to stop and fortify himself? It would allow him to watch all his undead at once. He might be able to finally catch the bastard.
The tactic did not even make sense. It would take months to meaningfully diminish his numbers this way. Were they just trying to annoy him?
That might have been the point. Nith hated to admit how effective the method was if so.
His undead body could not tire. But he remained susceptible to mental stress. And the tactical equivalent of being randomly poked with a stick for several weeks was very mentally stressful.
Did they want him to react? Maybe stopping was the exact thing they were waiting for. Or maybe they wanted him to keep wasting time trying to lose an enemy he could not even identify.
Nith needed to figure out a solution. He was not some roaming savage slaughtering villages for the fun of it.
The crudely raised souls were valuable resources he needed the time and space to make use of. That meant returning to one of his existing bases or making a new one.
He could do neither if a hostile unknown entity would follow there. Which left few options.
The archer’s body lay stripped on the ground. Nearly a month on life support magic had left the man emaciated and soiled. But neither would interfere with Nith’s work.
The heavily altered soul slipped into its body with ease. Nith carefully attatched each of the necessary junction points.
A long moment passed. Than the body seized. Eyes opened wider than biology intended. Pupils dilated and rolled as every muscle twitched.
Nith snapped his fingers. The vampire jolted to a standing position in a manner that rightfully should have broken several bones.
Confusion was obvious on the sunken face. But Nith had removed the capacity to speak. It only interfered.
“Patrol the outer edge of my forces. Remain unseen and kill anything not under my command.” The verbal instructions accompanied the mental instructions to the control matrix within the vampire.
Realization and a new kind of panic overtook confusion. But that had no effect on the new undead’s actions.
The vampire dropped to all fours and bounded away. His limbs contorted and stretched unnaturally to facilitate the movement.
Air shimmered around the twisted figure. A moment later he vanished from both physical sight and magical senses.
Nith could still identify the undead’s location when he focused. But it would be very hard to detect the vampire casually.
The necromancer let out a biologically unnecessary and much needed sigh. It was not a solution. But the specialized servant had a chance of catching the enemy in the act.
It seemed to work. At least in part. No more undead vanished for more than a week. Yet the former archer failed to reveal any attempts.
It was like the enemy knew the vampire was patrolling. But they could not do anything about it. That was progress. Until the vampire disappeared.
Nith froze the moment the creature’s bond snapped. He could not even tell where it had been. But it was now gone.
Animus threads exploded out from the soul-mage. They dug into every living thing. A thousand tiny hearts stopped. Grass wilted. Every scrap of animus was torn away.
It was all dragged back to the furious mage. His channels gorged with power far in excess of his natural limits.
Nith rose into the air. His lack of ability with force magic overcome by exorbitant waste.
A pale hand thrust to the heavens. Animus twisted in a way only the cult of the sepulchral flame could teach.
It sparked and flared into a visible color no mortal eye was intended to see. The materialized soul-stuff swelled and burned brighter.
Undead began to crumple below as their animus was drained. They would survive. Unless their master drew any deeper.
The soul flame redoubled. The resulting orb of unnatural fire was approaching twenty feet across. The night became illuminated in the shade of burning souls.
“Face me!” The scream contained all the pent up rage of the last month. Rage born of futility. Of fear of the unknown.
The dying grass and trees shifted and bent in the orb’s light. All else remained still.
There was a moment where Nith was going to do it. Going to burn away everything for miles. Burn body and soul alike.
But then there would be nothing left. Only wasteland and him. Him drained and without a single servant. And they would win.
He cut off the animus feeding the soul flame. The orb flickered out as the necromancer lowered to the bleached skull of his va’id throne.
Darkness fell once more. The darkness had not frightened Nith for decades. He had long been what many feared in the dark.
Somewhere along the line that had let him forget. Looking into the swaying dead grass of a moonless night, he remembered.