A few minutes had passed and now two bodies lay before Heidie. Both were stripped of clothing but the second body was in much worse condition than the first. The second’s cause of death, assuming they’d survived the initial fall, had been a treadmill to the chest. The result had been a fairly damaged body. It’d been a bugger of a job too, to lever and push the treadmill off of the crafting materials.

Feeling little but numbness and a smattering of revulsion, Heidie prepared to carry out her plan. She was coming to terms with the idea that she might have an empathy problem. Then again, was empathy applicable to the dead? Probably not. The dead didn’t have feelings. Her worldview had been shaken up pretty badly but Heidie was still pretty sure about that one. Perhaps it was a sympathy problem. Regardless, there was work to be done. Heidie found a slightly away spot to designate as a viscera dump and dragged the second body to it.

Heidie emitted a mana probe into the corpses chest and focused. She began preparing the flesh and bone molding spell the demon had taught her. A slit appeared on the chest, expanding in size, and and Heidie guided the flesh, muscle, and cartilage away from the exposed bones; She couldn’t combine the fleshy bits to any great effect at this level.

This body’s purpose was only to reinforce the next body. It was the extra bone that Heidie needed. Peeling the flesh off of the corpse with her spell wasn’t as fast as Heidie would have liked, but it was incomparably faster than doing it by hand.

Twenty minutes later Heidie was finished and in several trips she transferred the stack of boney prizes to the corpse which would become her first undead. The offal was cast off and the fleshless bones of the skeleton were now prepared in disorganized pile.

With the flutter of wings carrion birds descended upon the pile of viscera, only to be driven off by the snapping teeth and mental probes of Lome’Matar. Heidie had plans for that viscera. To protect the pile of flesh she had stuck a stick in the ground and inserted Lome’Matar’s head atop it as a makeshift scarecrow. He seemed to be enjoying himself in his new role.

Preparing to create her first minion, Heidie went over her plans. She was going to combine about half of the pile of bones into her minion to increase bone density then Heidie would craft a large rectangular shield out of the rest to attach to the left hand. She hoped that there would be enough bone remaining at that point to increase the length of her minion’s right arm a little and craft it into a makeshift halberd. If there wasn’t enough extra material then Heidie would debone another classmate.

For offense she planned to remove the right hand and mold the tip of the arm bone into a sharpened point. Shortly below the point would be an axe-like blade. Good for chopping through foliage and stabbing things with the pointy end from behind a shield wall.

A Shield wall was what Heidie wanted from her first batch of undead. Ideally she should have enough minions for a tight formation, covering all sides and above. The watery and forested terrain would make maintaining such a formation difficult, however. Heidie hoped it would be good enough to deal with anything that tried to jump her.

Undead should be able to keep their shields raised indefinitely and move in formation. Enemies would hopefully have to try and break through the shield wall to get to her. That was when her minions would stab them to death or hold the enemy off long enough for Heidie to escape.

The uneven terrain made holding a tight formation improbable, but Heidie couldn’t think of anything else that had a good chance of getting her out of this place.

Heidie was the weak link here. Options for self-defense were just not there until the demon coughed up an offensive spell for her to use. She was out of her element in this place; Unaccustomed to strenuous physical activity and hositle environments. Stealth wasn't an option for her. There was no way she could sneak past large predators in their natural environment. Moving while covered by a tireless group of protectors would hopefully maximize the chance of survival. At least Heidie would have a group of allies with shields to hide in.

Lome’Matar had said the spiders were intelligent. They scouted potential threats and studied them before attacking. Heidie shuddered at the thought of getting jumped by one of those things. Yeah, Standing in the open sounded terrible. The shield minions probably couldn’t cover her from every angle all the time but it was the best idea she had.

Twenty four bodies lay in the clearing. For enough minions of the shield/halberd variety to form a shield wall formation around her, Heidie estimated she’d need quite a few. Ten would be ideal. She wanted to make sure that they were especially durable, difficult to harm and difficult to break through. This meant reinforcing their bones. There should be enough materials for approximately two and a half bodies per minion.

She also wanted to craft at least one designated porter, although that was a luxury and she could probably figure out a way to allow the shield minions carry some things with them.

Heidie wanted to carry as little as possible herself. She knew she’d never walked more than a couple of miles at a time in her life. Any sort of long distance trek would be bad enough without adding weight to it. Unless they were right on the edge of the spider colony’s territory Heidie’s feet would be blistered and bloody by the time she and Lome’Matar exited it. That probably wouldn’t be the end of the pain either. She didn’t even want to think about how much of her body would be chafed raw after traversing this wet forest. Heidie’s condition was going to be a mess before this was over. Lome’Matar had a point when he listed out priorities. She needed to learn to heal herself quickly. Before that, however, there were more immediate concerns.

Returning to work, It now occurred to Heidie that she couldn’t really tell most of the bones in the pile apart. There were some which were more recognizable than others, but she wasn’t able to determine where many of them were from originally. Meh Heidie thought. It wasn’t like she really needed to mold bones of the same type together. Heidie picked up a slightly damaged spinal column. It was holding together but the treadmill impact had done a number to it. She rolled her future first minion onto his back and started molding the flesh aside, exposing his spine from the cervical vertebrae to the sacrum. Pressing the two spinal columns together Heidie began her first merger.

Progress was made but it was taking a while. Bone seemed to be more time consuming to work with than flesh. Heidie was getting leg cramps from slaving over the ungrateful cadaver for so long. The temperature was going up as the sun was reaching its zenith. Heidie took a break to remove her hoodie and put it with her bag, taking the opportunity to seize a drink of water before returning to work. She intended to do whatever was necessary to survive here. No matter what.

Hours later Heidie was nearly finished. Bone was an absolute bitch to mold. It took ages to get anywhere and she had to concentrate hard the whole time.

The right arm was all that was left. The future minion’s hand had been molded into a solid point and she was getting it as strong and pointy as she could make it, critically eyeing the spear-arm with her mana probe.

Deciding that it was good enough, Heidie moved on and pressed the last of her pile of bones to the arm. About six inches down from the tip. She molded them into a solid mass and fused it with the arm, then tried to mold it into a vague axe shape. Minutes passed and it was done. Heidie took a few more minutes to sharpen up the axe and then slowly and stiffly stood up.

Heidie’s first undead minion was complete. The body of the boy was unrecognizable from before Heidie had gotten to it. For one thing, his skin had ghastly puckered scars running all across his body from the flesh being magically cut and shifted away from the bone, then rejoined after the reinforcement. No longer very pink, the skin had a gray look to it now. The result of Heidie working it with mana to prevent rotting and increase the strength somewhat Organs remained packed inside the fleshy cavities, but they’d gotten the mana treatment as well to keep the smell down.

The arms from shoulder downwards were completely stripped of flesh. The left hand was fused to a rectangular shield, a smaller one than Heidie would have liked, but still about four feet high and two wide. The right arm had been lengthed a few feet and ended in a spear tip, with an axe head a good six inches below it. It was Heidie’s best attempt at a halberd.

Everything was ready.

Heidie prepared Lome’Matar’s reanimation spell. The minion shook violently as mana flowed into it. The corpse seemed to be imbued by a ghostly blue light. Heidie watched as the minion stopped shaking, then tried to push itself off of the ground. It seemed to be struggling with that. Its right arm-spear had been plunged into the dirt and wasn’t of great help. The left arm finally managed to push itself up after it got its bearings but it took the minion a while. It raised itself and looked at Heidie with eyes of burning blue flame.

“Miistreess.” it slurred “I reaady to seervee. I kiill eneemiees of the miistreess.”

“Huh.” Heidie said. “It talks.” Heidie started at the undead she had created. In her mind she felt an intangible connection to it, a tiny drain on her reserves. She looked at Lome’Matar. “Is it supposed to talk?”

“Perfectly normal for my techniques. Its speech will improve a bit with time but don’t expect too much from it.” Lome’Matar replied smugly “Undead created from my methods can usually communicate to a moderate extent, even the weakest of them. They can take orders too, just don’t try to give them any tasks that are too complex. Unless you want to watch them fail for amusement. ”

Heidie walked around her minion. It looked impressive enough.

“Okay.” Heidie said. “You are now called Sergeant Spear-Arm or Sergeant for short.”

“Yess miistress.” Sergeant replied.

“Hold your shield up.” Heidie instructed. “Ready your arm next to the shield, ready to stab or chop.”

Sergeant compiled without needed any corrections.

“Excellent..” Heidie gloated. This was going to work. She addressed Sergeant again, “You will be expected to impart this information to the next minions. What you are in now is standard combat position,” Heidie told her new Sergeant. “You wait for enemies to come to you or march towards them in combat position. Do not break combat position without orders.”

Heidie walked Sergeant through the steps of marching while shielding her, shield walls, moving in formation, and to prioritize protecting Heidie in combat above everything else. It took surprisingly little time to get through it all.

Feeling tired, but more optimistic than before, Heidie had her new minion gather her a few new bodies. She sat back and took a drink of water while Sergeant worked to lever up machines with his spear-arm and push them over with his shield to get at the corpses beneath. Its awkward difficulty with the relatively simple tasks was amusing. Heidie felt a little sorry for it.

Maybe just a tad overspecialized Heidie thought.

Overspecialization aside, this was still going to save Heidie a lot of work. The Sergeant finally succeded in tipping over a machine that prevented access to the nearest corpse. Yeah Heidie thought, Having servants is nice. She kept watching. Sergeant was trying very hard to pick up the body he’d finally gotten uncovered but was failing comically. Eventually giving up the minion speared the corpse with his arm and awkwardly dragged it back to its mistress.

I think I’ll mold actual halberds and shields that are held for the future soldiers. Ones that can be dropped. Heidie was starting to see the value of hands, skeletal or otherwise. They were more versatile than having a spear-arm. What if she was wounded and had to be carried? Sergeant Spear-Arm wasn't rising to the challenge if Heidie had anything to say about it.

Oh well. Heidie thought. She wasn’t changing Sergeant Spear-Arm now. Live and learn.