[TLQ-B2] 6. First of the Dead (Patreon)

VI

First of the Dead

“What a strange child,” Morgathis said, strolling back to her throne. Well, her granddaughter’s throne, she supposed. She was only using her elder privileges to use it at the moment.

She cupped her chin. “Something is off about her.“

Morgathis remembered exactly how her first meeting with her grandmother had gone. Helen the Doomsayer, a despicable woman who’d made a name for herself in the seven states that controlled the land currently known as the Duchy. Her name was a reference to her mastery over curses and necrotic diseases. Wherever she went, the living fell ill, died within days, and rose as corpse puppets. ‘Captured,’ her wanted posters read, for no one was certain if killing her would stop her.

Morgathis had barely stopped her voice from cracking when speaking to her.

Now, she was not half the despicable woman her grandmother was. If so, she’d not have left her descendant a slew of undead to raise, but found a way to turn this chamber into a rite that’d bring herself back from the dead and give her control over her granddaughter to boot. Still, her name should’ve held weight. The Dread Empress. The Black Shadow over Vrost. Those names should’ve scared any descendant entering her tomb. And yet.

“I didn’t scare her a bit.”

The reverence in Sepharin’s tone was genuine, but the tone was one of respect, not fear.

She jumped onto her seat, which was much too big for her, and swung with her legs. “Should I have been more strict?”

Recalling her own experience with Helen had made her adjust her demeanour. She didn’t want her descendant to be afraid of her like that, but she may have overdone it. She couldn’t have her granddaughter telling her descendants Morgathis was a sweetheart that wouldn’t hurt a fly.

…Morgathis nodded to herself. Yes, she’d be more strict. Keeping up an image was important.

She leaned back in her, satisfied and convinced. Her gaze went to the genesis chamber, whose gates glowed and hummed.

“Better go to sleep.” She’d told Sepharin it’d taken her two weeks, but Morgathis had spent an entire month raising those three giants. She didn’t have enough energy stored in this shell to stay awake for that long.

So she let her form dissolve and her mind quiet.

‘That’s another strange thing…’ Her granddaughter’s gifted miasma bundled up inside her. ‘How is her miasma so pure?’

It’d been refined until the basest of forms. Achieving such a result would require a high-tiered refinement technique.

‘Didn’t she say she didn’t have a teacher?’

The question simmered in her head until her mind went silent.

There was the sensation of being pulled. Hurled, like I was whirring through space at breakneck speed. My eyes shot open, and the feeling vanished with all the force of crashing into a wall.

I groaned and bent forwards. “Not the most sophisticated enchantments.”

But I suppose I couldn’t have expected much more than this.

Rubbing my stomach so it settled, I glanced up through my bangs. I was still sitting in the centre of the dias. Around me, the many dead were arranged as they had been in the physical world. Only their skins were no longer stone. Hairs whipped in the breeze, which carried the scent of rot deep into my nostrils.

I turned in the direction of the wind. Stalks of grass waved back and forth, forming a dancing, green plane. It stretched towards the horizon, interrupted only by some hills and rolling mountains in the distance.

“Is this supposed to represent a real place?”

If so, it must be on the completely different continent.

‘I’ll ask Grandmother once I get out.’

Thinking of her as ‘Grandmother’ was strange, given that she wasn’t really my grandmother. Neither of Sepharin or my real self. Still, I didn’t hate calling her that.

“I’ve never had a grandmother before.”

My only direct family had been my father.

The breeze struck my face, brushing my cheeks with a cold many times lighter than that of the Duchy. My chest expanded as I breathed in deep. This place was…peaceful. Perhaps that was why I found my thoughts drifting towards a time far in the past, instead of focusing on the task ahead of me.

A spindly man in a vessel of all-necronite. His robe, the colour of the living’s terror, was long and billowing. His gaze heavy without trying, judging every one of my movements for the slightest imperfection.

Gravelord Zerrot, Twentieth of his line, Great Banisher of Light, Keeper of Necron, the Silent Emperor of the Seven Realms…those were only some of my father’s one hundred and eighty-three titles. He’d made me memorise them, so I knew the exact amount.

The first and foremost command of every Necron is to respect their elders, so he told me.

Practical advice. Undead, especially Necrons, didn’t expire unless there was some internal foul play at hand. In Necron, it was commonplace for court to be filled with at least fifty retired Emperors and Empresses that acted as counsellors for the acting ruler. My rule was different. The Emperor before Father had cleaned house after a brutal civil war, preferring to reset the state of court than choose who he wanted to stay and support him. Since that very same emperor had found his demise in the prelude to the War of Heaven, it was only me and my father in court. Until he, too, was destroyed in the war. Just like my children.

In the end, Necron, that desolate planet with no natural light, where the past Emperors and Empresses of the Dead Citadel conversed with each other in the hundreds, planned and schemed on the best way to eradicate all life in the known universes—including their own—was left nothing but a husk. A hollowed shell, where no true intelligence save one remained.

Merely thinking of it, the weight of tiredness settled on my shoulders. I took another deep breath, then I turned to the horizon, where mountain peaks pierced the clear sky. ‘Genesis, huh.’

My birth had been a spectacle. So I’d been told. The seven sectors under my father’s control all celebrated my birth by sacrificing souls they’d prepared beforehand. According to reports, at least a million died that day.

I didn’t feel any particular way about it. For the longest time, I’d considered such a rite normal, still did, to an extent. I even had one planned for Diane’s birth, the eldest of my children.

It was Lucian who’d refused.

“I’m spanking you the next time you mention it, Seph.”

My unblinking gaze rested on him. Lucian was an individual unlike any I’d ever seen or come into contact with before, and many of his motivations and mannerisms were alien to me. But I’d come to understand how he thought over the many years we spent together…a bit. “Are you looking for an excuse to touch my ass?”

He paused for a moment, then grinned.

I’d never figured out if he was against the idea because of the killing, or if he really was just looking for any excuse to play with my behind. Either way, he vehemently protested against it at every turn, until I, too, no longer saw the need for it. That was how it always went with him. I’d say or propose something he considered heretical, then he’d sling jokes at me and debate me until I changed my mind or at least shelved the idea until a later time.

A chuckle. “You strange man.” Still staring out towards the horizon, I added in a whisper: “I miss you.”

The words lingered in the air, until the breeze carried them across the landscape, leaving them too quiet for anyone to ever hear again.

Rising to my feet, I approached the smallest of the corpses, a human female wearing full plate. She was but two heads shorter than me.

‘They’re all tall.’

Where exactly had these beings come from? Outside of Vrost? Filing all of these away as the ‘offshoots’ of giants wasn’t possible, given the differing races. Yet I’d never heard of many of the creatures here being in the Duchy. Not even folk stories.

‘Then again, the previous Sepharin didn’t particularly care for fairy tales.’ She also didn’t go out of her way to study them.

I sensed for the undead’s heart and found it slumbering instead of sealed away like before. ‘Here comes the first.’

Miasma slithered out of my own core and pushed into the corpse. Raising an undead was a difficult concept, made easier due to the many years of trial and error our elders had spent perfecting it. Through the ages, two main methods had formed. One was the one I was using now and had used forever: invading the core of a being, usually the heart. There were pros and cons to it. A prominent con was that the core of a being was also their most fragile part. Too much miasma and the core would break, leaving the body unable to be raised forever more.

The second method was to saturate the body itself with miasma. This was safer as the miasma would be less concentrated and at less risk of destroying the corpse. The downside was that an undead raised in this manner would be weaker than another undead raised through the first method.

Still, both methods had their place. Especially since, sometimes, there was no core for you to work with.

Having to figure this, and many more intricacies, out on your own would be the study of a lifetime. If Morgathis had indeed done so in a mere two weeks, then she was an unparalleled genius in the domain of necromancy.

My miasma slithered towards the heart like a snake. Carefully. It flicked its tongue, tasting the air, calculating how much power would be needed. Only when it was certain of its kill did it lunge to hungrily sink its fangs into its prey.

Eyelids went slack with keen disinterest as a process I’d seen a million times played out. I stepped away, ‘up to the second—’ My gaze snapped back. The jaw of the snake representing my energy was spasming, struggling to contract as the fangs failed to break the outer layer of the core.

A raised brow. I poured more miasma into the energy to give it a boost. ‘Maybe these old corpses are unnaturally strong?’

But no matter how much I poured, the miasma couldn’t break the core.

Utterly confused, I gazed down at my hands, inspecting them for anything that may be off and interrupting the process. That’s when I noticed that my hands were not my own.

It wasn’t colour or the slenderness that ousted them, but the size.

‘Did the spell change my appearance?’ I had the hands of a child.

Inspecting my attire, I discovered I was wearing nothing but a thin silk dress, something I hadn’t paid much attention to given the purpose of this realm. However, I also wasn’t wearing any boots.

“What in the world is going on?”

“Illya, there you are.”

I turned on pure reflex.

A boy taller than myself in robes similar to my own, but wearing a belt around his waist to which a blade was strapped, gave me a pure white smile. “You’re praying to those statues again? Don’t you get tired of sitting here all day?”

“Uh…“ I blinked. “…No?”

The boy, whose name I somehow knew to be ‘Titan’ pursed his lips. “You alright?” he closed the distance between us and placed the back of his hand on my forehead. “Feels alright to me…”

Only after he backed away did I exit my stupor.

“Well, I’m sure you know what you’re doing,” Titan said. “But lunch is ready so let’s return.”

“Lunch?” I asked.

He crossed his arms so his muscles bulged underneath his robe. “Are you messing with me?” He huffed when I didn’t immediately respond and turned around. “Whatever. Just don’t blame me if you go hungry. We both know Ruelle has had a voracious appetite as of late.”

Mention of the name slapped me back into the depths of confusion. Levi’s face flashed past through my mind.

Ruelle?