Anastacia stepped on the paved main road of her home nation and stared into the horizon to see if Amaranth had already sent something at her, but that didn’t seem to be the case. Perhaps she wanted to wait long enough so that the necromancers at the camp couldn’t help Anastacia, or maybe she wasn’t even going to attack from the direction of the castle. Making assumptions like that was very dangerous against a necromancer like her. In all likelihood she had already surrounded Anastacia with the skeletal creatures under her control and was now just waiting for a good moment to spring her trap, all of it while probably having some tea and reading a book in the nice and cool evening breeze that was blowing from the north.

“Okay, lets make something clear here: you can’t protect me from everything.” Anastacia said to the simulacrum by her side. “Your only job is to stop anything they throw at me that I can’t stop on my own, like spears, arrows, chairs… Whatever they can just throw. But everything that has anything to do with necromancy is mine, if I can’t stop those, neither can you and you’ll just get hurt.” She continued and took King’s hand.

There was maybe two hours of light left, and Anastacia wished she could have everything wrapped up by the time it was dark. The main hurdle would be getting to the castle in one piece, but once they were there, things would be extremely simple. There wasn’t going to be a flashy fight, no explosions, no trading of blows. Just a quick and simple test of strength where they would see whether Anastacia was able to snap Amaranth in half or not, failing would probably mean that she wouldn’t be able stop whatever the inquisitor was going to attack her with. All of it really depended on how Amaranth’s powers worked closer to herself. Some necromancers, like Periwinkle and Alizarin, only saw a slight increase in their power when working very close to themselves; and some, like Anastacia and Coquelicot, were all about the immediate area around them and had their powers fizzle out rather quickly when the distance increased. Anastacia had no idea which category Amaranth belonged to, and just because she was able to use raised creatures from far away didn’t guarantee anything. Necromancy was far from an exact science.

“What’s your opinion on revenge? Coquelicot was right, this is the last chance I’ll have to actually do what I’ve dreamt of doing thousands of times. I don’t think I particularly want to kill anyone myself since they’ll all die anyway, but what if I’ll regret not doing it later? I mean I was supposed to fix your friend, but now I can’t because no one knows where he even is, and now I’ll probably regret not doing that forever. You know what I mean?” Anastacia asked.

It wasn’t something King could answer, so the simulacrum didn’t react to the question and kept looking around for anything suspicious.

“Which one do you think is worse: living with the fact that you killed a bunch of evil people for no other reason than that you had the chance, or living with an unfulfilled dream of killing those evil people? They did steal the first fifteen years of my life and left me… well, like this!” She pondered her options out loud. “I really need to figure out this before we get there.”

They kept walking hand in hand at a brisk pace and didn’t run into any kind of opposition from Amaranth. No dragon skeletons crashing down from the sky, no other earthbound creatures rushing at them, not even a dead sparrow following their every move.

Along the way to the castle, the road formed a stone bridge over an artificial river, dug back when the land was claimed by the first necromancers of Mournvalley. Flowing almost exactly ten meters wide and five meters deep, the river called Woe was an unnatural sight in that its width, depth and direction never changed in the slightest, it ran death straight for kilometers after kilometers and Anastacia had no idea what was in either of its ends. The water itself was also unnaturally clear and one could easily see all the way down to its bottom, not that there was any point in peering into the waters, since much like the land around it, Woe had never supported any kind of life. There was noting wrong with it as far as anyone could tell and the water was perfectly drinkable, but there were no fish or bugs, nor were there any reeds growing by its banks.

“This river is shit, and I’ve almost drowned in one, so I should know a thing or two about terrible rivers.” Anastacia pointed out and leaned on the stone railing on the edge of the bridge. “I’ve also almost drowned in a swamp and a lake, both within the same day too. Remind me that we need to visit an ocean, so I can almost drown in that – might as well collect them all at this point.”

As she stared into the lazily flowing river, in the barely visible reflection on the surface, she noticed a small dot right next to her own image. At first, she though it was just something floating in the water, but when it didn’t move with the current at all, she realized it was a reflection of something in the sky. Anastacia barely had time to look up before she felt it too. A large skeleton of something was heading right at them at incredible speed.

Not having the time for further analysis on the situation, she warned King and jumped into the river with him, right before the huge creature crashed into the bridge, crushing it like it was made of paper. She let go of the simulacrum’s hand so that she wouldn’t sink to the bottom with him and instead swam back to the surface to see what exactly was it that hit the bridge, but as soon as she managed the get her first breath, a skeletal claw of some kind pushed her back down, this time all the way to the bottom. She only barely managed to stop it before it crushed her against the gravel and was still in no shape to do more than just hold it still. Having lost most of her air on the way down, Anastacia was already running out of breath and slowly blacking out. Panic started to set in and she flailed to no avail, trying her best to gain a foothold on the thrall holding her down.

Suddenly the strength of Amaranth’s grasp on the claw pushing Anastacia down was weakened to a fraction it used to be. Before she closed her eyes to gather what little remained of her concentration, she saw King wedging his sword into the small gap between the bones in the creature’s joint, separating them from the skeleton.

When she opened her eyes again, she was lying on the bank of the river and coughing up water. Not sure how long had passed, Anastacia was initially extremely confused, but the high pitched yet thundering screech from the other side of the river did a good job at waking her up.

“Oh, it’s a wyvern. Did she run out of real dragons?” She commented and peeled off her now drenched cloak.

Missing one of its legs and a wing, the skeletal wyvern was considerably less of a threat. It could barely move and mostly just trashed around and screamed like it was in pain. Its wingspan of ten meters had been halved and the remaining leg couldn’t reach too far, though the massive claws on it still looked terrifyingly sharp.

King rose from the water, dragging the wyvern’s missing wing in one hand and his stupidly large sword in the other.

“I may have underestimated you. Are you okay? You’re not allowed to get hurt though.” Anastacia asked worryingly and started going through the simulacrum’s body for damage. “Can’t believe she almost got us with that surprise attack… Turns out necromancy is really hard when you can’t breathe, but now I have some idea on what we’re up against. I don’t think I can take them over just like that, but now that I’m not being drowned, stopping them shouldn’t be a problem. Though if we can break even one of the bones, it might just be possible to-“

Her thoughts were interrupted by a second, far louder roar from the distance. It was something far bigger and louder than even the dragon Anastacia had fought outside Valor, which meant it could only be one thing. There was a creature stored in the collection that couldn’t even be stored in the castle itself, so it had its own storage building right outside the castle itself. Perhaps as a terrible and grim joke, the building was almost entirely underground and looked like a massive stone sarcophagus. As for what the creature was, no one had any idea. Centuries ago, some necromancers discovered it in the bottom of the sea and somehow managed to drag it all the way to Mournvalley in pieces. Over the years, anyone who could have had any clue of its origin was dragged from their homes by necromancers and forced to take a look at the massive beast. In the end it did nothing to solve the mystery of the its origin, but each of the kidnapped experts had their own theory about it, ranging from an ancient creature that once ruled the seas to a fallen god. Everything they had managed to gather was written down and storied in the library of the royal castle, where Anastacia had also found it.

Only a handful of necromancers had ever been able to control the entire creature, but it came as no surprise that the leader of the red inquisition would be one of them. Though as far as she knew, it had been left alone to decay and shouldn’t have been in any shape to be risen.

As the ground under their feet began to shake, they could see a gigantic monstrosity drag itself from its tomb and scream at the sky. Its skeletal structure was not anything that existed in the world now, and nothing short of disturbing to say the least. The torso alone was as large as the ships sailing across the oceans, held together by a spine that was full of thorns long enough to impale a horse. The ribcage had a massive hole in the middle instead of a sternum and from each of the twelve ribs surrounding it, dangled an arm that ended in three long fingers, possibly just to drag something into the chest hole. Whether it was because of the deteriorated condition of the bones or because even Amaranth couldn’t control the entire creature perfectly, these claws dangled lifelessly from their sockets.

Its arm bones were sturdy, thick, large enough to swat a dragon from the sky and ended in a fist made out of three eerily long. but thick fingers arranged evenly around the palm. The creatures lower body offered no comfort for the looker either, as its weirdly human looking legs dragged along the ground as it moved, like they had been paralyzed. Between the defunct legs, was a large abdomen, not unlike that of a lobster. The bone plates that still held its shape despite the actual abdomen having been gone for who knows how long were now used to support its entire weight in place of the legs as it dragged its massive corpse along the ground and howled miserably on every step. The skull of the monster offered some clues on the reason of its demise, in that it was mostly missing. Something even more terrible had crushed its cranium, only leaving behind the jaw and half of what used to be the closest thing to a face it had. Riddled with eye sockets, even the remaining half had over ten eyes in seemingly random pattern above a set of shark-like teeth, large enough to chew on a whale on both its upper and lower jaw.

Despite not having the faintest idea of what it was, where it was from, what could have possibly killed it or why it even existed, the necromancers of yore had named the creature ‘Mother’; because inside its abdomen, they found the skeleton of a smaller such creature.

As she watched the mother slowly approach them, Anastacia almost felt sorry for it. Somehow it seemed to be in agony despite being dead, and it really felt wrong to see something so fearsome in such a broken-down state. Though no matter how miserable it was or how it felt about it, the mother would still crush them like bugs.

She took King’s hand and leaned against him. “This went from manageable to a shitstorm of legendary proportions so very quickly. I won’t know until it gets close whether I can do anything or not, but I honestly think this might be it.” The tiny necromancer said and took out her knife. “In case this ends badly, just know that I love you and stuff, I think, okay?”

Periwinkle sighed and popped off the broken lens from his mask while on his way to the river. He had been tasked to get some water for Coquelicot, not because the camp didn’t have plenty, but because she didn’t want him around. Because everyone had been prohibited from going any closer to the castle, he had to walk in a large curve around it to keep the required distance. After finally reaching the river Woe, he rinsed the waterskin quickly and started filling it.

While working, he hummed a tune that didn’t really exist, at least as far as he knew, but to him it just sounded nice. Until suddenly something caught his eye: there was someone fishing only a hundred meters away from him. It was odd because the fact that he hadn’t noticed meant that the man was not a necromancer. Periwinkle quickly capped the waterskin and approached the intruder.

“Such a lovely evening, isn’t it? This one especially, the other todays pale in comparison!” The smartly dressed, black feathered birdfolk greeted him.

“Sure is… Are you aware that you’ve somehow snuck into Mournvalley, only kilometers away from the royal castle and the frontline of a civil war, just to fish from a river that doesn’t have fish in it?” Periwinkle asked, genuinely curious about what was going on.

“Ah… Have we not met yet? Forgive me, sometimes I get confused. We are actually quite close, just not yet. Oh well, I am known as Noir, pleased to meet you again.” The birdfolk laughed and patted the ground next to him, urging the necromancer to sit.

The crow seemed insane, but at least interesting, and there was no harm in a little chat, so Periwinkle sat down and peered into the water. “Likewise, my name is Periwinkle, or did you already know that?” He joked. “But what’s up with the fishing rod though? There’s no chance of catching anything so why are you here?”

“There is history in the making and you ask why the scribe present! Though that is not the only reason why I am here. I’ve taken particular interest in this fate, so I am here to meddle.” Noir explained and cast his fishing line again.

“Do you mean what Anastacia is doing? Are you a friend of hers from Valor?” Periwinkle kept inquiring.

“History is not any single event, but the sum of them all – and as for being miss Anastacia’s friend, I would be lying if I said that I remember whether or not I had words with her yet…” The birdfolk said happily. “You could even say that I’m here for you.”

“For me? Do tell!” The inquisitor encouraged the seemingly loopy Noir.

Noir opened his bag, took out a black leather-bound book from it and opened a page, seemingly at random. “I have written down that the freshest shade of blue has a part to play in all of this, and that it starts now.” He said and lifted his line from the water. Dangling from the hook was a belt with a single pouch attached to it. Noir opened up the pouch and took out an emerald ring before tossing the belt back into the river. “Here you go, your part begins with this.” The crow said and handed the ring to Periwinkle. “He seeks to be with its two siblings, your job is to make sure he meets them at the right time.”

“I… What? Whose is this? My part?” Periwinkle uttered in confusion.

“I would love to converse, but you must run along now, young scribe. It says here you have water to deliver.” Noir said and pointed at the open page in his book.

The confused necromancer got up and stood in silence for a while, trying to think of something to ask but just couldn’t come up with anything, so instead he just turned towards the camp and walked away, leaving the strange crow to his book.

On his way back, the most terrifying roar he had ever heard echoing from the direction of the castle and he decided to pick up the pace.