Reluctant Necromancer

As soon as the ash cloud settled Mara went to investigate the ash pile the monster had turned into. After a few minutes of her digging by hand and flinging more ash back up into the air, John went over to help. He shifted his hands back into shovels and they started sifting through the pile.

They were getting more and more frustrated by the minute as they didn’t find anything. Oliver leaned over to me and Ashley, “How long do you think it’ll take before they realize there’s no core or essence?”

“What’d you mean,” I asked.

“There was no kill notification. This was a puzzle. There are no notifications for those,” he laughed quietly.

“Oh, damn!” Ashley leaned over chuckling. “I hadn’t even noticed.”

“After what happened with the goblins you’d think we’d pay more attention to shit like that. Or at least I would. Geez,” I grumbled.

“Wait, you two weren’t in on it?” Oliver asked. “I thought you guys were just fucking with them.”

“I mean I won’t tell them the hazing was accidental if you don’t,” I told him.

We all started laughing quietly together. Mara must have looked over and noticed it or heard us over her own cursing because she yelled across the room asking what was so funny.

I let Ashley and Oliver explain the notification thing. Mara looked down at herself. She was coated in ash, and all of her clothes looked like she’d been rolling in it. “I will get you back,” she declared.

Oliver helped Mara and John get cleaned up. He ran a glob of water over them and their clothes to pull out the ash and then pulled out the water as he moved on, effectively washing them and their clothes. I thought Ashley and I had done a decent enough job cleaning each other, but Oliver ran his globs of water across us and the dirty water he tossed aside after was still pretty gross looking. Even if it was cleaner than the others’.

After getting cleaned up, we all hopped back up into formation. There was an opening in the room across from the entrance now. We headed toward that, giving the pile of ash a wide berth now that we were clean.

Once we were outside the room the corridor we entered looked the same as all the ones that had come before in this temple of doom. Same grey stone floors and same tan stone walls. With the addition of the large ashen footprints of my minions marching ahead of us. I hadn’t asked, and Oliver hadn’t offered to clean them.

The corridor went on for quite some time. It twisted and turned at irregular intervals. After a few minutes I began to become just the littlest bit suspicious of where this thing was leading us. Not that anywhere in either dungeon was somewhere I had particularly wanted to go anyway. But the idea of the never ending hall again was almost a trauma response at this point. I might have PTSD of long hallways. Like I didn’t have enough going on in my life right now.

I swear we must have twisted back on ourselves a few times with all the turns and corners in this thing. But there were no cross corridors. No splits in the hall. Just one long corridor. Again. Gah! I wanted to rip out my hair.

Finally, after nearly ten minutes of walking, we came to an end. There at the end of the corridor was a curtain of black shadows. I was actually excited to fight something. Anything but walking endless corridors any longer.

We bunched up in the hallway. My minions were not exactly small and unnoticeable like the goblins. And if the pattern held true, this would be a combat room. Not that the last puzzle hadn’t involved combat.

We all looked around at each other, making eye contact and seeing everyone’s readiness. Finally, we were set. I sent my two trolls through first, and John was a half-step behind them. The rest of us hurried after.

Once I was through the curtain I looked around. It looked like we’d been transported back to the jungle we’d started out in. I couldn’t see any walls or ceiling like I had in the goblin village. The sun seemed to shine down through the foliage, painting the air green.

There was also nothing in our immediate vicinity that wanted to eat or kill us. We all bristled in place for several moments before I sent my trolls further out to scout the area. I really enjoyed working with the more alive undead…more recently dead undead…I don’t know, but not the skeletons. They would do in a pinch, but these guys beat them every time in every way. The trolls moved with caution instead of wandering blindly into situations. They looked around at their surroundings. I loved competence, even in minions.

I looked around and noticed I could barely detect Ashley. She was once again blending into the shadows of the area and moving around us to keep sightlines or something I guess. She just looked really hot doing it. Again, competence.

Eventually we began to move forward again. Like before the temple, we moved slowly. We headed out of the tiny clearing that barely held all of us and headed into the jungle once more. I hadn’t noticed when we stepped through, but it had been silent around the curtain. The deeper we moved into the jungle, the louder it became. There were the sounds of insects buzzing, frogs croaking, birds calling, monkeys hooting, and occasionally something almost screaming that stopped all sound for an instant before it picked back up again.

It didn’t take too long before the trolls came to a stop in the jungle and waited for us. So much better than skeletons. We crept up quietly until we could all see past the suddenly ended tree line and into the clearing beyond.

The trolls I had brought with us stood at an impressive seven-ish feet tall. They towered over all of us. The pair of creatures in the clearing, lazing about in the sun, must have stood at least nine or ten feet tall when they stood up. And they were so wide. Their shoulders must have been close to four feet across.

One of them was laying back on his elbows, head thrown back to soak in the sun. The other was laying on his stomach, naked back absorbing all those rays. They had rough looking, grey skin with large pebbled protrusion like studs across their shoulders and neck. Their thick, muscled arms ended in three fingered hands that were as wide as a trashcan lid. They wore loin clothes similarly to the goblins, with little feathers and beading hanging along the edges.

I saw Ashley pull out her big hunting rifle and slowly take aim at the monster splayed out in the grass. I readied my hold on my minions. My hands flexed on my spear’s shaft. John’s arms transformed from machetes into curved scimitars. Mara’s fingers flexed and a glow began to spread between them.

The troll laying on its stomach lifted its head and began to sniff the air. His nostrils flared as he turned his head in our direction. He opened his mouth to roar out a warning when there was a loud boom and his head snapped back. One down.

I sent my trolls charging across the clearing to jump on top of the monster now scrambling to get up after its companion was killed. Then gathered some of the surrounding shadows and flung my [abyssal chains] up and around them, locking all three together. I didn’t have the best aim with the things, and better safe than sorry.

The monster started to sit up, straining against my chains, sending a torqueing feedback through my link to them. His head cleared the trolls bodies and another deafening boom rang out. His head snapped back and he fell over. Two down and done.

I looked over grinning at Ashley to congratulate her. Her face drained of all color immediately before a loud, angry roar blasted us all. My head snapped back to the clearing and the first monster was slowly getting back up. He had a large hole in the back of his head where the bullet had exited. But as I watched, it was slowly closing. The hole in the middle of his unibrow had already mostly closed.

“Fuck!” I screamed shrilly. My voice may have reached quite the high note. I wasn’t paying particular attention.

The second monster began to twist and writhe in my chains as well. Thankfully I hadn’t tried to dismiss them yet.

The first monster stood up, and I may have underestimated their height. Or I was just that much more scared. He opened his mouth again. I noticed almost clinically that he didn’t have tusks like the goblins and trolls did. Instead his mouth was full of a double row of triangle shaped teeth like a shark.

He started rushing toward us when Mara stepped forward muttering, “Eat this, shit head.” She flung her wide beam of anime level energy at the monster’s head and I blinked as it crashed to the ground again, skin melting off of it from the neck down. No head in sight.

We all waited in near silence, except for the struggling, roaring monster stretching my chains to the breaking point. The ‘dead’ monster’s body twitched and I swear I saw some of its skin start to grow back up its neck. It would take some time, maybe even a few hours, but that motherfucker would be getting back up.

“I-I have an idea,” Ashley said quietly. “But first, go do the same thing to the other one.”

Mara nodded her head and stomped out into the clearing. She walked up next to the struggling monster. He strained against the chains and I began to feel them snapping and cracking. Before I could call out a warning she slapped her arms together and blasted the monster’s skull off. Then she staggered away. The jungle around us was silent once again.

Ashley nodded her appreciation toward Mara. She pulled out her skinning knife and walked up to the first monster. She crawled up it until she was straddling its lower torso. Her feet dangled above the ground. The monster’s arm twitched in her direction as she got on top of it, but nothing more.

With a grimace she sliced into the monster like we would when harvesting cores. She reached her hand through the incision and the monster’s body bucked beneath her for a moment. I saw her arm struggle to reach the right place in the large chest. After several moments rooting around she gasped as she grabbed ahold of something and gave a hard yank.

As her hand clenching an essence cleared the body, it gave a final little shudder and then seemed to almost deflate as it stilled finally. Without a word she marched over to the second monster and repeated the feat. A few minutes later I got a notification as her hand pulled out a second essence.

[Your party has killed: Orc x 2]

“They’re both regeneration essences,” Ashley called out as she walked back to us.

I looked over at Oliver to see if he was interested. He shook his head no, “I have something specific in mind that I found in the books. And I’m not sure I’d be able to use it on other people and not just myself.”

“You are the squishiest amongst us, doc.” Mara called.

Oliver rolled his eyes. “I’m fine, but no thanks.”

“Suit yourself,” she told him.

I finally dismissed my chains and called my trolls back to me.