Of the many undead varieties, I find the skeletal ones most appealing. They are clean, easily reconstructible, and do not smell hideously. But what they make up for in convenience, they lack in prowess.

Ghouls, the incarnations of those who died of starvation, are the exact opposite. While their grim sustenance is hard to maintain, requiring a steady supply of corpses, their demonic frenzy is a boon that few other undead can match, especially in large-scale battles.

Wraiths are also interesting. They are created when natural energies animate a body whose soul is unwilling to reoccupy its former shell. Body and soul are then animated separately, creating a combination of zombie and wraith that often travel together and hate each other.

It irks me greatly that the most fascinating of undead are those I cannot easily produce. If I could get my hands on even a single dragon corpse, however… Oh, what I wouldn’t give for a skeletal dragon to fly on.

- From the personal notes of Ozborne the Cursed

And the weeks passed.

The snow began falling in late December, and it did not stop. December led to January, which bled into February. For Jerry, it was a warm time.

His time was spent relaxing with his undead. In fact, he enforced a half-day mandatory rest period for everyone. Even if the undead were tireless, he wanted them to discover how to have fun too.

Boney taught Jerry checkers, and they constructed an impromptu board. Headless was learning how to dance, and he also enjoyed throwing his head up and catching it again like a ball—curiously, he had not yet begun to rot. Boboar enjoyed barreling through the forest snow, while Foxy liked endlessly traversing the tree branches. Axehand was trying to sculpt wood and failing spectacularly, but having his fun nonetheless. As for Birb, it perched on everyone’s shoulders, enjoying watching them do their thing.

“Hand me the ball, Boboar.”

“OINK!”

With a happy squeal, Boboar finished rolling up his ball of snow and picked it up in his tusks, handing it to Jerry.

“Good boy.” The necromancer laughed, stuffing it on top of another, larger ball. “Is this okay, Boney?”

“A bit to the left, master,” replied the skeleton, calmly sipping his tea. His legs were knee-deep in snow, but he didn’t seem to mind.

“Alright!” Jerry rolled the ball a bit. “We’re almost there! Headless, can I have the head? No, not your head, the snowman’s. Thanks!”

With a final plop, Jerry placed the head-sized ball of snow atop the other two. It was neatly decorated with a carrot and two dark rocks, courtesy of Foxy. Birb perched on top of the snowman’s head, completing it.

“We did it, guys. Hooray!”

The undead cheered, throwing their hands, snouts, beak, and head in the air. Jerry smiled brightly. He loved being a necromancer.

A man-sized snowman now stood in front of him, made up of three neatly stacked snowballs. Two sticks stuck out the sides, serving as arms, while a pair of boots peeked out from underneath it; snow or not, Jerry was a firm believer in everyone deserving shoes. As he’d been practicing, he had also gifted some pairs to his humanoid undead, while he was secretly working on animal versions.

Now, he proudly took in the sight of his undead cheering, their feet shiny and fully covered. They were a disorderly bunch, ranging from a skeletal double-boar to a headless zombie, but that did not limit their joy at all.

Around them, the midday sun reflected on the blanket of snow, illuminating Jerry’s mountainside. The snow was flat around his tower, undisturbed save for a few footprints, while shiny stalactites hung from the branches of distant trees.

It was beautiful.

“This will be our guardian,” declared Jerry, pointing at the snowman, “and its name shall be… Snow White!”

“What an imaginative name, master,” commented Boney. “Have you considered writing a book?”

“I’m not paying you for comments, Boney.”

“You aren’t paying me at all, master.”

“Exactly.”

Jerry gave everyone a wide grin. “Now let’s go see what Axehand is doing. There is no way he can defeat us.”

They cheered again.

Axehand, you see, turned out to be quite competitive. When Jerry had announced they’d be building a snowman, Axehand had grunted in a grand declaration of building his own, superior snowman. He also grunted away any assistance, claiming he was more than enough.

But of course, how could one skeleton match up to the work of many?

Which was why their jaws dropped, literally for some and metaphorically for others, when they laid eyes on the tree-sized monstrosity that stood in a clearing. Its bottom snowball was as wide as Jerry was tall, while its arms were made up of actual tree branches instead of sticks. There were even large snow-shoes underneath its base! A direct challenge to Jerry!

The snowman’s head reached fifteen feet in height, and leaning on it, perched on the second snowball, stood Axehand.

“What the—” Jerry was lost for words. “How?!”

The double-skeleton grunted smugly. Birb left its perch on Headless’ shoulders and flew up all the way to the snow giant’s head, circling around it and chirping happily.

“Great job, Axehand! What is this called?”

“Gmh,” grunted the skeleton, in the specific way that meant ‘The Winter Shoemaker.’

“Shoemaker? Like me?” Jerry grabbed his heart. “Axehand, is that—”

“Master.”

A grave voice interrupted him, coming from behind. Turning around, there was Boney, his fists clenched and a crimson fire burning in his empty eye sockets—literally. Jerry didn’t even know that was possible!

“I apologize for my complacency, master… I have failed you,” he spoke, shimmering with determination.

“Boney, are you oka—”

“We cannot let this infidel surpass you, master!” Boney shouted burningly. At once, crimson flames lit up in the eyes of all his undead. They shimmered with determination. In Axehand’s eyes, similar flames had been lit, and he grunted in a way that clearly meant ‘bring it, losers.’

“We simply cannot let this pass!” cried out Boney, and the rest of his team cheered him on. “We must defeat this infidel. We will make Snow White the largest, greatest, most awesome snowwoman the Three Kingdoms have ever seen!”

Jerry paled. Oh no.

And so began the snow-building wars, which lasted for an entire week.

***

Despite their leisure time, nobody slacked off. Even amidst the falling snow, the fence was proceeding well. On the days when the snow was especially thick, Boboar’s massive body came in handy, as he used his tusks and head to shovel the white out of the way.

By the end of January, it was finished, a black, solid encirclement of the tower.

Jerry also worked hard. He spent most days down in his basement, experimenting with new undead designs. He remembered his early days of necromancy, when it was just him in the forest and his time was spent experimenting, just like now. It was a golden time, and the days flew by.

He recalled a special undead he’d once made, the tusked fox. With his current undeads' assistance in corpse collecting, he could recreate this feat once again, creating a fox with a large boar tusk sticking out of its head. The little thing was funny, having great trouble walking like that, but still capable of climbing trees and falling on things. Preferably, those things would involve Jericho’s head.

Jerry also created a humanoid variant of this skeleton, enhancing it with bear claws and boar tusks. It resembled some sort of werebear, a humanoid with sharp claws sticking out of its knuckles and a tusk jutting out of its forehead.

The result was quite intimidating, reminding Jerry of Shorty. And speaking of bears, Jerry had also managed to find a bear corpse, which he’d promptly and excitedly ordered Boboar and Foxy to carry over. When it was time to raise, this one wouldn’t need any modifications; bears were frightening creatures by themselves. Though, if he could find a second one and create a double-bear…

Unfortunately, he couldn't find any.

He also created various other kinds of undead, experimenting with the limits of his skills. The most amusing one was a four-armed humanoid skeleton, able to wield four tools at the same time. Apparently, when two souls were grafted together, some things left but others stayed; this skeleton could effectively operate all of its limbs.

The idea of an octopus-like skeleton also crossed Jerry’s mind, but it proved far too difficult to implement. To create the four-armed skeleton, he’d had to modify the shoulder sockets to fit a second arm. It was barely possible; fitting four of them was simply too much.

He’d even tried adding another pair of shoulders right below the actual ones, but with little success. While it technically worked, the four lower arms were way too stiff and constantly got in the way of the upper arms; and that’s without mentioning how malfunctioning this skeleton’s mind was. Apparently, smashing four souls together is not a good idea—go figure.

When the skeleton slammed against a wall in its confusion for the third time, Jerry had to call this experiment quits. The four-armed skeleton would do.

Of course, he could not maintain all these skeletons. While his capacity for supporting undead was steadily growing, to the point where he could easily maintain up to seven on a constant basis, any more than that began to tire him out. Besides the skeletons that had been around since autumn, all these new experiments were deanimated and left in a corner of the basement for later use, even the octopus one—you never knew when it might come in handy.

He had also made all of the available bodies into skeletons; everything else had begun to really smell at some point, so Jerry had ordered the bodies to stand up and head waaay outside, then he’d deanimated them, animated just the skeletons, and ordered them to go back inside after washing up. It was clean work and Jerry felt proud for thinking it up.

When he was not playing checkers, building undead, or relaxing on his soft chair by the fire, Jerry also made shoes.

His true occupation had not seen much use yet, but he did not intend on letting it rot. Some days, he made clogs, boots, even a silly version of summer shoes he called flip-flops. Working with his full mental faculties was a lot of fun, and it allowed him to see shoemaking in a new light; it wasn’t just his livelihood now, he also liked it!

If only the villagers came to order shoes… but well, they’d get around. For now, after equipping all of his humanoid undead, he stored all shoes in another corner of the basement. Maybe someone would buy them later.

At the same time, he worked on his secret project, shoes for animals. He had no idea how to make these so it took some experimenting, but he eventually ended up with what he imaginatively called ‘animal shoes.’

These were similar to human shoes in shape, but with a much shorter length, as foxes and boars don’t really have feet. They were simply leather wrapped around a network of wooden supports, with adjustable pins to let him fit them directly to each animal’s paws. He could have just taken their measurements, but he really wanted to make this a surprise.

“There you go, Boboar, Foxy.” He eventually handed the shoes over, grinning cheek-to-cheek. They only stared at him, not understanding. But when he began adjusting the shoes around their paws and hooves, their bony faces brightened up with joy. They squealed and yelped in pure happiness, and they would have even licked him if they still had tongues.

For the next few weeks, Foxy and Boboar would occasionally go and stand next to other undead, simply waiting for their victim to notice the brand new shoes and compliment them. Jerry felt some pity for Boney, who had to endure the brunt of these attacks, but his undeads’ joy filled his own heart with warmth.

However, while Jerry’s days flowed from one to the next, another incident came to disrupt his calm.

“Master,” Boney’s serious voice echoed through the basement, interrupting Jerry's experiments.

“What is it, Boney?” he asked, looking up from the skeleton of a tailed human.

“Your presence is needed at the entrance. Urgently.”

Jerry frowned, worry squeezing his heart. Had Jericho returned? They were not ready. With hurried steps, he climbed the stairs and reached the tower’s entrance, pushed the door open, and—

“Surprise!”

Jerry froze. All of his undead stood before the tower, their grunts and shouts and chirps and squeals accentuating Boney’s excited shout. In the center of them all stood a wooden statue depicting Jerry himself, smiling kindly and holding a shoe.

Jerry gawked. It seemed very detailed; it must have taken a very long amount of time to carve.

“Guys, what—what is this?” he asked, unable to think clearly. In front of him, the undead all had happy expressions plastered on their lovely faces.

“We created a gift for you, master,” said Boney. “You have created us and taken care of us like your own children… We have no way to repay you—besides our eternal servitude—but we hope that this gift can at least bring a smile to your face. We want to let you know that we don’t serve you only because the laws of magic compel us—we serve you because we want to.”

Faced with all these affectionate gazes, Jerry’s heart melted.

“Ohhh, it’s beautiful!” He jumped forth, reaching the gathered undead in two strides. He opened his arms wide, embracing them all in a slightly painful hug. “You guys are the best undead I could ever ask for!”

They smiled. He smiled. The statue was put up in front of the entrance, signifying who Jerry was to any visitors and being the greatest piece of decoration this tower could ever have.

And for a few short months, everyone was happy.