His mistress wasn’t saying anything. She had been that way for a long time, contemplating in stony silence.

Apparently, the forceful submission of the two ghouls had granted both the juvenile ghoul and Kalaki Brands of their own, much like the ones Vanalath already bore on his forehead. The woman had briefly spoke of Brands when they met during the ritual, but Vanalath still didn’t know what it meant to bear one.

The necromancer finally exhaled through her nose, but she didn’t look too exasperated. Rather, there was a faint smile on her face.

“Let’s go inside. You might as well bring those two Peons of yours, as well. I can spare an hour or two to act as a teacher.”

Vanalath let out a questioning growl and gestured towards the body of the hunter.

“Don’t worry about the hunters. I know where they are camping. We won’t strike until the darkest hour of the night, which leaves us with some time yet. Ah, but do bring that body inside my cabin, if you please.”

Complying with her orders, the three undead entered the cottage, accidentally knocking over the unattached door which someone had propped up against the frame. Then, they dropped the hunter’s corpse in a clear space on the floor. It stunk, but the necromancer didn’t seem to mind, surrounded as she was by the dead already.

Vanalath’s steps paused upon realizing that there were already two people inside. Though he wasn’t sure if the other two counted as “people.” One was Kaipo, the boy whose spirit he temporarily sheltered, and was resurrected under strange circumstances. The other… well, Vanalath had no idea who she was. The ghoul was slumped against the back wall in a daze. There was a familiar scent about her, but it was masked by blood and a thick chemical aroma, making him unable to place it.

She was small in stature and wore a faded dress that was stained black with her blood. Her head was completely shaved, and something alarming had happened to her face. It appeared… offset. A line of stitches framed her features like some sort of macabre painting, and many more incisions had been made in specific areas, such as her mouth, eyes, nose, and cranium. These cuts were sewn shut, but it was clear that they were far from healed, as dark fluid still seeped out and ran in rivulets down the creases of her skin. Finally, a single seam ran down the center of her face, bisecting both halves. Some of the stitchwork along this line had even been torn, which was what caused her “skewed” features, placing the left half of her face lower than her right.

She looked like a patchwork doll made by a lunatic.

“Iokina! Haven’t I told you not to play with the stitches?” Tutting, the necromancer approached the woman, pulling out a sewing kit and needle. “You’ll never set correctly if you keep ignoring my instructions!”

‘Iokina’ weakly lifted her arms as if to ward off the advance of the woman, but it was futile. After some tugging and pulling and a few more stitches, her face was more or less back in position. At this point, Vanalath was able to draw the connection between the faint scent and her appearance: this was the enemy commander from the second village, the female ghoul. What on earth had she done to anger his mistress this far?

“Now sit quietly and don’t fiddle.”

She said a few more words in that language Vanalath didn’t understand, before turning with a smile to her guests.

“Now then, I’d like us to get down to business, but there’s a bit of a problem. I can’t have nameless ghouls with Brands wandering about. What should I call you three?”

Vanalath already knew two out of three of their names, and he didn’t much care about the juvenile. That was good enough for him, but he couldn’t exactly communicate his knowledge. She didn’t understand his growls like the other undead did.

His mistress already knew his name—she was the one who told him what it was in the first place, even if she hadn’t been speaking to him at the time. Him aside, he was sure that whatever names she chose for these two would be fitting, even if they weren’t their original ones. The necromancer had the bearing of someone with a high pedigree, so she would surely pick distinguished titles for her first subordinates.

“Hmm, let’s start with the old spear fellow, then.”

Kalaki. What would his new name be?

“How does Wrinklebeard sound?” she mused.

The ensuing hush was so silent that you could hear a pin drop.

“No, that’s just layering on the ‘old’ aspect,” she continued. “He’s quiet, so… Mutebeard? Oh! Spearbeard! Now that’s a memorable name!”

‘Memorable’ was one way to put it. As she continued to list out possibilities, Vanalath staggered. Blow after blow, the impacts resounded against his formerly implacable psyche. He might never recover from this terrible shock.

His mistress had absolutely no naming sense.

Luckily, Kalaki was saved from an embarrassing future by a small voice that spoke up in the corner of the room. His mistress turned, regarding Kaipo for a moment. The boy flinched at her stare, but when she asked a question in his language, he responded, a bit more sure of himself. They carried on for another minute before she turned back to the trio. She had a slightly miffed expression on her face.

“Very well. The boy tells me that this man is actually Kalaki, the warrior-protector of Yayu. This other little savage is Anamu, who isn’t really known for much of anything. Those are the names you will go by from now on, even though they’re boring. Clear?”

Neither of them reacted. She sighed, repeating her words in their language, after which the two ghouls finally nodded.

She turned back to Vanalath. “As soon as this ordeal is over, I shall make sure learning Dhaalkesh is put on the itinerary for all my undead. Or perhaps it would be easier for them to keep speaking Yaranese? Now I’m thinking of it, I can see it being a tactical advantage for them to speak such an obscure language. Ghoul, I’ll have to ask you to learn their tongue, I’m afraid.”

He nodded, somewhat hesitant, not knowing what learning a new language would entail. Or who would teach him, for that matter.

“Now then, what are we to do about your name?”

What did she mean? He would use Vanalath, of course. She’s the one who told him what it was in the first place.

Though, now that he thought of it, she’d never called him that to his face. It had always been just “ghoul.” Why was that?

The necromancer wandered over to her tiny kitchen, struck a spark with some flint, and got a small fire going. Then, she put a kettle of water on to boil and rummaged through her cabinet. As she did all these tasks, she began thinking aloud.

“I think it has to be a name with impact. ‘Dread-something.’ Or something to do with your mask? The Dread Mask?”

“..lath…”

“No, then it sounds like the mask is the one in charge. It needs to be something indicative of your personality. You have a personality, yes?”

“…nalath…”

His voice—if it could be called that—was a struggle to control. His throat didn’t feel able to form the word he wanted to make. It was built all wrong, and the sounds came out like a dying rasp.

Tensing, his mistress half-turned, revealing a mug she had begun to fill with water.

“Pardon?”

“Van…a…lath”

Crash. Fragments of pottery littered to the ground, some of them bloodied. She’d squeezed so tightly on the ceramic that she had shattered it.

For a long time, neither of them spoke. Vanalath couldn’t read the frozen mask of her face.

“…Why?”

He did not speak.

“I’m asking you why. You take his body, face, and blade, and now you want even his name? Why?”

He shook his head. It’s who he was.

Speaking calmly, she said, “Do you doubt that you are a thief? A dead body cannot retain an original soul. Your filament is broken. Once that happens, the soul-body connection can never be reestablished. Not with that soul, or any soul that was once human. You are not Vanalath.”

Her breath quickened, and her words began to fly out more quickly, one after the other.

“You are an amalgam of spirit fragments, gathered and forced into his empty vessel through a death-binding ritual. This ritual supplied you, the amalgam, with Ichor and Miasma. The spirit fragments, Ichor, and Miasma combined within this vessel and created an embryonic Necrosoul. That’s what you are. In order to better match this body, you have taken on aspects of its previous owner. Aspects. Perhaps you sense things. Perhaps you have memories that only the previous owner of this body could have known. If so, they aren’t true memories, but peripheral spirit fragments that merged with your Necrosoul. You. Are. Not. Vanalath. Strix.”

The necromancer’s voice, slow and clear at the start, lacked all of its calm by the end. She was shaking. As if just noticing the bloody fragments of pottery that she still had clenched in her fist, she put them down on the counter, took out a rag, and began trying to clean her hand. It looked rather like she was trying to rip apart the cloth.

“…You were never meant to exist. Your body is Vanalath’s. His was the one body that I would not dishonor. Yet, as always, the Insanity had its own designs,” she said bitterly. “My will has always been second to my circumstances, it seems. To these vast, cosmic forces that operate on unknowable principles.”

She spoke of insanity as if it were sentient. As if something else had caused all of this.

But to Vanalath, she simply didn’t see what was in front of her. She didn’t know that he had known the eye of the Maelstrom. That he had heard her call and pierced the impregnable wall, entering into the None, that place where even the screams of gods are silenced. She didn’t know that he had long ago Branded himself with the eternal mark of hatred long before receiving its corporeal twin on his forehead.

He knew he was Vanalath. It wasn’t something he could ever explain, not without his memories and without a true voice, but he wouldn’t be anything less. He would not.

“Vana…lath,” he said, his growl now clearly audible.

Her shoulders tensed, and an inexplicably heavy sensation pervaded the room.

“Anyone else demanding this of me, and I would kill them,” she said. “Living or dead, it matters not—anyone else, I would have ended them where they stood.”

He waited for her to come to her point. As they stood in silence, something seemed to flicker in his mistress’s eyes. The flicker turned into a shiver, a tremor that ran its course from the top of her head down to her toes. Then, her posture softened. Relaxed.

She looked up, and Vanalath was greatly taken aback at the sight of her changed face. Instead of the anger he expected, her eyes were bright once more, and an easy smile played on her lips.

“Very well, you stubborn mule! Vanalath! That shall be your name. Vanalath, Kalaki, Anamu. Rather heavy on the vowels, you three, hm?”

He blinked. The transition had been jarring. She’d switched dispositions more rapidly than seemed natural. Were humans normally like this? He remembered very little of his life, but he somehow doubted it.

“Enough with the naming, then. On to other matters—oh, but Vanalath, you’re hurt!”

Looking down at his body, he realized what she meant. He’d nearly forgotten getting torn into by the pack of ghouls he’d fought—the ones led by Iokina. He’d managed to bind his wounds with a few simple bandages afterwards. It was a quick job that he’d done more for aesthetics and functionality rather than because the injuries bothered him.

As she untied the cloth and inspected him, she tutted. “If you are to pilot this body, Vanalath, you cannot be getting it so injured. Ghouls never heal. It’s dreadful, really. A slow descent into decay and destruction is the lot for you undead of the flesh, unless you evolve to such a stage that it isn't a worry. That’s without intervention from a necromancer like me, of course. Evolving is a one-time fix, too, but you cannot count on something as rare as that, even if you’re a Branded. I can heal you this time, but if I ever see this body in such a state again, well—you never know—I may just decide to lock you up in a crypt!”

Her words were punctuated by a giggle, but the threat behind them felt tangible. Vanalath promised himself that if he ever got injured again, he’d do a really good job of hiding it.

The necromancer began to rub some smelly powder that she dug out of a jar onto Vanalath’s skin. His injuries began to burn as she tended to them, but like most undead, physical pain was a sensation of the body and completely failed to disturb the island of his mind.

You have received the status effect: (temp)

“Well,” she said as she worked, “I think it’s time I told you what those Brands of yours mean. Hmph, you probably can’t even read the words, can you?”

Words?

“Can you read those glowing symbols that appear sometimes?”

He shook his head.

“Hmm… I see. The Institute never conducted undead literacy tests. None that I knew of, anyway. This may well be an area of study that even they were unable to broach. What language would a ghoul’s Brand be in, I wonder? See, Vanalath, the script you see is something decided on by your Brand. Normally the language is based on your region or birthplace: whichever your Brand deems is best suited to you. This means that if you were born and lived here in Yarang all your life, you would have your script in Yaranese. However, if you were born in Yarang and moved to, say, Ostros—impossible unless you knew the secret route, of course—then you would have a chance of your script being in either Yaranese or Dhaalkesh. Common sense, yes? If a Brand is a gift from a god, then it should do at least this much. But there’s so much that they miss! For instance, what if your mother’s first language was Glaparr and she raised you to speak it more fluently than you spoke Dhaalkesh, though you grew up in Ostros? Well, the Brand will usually give you Dhaalkesh script! Even if you can’t read it! Fascinating, yes?”

…

“We will have to work that voice of yours, moving forward. Fine then, what I mean to say is that my best guess is that the script you’re seeing is Dhaalkesh or High Dhaalkesh, since your body is from Ostros. But perhaps it is in Yaranese. Or, since you are classified as a monster, your script may not be a script at all, but some other method of communication? No one knows how the monstrous Branded interact with their status, after all. Pictographs, perhaps? Is this the case for you?”

She stopped her excited babble for a brief moment, awaiting a response. Vanalath shook his head once more, hoping that she would return to a more relevant topic.

“No? Ah, so it is a script, then. When we have the time, we’ll have to narrow down which language it is.”

This was going to be a long night.