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Zargothrax scowled as he pushed back the hood of his robe in wain hope that this time it would stay properly sitting where it was supposed to be, and gazed at the construction work happening around him.
He had to admit, even though he did so unwillingly and also despite the fact that it felt like pulling teeth, that the rabble who proudly called themselves “Chaos Wizards” had managed to do things right and even without setting on fire everything that could be set on fire (and even some things that, according to the laws of nature, should not be possible to set on fire, as the group’s history, unfortunately, had shown). In his opinion, the workflow did leave to wish for better, but in general things were going well, and the undead were just as good as the ones he created, despite the fact that they could do with some purely cosmetic upgrades.
Maybe the lot had, indeed, learned something from him. Zargothrax liked to think, he was an excellent teacher (when he felt like being one), and maybe with time some of his greatness was, indeed, going to rub off on Tharon-Zul and the likes.
Well. Maybe not on Tharon-Zul. Hopefully on somebody else. That guy was a slimy, chattering imp. Zargothrax really had to find a replacement to the so-called “cult leader”, even though that ought not to be much of a problem, since the standards were abysmal to begin with.
“As you can see, My Liege, we have made excellent progress!” Tharon-Zul interrupted Zargothrax’s train of thought, and the sorcerer who had just been amusing himself by imagining a thousand ways of killing the imbecile, had to restrain himself so he would not throw the Chaos Wizard off of the scaffolding. Although knowing his luck, the man would land safely in a pile of discarded rags, and the greatest injury he suffered would be to his self-esteem. “The work is going steadily, and save for a few minor accidents and one case of attempted sabotage from outside, the workflow has been pretty much uninterrupted.”
“I assume everything is going according to schedule, then?” Zargothrax tried to sound interested in the project at hand, not in vaporising his second-in-command in all things wizardry in a hundred painful ways.
“Yes, Sire! We took several precautions, to ensure a steady flow of the workforce in your absence, Your Dark Eminency!”
“Workforce? The undead, yes?” Zargothrax felt the need to clarify, for one could never know with these incompetent nitwits, and Tharon-Zul nodded enthusiastically.
“Yes, Sire! We’ve received excellent help!”
“Received. Help?”
“You see,” the wizard fumbled around with his hands for a bit and brushed a speck of dust off his robes, “at the beginning, it was very hard to make the undead do what they were supposed to, without your guidance! You know, they’ve no brain at all! They even ate two of our Initiates! And it’s very hard to find adequate wizards these days! So! We outsourced!”
“You… outsourced?” Zargothrax hoped, the confusion was present in his voice only, for then he could always claim those around him had merely misheard.
By his best will, the dark wizard could not imagine a single necromancer out there whom these buffoons could have outsourced to. Not when he, Zargothrax, in person, had been very thorough with cleansing the lands of every single wizard who would not pledge loyalty to the new Emperor of Fife while being able to stand up to his undead hordes, and the only wizard currently outside of his reach would have never agreed to help, even if Ralathor knew how to raise the dead. Which he did not, otherwise Zargothrax would not have had to learn it on his own, damn it!
Unless…
Zargothrax felt his eye twitch.
“Yes, Your Evil Overlordness!” Tharon-Zul almost beamed, completely unaware of anything that was going on in the head of his superior right now. “And I must say, he’s been of great help!”
“He?” For once, Zargothrax was glad about the hood falling and obscuring his face right now. “Do not tell me you—“
“Well, well, well, look who’s finally decided to grace us with his presence! If it isn’t the fucking hack himself!”
”Tharon-Zul?” the wizard hissed.
“Yes, my Dark Emperor?”
“I will skin you alive. With a butter knife,” Zargothrax stated, before turning to face the inevitable.
The inevitable tended to arrive in quite an array of shapes and sizes, from letters tied to stones launched through windows, to dragons, and everything else in-between. In this case, however, the inevitable had arrived in the shape of a bald man of indiscernible age who had stepped out of the doorway behind them unnoticed. A man of extraordinary presence, he wore a fine, tailored two-piece suit in crimson and black, under just as fine of a dark grey coat with ornate embroidery, and long black boots with a row of silver buttons running down their length. His most prominent feature was a long, raw-looking scar slicing across the right side of his face, and whatever had left it there had taken the vision in that eye with it, leaving it white and dead, in a stark contrast to the piercing blue of its left counterpart. The man’s hands were dirty with grey earth, and he leaned onto a fancy cane with silver handle as he walked.
There was something otherworldly, almost demonic, about his appearance.
“Dead,” Zargothrax growled through his teeth; a little more, and his voice would have been physically dripping tar.
“You still aren’t, far as I can see.”
“What do you want here, you pompous freak?”
“Such warm greeting, I am almost touched. But to answer your question,” the man casually waved back three figures lingering behind him, and they retreated into the shadow cast by the scaffolding, “I am here because I was asked for help. Something about them having no idea what to do with all the undead, after their glorious leader left. By the way, you wouldn’t happen to know when this leader will be back, would you? He sounds like an interesting one.“ Dr. Dead spread his arms in a grand gesture. “A fellow scientist, at last!”
Zargothrax had to resist the urge to throw a couple curses at this insolent fool.
“Listen here, you foolish mortal—Wait, are you even mortal?”
“Going to test that, you charlatan? With what? That magical knife of yours?”
There was a smug expression on Dead’s face, as he pulled the last sentence longer than it had any right to be.
“Why don’t you crawl back under the tombstone you came from and leave this to a professional?” the wizard hissed.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know that you become expert on the undead, by finding rusty garbage in a swamp.”
Zargothrax growled, having decided he would not entertain this argument any further.
“I would gladly go back to my studies,” Dead continued, pretending he had not noticed a thing, “but, I am afraid I was contracted to do this. As you know, colleague, my zombies only obey me,” the man flashed a grin that had crossed the line that lay beyond feral a long time ago, before he gestured at the area they were in general, “therefore I must stay until this… project… of yours is complete. We wouldn’t want this construction site to turn into a massacre, would we now?”
“You can just leave with them. I’m surprised you didn’t know that, Doctor.”
“I could,” Dr. Dead inclined his head, “but. It would be a fucking shame to waste all the material I’ve gathered for this. Not to mention the hours of work put into it. Some of us actually work for their success, instead of leaving it to others, to figure it out.”
“If you must know, I was parlaying with the goblin kind.” With this, Zargothrax began walking down the boardwalk, and to his great disappointment, he could hear both the steps of Tharon-Zul as well as the unwanted contractor following him. Behind them trailed the characteristic sounds of undead dragging their feet across floorboards, courtesy of the trio accompanying the doctor.
“Hm.” Dead hummed, and it almost sounded like approval. “Hmmm. I say, it’s about damn time somebody did that for those poor devils.”
“Aww, jealous you didn’t get there first?”
“I am not interested in the living which I cannot turn. Goblinoids are therefore of no interest, and no use to me. And they would likewise not be interested in what I can offer, either. I’ll gladly leave them to you. But enough about that. Care to shed some light on what this will be once it’s finished? I admit, I am quite curious about that part. For all your… assistant’s… eagerness to elaborate on what needs to be done, he has been surprisingly evasive about what it is you are building.”
“A chateau, and that’s all you need to know.” Zargothrax brushed him off. “Not that it’ll give you much, if you do.”
“A chateau?” Dead cocked an eyebrow. “And who is being pompous now, colleague?”
“Dirty plastics and mould on the walls are more of a you-aesthetic. So are dead, half-chewed rats everywhere.”
“I would be a complete fool, to let people know where I am at any given moment. Do not work where you live; that is what I go by. Tharon-Zul also showed up at my laboratory, not my actual house, just like you did.”
Zargothrax made a mental note to ensure the next cult leader he had would be better at gathering intel on their adversaries.
They passed a few platforms on their way down, with the undead not only not scurrying out of their way, which was in complete opposite to what was expected of them in his domain, but also ignoring those who walked past. Zargothrax cursed under his breath as he was forced to walk around a pair of zombies busy setting up an ugly statue of an even uglier gargoyle (could never have too many gargoyles perched everywhere), instead of them running the moment they saw him incoming. In fact, the wizard was not sure they even noticed him coming in the first place.
“But hey, I understand!” the doctor continued. “Every evil wizard ought to have his evil castle… or chateau, in some cases… where he can sit and make his evil plans. Well, no, I’m actually lying here. I understand everything but that tacky statue of yours. Oh! Excuse me for a moment, colleague.”
A commotion had arisen in the courtyard where the supplies lay piled into neat heaps for easy access. A Deathknight of Crail was cursing at one of the undead, the creature’s crime being running into him with a basket full of bricks that were now scattered on the ground as the knight sought retaliation for this offence. A small, insignificant transgression that had completely accidentally targeted somebody who was not supposed to be in the yard in the first place. The unfortunate zombie endured both the curses and the assault like a zombie would, while attempting to do its assigned task and filling the same basket with building materials again.
“Hey!” Dead had raised his voice only slightly, but it was enough to catch the attention of the deathknight.
Slowly, the doctor shook his finger at the man, and there was something threatening in that motion. After that, he turned to look at Zargothrax.
“Be my guest!” The wizard shrugged and gestured towards the deathknight.
The deathknight, on his turn, had suddenly become very aware that, right after the man had spoken, eerie silence had settled upon the courtyard as every and all hammers, saws, and other tools had ceased. Every single set of dead, grey eyes in the yard, including the ones of the undead standing at his arm’s length, were now fixed upon him, their owners almost motionless, save for swaying lightly in place. He lifted his head and met the doctor’s eyes, and his face shifted from confusion to fear which then became sheer panic. Zargothrax grimaced and noted something about almost pitying the fool, before stating, to Tharon-Zul who had produced a notebook and a pen for this occasion, that in the future they should filter deathknight hopefuls for cowardice as well.
Dr. Dead snapped his fingers, before turning on his heel and walking back to the two wizards without sparing a second thought about the scene that began unfolding in the courtyard almost instantly, or the piercing screams that accompanied it. Zargothrax raised both eyebrows for a second, before he shrugged again and followed the doctor’s example. Tharon-Zul, slightly green in the face, trailed behind them, but now determinedly staying away from the three undead who kept Dead company at all times.
***
“Let me guess,” Dr. Dead mentioned, as matter-of-factly as it was possible with him, when they had almost reached what was going to become the main hall in the future, “you’re still getting your deathknights dragged in kicking and screaming? Makes me glad I never had such problem.”
“Of course, you didn’t.” Zargothrax snorted at this statement. “And the people who were running from you merely did so because you fancied a challenge.”
“If you had let people who learned who you are escape at the beginning, you wouldn’t be here, would you now?”
The laugh that Zargothrax gave acknowledging this statement was nothing if not self-satisfied.
“I have been thorough with that, I admit!” the wizard stated, completely and entirely shameless.
Through a large arch that was going to support the mightiest, most magnificent door one had ever seen in the Land of Fife (at least according to the craftsman responsible for its creation), the small group entered the building. Upon arrival, they were greeted with more clutter and orderly chaos characteristic to construction sites everywhere, and Zargothrax thought, not without sadness, how it would probably still be a year before he could even begin moving in. Provided he still wanted to move. Why not simply leave the chateau as a secondary residency for when the pyramids were due for a good cleaning? He figured he would see how he felt about that when it was time to move.
“Doctor! Doctor, a moment of your time, if I may!” A woman intercepted them here, noticing Zargothrax at the last moment and making a curtsy at him, accompanied by a quick, Lord Zargothrax, before she shoved past Tharon-Zul.
“Madame Colette!” Dead took her hand and raised it to his lips for a greeting.
“Oh, you are ever the flirt!” She brushed him off with a giggle. “Here are the reports you wanted. Productivity is up entire twenty percent this week! We’ve never seen it go up this fast before! At this speed, the base constructions will be done within a month, give or take, and then we can finally move on to the interior. The architects are ready and set to be let loose, their words not mine! They really want to see how the undead will fare with some of their more… ehm… experimental ideas.”
“Tell them,” lazily, Dead listed through the papers he had been handed, and his facial expression changed from curiosity to satisfaction, to delight, as he did, “that they will be able to begin soon. There are a lot of people in this… kingdom, to put it one way… who want nothing to do with this nonsense and who would happily be freed from their worldly problems. And that’s not counting all the material that the Deathknights of Crail bring in constantly.”
“I shall tell them so, then!” His assistant nodded. “They will be delighted. They’ve been arguing about whether or not it’s possible to get some statues up to the vaults, but previously we couldn’t test that; the casualties among workers we might have suffered were too great of a risk, against having a few stone figures on the ribs up there.”
“Please assure them on my behalf, Madame, if it can be done at all, it will be done. The chosen ones are very crafty about all sorts of tasks. And please pass this on to Grand Master Proletius, would you?” Doctor handed her an open envelope. “I need some highly specific ingredients for my work, and I really rather not run out at the worst moment possible. The deathknights will be able to track them down better than regular folks. Or worse, merchants.”
“Will do, doctor!” Colette put the letter away among other papers, before bidding a hasty good-bye and curtsying at Zargothrax again, and disappeared through the arch that was most likely to become another magnificent entryway into the next hall over.
“When the fuck did you get a secretary?” Zargothrax cocked an eyebrow.
“An assistant,” Dr. Dead corrected him.
“An assistant, pardon me. When the fuck did he get an assistant,” Zargothrax addressed Tharon-Zul now, “and why do I only have you?”
“I ask myself the same thing constantly!” Tharon-Zul did not even bother to keep his voice down any longer. The only saving grace for him was that Zargothrax saw him roughly the same as a piece of furniture most of the time – equally not worth the bother.
A few more rooms and door arches later, they had concluded their tour, as they found themselves on a stone platform surrounded by a magnificent ornate dark grey stone fence, with stairs of dark marble leading from it and down into the area that was going to become an enclosed garden. This appeared to be the first space in the whole chateau that was nearing completion, with no simple construction workers or zombies anywhere in sight. In fact, the only workers here were three men who were busy laying out complicated mosaics on the floor and who acknowledged the approaching group with a quick raise of their hats before concentrating on their work again.
“Nice terrace,” Dead noted, as he waved the undead trio to stay behind. “Secluded. Intimate. Didn’t think you to be one to provide for lovebirds under your care.”
“And you, of course, would be the leading world expert in all things love and romance, wouldn’t you?” Zargothrax tried to be subtle in his enjoyment of the man having practically handed him the opportunity to stab right where it would hurt, as he did just that.
Dead’s right eye twitched.
“But my Dark Overlordness,” why Tharon-Zul had decided to interject right now and with this particular piece of information was a mystery to Zargothrax, yet here he was, speaking up right now, “may I remind you that your own attempts to court—”
”Tharon-Zul.”
“Yes, My Liege?”
“With a dull butter knife.”
Tharon-Zul muttered something that sounded suspiciously like ”fine, do that, see how fast everything goes to shit then” but that also went ignored by everybody present. To Zargothrax, it mattered little, for the moment he could have revelled in was lost, revealing his own misfortunes to his adversary. And Dead, indeed, looked so smug about it, one could think he had just been given access to the greatest secrets stored in the most secure vaults in the Intergalactic Empire of Fife.
“Do. Not.” Zargothrax hissed.
“Oh, don’t worry, colleague! On the contrary to you, I won’t say a thing.” Dead gave him such a satisfied, feral grin that the wizard began wondering whether throwing a few curses would really be such an unacceptable course of action for dealing with this problem. “But. I will cherish this memory forever.”
Zargothrax decided, he was not going to honour this statement with an answer. Instead, he pushed past the three zombies in the doorway and stomped off to what was, in theory, going to become a mighty throne room one day. Provided he did not obliterate the whole building before that and have them start over again, this time with no adversaries present, just to spite both Dead and himself.