On Death and Locals

Humans, humans, stupid humans. This is the only thing that the Dark Lord could think of. After long months of prosperous life in the now destroyed underground layer and days of travel with his two remaining undead minions, the evil wizard forgot how easily tired the pesky humans are. Even the strongest and toughest can’t seem to keep up with the undead endurance that can walk for days and nights on end without ever needing to rest, sleep, or eat. And he did not think of that when he agreed to travel with this idiotic barbarian.

“Fer Gods above and below, do ye lads never get tired?!” Harold did not seem to have the basic capability of keeping his mouth shut. Every day, every time, after walking for merely eight hours of the day, he would start complaining about how his legs hurt, how he wanted to take a rest, how his stomach was twisting from lack of food, and just rabble on and on and on. The first five days the Dark Lord has decided to be generous and allow his newly acquired living minion some moments of peace as he understood the importance of loyalty. However, with every day the wizard’s tolerance slowly withered away with each stop to rest their feet, to eat what rations were leftover in his bag, and worst of all sleep, when there was absolutely nothing for the necromancer to do other than contemplate leaving this endeavor once and for all. And on the dawn of the sixth day, the Dark Lord’s patience finally snapped.

“No! We do not!” yelled the evil master at Harold. “Unlike you, we, the creatures of undeath, do not need stop every half-day to tend to our foolish, unbecoming bodily needs! We are machines of destruction and you shall either befall before our feet, or become one of our number!”

“Bloody hell, fine, you’ve made your point, ya undead bastard. What do you want from me, eh? I can’t help that this ‘unbecoming body’ needs to eat and sleep”.

“What I want is for you to shut your imbecile mouth and keep silent for as long as it takes us to get to that village, so I can get a proper roaming army!”

“Fine, fine. Didn’t know ye lads were so fecking childish”.

“How dare you speak to me this way?! I shall crush your mind into dust and turn your body into a proper servant, if you keep up with these unwanted false remarks!”

“Heh. O’er my dead body, ya silly bastard”.

“That is the plan, yes!”

“Ha!” the barbarian barked a chuckle. “Yeah, yeah, I get ya lad. I came to you for help and now here I am complaining. I’ll try to keep up with ye lads for at least some time, but can’t promise how long this will last”.

“Then I cannot promise how long you will stay alive”.

With that their relationship started to slightly change. No longer did Harold complain and kept on walking alongside his compatriots. He did get tired and hungry, but nevertheless he did not let it slow him down, even if it wasn’t easy, and it really was not easy. The very same night, as they were traveling along a dusty dirt road, he could barely keep his head straight, as his legs ached and his stomach furiously complained. Every thought every breath felt like torture, as the moon and stars far above in the sky seemed to be mocking his eyes. Why were there so many of them and why did they not make the night brighter? It made no sense, no sense at all. And all this walking, and this thing he asked for help finding Chardry. Was it all even worth it? “Why are we even going there?”

“Excuse me?” asked the necromancer.

After a moment’s thought Harold realized that he voiced his last question out loud. Well, in for a copper piece, as they say. “I said: Why are we even going to this village, ya loon?”

The Dark Lord sighed with irritation. “Because, you imbecile, I am a Lord with no army, and no Lord shall roam these barbaric lands without a proper army, and every army needs to start with peasantry”.

“Ya promised me we would be looking for Chardy”.

“And we are! Who says she is not going to be in this village?”

This was pointless. This undead idiot was as full of himself as he was full of shit. Might as well keep poking him while at it. Who knows, maybe with enough pokes enough shit will spill to make him pleasant company. “You sure Chardy’s gonna be there?”

That only irritated the evil wizard, who practically yelled his response: “For all you know, she can! So stop complaining!”

Poke. “I aint complaining, ya undead bastard!” Poke. “We’ve been walking there for a week straight, and all there is are trees and buggering animals!” Poke. “I just wanna know if all this is worth the fecking effort, or if I should chop your head off on the spot?”

“It matters not if this endeavor is worth it or not! Not for you, you sniveling mongrel! No matter if it brings you closer to that backstabbing snake Chardra, this expedition is garner back the strength of my army! And we wouldn’t need to attempt it, if you did not make that lizard creature stronger than ever before!”

Harold was at a loss for words. Yeah, he was not the smartest person around, but he was sure that this hydra plan he came up with was quite clever. It did force this idiot to come over and meet him. Not to mention, he did think of getting Chardra’s ex to help find her. And speaking of Chardra: “I swear to the Gods and the Devils, if ye call Chardra a snake or me a mongrel, your head will be lying at the bottom of a ditch, before we even reach that village.”

The Dark Lord pointed a bony finger at the barbarian near him. “Your threats mean nothing to me, you sniveling barbarian! I shall speak as I please when I please! And if you want to find your precious ‘Chardy’, you will stay quiet!”

After the fact, way later down in the future, both Harold and the Dark Lord agreed that the ensuing argument should have been resolved in a more peaceful manner. However, due to the hot-headedness of each character that’s not what happened. Especially not after Harold’s axeblade separated the Dark Lord’s arm from his torso.

Screeching filled the air, of shock, terror, anger, fury, and partial disgust. Then the spells started flying through the air in the attempt to destroy the unfortunate assailant. On the other side of the argument, Harold has decided that standing in the way of brimstone and hellfire wouldn’t be beneficial to his health, as he promptly dodged the attacks. Sparkles of electricity, smoke and ash, poisonous clouds, and many more fatal elements filled the air, as the Dark Lord desperately attempted to kill the barbarian, who dared to confront him in face to face battle.

All the while, two forgotten minions watched over the display of senseless violence. Unsure of what to do, as the inner conflict of undead usually does, they stood in behind the pair on the road, who were trying to kill each other. Perhaps, if treated right, they would’ve joined the fight on one of the two available sides, but as the undead master was too keen on torturing them, and the living barbarian was too keen on ignoring them, they were keen enough to stay back and watch the show. And what a wonderful show it was.

Green, yellow, blue, red lights filled the night starry sky. Every flame tongue looked like a dragon from the far away western country of Honni. Every line of yellow lightning looked like a road from the heavens themselves. The green poisonous clouds reminded them of the greenery around them… That was admittedly a stretch, but it was still pretty. It reminded the death knight of a time before all this nonsense, before it was so rudely killed and made into an undead abomination in the servitude of the stupid master of his, who was throwing, what it could only think to call, a temper-tantrum.

Then something moved in the corner of its undead gaze, just off the side of the road, behind the trees. It saw a face, and a familiar one at that, but for the unlife of it, it could not remember it. Familiar and all, the face was just as pretty as the display, and even more enchanting in the mesmerizing its not-completely-there mind by its familiarity. But before it could place the face back into its memory, the childish master of its has finally yelled a command.

“YOU FILTHY MINIONS! DON’T JUST STAND THERE AND ATTACK THIS CRETIN!”

“WHO ARE YE CALLING A CRETIN, YA MORON!”

And with that, the two minions joined the assault, but their heart wasn’t in it, quite literally. The skeleton’s weak strikes did nothing to the barbarian, and the death knight was just too slow with its attacks. In addition to being unmotivated, the recklessness of Harold's incomprehensible flailing and the Dark Lord’s firework of spells did not present the safest of environments. The deeply seeded self-preservation instinct, lack of motivation, and the vague command, all of these resulted in the lackluster fighting by the two minions.

The fight didn’t take long, as the two main fighters slowly got tired, as the memorized spells became forgotten and needed refreshing and the post-rage-fatigued body refused to raise the axe for a proper cut. Both of them were breathing heavily with exhaustion. The Dark Lord made the first move, as he looked down, and finally grabbed the cut-off limb. He tried to slap Harold across the face with it, but could only manage to drag it across the muddy ground. Harold decided to answer the attempt with a similar nicety, as the axe was dragged across the mud, creating a burrow worthy of a pumpkin.

“You know,” the Dark Lord finally spoke, “I don’t like you at all”.

Harold gave a short chuckle. “Glad, we can agree on that”.

The Dark Lord shook the arm he was holding in frustration. “Do you know how high a spell I will have to waste on this?!”

“Not high enough, I tell ya”.

“You, imbecile…” The necromancer could only growl at this moment. “Undead flesh is not as easily mended as the live one! Not to mention, someone’s as long unliving as me! The spell I will have to waste on myself will be powerful enough to erase that village and raise them back in one swoop!”

“Why don’t ye just wait another couple’o days to use that spell?”

“My layer was destroyed, and the ingredients required for it are rare enough! It was lucky that I had the pouch of the stuff on me in the first place, for that Gods damned hydra, and now I will have to waste them reattaching my limb”.

“Well, I don’t see that as a me problem. Ye can come back from it. Hells, last time, you blew yourself up in front of me eyes, and here you are, standing like it was nothing. You are the one who is so desperate to turn that village into undead, you are ready to march there for a week straight with no rest, when ye know full well Chardy ain’t there”.

The Dark Lord was surprised. “What an astute observation for a mindless barbarian” he voiced it outloud.

Harold sighed deeply and with frustration burst back at him: “Listen, lad, I ain’t mindless, not at all. Yeah, I might be simple an’ all, but it’s clear to me as day that you ain’t going there just to gain an army. Hells below, ya ain’t going there for Chardy either, or you’d dump me here to try and get with her”. The necromancer’s eyes widened with shock, and before he could say anything, barbarian continued: “Don’t act so surprised, ya lonely bastard. I ain’t no imbecile, as ye keep insisting. I know the look in yer eyes, I had the same. So,” he sat down on the ground with a grunt, “before we even get to that bloody place, tell me - why the bloody feck are we going there?”

His motivation revealed, the Dark Lord was left speechless. He was trying to come up with something clever, perhaps even witty, to try and put the ball of muscles back to its place, but no words seemed to do the job. Then he looked at the heavily breathing barbarian and told him that what he would never tell anyone before. “You see this large bastard. With the helmet?”

Harold narrowed his eyes and answered carefully: “I ain’t blind, ya twat. There’s only one of these going around. What are ye leading towards?”

“Well, this one got himself killed right on my doorstep just about a month ago. A hero of the sorts, ready to smite evil or what else these hero types do. So, of course, I killed him. Right down the stomach, cut him in half. It was brilliant in its simplicity. And then, not two weeks pass and my lair is destroyed by something, and I do not know what it was! The Devils were on my side that day, as I was outside for that pivotal moment, along with the very same creature whom I killed not so long before. So, I figured, either the undead idiot is important to the Gods to keep him safe, or Lady Luck has brought this brute to enact my revenge. In any case, the only place he could have come from was that village, and that village is the one place, where I shall have my revenge on this poor soul!”

Harold nodded in understanding. And then nodded in another direction. “What about this guy?”

The Dark Lord looked the same way Harold nodded. There stood the humble skeleton minion. “What about him?”

“Why is he here? And who was he?”

“That is not important! He is nothing! Worthless, but useful in a pinch. It was with us, when the lair was destroyed. That’s all”. The undead bones of a man lowered its head, as if being hurt by the comment.

The living barbarian has taken a couple of labored breaths in thought. “Very well. If ye’re so insistent on exacting revenge upon this poor lad, fine. But if I am going to help ye, we need some ground rules, as not to get to this point again”.

“Don’t you dare give me ru…”

“First of all,” Harold interrupted the offended wizard, “unlike ya lot, I need sleep and food. We will make camp every day and walk for no longer than half-a-day. Three, you will not complain to me about it, or I ain’t helping ya with the village, nor will I even give you the satisfaction of keeping your head to see Chardy with. Ya got it?”

The wizard hesitated. “I cannot promise I will not pass comments about your laziness”.

“Good thing, I said you would not complain, not comment on the situation. Comment away to your minions for all I care. And as for the camp”. Harold flopped over onto the ground. “Will make one right here”.

Before being able to acknowledge any of this, a deep guttural snoring cut through the air. The Dark Lord sat next to him having nothing else to do, but wait now, and wait intensely. Some time later, he turned to his death knight minion and asked a very important question: “Can you believe the audacity of this man?”