Dark power poured out of Jack like a river, his Mana plunging as he struggled to reanimate the titanic monstrosity. The beast burned with necromantic fire as it creaked and popped, rising onto its four legs, the black ichor of undeath pouring from its manifold wounds. The hundreds of pounds of missing muscle seemed to hinder the monster as it wobbled back and forth, until black, fibrous webbing grew across the bones where it lacked enough muscle to move, lending the creature a profane mobility.

It rose on its thick legs, black ichor drooling from its gaping mouth and ruined eye. The nemasuchus turned toward Jack, its massive mouth yawning as it approached, fangs dripping congealed blood and black ichor.

“Stop,” Jack ordered.

The zombified creature stopped moving.

“Roll over,” he grinned.

The creature rolled onto its back, sand and dirt mixing with the noxious fluids and caking the beast with detritus.

“Well… this is both terrifying and sort of hilarious,” Rory stood at the edge of the beach.

Jack fell to one knee.

“Shit. That was a lot of mana,” he grunted.

Since his transformation, once the sun set, Jack’s heart was visible within his body, pulsing dark mana across his chest, into his shoulders, and halfway up his throat. Now the pulse was almost invisible.

“You ok there, Tex?” Layla had woken when Erin shouted and watched as Jack raised the giant creature.

“Yeah, I’m good. Just a little tapped,” he smiled. “I’ll be ok in a few minutes now that the sun’s gone down.”

Erin stomped up to him and put her knee in his shoulder, bumping him to the ground. “What did I say about doing crazy bullshit, Jackson?”

“I wouldn’t call this crazy bullshit,” he cracked a sly smile.

“You wouldn’t call reanimating a five-ton fish monster CRAZY?!” she put her hands on her hips.

“Nah. It’s in the level range for the spell,” he grinned. “But raising it does lower its level to ten below mine. The elite bit costs extra, and I think some more because it’s so big.”

“Well,” she sputtered. “Warn a bitch next time, Jackson!”

“Yes, ma’am,” he smiled calmly and put out his hand.

She pulled him upright, shaking her head, then stomped away muttering to herself.

“Goddamn-Tim-Taylor-fuckin’-hold-my-beer-backwoods-bullshit…” the rant trailed off as she trampled her way to the campfire and plopped down next to Jack’s rucksack, where she angrily dug out a fistful of dried fruit and started stress eating.

“You really should be more cautious, Jack,” Rory patted him on the back.

A few feet away, Layla was pulling on the whiskers of the nemasuchus, telling the creature that it was a good boy. It simply laid upside down, staring with its one good eye gone black with ichor, awaiting Jack’s commands.

“Hey, Layla. Scoot back a bit,” he called.

The succubus scurried away from the undead, coming to stand next to the boys.

“Stand between the campsite and the water and kill any creature that isn’t one of us that gets closer than a hundred feet to the camp,” Jack ordered, a subtle wisp of dark mana passing between him and the undead beast like a thread of black silk.

“Can it be that specific?” Rory asked him.

“They seem to understand what I mean pretty explicitly, but they can be a little dense if the situation changes too fast. Like, I couldn’t tell it not to attack anyone who announces themselves, because it doesn’t understand what talking is. I suppose a humanoid zombie might be able to, but I don’t think I’m ready to raise a person,” he winced.

The zombie moved itself to roughly halfway between the pond and the campfire, where it became still.

“You two should hit the hay so we can start back up at first light,” Jack shooed the other two toward the camp, where they found Erin passed out on her bedroll with a piece of dried fruit hanging out of her mouth.

“She’s been really stressed about you,” Layla mused.

“Well, it’s been a stressful couple months,” Jack replied.

Behind them, there was a crash and a huge spray of water as the zombified gator-fish lunged into the water, pulling up one of the smaller nemasuchus in its teeth. It slammed the smaller beast into the ground, then clamped its jaws shut and wrung the creature back and forth until the beach was painted with dark blood.

“Yep. I think maybe I’ll try to take a nap and see how that works out,” Jack grinned.

“Lemme know how it turns out, Tex,” Layla laughed and dropped onto her bedroll.

“Night Jack,” Rory gave him a smile.

“Night Rory,” he returned the grin. “Night, El.”

“Night, Jackson,” she replied.

“Night hoss,” Erin mumbled around the remnant of her snack.

-----

It turned out, Jack was physically unable to sleep unless he emptied his Mana pool, and the resulting hangover wasn’t worth the short-lived oblivion. He spent the rest of the night cataloguing their loot and chuckling when the zombified nemasuchus squashed something that got too close to the camp.

He also discovered an interesting fact about the spell in question. While the zombie remained active, a portion of the Mana he spent on the spell did not regenerate. He’d never noticed before because the zombies typically didn’t survive long enough for his Mana to recover all the way. In the case of the fish-gator, “a portion” represented nearly a third of his total mana pool. He figured it was worth it for the time being, and started planning out ways to use the zombie as a pack beast for as long as possible.

Daybreak reduced his mana regeneration to a crawl and brought the stinging pain of the sun on his skin. He wrapped himself in the cloak Rory had gifted him back on the river and started implementing what he had mentally termed “Operation Fish Truck”.

The name was a work in progress.

When the others woke, he’d managed a strap system that attached their four rucksacks and the extra bags to the zombie’s back. They’d probably start to smell a bit after a few days, but Jack was sure there would be soap in Moryven, or at least someone who sold backpacks.

“Did you create a zombie-fish-gator lorrie while we were sleeping?” Rory rubbed his eyes.

“More or less, yeah,” Jack grinned.

“So big fish here is gonna carry our bags?” Layla was as happy as they’d ever seen her.

“Yeah, I figure that’ll make the rest of the trip easier. I call it ‘Operation Fish Truck’,” Jack said.

“We’ll work on the name, mate,” Rory teased him.

“Can I ride it?” Layla pleaded.

“If you want gross rotting guts and black blood all over you, sure,” Jack replied.

“I’ll go naked and take a bath closer to town,” she winked at him.

“No, you will not,” Erin grumbled at her.

“Maybe we can rig up a saddle or something?” she was still hopeful.

“The tart and I can use our bedrolls as saddles,” Rory smiled.

Jack and Erin shared a look, calculating how many miles they could make in a day if the rearguard didn’t start complaining about aching feet before lunch.

“Sold,” they both said simultaneously, then laughed.

Jack spent the next half hour figuring out a solution to secure the bedrolls, but ultimately ended up just removing the harness for the rucksacks and laying the bedrolls beneath it like a saddle blanket, then laying his own bedroll across the top as padding against the rope harness.

With that accomplished, they retrieved pan-seared fish from Rory’s inventory, and each summoned one of the First Fruit for breakfast. Jack planted several of his seeds around the pond, watching as the divine saplings emerged from the soil. He gave each one a tiny knuckle bump, and then the Chosen set out northward for the Reyvan Pass.

-----

The answer to the math problem of “how many miles they could make in a day if the rearguard didn’t whine like toddlers about their aching footsies” was a staggering “over fifty”. The zombie never got tired, simply draining a bit more of Jack’s Mana when its Stamina depleted, and both Jack and Erin had superhuman levels of Endurance. Layla and Rory were saddlesore halfway through the day, but they agreed that having numb butts was far better than blistered feet.

“We’ve got about a hundred and fifty miles or so to Moryven. If we can keep this up, we’ll be there in three days,” he grinned.

“Will there be beds?” Layla laid ass-up on her blanket, bemoaning her bruised rump.

“I bloody well hope so. We’re taking a week off when we get there. No adventures, no dungeons, no fucking mayhem of any kind,” he was walking around the camp, trying to get work out the abused muscles of his hips and rear.

The next three days passed in a blur of aching feet and sore butts. Even Jack’s undead constitution was strained by the pace. They were averaging fifty miles in a twelve-hour day, a pace that would grind down even veteran hikers over time.

“We probably couldn’t have done this without the pack animal, and if it weren’t undead, we’d probably have injured it by now. Fifty miles a day without a trail...” Erin whistled as they made camp, slowly working her greaves then her boots off her sore feet.

Jack returned as they were discussing, having scouted the terrain ahead.

“Moryven is just up the hill there, about ten miles. I’m gonna unload the zombie and send it packing,” he sat down and likewise began to remove his gear.

“Why packing? Why not just let it die like you did with the chimera?” Layla asked.

“Because I don’t want a giant corpse covered in black undead goo rotting in the hills near a major city. If scouts find it, they may assume a necromancer is mucking around up here and start looking for me,” he sighed.

“Oh, fair nuff,” she replied.

Jack and Rory unloaded the nemasuchus and unhitched the rope harness, relieving the giant beast of its burden. Jack patted the big creature’s head and whispered something to it. The beast began to march resolutely west, tromping down the hill.

“What’d you tell it?” Erin put her head on Jack’s shoulder as he watched the monstrosity amble away.

“To walk until it hit the sea, then swim to the bottom of the ocean and rest there,” regret filled his voice.

“Hey, Jack, can’t you just… dismiss the spell?” Layla asked.

“Yeah, I can. And I will, in a few days, once he’s made it to the water,” he replied.

-----

After that, they made camp, and the other three slept like the dead, until Jack’s insistent voice drew them from slumber.

“Guys. You may wanna go ahead and be awake for this.”

Erin opened her eye to find a lightly armored human pointing a heavy crossbow at her. Layla similarly found herself guarded by a woman with a boar spear wearing half-plate. Finally, Rory was awakened by a rough boot coming to rest on his chest. The owner of that boot was over seven feet tall, a powerfully muscled, grey-skinned orc with a greataxe thrown over his shoulder.

Five more scouts stood at the edge of the campfire light, with bows and crossbows loosely held at the ready. A willowy elf in leathers stepped out of the darkness and removed his helmet, allowing his golden hair to fall across his shoulder pads.

“Welcome to Moryven.”