NDE One

In which Rigel and Shuck meet and name Casper the corpse servant.

When the little town came into view over the ridge, Rigel let out a spontaneous whoop. “Hey! A town! Didn’t see that one on the map. Too small, maybe? Whatever. C’mon, Shuck. Let’s go check it out,” the traveler crowed, rubbing his gloved hands together. 

Shuck, who was up to his chest in a snowbank, paused long enough to give his human a doggy grin and wagged his rime-encrusted tail. The shaggy black mutt’s thick double coat was well suited to cold, damp climates, but to a human eye, he looked as if he must be half-frozen. Even the dog’s whiskers were spackled with frost. 

It was hardly noon, but Rigel and Shuck had been making little progress through the snow, so the traveler felt no compunction whatsoever about calling it quits for the day. They’d do some quick sightseeing and then check into the inn. Or whatever the locals had for travelers’ lodging around here.
Delighted, Rigel began to pick his way down the frore slope. It wouldn’t do to slip on the ice and break my neck within sight of comfort and relaxation, would it? It would not, he told himself cheerfully as he made a beeline for the little mountain town. Shuck bounded through the snow in his human’s wake, inspired to playfulness by Rigel’s exuberance. Soon they escaped the deep snow and their relieved feet found the cobbled streets of the town. 
Naturally, their first priority was to explore.
It was a charming-looking place, in the traveler’s opinion; maybe five to six hundred people, a thousand at most, he estimated, inhabiting a dense cluster of tall, slender buildings with steeply-pitched roofs of oiled shingles. A set of narrow and winding riverstone-paved streets both divided and connected the town. and the whole was nestled into a densely wooded mountain valley which formed a pleasing backdrop.
Each building was painted in bright, contrasting colors; to Rigel, the chaotic, clashing facades formed a delightful gestalt effect. There was something new and interesting to look at everywhere he turned.  
Plus, it seemed to the traveler that the riot of color smacked of defiance. In the bright sun of spring and summer, against the bottle-green backdrop of the surrounding trees and meadows, the town of painted-lady buildings with their lovingly-decorated facades would seem like a garden of brilliant flowers, and would certainly be a merry place… yet now, Rigel reflected, against the expanse of white snow, gray sky, and muted foresty earth tones, the colors stood out with sharp contrast even in the weak, watery late-year sun. Rigel imagined that, consciously or not, the people of the little town were fighting back against the winter, as if they refused to surrender their colors just because the seasons changed. 

Whatever their reasons, Rigel admired the blend of pragmatic architecture and freewheeling color schemes that he saw around him. 
True, the buildings did appear a bit neglected. The colorful paint was at least slightly faded on most, even peeling on a few. But that was quite understandable to Rigel. Who had time, in a hands-on hard-work climate like this, to repaint their house every year? Especially with all that detail? One might easily put it off for a season, and then another, and another after that, what with everything else that surely needed doing, he told himself. All in all, he found the place quite appealing. 
There was only one problem. Rigel didn’t see any people.

At first, the traveler took little notice of the lack of people out and about. It was midday, but in the depths of winter, perhaps the locals preferred to remain indoors unless they had some specific, pressing need to go out. He certainly couldn’t blame them, Rigel mused as he trudged through the icy streets. However, as the minutes went by, Rigel began to feel uneasy. Not only did he see no people, he saw little sign of their presence at all. The windows were not all dark, but he noticed no movement in any of them, no one peeking at the stranger or going about their chores. The snow was thinner on the cobbled streets than it had been on the mountainside, but he noticed few tracks aside from their own. Even Shuck, trotting at his side, seemed concerned. The black mutt’s ears were splayed out, his tail held straight and low.
Maybe there’s a rational explanation. I’m probably just giving myself the heebie-jeebies and spooking the dog, Rigel thought. 
He didn’t buy his own line. The heebie-jeebies remained.
After wandering in the snowy, silent town long enough to grow thoroughly unsettled, Rigel decided he might as well look for the inn, or whatever. The traveler was bewildered and unsure what else to do. He could hardly start barging into houses to check if they were empty or not and he’d seen no one to ask yet. Perhaps the innkeep could fill him in. It was entirely possible he was imagining things, or reading too much into a perfectly ordinary circumstance.
Having been on the road for several years, Rigel had an intuitive sense of how towns tended to be laid out. Even when that failed, he could follow Shuck’s nose; the black dog had a typically canine appetite and an unerring ability to sniff out places where hot food could be had. In a town of this size, he expected to find no more than one lodging-house, but there would be at least that one. Soon they spotted it.
As man and dog trudged through the low but gathering snow toward the lodging-house, Rigel noticed a man standing under the building’s sign. At first, the traveler perked up - At last! Signs of life! - but as his booted feet carried him closer to the stranger, Rigel’s steps slowed and a frown grew on his face. The stranger was thin, with a sallow, unhealthy complexion and a hollow-cheeked, lantern-jawed face. Dull, lusterless black or near-black hair hung loosely around the man’s face, visibly ungroomed, and he needed a shave. He was dressed in meager rags that could not have provided any meaningful protection from the cold. 
The stranger stood silent and motionless - almost as if in a trance - until Rigel and Shuck were about ten paces away. At that point, the gaunt stranger stood up straight and turned toward Rigel, who, in turn, noted the man’s stiff, subtly unnatural body language. The traveler’s frown deepened.
“Hello, sir,” the stranger said. “Please, could you spare a coin for a poor man?” Despite the pathos of his plea and appearance, the pale man spoke in a distant tone that, while not quite monotone, conveyed no emotion that Rigel could place, and his low, hollow voice had an unsettling sepulchral quality. 
Rigel fingered the golden stud he wore in his left ear, checking the spell-patterns that made the enchantment work, but the translation device seemed to be functioning correctly. The man’s voice truly did sound like that.
 By now, Rigel’s intuition was blaring a warning in the back of his head. 

Uncanny valley to the max, the traveler thought. 
The traveler eyed the gaunt stranger, sizing him up. Rigel’s face was a practiced blank, but his eyes narrowed like those of a wary animal that suspects a trap. He didn’t take his eyes off the rag-clad man as he reached into his coat pocket and fished out a couple-few coins; Rigel paid no attention to what exactly he would be handing the gaunt man. It didn’t matter. As the traveler’s hand closed around the coins, he set his jaw and concentrated. 
Shuck, I need a hand. Paw. Whatever. Help me out, the necromancer thought, reaching out to his familiar through their magical bond. The great black dog replied with a wordless acknowledgment. A heartbeat later, Shuck’s intense and thrillingly strange mind-presence poured through Rigel as the familiar focused his attention on the spell his magician wanted to weave. They worked well together; Shuck provided the raw energy and Rigel plucked at it like wool, pulling out strands that he rolled into spell-threads, which in turn could be woven into useful patterns.  
The fingers on Rigel’s free hand moved slightly as, with Shuck’s help, he wove a quick-and-dirty spell into the coins he grasped. Though the necromancer was trying to conceal what he was up to, the habit of physically using his hands to manipulate magic was an old one and hard to break. Rigel knew that using his hands wasn’t at all necessary to weave most spells, that it was his mind that did the work, but it was so intuitive to do so that he couldn’t avoid the feeling that somehow it made the act of spell-weaving easier. 
Whatever the case, he’d been trying to break the habit lately, but the necromancer’s strong, callused fingers still twitched as he ‘tied the knot’ on the spell he’d woven into the coins. The whole process had taken only a few seconds, a barely perceptible pause.
Rigel withdrew his gloved hand from his pocket, holding it out to the gaunt stranger. As the ragged man reached out to take the coins, Shuck let out a low growl and showed his teeth for a moment. Rigel tensed, but the stranger did nothing hostile; he simply accepted the ensorcelled coins, whispering, “Thank you, sir,” in his hollow deadpan.
The moment the stranger’s fingers closed around the coins, Rigel felt the simple spell-pattern he’d woven shiver as the latent power built into it broke free, flowing through the threads of the pattern. The spell activated. Rigel fought the urge to step back as an unexpected wave of terror flooded through him. He couldn’t repress the chill that ran up his spine, and his heart rate kicked up a notch or three. The blast of raw emotion faded within a second or two, and in its wake came a clutter of thoughts, memories, and mental images, carried along like flotsam on a storm wave. 
Rigel’s eyes narrowed as he concentrated. The man’s mind was full of bits and fragments. Most of it made no sense to him. Yet he kept sifting it with the experienced patience of a professional. The stranger put the coins in his pocket, showing no sign that he was aware of Rigel’s spell.
In another few seconds, the necromancer had gleaned enough scraps of information to confirm his suspicions. 
Rigel scowled. The gaunt stranger was dead. Nothing but a corpse made to walk. The undead creature was no simple zombie - he could speak, for one thing - but still, he was indubitably and indisputably dead.

Rigel frowned to himself, studying the information his 'checkup' spell was feeding through his mind. If the necromancer wasn’t mistaken, the dead man’s soul had been forced back into his own lifeless flesh, then bound there with threads of death magic. This meant that the dead man had a spark of real intelligence, even a bit of free will. The dead man was no mere meat puppet. There was a human soul in there somewhere. A wounded soul, muzzled and hobbled within the ropes of necromancy that bound it to its own corpse… but a soul nonetheless. 
And whoever built him has him begging, for f**k’s sake. The sheer pettiness of this use of a corpse servant annoyed Rigel; the necromancer considered it an egregious disrespect of the dead, but more than that, it was wasteful. Who put all that time and work into building a sophisticated undead servant only to set it to panhandling? 
One of my local ‘colleagues’ has been misbehaving, that’s for sure, Rigel concluded with disapproval. These amateurish shenanigans would never have been allowed by the Academy back home. Rigel wondered where local necromancers got their training, what kind of ethics was taught at that hack college, and if there was any professional oversight at all.
God forbid, they probably use a solitary master-and-apprentice system, he thought with mild disdain. He was a long way from home, and sometimes he felt as though the further he wandered from Kahli in kilometers, the further back in time he traveled as well. No, that wasn’t fair, Rigel corrected himself mentally. It was an occasional feeling only. Still, it amazed him how backward some cultures seemed to be. 
Rigel leaned forward and peered into the dead man’s half-lidded eyes, searching for… he wasn’t sure what. A spark of genuine emotion, maybe? The animated corpse returned the necromancer’s gaze dispassionately, his fixed stare as inscrutable as the eyes of a statue. 
At first, Rigel thought the dead man’s eyes were empty… but no. That was a misperception, the traveler decided as he stared intently into the undead creature’s paradoxical gaze. Distant yet attentive, the pupils slightly death-clouded yet the irises still a clear gray-green color, the corpse servant’s eyes reminded him of glassy spring-fed ponds. The kind that looked shallow, like mere puddles... until one stepped in and discovered the water was deep and cold. 
The kind in whose deceptive depths swam unknown things. 
Rigel thought he saw drifting shadows in the depths of the man’s eyes - echoes of deeply felt, deeply buried emotions, maybe?
The necromancer thought he could actually hear the man’s soul screaming somewhere deep within the cocoon of death magic that bound it within the cadaver. A faint, forlorn wail at the edge of his hearing that went on and on, needless of breath and hence, endless. When he ended the examination-spell, the sound, real or imagined, went away. Yet the necromancer felt certain it continued on some register beyond his ability to hear. He told himself he was imagining things, but he didn’t believe it. 
This creature was certainly not what the traveler had expected to find. Rigel was both fascinated and appalled. Well, s**t, he thought, studying the dead man’s gaunt, pale face. Who did this to you, you poor b*****d?

After a time, Rigel realized he was being rude and leaned back to regard the dead man from a more normal conversational distance. (The undead creature had exhibited no sign that he found Rigel’s behavior in any way unusual or unwelcome.) The necromancer eyed the dead man, considering his options. 

Then he cleared his throat and said, “Hey, buddy. Do me a favor. In return for my kindness, yeah?”

The animated cadaver seemed to hesitate, fixing Rigel with his inscrutable stare. After a few seconds, he said, “Yes, sir. What do you need?”
“Take me to your boss,” Rigel replied, his own gaze focused and intent as he watched the corpse servant. He thought the dead man would understand what he meant. Rigel wanted to meet his erstwhile colleague. He had some… peer review… to offer. 
The dead man didn’t reply for several seconds. Rigel frowned and wondered if there was enough slack in those magical ropes for the dead man’s soul to express the kind of free will the necromancer’s plan required. Just as he was about to open his mouth to try something else, the corpse servant spoke.
“Yes, sir. Now?”
“Now,” Rigel confirmed with a sharp nod and just a hint of steel in his tone. He smiled, reflexively trying to soften his expression, though even as he did it he realized that the dead man probably didn’t notice the hard edge that had come into the necromancer’s demeanor. Or, if he did notice, he didn’t seem to care. 
Without another word, the walking corpse turned around and began to trudge away from the lodging-house. Rigel and Shuck followed. Idly, the necromancer studied the undead man as they walked. Looking through Shuck’s eyes, Rigel could see the spell-patterns woven around and through the corpse servant, and he gave the spell a cursory examination as they walked. 

“Interesting,” the necromancer muttered to himself as he glanced over the spell’s weave, drawing out the word until it sounded more like ‘eeeeen-terest-iiinnngggggg’. 
Rigel had never seen a reanimation with quite these properties. The spell ultimately produced a form of corpse servant, a type of undead with which Rigel was familiar, but the technique was exotic - nothing like he’d been taught back at the Academy. If Rigel allowed himself the comparison, he rather thought the groundhawk that he’d reanimated for his senior thesis was much more efficient spellwork. Still, the necromancer couldn’t deny that the strange corpse servant presented an intriguing bit of magic. Perhaps even unique. Rigel wondered if this approach was his unknown colleague’s invention or if it was a conventional technique in this region.
Rigel eyed the undead man as they walked, thinking. Perhaps the creature could be freed, or at least brought into his service. The wastrel who’d created the corpse servant had no respect for his own work, the necromancer thought with a sniff. 

Then Rigel felt guilty. No matter how interesting the magic involved might be, the man was miserable beneath the unnatural equanimity his undead condition forced on him - and here Rigel was thinking about him as if he were a challenging specimen in his laboratory. 
After a few more steps, the necromancer became uncomfortable with the silence and the direction of his thoughts. He decided to give conversation a try.
Besides, he was curious what the corpse servant might have to say for himself if given the opportunity. 
“So, what’s your name, buddy?” Rigel asked after a time, hands in the pockets of his fleecy winter coat. 
“This one doesn’t know, sir,” the walking cadaver replied with his customary distant equanimity.
“Huh? How do you not know your name?”
“This one doesn’t remember, sir.” The corpse servant seemed untroubled, but Rigel was unsettled - both on the dead man’s behalf, but also because he sensed that this was an important detail. Yet he didn’t know why, and that made him edgy. 
“You… don’t remember...?” Rigel’s voice trailed off on an up note, prompting the dead man to continue, but his undead companion only shrugged. After a moment, as if recognizing that this was unsatisfactory, the corpse servant said, “It’s only a word that he calls me, sir. It means nothing.” 

A second or two later, he added, “It’s difficult for this one to think of himself by a name when he is only a tool, sir.”
Rigel missed a step. The necromancer did a quick double-take, looking sharply into the dead man’s face. The corpse servant’s features seemed as expressionless as ever, including no evident reaction to Rigel’s staring. Still, the necromancer was certain he hadn’t imagined the undercurrent of misery, bitterness, and resentment lacing that last sentence. Nor had he expected the creature to be so perceptive about its own condition. Human corpse servants typically lacked the emotional complexity to be troubled by their status - either as undead or as slaves. 
Interesting…
Out loud, he said, “Oh.”
Well, that was no good. The poor b*****d needed some kind of name. And was that really why he couldn’t remember whatever name his creator had tagged him with, or did that strange amnesia have some greater significance…? Rigel’s mind chewed on the problem for a few steps before he remembered to reply more fully. 
“That’s okay, buddy. I’ll… hmm.” The necromancer pulled his mouth to one side in a sort of lopsided grimace, thinking. Then he remembered a series of stories that had been popular when he was a boy, back home in Kahli. One of the primary characters in the stories had been a ghost, a gentle and harmless one. Rigel smiled.
“I’ll just call you Casper for now. How’s that?”
“If that’s what you wish, sir,” the corpse servant replied indifferently.
“Well, I mean, what do you want?” Rigel pressed, trying to prompt the undead creature to express a preference, to make a choice, however small.
There was a long silence. Rigel began to think that the creature wasn’t going to answer. Then he said, “This one doesn’t know, sir. He hasn't thought about it. No one has ever asked him that before.” 
Again, despite the dead man’s expressionless tone, Rigel felt the pathos of his words in his gut. The necromancer fixed the walking cadaver with a long, complex stare, but the dead man showed no sign of noticing. He just trudged forward steadily. 
“Casper it is, then,” Rigel said after a moment.

Soon they reached the far side of the village. Another minute or two, and the three were tromping through the forest. The dirt road was little-used, but Casper seemed to know where he was going, so the necromancer followed him without comment. Besides, it’s not like he knew any better where they were, so Rigel had little choice but to trust the dead man’s sense of direction. 
There was less snow on the ground beneath the sheltering boughs. The branches were overladen with snow and icicles, though, and the old conifers creaked eerily under their frore burden. Rigel was struck by an irrational but powerful impression that the trees were moaning in pain. He knew better, but the notion had a peculiar power in the winter-shadowed woods.
He shook his head to brush off the thought. Don’t be stupid, he told himself. There’s no sense spooking yourself. They’re just trees.
As much to distract himself from his overwrought imagination as anything else, Rigel restarted the conversation. 
“Do you remember anything, then? From before, I mean.” 
“Before, sir?”
“You know. Before you died.”
“Some, sir.” Casper paused. “This one doesn’t think I lived here, sir. I was…” The corpse servant’s face shifted, taking on the merest trace of a frown. “I think... I was a mercenary, sir.”
“Well, at least you’re used to taking orders,” Rigel joked.
“Yes, sir,” Casper replied, deadpan as ever. After a few minutes of silent walking, the dead man continued his earlier statement as if there hadn’t been any pause.
“I came here on campaign, sir. And...” That fleeting little frown, ever-so-faint, creased the dead man’s features again. 
“And?” Rigel prompted.
“The job ended. I ran out of money. I heard that he wanted hirelings.  I went to him…” Casper trailed off. There was a haunted note in his voice now, subtle but real. Rigel glanced at the dead man, pitying him. 

The necromancer didn’t know what to think about his erstwhile colleague’s deed. He was torn between being impressed at the blend of emotional complexity and limited free will that the magical construct allowed Casper, and offended by the callous cruelty the spell intrinsically required. Rigel was inclined to grant certain allowances to genius, but really. There were limits. 
“And he did what?” 
The dead man didn’t answer for several minutes, and his lantern-jawed face took on a subtle stoniness. Rigel felt bad. Prodding the dead man to remember these things was clearly causing him discomfort, perhaps even pain - but Rigel needed the information.
And, if he was being honest with himself, he wanted to gauge Casper’s capacity for deep emotion. To see what the dead man would say.
He felt a little worse. But only a little.
The corner of the necromancer’s mouth twitched, but he successfully shoved his niggling conscience into the back of his mind where it was easier to ignore. It was easy. He had a lot of practice. Despite that, Rigel was sincere when he said, “I’m sorry, Casper. If you don’t want to talk about it, you don’t have to.”
Casper appeared to grit his teeth. Just for a second. 
Then he said, “It’s fine, sir. This one doesn’t mind.” Rigel wasn’t sure if Casper meant it. Even when the dead man’s face showed a trace of expression, it was so subtle and fleeting that Rigel found it almost as difficult to read as Casper’s customary deadpan. After a moment, the corpse servant said, “You know what happened next anyhow, sir.”
“I’m not sure I do, Casper. That’s why I asked.”
The walking cadaver shrugged, a curiously lifelike gesture despite his stiff, stilted movements. “He killed me, sir.”
“Yes, I’d gathered that part,” Rigel said, his tone gentle despite the sardonic words. “But that’s all you remember? You died, then you just… woke up as you are now?”
“Yes, sir.”
Rigel wasn’t sure how Casper could make two words sound so melancholy despite his unemotive tone. The necromancer glanced at the dead man walking at his side. He hadn’t realized it until that moment, but he’d been unconsciously weighing his options - the best way to handle this situation. And, just like that, he’d made his decision. It was funny the way his mind seemed to run on its own, without needing any input from what he experienced as ‘himself’, a lot of the time. 
“You know what, Casper? Shuck and I are going to help you out. I know I asked you to do this as a favor to me, but you’re just helping us help you, got it? We’re gonna do you a big solid, buddy. Okay?”
Casper glanced sidelong at Rigel, but his expression was as unreadable as ever. “Yes, sir,” he said. 
“I mean it, Casper. That’s why we’re going to him. I’m gonna do something about this bullshit.”
The dead man shrugged his bony shoulders again and repeated, “Yes, sir.”
Rigel eyed Casper for another minute or two, giving him some time before he resumed his line of questioning. He couldn’t let it go yet, though. If he was going to tackle the problem, he needed as much information as he could get.
“So… what happened when you woke up?”
The faintest ghost of a sigh escaped Casper’s death-blued lips. The undead man had no need to breathe, but he had to inhale to speak, so the exhale itself didn’t surprise Rigel. It was the first time Rigel had noticed Casper use breathing expressively, though. Given the paucity of emotive signals the dead man expressed in general, a sigh seemed unusually dramatic by Casper standards. Rigel held his tongue, though, and his patience paid off when Casper finally answered the question several minutes later.
“I woke up in his presence,” the dead man said. “The last thing I remember was him taking away my name. Then he gave this one a new name.”
Rigel looked sideways at Casper, frowning in puzzlement. He noticed the change in how Casper referred to himself - from ‘this one’ to ‘I’ and back to ‘this one’ - and wondered what its significance was. He needed to focus, though, so he put that small mystery aside for later.
“And you don’t remember your new name? That seems strange. You do remember me calling you Casper, right? Of course you do, you respond to it. So you must remember.”
“Yes, sir. But that’s not my real name.”
“Okay. What’s your real name, then?”
The corpse didn’t answer. After five minutes or so, Rigel gave up on waiting for a response. 

“Casper. You know that’s weird, right?”
Casper shrugged, noncommittal. Rigel felt an irrational surge of impatience. With some effort, he stifled it. Casper couldn’t help his condition. It wasn’t fair to get mad at him. 
It didn’t help. Rigel was still annoyed. 
The necromancer took a few deep, calming breaths before continuing. Then he said, “Don’t you have any, you know, thoughts about the fact that you can’t remember your own names? Either of them?”
Casper shrugged again. “No, sir.” 
“Well, hell, why not?” Rigel couldn’t help sounding a bit piqued. The corpse glanced sideways at the necromancer, his expression unreadable in a different way than usual. 
“Should this one think about it, sir? Do you want him to?”
Rigel heaved a long-suffering sigh. “No, Casper. Not if you don’t want to.”
Again, Casper shot Rigel that strange look. “This one doesn’t like to think, sir.” Rigel returned Casper’s gaze with a puzzled stare of his own. “You don’t?” Rigel couldn’t imagine not wanting to think. Rigel wasn’t even sure it was possible not to think. How would one just… decide not to think? It seemed like a paradox. “Why? What’s wrong with thinking?”
The corpse stopped walking and stood very still, staring off into the distance with an unfocused gaze. Rigel stopped beside Casper and peered into the dead man’s face, studying him. The corpse’s face seemed blank as ever… except, Rigel realized after staring for several seconds, the muscles of his face weren’t as slack as before. There was a slight tension there. Casper’s face resembled that of a living person at rest - deathly skin tone aside - rather than the corpse that he was. Rigel frowned, puzzled and intrigued. 

Then Casper’s face went slack and corpsely once more, and his eyes came back into focus. He began to walk again, and Rigel followed him, wondering what that was about. 
After a few steps, Casper surprised Rigel by speaking again:
“It hurts, sir.”
Rigel glanced sharply at his undead companion. The dead man was looking straight ahead, his face customarily blank. 
“What hurts, Casper?”
“Thinking, sir. You asked why this one doesn’t like to think. It hurts. To think. To remember.” After a loaded pause, Casper added, emotionless as ever, “That’s why, sir.”
Rigel sighed.

Author's Note

Please don't spare my feelings. Speak your mind. Thanks.