It was in this room, Agensyx said, motioning toward a door with a pictograph of a sword mounted to it in bronze where the knob would have been.

  “And it’s not something that’s going to kill me?” Jay clarified.

  Not unless you let it.

  “That’s very reassuring.”

  Do not let it.

  “I didn’t think that needed to be said that I wasn’t going to let it kill me.”

  With no response from his familiar, he pulled the door open and went in. Agensyx had been very tight-lipped – tight-scaled? He didn’t really have lips, did he? – about what was inside, only saying that it would be useful before they’d actually been standing here. It might have been because he couldn’t fit inside. The door certainly didn’t look like he’d fit through and whatever trick he’d pulled to fit through the trapdoor above Rukai’s Redoubt didn’t seem like something he was interested in trying again, since he was lingering outside.

  The room was dark enough that when the door shut with a heavy noise, Jay had to let his eyes adjust. It was a long, corridor-like room, and once he could actually see the edges he could tell that they were lined with columns wrapped in bronze lattice. The Kisyonics were very fond of the metal, apparently. The intersections were more common at the bottom of each of the pillars, becoming cage-like before they unwound towards the room’s flat roof.

  He took it all in for a couple seconds, or at least as much as he could in the soft glow, and still didn’t see what had made the spirit say it would be useful for anything. Thinking it might be hidden behind one of the pillars, he walked further into the room and started checking behind them. Each pair of columns had a spool of chain between them that were recessed into the wall just far enough that they weren’t visible from the front of the room.

  Jay couldn’t see what they were connected to, since the chains vanished into the wall panel above each spool, but they all looked like they were in remarkably good shape for chains that had been sitting in an abandoned monastery for an extended time. Maybe they were oiled or something. He ran his finger along one to test and it came back dry, so it must have been something else.

  As he moved from one side of the room to the other, crossing between the middle chain spools, something under his feet clicked and shifted. His first thought was that he was going to explode. His second thought was a jolt of pure panic as all six of the reels of chain began to move at once, deafeningly loud. The bronze wrapping around the pillars began to undulate, the more complex end at the bottom rising toward the ceiling as the upper ends vanished into little holes that he hadn’t seen before.

  When the chains stopped, each of the areas had a stocked weapon rack in it. Each of the six was a different type of weapon, but Jay was less concerned with that and more with what it implied. That many weapons – in conditions just as good as the chains – moved into place automatically? The bad feeling that started to grow in him from seeing that got even larger when a countdown started on the back wall.

  He didn’t take any of the weapons. He had one already, and none of them looked quite like what the Crystalband became, so he figured he’d just rely on that. At least he knew that one would fit his hand.

  Jay called for the sword and the Crystalband flowed into the form. It was still the same sword in every way except for two minor differences. The pommel had shifted from being a generic snake’s head to a clear depiction of Agensyx and there was now a skeletal snake etched along the blunt edge.

  The countdown hit zero. The chains began to rattle again. A System window manifested gold-on-blue welcoming him into what the room truly was.

  The metal wrappings descended again, this time all the way into the floor, and humanoid figures surged out, scrabbling ferally at anything in their reach. They were gray-skinned, black-eyed, and looked like they’d been crudely molded out of clay. Jay saw several of their hands puncture the wood of the floor and rethought that last part. Maybe they were just lumpy due to an excess of muscle.

  They all saw him at once. There was a moment of unnatural stillness from all six shambling piles of them. Then they rushed him.

  In the single second before they reached him, Jay debated between three actions. Running was on the table, but he was in the middle of the room, so he moved on. Trying to go head to head with these things was off the table too with how many of them there were. Casting a spell would probably be his best bet, but most of the ones he had only hit single targets.

  But the spell idea was still the most promising, so he leveled [Touch of the Shroud] at one of the clay-things in the back, hoping the distance would keep him from accidentally killing it before the health drain effect finished its work. Then the first line of the things were barrelling straight over him, spinning him away from where he’d started and carrying him straight into the rush of others from the pillars behind.

  Jay ping-ponged back and forth like that for a few seconds, buffeted on every side by the churning of so many bodies moving in, around, and on top of each other. It took him getting spat back out into an open space between two groups to regain solid footing. He was only barely outside the seething knot that had formed where he had been standing, but he was outside of it. That was what mattered.

  He started slashing around himself with it, slicing as many of them as he could in as many places as he could. They didn’t seem to bleed anything more than a short burst of liquid gray goop. Jay couldn’t feel the impact of the cuts; he hoped it was because the sword was sharp enough that it was sliding straight through, but if he was just missing, he wasn’t sure he’d notice.

  It wasn’t a pretty sight. He knew there were probably forms of some sort he should have been using to fight with, but he didn’t know what they would have looked like. He was improvising poorly, doing his best just to stay upright for as long as he could.

  Jay tried to move out of the path of one of the scrambling ones and his foot slipped on one of the small spatters of gray goo now decorating the floor. He lost the fight to keep standing. On the way down, he bounced off several more lunging bodies, growing more and more disoriented as he did. He slammed to the floor and the wind left him in a painful exhale.

  He expected to feel the weight of dozens of bodies landing on him once he was down. He almost expected to die, pressed to death like someone closest to the best Black Friday deal. He had planned – if you could call a desperate hope a plan – to brace for it, to try to shove the things up and off of him long enough to squirm out from underneath.

  He didn’t expect the noise of the fight to just end, cutting out as if someone hit a cosmic mute button.

  When his breath returned, he levered himself up to a sitting position. They were all frozen. He poked the one closest to him and it didn’t respond. Not even a twitch.

  He took stock of himself quickly, letting in a flood of System boxes about health both lost and gained. Jay even saw a couple that told him that Alister had been biting the things. The last one was of more interest to him than the others.

  As he paged through the notifications, the gray-skinned things began to flake away. The scraps that they dissolved into fled back into the pillars that had brought the creatures down like six cylindrical vacuums. By the time he dismissed the last box – wincing at the insults of “Difficulty 6” and “Form skill: Not applicable” – the scraps were almost all gone and the chains had begun to rattle again.

  The window about the “Courtesy of Kisyon” popped back up and he dismissed it immediately. When the cage doors opened this time, there was only one of the mushy creatures inside each tube. Jay actually felt like he might be able to win against that few. He set himself as they approached, swiveling to try to gauge which would reach him first.

  He didn’t get it quite right. One of the six bulled straight into him from behind, one he’d thought had been steps behind the others. The momentum pushed him straight into the one he’d actually been aimed at, his sword plunging through its chest. The shove pressed Jay and the creature so close together he saw the end of it emerge from the thing’s back.

  It scrabbled at him the whole time as he pushed its weight away and freed his sword, hands still reaching for him even as it fell backwards to twitch on the floor. Jay ducked between the two that were reaching for him next. He nearly didn’t make it; the second set of hands ruffled his hair.

  He darted backwards, spinning around to keep any of them from getting a grip on him. His sword came around as his body did; small lines of dripping gray goo formed across each of the things’ chests. He kept the sword moving as best he could, fending off each of the creatures as they got closer to him, but he couldn’t land as definitive a blow on any of them as he had on the one he’d been shoved into.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The thing’s body was still there. It had stopped twitching but was still intact. Could he… there was no way. There was absolutely no way this worked.

  But he had to try.

  Jay moved away from the body and waited for the remaining five creatures to shamble after him. Then he darted around them, darting directly back for their fallen comrade. His hands began to glow green, wisps of light spilling out from his palms, as he slammed a hand into the thing’s body.

  The System’s resonance filled his voice as he spoke two words: “[Lesser Resurrection].”

  The green light crawled over the body, worming their way into the gray material that made it up. Jay could feel it take hold. The Divinity investment window popped up and he dismissed it without manifesting any of the little golden orbs. There was every chance the thing would dissolve once the training round ended; it wasn’t worth putting in the limited points he had. He dismissed the naming notification with equal speed and for many of the same reasons.

  The thing’s body sat up. It worked. They counted as alive enough to resurrect.

  He had a potentially infinite number of bodies waiting for revival right in front of him. An army of them. And for the cost of just a little bit of the Curse’s corruption, they could be the solution to Cinri’s ducal problem.

  If he could get through enough of them, at least.

  *

  Don’t be mad, Jay started. Just hear me out.

  He could feel Agensyx’s irritation before the spirit even responded. I will guarantee nothing until I have more details.

  At least tell me you’ll hear me out.

  I will listen until or unless I hear something completely outrageous. Past that, again, I cannot guarantee anything.

  I may have resurrected a bunch of the moving training dummies in here. None of them had vanished as he moved up the difficulty ranks – maxing out at ten enemies, though he’d almost beaten all of them in his last attempt – so Jay was standing at the head of a horde.

  You what.

  I may have –

  No, I heard you. My question stands: you what? Those things have never been alive. They lack anything to resurrect.

  Jay looked around at the army of gray-skinned green-wisp-infused zombie-things and pushed a mental shrug over. It worked.

  With no negative effects? I thought we had agreed you would cast necromantic spells through me.

  That’s not how I remember that conversation. Jay took stock of himself quickly to answer the actual question, pulling his summary sheet into view.

  Yeah, I’m fine. Better than fine, really; I levelled. Jay carefully didn’t think about how much health using [Lesser Resurrection] that many times in a row had drained from him. Or how much mana he was spending every second to maintain them. The spell itself didn’t take anything to cast, but once he’d gotten past five undead, a drain had started. Then it kept increasing with every new resurrection.

  Hm, Agensyx hummed. At least there was some benefit. Have you made your selections yet?

  I put the points into Agility to even things out a little. Haven’t chosen anything else yet.

  Make your choice. Then we must inform Cinri about your newfound army – that shouldn’t exist – and discuss how it changes her plan.

  Jay pinched the bridge of his nose. Yeah. We should do that.

  Jay? Agensyx asked. Are you sure nothing is wrong after resurrecting that many creatures?

  Everything’s fine. Jay released his nose and swiped his hand down his face. He was sweating. Why was he sweating? He hadn’t done anything for the last several rounds of the training. The zombies had handled everything. His hands were trembling, too. That was even stranger; there hadn’t been anything to cause that.

  Maybe he just needed to sit down for a bit. That idea sounded really good, actually, now that he’d thought of it. He sat as he brought up the other second set of options he had to choose from.

  Now those were some options. Jay brought them all up.

  The choice for traits was clear enough. Jay took [Extremophile]. It was just too useful with how many times he’d had to sleep outside already.

  The spells and abilities were a little bit harder, with a few good choices. [Sense Unlife] was more tempting now than it had been when he’d first arrived now that he knew something about the stuff. He really didn’t need another health-sapping effect. Seeing the future could be useful, but that was a very time consuming spell and he wasn’t sure how reliable it would be.

  He chose [Soulbinder]. Jay wasn’t planning on resurrecting anything sapient, so the ethical implications of fueling a spell with someone’s soul shouldn’t come into play. And in the meantime he’d have better undead.

  It was about time he started embracing the necromancy aspects. Raising all the training dummies into zombies had felt right, and Jay really thought he was getting to the point of understanding some of the underlying principles behind his spell thanks to the practice it had given him. He couldn’t hope to fix whatever had caused the curse if he didn’t understand the effects anyway, right?

  Jay wiped the sweat off his forehead one more time and stood. Agensyx was right about needing to tell Cinri. He commanded the gray-goo zombies to stay in the room and turned to leave.

  Jay reached for the door handle with his left hand – his off hand, the hand he’d used to tag the creatures with the resurrection spell – and then stopped. He pulled the hand back, balled it up, and tucked it into the pocket of his jacket. He couldn’t let Agensyx, or anyone else, see what had happened.

  He couldn’t let them see the dark stain on his fingertips. The stain that trailed down, tendrils pooling in his palm. The stain of his own spells that had started to take their toll.