NDE Two

In which Casper's master makes it clear that he is Not Okay with Rigel's interference and sends what Rigel considers a "really cool combat zombie". Also, Casper's jaw falls off. (It's repairable.)

Casper followed the unpaved road as it wound across the stony flanks of the mountains, gradually gaining altitude. Rigel, in turn, followed the dead man. Shuck drifted in their wake, sniffing at things and, to all appearances, being a typical dog. 
“How much further, Casper?”
“We’re about two-thirds to his home, sir,” Casper replied. Rigel grimaced. The dead man’s deferential mannerisms were starting to unsettle him.
“You don’t have to call me sir, you know, Casper. I’m your friend, not your master.”
There was a brief silence. Then Casper said, “Yes, sir.” 
Rigel frowned, studying the corpse’s face. If he didn’t know better, he would have sworn there was a twinkle of humor in those gray-green eyes. 
Nah. No way. I’m imagining things.
“I mean it, Casper. You don’t have to do that.”
A longer pause ensued. After several minutes, Casper said, “But this one wants to, sir.”
Rigel looked over at the dead man again, blinking several times. Did he just express an actual preference? Son of a b***h, he did. Rigel wanted to ask why. Badly. But, fearing he might disrupt Casper’s presumably fragile sense of agency, he squashed the impulse. 
Instead, Rigel said, “Oh. Well. Okay. If that’s what you want, Casper,” the necromancer couldn’t resist emphasizing.
“Yes, sir,” the corpse confirmed.
Again, Rigel bit back the question on his lips.
Timing is everything, he reminded himself. You can ask later. It’s incredible that he cares enough to say he wants anything to begin with.
In the back of his mind, Rigel was aware that Shuck was paying attention to the conversation despite his apparent preoccupation with matters of deep canine interest, such as intriguing scents and potentially edible detritus. 
What do you think, Shucky?
Strange, Rigel’s familiar replied through their magical bond. The dog’s thought wasn’t verbalized; it was the canine equivalent of a shrug as conveyed through telepathy. Shuck didn’t know what to make of Casper, so he was reserving judgment. The corpse servant was not immediately dangerous, but beyond that, who knew? 
All of that was conveyed in one thought which Rigel’s human mind experienced as that single, albeit loaded, word: Strange.
Me too, buddy, Rigel agreed, meaning that he wasn’t sure what to make of Casper either. The more I learn, the more confused I get.

Shuck was amused. A wordless query came across with the humored feeling, and Rigel understood the combined sentiment to mean, “Is that a bad thing?” The necromancer smiled.

No. It’s damned annoying, but it’s not a bad thing. The day I stop finding new things to get annoyed over for no good reason, dig a grave, Shucky ol’ boy - I’ll be dead. 

Be less annoyed. You might live longer, Shuck replied. That time the dog went to the trouble of verbalizing the thought. Rigel rolled his eyes, knowing the dog would ‘feel’ his dismissive gesture. Shuck’s amusement deepened. 

“Pest,” Rigel muttered fondly.

“What did you say, sir?” Casper looked over his shoulder at Rigel.
“Nothing. I was talking to the dog.”
Casper opened his mouth to reply, but his jaw didn’t stop at the usual spot - in fact, it tore right off his face, falling into the snow with a dull thump. 
Rigel couldn’t help but find this funny. He set his jaw and squeezed his lips together, trying not to laugh, feeling guilty that he wanted to laugh in the first place. Casper just looked down at his fallen jaw, and his deadpan expression only made the situation funnier. 

“Oh dear,” Casper said. Or tried to say, at least. Without his lower jaw, the sound came out as an unintelligible two-syllable moan. Rigel’s earring managed to translate the sound regardless.

“Oops,” Rigel agreed, unable to stop himself. Then he had to clap his hand over his mouth to stop from cracking up. Poor Casper. His creator hadn’t been maintaining him, evidently. Rigel knew he shouldn’t laugh at that, but he couldn’t help it. The scene in front of him was just too absurd. A snort escaped as the necromancer strove mightily to repress his laughter. After several more seconds, Rigel finally mastered himself. Mostly. He had to repress another giggle before he could speak.

“Sorry, sorry,” Rigel apologized, though an irrepressible grin still lingered on his features. “Hee hee. Okay, for real though,” the necromancer added, shoving down the urge to laugh. “I can fix that. Hold on, buddy, just a sec. Oi, Shuck, c’mere,” Rigel said, indicating Casper with a sideways nod of his head. The black dog trotted through the snow, sitting beside his human and the unfortunate corpse servant. 

“Hmm,” Rigel said as he leaned down to pick up Casper’s fallen jaw. “You know, it’s got to be significant that you can’t remember your name, Casper. Why, though?” The necromancer frowned thoughtfully, holding the corpse’s jaw up near his face as he studied the failed joints where the mandible had detached. Yep, advanced dry-rot. Pure neglect. Sloppy, sloppy, he thought with disdain. 

Rigel shook his head, flicking the fingers of his free hand dismissively. “Nevermind. I’ll worry about that later. For now, let’s get this jaw back on your face, okay?”

“Okay, sir,” Casper replied, or tried to. Rigel understood him regardless of his impediment, but he had to bite his lip to stifle a giggle at the mournful hooting sounds that were all the poor corpse could produce without his jaw.

Rigel gently but firmly gripped the jaw, pushing it up against Casper’s face. The bones didn't quite fit together properly, and the joints were slightly out of alignment. Rigel had to wriggle his wrist, then rock the jaw inwards slightly so that it would be an even press to fit it into Casper’s face. If Casper had been alive, he would have been in agony before the jaw finally came off. Luckily, the dead feel no pain. Still, Rigel clicked his tongue in sympathy as he manipulated the jaw, looking for the best way to fit it back in. 

Poor guy must have died of a blow to the head.
It was a tricky fix. But the necromancer managed it using a combination of physical strength and just a few threads of magic. Rigel let go of Casper’s jaw and put his hands on his hips, frowning as he evaluated the temporary bond he’d made at the mandible joints.
“Hmf. That’ll hold it while I prep a real fix, but don’t try to talk right now or it’ll fall back off,” Rigel told Casper. The corpse said nothing in reply, standing stock-still. Rigel wondered for a moment if Casper had heard him and was obeying, or if he was in that odd trance state he’d seemed to fall into earlier. Then he decided it didn’t matter so long as he got the repair done.
"Okay, Shuck, help me out here with some extra mojo. Let's... hmm. Let's try Routine Zombie Repair version three, see if that works."
The necromancer closed his eyes and concentrated. He began to feel a little more in tune with the world around him. Absently he noted that his aura had changed color -- it had brightened compared to last time he’d checked, from shadowy black to a deep purple-blue. It was strong, too, blazing up like an indigo bonfire. Rigel felt like he could crush stones in his hands as he sank into full awareness of his power, of the magic latent within him. Shuck leaned against his side and he became aware of his familiar’s complex aura, as if the dog were wreathed in chilly fog and moon-shadows. Casper's aura was extremely muted, wrapped within glowing black threads. Rigel frowned. He wouldn't have been able to see the echoes of Casper's aura at all back when he was in college. 

That's some tight weaving on that spell, he observed with disapproval. Liable to damage the soul. Is this guy a complete bungler or does he just not give a damn? How can such a brilliant designer have such sloppy execution?

Rigel’s strong hands reached up to grasp Casper’s jaw, massaging it. He murmured to himself, guiding the threads of magic as Casper’s dead flesh began to knit as if under its own power. Within seconds, the jaw was fully reattached.

“Dead flesh is harder to repair than live,” Rigel commented as he finished the spell, “but a little mandible reattachment is an easy job. How does it feel?”
Casper shifted his jaw as if testing it. As the corpse began to answer, though, Rigel was distracted by a sense of danger radiating from Shuck. The dog began to pant in anxiety, then let out a low, hard growl from deep in his chest. His ears, normally droopy at the tips, stood stiffly upright, pricked forward, as the dog swung his head around to stare up-slope, into the woods above them on the mountainside.
Bad smell! Danger!
Shuck’s warning, nonverbal yet sharp as a slap, struck Rigel hard. The necromancer looked over his shoulder, instinctively seeking the direction Shuck faced. At first, he stared into the trees, seeing nothing amiss. Then birds fluttered up from somewhere further up the slope and Rigel realized that Shuck’s more sensitive ears could hear what he could not: slow, heavy steps.
Something was coming.

Without thinking about it, acting from habit, Rigel stepped in front of Casper, putting himself between the corpse servant (whom he thought of as a noncombatant) and whatever was approaching. He had no idea if Casper could run with any speed and wasn’t in the mood to test him under live-fire conditions.
Besides, Rigel didn’t like to retreat if he didn’t have to. He felt a fierce smirk split his face, baring his teeth with aggressive anticipation. He had no doubt that whatever was coming their way was hostile, and he set his feet in a fighting stance. 
As it turned out, that was a solid bet. Faster than he’d expected, the distant stomping grew close enough for his own ears to detect. And then it got loud.

"Brace yourselves, boys," Rigel warned.
When the great reptilian head pushed out from between the trees, regarding the three figures on the path below with its small, ember-bright eyes, Rigel’s own eyes bulged. He took an unconscious step backward, thinking maybe they should have run when they had the chance after all.
“What the ever-living f**k is that!?” 
Though his appetite for a good fight was higher than average, Rigel wondered again if discretion might not be the better part of valor this time as the immense brute took one ground-shaking step onto the path about ten meters in front of them. It was gigantic, and bipedal, its legs mighty pillars of muscle and bone. Its three-toed talons dug into the ground as it turned to face its puny adversaries. It reminded Rigel of a dragon in some ways, except it had no horns or wings. In other ways, it was like a tremendous bird - no, even more, like a groundhawk, he thought - but with tiny, useless forearms and no feathers, only pebbly-scaled hide. 
Then again, Rigel couldn’t be sure if its featherless state was natural to it or if it had merely lost them to death. The beast was a reanimated corpse. Its ribs showed through tattered hide and grave-stench rolled off it in waves. The dead monster’s jaws gaped, its knife-like teeth - each one longer than Rigel’s hand - flashing in the gray winter daylight. It stretched its head forward and roared, blasting Rigel and Shuck with a hideous stench as its unearthly bellow rolled over them. (Casper, unable to smell anything and equally dead in any event, didn’t mind.) 
“Holy s**t!” Rigel swore again and took several more steps backward, stunned by the sheer scale of the monster. He’d seen some impressive beasts in the past, but he’d never seen something this big reanimated before. 

To his surprise, the beast’s head turned, tracking his movement. As if it was unaware of - or uninterested in - Shuck and Casper, it advanced toward Rigel, following him as he continued to back away. Shuck let out a series of ferocious barks and charged at the beast’s huge talons, but it showed no sign of being aware of the dog, and its huge strides made it difficult for Shuck to harry its feet as it advanced on Rigel. He couldn’t reach its ankles to bite them, and even if he had it would have done no good. 
Shuck stopped and looked to Rigel with a whine, but the necromancer was busy focusing on the attacker. Rigel could see the beast’s aura, and, through Shuck’s eyes, the spellwork that held it together, the glowing violet ribbons and threads of neon black. It was massive, no doubt, and its creator was no amateur - but beneath the complex patterns required to hold and move so much moribund flesh, there was only a seething mass of death magic. No soul. It was a big, bad zombie… but only a zombie.
Rigel pulled his magic over him like a heavy cloak. It sang in his veins, and he was no longer intimidated by the undead beast. He felt unstoppable. His fighting smile returned.
Giant monster-zombie? No problem.
The beast was almost on him, its jaws already gaping wide to engulf him. Two more strides and it would have him. 
Rigel focused. The necromancer reached into the environment around him for death-energy. In the depths of winter, in this place, it was abundant. Countless small animals and plants had lost their lives to the cold, hungry darkness of the season, and the residue of their demise lingered all around him. He seized those remnants with his mind, pulled on them, gathered them around himself. His aura pulsed, then swelled. A bubble of deep purple laced with glowing black swirled into visibility around him as he wove the death-magic around his own natural aura like a scaffold. The necromantic aura flickered into being around Rigel just as the beast’s head swung toward him for the kill.
The huge zombie’s jaws stopped short in mid-air.  The tips of its teeth were millimeters from the edge of Rigel’s necromantic aura, which crackled with arcs of black lightning as the spell caught the beast. It could get no closer. Rigel could see the reptilian horror leaning against the barrier, its dead muscles twitching in unnatural patterns as the reanimating magic flowed through them. 

The beast shrieked, a higher-pitched sound than such a huge animal should be able to produce. Now it was his enemy’s turn to retreat. It backed off two or three paces, shaking its great head in confusion. Its dead brain could not understand what had happened, why its prey was not even now dying in its jaws.
“That’s right, ya big ugly f**k,” Rigel growled through his clenched teeth, his expression somewhere between a grin and a snarl. “Back off, or I’ll cut the magic strings that keep you from crumbling into a pile of corpse dust!” 

He knew the zombie couldn’t understand his words, but it didn’t matter. They were meant for the other necromancer or magician - whoever was in charge of the beast. His rival would be miles away, no doubt, but they would be watching through their minion’s dead eyes. 
Someone has to be pulling that meat puppet’s strings, he thought with grim satisfaction. Let’s see if they’re willing to wreck their big shiny toy to kill me.
The twin euphorias of magic and combat sang in Rigel’s blood as he locked eyes with the brute. His confident, aggressive gaze met the beast’s cold, ember-bright stare. Its eyes were strangely small in its huge head, but there was no mistaking the predatory calculations happening behind them. Rigel realized that the monster’s corpse-mind retained a certain low cunning. It was stupid, no question, deeply stupid, its brain half-rotten… yet not as stupid as he’d first thought. Not mindless. Just… well, stupid. Which made it dangerously clever by zombie standards.
He wondered how smart the beast had been before it died... and decided he didn’t ever want to see one of these monsters alive, whatever they were.
There wasn’t enough room on the path for the beast to circle him, but it turned its side to him and swung its great tail at him, moving its hips to lean into the awkward yet lethal strike. The great crocodilian tail was stiff with tendons - a lot more like a tree trunk than a whip - but the monster contorted its undead body to bring the huge appendage around anyhow. Rigel’s eyes widened.
He threw himself to the ground just in time. The huge tail whooshed over his head like a felled tree, missing by centimeters. He knew in his gut that even with his shield spell, he would’ve been dead if that massive blow had connected. Magic could only do so much about raw physics. He would’ve gone flying right off the path, shield and all, and while the blow itself wouldn’t have harmed him - the spell would have prevented that - the abrupt stop at the end would have. There’d be a rock or tree with Rigel-bits all over it, laid out like a feast for the wolves and ravens. Yick. Not a great mental image.
“Damn it, that’s cheating!” Rigel yelled, indignant, from his prone position. The beast, meanwhile, pulled its ungainly bulk back into balance, turning its head toward him while maintaining its side-on posture so it could take another swing at him if it chose to. Rigel could have sworn its vicious little eyes glittered with humor, and that’s when he decided that his rival had taken direct control of the beast. The hideous sepulchral chuckle that echoed out of the reptilian horror’s dead chest confirmed his impression.
“Oh, f**k you too,” Rigel growled as he got back to his feet. Now he was getting pissed off. The brute watched him with wary, newly-intelligent eyes, but made no move yet.  

“You obviously know what I’m up to, and you don’t like it one bit. Well, guess what? The feeling’s mutual, shiteyes. And, that aside? No one ambushes me with a goddamn zombie,” the traveling necromancer hissed as he braced his booted feet in the frozen dust of the unpaved path. “Not even a huge, weird one. Don’t get me wrong - great craftsmanship! But I’m Rigel the Whirlwind, and I’ve got a reputation to uphold,” Rigel smirked. 

“So I’ll warn you once. Get out of my way… or I’ll take away your toys. All of them.”
The undead monster reared its great head back and blasted out another deafening, stinking roar, this time laced with the defiant anger of Rigel’s unknown rival. It didn’t exactly turn on a dime, but it still hauled its massive bulk around with more speed than Rigel would have thought possible for such a huge zombie. In the same movement, it lurched forward, charging him. 
Rigel slid one foot back, bracing himself. Such a great combat zombie, he thought as he reached into the death-haunted forest again for more power. Too bad there’s no time to steal it. His big hands moved with frenetic speed as he traced out the patterns he needed. He didn’t bother to hide what he was doing. He’d already announced his intentions.
“All righty, fucko,” the necromancer shouted as his counterspell flickered into being between his hands. “Have it your way!” 
With the counterspell fully charged, Rigel no longer had to rely on sneaking peeks through Shuck’s eyes. In the midst of the spell’s halo of power he could see it for himself: all the lines and ebbs and flows of power in the world around him. Death-energies, of course, were by far the most obvious to Rigel, and in his enhanced vision the undead monster glowed black like a dark sun, looming larger and larger as it bore down on him. Countless lines of power enmeshed the beast, holding it together and reanimating its cadaverous bulk. In spite of himself, Rigel shivered at the sheer massive size of it. He felt like a mouse cowering before a charging groundhawk.
Then Rigel activated the spell and fear went away. Everything went away except for him and his target. Magic shot through him and he shivered again, this time with pleasure. He drew the unfocused energy into the pattern suspended between his hands, overcharging it, pushing the limits of the crystalline weave. It was on the edge of fracturing when he released it. 
The spell roared across the remaining distance between Rigel and the onrushing monster. The incandescent surge of magic left an afterimage on the necromancer’s retinas like the warped ghost of an exotic fractal, and his ears rang with the backrush of sound. When it left Rigel’s hands, it was a raw blast of unfocused force, but as it flew over the undead monster the magic drew into a shape somewhere between a wing and a blade, its leading edge razor-sharp. To Rigel's eyes it almost resembled a falcon made of power, a blazing indigo death-bird.
The beast loomed over Rigel. Its ugly reptilian face twisted in a gloating snarl, ember-eyes flaring bright, as it raised one massive foot to stomp him, to crush him beneath its tremendous bulk. 
With a contemptuous gesture, Rigel pulled his counterspell around and down across the beast. The spell dissolved as it spent its energy against the strands of death magic, but the impact was more than enough to break them. He watched the glowing black and violet ribbons of power that held the huge zombie together split as the energy-falcon snicked through them, its razored leading edge as ruthless and efficient as a knife.
The zombie's enormous three-clawed foot was just a few centimeters above his head when the last ribbon split. 

At that instant, the creature collapsed like a marionette with its strings cut, dissolving into a cloud of foul-smelling dust. The corpse dust piled at Rigel’s feet, fell around him in drifts, and swirled in the disturbed air like stinking smoke. A hideous smell lingered on the air as the dust began to settle.

Shuck sneezed.

“And where were you, huh? Man’s best friend indeed,” Rigel joked. “Seriously, glad you’re okay, Shucky,” the necromancer added. The dog chuffed as if to say, Same to you. He wagged his shaggy tail, reflecting the relief both of them felt. 
Then Rigel remembered Casper. 
“Hey, Casper? You okay, buddy?” Rigel looked around for the corpse servant, worried that he’d been trampled or otherwise harmed in the chaos. To the necromancer’s surprise, Casper was standing exactly where he’d been when the fight began, staring back at Rigel blankly. 
As he trudged back up the trail toward Casper, Rigel noted absently that the corpse servant’s mandible hadn’t fallen off. Looks like basic zombie repair spells work on him. Good to know.
“You don’t feel much of anything, do you, Casper?” Rigel asked as he reached the dead man, a note of resignation in his voice. He’d almost have preferred if Casper had run away. At least that would have shown some sense of self-preservation.
“No, sir,” Casper answered with his usual dull equanimity. 
“So you are okay, then? Didn’t get stepped on or anything?” Rigel asked in a jocular tone, trying to lighten his own mood.
“Fine, sir. Just trying to remember where I left my lips,” Casper said. 
Rigel blinked several times.
“Was… was that a joke?”
“Yes, sir,” Casper said. His voice was as deadpan as ever, but Rigel felt a grin stretch his features. With a surge of surprised delight, he jumped forward and wrapped Casper in an impulsive hug.
“Casper! You told a joke! Good job! I’m proud of you, my dude!”
“It wasn’t very funny, sir,” Casper said, and though his voice remained unemotive, Rigel imagined there was a nonplussed tone to it. He blinked down at Rigel slowly as if confused. 
“Who cares? Signs of life, man, signs of life!” The necromancer let go of Casper and did a quick little hopping dance of happiness. “There’s hope for you yet!”
Casper stood motionless, staring at Rigel in his inscrutable way for several seconds. Rigel peered back at the dead man, intrigued. Man, what is that about? Is he broken when he does that? What’s going on in that corpsey skull of his? If anything?
After a minute or two of silence, Rigel ventured, “Casper? You there?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay…” Rigel stared at Casper for a moment. It was his turn to feel nonplussed. “You all right, then?”
Casper seemed to think for another few seconds. Then he said, “I’m fine, sir.”
“Got your lips all found and strapped on?” Rigel asked, raising one eyebrow.
“Yes, sir,” Casper answered, deadpan. Again, Rigel couldn’t tell if it was just the corpse servant’s customary blank tone or if there might be a spark of humor in his response. 
“Good enough,” Rigel said, and clapped Casper on the shoulder. “Gimme a sec, buddy, I gotta get some of that corpse dust.”
Casper said nothing. He and the dog both waited patiently as Rigel went back to the pile of smelly powdered zombie remains. The necromancer knelt beside the largest pile and reached into his jacket’s left inner pocket, pulling out a glass vial with a cork stopper. As he popped the stopper out of the vial and collected a sample of the corpse dust, Rigel commented, “You know, it’s a shame I had to put that thing down. It was a great combat zombie.” There was a pause as Rigel packed the dust into the vial. “Kind of cute, even,” he added as he popped the cork back into the vial. Rigel tucked the vial back into his coat pocket, stood back up, dusted his hands off, and returned to his companions. He didn’t notice that Casper was staring at him with slightly more focus than usual. 
After a moment, Casper said, “You’re very strange, sir.”
Rigel grinned. “I’m glad you have the presence of mind to think so.”

Author's Note

Don't spare my feelings, please. Speak your mind. Thank you.