Dread Mage

Vellichor began rummaging through the village.

Most houses were burned and there were a few corpses left of other villagers.

As he pushed a bit of rubble away from a dead man he asked Sonder, "Do you know this man?"

She looked at the man and could only answer, "No"

To her, he looked like any man would. He wouldn't stand out to her in a sea of faces.

But there was something on his forehead, a symbol that was carved into his flesh.

"An ugly mark, isn't it?" Vell said.

"What is it?"

"Well, a mark of course. So that others would know whose handiwork this is."

"Do you know that symbol?" Sonder asked.

"I've seen it a few times, yes. Garrions, a gang of outlaws that stretch all over the world. Let me ask you this. Should I go and look for them?"

"What do you mean?"

"You've seen what they did to your village, and what they did to you. You died here. But I don't have a connection to you, or this place, and I don't have a personal problem with the Garrions. But you do."

"Could you fight them if you had to?" She asked.

"I can handle a great many things, but I don't usually go out and look for trouble. But I'll let you decide what I should do."

Sonder thought about it. Why did he want her to choose?

He was the great magician. She was just an undead girl.

"Don't you want justice or an explanation why they attacked your village or where the rest had gone? They took prisoners. There aren't enough corpses here." Vell said, spurring her on.

And she felt a strange feeling in what used to be her beating heart. There hadn't been many questions in her mind since she returned to life but it seemed that Vellichor needed her to answer.

"I want to know why," she blurted out the first question on her mind. "I want to know why they killed me."

"Then we have our cause," Vell said, "and a just one at that."

He took his staff and put one end of it on the forehead of the dead man, where the symbol had been carved in, and said, "Sag Ada."

A thin but obvious blue line came out of the man's head and began to wander in a direction without pause.

And the mage followed it at a leisurely pace.