Meeting the Necromancer
I walked.
With the sack holding his body slung across my back, I walked without end. Day and night passed, and still I walked. My feet blistered and tore open, but I paid it no mind. My condition was better than his—he who had already lost his life.
The thought that he had died at the hands of those scum because of me only sank my spirits further. That the one who had trusted me and loved me had lost his life over something I was tangled in. What crushed me was not the weight of his body, but the guilt. The fact that I could no longer even beg forgiveness from him, already gone, kept tormenting me without rest.
It was fine if my body broke. I did not care if I became more of a tattered rag than I already was. Simply because he had loved me, I only wished that he would not be made any more unfortunate than this. How many days had I walked, clinging to that desperate hope?
I began to sense that people were following me. Just before I left the forest, their presence swelled even stronger—as if they had been waiting for me to reach the boundary between the woods and the world beyond.
"...Who's there."
I set Evan's body down and slowly drew a breath. At the very least, I had to resist.
Whoosh—a rope snare sliced through the air from the right. The instant I barely twisted clear of it, an arm appeared. In a flash my face was seized and slammed into the earth, and my arms were wrenched back and bound.
"Got... her. Haha, got her!"
"To think the famous Thea would end up like this. Almost funny, isn't it."
Why wasn't I disappointed by them? I probably no longer had the strength left even for disappointment. Perhaps, with every last scrap of faith already shattered, I had known it would come to this.
"Acting so high and mighty just because you have that pretty face. Wouldn't it have been better if you'd softened up sooner? For you... and for me."
"Just you alone? Huh? Think about the rest of us who helped you out, too."
Was Tolfen not among them?
"That bastard Tolfen's pretty pitiful himself. Dozens of guys were sniffing after you, yet he only managed to kill one short-lived race and ended up like that. High Priest's son or not, marked by the god, path to advancement cut off. Well, for lowlifes like us it's actually convenient. Thanks to that, the heavens won't even glance our way no matter what we do to an exile like you now."
Even the sensation of a mouth whispering against my ear felt dull. Even the tongue that lightly licked the stump of my severed ear stirred nothing. My heart was already full of murderous intent.
Unlike me, the ones who had bound me seemed to have every gaze stolen by me—more precisely, by my body. Fortunately, Evan, whom I had set down, appeared to lie outside their notice. A hand settled on my stomach.
"Hoo, now this is true art. From the chest straight down to the hips. Incredible, your body. You were going to offer something like this to that short-lived race? You know our pride took a real hit because of that stupid idea, right? Huh?"
My teeth ground together. Not only had I lost him—now I feared that everything I had meant to give him, everything I had long treasured, would be stolen by the trash before my eyes.
"...I'll kill every last one of you. Without exception."
"Hands tied. Divine power all spent. What's left for you to glare like that? Still pretty, though. Haha."
"Quit dragging it out. I want to get started already."
"What's the rush? No one will care even if we play with this bitch and toss her aside now."
"Then how is it any different from handling short-lived race women?"
"Exiles or short-lived races—aren't they all the same?"
I hated this. I hated the way they looked down on and mocked the short-lived races for no reason other than being long-lived themselves. Being long-lived never made anyone better than others; the ones standing in front of me were proof enough. What had truly made me noble was Evan. I had doubted my own race, yet the one who saw me as a true elf—and made me one—was Evan. He had set me apart from scum like these. That alone was enough for him to mean everything to me, and I was feeling it keenly right now.
"...Wait. Don't you hear something?"
"What sound? The sound of this bitch's clothes coming off?"
Rustle—the clothes I wore were gently lifted. Eyes squeezed shut, I dragged rough breaths in and out.
"Ohhh, it's really something, isn't it? Way better than those short-lived race bitches."
"No wonder elves are elves. Killer, seriously."
Blatant malice. The end of all the slimy, clinging feelings I had endured at the hospital turned out to be this thick, murky, nauseating stench.
"No, but I keep hearing a growling sound from somewhere."
"Wolf or fox, probably. Don't ruin the mood—get over here!"
Yet the scent did not seem to be coming from them. From a little farther off, a foul odor that had been faint was suddenly growing stronger.
"No... fuck... what the hell are these?!"
What had been waiting in the undergrowth was not only them. Rotting corpses were slowly crossing the boundary and drawing near.
"Grrrrk—grrrk—"
Swollen bellies. Unfocused, bloodshot eyes. Rotting flesh and corpse poison fouling the earth.
"Z-zombies...!"
Someone nearby was forcibly raising the dead and defiling their bodies.
"Jokes have limits—how can there be zombies here?!"
That much, at least, they had right. This was the forest boundary. The boundary stone that divided the woods from the outside world stood right before my eyes.
...Yet it had lost its light. Ordinarily it should have been banishing the dark with white radiance, but it was not. Strangely. Because of that, from the pitch-black curtain of night and the underbrush, corpses far more hideously decayed than those already before me—and even skeletons of bare moving bone—were slowly advancing with blades in hand, their characteristic red eyes gleaming.
"Shit... everyone draw weapons. Just when things were looking good, damn it!"
The ones who had pinned me rose one after another, granting me a brief sense of release. Yet the stench that pressed down on me—the crushing weight of corpse poison—was not so easily shaken off.
"Hoo... hoo-eup—"
I drew a deep breath and began scraping my bound hands against the ground, trying to fray the rope. I did not want to use a miracle. I would not use one. Even if I died here, the god who had insulted both me and him was no longer a god to me. Even if he existed, I would deny him. So I chose to overcome this by my own will, moving my body with desperate force.
"There are too many of them—zombies everywhere!"
"Shouldn't we warn the village—hick!"
Ping—an arrow buried itself in the dirt. Among the shapes crossing the boundary stone, some even carried bows. That meant someone was controlling them. These were not wandering undead, not random thralls marked with formulas simply to wreck a village and threaten people. Someone was directing them with clear intent—here, in this heavily guarded forest.
Whoosh—another arrow cut the air. This time it struck a zombie in the head. Naturally a scout would have been hidden somewhere in the woods. Yet for some reason the miracle that should have warned the center—the flash that should have lit the night sky—never appeared.
"Why—why isn't this working, why the miracle—aaaah!!!"
On the ground the situation was just as chaotic. To sever the sorcery completely, one had to cut the neck with a blade carrying a miracle or smash the head entirely. Because the deceased's body had to be thoroughly destroyed, necromancers were heretics among heretics. Yet no one here could produce light. I had no intention of doing so either.
I felt the rope gradually give way even as I felt my hands becoming a ruin of scrapes. Skin raw from dirt and pebbles, I fixed my mind solely on Evan's body, which the corpses were still keeping their distance from—even while flesh was torn away and agonized screams filled the night sky.
"Kyaaaah! Aaaaah!"
Wild, panicked sword swings could never handle zombies. Their blustering swordsmanship only drove the blades deep into undead flesh, and of course the dead, who felt no pain, began crushing them in turn with the very weapons they held.
"Hiiik—hick—"
Their own clumsy flailing was no better, yet they felt every bit of the pain. It was certain to be a miserable death. Having treated herbalists who had been savaged by zombies, I already knew exactly how much that pain amounted to. Corpse poison seeping in; wounds that refused to close, festering and swelling instead. Without swift treatment they would waste away, lose their reason, and before long behave exactly like the undead themselves... then be cleanly beheaded and burned. So I felt a small, cold satisfaction.
Leaving the screams behind, I felt the last of the rope part and briefly surveyed my surroundings while still lying down. Arrows no longer flew; the scout had clearly fled. Covering my nose against the reek of blood and rotting flesh, I pushed myself up in a hurry. Zombies filled the area—yet I was free of them. Strangely, they showed no interest in me at all. Seizing that opening, I rose and started toward Evan—
"An exiled elf...? Khek, kheuk!"
Before me stood a hunchback draped in a shabby, foul-smelling robe. A creature with a thoroughly twisted spine that could have passed for a dwarf leaned on a staff and peered up at me with a bizarre expression.
"The revelation He granted was—khek—correct! Hnngh!"
With relatively intact armored skeletons at his side, he slowly looked me over.
"Good! Khek! Three half-dead elves and one intact elf! And—hick—one human corpse..."
I stopped him as he shuffled awkwardly toward the sack. Staggering, I blocked the foul hand that reached for the body of the man I had loved. Even when the skeletons leveled their swords at my throat, I could not stop. He had already suffered enough.
"Not Evan."
"I—hick—know! I came to fetch you, you see!"
But the necromancer spoke words I had not expected.
"...Me?"
"I received a revelation—from the god I serve—to me, me! Me! Khehihik, hihik!"
He shook with a grotesque laugh, clapping his hands, then turned and showed me a twisted smile.
"I, at least, won't do things like those ones! So... so..."
Whether the words were true or false, I could not tell. He was looking at me with the same slimy, disgusting gaze as the bloodied wrecks sprawled on the ground. Yet perhaps he had no further designs; he soon turned and gestured.
"Catch the three properly and bring them along, and as for that human corpse—you carry it, heh, kheuk, do!"
A stench worse than the zombies clung to the man. Even so, the chance to escape this situation at least once was welcome. I loosened the sack just long enough to check Evan's face.
...He was still intact. For now.
Confirming that, I felt a little of the tightness in my chest ease. I hoisted him onto my back once more, already turning over in my mind what I would have to do from here.