Anastacia looked at her new treasure, breaking or losing it would probably anger the goblins, so now she needed to drag around a moldy piece of bread on a stick.

“So this is my life now. Anastacia the forest queen, holder of the holy bread stick.” She said to herself as she tested how easily the bread would come off to know whether it was going to be a problem. Luckily it wasn’t as the mold had basically welded it onto the stick.

“By the way, simulacrum, what exactly do they mean by making the prince anew?” She said to the forest king who was sitting next to her. “It can’t possibly be what it sounds like.”

The king swiftly got up and offered his hand to Anastacia. She was glad that the king had learned not to just grab her and took his hand. They walked for a kilometer or so, it was hard to tell distances or the passage of time without the sun or any change in scenery. Next to another pool of water, there was a flat rock, on the rock lied another simulacrum. Unlike the king, this one was broken down and missing pieces.

“Ohhh… So this is the prince that the elves killed? And you guys need me to fix him up? That makes a lot more sense than what I had in mind.” Anastacia confirmed.

The king placed his hand on his companion’s broken face plate and looked at Anastacia.

“I can’t promise you anything, but if this can be done with bone instead of stone and metal, we might have a chance. I’ve been diving hard into Alizarin’s guide on the control patterns for necromancers, and I hope the idea behind your function is the same.” Anastacia explained, fully realizing that she was basically talking to herself. “Could you gather the goblins here, I need some help with this.”

The king ran off. Anastacia imagined that he was happy that there was a chance that his friend could get fixed.

As the goblins gathered around the rock, Anastacia made sure to hold up the stick they had given her, hoping it’d increase their attention span. She also made some of the goblins that were standing near the pool move a bit, as she didn’t feel like swimming right now. Even if there was just thirty or so goblins, the noise was unimaginable.

“Alright guys! We’re going to start fixing the prince today!” She declared, causing the goblins to screech and dance even louder. “And I need your help. I’ve been told that there is a battlefield nearby, with tons of dead elves. Go there and gather anything metallic you find, weapons, armor, jewelry… Whatever you find... Actually, let’s make that anything shiny you find!”

Anastacia had no faith in the goblins being able to tell what’s metal and what’s not.

“Shiny for queen! Forks, knives, shields, arrows of stupid elves!” They sang as they left.

Some went in to different direction for whatever reason, but Anastacia didn’t feel like asking why. She turned to the king.

“You will be getting me the bone I need. Go to the troll we killed earlier and take out all of its bones and scrape off whatever flesh stuck on them.” She directed the simulacrum. “I’ll study your friend while you do that.”

Anastacia could have gathered the bones faster herself, but really didn’t want to do it, and she really did need to inspect the broken simulacrum properly.

The king took off once again.

Anastacia started her project. The broken simulacrum was very similar in design as the forest king, similar patterns on the same parts and the main differences seemed to be completely unrelated to its function. Different kind of face and shoulder plates for example. Now that she actually paid attention to the patterns, they seemed really familiar. Perhaps controlling stone and metal like this worked on the same principle as undead thralls? The creator gives just enough power for the construction to work on its own if the control patterns were efficient enough.

Anastacia stopped for a while and sat down next to the stone. Alizarin would have enjoyed this… Everything being real would mean that she needed to figure out what to say to Coquelicot too. Sorry my stupid ass got your man killed just didn’t seem like enough. Living in the forest instead of confronting her seemed like a great idea.

Necromancers traditionally did believe that there was an afterlife, it just wasn’t connected to the real world in any way. But maybe, just maybe, Alizarin would be proud if Anastacia managed to pull this one off.

The goblins gathered plenty of useful pieces of metal, and just as many useless things that either weren’t metal at all, or were far too rusted to be of any use. They screeched happily and danced around the pile they had made.

“Are you guys missing a few friends? I’m pretty sure there was like 5 more…” Anastacia asked while trying to count the goblins.

“They run with sharps.” Gobby admitted.

“Oh shit. They died? That’s… I don’t know what to say… As the queen of forest, I say that you guys aren’t allowed to run with anything remotely sharp.” She declared. “There’s not that many of you left.”

Gobby ran to tell the other goblins the new rule.

Anastacia sorted out the items they had brought from the dead elves. Knives and maybe arrows would be quite handy for carving the details into the bones. Some of the armor could be used to replace the missing cover plates and such. She put aside a few shoulder guards for the king to try on.

One of the items was a huge greatsword, far too heavy and big for the necromancer to use it effectively, but she thought it was cool so she kept it along with some weapons she could actually use.

“I think that should be all of them. Good job, guys. I’ll find you some stones later.” She told the goblins, who celebrated their success by screaming and dancing as usual.

Now Anastacia just needed bone. She wasn’t quite sure if the troll would have enough suitable parts, and the elf bones weren’t really any good at all. When elves are alive, their bones are light and springy so they can take some big hits without breaking bones, but after death they harden and become one of the worst materials to use for anything. Maybe she should just ask the king to hunt down something like a moose and get some meat to eat for a change?

The forest king dragged the bones to the rock Anastacia was at.

“Oh! You have the bones already? That took way…” Anastacia said and turned around to face away from the king, who now had a thick coating of troll blood on him. “You’re going to need to wash yourself, or I will throw up every time I see you and you’ll start to smell. Let’s just find a pool that’s a bit further away from here.”

She grabbed a helmet that could serve as a bucket and they left to find a pool. The smell of blood would probably attract beasts and the pool they’d use would be ruined. Of course they’d need to get rid of the corpse too. Trolls weren’t edible for anyone with taste buds and leather made from them wasn’t too good.

“This should be good enough. Just jump in and move around a bit. Once you’re a bit less gross, I’ll pour some water on you and clean out the difficult spots.” Anastacia told the simulacrum and pointed at a pool they had stopped at.

The forest king did as he was asked to and dropped into the water.

“Hey, do you think I should just stay here? My friends are probably going crazy trying to find me but they’ll give up eventually. The necromancers I told you about would stop bothering them too if I’m not seen at Valor anymore, and they probably wouldn’t find me here. Once we get your buddy fixed, we’ll have more company too! Then we could just mess around with the goblins and wait out whatever timer I have on this fake world, though if this is real, it’s going to be a long wait…” Anastacia chatted while the king walked around in the pool.

A few goblins appeared. Much like their king, they were in troll blood from head to toe.

“What did you do?!” Anastacia yelled before gagging a bit.

“We made tent! Troll tent!” One of the goblins explained enthusiastically.