A soft scraping sound of metal and unlocking tumblers came from the door. Slowly, it swung open, the hand guiding it moving gently so as to not make it creak. Soft light spilled into the room through the now open doorway, illuminating the girl’s bed as the rest of the room was thrown into deeper shadow.

Pierce stepped forward, the two members of the village guard following. The men were unarmoured, moving quietly in normal clothes. One of the guardsmen carried a long length of rope, the other a sack, and Pierce himself carried only an amulet.

It was a beautiful thing, a golden symbol of a moon and sun swirling around each other. The Goddess’ symbol.

The three men moved quietly into the room, the two guards spreading out to either side of the bed as Pierce stood at its end. The old hunter grasped the amulet firmly, a quiet prayer echoing under his breath.

But before he could give any orders to the two waiting men as his prayer came to an end, a noise interrupted him. He frowned. A soft grinding sound.

Baffled, he looked up.

Stooped over in the low bedroom was the undead, almost entirely hidden by shadows. His long legs stood on either side of the door, his tall body bent forward at the waist to press against the ceiling. When Pierce looked up, Buddy looked down at him, grinding his sharp teeth gently.

The hunter screamed, spinning around to face the doorway, his cry turning into a gurgling gasp as a long clawed hand pierced his unprotected chest. Blood gushed from his chest and mouth as he lifelessly fell back, sliding off the claws then limply falling against the foot of the bed with a wet thud. Panicked, the two guards spun around as well and stumbled against the back wall, looking up in horror at the surely nightmarish sight. Buddy felt a morbid satisfaction in seeing their fear, a grim delight that they surely regretted whatever they were attempting to do. He grinned down at them, spreading his arms wide so as to cover the entire length of the room like a pale and bloody cordon.

Suddenly, Eliza woke, the scream tearing her away from her dreams. Scrambling, she pressed herself against the backboard as she stared in horror at the two large men on either side of her and the bloodied undead.

One of the men tried to run, darting for the room’s window. He actually made it, escaping out the window and onto the roof of the next building over, a cry of joy bursting from him as he made it.

Suddenly, a hand snared his shin, the long fingers clamping down like chains. The man screamed, flailing desperately at the sloped thatch roof as the long arm dragged him back into the tavern bedroom.

Buddy chuckled. His form did have some advantages.

The other froze, panicking, drawing a knife from his belt. Eliza looked up at him with wide eyes, frost curling around her fingers yet not striking. Rather than attempting to kill the man, which she probably could but certainly didn't want to, she simply froze him in place. He must have been in the rain earlier, Buddy thought, watching as with a flash of blue light his clothes and hair were suddenly stiff and frozen solid, a restraining suit of ice. From inside the frosty mask of his facial hair, the man's eyes darted around in confusion in fear.

The other attempted kidnapper was dragged into the room a moment later, crying and flailing about before abruptly being silenced with a sudden claw slash to the throat.

Eliza looked up, breath slowing as she was finally left alone with the undead and three corpses. Buddy grinned at her before turning to the doorway, peering out of it as the sounds of rushing people came from the rest of the tavern. Down the long hallway of many adjacent bedrooms, Buddy could see down the stairs into the main tavern floor. Despite the time of night it was full, packed with villagers holding knives and wearing-

White robes.

He turned back as Eliza finished dressing, carefully stepping around the corpses as she rushed to the doorway. Buddy raised a hand, stopping her. Looking up, she saw him shake his head and point at the window. Angry voices and stomping feet came from the stairwell down the hall as footsteps made their way quickly to the bedroom. Realising the danger, she rushed to the window, Buddy snatching her up with both hands and lifting her out of it, depositing her on the adjacent roof. He followed a moment later, long limbs reaching through the narrow gap before pulling his body through.

To him, it was a relief. That room was far too cramped. Now, he could spread out across the roof of the adjacent building, body stretching across the entirety of it as his long limbs held him high in the air.

“They went out the window!” A voice shouted furiously. Eliza peered back to see a robed man having made his way into the room, cleaver in hand. His anger turned to confusion as he looked at the ice statue they left beside the bed.

“Oh shit! Buddy come on, we gotta go.” She called in alarm as voices swelled from below, people flooding out of the tavern to try and pursue them.

The undead nodded, looking around briefly at the adjacent rooftops. The buildings of the village were haphazardly spaced, mostly far too distant from each other for someone to jump from one sloped roof to the next. For your average person, that was. Buddy reached down, wrapping one arm under Eliza’s armpits and holding her to his chest. Swiftly, he made his way across the village rooftops heading away from the tavern near its centre, stretched limbs carrying him from roof to roof like a three-legged spider. His long fingers grasped the curves and edges of the thatched roofs, clawed feet digging into them easily as he moved. Below them, villagers rushed through the streets, torches and farming tools held high like crusader’s weapons. From their height Eliza could see that every villager in the town was out, chasing them, every last one wearing white robes. They writhed and ran through the streets, a tide of white violence.

-

In hindsight, maybe claiming to be a necromancer was a bad idea. She had forgotten that the most radical followers of the Goddess believed it was an unholy practice.

Apparently, the whole village of Rocksdale was that brand of followers. Who could have figured that the rural, secretive community next to the Old Woods would be extremely radical. If she hadn’t been so frazzled from recent events maybe she would have thought of that before making such a dangerous gambit.

She shook her head, raising an arm to form a barrier of frozen moisture in the air as a villager fired an arrow towards them. It crashed against the hasty barrier with the dry crack of ice shattering, piercing it but falling completely short as it was robbed of its momentum.

-

The whole village swarmed with people, like a hive of angry goblins stirred by their presence in the warren. Buddy moved swiftly towards the village edge, keeping far out of reach of the people below. Those buildings that people did climb he moved around, making detours to avoid them. A couple arrows pierced his body, but he disregarded them. Most of the projectiles failed to penetrate his skin and those that did snapped soon after as his bones shifted just below the surface of his emaciated body. They were minor annoyances, his focus was on keeping the girl safe. He knew she wouldn’t be as resistant as he was.

Bad memories plagued him, the white robes bring back vivid images of pain and suffering. He focused, ignoring the twisted visions and seeing past them to ensure they kept swiftly closing the distance to the village edge, one rooftop after the next as his long limbs ate up the gaps.

Eventually, they made it, arriving on the village wall. The round wall of tall logs and wooden platforms was already teeming with villagers, standing as the night guards would but facing in, rather than out. Buddy batted an axe-wielding man over the edge with a powerful strike of his unoccupied arm when he arrived while Eliza continued to block the onslaught of projectiles that more and more people were shooting their way.

Pitchforks, spears and axes were thrust his way but Buddy didn't relent. He rampaged across the wall like a charging bull, bisecting one villager with his claws before biting another's head off. He spat out the disgusting ball of flesh and hair, raking another man apart as the ranks of villagers began to flee before him, those that still remained to fight finding their position unsteady as Eliza's ice creeped across the parapets. She'd deterred the ranged attackers by manifesting a small blizzard over the streets they fired from, blocking their vision as she turned her attention to the melee attackers that still remained.

As Buddy pounced and slashed at a careful spear-wielding guardswoman, trying to get past her defences, he heard Eliza winced as a man further down the wall slipped on the ice and fell over the edge, his scream suddenly silencing as he hit the ground.

If he wasn't busy fighting, he'd have taken the opportunity to pat the noble girl on the head. She'd doubtlessly never killed someone before, and the thought she may have killed that man, even accidentally, clearly plagued her. Not that he would have died falling from that height. Probably.

One of the last remaining guardsmen charged at them with an actual sword, boots pounding against the wooden parapet as he sprinted towards them atop the wall. Rather than dodging, Buddy met the charge, surging forward and grabbing the long blade with his steely claws, turning it around and into the hunter. The man stumbled back then fell, tumbling over the edge alongside the waterfall of his own blood.

Whatever those sick bastards had done to him, they’d at least made him powerful, Buddy reflected. Well, technically he was the one that made himself powerful, but still. It was the agony he went through which unlocked his magic.

He hadn't even had time to process it, the implications of what he could possibly do with the power. His recollection of that event ended just before the men snuck into the bedroom.

At last uncontested, he fled quickly over the edge, leaping down the wall while clutching Eliza tight to his chest. He landed heavily against the muddy field, long limbs sinking deep into the muck. The field of tall crops stretched into the distance, long stalks swaying in the night wind.

Damn it, he'd meant to flee to the village edge with the road leading into it. He must have got turned around while traversing the rooftops, now he'd have to fight his way through the mud's grasp.

Slowly, he fled, struggling to move through the farmland as his limbs tried and failed to find purchase in the soaked earth. Behind them, the sound of shouting villagers ceased to abait.

-

Eliza glanced over Buddy’s shoulder as the undead desperately pushed his way through the crop-filled mire. Men and women followed, somehow gaining on them.

After a few moments of squinting at them through the tall crops, she realised what they were. Farmers, clearly the ones who tended these fields, wearing all the equipment needed to move easily through the muck. They didn’t carry torches, either, clearly not wanting to burn their crops, but instead bore glowing crystals which cast a beam of light forwards. The lights closed in on them, Buddy’s movement growing more frantic as he failed to gain distance. When the farmers drew near, the white light began to flood the area with an awful intensity in the night.

When the first pitchfork wielding farmer emerged from the dense crops, Eliza was ready. She froze the wet earth his tall boots sunk into, trapping him in place. From their left, another emerged from the plantlife, swinging a scythe at Buddy’s leg. Rather than attempting to stop it, she froze the mud which clung to the undead’s leg, turning it into a dense greave of ice, the metal blade bouncing off it with a reverberating ring. The farmer stumbled from the backlash of the blow, and Eliza froze the ice around one of their feet, unbalancing them and sending them tumbling down into the muck.

“You won’t escape us, girl! Your kind ain’t welcome here! The Goddess will reward us for ridding the world of a vile creature like you!” A voice called through the crops, laughter following from another two locations off to their sides. Rather than responding, Eliza rapidly froze the mud in the directions of the voices, trying to judge the distance right to hopefully trap them. A woman cursed, presumably caught by the freezing ground while the other two more distant pursuers continued chasing.

At last, Buddy’s claws latched onto solid ground, a sudden contrast to the butter-like earth they’d previously sunk through. Pushing, he strained to pull his body out of the clinging muck and onto the path, a raised gravelly road which ran away from the town. The mud dripped off him as he finally escaped its grasp, legs suddenly finding good purchase as he took off down the road in a sprint.

The voices faded into the distance. Eliza saw the lights emerge onto the road and turn their way, but they were unable to catch up without the terrain advantage.

She sighed, resting her head against the undead’s chest as he continued running in vast strides, eating up the distance quickly.

“Sorry, buddy. My fault.” She admitted. The undead reached his other hand up, patting her head with his muddy claws. She chuckled. It certainly wouldn’t make her any dirtier, she had even noticed with the tension of the escape but that chase through the fields had caked her in dirt, mud spraying everywhere every time Buddy had moved through it.

“If you hear a river bud, we can head towards it and get washed up. Otherwise, just keep following the road. It’ll lead somewhere.” The undead nodded, never tiring even as he sprinted at a ferocious pace.

She sighed.

“I’ll get a full night’s rest one of these days.”

She went silent for a few minutes, simply resting in Buddy's grasp and feeling the cold night's wind rush by. Once again, she relished the fact her ice attunement made her resistant to the cold. Unless it started seriously raining or they moved to a higher altitude the temperature wouldn't affect her.

Eventually she spoke, as much to herself as to the undead that carried her. "Yeah I'm sorry I didn't think about that buddy. There's so many things the Church says are sinful I forgot about the undead being one of them. I worship the Goddess, I just don't follow a lot of the weirder, stricter rules the Church comes out with."

The undead nodded. It wasn't exactly a reply, but it felt nice to be listened to, at least. All her life servants had hung on her every word, but they never truly listened. They heard requests and statements to be agreed with, but never truly listened. She continued to monologue in the night's silence.

"Sometimes I wonder if the Church makes up what's sinful and what's not. I mean, how do they know? Did they talk to the Goddess? Did She tell them that sex outside of wedlock was sinful, or same-sex relationships or even the existence of the undead? How could they interperet Her will?"

Rather than looking up and seeing her companion reply with a nod or facial expression, she felt it. Pressed against his chest as he ran, she could feel it shake, what little muscles seperated his skin from his bones conracting and expanding.

Was he laughing? At which part? She smiled, the undead's wide grin and silent laugh a nice contrast to his usual mute, dazed attitude.

"Do you believe in the Goddess buddy?"

He shook his head.

"Did you ever?"

Slowly, ever so slowly, he nodded.

-

Yes, he certainly had.

Who hadn't?

It struck him as baffling that she even had to state she believed in the Goddess. Didn't everyone? He knew he'd been… away, for quite a while, but were things really that different now? Did people choose not to?

Back in his day, people like him would get called a heretic.

Not that he cared.

It was hard to pin down when exactly he had stopped believing. During the year of torture, or the darkness which followed?

In truth, it didn't matter when it happened. What mattered was that he realized the truth, that a Goddess who was supposedly all-powerful and benevolent couldn't exist. Because how could she allow that to happen? He vaguely remembered praying for aid, for salvation, for death.

But there was nothing.

Maybe he was wrong. Maybe the Goddess did exist.

And if she did?

Well.

He'd rip her apart the first chance he got.