Never Die Twice

Tinkering furiously on his machine deep inside one of the mines’ isolated caves, Tye found his quiet work interrupted by tremors. Ghostring phased through one of the walls, as the bearer of bad news. “They’re here, chief.”

“They attacked sooner than expected,” the alchemist mused while putting on the final plate of the steel coating. “How many?”

“Over a hundred. Early risers. They think they should grab the glory before everyone else arrives. Hagen squished a dozen of them by collapsing a tunnel.”

The joys of explosives. “Is Annie or the princess among them?”

“No, and you’re too good for them anyway.”

As he expected, fools eager to gain some royal favor would throw themselves to their doom. Tye examined his machine, an alchemical, circular cauldron three meters wide in diameter. The greyish mechanical complexity possessed various red holes as ‘mouths,’ exuding steam and stockpiled blood. A primitive panel covered in buttons allowed the alchemist to input sequences, which he did.

In response, the cauldron began to spew greenish, mindless oozes by the half-dozen each minute, but not fast enough for Tye’s taste. He had ordered the machine to produce a very specific kind of slime, which took longer to manufacture.

Driven by a vicious instinct the alchemist had instilled on a primal, genetic level, the ooze slithered into the tunnels to seek living beings to attack, smelling blood like sharks. On their own, they were no match for adventurers; the invaders would kill them in droves.

Tye counted on it.

“Oh, this will be fun,” said Ghostring, phasing through a wall to follow the slime horde. Tye himself summoned his [Ghost Mirror] to survey the situation.

As he planned, Hagen had collapsed parts of Level One’s caverns with explosives, separating the invaders and trapping some of them away from the exit. Most were newbie adventurers he had seen at the tavern, or in his shop. They wielded torches, spears, swords, and bows; weapons ill-adapted for the narrow caverns and corridors. Even the mages among them looked inexperienced.

No Academy students among them… but Tye noticed Percy among a large group of ten, working as a guide. Unlike his comrades, the squire seemed like he would have done anything to be elsewhere. Perhaps the thought of ending up like his mentor gnawed at him.

Tye glimpsed at another area of Level One, watching Spook luring a human party further down, through a narrow corridor. At a point, a trap activated, the floor collapsing beneath their feet and a rope dangling from the ceiling. Spook caught the rope and saved himself, while the humans fell on poisoned spikes below. The mummy glanced down at the dead with a cold, uncaring gaze.

In another area, Duke, more straightforward, had engaged a small group in combat, first slaughtering the spellcasters before massacring the rest. Like a deadly dancer, he moved around swordsmen with grace, his rapier impaling skulls through the eyes or finding ways through armors’ chinks. The difference in level was too wide for the newbies to overcome, and the zombie clearly relished in the wanton bloodshed.

Eventually, the first slimes, backed by a group of armed skeletons, confronted Percy’s group in a small, cramped cavern. The party adopted a good formation, the archers led by Percy staying at the rear while close-range fighters formed a defensive line; of course, the narrow space prevented the former from firing without accidentally hitting their teammates. A spearman impaled a slime that had aimed for his head, sealing his fate.

The blob of goo inflated and then exploded into a sickly green cloud. The spearman and the rest of the vanguard inhaled it and quickly started to cough. Their mouths quickly started to foam, their skin turning sickly yellow, and most collapsed while scratching their throats.

“Toxic fumes!” Percy, the smartest of the band, quickly understood the danger. “Don’t kill the slimes! They release toxic gas upon death!”

The archers stopped their assault, albeit too late for the vanguard. Those the fumes didn’t kill ended up too weakened to resist the undead attackers. More slimes leaped at the rearguard, attempting to self-destruct on contact and spread the smog.

“They’re suicide bombers!” Percy shouted, turning tail. “Fall back!”

While it was the most sensible strategy, Tye noticed true, pure terror in the eyes of the squire. He hadn’t turned his back out of pragmatism, but primal fear of death. The adrenaline helped run faster than his cohorts, who struggled to outpace the cloud.

Ghostring chose that moment to make himself known, the purple specter surging out of the ground between Percy and his fellows, surprising them.

“Booo!”

Ghostring lifted the protective illusion surrounding him and revealed his true, horrifying form. A vision of nightmare, of festering flesh and tentacles, of snarling mouths and shining eyes. The weak of heart among them died from the fright alone, while the others froze at the sight… allowing the cloud and the skeletons to catch up to them.

Percy, tears in his eyes, courageously left his companions to die while running faster than a rabbit towards the exit.

By the end of the ‘invasion,’ the toxic clouds had spread to almost all of Level One, making it a no living man’s land. As the necromancer and his soldiers patrolled the area to finish off whoever survived, Tye discovered that an incredible number of rats had made their home in the dungeon. “Poor creatures,” the necromancer said while stepping on a dead adventurer’s back. “War is always such a bitter affair.”

Note to self: breed toxin-resistant rats.

Summoning his [Ghost Mirror], Tye checked the entrance of the dungeon, where the princess and her classmates had arrived alongside a larger force.

Situated near the bottom of the hill under which the dungeon was built, the locals had taken to calling the entrance the ‘Maw,’ because the many stalactites of the open cave gave it the look of beast’s jaws. The churches had erected spear pillars near the entrance, whose holy energies prevented the undead from crossing the entrance and attacking the town; or at least, Tye let them believe so. The priests had even grown flower gardens to surround the road towards the entrance, drowning the stench of death.

Percy had managed to escape, the smog escaping the caverns after him. The princess observed the fumes go up in the skies with a frustrated face; due to her supporters’ foolishness, her attack had ended before it even began.

“A toxic cloud which only affects the living, but spares the undead,” the young woman told her classmates, who numbered in the dozens. “This is a premeditated strategy.”

“I can push it back with a wind spell,” Annie proposed.

“No,” the princess replied, as a few survivors, crawled out of the ruins, struggling to breathe. “Our priority is evacuating the wounded, and your spells will not protect us for the full trip down.”

Tye noted that they didn’t have any high-level caster yet, or they would have noticed his scrying. After the princess did as she said and ordered her classmates to heal or carry the survivors to safety, the necromancer dispelled his mirror.

“I call that a battle well-won,” Hagen said, as Tye joined with his elites at the cavern where they ambushed Sigurd. “Now, chief, what do we do with the corpses?”

“I suggest impaling their heads on spikes near the entrance,” Duke suggested. “To break the survivors’ will.”

“That’s barbaric,” Tye replied. “And most importantly, a waste of workers and meatshields.”

“I suggest a middle ground,” Ghostring said with a happy voice. “Decapitate them all, impale the heads near the entrance, and raise the headless corpses.”

“Stupidity,” Hagen replied, as the only headless undead in the group. “Stop joking around and bring them to the lab for reanimation.”

The living dead grumbled in disappointment but obeyed their captain’s order all the same. Tye’s strategy had brought them some time… but for how long?

“[Summon Greater Daemon: Laufey Sorrowsinger].”

As he finished casting the spell in his summon room, Tye watched his hexagram shine with crimson light. He had been forced to upgrade from his previous pentagram when he started summoning stronger creatures from the Nine Realms.

The creature that materialized before him was terrible in its beauty, a curvaceous maiden with pitch-black skin. Her dark purple hair fell down to her shoulders, held together by a crown of thorned roses. Contrary to what he had expected, she dressed conservatively but elegantly, wearing clothes made of woven black silk. Two dark crimson butterfly wings allowed her to fly without her leather boots touching the ground.

Her bemused violet eyes reminded him of a cat looking at a particularly amusing rat, as she noticed the demon Beli chained to his walls and the undead in the darkness. She put a hand on her waist, as she focused back on her necromancer. “Yes, darling?”

“Laufey Sorrowsinger, I wish to form a [Soul Pact] with you,” Tye offered. The dark elves already had a sinister reputation, but this one surpassed her kindred in cruelty. She had demon blood, hence why he could summon her; and not just any wicked beast’s blood.

Summoning her was a risky gambit, and he wouldn’t take her into his service without magical binding. [Soul Pacts] were one of the best [Diabolism] spells for that purpose, enforcing contractual terms and punishing the oathbreaker with pain, death, or eternal servitude to the wronged party.

“It had been many years since a mortal summoned me,” she said with a melodious singer’s voice, narrowing her eyes as she seemingly glimpsed the necromancer’s true nature. “Although ‘mortal’ may not be so appropriate in your case.”

“I am having a hero problem which will only get worse, and I need competent elites to lead my mindless minions, maybe infiltrate my enemies, sow chaos, the usual. I thought you might enjoy such a position.”

“I might,” the dark elf replied, putting a finger from her other hand on her lips. She had a deadly reputation for leading knights astray to madness and horror. “But not for free. What do you offer in return for my help, Soul Eater?”

“Serve me for a year and be released on Midgard afterward to do as you wish, or die.”

“Interesting proposal, but not a satisfying one.” The dark elf chuckled… until she paid more attention to the undead in the room.

Most of them were reanimated demons; maybe even her cousins.

“What have you done?” she asked in amazement. Clearly she hadn’t expected that.

“Well, I’ve been asking every member of demonkind that I could summon to join me, but they misbehaved.” Tye shrugged. “Seriously, what is wrong with you fiends? I give you money, secrets, whatever you could possibly want, and you are never satisfied.”

“You foolishly summon monsters, and murder them when they refuse to serve you?”

“Why, yes?” Tye stated the obvious. “You can serve me in life, or in death. It makes little difference to me.”

Well, not quite. He couldn’t reanimate an undead twice, while he could recycle living minions. The dark elf appraised him, her smile turning into a mocking one. “You do know who my father is?”

“Yes, but according to my research, you do not serve him.”

“There is a wide gap between not serving, and not being loved,” Laufey replied, the menace lurking behind every word. “For your sake, I would suggest not to lay a finger on me. Especially so early in our association.”

“That only depends on your goodwill, and obe—” Tye stopped himself. “Association?”

“Yes, and I have very high standards of living. If I am to stay for a year, I want a large bedroom of my own, servants, fine drinks, and a kennel for my pets.”

The necromancer remained silent. She didn’t sound like she was lying.

“What it is darling? Have you changed your mind?”

“No, no, but I did not expect you to accept so readily.”

“My, I have a good feeling about you,” she said, glancing at the undead demons with what Tye took for pure, distilled, unadulterated sadism. “I worried you might be another foolish wizard, but you are already deeply depraved. I approve.”

She hadn’t been scared but impressed. Entertained. That elf found the sight of demons turned undead hilarious.

“I agree to every term,” Tye said. “But only mindless undead for servants.”

“Fine, I believe we will work very closely together from now on,” the dark elf mused. “I would enjoy having one of your toys for my personal use. I love to sculpt in my downtime… and are there better materials than screaming flesh and bones?”

Tye had the worrisome feeling he might have made a mistake. A big, big mistake.