by Rosie Scott
Now, I was the one to fear. This intoxicating realization almost overrode the deep pit of isolation that consistently threatened to implode my chest.
Almost.
My minions swarmed the camp like ants around a fallen dessert, surrounding orcs and hobbling up tower staircases to get to the archer slaves. Three of the four slaves refused to stop attacking and were quickly cut down by the undead. I set my sights on the fourth.
The background noise of battle fell silent with victory behind me as I reached the covered floor of the watchtower. A goblin huddled in the corner, holding shaking green arms before its face and rambling nonsensically in its stilted native tongue. Wide-set floppy ears stuck out behind its hidden gaze. As I neared it, black eyes peered at me through spread knobbed fingers before it whimpered.
I took the bow from the floor by its bare feet and threw the weapon over the wooden plank that served as a low wall. With the orcs demolished, my corpses gathered around the tower, and the bow clunked one in the head in its descent. The zombie gurgled with distaste and crumpled to the ground, dispelled. I huffed with amusement at the scene before turning my attention back to the goblin.
“Where is your key?” I asked. When it lowered its hands to meet my gaze, a look of confusion snagged its ugly features.
“Your key,” I repeated, squatting to point at the slave collar around its thin throat.
The goblin said nothing, only ducking away from my nearness. I sighed and went back to ground level. After some searching, I found a crudely fashioned key ring hanging on the tip of a meat hook. When I took it back up to the goblin, it huddled and shook again. The third key opened its collar, and the iron ring fell to the wooden floor with a clank.
The goblin stared at me, confused. I stared right back. Despite my limited knowledge of goblins, I knew from fighting them as orcish slaves that they spoke in clicks and grunts, not words. Still, they did speak. Perhaps this one would understand words even if it didn't speak them.
“Free,” I said, backing up toward the staircase and pointing at the fort's open gate. “You. Free.”
The goblin kept its stare for a moment before it trusted the situation enough to stand. It wandered tentatively over to the staircase. To help convince it, I trotted down to the ground. With a sweep of my arm, I convinced my minions to move to the other side of the camp where I dispelled them.
With the dead back to their rest and me far away from the gate, the goblin finally ran for freedom like it still expected me to kill it. I watched it rush through bloodied foliage to the west until it disappeared and silence fell over the forest. I assumed the goblin would try its best to go home to its tribe of like-minded peers. Perhaps it would reunite with other goblins it once knew and cared for. Did goblins shed tears? Maybe there would be an emotional homecoming.
Or perhaps I was projecting my own underlying self-conscious desires.
It will do you no good to be envious of goblins.
Disgusted by my sudden sentimentalism, I blanked out my mind and focused only on preparing my newly claimed land for inevitable attack. If I'd learned anything from surviving on my own for years, it was to trust my intuition.
And my intuition promised a storm was brewing.
Twenty-five
In the seasons following the camp's takeover, my mind slowly crumbled and melted into a realm of insanity. I was aware of this. I understood it. I just could do nothing to stop it.
The last semblance of friendly companionship I'd had was with John, and his corpse had long ago been destroyed after repeated use in battle. How long had it been since I killed John? My memories were blurs. I remembered the weather had been cool and the forest had a red tint, so it must have been Red Moon. I also remembered that I was sixteen at the time. Gods, had it really been four years? Four years since I'd last had a cordial conversation where the other person spoke back?
I definitely believed the rumors that necromancers were insane now. They lost their minds because they had no choice; lives of isolation were precursors to insanity. I'd become a statistic.
The assassins and orcs were undeterred by my claiming the fort. If anything, it encouraged them to hunt me down prepared and fight particularly cruelly. The orcs always brought ogres now, and their brute strength was evident in the many places of the palisade that were worn, dented, and outright broken. I assumed ogres came from the mountains based on what little I heard about it from the orcs, so the fact that sightings of them ramped up over time told me the orcs searched far and wide for aid to help root me out of their forest once and for all.
One enemy stopped coming altogether: mercenaries. And that spoke wonders.
On one late-High Star evening in 416, I tugged a shoddy wooden chair up the steps of the northwestern guard tower. The tap of its wooden legs on each step overrode the footsteps behind me, albeit barely. When I reached the square floor, I set the chair down next to another more familiar seat. I claimed my usual chair and pointed to the new one. The Alderi corpse following me plopped down in it, facing me with a blank stare in her solid black eyes.
This assassin was far lighter than most. Her skin was an even mix of blue and gray, and it was free of imperfection. She seemed young enough to be a juvenile, but then again, it was hard to tell age with elves. Her shoulder-length black hair was pulled up in a ponytail, but many frizzy locks escaped and hung by her face, proof of her efforts in battle the night before when she tried to assassinate me. I knew nothing about this woman. Her name, her story, her hometown, her skills, her hopes and dreams—all of this would forever be unknown to me. I'd only picked her to follow me here because she was the freshest corpse I had in this fort. I could pretend, even for a short time, that she listened and cared about what I said.
“I apologize,” I began, my voice wavering with a combination of embarrassment and disbelief of my current state, “but I desperately need someone to talk to.”
The assassin didn't move or blink.
“If you were alive, I would ask you for your name,” I went on, spinning the skull ring around my thumb and staring at it. “I would ask you more questions than I would answer. I never used to feel comfortable talking about myself. What was there to say? Most people judge others by their preconceived biases. I never felt convincing enough to change their minds. I didn't want to, anyway. Few people impressed me enough to inspire the effort.” I thought of Kai. “Those worth the effort were determined to learn more about me as it was. That's why I'm apologizing. I'm better at listening than I am at expressing myself, but I cannot listen to you. That leaves you in the awful position of having to listen to me, and even before I resorted to talking to corpses I couldn't find the right words to say.”
I sighed with frustration and glared off into the forest. Tree branches overlapped until the canopies were one big collective blur of green.
“I'm slowly going insane,” I murmured. “And there's nothing I can do but let it happen and pray to the nonexistent gods that I'm of mind when I kill Kenady and out of my mind when I kill Kai.”
The corpse readjusted in her seat. A low, raspy gurgle rose in her throat before it cut short at her tongue. I imagined her saying, And both are coming.
“I know,” I agreed. “I feel it in my gut. I wait for it every day. After the mercenaries ceased coming, I knew Sera was preparing an army. Too many have come to this forest just to die. Sirius is sick of wasting gold on contract killers. He's the type who wouldn't blink at throwing his men at the situation instead. I expect them any day now.”
The assassin tilted her head. Both of them? Kenady and Kai? Together?
“Gods, I hope not.” I frowned and met her hollow gaze. “I will tear Kenady apart for many things, but most of the reasons revolve around Kai. Tormenting her like he tormented me, forcing me away from her and into this isolated life, destroying the note she gave me. He has destroyed my life and all the good things in it and left nothing but cruelty and despair. Yet, when Kai hunts me down, I'll have to kill her, too. Who reall
y wins in all this?” I glanced down at my rings again. “Sirius. He is nothing but a puppeteer pulling strings in Sera, directing his minions to solve problems for him as he watches from his high tower. Killing Kenady will allow me vengeance and relief, but Sirius won't sweat the loss. Kai will likely hunt me down just to win her father's favor, but nothing will breathe life into a heart that's already black. I will kill the one person left in the world who ever meant anything to me, and the reasons we are enemies at all stem from her father who won't shed a tear when she breathes her last.”
Then vow to kill Sirius. The assassin blinked once, stiff eyelids slipping over drying eyeballs.
“I can't.” I reached down to clean a piece of debris from my boot. When the hard object didn't budge from the tread groove, I kept picking at it as I spoke. “I don't make vows I cannot keep. Sirius is well-protected in Sera. I would need tens of thousands of corpses to make a dent in that city. Even if I thought I could lead that many alone, I would need centuries to build an army that size. I'd need some way to get through the wall. I can direct a corpse to open a door. I can't direct thousands of them to lift a locked gate.” The object finally loosened from my boot, and I studied it between two fingers. It was a piece of shattered bone. I flicked it over the half-wall before continuing, “Even Valerius didn't last that long.” I hesitated and laughed dryly. “How did Valerius last as long as he did? Despite all my success, here I am at twenty, pretending I'm having a conversation with a corpse.”
The assassin only stared.
I huffed dryly. “Exactly.” I stretched my arms out wide, and my muscles ached at just the right note between pleasure and pain. “I used to think I would forge a life for myself like this. And I have. But my only avenue of success isn't much of a success at all. After killing Kenady and Kai, will I have the motivation left to go on? What will be left? I've already proven my point. I've shown enough resistance to Chairel's necromancy ban to leave my mark on its history. The only thing keeping me going now is the intense urge to see Kenady's brains come out of his ears.”
Creative. The corpse gurgled again.
“There is nothing more savagely passionate than one man ripping another apart one layer at a time,” I mused as an excuse. “That is, in its own way, a form of beauty.” I laced my fingers behind my head. “Might as well remove something ugly from Arrayis and replace it with beauty before my inevitable demise, right?”
The assassin turned her head in reaction to a tweeting bird on the other side of camp. Such dark wit you have.
I frowned and said nothing, overcome with nostalgia. Those words too closely resembled those said by a particular fiery-haired girl so long ago.
If you could have anything in the world, what would you want? The assassin blinked at me expectantly.
“A sense of belonging,” I told her without hesitation. “No one has ever accepted me for the way I am. My mixed racial heritage is enough for the Icilic to hire assassins like you to kill me. My family's poverty made me an outcast in Sera as much as my appearance did. Learning necromancy has the world after me. Just owning land in this gods damn forest is enough for the orcs to declare war. Only three people have ever accepted me, and my parents were bound by blood. The other...” I trailed off and shoved Kai from my mind for the millionth time. Finally, I summarized, “I want to belong somewhere. With someone.”
You belong here with us, she seemed to reply, facing the inner camp. All throughout its dirt and debris were mass graves filled with bodies. How quickly such uncivilized and macabre things became my normal.
“Yes,” I agreed, “but I am the only one here.” Though I'd always known that, saying the words aloud made them real. A sick feeling of despair clenched my gut.
She turned to face me again. Yet you speak to me.
“Yes,” I murmured. I averted my eyes as I went on, “John suggested finding a band of criminals to be a part of all those years ago. The idea seemed so far-fetched, yet so attractive. Maybe one day...” I cut that thought short.
You do not trust, she reminded me.
“No,” I agreed. With memories of various betrayals and cruelties flashing through my mind, I laughed low and asked, “Would you?”
The corpse only stared.
“I cannot trust those I can't control,” I murmured, looking off over the camp's mass graves again. “And how sad of a concept that is.”
But you control us, she said. You can trust us. And there are hundreds of us here.
I stood up from my chair, unwilling to hear it. “This is why I don't like talking about myself and my struggles,” I proclaimed. “I learn new things all the time and none of them are hopeful. Yes, there are hundreds of you here.”
I waved my hand through the air, dispelling the assassin. She slumped in her chair until she fell to the tower floor. “I am surrounded by hundreds of bodies, but I've never felt so fucking alone.”
*
42nd of Red Moon, 416
Even before I felt the forest's tremble, I knew today was the day.
I awoke feeling an intense lust for carnage. It started as a tremor in my bones that traveled out to my fingertips. I shook as I pulled on my armor, full of adrenaline I didn't yet have a reason to expend. Thoughts of Kenady's face flooded my mind before splashes of red overcame them.
Intuition is its own form of magic.
When I stepped outside my tent, I heard scrambling footsteps just outside the worn palisade. I stilled and listened as best as I could, but without excess life force, my hearing was normal. When all noises faded, I tentatively climbed the northwestern watchtower to scan the area outside the wall.
The trees closest to the fort were wounded or torn from the dirt by virtue of all the previous battles here. Over time, ogres gained armor and packs of war supplies as the orcs outfitted them, but they always insisted on using trees as clubs and they harvested them mid-battle. Thus, the immediate area around the palisade was soft dirt and rotting tree trunks. I could oversee it easily from this tower, and right away I knew someone would attack me today. For in the rich soil just outside the wall, multiple decomposing limbs announced their buried presence like wayward weeds. Nearby were boot prints of the person who uncovered the stash and ran northwest after hearing me stir.
At first, I loathed my decision to keep corpses both in and out of the fort since those outside its protective wall were so easily discovered. But such decisions were strategically made; in my previous battles with the orcs here, having corpses rise both in the fort and out of it allowed me to encircle my foes when they tried bashing their way through to me. What had Kai called this strategy?
Ah, yes. A pincer attack.
In either case, I didn't regret being found today. Based on the mixture of foreboding and anticipation that swelled in my gut, someone was here that I'd looked forward to killing for years. And because my foes were smart enough to scout out the area, it seemed I would deal with mercenaries rather than orcs or assassins. Unless, of course, Sirius finally deemed me enough of a threat to require sending an army.
I chuckled dryly to myself as I waited for the inevitable, staring toward Sera as the sun assaulted the forest from the east. What had bloated my ego to where I thought the Seran Army was after me? Sure, I'd grown to be the largest necromancer threat Chairel had seen in generations, but Sirius coveted his precious army. He wouldn't send it unless it was a last resort. Having official armies coming after me would mean my notoriety had reached levels I once only dreamed of. It would mean success. While alone and surviving in the wilderness, success was the furthest thing from my mind.
Besides, my gut promised that Kenady was here. And he'd been a mercenary just three years ago. Given his cowardly abandonment and failure to kill me, there was no way Sirius allowed the bastard into the Seran Army.
All these thoughts came to a screeching halt once the vibrations of an approaching force traveled from the boots of my enemies to mine. Breaths filtered evenly through my nostrils as I waited for them to walk into v
iew. When they finally did, I went through a variety of emotions: shock. Disbelief. Accomplishment. Determination. Shock again. Confusion. Anger. Rage. Homicidal furor.
A regiment of the Seran Army broke through the dense brush and into the close war-torn section just outside my fort. Hundreds of men and women prepared to annihilate me while dressed in the prestigious green and black Chairel armor I hadn't come across since fighting the Twelve five years ago. Many held melee weapons. Some held bows. Most wore jewelry, and their bodies betrayed their magical predispositions. Fiery hair called out the fire mages. Strong bone structure and dark features alerted me to earth mages. Pale eyes and flesh hinted at air or life mages. Blue eyes of all shades belonged to water mages. Mages were the most challenging foes to face, and there were so many here. They were, after all, a specialty of the famous city of magic.
Then, the shock of seeing the Seran Army here faded into the aforementioned homicidal furor. Front and center of this army unit stood its general, who even now pointed to either side of my fort and directed men to surround it. The prestigious armor gifted to him by Sirius shone a sharp black in the rising sun, though its details were etched in green. Bulky, expensive rings on each of his fingers indicated great wealth and an affinity for magic use. A chain flail rested at his right hip. Beneath brown hair that he'd cut shorter since our last encounter, the homicidal furor I felt reflected back to me in cruel cold gray eyes.
Fate was a merciless and unjust bastard. I'd been forced into a life of solitude and insanity after a harmless childhood curiosity. I never wanted to hurt anyone. Yet, here I stood six years later as a broken and bitter man who had to do ugly and brutal things to survive. Contrarily, the cruel boy who wanted nothing but to hurt and humiliate me and force me into exile was rewarded for it. Throughout every struggle and hardship I suffered, Kenady only prospered. Though I had successes, my isolated existence kept me from celebrating them. Though Kenady had failures, they rewarded him.