Bodies, bodies, valuable bodies, bodies that would be ideal for his research and for growing the supply of available parts. Of course, they had been living seconds before until an unfortunate encounter with a form of necromantic trap rendered them quite dead. Fortunately, he wasn’t so easy to kill as Vanir’s great sword cleaved the last of the creatures in half, and it went down with a hiss of fury. Vanir was Junius’ favorite puppet, created from his former chief tormenter at the academy, who thought he might get rid of Junius in the horror that had been their botched final exam by striking him for refusing to cooperate. Unfortunately for him, he never saw the dagger Junius had on his threads and had met a swift end, which had likely been a fluke but the man died nonetheless. Without that bit of skullduggery, Junius would likely be very dead since Vanir had been a proctor and teacher of the martial classes such as sword fighting, the ones Junius was most inept at, and he had greatly disliked Junius.
”Excellent job, Vanir, I can always count on you to deal with any situation.” With a thought and a tug, one of the glowing red threads attached to Vanir’s head flashed slightly. These threads were attached to Vanir in various other places as well, giving Junius a lifelike level of control over the puppet. Only Junius and powerful casters who were looking could see his threads or sometimes sense them. Most people had no chance of doing so.
”Of course, Master Junius. Whatever these creatures were, they are no more.” What those on the outside looking in would find disturbing if they knew was that this was effectively Junius talking to himself, since the body was simply a heavily modified shell that was animated with marionette magic. There was a sick pleasure that he derived from having one of his chief former tormentors calling him master, even if it was effectively Junius calling himself master. He looked down on the ground at the piles of bodies. The entryway of the tomb contained numerous corpses in various states of decay. The squeaking of rats filled the room as they feasted on carrion. There were very few usable parts here, to be honest.
Stepping over the pile of bodies, he inspected the corpse of whatever had attacked them. Some kind of warriors with ancient, rusted armor with the crest of some long dead king, arose from several large nearby sarcophagi to strike at them. The band of mercenaries Junius had met a few nights back in the village three days travel from here had not survive. He had met them and had struck up a conversation, and they had become fast friends, or so Junius had led them to believe. He had no strong feelings about any particular being, other than his friends of course. Though the
Dreadlords hated and reviled other races, Junius simply had no real animosity for anyone and simply assessed beings based on their use to him at the point of their meeting.
Now they lay dead and quite mangled as the creatures had made short work of them. Out of the five enemies, twelve mercenaries had managed to take down one. ‘What a truly, incomprehensibly, incompetent bunch’, Junius thought to himself. Their attackers were dead far too many years to be of use and after rifling through the mercenary party’s possessions and taking what he thought valuable, he only found one body that was mostly untouched. The unfortunate soul had been killed with a jab in the throat and looked fairly young, likely mid-twenties. He had been the happiest of them all, bright and excited to explore the tomb.
He shrugged and squatted down, touching the corpse of the young mercenary and uttering a brief phrase, and suddenly the ruby around his neck began to glow as an inky black smoke poured out of it, surrounding the corpse. The smoke pooled entirely around its target, obscuring the corpse from view. Once the body could be seen no more, the smoke flowed back into the gem, and the corpse was gone, as if it had never been there. He repeated the same task with one of the
undead defenders of the tomb. Likely not much use but still worth a look.
Standing up with a sigh, Junius observed his surroundings, noticing the vast empty entry chamber of the tomb that led off the main entrance. He noted the other door on the other side of the empty stone room which likely led deeper into the tomb. It had all likely been built this way to inspire a sense of awe amongst those who would enter, but Junius cared little for such trivialities. What did any of the matter, once you were dead? It was useful to no one since it couldn’t even be inhabited unless you wanted to fall victim to one of the many traps that lined the corridors.
Instead of going through the tomb by himself, Junius opted to wait and see who else might wander in. He had time, after all, and he still wanted to see what other interesting things were present in this place. Based on the number of dead mercenaries, sellswords, and mages around here, the area likely got traffic often. Also, Gilram wasn’t expecting anything from him for a while, so Junius had time off. This was an interesting place to spend it. He sublty moved the fingers on his right hand and his puppet began walked over to a nearby stone, standing by Junius who sat down on the cool rock, observing the area.
