King Rega IV sat hunched over a stack of grim dispatches, the flickering lightbulb casting long, skeletal shadows across the throne room. Commander Vihan, a man whose face seemed permanently etched with the weariness of a losing war, stood stiffly beside him, pointing his finger at a particularly bloody tally.
"As you can see, Your Majesty, the losses at the Crimson Pass were… substantial. Another five hundred gone. And the Northern tribes show no signs of relenting." Valerius's voice was flat, the tone of a man reciting an unpleasant truth he'd delivered countless times.
Rega tossed the parchment onto the table, the sound echoing in the vast chamber. "Five hundred more. For what? Because my father, in his infinite wisdom, decided that free magic training for the general populace was… a drain on the royal coffers. Now we have a generation of soldiers who can barely conjure a decent shield spell. Why exactly are we even fighting this bloody war, Vihan?"
Vihan shifted uncomfortably. "It was… your father's will, Your Majesty."
Rega fixed the commander with a look that could have frozen magma. He debated, for a fleeting, dangerous moment, whether the man's staunch loyalty to a dead tyrant outweighed his usefulness. Before he could voice the dark thought, a nervous shuffling at the entrance of the throne hall drew his attention. A young servant, eyes wide with apprehension, stood just inside the massive oak doors.
"We're busy," Rega snapped, already reaching for one of the sleek, dark handguns holstered at his hip. "Go before I use you for target practice."
"Sir, I have… urgent news," the servant stammered, his gaze darting between Rega's menacing weapon and the imposing figure of the commander.
Rega sighed, the air leaving his lungs in a frustrated gust. "Fine. Go ahead. But if I deem this some trivial palace gossip, I'm shooting off one of your ears. Out with it." He leveled the handgun, the faint hum of contained light magic barely audible.
The servant swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing. "There are… multiple reports, Your Majesty. Of a child… with a green magic affinity, sir."
Commander Vihan's eyes widened in disbelief. "Impossible! They are extinct."
"Are they not?" Rega echoed, his finger still resting lightly on the trigger. "The reports… are they credible?"
"Yes, very credible. Several nobles witnessed the attribute stone turn green themselves, sir," the servant said, his voice trembling slightly. "The last confirmed sighting was over two decades ago."
"Yeah, okay," Rega said, already losing interest and subtly adjusting his aim. "So what? A rare magical child. What does this have to do with me or the war effort?"
"Uh… well, your father… he made it of the utmost importance to inform him immediately if one was ever found, sir," the servant said nervously, his eyes pleading. "He… he authorized an award of two thousand gold coins for just information leading to finding one. Twenty thousand… for anyone who brought one in alive."
Rega's hand stilled. Twenty thousand gold coins was a king's ransom. "Twenty thousand? Why? Why would we offer such a ludicrous sum? Why exactly do we need a green mage?"
The servant could only shrug helplessly, his face a mask of terror, certain he was about to become intimately acquainted with the king's firearm.
"Go," Rega said abruptly, waving his gun dismissively. He hadn't actually intended to shoot the poor fool, but the surge of frustration was potent enough to make him reconsider if the servant lingered. "Just… get out of my sight." *My father was a damn fool,* Rega thought darkly. *I should have put him down ages ago.*
Commander Vihan stood silently, his usual military stoicism wavering slightly. "Sir… did you want me to continue my report on the disastrous troop deployments?"
Rega sank back onto his throne, the weight of his kingdom, his father's legacy of madness, and the baffling news of a magical child crushing him. "Proceed, Vihan," he said, the defeat heavy in his voice. "Proceed with the litany of our failures."
Rega leaned back in his carved chair, fingers steepled, his gaze fixed on a point beyond his Commander. Vihan, had been speaking for the better part of an hour, his voice a low drone recounting the latest series of setbacks on the northern border. Each word seemed to add another layer to the oppressive weight in the room.
"…and the trade delegation from Dakara refuses to proceed, my King," Vihan was saying, his tone carefully neutral, though the slump of his shoulders betrayed his discouragement. "They cited 'unholy abominations' near the Blackwood pass. Apparently, a single well-aimed fire arrow from a nervous guard caused an entire… unit… to ignite like kindling."
Rega's mind, already sifting through the tedious list of Vihan's reported failures, drifted to Njiru. Ah, Njiru, his ambitious Master Necromancer, and his much-vaunted army of the undead. A faint, humorless smile touched Rega's lips. What grand pronouncements Njiru had made – an unstoppable legion, impervious to fear and pain, the ultimate weapon to solidify Rega's dominion over Liptus and its fractious territories. The reality, Rega mused, had been far less glorious.
His undead soldiers, it turned out, were indeed impervious to fear, but spectacularly vulnerable to almost everything else. They were initially an impressive terror tactic against superstitious peasants or soldiers, yes, but laughably ineffective against anyone who knew even the most rudimentary fire or holy spells. A child with a blessed slingshot or a farmer with a pitchfork and a torch could, and often did, reduce Njiru's 'invincible' warriors to piles of smoldering bones or sanctified dust. Rega recalled early reports with a grimace – entire platoons of the dead dissolving under a single cleric's chanted prayer, or scattering in flaming disarray when confronted by a determined village militia brandishing burning branches. The cost in resources to raise them, only to see them so easily dispatched, had been galling.
A waste of perfectly good corpses, Rega had initially thought. But he was nothing if not pragmatic. If they couldn't fight, perhaps they could work. And so, Njiru's necromantic efforts, and the tireless bodies they produced, were now primarily used to bolster the kingdom's labor force. The undead were currently 'serving' in the iron mines of the Dragon's Tooth mountains and felling ancient trees in the vast, untamed Whisperwood. No need for food, or rest, or wages. No complaints about the crushing darkness or the back-breaking labor. In that, at least, they were proving their worth, outperforming any living worker in sheer, unceasing output.
He had even, in a moment of what he now considered naive optimism, attempted to deploy them in the expansive farmlands along the Serene River. The reaction had been… predictable. The people of Liptus, while grudgingly tolerating the dead toiling deep beneath the earth or in distant, unpopulated forests, drew the line at skeletal hands harvesting their yams or withered fingers tending their cassava. Whispers of tainted crops and blighted earth had quickly escalated to furious delegations at the palace gates, to burning effigies of 'the Bone King' – him – and thinly veiled threats of open revolt from the powerful farming guilds. Having the undead touch their food, it seemed, was an offense even his most loyal subjects could not stomach. Riots would have been an understatement.
So, mining and logging it was. Njiru's once-feared undead legion, Rega reflected as Vihan finally wound down his dismal report, were far more useful to him as tireless, mindless workers than they ever had been as soldiers. He wondered idly if Njiru felt the sting of that irony, his grand creations reduced to little more than magically animated tools. Probably not. The necromancer was too engrossed in his dark arts, too convinced of his own indispensable power. And perhaps, Rega conceded, he was indispensable, in his own peculiar way. The mines had never been so productive.
He waved a dismissive hand, cutting off Vihan's concluding remarks. "Enough, Vihan. The undead will continue their… civic duties. Send word to the Dakara delegation that the Blackwood pass will be cleared by living patrols. And double the guard on the grain shipments. The living, at least, have the sense to fear fire."