Chapter 7: Chapter 6 – The Bone Lord’s Domain

"O give me a home~ where the skeletons roam~ and the kids can play with them all day~

Where burglars were scarce~ and bandits extinct~ and the life, was safe as can be~

Home~ Live with the dead~

Where the kids can play with them all day~

Where burglars were scarce~ and bandits extinct~ and the life, was safe as can be~

With the undeads on guard~ lets the people be calm~ and go on with their lives and duties~

I stand there amazed~ and I ask as I gaze~

What we've done~ to have all these blessings~?

Home~ Live with the dead~

Where the kids can play with them all day~

Where burglars were scarce~ and bandits extinct~ and the life, was safe as can be~" - Lyrics to "Home with the Dead", popular song in Ptolodecca.

"This is my seventh time here," Aideen said as she looked out the window of the carriage. Shortly after they left Vitalica, the carriage driver - a mist mage in Nec Aarin's employ - dispelled the illusions that had made the horses look like fierce, black stallions. Their true forms were beasts of bones, clad in bone plates and with wicked fangs in their mouths, a beyond fearsome undead monster, creation of the Bone Lord himself. "And I still have a hard time getting used to these sights."

 

The sight she mentioned was the happy, plump-faced farmers who stopped their work when they saw the carriage roll past and cheered at the top of their lungs, many of them yelling phrases like "All Hail the Bone Lord!" Or "May those blessed by death, reign eternal!". Their jubilation and cheer had not seemed forced to her, and these people just looked truly grateful from the bottom of their hearts.

 

A weirder sight were the multitude of armed skeletons who stood at nearly every intersection and corner of fields she had seen so far. None of the workers paid heed to the skeletons, while the skeletons themselves all faced outward, not there to watch those on the inside, but on guard for threats from the outside.

 

Even as their carriage rolled by, Aideen saw how one skeleton was being used as a playground by several children, and had not reacted in the slightest to it. She almost screamed out in warning as a wild animal - a large, hungry wolf - had emerged out of the nearby woods and headed straight for the children. The carriage was too far to intervene, however.

 

Before her eyes, the skeleton gently disentangled itself from the scared, screaming children, and interposed its skeletal body between the children and the animal. As the wolf lunged, the skeleton raised its spear into its path and set the butt of the spear against the ground.

 

The beast impaled itself on the spear, unable to alter its trajectory in mid air. Carried forward by its momentum however, it broke the spear's shaft and barreled into the poor skeleton, breaking its bones and sending bits of it scattered away to the children's screams.

 

Fortunately enough, the beast was mortally wounded when it impaled itself with the spear, and its charge had widened the wound even more. The wolf whimpered, legs trembling as its own innards fell out of its torn belly and pooled beneath it along with copious amounts of its own blood, before it lost strength and fell dead where it stood.

 

The carriage soon reached where the incident happened, and Nec Aarin bid the driver to halt. He led Aideen and Diarmuid, as well as Aoife, towards the scene, where the wolf lay dead, but the children had not dispersed. Aideen saw that some of the children had gathered the skeleton's scattered pieces together, while others cried for their "Mr. Skeleton".

 

"Should I fix the skeleton for them, master?" Offered Aoife as they approached, some of them older children noticed their black robes and had begged them to help their "Mr. Skeleton".

 

"No, child, you calm the children with the kids," said the Bone Lord. For some reason Aideen felt as if his skeletal face had grinned. "This skeleton has been a good boy, so let me do it myself."

 

"Understood, master," said Aoife. She did as was bidden, and gathered the children to her as she consoled them to give her master room to work. Aideen and Diarmuid helped their mother handle the children while the Bone Lord went to work.

 

To witness the Bone Lord personally raise an undead was a rare sight, and everyone's eyes were soon transfixed to him as the greatest necromancer of the ages went to work.

 

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A black stream of pure death magic enveloped the wolf's corpse, and when it lifted away moments later, all the blood and flesh spilled had vanished, and all that was left of the beast were pristine white bones.

 

The Bone Lord then reformed the skeleton, its broken bones fused together as it became whole again, and the children cheered as the skeleton stood under its own power.

 

But the Bone Lord was not done.

 

With a flick of his finger the skull of the wolf separated from its body, where it flew up and aligned itself with the skeleton's skull. The wolf skull than warped, and clad itself onto the skeleton as it formed into a bone helmet styled after a wolf's visage.

 

Next, the wolf's limbs and ribcages flew over and did the same with the skeleton's torso and limbs, where they formed a layer of armor-like plates merged with the skeleton's own bones, the limbs reinforced and far sturdier than it ever had been.

 

The wolf's spine and tails was last, and also flew up, where the mass of bone seemed to have turned fluid and merged into a ball, which then elongated and formed itself. Half a minute later, a pristine, white bone spear with a wicked barbed spearhead was held in the skeleton's grip.

 

Even as young and inexperienced as she was, Aideen recognized that the humble skeleton, has now become a death knight. An undead being easily worth a hundred of its lesser ilk, often feared and dreaded for their prowess on the battlefield.

 

The way the Bone Lord had made one so casually scared Aideen somewhat.

 

"There you go kids, Mr. Skeleton is good as new, now don't be playing too much, and make sure you get home in time, okay?" Said the Bone Lord cheerfully as he addressed the cheering children. "Wouldn't want your parents to worry, now would you?"

 

"Yes grandpa bones!" Said the kids in unison. "Thank you!"

 

As they walked back to the carriage - and Aideen still struggling to accept how the kids happily treated a death knight as a playground facility - a black robed figured had ran in their direction in haste.

 

"This lowly servant greets his holiness the Bone Lord," said the middle aged man as he bowed deeply to Nec Aarin. "Forgive my late arrival, I would have hastened more had I known your holiness to be present."

 

"It is fine," said the Bone Lord. "You did well with the skeleton's commands, none of the children were harmed."

 

The man looked elated at the praise he received, much like a child praised by their parent, Aideen thought.

 

"I gave it a little… upgrade while I repaired it earlier," added the Bone Lord. "Do keep it stationed there, those children seem pretty attached to it."

 

"By your will, your holiness. It is my honor to obey."

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