Galar Kayle wasted neither time nor words. Leaping forward, he shattered the skull of a skeleton with a sweeping blow, and spun to plant the heel of his staff in the sternum of a zombie, launching it nearly five feet and knocking it to the ground. The skeleton's connection to Velinaer's mind winked out, startling him and causing him to begin paying attention to his surroundings once more.

Two of the other zombies and another skeleton rushed towards Galar, alert for danger and hungry for brains. But Galar Kayle was not a fat militiaman from a one-horse village, nor was he a feeble clerk or pampered politician. He had been captain of his Arts Martial club at prova, done two tours as a reserve pikeman in the province's guard, and had even spent a semester training with the monks of Ilbalad in lieu of a summer course he had wanted to avoid. Also, he had been Tebes of Reth's sparring partner for the last ten years. His staff swept forward, clearing an arc around him, as Velinaer turned to observe the battle.

The first zombie charged in immediately. Galar performed a sudden reversal and bashed the zombie's teeth out of its skull, then executed a swift kick to its chest, knocking it down to the springy grass. As the skeleton and other zombie moved to take advantage of the opening, he spun a full three hundred and sixty degrees of rotation, bringing his staff around in a two-handed blow which sent the skeleton flying, then spiraled it under the guard of the incoming zombie and launched a powerful upward strike that decapitated it and sent its head rocketing off into the sky. Executing a swirling flourish, he brought the staff behind him with one hand and fell into a menacing guard pose. "FUCKING AWESOME!" yelled Velinaer, in spite of himself.

To Galar, this appeared to be a furious roar of "VEXAS NABLAR!", which he interpreted as some manner of curse or incipient spell. Charging forward in the blink of an eye, he thrust the tip of his staff at Velinaer's face, hoping to slay the strange hooded figure or at least disrupt his spell by expediting its teeth down its throat. This proved to be a mistake, as the staff shattered explosively upon contact with the lich's skull, throwing Galar back with sufficient force to launch him past the two zombies closing in on him from either side and send him flying back against the wall of the burgon's manor house.

Galar crashed to earth with a teeth-rattling impact, stunning him for a few critical moments. He recovered his senses just in time to behold Velinaer's undead horde swarming towards him, a bony claw inches from his face. Gasping in fright, he reflexively made the sign of the star.

This gesture, which he had been forced to do constantly for most of his childhood by his mother, was a ritual blessing of Santorana, and caused the zombies and skeletons to recoil with unearthly howls. This was not due to any sort of intervention by Santorana, the goddess of family and light (who was in fact entirely noumenal), but rather the result of a curious historical coincidence. Hundreds of years in the past, at the dawn of Temurini culture, the people of the Algoran tribe ran afoul of a powerful witch-doctor who saw fit to bestow upon them the gift of a jujoram, which was a sort of relentless zombie killing machine immune to nonmagical weapons (and the same sort of creature, it should be noted, as Velinaer's three original zombies). The Algorani, in imminent danger of being completely wiped out, were rather heroically saved by the traveling magus Boraficus -- an event during which they paid close attention to the majestic, sweeping gestures with which he cast his powerful spells. Reasoning that this great hero must surely have been sent by the gods, the Algorani dutifully incorporated his gestures into their rites of worship, and taught them rather zealously to visitors. Many of these gestures were abandoned after mishaps involving the spontaneous combustion of the honored guest or the unexpected transmutation of holy wafers into snakes, but the gesture which eventually became synonymous with the blessing of Santorana had persisted because its function, which was to ward against undead, had no visible effect in their absence and undead were so rare as to be considered cryptids in Temurini lands. Galar, who knew nothing of this, merely thanked the gods, scrambled to his feet, and made a quick assessment of the situation.

It was obvious that the burgon was quite beyond help; his corpse had begun to liquefy and turn a somewhat festive shade of chartreuse. Alone and weaponless, Galar had no chance of defeating the undead horde and even less chance of surviving against whatever had killed his master. Adjusting his spectacles, the clerk decided that discretion was, in this instance, the better part of not becoming a zombie's bowel movement. Dashing past Velinaer's horde and through the open door of the manor, he threw furniture behind him to slow his pursuers and dashed up the stairs to the burgon's office.

Velinaer, who had no intention of pursuing whoever this guy was and was in fact quite enamored of his totally sweet staff moves, watched in confusion.

Upstairs, Galar executed plans that he had made for this eventuality many years ago. He grabbed up several record-books which held the most critical administrative details of the fief, tossed a rather incriminating portfolio into the fire, and rooted frantically around in the burgon's bedclothes for the key to the room's tiny safe. He spent several panicked moments tossing aside half-finished snacks and ominously stained cloths before noticing that the key was already in use, and the safe wide open; cursing, he grabbed the valuables within and stuffed them into a pillowcase. Tying the makeshift sack securely, he opened the window and leapt to safety, certain that the zombies were mere instants behind him.

Outside, Velinaer waved cheerfully at Galar's retreating back. He had no idea what that had been about, but damn, had it ever been cool. He poked curiously at the burgon's remains, unsure of exactly what had killed him, but was soon distracted by one of his zombies nudging him gently forward into the manor's entry hall. As he watched, bemused, two other zombies brought forth a large chair.

***

The slimy black blob which until recently had been the organic tissues which slightly less recently had been Tebes of Reth crawled out from under a leaf pile, slowly and with a sort of lackadaisical oozing. Birds, perched high in the trees above it, twittered and regarded it curiously. It looked a fair bit like a black slug, albeit a slug nearly a meter long, except for the wriggling eyestalk sprouting from the center of its body mass. The thing quivered a bit, grew slightly, then subsided.

For the next hour or so, it sat mostly motionlessly, occasionally pulsating or squirming in an oblique fashion. At one point, a curious sparrow decided to see if it was actually small enough to eat and merely very close-up, which proved to be a poor decision when the blob lashed out with a tentacle and snatched the sparrow into a suddenly-appearing featureless maw. Small bubbles of decompository gases popped on its surface daintily as it digested its newest sensory experience.

Velinaer Dax'taxu, had he been present, would have been able to rather readily identify the creature as a li-iggura al-flgath (roughly translating to "information cyst"), a hazardous metagenetic by-product of demonic containment failure commonly referred to as an "igg". To the people of the modern Temurini school of philosophy, who had rather less insight regarding the underlying mechanisms by which they were created, they were mostly referred to simply as "abominations" and "quick, get some lantern oil and a torch". Most did not live long.

This particular igg, unburdened by such knowledge, had been mostly experimenting with its new form for the past several hours, rummaging curiously through the genetic code it had mapped from its host. It grown some extrudable tentacles that it quite liked (as well as discovering the capacity to like things), and had dabbled in internal structures for quite a while (at one point growing a few dozen pancreases before deciding that they weren't all that useful). If Tebes' head had been attached when the creature had manifested, it would have doubtless assimilated his neural structure and gained both his knowledge and a demonic sentience, but this igg was mostly formed out of muscular tissue, reflex and motor neurons, and what had once been Tebes' digestive system. As a result, for a time it was mostly content to eat whatever came near it, do whatever felt natural, stare at its surroundings with its curious ocular appendage, and luxuriate in the various sensations of physical existence as they occurred. Eventually, however, the neural structures it kept encountering inside the various animals, insects, and other meals it consumed gained its interest, and it began trying out this whole brain business. Its first attempts were fairly disastrous, but soon it discovered the trick of building little sub-clusters that specialized in particular types of processing and started making more progress. Its existence unknown to the world at large, it settled into the base of a large tree and began recursing.

***

"Pick up that rock," said Cheis.

Linduin, wary, picked up the rock. It was a large, black stone, roughly the size of an apple, and rather ominously heavy. "Yes ma'am. Now what?"

Cheis nodded. "Now, hit yourself in the head with it, as hard as you can."

Linduin blinked. "What?" Cheis repeated herself. He frowned. "Um... this is one of those test things, isn't it? Like in the story with the guy with the magic fork. If I do it, you'll say only an idiot would do that, and say I'm too stupid to be your apprentice. If I refuse, you'll say that a student has to trust his teacher and that I've failed to win your approval, or something."

"Yup," replied Cheis, nodding again.

Linduin, thoroughly unprepared for this level of honesty, was somewhat taken aback. "But... then what do I do?"

"You pick one," said Cheis, "despite knowing that both questions are a trap."

"But why? That's stupid." Linduin whined.

Cheis shrugged. "Lots of things are stupid. Maybe there's a third option you haven't considered, like 'throw the rock at your teacher'. Maybe you're supposed to count on the bond of trust between us, and hit yourself, assuming I'll stop you at the last second or something. The point is that you have a problem you don't know how to solve, and you need to solve it anyway."

Linduin stared at the rock for several seconds, then shoved it into a pocket. "Then I'll put it off for tomorrow, until I can figure out something else."

Cheis sighed. "Procrastination never solves anything."

"That's not true," Linduin pointed out.

"What do you mean?" asked Cheis, raising an eyebrow.

Linduin grinned. "It solves made-up urgency."

Cheis groaned. This was going to be a long apprenticeship.

The two of them trekked northwards, crossing the Fiural river and making their way into the forest of Alberit. Linduin, who had heretofore never ventured beyond Haelid, felt that his adventure was finally beginning; the wide world opening before him, with its distant horizon calling him to an epic destiny. Cheis, who had been to the horizon and left a two-star review, wanted a chocolate cake.

Passing through the forest and into the province of Emalin, they traversed an abandoned rock quarry and came at last to Imperial Highway #38. The smooth cobbled stones and sheltered rest areas made the rest of their journey seem luxurious by comparison, and the remaining two days of their travelling pass by quickly. Finally, arriving in the village of Veraleigh, they reached Cheis' abode.

Linduin, who had been expecting a sterotypical necromancer's castle made of dark stone and festooned with skeletons and torture devices, gazed at the picturesque cottage before him in stupefied disbelief. A tidy walkway made of cleverly fitted stones crossed over a babbling brook and led up to a lovely split-level home with crystal-clear glass windows, dainty white trellises adorned with climbing ivy, and a meticulously-laid brick veneer over thick wood planking. A shingled roof, startling in contrast to the wattle-and-daub shacks in most of the villages he'd visited, completed the picture with a jaunty chimney and a weathervane in the shape of sunflower.

"How do you keep it so... clean?" Linduin gaped.

"Skeletons, mostly," replied Cheis.

Opening the door, Cheis stepped inside and muttered a few commands to the house. The first of these added Linduin to the "allow list" of authorized persons, so that he could enter without being disintegrated and having his soul fed to the cottage's energy reservoir, and the second opened a large cellar door in the entryway. The other two activated a teakettle and began warming up her bathtub. "Well, don't just stand there."

Linduin, still somewhat taken aback by this jarring domesticity, was barely through the door when Cheis shoved a thick blanket and a couple of pillows into his arms. "Here. Go set yourself up in the basement. Tomorrow we'll get started."

At that, Linduin perked up. "And then you'll teach me magic?"

"No," answered Cheis tiredly, "and then I'll start using you for free labor and subjecting you to various ordeals which will make you miserable. I haven't actually agreed to teach you magic yet, and quite frankly, the most likely outcomes if I do are that you'll go insane, get yourself killed, kill me, or blow up half the kingdom. Thus far the only aptitudes you've shown me are for the first three, and it's going to be a long time before I let you take a shot at the fourth." She gestured towards the cellar door, meaningfully.

Linduin, who among his few skills counted "knowing when to shut up" solidly among them, obediently stumbled down the stairs with his armload of bedding. "Hey, wait a minute. There's no lights down--"

Behind him, the trapdoor slammed and locked with a crash.