Six years ago.
Death has taken over the Mushdall town.
Although many of the townsfolk were still walking and breathing, death was already inside them. Death was in the water, in the ground, and in the air.
It was rotting people's organs and seeping out through boils on their skin while they gathered dead bodies off the streets and burned them on pyres.
In a small house in the town's artisans' quarter, a boy clung to his mother's chest and tried not to cry. Near the sickbed, a doctor in a leather mask shaped like a beak was watching the boy with concern.
The plague has taken the woman's eyes already, rendering her blind, but she still found her son's hand with her own.
"Aleric… You're already fourteen, that's almost a grown man. Be strong…"
"No, mom! I don't wanna be on my own! Dad is… is already gone," Aleric bit his lip until it bled to not cry.
"I… believe in you. Al…"
With each sound, the last remains of strength left the woman's body until it went entirely limp.
Despite his efforts, a tear fell down Aleric's cheek. With a sniff, he leaned down and clung to his mother's unmoving chest. He felt not like an adult at all, but like a little lost boy.
"Mom…"
The doctor shook his head and put his hands on the woman's neck. As he had expected, there was no pulse.
"Your mother is beyond help. Let her go, boy," the plague doctor said tiredly, moving back.
When Aleric didn't move, the man sighed under his mask. He had seen many such cases, and they were always saddening. But he couldn't allow the boy to hug a corpse forever.
The doctor waited another minute, then reached out, about to pull the boy away by force if necessary. However, a movement made him stop.
A wisp of chilling green energy left Aleric's hand and seeped into his mother's body. Then, the doctor saw something unbelievable.
The dead woman's hands moved.
With slow movements, she sat up and hugged the boy back!
Aleric jerked up.
"Mom? Mom! You are feeling better!"
He laughed a little while the doctor gasped and clutched his chest in terror.
Although she was moving before his eyes, the woman's movements were unnatural and stiff, and she wasn't breathing!
Worse, strange things were happening with the boy, too. Only a few minutes before, Aleric looked just like an ordinary youth his age with brown hair and acne-covered skin. His only rare feature was the lack of the plague's symptoms.
But now Aleric's hair became utterly white, and his skin became gray like that of a corpse!
The doctor stumbled away from the bed.
"Monsters and evil witchcraft… Dark magic…" he whispered in disbelief. Then he turned away, picked up the long hem of his doctor's robe, and began running as fast as his old bones could carry him!
Aleric didn't even turn in the doctor's direction. All he could think of was that his mother got better.
"This is a miracle! This is a miracle, Mom!" He hugged his mother even tighter. "Just like the priests tell, the Light has come down on you and healed you!"
His mother didn't reply, but Aleric wasn't worried about it. Since the plague has fallen on their town, his mother has barely spent a day out of bed. She was so very weak… If she had said anything, Aleric would've told her to save her strength.
Although her hands felt very strong on his back already.
It took several minutes until the happiness abated enough that Aleric noticed that the doctor had left the house. Puzzled, he pulled back from his mother and looked around.
"Huh? Did he go tell others about the miracle?"
At this moment, Aleric heard loud footsteps outside the bedroom and stood up. As soon as he approached the door, it opened sharply, making him stagger back.
On the other side stood a pair of city guards and the doctor who was peeking cautiously from behind their backs.
"This is it! Look at these… unnatural creatures!" the doctor spat, pointing at Aleric and his mother. "This woman is dead, but moving! And the boy... It came from the boy, I saw it!"
"What?!" Aleric gasped, shocked. "What are you talking about? What's going on?!"
He looked at the guards' faces. One of them, Livs, was a friend of his aunt's husband, while the other, Rammon, often patrolled Aleric's street. But now both of them stared at Aleric like he suddenly turned into a giant spider.
"That's… a ghoul! A zombie!" Livs said. "And… whatever the hell Aleric turned into!"
Rammon pulled out his sword. "We will bring them in. By Light, we will!"
"Wait! Stop! Why—what are you doing?!" Aleric cried out again, but the guards ignored him.
Livs grabbed Aleric's shoulder and pulled him toward the exit. At the same time, Rammon walked around them and cautiously approached Aleric's mother. She didn't react except for turning her head toward the guard. If her eyes weren't covered in bandages, one could think she was watching him.
"Just come with us… Whatever you are!" Livs spat at Aleric when he pulled back.
"No! Don't touch my mom!" Aleric shouted. "Get away from me, dammit! Mom, don't sit there! The guards have gone insane, we must stop them!"
Ignoring Aleric's shouts, Rammon raised his sword, aiming to cut off the undead creature's head.
At this moment, the woman leaped up and lunged for his throat with unexpected speed.
"Rammon!" Livs shouted, letting go of Aleric.
The guard ran to help his partner, but the undead woman had already torn open Rammon's throat with her bony fingers. A fountain of blood poured out, smearing her and the room.
Aleric stood paralyzed by terror–but not from the sight of his mother attacking the guards.
He had caught sight of his own hands and saw eerie green energy under his skin. Instinctively, he could feel the same energy in his mother and how it echoed his desires.
Although Aleric didn't understand what exactly had happened, he knew that something terrible befell him and his mother, something that made the guards and the doctor call them monsters.
Only now had Aleric fully realized that his mother had really died.
Too terrified to think straight, Aleric turned and ran away. Behind him, he heard Livs's scream that ended abruptly. Then more shouts.
All of that made Aleric run even faster. He ran past the exit, past the doctor, past the people on the streets and out of the town.
He only stopped when he didn't hear shouts behind him anymore. And even that, as future showed, was too soon.
***
Aleric looked at the people of Broomwood gathered in front of him: dull-witted men, weak-willed women, and unwashed children.
One day, they would all die. It could happen in ten years or tomorrow.
Aleric felt that it mattered very little.
"Spine Staff, did you count them?" Aleric whispered.
"Yes, master," the artifact replied just as quietly. "Three women, eight children, and two men aren't here anymore. The men seem to have left last night, the rest—this one, hiding somewhere like vermin."
"I see."
Aleric suspected this would happen. The women and children must've simply hid, but the men… He was sure that they were riding their work horses toward the nearest chapter house of Light templars to plead for help.
Not that it mattered. Aleric wasn't trying to hide, he was testing these people's obedience.
He looked at the people in front of him. They didn't dare to raise their eyes at him, but there was hatred in them. Hatred and fear.
As soon as Aleric left, these people would turn against him, too. Everybody did, just because Aleric was a death-touched.
Yesterday, Aleric thought he might rule them with fear, but today he realized it was foolish. His power wasn't enough to keep a place like this—templars would come and kick him out. These people didn't have the loyalty to serve him without threats.
And Aleric needed more corpses if he were to stand his ground against the Church.
He raised his free hand, and dozens of his undead slaves stepped up to surround the scared people.
"People of Broomwood, you had your chance. Since you went against me, I revoke it. Clearly, only the dead can be trusted. Undead slaves, kill them!"
His zombies and skeletons attacked before Aleric even finished his speech. Some of them wielded weapons, but even their bony fingers were enough against unprepared farmers.
People screamed with pain and fear as Aleric's undead tore their necks and slashed at their chests. Some even tried to resist, but without weapons, they couldn't harm even Aleric's skeletons.
"Nooo! P-please, sp-spare!" the old village's head screamed when two skeletons grabbed him. Even now, he couldn't stop stuttering. "M-master, we ob-obeyed!"
Aleric winced.
"Stop screaming. Everything dies eventually—you will just get there sooner."
This simple wisdom didn't diminish the screaming, but Aleric's zombies did. Soon, blessed, dead quiet filled the place. Only fearful bleats of goats in someone's barn interrupted it.
The air was thick with the smells of blood and Dark emanations. The latter felt like a balm to Aleric's senses.
Now these people, moderately useful in life, will become much more useful in death. Aleric's undead slaves obeyed his orders and didn't tear off any limbs.
"Tanssikaa kuoomat nukkelemattni…"
He will carry these bodies with him as puppets for now, but as soon as possible, he will upgrade them to undead slaves.
But right now, Aleric didn't want to waste more time in this wretched village.
He had another goal in mind.
***
Templar Captain Rihard Rawing knew that something was seriously wrong long before his squad of twenty-five templars entered Broomwood. The fields, where farmers should have been gathering the crops this time of the year, were empty. No animals were grazing the fields nearby.
Closer to the village, the smells of death and Dark magic filled the templars' senses.
"Keep your weapons ready. Brother Karn, do you sense anything active here?"
Karn, the first rank cleric attached to their squad, shook his head.
"Only traces, Captain. It looks like we are already too late…"
The sight of the village confirmed Karn's words. The massacre already happened. The ground was red with blood, but not a single body was here. Instead, there were countless tracks, so many that they muddled together and became indistinguishable.
"Search for any survivors!" Rihard ordered. "Pray to the Light that we find any…"
The templars spread around the village, holding their axes and falchions at the ready. Soon, Rihard got his first good news today.
"There are people hiding in the cellar, Captain!"
The people were a bunch of terrified toddlers with a couple of women, one with two babies in hands. At the sight of people in the Church's colors, they sobbed with relief. One woman even hugged a stupefied Karn to sob on his shoulder.
"Calm down, calm down! The danger is gone, you are in safe hands now. What happened here?" Rihard asked.
It took a while to extract information from the crying women, but eventually one of them calmed down enough.
"The… The necromancer p-promised that he won't kill us if we obey… B-but we didn't believe him. Most of us, at… at least. So we took the children and hid h-here. But we still heard the screams. Oh, the screams!" the woman sobbed again, but no tears were coming from her eyes anymore. "I can't stop hearing them."
Rihard sighed and called over one of his templars.
"These people need healing for their souls… And safety. Take another man and a cart with you and escort them to Oakdale's Temple of Light. The one where the two men who sent a message from Broomwood are staying. There should be enough space to take them in."
"Yes, sir. The familiar faces will be good for them, too, right?"
"Exactly. And we will avenge their families."
As soon as the grieving women and their children were put on a cart pulled by two templars' horses, Rihard gathered his remaining men to follow the necromancer's trail.
The track left by dozens of undead was impossible to miss, and knowing how slow they were, Rihard knew his team would catch up with him quickly.
"It goes north-east… With the Light's guidance, we will reach him before he can slaughter any more villages," Rihard said. "But it's strange—there are no settlements nearby to the north-east. There are villages much closer to the south or west."
"Maybe the necromancer knows that he can't control more undead?" Karn suggested. "If he's an ordinary self-taught witch, then he should be at his limit already with both the Broomwood villagers and the bodies from the graveyard… Oh, I will pray for the souls of all whose bodies the necromancer has stolen."
"Aleric Fenn…" Rihard repeated the name given to him by Broomwood's messengers. "The Light will guide our hands to smite you. Move out, men, and be ready for a tough fight!"