Seven men dismounted their horses, tying them up in a small grove of trees beyond the view of the small village in the gentle valley below. More men would have been preferred for this mission but their order was only now beginning to recover after so many hundreds of years of stagnating.
It meant they couldn’t just ride into the village killing as they went, they needed to remain unseen until it was too late for the villagers to stop them. Their sole task was to cleanse the land of the source of this new blight. It was a holy and righteous task that all seven men would gladly give their lives to complete. They may be few in number but their task was clear, their hearts steeled against evil. Somewhere in this corrupt village was the source. Their goal was simply to kill it by any means necessary.
They slipped quietly among the stone houses, hidden by the dark of night and new moon, a fortuitous turn of events. Fenris of Horshoen abhorred having to hide their presence like some thief or petty scoundrel. He would have preferred to ride in and cut down all in his path until his target was in sight. But the mission was far more important than his feelings. Apolon the Radiant would surely forgive them for these black-hearted tactics after their mission was a success. Maybe the deity would even uplift them from this accursed plane and return them to their old world as a gift for destroying this evil. He could only prey.
It didn’t take long for the men to cross through the town without being spotted. The rot that had taken root in this village hadn’t had time to spread far. It was a good sign that Fenris and his men had arrived in time to stop it. Fenris gripped his sword tight as he glanced at the largest house inside the small settlement.
The castle, because that was what it was, was situated in the distance on a hill that overlooked the valley and the other more humble dwellings. Its size and location proclaimed it and those that lived within above everyone else. Fenris wasn’t surprised by the building's intended statement. He would expect no less from someone so unclean.
He compared the foul structure to the temple back home. Unlike this travesty in front of him, the temple proclaimed itself heavenly by reaching for the sky, but it stood on the same ground as everyone else instead of above anyone. Meaning all people were judged equal in the light.
Fenris turned back toward his men, all grim-faced and determined. He gave a single nod and they all unsheathed their blades and rushed up the shallow incline of the hill as fast as they could. There were no shouts or war cries, just stone-cold determination to complete their holy duties.
The two guards outside the home eventually noticed them and Fenris ordered four of his men to intercept them. They couldn’t afford to be stopped.
The sounds of battle quickly broke the quiet night but Fenris and the rest of his men didn’t slow. The first man to the door gave it a solid kick but it held. It took four more kicks to the thick wooden door before it gave way and the now five remaining men rushed inside the house to search for the source of this rot.
Two of his men had given their lives to fight off the guards but it was an even trade. Fenris would ensure those men would be touted as heroes when they returned home.
Fenris stopped as the group entered a larger room, It reminded him a bit of the sanctum where the high priest met supplicants. But this was a twisted caricature of that pristine place.
His eyes flicked toward the far side of the room when a door opened. A man had just stepped out of a side passage and was moving rather erratically to the point Fenrir thought something might be trying to possess him. Fenris wouldn’t put it past the people that dabbled in this twisted magic to do something like that as well.
The man didn’t have the same grey-skinned appearance as the unclean, which gave Fenris pause. Something must have alerted the man to their presence as he turned toward the group, lowering some strange reflective eye coverings while holding what looked like a chicken wing.
***
Norman was dancing to some funky techno beat with his earpods in as he exited the kitchen with one of Grobert’s amazing chicken drumsticks in his hand. Norman didn’t know what spices the man used or where he had found chicken but damn that man could cook. It put anything Norman had ever eaten to shame.
Something flashed in the side of Norman’s vision and he turned to see what it was. He paused, the chicken halfway to his mouth. There were five heavily armed men wearing what looked like crusader armor adorned with a white tabard. Said tabard was emblazoned with a golden ring that could have been a Sun, assuming it was drawn by a drunk with Parkinson's. He pushed down his sunglasses to get a better look. Yeah, definitely a sun.
An older-looking man was yelling something and pointing a very sharp-looking sword his way.
Norman popped one of his earpods out, “Sorry, could you repeat that, I couldn’t hear you.”
The man turned red in the face and shouted at him. “Are you in league with these foul abominations!”
Norman looked around, seeing only himself and the five men in the room. “Um, who exactly are you referring to?”
“The ones in this town,” the man growled through clenched teeth. “The grave-walkers.”
Norman scoffed, “grave-walkers? What a stupid name, that makes it sound like I dug them up or something. I didn’t mind you, that would just be weird. Besides, they prefer to be called the greykin, so let's not have any more derogatory name-calling, ok.”
It didn’t seem like any of the men liked his answer as all five blades turned his way.
The older man’s eyes widened in realization. “You are the foul master behind this blight. I will rid the land of your curse and purge it in holy fire, praise be our benevolent god Apolon!”
“Who?” Norman asked, but the man didn’t answer as he charged across the room. “What the fuck!”
Norman had no clue who these men were or where they came from. But it was pretty clear what they wanted. They also had him at a bit of a tactical disadvantage since he hadn’t expected to be, you know, attacked in his own fucking home.
Norman had no weapons so he did the next best thing he could think of and chucked the half-eaten chicken leg at the charging man. He would have to apologize to Grobert for wasting his delicious food later. As the half-eaten bone sailed through the air, Norman drew a quick spell circle in the air behind it, leaving bloody red lines hanging in the air as his finger blurred. As the spell circle finished, it flashed forward, absorbing the chicken leg and turning it into a bolt of black that seemed to suck all light it touched out of the room for a moment as it sped forward.
It wasn’t an attack spell but Norman only needed it to slow the man down for a moment as he reached into his pocket.
The bolt flashed forward and struck the man who had screamed at him in the chest, making him stumble back a step. The man tried to continue forward but he coughed, a thick black ichor spewing from his mouth. Then black lines started to crawl up his body, following his veins.
Norman was surprised by this development but didn’t have much time to gawk at the spectacle as the other four charged around their incapacitated companion. Norman pulled his hand from his pocket and whipped out a handful of small bones. “Nobody expects pocket zombies!” he crowed as the bones impacted the floor between him and the four attackers.
As they broke apart, a dozen feral zombies burst forth and started attacking the remaining assassins. It didn’t take long for the feral zombies to overwhelm the attackers, being three-on-one. Soon the last man fell under the combined might of eight zombies, after having managed to dispatch three of the feral zombies by himself. Four of the remaining zombies were unharmed with the last zombie having survived the fight but missing an arm and a leg. “The cost of doing business,” Norman stated sagely.
Norman was glad he had finally figured out the issue of storing the feral zombies. He hadn’t figured he would need them so soon, and luckily he had some with him for experiments or this encounter would have gone a whole different way.
The man Norman had struck with his conversion spell was slumped over but still sitting up, black blood pooled from his mouth and stained his fancy white tabard. The black bolt wasn’t an attack spell, or at least Norman hadn’t ever intended it to be. It was simply a device to prepare corpses for revival into undead since he couldn’t just reanimate standard corpses. They needed to be properly prepared first. And the poison method didn’t work on those already dead. He would have to add a note to his grimoire that it could be used as an attack spell in a pinch.
“Now, who are you?” Norman walked over to the corpses and examined them without touching the bodies.
He had to shove a few of the feral zombies out of the way as he examined the body, they were milling about and being general nuisances like normal. Norman didn’t have any spell anchors on hand to store them away at the moment, not expecting to be attacked in his own home, so they would just have to be left to roam until he could store them again.
At first glance, Norman thought these men were human, they certainly looked exactly like a human but he was starting to second guess that assumption. Mostly based on their skin color. Instead of a pinkish hue, they were slightly purple. Which was hard to tell based on how tanned these men were and the poor lighting in the room. He would have to talk to Grobert about that.
Norman licked his finger and placed it on the blood cuff that he wore nowadays. It was much simpler than carrying around a bottle of blood powder. It was just the powder in a compacted form, similar to how women’s cosmetics were pressed into solids or water-colored paint. It was a design from Grobert and it allowed him to draw directly from the cuff without having to resort to more clumsy methods like stabbing himself to draw blood.
“Alright, let's see what story you have to tell,” Norman pressed his blood-coated finger to the man's chest and drew out the spell circle that would allow him to peruse the man’s mind at will.
Norman was forced to leap back though as the spell circle burst into white flames, singeing him. Soon the flames spread across the body, engulfing the entire thing, and Norman was forced to the back of the room, afraid the fire might spread and burn the entire house down.
Thankfully this did not happen. The fire consumed the body in its entirety but did not spread. It was hot enough to reduce even the bones to ash and liquefy the sturdy stone beneath the man into a bubbling mess though.
Eugene took this moment to burst into the room, his Desert Eagle pistol swinging about looking for a target. Norman had gotten the gun for him as a gift and the large man loved the stupid thing, even though it wasn’t likely to kill an enhanced person. Not that Eugene needed such a weapon, he was a weapon. Eugene was easily capable of tearing apart a normal person with his outrageous strength alone.
“Sorry, Boss, I came as soon as I realized something was wrong.”
Norman nodded at the man, not correcting him anymore. The man refused to call him anything except ‘boss’, Norman had tried to get him to change but the man was set in his ways.
“Who was on watch tonight?”
“Nolix and Renton,” Eugene replied clinically.
Norman cursed, he liked those two. “Are they recoverable?”
Eugene thought for a minute before shrugging. Norman would have to go look to see if the men could be repaired and brought back to life.
“Quit waving that gun around and get over here. Any idea who these clowns are?” Norman pointed to the corpses.
Eugene reluctantly holstered the gun and walked over. He examined the bodies and shook his head. “It isn’t a symbol I recognize.”
“Dammit!” Norman kicked the nearest corpse, not at all feeling bad about killing five men.
He had come to a realization over the last year. One that should have been blatantly obvious as soon as Norman summoned his first ghost. But he hadn’t been in the right mindset at the time to see what was right in front of him. Norman blamed it on his drug-addled mind. The realization Norman had come to is he didn’t truly kill people, sure he robbed them of their mortal coil so to speak, but if people came at him with murder or violence in their hearts and minds, they got what they deserved.
“Couldn’t you just check their memories, Boss?”
Norman gestured over to the ash pile and steaming stones. “Tried that, didn’t work. Seems these men have some sort of magical protection. Where is Grobert?”
“He left for Grothlosburg a few hours ago. Probably won’t be back until late tomorrow.”
“Fuck… Alright, keep one of those symbols for Grobert to look at when he gets back.”
“And the rest?” Eugene asked, shoving one of the overly curious feral zombies away.
The things seemed to purposefully annoy Eugene every time he was within proximity of the ferals, almost as if they could sense his discomfort with them. It always got a chuckle out of Norman, except for tonight.
“Burn them. I can’t use them if they are warded.”
Eugene nodded and got to work dragging the bodies off to the refuse pit. Meanwhile, Norman stepped outside with a flashlight and examined Nolix and Renton. Their bodies had been slashed apart pretty badly during the attack but Norman thought they might be fixable. Their souls had fled though so he would have to see if he could bring them back for a third time. He had never attempted that so this would be a good experiment.
Norman also found two more of the attackers. He pointed them out to Eugene when he returned and the man nodded. He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. Why couldn’t his life just be simple?
The sun was coming up and Norman looked over the sleepy town that had been built around the house Grobert had built. It was more house than Norman had ever had in his life, but Grobert had insisted on building the pseudo-castle and having Norman live there.
Thankfully it wasn’t built in the same bland grey concrete that the entirety of Grothlosburg had been built in. No, Grobert may not have been a master builder but he had done an admirable job at making something both functional as well as aesthetically pleasing. Some mix between prairie-styled buildings and palladian. With thick stone walls all along the bottom floor, and large overhanging roofs held up by ornately carved stone pillars.
Honestly, Grobert was a madman to build the entire thing himself in only six months. Once the house was built Norman started resurrecting some of the bodies he had purloined from Grothlosburg. Most of the resurrected stuck around, more than happy to build up a small town in this idyllic spot of land they located.
Who would have suspected they were still in the deadlands? But the actual portion inhabited by the specters was relatively small. It consisted of only a hundred-mile stretch around the volcanic vents that ran along the north and eastern borders of the territory. Also partially along the western.
That left most of the territory looking rather normal. With beautiful plains of wildflowers dotted with small copses of trees here and there. And the weather was rather mild, leaving Norman to believe this land came from much further south than Colorado had been back on Earth.
There weren’t even any big nasty animals around. Just some smaller birds and critters that hung around the forested bits, and a few different types of grazing animals that roamed the large prairie. An ideal place to settle down and build his new life, or so he thought until today.
Seven men dismounted their horses, tying them up in a small grove of trees beyond the view of the small village in the gentle valley below. More men would have been preferred for this mission but their order was only now beginning to recover after so many hundreds of years of stagnating.
It meant they couldn’t just ride into the village killing as they went, they needed to remain unseen until it was too late for the villagers to stop them. Their sole task was to cleanse the land of the source of this new blight. It was a holy and righteous task that all seven men would gladly give their lives to complete. They may be few in number but their task was clear, their hearts steeled against evil. Somewhere in this corrupt village was the source. Their goal was simply to kill it by any means necessary.
They slipped quietly among the stone houses, hidden by the dark of night and new moon, a fortuitous turn of events. Fenris of Horshoen abhorred having to hide their presence like some thief or petty scoundrel. He would have preferred to ride in and cut down all in his path until his target was in sight. But the mission was far more important than his feelings. Apolon the Radiant would surely forgive them for these black-hearted tactics after their mission was a success. Maybe the deity would even uplift them from this accursed plane and return them to their old world as a gift for destroying this evil. He could only prey.
It didn’t take long for the men to cross through the town without being spotted. The rot that had taken root in this village hadn’t had time to spread far. It was a good sign that Fenris and his men had arrived in time to stop it. Fenris gripped his sword tight as he glanced at the largest house inside the small settlement.
The castle, because that was what it was, was situated in the distance on a hill that overlooked the valley and the other more humble dwellings. Its size and location proclaimed it and those that lived within above everyone else. Fenris wasn’t surprised by the building's intended statement. He would expect no less from someone so unclean.
He compared the foul structure to the temple back home. Unlike this travesty in front of him, the temple proclaimed itself heavenly by reaching for the sky, but it stood on the same ground as everyone else instead of above anyone. Meaning all people were judged equal in the light.
Fenris turned back toward his men, all grim-faced and determined. He gave a single nod and they all unsheathed their blades and rushed up the shallow incline of the hill as fast as they could. There were no shouts or war cries, just stone-cold determination to complete their holy duties.
The two guards outside the home eventually noticed them and Fenris ordered four of his men to intercept them. They couldn’t afford to be stopped.
The sounds of battle quickly broke the quiet night but Fenris and the rest of his men didn’t slow. The first man to the door gave it a solid kick but it held. It took four more kicks to the thick wooden door before it gave way and the now five remaining men rushed inside the house to search for the source of this rot.
Two of his men had given their lives to fight off the guards but it was an even trade. Fenris would ensure those men would be touted as heroes when they returned home.
Fenris stopped as the group entered a larger room, It reminded him a bit of the sanctum where the high priest met supplicants. But this was a twisted caricature of that pristine place.
His eyes flicked toward the far side of the room when a door opened. A man had just stepped out of a side passage and was moving rather erratically to the point Fenrir thought something might be trying to possess him. Fenris wouldn’t put it past the people that dabbled in this twisted magic to do something like that as well.
The man didn’t have the same grey-skinned appearance as the unclean, which gave Fenris pause. Something must have alerted the man to their presence as he turned toward the group, lowering some strange reflective eye coverings while holding what looked like a chicken wing.
***
Norman was dancing to some funky techno beat with his earpods in as he exited the kitchen with one of Grobert’s amazing chicken drumsticks in his hand. Norman didn’t know what spices the man used or where he had found chicken but damn that man could cook. It put anything Norman had ever eaten to shame.
Something flashed in the side of Norman’s vision and he turned to see what it was. He paused, the chicken halfway to his mouth. There were five heavily armed men wearing what looked like crusader armor adorned with a white tabard. Said tabard was emblazoned with a golden ring that could have been a Sun, assuming it was drawn by a drunk with Parkinson's. He pushed down his sunglasses to get a better look. Yeah, definitely a sun.
An older-looking man was yelling something and pointing a very sharp-looking sword his way.
Norman popped one of his earpods out, “Sorry, could you repeat that, I couldn’t hear you.”
The man turned red in the face and shouted at him. “Are you in league with these foul abominations!”
Norman looked around, seeing only himself and the five men in the room. “Um, who exactly are you referring to?”
“The ones in this town,” the man growled through clenched teeth. “The grave-walkers.”
Norman scoffed, “grave-walkers? What a stupid name, that makes it sound like I dug them up or something. I didn’t mind you, that would just be weird. Besides, they prefer to be called the greykin, so let's not have any more derogatory name-calling, ok.”
It didn’t seem like any of the men liked his answer as all five blades turned his way.
The older man’s eyes widened in realization. “You are the foul master behind this blight. I will rid the land of your curse and purge it in holy fire, praise be our benevolent god Apolon!”
“Who?” Norman asked, but the man didn’t answer as he charged across the room. “What the fuck!”
Norman had no clue who these men were or where they came from. But it was pretty clear what they wanted. They also had him at a bit of a tactical disadvantage since he hadn’t expected to be, you know, attacked in his own fucking home.
Norman had no weapons so he did the next best thing he could think of and chucked the half-eaten chicken leg at the charging man. He would have to apologize to Grobert for wasting his delicious food later. As the half-eaten bone sailed through the air, Norman drew a quick spell circle in the air behind it, leaving bloody red lines hanging in the air as his finger blurred. As the spell circle finished, it flashed forward, absorbing the chicken leg and turning it into a bolt of black that seemed to suck all light it touched out of the room for a moment as it sped forward.
It wasn’t an attack spell but Norman only needed it to slow the man down for a moment as he reached into his pocket.
The bolt flashed forward and struck the man who had screamed at him in the chest, making him stumble back a step. The man tried to continue forward but he coughed, a thick black ichor spewing from his mouth. Then black lines started to crawl up his body, following his veins.
Norman was surprised by this development but didn’t have much time to gawk at the spectacle as the other four charged around their incapacitated companion. Norman pulled his hand from his pocket and whipped out a handful of small bones. “Nobody expects pocket zombies!” he crowed as the bones impacted the floor between him and the four attackers.
As they broke apart, a dozen feral zombies burst forth and started attacking the remaining assassins. It didn’t take long for the feral zombies to overwhelm the attackers, being three-on-one. Soon the last man fell under the combined might of eight zombies, after having managed to dispatch three of the feral zombies by himself. Four of the remaining zombies were unharmed with the last zombie having survived the fight but missing an arm and a leg. “The cost of doing business,” Norman stated sagely.
Norman was glad he had finally figured out the issue of storing the feral zombies. He hadn’t figured he would need them so soon, and luckily he had some with him for experiments or this encounter would have gone a whole different way.
The man Norman had struck with his conversion spell was slumped over but still sitting up, black blood pooled from his mouth and stained his fancy white tabard. The black bolt wasn’t an attack spell, or at least Norman hadn’t ever intended it to be. It was simply a device to prepare corpses for revival into undead since he couldn’t just reanimate standard corpses. They needed to be properly prepared first. And the poison method didn’t work on those already dead. He would have to add a note to his grimoire that it could be used as an attack spell in a pinch.
“Now, who are you?” Norman walked over to the corpses and examined them without touching the bodies.
He had to shove a few of the feral zombies out of the way as he examined the body, they were milling about and being general nuisances like normal. Norman didn’t have any spell anchors on hand to store them away at the moment, not expecting to be attacked in his own home, so they would just have to be left to roam until he could store them again.
At first glance, Norman thought these men were human, they certainly looked exactly like a human but he was starting to second guess that assumption. Mostly based on their skin color. Instead of a pinkish hue, they were slightly purple. Which was hard to tell based on how tanned these men were and the poor lighting in the room. He would have to talk to Grobert about that.
Norman licked his finger and placed it on the blood cuff that he wore nowadays. It was much simpler than carrying around a bottle of blood powder. It was just the powder in a compacted form, similar to how women’s cosmetics were pressed into solids or water-colored paint. It was a design from Grobert and it allowed him to draw directly from the cuff without having to resort to more clumsy methods like stabbing himself to draw blood.
“Alright, let's see what story you have to tell,” Norman pressed his blood-coated finger to the man's chest and drew out the spell circle that would allow him to peruse the man’s mind at will.
Norman was forced to leap back though as the spell circle burst into white flames, singeing him. Soon the flames spread across the body, engulfing the entire thing, and Norman was forced to the back of the room, afraid the fire might spread and burn the entire house down.
Thankfully this did not happen. The fire consumed the body in its entirety but did not spread. It was hot enough to reduce even the bones to ash and liquefy the sturdy stone beneath the man into a bubbling mess though.
Eugene took this moment to burst into the room, his Desert Eagle pistol swinging about looking for a target. Norman had gotten the gun for him as a gift and the large man loved the stupid thing, even though it wasn’t likely to kill an enhanced person. Not that Eugene needed such a weapon, he was a weapon. Eugene was easily capable of tearing apart a normal person with his outrageous strength alone.
“Sorry, Boss, I came as soon as I realized something was wrong.”
Norman nodded at the man, not correcting him anymore. The man refused to call him anything except ‘boss’, Norman had tried to get him to change but the man was set in his ways.
“Who was on watch tonight?”
“Nolix and Renton,” Eugene replied clinically.
Norman cursed, he liked those two. “Are they recoverable?”
Eugene thought for a minute before shrugging. Norman would have to go look to see if the men could be repaired and brought back to life.
“Quit waving that gun around and get over here. Any idea who these clowns are?” Norman pointed to the corpses.
Eugene reluctantly holstered the gun and walked over. He examined the bodies and shook his head. “It isn’t a symbol I recognize.”
“Dammit!” Norman kicked the nearest corpse, not at all feeling bad about killing five men.
He had come to a realization over the last year. One that should have been blatantly obvious as soon as Norman summoned his first ghost. But he hadn’t been in the right mindset at the time to see what was right in front of him. Norman blamed it on his drug-addled mind. The realization Norman had come to is he didn’t truly kill people, sure he robbed them of their mortal coil so to speak, but if people came at him with murder or violence in their hearts and minds, they got what they deserved.
“Couldn’t you just check their memories, Boss?”
Norman gestured over to the ash pile and steaming stones. “Tried that, didn’t work. Seems these men have some sort of magical protection. Where is Grobert?”
“He left for Grothlosburg a few hours ago. Probably won’t be back until late tomorrow.”
“Fuck… Alright, keep one of those symbols for Grobert to look at when he gets back.”
“And the rest?” Eugene asked, shoving one of the overly curious feral zombies away.
The things seemed to purposefully annoy Eugene every time he was within proximity of the ferals, almost as if they could sense his discomfort with them. It always got a chuckle out of Norman, except for tonight.
“Burn them. I can’t use them if they are warded.”
Eugene nodded and got to work dragging the bodies off to the refuse pit. Meanwhile, Norman stepped outside with a flashlight and examined Nolix and Renton. Their bodies had been slashed apart pretty badly during the attack but Norman thought they might be fixable. Their souls had fled though so he would have to see if he could bring them back for a third time. He had never attempted that so this would be a good experiment.
Norman also found two more of the attackers. He pointed them out to Eugene when he returned and the man nodded. He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. Why couldn’t his life just be simple?
The sun was coming up and Norman looked over the sleepy town that had been built around the house Grobert had built. It was more house than Norman had ever had in his life, but Grobert had insisted on building the pseudo-castle and having Norman live there.
Thankfully it wasn’t built in the same bland grey concrete that the entirety of Grothlosburg had been built in. No, Grobert may not have been a master builder but he had done an admirable job at making something both functional as well as aesthetically pleasing. Some mix between prairie-styled buildings and palladian. With thick stone walls all along the bottom floor, and large overhanging roofs held up by ornately carved stone pillars.
Honestly, Grobert was a madman to build the entire thing himself in only six months. Once the house was built Norman started resurrecting some of the bodies he had purloined from Grothlosburg. Most of the resurrected stuck around, more than happy to build up a small town in this idyllic spot of land they located.
Who would have suspected they were still in the deadlands? But the actual portion inhabited by the specters was relatively small. It consisted of only a hundred-mile stretch around the volcanic vents that ran along the north and eastern borders of the territory. Also partially along the western.
That left most of the territory looking rather normal. With beautiful plains of wildflowers dotted with small copses of trees here and there. And the weather was rather mild, leaving Norman to believe this land came from much further south than Colorado had been back on Earth.
There weren’t even any big nasty animals around. Just some smaller birds and critters that hung around the forested bits, and a few different types of grazing animals that roamed the large prairie. An ideal place to settle down and build his new life, or so he thought until today.
