Reluctant Necromancer

With slumped shoulders I shuffled in line out of the puzzle room. My final skelly walked point again, and I prayed it didn’t get destroyed before I could make a replacement. They’d already proven their usefulness several times over. Even these idiot skeletons were useful.

We walked down the hallway and cautiously turned the corner. The hallway stretched out into the distance and I hoped it wasn’t another endless one like before. It stretched out past where I could make out the light from torches.

As we walked down the hall the end of the corridor began to come into view. The darkness fell away as more torches came into view. The end still seemed dark and ominous though. The hall just seemed to end at a wall of darkness, with nothing to be seen past it.

When the skeleton reached the darkness I watched it step into the darkness and disappear from view. “Stop,” I whisper yelled. The group quickly came to a halt. I called the skeleton back, and it stepped through the darkness and into the light like it was a curtained doorway. “Something weird is going on,” I muttered.

“What else is new,” Mara complained. “At least it let him come back, so hopefully we can too if we need to.”

“Yeah, I say we push ahead,” John volunteered.

I looked at Ashley and Oliver who both just shrugged. “Fine,” I whined. “But I want it on the record that I think this is a bad idea.”

“So noted,” Mara intoned solemnly.

We walked through the curtain of darkness. On the other side we were met with loud noise and bright lights. We stood at the edge of a very tiny dilapidated village. Mud huts and cloth tents circled around a central bonfire that roared into the night. The rest of the room was dark with stars seemingly etched into the ceiling tiles some ways above our heads.

The entire village of goblins seemed to be cavorting and dancing around the bonfire. On the opposite side of it from us stood a large, for a goblin, throne like chair. A particularly fat goblin lounged upon it with a brightly feathered crown upon his head.

As the last of us stepped through the curtain, a shrill cry went up from those gathered around the bonfire, and then a hush fell over everything. The chieftain, if that’s what he was, scrambled from his seat. A heartbeat passed in absolute silence as we all stared at each other. Then the goblin chief yelled something and the entire village came running at us. Only a handful had any weapons, but they all looked feral and ready to fight to the death.

I turned to Mara as everyone readied themselves, “Try not to melt everything, yeah. I’d like a few more undead from this.”

Mara shrugged and began flinging balls of plasma at the feet of the group running at us. Many caught fire from the waist down and went down screaming their little buzzsaw screams. The rest of the mob behind them got caught up in the falling front of the line and went down in a tumble as well.

I watched several goblins get trampled as the ones behind that remained on their feet ran over the tops of the others. With a weary sigh I sent my skelly into the fray. It spun and slashed and thrust with its spear. Goblins died. And I began to raise them.

Then John crashed into the mob and limbs began to fly. I ordered my minions to the outskirts of the fight in order to avoid both John and Mara. Ashley seemed to be paying more attention to my little minions. I don’t think she shot a single one. The same could not be said of the others. I once again began the relentless recycling of corpses as the mob began to get whittled down.

The entire time, the little fat chieftain stood upon his throne. He jumped up and down, screaming at his horde. To absolutely no avail. His kin continued to fall like wheat before a scythe.

Mara began to experiment with her powers some more. I only noticed because suddenly her little plasma balls began exploding and became plasma bombs. The splash effect managed to catch several surrounding goblins in its radius.

Soon we were down to the final dregs of the fight. I had managed to keep two undead goblins up and fighting. Mara was being more focused now with little beams that sliced through flesh like a hot knife through butter. Ashley’s gunshots had fallen off from a constant staccato to a more leisurely pace. And John was slowing down his lawnmower impression.

Finally all the goblins were lying dead in front of us except the hopping mad chieftain. A single shot rang out though, and he slumped over and fell out of his throne.

“Alright, let’s–” Mara’s beam through the head of one of my undead minions cut me off. “Stop!” I screeched at her.

“Oh, sorry,” she shrugged at me.

“Gods damnit, Mara. I only have so many intact corpses to work with,” I growled at her.

“I said I was sorry, geez. I’ll be more careful.”

I seethed as I stomped off. I figured the chieftain was the most likely of these little fuckers to have an essence in him. So, I started with him. As I got closer I realized the throne he’d been on was no ordinary throne. It was constructed of old, whitened bone. Mostly goblin sized bone, but some much larger bones mixed in. Skulls at the ends of the armrests, a large ribcage was the base of the back piece, but had been filled in with other bones woven between the ribs until it was practically solid. The same thing seemed to be happening to the rest of the throne, just bones woven interlocking into each other. Except the seat which was what looked like thigh bones…femurs maybe, I don’t know…sitting in parallel to make a smooth-ish surface to sit on.

I did my best to ignore the disgusting chair and knelt over the still warm corpse of the fat little chieftain. I sliced him open, inserted my hand, grabbed, twisted, and pulled back out.

[User, this is a cube of [Rage] essence. Rage essence represents anger in its most refined, focused state.]

Well, I didn’t think any of us wanted that. It really didn’t fit with either Oliver’s sweet or Ashley’s happy dispositions. The rest of us already had our three essences established. I put it in my pack and stood up.

Out of the corner of my eye I caught movement. I twirled in time to see a wizened, old goblin step out from behind a mud hut. He raised a twisted staff at me, and shouted a word I didn’t recognize. I dove away, tucking myself into a roll that I popped back out of several feet away. A sickly green glob flew through the air and landed beside the chieftain where I’d been. It splashed and coated the dead body, dissolving it in moments.

Without really pausing to think, allowing the muscle memory instilled in me from my essence, I hurled my spear forward. It flew true, and before the goblin wizard or whatever could react it pierced him in the chest. He fell over from the force of the throw, coughed once, and then was still.

Damn! That was close. I struggled to catch my breath. Ashley came running over. She grabbed my shoulders and spun me around. Her eyes dragged all over me, checking me over.

I raised my hand to her cheek. “I’m ok,” I whispered to her.

She nodded her head, but her eyes were a little glossy. The pistol trembled in her hand and against my arm as it slid down and away.

[Your party has killed: Jungle Goblins x 32, Goblin Chief x 1, Goblin Shaman x 1]

I swiped the notification away. It wasn’t important. Ashley pulled me into a tight hug, and I could feel her trembling against me. I rubbed soothing circles on her back until she was calm enough to pull away.

I grabbed her hand and together we walked back to the others. I reached out through the spirit energy I could detect and felt for suitable vessels to fill. There were several, but they were badly mangled, and it felt like large chunks were missing, so I decided to just work with the one undead I currently had. Certainly there’d be another puzzle room or something next where we could recover a little bit.