Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The year is 3012, 1000 years into the future. The world is corrupt and beasts roam the shadows. Magic is a lost art, most of the books having been destroyed by the Catholics who gained control of the world in the 2000's. By 2200, there was no magic, no rock music, most musicians having been murdered by the 'Police', more like the Gestapo. These dead bodies were buried in a graveyard far from any city. In the beginning, there had been armed guards against the fans who would have wanted to steal the bodies.

Now, the graveyard stood empty, derelict, unguarded, full of skeletons. And on this particular night, a short, slender figure could be seen walking up the unkempt road to the gates, here and there sidestepping exposed roots or over pieces of junk thrown to the ground. A passing ray of moonlight illuminated the figure. It was a young woman who looked to be in her early 20's.

Entering the gates, she took no heed of the faded signs that read 'No Trespassing' and 'Violators punishable by death'. They creaked open, hinges unwilling to move. The sharp sound pierced the silence of the night, high and squealing. When they'd opened sufficiently to admit her, the girl slipped through, not bothering to open them any further.

She walked to the graves at the furthest side of the cemetery, making sure not to step on any of them, not exactly an east task when there wasn't enough light to see by. There was the last gravestone in the final row. The first poor sap to be killed and buried here. Crouching down, one hand snaked out, encased in a thick black leather glove, to rub off the dirt that had accumulated over the past thousand or so years,

The first name and birth-date were illegible, but the last name and date of death were somewhat legible. Some guy or maybe girl, surname Radke, murdered on January 18th of 2013.

Stepping back from the grave, the girl whispered something, pointing at the hard packed dirt over the grave. It lifted into the air, effortlessly, before being dumped onto the ground next to the grave. In removing it, she had managed to carve out an incline leading down to the coffin, for ease of access.

She stepped down the path. Standing over the coffin, she pulled a crowbar out of one of her tall boots. Then, she began to pry the lid off. She didn't care how much noise she made, as nobody had come anywhere near here in the past few centuries. The soft wood of the cheap coffin was easily shattered, and soon removed, to reveal the corpse within.

Whoever it was, seemed to be a fairly tall person, even though the body was shriveled by years below the ground. They had piercings and what looked like tattoos, something that hadn't happened often in centuries. Even though the girl standing over the corpse had a few herself, she couldn't help but feel surprised. They used to do it in parlors, not in the bathroom using safety pins and ink out of a pen.

She noticed that the corpse had no shirt and no breasts discernible. So a he, then. It wasn't surprising that the corpse was shirtless, because during that time of murder and bloodshed, people were killed and buried in whatever they were (not) wearing. Often times, they were shot standing over the coffin, and the lid was sealed within the hour. The lack of shirt made the huge gash in the man's neck obvious. She eyed it. It certainly looked painful. Whoever he was, probably died choking on his own blood.

With a sigh, she wiped her sweaty palms on her pants. She was nervous, never having done this. In theory, she knew what was going to happen, but in practice, so many things could go wrong it wasn't funny. From her pocket, she pulled out a small knife. She rolled up her sleeve slightly, holding the blade over her wrist, before slicing down.

Most of the blood spilled into the corpse's mouth, but some spattered on the girl's face and coat. 1000 years ago, the coat could've been something out of an album named 'The Black Parade'. These days, nobody would recognize it. Under another passing ray of moon-light, the bright red beads stood out on the white stripes across her chest, and showed it dripping in between the body's yellowed teeth, some slipping out of the huge gash in the neck. She opened her mouth and said, barely above a whisper,

"Sangius regenerare hoc cadaver
casement recreare spiritum vitae nulla reducere sicut in
corpore mortis
creare mortuum meum exercitus
fidelis et innoxia me
meae obsecundare omnis arbitratu
et quaeritis ultionem meam"

The corpses eyes, or rather, eye sockets, began to glow an unholy purplish blue, as did the girl's own eyes. She held her hand over the grave and said, "Rise from your grave, and take my hand." The dead man's arm slowly creaked up, bony fingers clutching her hand. She could feel the claws digging into her hand, and the chill of death even through her thick gloves.

Standing up slowly, the corpse creaked up along with her. Already the corpse looked like it was being regenerated from the state of near-crumbling that it was in. The corpse had changed to the point that it's legs could support it's weight and it wasn't quite so shriveled anymore.

Oh so slowly, the girl began to lead the corpse up the incline, one step at a time, mindful that if it fell now, it might become useless to her. It stumbled along behind her, it's grip on her gloved hand growing stronger by the minute. She knew that if it chose to, it could pull her back into the grave, and steal her soul with it, too.

When they got to the top of the incline, back above ground, for the corpse the first time in a millennium, it let out a low groan, and tried to begin back down to it's shattered coffin. "No follow me." She said, tugging the withered hand that held hers gently but firmly. Still, it had started going back down the incline. "You'll be alive again if you do." She said, giving another tug. It paused, and looked at her, head lolling to the side, before it followed her.

She led to the corpse out of the graveyard, stopping only to replace the dirt over the grave and pull the gate shut behind them. She made a mental note to bring some oil for the gate next time. Even though the graveyard was abandoned, and the state was pretty lawless and forgotten, the goddamn screeching irked her.

The corpse followed her down the path, to the old car she left parked there. Apparently it was from the year 1959, and near impossible to find parts for unless she went to junkyards or raiding the storage or the rich ruling class, or even rig something together herself. It ran off used cooking oil as bio-diesel, when today's car's ran off electricity.

She didn't care about that either, because she personally found the old Premier had more visual appeal than what anyone drove these days. And it had more space. But to be honest, she should've picked a car that wasn't white if she didn't want to call attention to herself late at night.

Walking up to the old piece of metal, she opened the door for the corpse, and it mostly fell into the car, finally letting go of her hand. She closed the door, walking around to the other side. Getting in, she turned on the engine, roaring to life in the very early morning silence.

She drove off, going own road after road, for quite a few miles, not meeting anyone else. after nearly an hour, they pulled up in front of a derelict farmstead, their paths blocked by a rotting gate. "We're home!" She said, turning to the corpse, only to gasp in shock. She knew the spell was powerful, but she didn't expect this!

What the necromancer had brought out of the graveyard, and put into her car was a shriveled corpse. What sat next to her was a rather good-looking young man. The same unholy glow was in his eyes. The gash in his throat however, had not healed. It was blood, though whether that was from the corpse itself or just the blood she had poured into his mouth, she couldn't tell.

Getting out, she opened the gate, before getting back into the car and driving into the abandoned farmstead. The gate slammed shut after she was insdie. The duet were bounced along as they drew closer to their destination. The road was overgorwn, no path really being in existence, only the crushed down grass that'd been driven over many times before. Because of this, they were down to a crawl.

Eventually, they arrived up at the farmhouse itself. It looked like it was going to fall apart at any minute. They drove around it instead, circling around to the back. There, some several feet away from the house, was a barn, and on one side, an open shed of sorts.

A small hut stood on the side opposite the shed. Together, the 4 structures formed a sort of courtyard, composed of weed choked dirt. A shell of an SUV lay beached like a giant whale in the courtyard, off to one side, devoid of tires. Vines tangled around the axles, keeping it anchored.

In front of this rusted out wreck the Necromancer drew the car to a halt and killed the engine. While the SUV was easilt 300 years younger than the car, it looked a lot older. The sudden silence was deafening, and the night seemed so much darker. She got out, running around to the other side of the car, opening the door for the corpse. It clambered out, nearly falling over in the porcess. Unfolding itself, it was around the same height as her. With a shrug, she took it by the elbow, steering it in front of the wreck.

She gave the old SUV a hard kick, right over the faded logo on the grille. The hood sprang up on well oiled hinges, rigged up as a perfect door, soundlessly, to reveal a flight of unlit steps going down into the ground. Together, the two journeyed down the stairs, to an underground labyrinth.

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After following many hallways and through quite a few rooms, they finally ended up in a room that looked like it could be that of a medical examiner, with steel lockers lining the walls, and 5 large stell examining tables lined up parallel in the middle of the room with ample space between each.

The Necromancer led the corpse to the nearest table, which had a small step stoll next to it and said, "Well, go on. Get up there!" The corpse, regenerated as it was, including eyes, gave her a glare, and it's mouth moved as though to speak, but only gurgling came out. "I get it, you don't gell like being dissected." She said. Still, the corpse didn't move. "Geeze... I do have to stitch up your throat, you know." She said, impatiently tapping her (small) foot.

IT gave her a look that said if she did try dissecting it, she would be in for a world of pain before it used the stool to awkwardly climb onto the table. It's muscles might still be a bit dehydrated. "Good. I'll be right back." She said, walking out of the room. As she did, she wondered idly why she was treating the corpse (even though it was regenerated, it was a dead body) as thoug hit were a mute human, which it wasn't (well wasn't much), and not her undead servant, which it definitely was.

She came to the conclusion that it'd been so long since she'd been around other people that she was either really fucking lonely, or going insane, or maybe something of the sweet young girl she used to be was somehow still in existence and showing through. The last of these 3 semmed the most unlikely, but also the scariest.

When she retured in several minutes, anti bacterial cream, disinfectant, clean bandages and gauze and cotton balls in arm, she had to stifle a laugh. The corpse was laying on the table, but his hands were behing his head, in an almost cocky manner. Maybe he, too, was regaining something of who he was.

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Sitting next to him on a high chair, she soaked several cotton balls with the disinfectant solution, before wiping the corpse's neck with it. Very little dirt came off, though a lot of blood did. She could have sworn that there was a look of pain in the thing's eyes. But zombies weren't supposed to feel pain... Right?

Then, the needle and thread, flashing in and out, pulling tanned flesh together. Doubtlessly, he was in pain. Mentally, she made a note for next time, to bring ice, or a numbing spray, or something. Within a few minutes, the corpse's neck was sewn up entirely. At the end, she had to stop to wipe up more blood. There was no way that this was still the blood from her wrist. Why was a regenerated corpse bleeding?

The question troubled her even as she dabbed ointment on the cut and covered it with gauze and bandages. She left the room to go return the leftovers to the medicine cabinet. When she returned, she smirked, seeing that he'd fallen asleep, snoring loudly. She snapped off the lights, closing the door quietly behind her. Let him sleep, even though he'd been taking a dirt nap for the past thousand years.

It was nearly 3 AM, but the Necromancer couldn't go to sleep as yet. She had more to study up on, questions burning in the forefront of her mind. She had to find out. As in, why was this guy looking so human? Why was he bleeding? Could he die again?

Half an hour later found her still poring over musty old tomes, pages so frail that they'd crumble if she gripped them too hard. Going through near everything she could find about zombies and regenerated corpses and the afterlife, especially the book she'd gotten that spell from, she came up with a very interesting theory.

It turned out that the spell she used was easily one of the most powerful that there were out there. It was usually meant to be used to raise several hundred people at once. Used like that, it could take several hours to work, and would only regenerate a corpse to the point that it would be able to shamble about. As writing, the spell called for the blood of an animal, slaughtered by the one wishing to raise the dead, and dripped onto the graves of the dead. Using one's own blood would give greater loyalty, but also a greater chance of the corpse turning against it's master. Using the spell on a single corpse would be able to regenerate skin onto a skeleton, bringing it literally back to life.

In this state, no matter what happened to the corpse, it would not die unless given permission to do so by the one who gave it life, and would be fiercely loyal to the one who's blood it drank.

"Joy. I get a loyal zombie that can't die, and is pretty much completely alive." She said sarcastically. Reading on, she saw that if a corpse reache this point and began to regain elements of it's personality, the best thing to do was to find it's soul and place the soul back into the body, unless you wanted said corpse resenting and killing you.

"Why did society push me to this?" She lamented, thumping her head against the book and sending up a huge cloud of dust. Too tired to move from there, she fell asleep, just as the first rays of sunlight began to peek above the horizon.

The sun rose above the horizon, signaling the beginning of a new day. Normally, the Necromancer would be awake til nearly 10, before going to sleep, waking again at maybe 5 in the afternoon, working 2 part time jobs to try and keep things running.

But today, she was asleep by the time it was 6 Am. Raising corpses was certainly a tiring job. And more to the fact, she was just beginning. She slept as the day wore on. Sometime around 3 PM, the recently restored corpse began to shuffle around, looking for food. At 4.15 PM, a loud alarm went off. Still, the Necromancer slept.

When it was nearly 9 PM, she awoke with a start. Everything was in chaos. Her alarm was going off, like it'd been for the past 5 or so hours, even though it was her day off. The corpse was still in the morgue, bumping around and groaning, almost comically, for brains.

Dragging herself off the stool, and into the kitchen, she opened the fridge, yanking out several raw chicken breasts that she's left defrosting.

With the still raw chunks of meat in hand, she made a beeline for the morgue. Hungry zombies were dangerous zombies. When opening the door, the zombie, whatever-his-first-name-was Radke made a mad dash towards the Necromancer, arms raised as if to attack.

She threw the raw chicken at him, slamming the door shut again. From inside, could be heard the noise of the corpse viciously ripping into the meat, eating it quickly, as though he'd never get food again. A few minutes after the noises had died down, she opened the door again.

Her regenerated zombie was sitting on the ground, a fairly content look on it's face. She rolled her eyes, before saying, "Come on, you smell like shit.", and gesturing for the corpse to follow her. Doing so, she led him to a bathroom. "Take a shower, I'll leave something for you to change into."

The corpse entered the bathroom. The truth is, the Necromancer didn't care how the corpse smelled. She just wanted to see if the corpse was capable of remembering how do to things from it's human life.

When she returned with towels and a pair of sweats for the corpse, she heard the shower running. Entering the bathroom, she nearly tripped over the corpse's discarded clothing. Depositing the bundle she was carrying onto the toilet, she scooped up the discarded clothing, looking at it. Were pants that tight ever really in style? And garishly printed scarves covered in skulls?

Shrugging, she left the room with them, dumping them into the washing machine several rooms over.

Then, she decided to help herself to a shower in another bathroom.

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Exiting her bedroom, fully dressed, and smelling of shampoo, she walked over to the other bathroom. The shower had stopped running. Taking this to be a good thing, the Necromancer walked into the kitchen, proceeding to make a pot of coffee. While she was sitting there, drinking the hot beverage, the corpse came crashing in.

Upon smelling the coffee, the corpse shambled over, grabbing the entire pot, glugging it down noisily, slopping some onto his chest in the process. "Fucking sloppy bastard." she hissed below her breath. This fucking thing was a slob. Was he the same when he was alive? Or was his brain still yet to come back?

After the (Rather rude) corpse had guzzled down her coffee like the messy, ungrateful bastard he was, they made the journey back to the surface. There, they got into the Necromancer's car, driving back to the cemetery. The corpse began to act strangely, finally lunging for the steering wheel.

The Necromancer swatted him away, and said, "We;re going to get people, not drop you off." It gave her an uneasy look that clearly said that if she lied, things would quickly go south. They pulled up outside the gate.

Getting out of the car, yet leaving it running, she walked up to the gate, pulling out a small can of oil, applying it liberally to the hinges. Then, she gave it a rather hard shove.

They swang open, with barely any squealing. She got back into her car, and they drove through the gates. They crawled across the mostly overgrown road through the cemetery. Soon enough, they weren't able to get any closer to the last row of graves without running anyone over, and had to proceed on foot.

They did, going to the same aisle of headstones that Radke had come from.

As the Necromancer approached the headstone from last night, a can in her hand, the corpse let out a low growl. She ignored it, spraying a large slash mark over the stone. It served the purpose of showing her who she had already 'saved'. When she stepped away, the corpse stopped growling. Apparently it didn't like her near the grave it crawled out of last night.

Standing at the next grave, she performed the same spell as last night, pulling the dirt out of the grave. Then, she made the coffin levitate into the air. Stealing a glance at the stone, she could make out "sh y Pur". This she marked onto the coffin, before making the slash of bright red paint on the stone. Then, she dropped the dirt back into the grave. Then, she guided the coffins, still levitating, into the trunk of her car.

She repeated this thrice more, recovering a "ra Ie", a "dra Alv", and a "ist om" These stones seemed to be more worn than the one that had covered Radke for the past thousand or so years. Maybe it was of a different material? These 4 looked like they'd been killed the same day, January 27th, 2012.

She shrugged, getting back into her car, and driving out of the cemetery, back to her "home". There, her and the corpse managed to get the coffins down into her morgue. She couldn't help but notice that the coffins of "ra Ie" and "dra Alv" were shorter and lighter, while "ist om" was so heavy, the rocker's coffin was dropped onto the Necromancer's foot several times.

Whoever he or she was, they were so fucking heavy that it prompted her to let out a slew of profanity each time, each words that had been outlawed some time in 2017. in fact, she was pretty sure that the only reason she knew half of them was because of her reading things she shouldn't be getting into.

Finally, they managed to get each coffin next to a steel table. Then, came her task of cracking open the coffins. Her regenerated assistant helped her with this, with extreme vigor. It was as though he could remember the fear of being trapped in a wooden box far below the ground for so many centuries. Maybe he did.

They came up with what looked like 3 men and a woman. One corpse, under the title of " sh y Pur", who turned out to be a man, not a woman, had several rather nasty gashes all over his body. He probably hadn't made them himself. They looked like they were over vital veins and arteries. Hopefully, he'd bled out faster than Radke, leaving him less time to suffer. But apparently, there's be no such luck, as upon closer inspection, the Necromancer could see that while large, they were shallow, barely nicking the blood passageways below them.

He would've bled out slowly, trying to staunch first one, then another of his wounds.

The short man, " ra Ie", had no visible signs of death. This worried the Necromancer. She couldn't tell why this guy had died, and what needed to be fixed so he could pretty much regain a proper form of life, not a shambling zombie like existence.

" dra Alv" Looked like he (she?) had died of a gunshot wound to the heart. Might be a lost cause, but the Necromancer wouldn't give up that easily. Instead, she would try to find a replacement heart for " dra Alv" and find out why " ra Ie" croaked.

She darted across the room, and opened one of the steel drawers, sliding out the metal slab. Then, she walked back to " dra Alv", who was easily one of the lightest of the four. "Help me get this one in there." She said, lifting the corpse below the arms. Radke looked at her angrily.

"There's nothing I can do right now. He had to go into one of the drawers until I can find him a heart." She said, annoyance creeping into her voice. You'd have thought the corpse would have figured out that she wasn't like all the rest by now. But apparently not.

He picked up the corpse's legs, helping her carry it over to the open drawer. Laying it onto the sliding piece of metal, they gave it a push, and " dra Alv" was once again shrouded in darkness. When the Necromancer shut the door however, Radke growled at her, grabbing her arm with surprising bone-crushing strength.

She let out a yelp of pain, before hitting the corpse, who didn't let up it's grip. In another minute or two, her arm would break, and then, the entire plot would be absolutely useless. However, she could still work this plan with one less corpse.

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The necromancer was fuming. She was in pain, and her arm was starting to bruise. She could swear that she just might have a compression fracture. Plus, she'd had to lift " ra Ie" into a drawer by herself.

Radke was laying strapped to a table, a gunshot wound to his shoulder. She didn't know whether to be angry or grateful that he was moving too much for her to get the head shot that she was aiming for. He was howling in pain, and she thought that she had heard "Why?" several times. But then again, it was hard to tell what someone was saying with a slit throat.

At this point, she didn't know whether she should kill him, or give him a second change. The one thing she didn't need was a rebel who might end her plan before it had even begun properly. The world out there was harsh enough to her, sans her regenerated army. Thus, she didn't need any more shit from them.

Soon enough, she left, getting a pack of raw chicken. Upon her return, she noticed something. Radke had stopped howling, and was instead whimpering quietly. She noted blood oozing out of the gash on his throat between the stitches with an odd sense of grim satisfaction. His eyes rolled to look at her, with a gaze that clearly pleading with her to help him, save him, do something. Instead, she laughed at him, saying, "You started this, so shut your mouth and finish what you started. Face the fucking consequences."

He let out a whine in reply.

She ignored him, sitting on a high stool above "sh y Pur". She pulled out a small knife, holding her arm over the dead man's mouth. When she rolled her sleeve up, you could quite clearly see hundreds pf scars there. Again, the knife ripped open her skin, and his mouth filled with blood. She whispered the spell, and his withered, papery eyelids slid open, exposing his empty sockets. He let out a groan, and she smiled. "Welcome back." She said.

Then, she walked out of the room, locking it behind her. She'd be back in an hour or so to stitch up those god-awful wounds. But if he got hungry, then there was always the pack of chicken, even though it was a known fact of life that zombies, right after they were regenerated, had the most ravenous sort of appetite, and tended to go for warm, moving flesh to sate it instead of dead meat. And they didn't seem to care for anything cooked while they were in that state.

Radke let out a howl of fear upon hearing the door lock. He was regaining his sentient mind, if not necessarily his memories. As it was, he didn't know who he was, where he was, or why he was there. All he knew was that he was scared, he was in pain, his shoulder felt like it was on fire his throat was feeling like it was being ripped apart from the inside out, and A woman had just locked him in a room, tied to an autopsy table with a zombie on the loose.

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The necromancer felt no sympathy for the regenerated corpse she left strapped to the table with the waking corpse in the room. He deserved whatever punishment she was dishing out, because she refused to have an uprising. He should at least be grateful that she left some raw meat with them.

Sure, it was unlikely corpses would attack other corpses, but from what she had read, Radke was no longer a corpse. He was now more a human without memories or emotion or even a will. It was like a person with amnesia and whatever the hell that disorder that makes you not feel emotions is.

In theory, he was growing more humanoid by the day. But the more humanoid he grows, the more dangerous he would get. Either way, ti was a possibility that he would be attacked by the zombie.

In the labyrinth, in another room, far enough from the morgue that the unholy howling and sounds of crunching bones could be heard, the Necromancer lay sleeping. She had to get going to work the next morning, otherwise it would be impossible to keep this place running, even if most of it ran off solar power.

Several hours later, her alarm went off. She rolled out of bed grudgingly, snapping it off. In her mind, she wondered why she didn't just go back to sleep, even as her feet took her down to the morgue. But then she reminded herself that she had to check on her corpse. Not Radke, who she no longer gave a damn about. No, she was concerned over "sh y Pur", her latest project. IF the belligerent corpse was bleeding when she brought him back, and the fatal injuries didn't heal by themselves quickly, then there was a chance her new corpse might bleed out before the spell had taken it's full effect.

She unlocked the door to the morgue, peeking in carefully. Nothing rushed her, so she opened it fully.

Inside, there was quite a bit of blood. Stepping in, her foot went straight into a small puddle. Splatters of the ruby liquid stained everything, and trails of it leaked down the metal cabinets. A faint gasp of shock slipped from the Necromancer's mouth. She hadn't expected to see this. Sure, she was counting on there being a mess most likely, but not to this extent.

She moved further into the room, feet slapping on the wet ground. The carnage was truly unpleasant. The tangy, coppery scent invaded her nostrils. She hissed in annoyance.

There, in the corner, hunched up in pain, was her corpse from last night. He was trying in vain to staunch the flow of blood from his limbs. It was his original death all over again.

She stepped forward carefully, trying not to seem imposing. "Are you alright?" She asked quietly, kneeling down in front of the man.

He let out a cry of fear, or at the least, tried. His voice was gone, maybe forever, from most likely dehydration. "I'm not going to hurt you." She said quietly. Sure, she was lying, she hurts everyone in the end, but she was trying to make her army stronger, after all.

"Who're you? Where'm I?" He choked out, still holding onto his arm and leg, as if that would help prevent him from death... again. She froze in shock. The vernacular he spoke had fallen out of use centuries ago, replaced by an older one, from somewhere around the middle ages. "I'm no one important, but you're safe." She said, switching over effortlessly.

"What happened? Who am I?"

"You were injured, so I brought you here to heal you, but I don't know who you are."

"I don't believe you, I don't, you're one of them, who are they, you-"

"Come on, at least let me get you stitched up, you'll bleed out again if I don't."

"Again?" He asked, eyes wide open in fear.

She cursed herself mentally. "I'll explain everything to you in a bit, now come on." she said, standing before offering her hand to him. Of course she wasn't going to explain it. He took it uncertainly, standing, shakily. His eyes were dilated, she could see quite clearly now, and his hands were clammy. Upon standing, he nearly fell. He was showing shock and postural hypotension. Early signs of too much blood loss.

Slowly, she lead him over to one of the tables, having him lay down on it. Seeing her pull out a large medical kit, he started to get up.

"I'm not going to dissect you, don't worry." she said, pulling out an alcohol prep pad, ripping off the packaging. He didn't seem to relax too much. It appeared that the corpses coming through here were just plain traumatized from whatever they had went through a year prior. To them, it was only yesterday that they were suffering. They didn't know they'd been dead a thousand years.