Intro
One thousand years ago the planet Earth was one single being. A single soul with a fusion of magic and machine, both very much in their infancy. Humans led the technology side of things, while other races, infused with magic, worked to advance their respective field. But it didn’t take long for them to out pace the humans, and soon man became jealous.
And so the humans worked to harness magic as well. They discovered they were almost built for it. The human soul worked as a conduit to the Earth, one that magnified the powers of magic. It didn’t take long for humans to find the source of the Earth’s magic, the giant rock in the sky everyone called the Moon.
Giant towers called spires were constructed and served to control the magic so that the humans could use its power. But they were still jealous of the other races, who all possessed unique qualities and were never quite so average. Man wanted the gnomes and dwarves vast knowledge for magical artifact craft; the immortality, strength, and speed of the vampires; the massive psionic powers of the mind-flayers; and the natural ability to fly given to the bird people, to name a few. And so the experimentation began.
The humans also sought to enslave the other races, but this did not sit well with any of them at all. A massive war was launched, but the humans eventually found themselves outnumbered. Some powerful humans turned against their own kind, appalled by the jealousy their own race was capable of as well as their despicable willingness to perform experiments on themselves and others. Using a great spell developed by the teamed efforts of the dwarves, fairies, gnomes, and rouge humans the planet was finally split into two worlds, one with magic and the other without. Every single human was banished to the non-magic world, and a curse put on the magic one. Should any human ever come back they will transform into a decrepit image of their former self called ghouls. They would also forget their past lives forever so that they can never go back to warn the people of what was later to be called Normal Earth.
However, one of the races we will be concentrating on is something that began as a human experiment in immortality. The humans were able to bring back the dead, but were unable to restore normality, causing the person to take on a state of undead. They were mindless creatures who sought only to feed on the flesh of the living, hunting them down endlessly until their bodies would finally rot away. Their bite would also infect their victims causing them to die and take on the same undead state as themselves. One powerful human mage by the name of Viratea had someone managed to bring herself back completely, without being a mindless monster. Her flesh even regenerated instead of rotted away!
But she was the only one of her kind, and had long since seen the horrors of what her and her colleagues had done. They had created a new race, and many wanted to simply kill off the monsters completely, the zombies as they came to be known. This greatly depressed Viratea, so she researched a way to reverse the effects and maybe give her zombie brethren a new hope at normality in their quickly diminishing lives.
First she was able to develop the cold spheres, globes that generated auras of cold that a zombie could use to keep his body from rotting away as fast. Then she managed to create a new species of insect, slugs whose slime would work to preserve the zombies almost endlessly.
But the matter of their ruined minds eluded her. Viratea researched and researched, dabbled in magics for many months. As a result her own power continued to grow greater and greater, but none of it could help her friends attain a level of normality they needed to function in society.
Eventually Viratea grew into a deep depression. She went to a Ley Line and prayed to it, prayed to the great magic stone in the sky to give her the answer she seeked, to free her race from the oppression of endless hunger and mindlessness. She prayed for many days straight but got no answer. Viratea had given up hope. She knew that soon the zombies would be rounded up and slain all at once to erase their presence from the world, ending their spreading curse. In her depression she threw herself in to the Ley Line, the pillar of pure magic that connected the Earth’s soul to the Moon, ending her own life.
However, this had unforeseen effects on the world. Viratea’s power was so great, that when her soul was shattered into the Ley Line it caused something very strange to happen. Every zombie in the world was given a small piece of her soul. It bestowed all them with two new and unique abilities. First they gained what she had so long worked to discover, a complete and conscious mind. Secondly they gained the ability to reproduce, allowing them to sustain their race.
The zombies proved to be very potent warriors, and were quickly employed by the vampires. The Zombie Royal Guard was formed, it’s founding member a zombie named Krontus. Using their newfound strength the zombies and vampires were key in taking the spire from the humans that Viratea had gone to. This was one of many spires that were taken over, and many races followed suit with the zombies and vampires, combining their forces to create a hierarchy. A major race to govern over each spire and a lesser race to protect them. After the humans were driven from their world, banished to a realm based entirely in technology, peace was established, a peace that remained for well over a thousand years.
Until one day, when a hole was torn into the very fabric of reality. A great evil was birthed into a world, its mother the devil and its father man.
Chapter One
Trask opened his bright yellow eyes with deep black slits in their centers. Bits of black surrounded the pupil and at the edges of his eyes where the iris ended more black overcame his eyeballs. On his pale green face he wore a sneer, a mischievous half smile. His long, fiery red hair was slicked back to keep it out of his face, and two long pointed green ears poked out the sides of his head.
He rose and peered around him at the empty field he resided in. His height was nothing out of the ordinary, not too tall but not very short either, just an acceptable in between. His olive frame was muscular, but not like that of a bodybuilder; it was lithe. Here and there he had lines of deep purple stitches running along his lime arms, and the clothes he wore were tattered and unkempt, as if they were the only pair of clothes he was ever given and ever wore. Holes poked through them and where the holes had become too big, a stitched on patch had been applied. His hands looked completely mangled, as if he had shoved them into something large and sharp that spun a lot, but were then stitched back together again by some sort of professional hand re-assembler. He went barefoot, weathered green feet topping off his powerful legs.
He scratched the back of his head and raised a confused eyebrow, his fingers losing themselves in the forest of the flaming mane.
“How did I end up here?”
He suddenly noticed a monstrous, steep, grassy hill that he was sure had not been there before, looming before him, beckoning him to ascend it. A dull, unassuming gray sky lazily mulled about above him, trying to decide whether or not it was going to rain, snow, or just float away. Ultimately it just sighed in indecision and trickled a slight breeze into the area. Trask shrugged and trudged up the hill.
As he walked he looked around his depressingly plain surroundings. Aside from the hill, grass stretched out for miles in every direction. Strange, he thought, I’ve never heard of such a boring place with nothing but grass and sky. He watched as tiny grass parties erupted all over the place from little blasts of winds, unaware of the fact that the wind was picking up around him.
A blast of wind caught him off guard and almost threw him into the grassy rug. Trask braced himself as the gust continued to pour down on him. It tore angrily at his entire body, as if trying to rip away his flesh. The wind continued to howl fiercely before finally running out of breath. He opened his eyes widely, shocked at the sky’s uncalled for outburst. Darting his eyes around suspiciously he continued his trek up the hill.
The wind was growing more noticeably steady, and at this thought Trask shivered, and then stopped suddenly.
Did I just shiver?
Something he had never experienced before was overcoming him, a bitter, stale pain in his flesh. It made him feel stiff, a feeling he only associated with sleeping in his family’s cooler. As a result of this familiar memory he began to grow tired, in addition to feeling this new pain. He looked left and right, behind him, and shivered again, but not from the cold. He forced his legs into a jog up the hill, wanting to get to the top as quickly as possible. He looked ahead into the wind in hopes of spying the top of the hill, but it was impossibly long. He felt as if he were running in place, and had to constantly look down to make sure he wasn’t.
Again, he was forced to stop, as his eyes stung while the wind poked its dry unforgiving fingers into them. Trask put his hand over his eyes and noticed liquid was coming out of them.
“What?!”
He shook his head fiercely and sprinted up the hill with his hands over his eyes, terrified at what was slowly overcoming him.
“I’m dead! This isn’t supposed to happen!”
He continued shouting to himself as he went up the hill, the pain in his flesh increasing as the wind grew angrier and beat down on him with a cyclone of billowy fists. He had to stop shouting as his chest began to burn, rising and falling quickly as if it were trying to take in something. He did his best to ignore this strange pain as his mouth uncontrollably gulped down mouthfuls of air but had trouble doing so, because his throat and mouth felt like they were freezing up. He raced up the hill even faster, panic-stricken.
The pain in tandem with his fear was becoming almost unbearable. He worried they would never end, fearing he was going to die in the strangest way possible for a zombie. He broke through a force field of air, the wind made a loud bang behind him as it stopped. He was at the top of the hill.
Two familiar figures were kneeling on the ground, heavy chains littering their bodies adhering them there. The man on the left had shaggy dark red hair, and the same dead green skin tone shared by Trask. His face was masked with a full thick mustache and a beard that looped up the sides of his face into sideburns that joined his hair with long pointed ears jutting out behind them. His eyes were closed, with bushy father-like eyebrows reclining above them. On his right shoulder was a battered and beaten grey metal shoulder plate that was attached to a leather strap which ended at his large armored belt. He wore a slightly tattered but obviously cared for dark red-brown shirt and a pair loose black pants. At his side was a sheath with a simple looking hilt poking out the end of it. The man was tall and muscular, but looked rather diminutive kneeling in chains.
The man on the right was much, much older, his ancient malachite face etched with thousands of wrinkles. His eyes were also closed, with white grandfatherly eyebrows hunching over them, and a square jaw jutting out of his elderly face. He was also tall, but his frame was indiscernible underneath the golden armor he was clad in. A very large ornamented spear also hung from his back. The armor gave him a huge appearance, like that of an ancient warrior left to protect the treasures of a long dead king at a forgotten temple just waiting to be raided by would be adventurers.
“Dad? Grandfather? What’s going on?”
Trask jerked forward and looked down at his legs. They were frozen in place and stuck to the ground, rooting him there. He struggled with his legs, jerking his body foreword, clawing at the air, doing whatever he could to force them to move. His father and grandfather slowly, weakly, open their eyes and looked up at him.
“Trask,” his father breathed out, “you must run.”
“He’s after us, to steal our souls,” his grandfather said.
“What are you talking about? What’s going on? Why can’t I move?!”
In frustration, Trask punched himself in the thigh, but was unpleasantly surprised to find he was still feeling the strange effects of a living creature. He cried out in shock and pain.
“I don’t understand this. Why do I feel pain?”
“You have to get away from here,” his father said, staring at the ground.
“If you see him, just run, don’t fight,” his grandfather said.
Trask grabbed the sides of his head and shut his eyes tightly.
“What are you talking about?! Run from who?!”
Everything remained silent for a few moments, save the light sound of the breeze whipping around the hill. The sky had long since taken on a much darker tone, having decided that it might just rain after all.
Trask opened his eyes again and looked at his father. He was just staring ahead blankly and weakly as if he was hypnotized by something. Trask had never seen such a mute expression on his father’s face, and when he looked at his grandfather, his state was no different. His permanent old man grimace was replaced with a sad, defeated stare into space.
It was at this time Trask started to notice something happening between his father and grandfather. A small patch of grass was swaying back and forth as if they were slowly rocking to a concert put on by the air. They would sway back and forth, back and forth, and then fall to the ground, dead. Their color would fade away into a dull mulch green creating an entire patch of green dying or dead grass. The patch slowly grew larger and larger until it became about the size of a person’s shadow.
What Trask thought to be a plant poked up from the now dead patch of grass. Two tiny black buds poked up from the dirt, and his grandfather and father both stared at it, entranced. The ground exploded in front of the two buds as black hand with black serrated talons violently shot out of it. It grabbed at the ground to find something to hold on to until it settled on the chains around Trask’s father. Another onyx hand shot forth from the earth to grab onto the chains, pulling down Trask’s father as whatever it was pulled itself up.
The two tiny black buds quickly grew now until they came to meet at a sinister head. The creature hoisted itself out of the ground, dirt falling off of it, as if it had just come out a lake or stream after a refreshing swim. It pulled itself out of the ground and dusted off its terrible muscled arms and legs, brushed off its huge foreboding body, and shook clean its vicious thick black spikes and horns that littered different parts of its atrocious form.
It glowered at Trask with pitch black eyes that contained a burning explosion for pupils. It grinned at him with a smile filled with many assortments of different weapons, pointed ears jutting out from the sides of its head, almost blending in with the many horns that adorned its skull. High and thin cheek bones almost gave the monster's face a skull-like appearance, and if it weren’t for the large, hooked nose that flared with hatred and evil, its face would almost be mistaken for the blacken and charred skeletal remains of a burn victim.
It looked down on Trask’s father, its smile growing bigger. Its body moved as if it were made entirely out of obsidian snakes who were forced into a hulking sinister jet black body. It knelt down next to Trask’s father, who simply stared at it without any hint of emotion. It brought its twisted face right up against him, nuzzling the man’s cheek.
Trask watched in confusion and disgust. The monster closed its eyes and kissed Trask’s father’s forehead. Without opening its eyes it wrapped its fingers around his neck. Trask’s cried out as the demon tore his father’s head off. Purple slugs and slime oozed out of his father’s neck. Trask screamed out for his father.
“Dad! Dad, we have to get your head back on! Why aren’t you doing anything!? Grandpa, please! Why are you both just sitting there?!”
His grandfather turned his head to Trask and simply repeated himself from before, telling him he needed to run and get away.
“But I can’t even move!”
A sickening noise came from the monster. Short quick breaths that oozed with the tortured screams of forever imprisoned souls and the buzzing of a thousand locust. The monster’s vocal cords were a tube that was directly connected to the bowels of Hell itself. The noise that came from the monster as his body quivered could only be described as a laugh, but only in the most perverted and twisted sense that the sound of laughter could ever be.
It hurled the man’s head at Trask. The head bounced off his chest with a sickening thud and was caught it. He stared down into his father’s still emotionless eyes.
“Dad, please! Do something! Please!”
The monster plunged his fist deep into Trask’s father’s neck. A crackling green aura burned out of his body. Trask recognized the color of his father’s soul. He looked down into his hands to see his father’s face contorted in a look of pain, his eyes rolling back in his head. Trask could feel his soul draining away, vanishing. It was quickly being sucked out of his body and being absorbed into the monster’s own. Trask felt weak and powerless, his body completely immobile.
With a loud pop the aura died away, his father’s soul completely drained. The monster pulled his arm out of the body, another sick round of slugs and slime pouring out with it. Slugs were clinging to his arm, writhing in pain and dying but unable to let go. Trask screamed out in rage and did the only thing he could think of. He hurled his father’s head at the monster’s back. Instead of hurting the beast it harmlessly bounced off and rolled away. Trask cursed himself and wondered out loud why he just did that.
The monster strode over to the older man with a new spring in his step. It grabbed the chin of the man hard and held his head up so that Trask’s grandfather was staring the demon in the eyes. The cracking of an archaic brittle jaw was all too audible, but the old man didn’t seem to notice or care. The monster’s eyes for a moment almost grew kind and the mocking depraved image of a smile crossed its face once again. Without a change of an expression it used its other hand and tore through the man’s neck as if he were a pig, unexpectent of the blade to its neck and all to willing to be put through its slaughter, unknowing of its fate right up until its dead.
Trask howled again. The demon dropped its trophy and dug his arm into the body of the old man. His head rolled away from the two of them and rested with his vacant eyes facing Trask and mouth agape.
“Stop it! Stop it! Why are you doing this! If I could move I’d tare you apart!”
The demon almost seemed to stop.
“I beg you, stop. Please show my grandfather some mercy,” Trask said, “he’s an old man. He’s retiring soon. You’ve already forced me to watch you take my father, please.”
The beast sharply turned around and let out a loud, forced laugh. He plunged his arm deeper into the man’s neck causing a huge orange explosion to burst forth. Trask felt his grandfather’s soul drain away even faster than his father’s, with the demon staring at him and laughing. With loud WOOSH his grandfather’s soul disappeared, a part of the monster now.
It yanked its arm out, hitting Trask in the face with his grandfather’s bile. He closed his eyes and flinched hard.
Trask bolted upright in the darkness. He looked around but could see nothing.
“Am I in the Earth’s soul?”
His eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, and soon he recognized the familiar blue spheres that lined the walls.
“It was just a dream,” he said, and took a deep sigh of relief.
A door slammed open at the top of a flight of stairs, letting bright morning light violate the comfortable darkness in the room. Trask cried out in surprise, and a senile voice cried out in surprise back.
“What’re you still doing down there boy!”
“I-I just woke up, I--”
“Just woke up? Just woke up?!”
The old man stomped down the stairs, his armor clank, clank, clanking with every step. He loomed over Trask.
“You want to take over your father’s position when I retire and you’re still sleeping in?!”
“Hey, shut up gramps, I was having some pretty scary dreams!”
Trask pushed himself off the floor and scrambled past his grandfather. He was thrown back into the floor from the pole end of his grandfather’s spear and held there.
“What did you say’t me boy?”
“Get off me!”
“Don’t disrespect yer elders, sonny, it’s downright uncivilized of ya!”
Trask shouldered the pole off of his body and in one motion rolled away and up the first half of the stairs.
“Don’t run away from me boy, you’re gonna have more than scary dreams to worry about when I get done with ya!”
Trask burst out of the door and into the kitchen, his father, mother, and younger sister and brother all staring at him. His father chuckled and shook his head while his brother and sister started giggling. His mother smiled warmly at him. She gestured to a bowl at the table filled with slithering purple slugs.
“Your corpse slugs are ready honey.”
Trask muttered his gratitude under his breath and sat in front of his breakfast next to his brother, not looking anyone in the eye, shoulders slumped in slight embarrassment.
“Dregg you need to teach this kid more respect if you ever want him to take yer place,” his grandfather said as he clanked and clattered into the room. He plopped down hard at the stone table and grabbed a fist full of slugs.
“Sleepin’ this late is a sure sign of laziness!” He shoved the slugs into his mouth and continued to ramble on, causing whatever slugs that escaped his maw to pelt his family.
A slug somersaulted out of his mouth and did flying flips across the table until if finally landed with an impressive thwack onto Trask’s left cheek. He glared at his grandfather.
“Now Krontus, there’s no need to argue at the table or lecture with your mouth full,” Trask’s mother said.
The old man opened his mouth to say something, but stopped short from the glare from Trask’s father. Silenced for the time being, he grabbed some more slugs and shoved them into his mouth.
“Trask,” his father began, “I want you to go into town today before we head out to the spire and pick up some slugs to bring to your uncle Bub.”
Trask swallowed a mouth full of slugs almost too quickly.
“What?! I don’t want to go see that crazy old brain dead freak!”
Trask’s mother reached across the table and slapped his head.
“That’s my brother you’re talking about! Don’t be so rude about his disability!”
“See! Look how disrespectful that boy is,” his grandfather shouted.
“And I think you should take Numies along with you,” his father added.
“But I wanna go too, pleeeeeease,” Letters said.
“But Letters, your mother needs you to help her with some things around the house.”
“Hmph,” Letters said, sticking out her lower lip. “I don’t wanna do no stupid chores.”
Trask’s younger brother looked at him with wide eyes, filled to their little brim with excitement. He couldn’t help but smile at his brother’s cute pudgy undead face.
“Alright,” he said jostling his brother’s reddish blonde hair. “I guess if I have to.”
Trask, carrying his younger brother on his shoulders, sauntered down the dirt path that leads into town. His family presided in the outskirts of the city, closer to the spire so that Trask, his father, and his grandfather could all get there with ease. It was also because their family was a bit famous amongst the zombies, so they moved out of town in order to avoid the public.
As Trask came into town he passed by several simple looking gray huts with hay thatched roofs. The zombies were minimalists; they only used and kept what they needed to survive. With the exception of a few rare cases the zombies lived in plain unassuming little huts, the insides of them always adorned with cold spheres to keep their bodies cool.
One of the few exceptions mentioned earlier was the runner of the only zombie marketplace. He employed a few other zombies to work under him, and worked hard to collect things. Having no need for money his means of trade were any interesting objects others could find.
“Trask, Numies, how are you doing today?” exclaimed the fat jolly zombie. As he spoke his rolls of fat quivered and shook. One of his eyes hung out of its socket.
“Hey Berret, we’re here to pick up some things for Bub.”
“Oh, that’s so nice of you kids, to go and see your sick old uncle like that!”
Berret began to gather up handfuls of corpse slugs from a container behind him and scoop them into a burlap sack.
“Hey mister, how come you let your eye hang out like that?” asked Numies.
Trask began to reprimand his younger brother, but Berret waved his hand.
“Not to worry Trask, he is but a little boy.”
He took his hanging eye between two fingers and put it close to Numies face.
“It gives me character, eh? It also helps me inspect my belongings to make sure they’re authentic.” He lowered the eye to Trask’s face, who promptly backed away a little.
“You do have something interesting for me today, eh?”
Trask dug deep into his pocket, which was a red piece of cloth crudely sewn onto his pants. He pulled out an empty little glass vial and handed it to Berret. Berret hastily grabbed the little vial and put his eye to it, looking the thing over and over.
“What is this you’ve brought me?”
“It’s a little empty vial that we keep blood in. Sometimes we have to escort vampires to different places, and they can grow weak and pass out in the natural sunlight. Usually they keep canteens on them, but it’s not unheard of for a vampire to suck away all his blood and then find out he’s out. That’s where these come in.”
“And this is what you keep it in? That’s pretty interesting, eh? Where you get the blood from?”
“Well, if you think it’s weird that they drink blood, where they get it from is even weirder! A long time ago vampires had to drink the blood of humans, when they were still here at least. But they didn’t much like that idea, and wanted to establish a peace with the humans.
“So they found this human who was a powerful mage and worked with him to find a way that the vampires could go on living without the need for human blood. You know how it’s always night at the vampire’s Spire?”
Numies and Berret both nodded.
“Well, that was the first thing they did. They made a spell that could create a sphere of nighttime around something. After the humans left and the vampires got the Spire they got together and created a big permanent one around it. But that human mage who was helping them was banished before he was able finished his research.
“As a result the vampires almost died! They sent some zombies over to the dwarves and gnomes to see if they could work something out. Didn’t take them long, and much to the vampires relief a giant heart was created in a deep basement of the Spire.”
“A heart!?” Berret and Numies said in unison.
“Yeah and veins throughout the walls of the Spire so that the heart could pump blood through out the whole thing!”
“Well that’s pretty disgusting, pumping blood through the walls of a whole big Spire like that,” Berret said rolling his eye around in his fingers. He shook his head and scooped a few more purple slugs into the sack. When he handed it to Trask the bottom of it was soggy and oozing with slime. Trask took the sack and slung it over his shoulder, hitting himself in the back with a sickening squishy noise, but seemed totally unaffaected by it.
“Thanks Berret! Oh, and about your eye.”
“Eh?”
“If you ever want it put back my mom, she,” Trask trailed off and then held up his hands to show his mother’s handiwork.
“She’s a master at putting us back together again.”
“That’s quite alright boy, I’m proud of my heritage, and this eyes cries that out for all to see. You look at some of us, like you two for example. Almost can’t tell your dead aside from your green skin. You just look like a green stitchy man. But look at me,” he held up his eye,”and you definitely know I’m dead.”
Trask gave Berret a confused half smile, who returned it with a big jolly grin.
“I’ll see you boys later, eh? Don’t be afraid to stop on by.”
Trask walked away, Numies still riding on his shoulders.
“So Numies, you think all that stuff about the vampires is pretty cool?”
“Oh, sure.”
Trask looked up at his younger brother, enveloping his stomach in a ball of flaming hair.
“Sure?”
“Yeah, like, it’s exciting.”
“You think you’re gonna do it with me and dad when you grow up?”
“Nah, that’s more Letters’ thing.”
“That’s interesting. I know I haven’t been around much recently, since I’ve been training so much with dad and grandpa.”
“S’okay Traskie! Granddaddy is retiring soon, and your gonna take daddy’s place so daddy can take his!”
“Yeah, that means you’ll get to hang out with gramps every day,” Trask said, putting more emphasis on the last two words. He grinned up at his little brother, but frowned when Numies looked away and drooped his shoulders.
“What’s wrong buddy, gramps is an okay guy. When he’s not spitting slugs and lecturing us.”
Numies hesitated at first, and seemed very reluctant to explain himself to his brother.
“Well, granddaddy, he,” he said and bit down on his lower lip. “He wants me to be a fighter like you and daddy.”
“Ooooooooooh.”
“And he wants sis to do what mommy was, but Letters is really strong! I think she could be as strong as you some day!”
“I understand buddy. I’ll talk to dad and see what he thinks. Maybe we can talk to gramps and set him out of his ways. You know how stubborn he can be, just like gramma. Thank Viratea she doesn’t live with us too.”
The two boys laughed together.
“What do you wanna do then?”
Numies smiled.
“I like what mommy does!”
Trask finally came to a stop in front of a shack with a large hole in the roof. He and Numies looked up at it.
“Ah man, I wonder how that happened. Have to tell mom about it when we get home. Me and dad’ll have to come out here and fix it sometime.”
Trask walked into the shack. It was dark and stale, with a slight hint of decaying flesh. In the corner sat a man wearing only a tattered pair of pants. His skin was much paler then Trask’s and Numies’ but still managed to share the same green tone. He had a vacant look in his eyes that suddenly reminded Trask of his dream, making him uncomfortable. Small patches of flesh on the man’s upper body were sort of rotting and decaying.
He frowned and set Numies down on the ground.
“Hey uncle Bub,” Trask shouted.
The man sat forward. “Who?”
He starred wide eyed around the room until his eyes finally came to rest on Trask.
“Tra… Tra…”
“Trask, Bub.”
Bub gave Trask a big stupid smile, his mouth a patchwork of teeth, some missing and some discolored or black.
“Visit?”
Bub pulled himself off the ground and shambled towards his nephews, his legs moving like the knees didn’t have any joints in them. Trask swore he didn’t have joints in his elbows until the man put his arms around him, the stench of decaying flesh strong in his nose.
Trask stiffly patted Bub on the back.
“H-hey Bub, how you doing? I brought Numies with me too.”
Bub put his hands on his knees and bent down as best he could to see Numies.
“Hello Num!”
Numies hid behind Trask’s legs. Bub, unaware of the concept of shy children, reached for Numies, who backed away. Trask’s took Bub by the shoulders when he finally felt the man was invading his personal space with his face buried in his legs and pulled him up to a normal stance. Numies was standing in the doorway.
“We didn’t come to stay for long Bub, mom just wanted to bring you some slugs.”
“Thank Traaaask!”
Again he embraced Trask, hanging on to him for what seemed like dear life.
“I’m going to say something to mom about the hole in your roof and see if dad and I can’t get out here to fix it tomorrow too.”
Another round of undead hugs commenced.
“We should really get going now, I have to get to the Spire with dad and gramps, okay?”
Bub opened up the sack and shoveled slugs into his mouth. He planted himself into the floor and continued to eat them, Trask taking this as his que to leave.
After walking a few feet away from Bub’s shack Trask picked up Numies and put him back on his shoulders.
“He’s creepy.”
“Yeah, I know, and he also doesn’t seem to be taking care of himself,” Trask said and sighed. “He might have to come live with us.”
“Whys he like that?”
Trask shrugged.
“I guess he, mom, and dad were all out in the Tentacle Swamps harvesting corpse slugs for the town when an old rotting tree just sort of fell over on Bub’s head. Mom can work magic with her hands, and Bub mostly looks pretty normal. But she doesn’t know anything about putting back together a person’s brain.
“I mean, not to say she didn’t try. She collected what she could of his brain and sewed it up, and Bub is lucky to be dead. He was just… never the same again.”
“Poor mommy. And Bub.”
After Trask and Numies arrived home he and his father made plans to fix Bub’s roof the next day. His mother and father also decided they needed to have a family discussion on what to do with Bub, but it had to wait. The three zombies had to leave for the Spire so they were late. Trask’s mother packed lunches for all of them, kissed Trask’s and his father goodbye, and awkwardly patted his grandfather on the shoulder.
As they left the house and began down the dirt path Trask decided to tell them about his dream.
“And when I got up to the top of the hill you and gramps were there, all tied down to the ground with some chains. You kept telling me to run away from something, but I couldn’t move.”
His father gave him a look of concern.
“What did we want you to run away from?”
“A monster, I think. A monster rose from the ground after you told me that. He was all black, and the grass died around him where ever he stood. His body had these spikes all over it and huge horns on his head too. It seemed like he had no lips to close his mouth so you could always see his big black scary teeth.”
His grandfather gave out a low wistle.
“Sounds like you know who.”
His father nodded.
“What happened next?”
Trask recalled the violence of the monster tearing his father’s head off, sucking away his soul, and then doing the same to his grandfather. Slugs and slimes pouring out of their bodies, the dead vacant looks in their eyes.
“I,” Trask wasn’t sure he wanted to worry them with a silly dream. “I don’t remember.”
“Bah,” croaked his grandfather.
The three of them walked in silence for a few moments.
“Dad, do you and gramps know who that monster was?”
His father and grandfather exchanged glances. His father gave one slow nod.
“I would advise you to follow our advice from your dream,” his father said.
“Huh? Who was it?”
“He’s a demon, boy. A black twisted soul crammed into a black twisted body. His name is Bblaq, as far as we know.”
“Bblaq? How do you know his name?”
“A few days ago a new Spire appeared several miles north of the vampire’s Spire. It was also close to the fairy Spire as well. The vampires and fairies called a meeting that your grandfather and I attended, along with some of the fairies werewolf guardians.”
“A whole new Spire just appeared?” asked Trask.
“Yes. We wanted more information, so the werewolves volunteered to send over a scout, Ozzus Kazzarous. A ghoul appeared at the fairy Spire a few days later, carrying Ozzus’ head.”
“What the hell happened to him,” Trask said.
“Nobody knows, boy. The fairies and wolves were in an uproar about the whole thing. Ozzus was the next alpha in line after Astro. Now all he has left is that loud mouthed daughter of his.”
“Hey, what’s wrong with that gramps, girls can’t be alphas?”
“Technically not, son,” his father said.
“Besides, girls don’t make good fighters, and that girl does nothing but fighting!”
“Come on gramps, I seen gramma beat you up plenty of times when you still lived with her.”
His grandfather stomped in front of him and blocked his path. He seemed abnormally tall to Trask right now. His face was like an angry mountainside, preparing to drop an avalanche on its unsuspecting prey.
“You don’t cross that line.”
Trask put his hands up and backed away.
“Hey, hey gramps, it was just a joke! I didn’t mean nothin’ by it!”
Trask’s father slapped his grandfather on the back and laughed.
“He pulled a good one over on you dad, you should’ve seen the look on your face.”
He glared at Trask’s father.
“Dregg Delpret don’t you dare take his side.”
Trask’s father put his hands up and backed away.
“Whoa, okay, sorry old man. Trask, apologize.”
Trask rolled his eyes.
“Sorry gramps. You know I didn’t mean anything by it.”
His grandfather huffed, turned around, and walked away from the two. Trask and his father looked at each other and shrugged.
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Submission Name: Undead Revenge (Chap1 In progress)
