Golden Skulls. What did they mean? He saw them as blurs. Flickers of gold across a spectrum of streaked lights and hazy imagery. They were a constant, a memory, a future. They grounded him between scenes of red. As he saw his shadow in the moments of clarity, he envisioned himself in his grey glory, his ink-stained flesh in a constant state of flux between tones and Inscriptions. Each time he saw red splattered across his hands and face, he felt a rush of joy. A rush of joy that submerged him in a pool of reflections. Within his mind, he was surrounded by that golden skull. He held it in his hands. Sometimes, he could have sworn he saw a horde of golden butterflies in the distance. Except, when they came closer, they were just more skulls.

  Xala slowly sauntered into Halifax’s mansion. It was an opulent, ostentatious thing situated close to the grand alcove in the cliffsides of Feltkan that led to the open ocean. Halifax had a beautiful view of the messy, rudimentary docks of Fae Town, with a glimpse of Fellman Port in its industrial beauty further out in the distance. Those views were obscured by closed cowardly curtains who concealed chambers drenched in crimson. The tangy scent flooded Xala’s nostrils and fueled his steps as he dragged the latest corpse behind him. His black claws and black hands held the Thrashian giant woman by her foot and made no complaints as he heard her head thud against the grooves and steps in the floor. She was a massive woman, easily twice his height with strong, square features, but that did not stop him. She died all the same. Runes of strength floated around his biceps and legs as he dragged her with languid steps.

  He tossed her corpse onto a pile in the center of the mansion at the foot of the large staircase littered with dead. Blood dribbled down his chin, barely felt against all the other dried blood. How long since he saw Colhern? A night? A few nights? A dozen? That did not matter. No. Not while he wheeled and dealed. His silver tongue wagged all the same. He enterred magical shops under a new disguise every time. He whispered honeyed, cursed, enchanted words into the minds of Feathers, Grave Snatchers, Cultists, and even visited the fringe religions of Fae Town. He invaded their holy homes under the guise of a pilgrim, preyed over their dreams, and twisted those dreams to suit his goals. Conquest. Glorious Ideological Conquest.

  In Halifax’s mansion, Xala stood still as he stared up at his victims. None of them decayed. He preserved all of them with the same spells. He mended the bite marks on their necks with the same flesh sculpting that remade Vulcan.

  “No, no, please, please, let me go!” A man’s voice entered from a side entrance of the mansion. Xala cocked his head to the side and saw a Tinkerman dwarf man, old and bearded and bruised, being dragged by the head with ease by Vulcan. “Oh, gods!” He wretched on himself at the sight of all the corpses, but his total, primal fear came from the sight of the Moor at the foot of it all. He screamed at the top of his lungs, scrambled and squirmed, and struggled with the fury of a wild beast encountering its most primal fear. He slapped and scraped his nails against Vulcan’s hand and fingers, but it was no use. The thrall delivered the Tinkerman to a spot a few paces away from Xala. When he let go, the dwarf immediately tried to run toward the entranceway, past Xala.

  As he did, Xala pounced on his back, pinned him down with his claws, and drove his fangs into his throat. The Tinkerman’s jugular was immediately punctured, and he further drove his fangs into the larynx. The dwarf’s screams were immediately muffled as the blood drained from his body and hollowed out his features. As Xala drained him, his mind flooded with the memories of the dwarf’s life.

  Within his pool of reflections and golden skulls, Xala examined the life of Yurgin Chejenko. His blood tasted of perfectly preserved memories; juicy and ripe. The Tinkerman’s thoughts and memories of ingenious ideas flowed into Xala, and as he consumed, he saw the memories of love and childhood. Xala immediately disintigrated those, burned them up, and watched the ashes rise from his silvery pool. The skulls fed on the scraps of floating ash like cud.

  Xala let Yuri’s body drop to the ground with a limp, pitiful thud. He breathed heavily over the body, slowly rose to his feet, and emitted a low, echoic growl. It ricocheted off the stone walls of Halifax’s manor and reverberated through the immense amount of concentrated arcane energy.

  Vulcan spoke up and said, “Who are you?”

  Xala’s growl ceased in an instant. He turned to face Vulcan, did not move from his spot, and began to smile. His stained teeth were wet and glossy with gore. He said in a quenched tone laced with mocking amusement, “You do not recognize your Resurrectionist?”

  “Not really. The person who resurrected me wasn’t like this.” He gestured toward the bodies.

  Xala released a tired sigh. He heard Vulcan say this a million times already. Vulcan thought about it all the time. “The person who rescued you from death is me. Just, a weaker version of me. A version clouded by inhibitions. Forget who you knew. I have evolved.”

  Vulcan scowled, “More like devolved. Thirty-Three people in seven days? You didn’t have me vet any of them. You’ve gone rogue. Half of these are probably innocents.”

  “Innocents? Innocence? I thought the distinction was pointless to you. You enjoyed killing. I was a,” he licked his fangs with his forked, black tongue gleefully, and spoke in Vulcan’s own voice, “pussy,” his own returned, “for limiting myself.”

  “I’d come around to your philosophy, after being risen.”

  “Ah,” he chuckled softly, “the risen philosopher. Yes, that’s right, you have been thinking a lot about a lot of things. The chatter in that thick skull of yours, it never ends. All these ideas, bouncing around, I wonder when the line between inquiry and sedition is formed.”

  “You’ve been reading my mind?”

  “It’s so loud. Difficult to ignore.”

  Vulcan knew something was off. He knew that Xala was different. Vulcan’s mind swam with ideas for what could have happened. At first, Vulcan noticed Colhern was out of the picture. Vulcan believed that Xala was acting out like some teenager after being broken up with. Then, as Xala killed more people more ruthlessly, Vulcan took greater notice of entire behavioral changes. It was almost like he was possessed.

  Xala was delighted as he watched Vulcan, aware of all his loudest thoughts. “Why? Does it upset you that I can?”

  Vulcan’s face did not move. He remained stoic. A perfect guard. A perfect soldier, once all those silly impulses were removed. “I knew you for a short time, and then you somehow switched to what you are now.” He turned to face all the corpses strewn across the staircase like warnings. “I refuse to believe that you don’t know how destructive and reckless you’re being. Durnstrum and I have been cleaning up your messes left and right.”

  “Ah, of course. You and the vegetable. Been having much meaningful conversation with that mindless thrall?”

  “Speaking to rocks is more insightful than you think.”

  “Akin to prayer? Make something spoken out loud and it manifests through the universe? Out toward whoever was called upon? Is it peaceful? Is it introspective? Because, talking to rocks is not very productive.”

  “These bodies have to go. The longer they’re just sitting here, the more likely someone’s gonna come and find ‘em.”

  All the magic in the air that saturated the whole mansion’s interior were a number of charms and protective runes that would have put Feltkan’s Ternion District to shame. Xala took a slow breath and glanced over the bodies, “Fae Town is so primitive, and yet so modern. An utter lack of decency of the arcane variety. The fact that thieves think it possible to steal from wizards who ought to have destructive runes in their pockets, ready to shred a pickpocket’s hand to smithereens, is something that must be corrected.”

  “Oh yeah? Why? Seems cruel. Is it because you believe it, or because you’re a Moor?”

  Xala’s mocking expression deadened. He stared into Vulcan’s eyes with a cold indifference. His claws clicked against one another at his sides.

  “Uh huh, there it is. You’re a Moor. Heh. I almost forgot. You almost fooled me. You’re no different than them, are you?” He glanced toward the staircase, “Clearly.”

  Within his pool of reflection, surrounded by the chatter of golden jaws, Xala dragged his finger in circles around the mirrored surface. He watched the ripples obscure and dissolve his features in a constant flow. He imagined those ripples becoming waves, tsunamis, as they reached the shores of his pool and made pitiful slaps against the dry ground. Xala slowly lifted his gaze from his obscurities and toward the golden skulls around him. He heard Vulcan’s voice, and it made him feel sick. His lips quivered as he heard those words, but ultimately let them slough off of him and into the pool.

  “Curious. I do not sense the fear one would feel upon realizing that.” He chuckled lightly. “Perhaps you require a bit of enlightenment.”

  Xala lifted off the ground, turned toward the staircase of bodies, and raised his hand. He outstretched his fingers, his long claws casting a shadow over the few half-dozen bodies as the chandelier above glittered. Xala’s pupils drained from their confines and the blackness invaded his sclera.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Vulcan’s scowl slowly dropped into incremental horror, “Xala, don’t,”

  “Rise.”

  For a split second, silence dominated. The silence that is peace only to fools. The moment before an eruption, explosion, or cataclysm.

  Xala’s whole body was surrounded in runes. Black and green fetid energies swarmed him like locusts as he turned his hand upward and eyed all the bodies before him. His mind traveled toward the bodies littered around the house. His mind invaded their corpses and slithered into their halted blood streams. Where his mind went, necromancy followed. The runes around his body bristled and moaned with otherworldly clicks and groans, until they decomposed into raw streams of light and dark. Those streams floated aimlessly at first, all around Xala, as if to make him look like a muse emerging from a crystallis, before those threads all hurtled forward and slammed into the hearts and minds of the dead. The black and green magic violated their bodies, seeped into their pores, forced open their mouths and other orifices, invaded every possible entrance, surged throughout their organs, into their empty blood streams, toward their hearts and brains. Necromancy, pure necromantic forces, drenched their bodies in a miasma of sickly green auras, visible and radiating.

  Xala floated forward, more spells being cast on all those individual corpses he passed. Each one he passed was granted the same enchantments and illusory charms as Vulcan, to make them indistinguishable from living beings. The further up the stairs he went, the more those corpses opened their eyes and groaned in agony as their remains were animated with undeath. He floated up to the top of the first flight of stairs, paused, and held out both arms to send those same spells and enchantments to the other corpses throughout the mansion.

  Vulcan’s mouth was held agape, his thick, tusked jaw hanging limply as he walked forward to watch an Oba human woman at the bottom of the steps whine and squeal as her body was repurposed and reawakened. Vulcan knelt down, slipped her hand into his, gently brushed his thumb over the back of her hand, and made eye contact with her. Her golden eyes, the same as his, the same as all the others, stared into his with an awareness of her condition. If he could feel sick, he would have vomited.

  Their heads moved, then their limbs, and finally their bodies. Vulcan helped the woman up to her feet, which she stood on unsteadily, and he watched as the others rose as if to mimic the first. Their bodies were alien to them. They shifted and moved uncomfortably, breathed out of habit until one by one they realized they no longer had to, and all eventually laid eyes on their maker.

  Xala lowered himself to the ground, clicked his talons together, and smiled as he looked out at all the risen dead before him, glanced up the next flight of stairs toward the others he had raised, and addressed them all, “Welcome, old friends.”

  The Thrashian Xala had dragged in earlier, Geraldine, stared at her hands, looked down on the many heads she towered over, and chuckled, “Oh, I could get used to this.”

  “Speak for yourself! I’m a godsdamned imp!” An Osha goblin man, Dust, screamed at the top of his lungs. He looked in horror at the padded frog-like fingertips that adorned his floppy-eared, short, frail, light green body. He scowled as he looked up at Xala, held up his fist, and said, “Fucking slave! You dare mock us all further?! Were our deaths, and subjugations into your wretched maw not enough!”

  Xala smiled down at Dust, “Oh, Doctor Fajagil, do you not enjoy your new body? That creature you inhabit has a knack for the Restorative Arts. It was carefully selected for you.”

  “An insult! Where are my scales?! Where are my claws? My snout? My fire! All gone!” He flexed his fingers and tugged at his skin. He watched the smooth flesh pull and snap back onto the meat when he let go. “I was the Royal Family’s personal physician, and now,” he growled in pure frustration as he stomped his little feet into the steps, “I’m an inferior, mongrel, degenerate race meant to be nothing more than rat-feed!”

  The Tinkerman Vulcan had delivered, Yurgin, stroked his beard thoughtfully as he inspected his stout body, “I must say, heightened intellectual capacity feels…ripe with potential.” He looked around the building analytically, mesmerized by the way his mind rapidly pieced together how the architecture might have been made, how the stonework was quarried, and followed hundreds of logical operations to uncover all manner of ways how reality worked. He understood chemicals and molecules, atoms and elements, in ways he could not have imagined in his previous body. “Do not sell yourself short, Dust, these new bodies have their advantages.”

  Vulcan stared at them all, then at the woman, who looked up at him with a passive disgust. He let go of her hand and yelled up at Xala, “What’s going on?”

  Xala placed his hands together and took a deep breath of satisfaction, “These, dear Vulcan, are special candidates for resurrection I have been wanting to use for a long time. I admit, I have been lazy.”

  Vulcan gawked at the people around him, who all looked at him as if he were less than maggots, while some took an interest in his physical build as if he were being appraised, “Oh, abyss’s ass. You’re all from Okra?”

  “All killed in Okra, at least,” Dust said with ginger bitterness.

  Yurgin shimmied his way over to Vulcan, reached up to grab Vulcan’s hand, and inspected it carefully, “My, my, I saw your blood as it was consumed, but I had not bothered to observe your physical form. Goodness me, you’d be able to work the fields quite effectively. Perhaps a good mason’s servant?”

  Vulcan ripped his hand away and balled it into a fist as he dealt with the reality of those words. He looked back up at Xala and said, “You’re letting these animals loose?”

  “Oh, no, of course not.” Xala raised his hand, clenched it into a fist, and every single risen undead, except for Vulcan, immediately fell to one knee, their torsos angled toward Xala regardless of direction, and bowed their heads in unison. “Your freedom was agreed upon. Their freedom is still in the drafting process. I am not convinced they deserve it. After all,” Xala walked down the steps, through the crowd of people whose torsos tracked his descent while their legs were locked in place, and gently glided the back of his black talons across Dust’s cheek, “I chose you all because of the crimes you committed in life. Oh,” he leaned down and kissed the top of Dust’s scraggly-haired head, “how I’ve longed to exact justice on you all.”

  Dust hissed, “Death wasn’t good enough?”

  “No. Not at all.” He stepped away from Dust and continued toward Vulcan, “I was the Left Hand of the Emperor, the one who killed his political rivals, enemies, and, well, anyone he wanted. I told you of the mother he demanded I kill, but he also had me kill plenty of people who deserved it, as far as I was concerned.” Xala turned to look back at Dust, “Tell me, Dust, do you remember the woman you turned into an abomination for the sake of your experiments? She killed her whole family. The Emperor found you guilty, no?”

  Dust’s face twitched, but he did not answer.

  “Answer.” His voice was suddenly darker, submersed in a frequency that rattled the air between him and the goblin.

  “Y-yes.”

  “Good.” He looked toward Yurgin, “High Artificer, maker of baubles and tinkertoys, you remember what you did, yes?”

  Yurgin’s face was full of contempt. “Of course.”

  “Say it.”

  “I,” he swallowed the saliva that was merely recycled the moment he did, and said, “I killed the Emperor’s nephew.”

  “You lured him into one of your elaborate dungeons, and offered your friends the chance to pay to watch. How old was he?”

  “Seven.”

  Xala nodded, looked toward the Thrashian woman, Geraldine, and asked, “Nataja?”

  “Torturing prisoners of war is not a crime. It is a tactic.”

  “Hm, yes, I suppose the Emperor did agree with that. Although, he disagreed when you began to do it to your own soldiers.” He walked toward her, her bowed head at the same height as his thanks to their stature disparity, and said, “And when they were broken, what did you do to their helpless bodies?”

  Geraldine did not speak.

  “Ah, so you do understand your crime. Wonderful.” He turned toward Vulcan. “Every single soul you see before you, trapped in bodies that are not their own, are the opposite end of the spectrum of innocence. Imagine, me, consuming their souls and minds, every fetid and rotted thought, having them live within me. It is hard not to hate them with every fiber of my being.” He walked up to Vulcan’s side and turned to face them all. “Alas, I am merciful. Perhaps to a fault. They have a chance at redemption, after centuries of darkness and absolution. Tell me, my friends, are you ready to get to work?”

  All of them went lower until their foreheads touched the ground. Those on the staircases, who originally faced the opposite direction than their torsos do now, were bent and contorted in unnatural ways.

  “Excellent.”

  Vulcan grimaced, glanced toward Xala, and said, “They already know your plans?”

  “Of course. For undead such as these, unlike you, I impart many things into their structures as I raise them. They understand their roles, and what I desire, just as I have given them the gift of their current body’s understanding and languages of the modern world. All of them are intelligent enough, or obedient enough, to adapt and overcome this world. Yurgin, get to work on the Commune Charms. I want you all to be in constant contact with one another. A flow of information between your operations is vital.”

  Yurgin kept his head pressed firmly against the floor as he said, “As you wish.”

  Vulcan grinded his maulers before he said, “They’re gonna be everywhere, huh?”

  Xala nodded. “As for you, have you made progress with the Feathers?”

  “What? You didn’t read my mind for that?”

  “Shall I?”

  “No.” Vulcan never looked so sure of something in his whole life. “I’ve made them aware of you. They know about the stuff being said in the streets. They’ve been dealing with a lot of mages using black magic. A lot of people are becoming Cursed. I told them you were the cause of it all, and today they told me they wanted me to arrange a meeting between you and one of the Fangs, a leader who serves under the Grandmaster.”

  “Hm, a direct disciple of the Exodi. Excellent work.”

  “When can you meet him?”

  “Tonight.”