Chapter 9: Undeath

  “I’m alive… because of that item that the goddess you follow gave you?” Ninya asked, and Calvaria nodded her head, “then, I think I should follow you for now. I know that the rest of my friends got turned into undead,” she said, and looked up from the floor.

  “I want to follow you, if you don’t mind. After all, I have no one to go back too,” she said a bit bashfully.

  Calvaria kneeled down, one knee on the ground. She then reached out a hand, and pced it upon the young woman’s shoulder. She spoke in a voice that reeked of seriousness.

  “Are you sure? Are you absolutely confident that you can keep up with us?” Calvaria said, and Ninya shifted in pce a little, “we have many secrets. We have secrets that are most definitely more important than your life,” she said, and Ninya shuddered then.

  “Oh, I didn’t really think of that,” she said, voice falling a tad, “But I am confident in keeping secrets.”

  Calvaria gnced at Ninya’s wrapped chest. Then hummed in affirmation. She spoke once more. Though it was slightly more lighthearted this time.

  “Well then, I guess I have no choice but to tell you this secret. After all, you must know it if you are to follow us three,” she said and the helm that she wore vanished in a puff of blue smoke.

  What Ninya saw made her gasp in awe and slight fear. The woman that kneeled before her, was undead. There was no doubt about it, her skin was the right color. Her eyes were a vampiric red, though slightly off.

  “I am Momonga. I am not an apostle of a goddess of undeath and the end of times. I am the real thing, or soon to be once my faith spreads,” she expined, and Ninya began shaking, “I know this is a lot to take in, just breath in through your nose, and out through your mouth.”

  Ninya did as instructed, and looked into the eyes of the utterly gorgeous woman in front of her. She looked like she was made by a deity, then again, she was one so that made sense. The aura that the woman gave off now was utterly different from when she was Calvaria.

  She felt like a force of nature, a kind force of nature. Though, one that could switch on a dime to totally dangerous. Ninya shuddered again at that thought. If the power that she showed as a mortal was her holding back, then what was her full power?

  Momonga noticed her shuddering, and reached out a hand that had been on Ninya’s shoulder to her head and patted her. Ninya looked down in slight embarrassment.

  “If you really want to follow me, then simply follow my orders, follow my lead, and all will be fine,” she said with gentleness, “you are ok now.”

  …

  “What!?” Lizzie Bareare screamed, “he’s alive!”

  She hadn’t seen the corpse of the young man, yet she could tell that the boy in front of her wasn’t undead. After all, she had just seen some a mere half hour earlier. The truly strange thing was the reason that he was alive.

  “That’s right, he was dead. Sin by the very same person who killed the others and stole away your grandson,” Anna said as she took a step forward, “Yet now he lives thanks to the items that our goddess gifted us.”

  Calvaria had resurrected Ninya, figured out where they were keeping Nfirea, and had converted a local to their new faith. Anna, or rather Albedo, swooned at the thought of her Lady. The undead overlord herself felt a shiver go up her spine as Anna looked at her for a second.

  Calvaria nodded with Anna’s words. She then spoke, as she gnced at Ninya from the corner of her eye. The young girl was traumatized, yet had tched onto her. The idea of a goddess like her, one of undeath, yet that resurrected people into normal life instead of unlife was new, and rather intriguing.

  It just went to show that she herself couldn’t merely pretend to be a goddess, she had to at least be one if she was going to have a cult made in her and her friends’ images. She wanted to actually make sure this world didn’t implode in on itself, like her own world.

  “That is right, the only thing that I asked of her is that she is to move to Carne. Nfirea has been asked by myself to move to Canre as well, yet, that is something we can talk about ter. After we free him,” she said, and Lizzie’s eyes widened.

  Then, a realization came, and they softened. A gentle smile coming to her face. She looked down at the ground, a solum sight escaping her. Her voice was thin now, not loud as it had been. It was like she had been completely defused.

  “Well, he always did have a soft spot for that Enri girl,” Lizzie looked up, “did you know that I once saw him spying on her, from the window of her won home as she picked weeds from around front door? She said as she chuckled with nostalgia in her eyes, “that was when he was just noticing girls.”

  Calvaria nodded her head. She couldn’t very well understand those feelings of familiar love like that. Her feelings for her friends-turned-family was a bit more modern than that.

  Yet, she did remember sometimes she would be found simply eavesdropping in on Peroroncino’s conversations with his sister, Bukubukuchagama. Momonga herself had had a small crush on her, as she was one of the only women that she regurly interacted with. Of course, that faded in time, though.

  So too did Calvaria chuckle at some of the memories that had begun to float in her mind. Then, her emotional suppression went off, and they faded. She stood up straighter.

  “Nfirea is coming to Carne because I need him there to make and design potions for the church, I pn on constructing,” she expined, “After all, I need to show everyone the mercy of the goddess to whom I serve,” she said, and her group looked at her with attention written into their postures, she then spoke once more.

  “Lizzie, you can stay here. We will come back with your grandson in tow,” she then turned to Ninya, “Ninya, I do not know if you are mentally stabile…” she had begun to speak, but was interrupted.

  “No, I want to see her,” Ninya said as she rose from where she had been kneeling, “I want to see the woman who killed my friends suffer,” Calvaria simply nodded at that.

  Shye had been looking at them, her allies. The Swords of darkness were no more. now reduced to simple corpse that had been turned into undead zombies. They now y on the ground, their bodies covered by cloaks, so as to keep them nice looking for when they would be carried off to the morgue by professionals.

  It was hard on her mind, to see them dead. To know that she had been like that. She had been a corpse, not even an hour ago. Yet here she stood, a living and breathing being. All thanks to a foreign god. She owed her life to her now, as well as to her own friends.

  She needed to make their killer pay.

  …

  Zogsalken