I woke up next to the corpses of the men I’d killed. Looking down at their pale faces probably should have bothered me, but I felt fine. Better than fine‌. There was no needing to puke or whine about what kind of person I was now. Nor were my hands shaky with guilt.

And that was interesting.

In my previous life, I’d never so much as hurt an ant on purpose. The contradiction of an innocent person to a cold-blooded killer should have had me worried, but because it didn’t, it left me wondering why. Was it because of my condition as a lurching corpse? I’d never considered that the possibility of being immune to physical pain might also extend to mental illness. It would be pretty hilarious if zombies were the happiest people in existence. The gods knew I loved every moment.

Another consideration was that there are a broad number of undead evolutions that feast on the living. Flesh eaters, blood drinkers, soul munchers—you name a human part, and there is a type of undead that’ll eat it for brunch. Perhaps a handicapped conscience was a blessing for that inevitability down the road.

The alternative was to admit that I had always had that in me. An immutable killer had lurked in my psyche, just waiting for his moment to step into the spotlight. If that was true, maybe all the bad stuff from my previous life should have happened to me. I’d just prepaid all my karma upfront, like a layaway.

Now that’s a comforting thought!

The second-guessing seemed fruitless, and I moved on to the more important task of looting my kills for all they are worth. I removed my already funky smelling jacket and placed the black leather armor one cultist had over my shirt. Putting it on was vexing, taking about two hours of rigor mortis roulette to feel good. I comforted myself with the fact that I wouldn’t have to take it off.

Next, I grabbed one of their red robes and threw that over my shoulders. No real reason other than I just liked how it looked. There were no markings for a cult or anything like that, just good old-fashioned blood red outfits.

The leader naturally had the biggest coin purse. I took his for my own, attaching it to my belt. I emptied the coins of the other three into it too, but there wasn’t much. There had been a bunch of vials and preserved body parts I assumed he used for rituals. I tossed all that garbage into a pile to burn later.

Every single one of them had a weapon. I only grabbed a light mace the guy in heavy armor had because I thought it would make breaking skeletons easier. Trying to swing around a sword in my state would assuredly end up with me losing a body part.

The most interesting loot was a locket that the leader wore, which was enchanted. I could tell by the golden colored runes on the centerpiece that looked like the ones on my dagger. However, I was reluctant to take it with me after I couldn’t figure out what it did. It could have identified me as a cultist, let others track me, or who knows what other kind of stupidity I didn’t need.

Yet it also could have been a really sweet item that does something awesome. Like levitating or ice skating. I couldn’t allow anyone coming behind me to take it for themselves, especially when they’d likely be enemies. So, I just did what I thought was best and tossed it down the hole to the Ossuary.

Once I started really thinking about who was coming down here next, I almost sent myself into a panic. Pollina left to get her fellow necromancers or death cultists, and the demon cultists had somehow come down here to ambush them. Now that the demon worshippers were dead, the necromancers would want to know what happened. And there was no way that Pollina wouldn’t try to find me after she saw me missing.

Worse, I didn’t know how long that book had put me out! I’d just assumed that it hadn’t been long, because it had only felt like I briefly passed out. Those corpse gropers could come down the hall at any minute.

Cursing my idiocy at taking so long to put that armor on, I started pilling the bodies up. All except the guy whose armor and robe I’d stolen. Thankfully, it wasn’t a hard task because they were all sitting right next to each other. That done, I got a torch and set the three leftovers alight, along with the ritual crap I’d stashed earlier.

Next, I dragged the naked guy back to where I’d killed Pollina’s skeletal minion and also set his ass on fire. I also reignited her supplies.

Man, I’m really turning into a pyromaniac here.

The last step to my master plan was to cut up a piece of my old jacket. I burned it around the edge, then placed it near the body. The rest of the garment got tossed on the flaming naked dummy.

I hoped that when the death cult returned, they’d believe I was dead next to the other minion, and that the cultist had tried a ritual that backfired.

Not willing to waste another moment at the crime scene, I snatched up the backpack with Pollina’s books and fled back to the Ossuary.

⬲

Pollina Mavis couldn’t wait to get back to her camp. Oran Farrow, the boy she’d spent years dreaming of marrying, was there waiting for her! It was cosmically ironic that she finally got to be with him, because even though she had long given up on the possibility of being with him, it had been her path that ensured the outcome. The same path that she’d stepped on for him!

Looking over at Lovina, Pollina grinned at the zombie in vicious triumph. “Slap yourself, swine!”

Once upon a time, Pollina had been happy to have a simple class. When her manacore formed, she’d gotten a few good choices. All of them magic using derivatives. Back then, she’d been a silly girl with no ambitions and she selected Alchemist because it was first alphabetically. And for a year, she hadn’t regretted that choice for a single day. Her natural inclination for scientific pursuits and the quiet life of a potion maker had been a dream come true.

Then that evil bitch Lovina Strain got engaged to Oran.

It had been almost too much to bear to see her long time bully betrothed to the boy she’d loved with all her heart, and she nearly ended it all. Pollina’s devotion to Oran had been a pure thing; she’d never once held it against him, that he barely knew who she was. Instead, she’d kept her distance watching him, and writing love letters she knew he’d never read. For a humble girl from a minor noble house, she’d accepted that to be enough.

A fancy she would deeply regret, even now. For it had been those very letters that had set their downfall. Lovina and her friends had ambushed her one day on the way home from an outing, and took her notebook. Embarrassing Pollina by reading the letters out loud hadn’t been even an appetizer for the full-course cruelty that Lovina Strain desired. She’d shared the letters with their peers and sent them to Oran anonymously. All the while extorting Pollina to do awful things under the threat, revealing her as the author. Once that got boring, and Pollina had no dignity left to give, she told Oran anyway.

Oran, blessed soul that he was, hadn’t cared a whit! He’d merely shrugged and said, “I don’t know who that is” and went about his life. The quiet boy just assumed it was a futile prank from another scheming noble. And, of course, he was right.

His nonchalance had incensed Lovina. Unable to get the reaction she craved, she conspired to find a new way to hurt Pollina by hurting Oran. She coerced her cousin and fellow sadist virtuoso Graham Vandergast into setting them up. Lovina then spent the entire summer planning out every single detail to ensure that Oran would eat out of her hand.

Only to toss him away on one of the hardest days of his entire life. The damage to his psyche was irreparable. A foundational tenet of core creation was tranquility through the acceptance of the self. Oran had long running issues with self-confidence, and Lovina’s vicious game had utterly destroyed the little he’d had left. With a fell swoop, she’d taken the boy’s entire future from him, all just to hurt Pollina.

Lovina had finally pushed Pollina too far. She lost something in her mind, and maybe even her soul, that she’d never get back. Pollina swore to get revenge at any cost. She renounced her class and joined the family death cult.

It was a poorly kept secret among the houses that the Mavis line were members of the Cult of Harhaz. Not all death cults were intrinsically evil, and the Cult of Harhaz was useful for controlling and containing the undead. Along with the smugglers of House Learmonth, House Mavis provided a citywide service for keeping the under city population manageable.

Using those connections, Pollina threw herself into battle in forgotten tunnels and magic rich crypts. Her levels shot upward, and with that strength came the solution to the revenge she’d long sought. A soul entrapment spell.

Getting Lovina to team up with her had been the only tricky part. In her wanderings, Pollina had rediscovered an ancient network of catacombs called the Ossuary of Thalzaxor. Together with her uncle, she reached out to the thieves of House Learmonth to assemble a team with the caveat that they needed a frost mage. She’d recommended Lovina, knowing that the promise of ancient artifacts and monsters weak against her magic would be too much for her to resist. House Learmonth recruited Lovina on her behalf, thinking that a mage that wasn’t too high in level wouldn’t ask for too big of a cut.

It worked out perfectly.

Pollina had visited so many torments on Lovina, ripping out her eye and disfiguring her face; only to name a few. After that, she used a soul gem to entrap Lovina’s soul into her body, then murdered and raised her as an eternal minion. Was it a little extreme? Sure, but deep down, Pollina knew she’d never tire of humiliating the monster. That it was nothing less than she deserved..

Best of all, now she got to return home to the boy that she loved. A boy that she knew was still in that shambling corpse somehow. She could see it in his clear and intelligent eyes. No matter what, she’d find a way to fix him—

“Pollina, do you smell smoke?” asked her master.

After he mentioned it, Pollina did. And her heart dropped.