*Authors note: Hey everybody! I've really enjoyed reading your comments so far! Please consider liking and reviewing if you like this one! I had to cut this one into 2 parts! Here is part 1!

This is Chapter 3! I might be able to get another chapter our earlier next week. Stay tuned!!

Without further ado:

I don’t stay very long after that.

I set out on the road with my bag, a map, and few expectations. I didn’t have any idea where I was going, but I owed it to that little deity in the Beyond to give it my best shot.

So I did.

Those first few days on the road are filled with dust and memories. The haunting, dead faces of my siblings resonate with every step forward, each one of them begging me to turn around and warn them–or plead with them never to join the war. On one hand, I’d made a promise. On the other hand, they would inevitably be called upon, and they would rise to meet the challenge: for the sake of their land, for the sake of traditions as old as time itself.

Telling them they would die changed nothing–they had been prepared for that outcome when they went into war. They understood that the invading kingdom knew nothing, or very little about their practice–knew that they would appear more dangerous than they actually were.

How different the world looked in just three short years. How different we were viewed, how different we viewed ourselves. War did something to us. Suddenly, our constructs weren’t our friends, our help: they were means to an end. We lost respect for the bones and the bodies.

Is that what Ben saw? Is that why he left?

I shove that thought down. I can’t think about my brother. He’d left so long ago: I was really a young child. It wasn’t worth spending time or energy on.

I follow the road to the north, the opposite end of the continent from the invading kingdom. I hoped it would buy me some time and peace. Maybe when we were invaded, the damned prince wouldn’t notice me and I could continue to live comfortably under the radar until my second death.

I suppose it doesn’t matter either way. Death is inevitable, I knew that better than anyone.

It’s never been a matter of whether, but a matter of when.

Three years doing something I loved with the remaining time I had was the only way I could ensure that it wasn’t… literally… stupid.

The first two towns I encountered are regular places that are filled with regular people, but they’re too big for my taste. I’d be far too obvious in places like these. The stops do offer me pointers, though. I follow the fingers through the mountain pass and into the cooler environment of the Norsard Highlands toward a little town called Reisau. It is greener here than at home and the air tastes different, the flowers are different, the light from the clouds above looks different: it’s a nice different.

The first day after I leave the city of Torsen on my way to Reisau, a sound startles me in my campsite by the roadside. I sit and look around, confused. The sound comes again, a gentle crashing that isn’t far off–as though something very large is trying very hard to be quiet. I frown, Is it a bear? No. A bear wouldn’t care about how noisy it was. This thing took a gentle step, hear the crash, then did not make another noise. It was trying to move away from the camp I’d built the night before. I frown. Human? I send out little waves of my green and purple mana, digging into the soil with my fingertips. I feel it flow through the earth: it twines in mycelium and dead roots, then splinters up a dead tree to create a long arch over where I’d heard the sound. Bones. Bones and… clay?

They shift beneath my tracing, as if startled to feel my touch.

A construct.

My eyes open and I frown. What are you? How do you move? Who leads you? I prod through the webbing of magic as I draw myself from my bedroll.

The construct doesn’t answer, only shies away from my magic: large, hulking body easing away from the place it stood. “Where are you going?” I call, both in magic and in alarm. I don’t want it to flee. It’s so strange to encounter a construct on its own out here. “Please don’t leave! I mean no harm.”

The giant hesitates, and I feel its energy consider me, but then it turns and crashes away from my magic into the forest. Too skittish, I realize. How long has it been out here alone? I wonder, heart tugging sadly. The only reason a bone construct would still be alive without its necromancer is if its necromancer had left without passing its life force onto another… or, worse, the necromancer had unexpectedly died. Without someone offering the construct a physical anchor, the magic could become erratic at best, and dangerous at worst. How peculiar that this one shied away from me. I push the thought of the hulking construct from my mind and break down my tiny campsite. A construct out here meant there was another necromancer out here, and the construct was safely contained. After all, it did no harm–in fact, it demonstrated incredible foresight and curiosity.

I smile, respecting the workmanship. A sad thought occurs to me: either it was well-formed, or it meant that the erratic behavior had ended and the construct would pass along again soon. What made the idea even worse was that it would not be given a proper committing ritual. Committing a construct back to the earth was usually accompanied by great ceremony: a grand gesture of gratitude for the bones in their second life and second passing. We hold our constructs with great honor and reverence in their last moments before returning them to the soil.

There are many reasons we might pass them along. Sometimes the bones become fractured or splintered in ways that we cannot abide using their form any longer without inferring great dishonor to the soul it once housed. Sometimes, the magic becomes finicky and the constructs grow violent – a rare and dangerous thing that should never happen. Young necromancers are always accompanied by a mentor in their first Awakening to avoid such a terrible outcome. It was rare, to say the least.

To see a construct repaired with clay was… Well, it felt like this construct was old. Without the use of other bones to supply its bulk, it was not a raising of convenience. It was an act of friendship, or of love. It was as though the necromancer that had brought it into being cared very much for the bones, and so supplemented its breaks with clay and sticks and mud: fashioning a body that would be sustained in weather and long hours, in the sun and in the night.

And it was so far from town, too…

I walked a great portion of the day before I heard the telltale crash of the construct following me. I cast my magic fingers through the earth to prod its feet, and found that it was the same energy as the creature I’d encountered earlier. I retracted my magic quickly, hoping not to startle it away. If it was so curious of me, it would wander to the edge of its territory, then return. But by midday, it was still keeping a generous distance behind me.

I ducked into the forest, seeking reprieve from the sun and to sit and maybe eat a small lunch. The construct stilled just out of my reach of hearing, but I could feel its eyes follow me as I moved. I opened up my rucksack and the dried mushrooms I had saved for my trip. I sat down and chewed them thoughtfully. The construct watched with interest, and even with my naked, magicless eyes, could just see the flash of its white skull behind a tree.

Where was its necromancer, its anchor? Why had it followed me so far?

I sit forward and set my hands on the ground, rooting my fingers into the earth. I cast a web of my magic out, seeking–there. A graveyard. It’s old and falling apart, and the bones are ancient and nearly dust. I gather my things and trek deeper into the forest. Where there was a gravesite and a construct, there must be some sort of trace of another necromancer.

My feet lead me to a small plot of graves. Their headstones had so deteriorated from the elements, and great swaths of moss and overgrown trees draped them into one another. Even the fence around the edges has fallen to barely ankle-height in places. It’s a place that has not been touched in centuries.

I frown and step into the circle. A rush of energy flows into me through the balls of my feet, ricocheting up my legs and into my torso, and I have to grip a nearby tree to avoid falling. A crashing sound erupts from behind me: the construct running toward me, and I have the beginning touches of fear. I try to take a step away and out of its path, but realize my feet are being pulled into the earth. Tendrils of roots flicker over my feet and pull me down, the dirt and grass separate around me and I cling to the branch of the tree. What?

The panic sets in when the branch breaks and the roots have pulled me into my ankles. “Help!” I know no one can hear me, in my heart of hearts. I dig the broken branch into the ground anyways, trying to force myself from the ground even as it sucks me down, but I’m not strong enough to push myself out.

This is a trap, I realize belatedly: an ancient tripwire set for people like me.

A root snakes up my knee, wrapping firmly against my thigh and tugging. I scream. I’m not proud of it, but I do. You would too.