Deadtired

Officer Cadet Wrapture saluted smartly. He had stood out to Seventeen, initially, because of his neatness. Mummies often allowed their wrappings to flop and undo themselves somewhat. The cleverer often used these as weapons, but it was nonetheless rather untidy. Officer Cadet Wrapture was neat. His wrappings wrapped just-so, and never dirty or stained. That same tidiness carried on to his demeanour. He was actually quite kind and helpful as well. Not necessary, but welcome all the same.

"Sir! The city militia's training is coming along at a satisfying pace. Within the week I expect them all to know which end of the spear is the sharp one!"

Seventeen nodded. That was about as good as they could expect from highly volatile humans. The unfortunate truth was that the human contingent of their militia was likely no better than the army approaching them.

Actually, they were likely to be even less well-trained and equipped. They did have two advantages. They'd be fighting for their homes at their home, with walls and palisades and the knowledge that failure meant more than just their own death. The other advantage came from tiredness. The army coming towards them would be exhausted from the long march.

The third, secret advantage, came from having necromancers on their side. A fallen soldier now was a risen zombie later.

"Officer Cadet Rotney?" Seventeen asked. Speaking of zombies...

Rotney was as sloppy as Officer Wrapture was neat. "Ah, yes, hmm," he said. His entire being was the personification of slumpedness. Seventeen suspected that even in life, Rotney's posture wasn't ideal. "The troops are as ready as can be. We have them buried where they need to be. The practice has been alright. We're being strict about it, I guess. Don't expect miracles, but we'll manage."

A lackadaisical reply. Seventeen regretted this promotion above all others, but Rotney was a rare zombie whose thirst for brains wasn't merely literal. He was actually smart... sometimes.

"And finally Officer Cadet Appari."

"Please, call me Shawn," the officer said as he shifted on the spot. He was a very emotive, personably, even charismatic wraith. A fantastic leader for their assassination and covert OPs division.

"Report," Seventeen suggested.

"With Serpen's targets marked out amongst the enemy officer core, we are ready to begin our first culling tonight. My wraiths have also noticed a few lower-ranked, weaker cultivators in the enemy formation. Might I have permission to take care of them as well?"

Seventeen considered it. It might anger the cultivators. Then again, they were ill equipped for dealing with them already. "Go ahead," he said. Even a few dead might demoralise the other lower-ranked cultivators, and it might make the slightly stronger ones stay up at night and disrupt their of-so-important meditations. "We might suffer some losses from that."

"It's all in the job, I'm afraid," Officer Cadet Appari said with a languid shrug. "It happens."

"I suppose so," Seventeen replied.

He eyed his officer corps. It wasn't much, but it was a start. A decade or so of constant war and turmoil would sort them out and turn them into a proper corps suitable for the Bone Father's grand return.

Now he just needed to arrange things for that great war to get underway. But all things in due time. First, these interlopers kindly volunteering to test their mettle. Then the rest of the human empire.

"For the Glory of the Bone Father!"

"For the Glory of the Bone Father!" the cadets repeated.

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Chapter Thirty-Eight — Eager Empress

Chapter Thirty-Eight — Eager Empress

She decided that it was about time that she started to exercise some of her 'power' as... whatever her title might be.

Actually, that was something she'd likely need to figure out sooner rather than later, because everything she knew and everything she'd been reading about cultivators shone a new light on certain things that she'd always taken for granted.

As usual, all-night reading sessions had proven to be a fantastic idea. She'd mostly scoured through the journals of a few sect members of the Hungering Inferno sect.

There were some journals that had been copied and reprinted in the library, ostensibly so that members of the sect could read about the exploits of their older peers from a primary source.

She'd read three of these journals overnight, though two of them had been skimmed somewhat. There were a lot of boring passages.

'In the year of the Emperor, blah blah, I spent six seasons in closed door meditation... opened my meridians... blah blah... slightly improved mastery of my basic skills.'

These cultivators were... well, they were patient, she'd give them that. It seemed like the normal pattern was a slow growth at the start, followed by an explosion of growth and improvement which eventually tapered off. Then there would be a very long, very winding road of slight improvements to master some skills. These would eventually lead to another explosion of talent.

At least, that was the pattern that she could discern. It wasn't what was important.

What was important was less about reading the day-to-day of these long-dead cultivators. What was important was seeing the way they thought from their own pen.

Cultivators were grand-standing idiots, but now she was aware that there was a reason for their grand-standing idiocy.

Her master had been right about them this entire time, and while she had disliked cultivators on principle because of a life of being dismissed by them, now she had a far more concrete reason for that very same dislike.

These people she was reading about didn't start off as complete jerks, but they reached that point eventually. She was certain that there was a way to reach their end goal without being a complete ass, but she wasn't seeing it here. Likely because doing so was so much harder than just folding and allowing themselves to be a little evil.

She shook her head and refocused. The thoughts were fresh in her mind, but that same mind hadn't slept very much and she had several meetings to attend today. She was on her way to one of these now.

First, her thoughts, she needed them all figured out or else she'd be a mess at the meeting.

Her reading showed the stories of three young men who were all, in their way, eager to join the Hungering Inferno. They were new recruits first, then outer, and finally inner disciples. One of them went on to be an elder of sorts, the other two's journals cut off quite suddenly, with long flower-y afterwards written in a different style going on about how they lost their lives in the service of the sect.

They started off as... alright men. Not saints, but not awful people either. And the sect didn't turn them evil. It just gave them the tools to turn...

She chewed on her lower lip. Evil wasn't the right term. It was too black and white.

Pragmatic? Yes, that fit a lot better. Their growth as cultivators required that they focus on that growth. To not focus on it was to stagnate, and stagnation meant eventually failing. Because their end goal was one and the same; become the most powerful.

But that was a fallacy, wasn't it? There could only ever be one most powerful.

They weren't all fools. The one who went on to be an elder often wrote about his thoughts on that same issue, initially with quite a bit of empathy and compassion even.

But to cultivate meant to pursue personal power, immortality, enlightenment, all with single-minded focus, and that also meant becoming an egotistical, selfish prick.

She nodded.

There was more to it, of course. To be a cultivator meant disregarding the law. Not just the literal laws, of course but the...

She struggled for a moment more. Her thoughts felt like loose strings caught in a strong wind. Just... there, almost tingling together into coherence, but not. And then two strings wrapped around each other and she had a spark of an idea.

Right! There was a rule, or a set of rules, that every normal person followed.

She'd followed these her entire life, in a way. Don't be a jerkass was number one. Helping others sometimes was another. Be polite, be encouraging, don't give up hope. Respect and listen to your elders, be kind to children and teach them. Little rules that people didn't need to have spelled out to them.

Cultivators had to break these to grow stronger. More, they had to disregard them because if they didn't, then they wouldn't spend more time in meditation. They were aware, generally, that they couldn't ignore all of these rules, so they pushed them onto others.

Inner disciples were tasked by elders to teach the newest recruits. So the inner disciples pushed that task onto the outer, who did the work for them because to do otherwise would invite punishment that might cripple their cultivation and ruin their hopes.

At every stage, the rules that kept society working were a little further away. She imagined it was probably the same for the very rich or the very powerful as well.

... It might have been a little bit the same for her too, now that she thought about it? When was the last time she'd done something to help?

She swallowed past the guilt. Soon. For now, her thoughts turned back to titles, because she had none and that was a problem.

Cultivators measured the value of listening to someone based on their perceived strength, and strength was either measured by deed, or by title.

She had no title. She was Fenfang Fang, and that was it. And it wasn't enough. The Limpet was maybe a title, she wasn't clear on that, but if it was, it didn't have the cultural context to matter.

If she met a nice man on the street and he gave her his title but it was in a foreign tongue, then it wouldn't matter if the title was cobbler or king.

Fenfang arrived in front of a set of double doors. These were held shut by two very large skeletal warriors in some of their only full armour. It was covered in small barnacles, and they stank of seaweed still, but that might help if anything.

She nodded to them, and they opened the door into the main meeting room of the Hungering Inferno sect. The tapestries had been ripped away and the sconces replaced by some which weren't as garish. There was nothing to do about the flame-patterned marble inlaid floor, though someone had placed a deep blue rug over much of it.

There were some three dozen people in the room, including two mantises and several undead. They all turned to stare at her as she entered.

"Good morning," she said. The sudden shock that came from having to be extroverted did more to wake her up than even fine tea could have managed. "We have a lot to go over today. Administrator Fu Yen, a pleasure to see you again."

"A pleasure," the father-bodied man said with a bow from his seat. "I brought the best of the city's administration with me today."

"Good, we're going to need the best. Captain Seventeen, how are you?" Fenfang asked.

"Well enough," the skeletal necromancer replied. "I brought some of my own best today as well."

She nodded, noting the presence of a few well-dressed and cleaned up undead. "Fantastic. It's good to see our army expanding." With that, she'd reached the large chair at the far end of the room and she sat in it. Rem pushed the seat forward suddenly, thrusting her almost into the table. It was... well, almost a nice gesture. She gave Mem a nod, then scanned the room. Lots of sweaty faces amongst the living. Not a bit of nervousness amongst the dead.

Good enough.

"First, I want to talk about our situation with regards to this war. Second, I want to set up a better system to help our fine citizens find work, housing, and gain better access to both medicine and food. Then I need to talk about titles."

"Titles?" Administrator Fu Yen asked.

She hesitated. This would be a big moment. A make or break. And if she did it wrong, it would be her head that would be gone. "Yes. I think, from now on, I will be Empress Limpet."

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Officer Corpse — Serpen Tine

Officer Corpse — Serpen Tine

He had to do a good job.

Serpen Tine had been raised from the dead, not once, not twice, but three times. First, he was a fisherman off the eastern coast. His past there was ancient and shrouded and lost to the shifting sands of time.

Then he was a cobra. A simple snake, sneaking across the sands until his inevitable demise.

He remembered his time as a snake most of all. He wasn't reincarnated. No, his body was that of a ghoul, an experiment by now-Captain Seventeen. The necromancer had two servants, a simple cobra who was too small to be of any use and a long-dead fisherman whose head had been chewed on by some large predatory fish.

So he did what necromancers do and combined the two.

Two existences becoming one in death.

Serpen Tine sometimes felt like an abomination. His cobra head was far too small for his human body, and he constantly had to fight the urge to curl up on any warm rocks he passed by. But that ability to fight those urges is what brought him to where he was.

There were plenty of abominations in the undead army. Few of them became anything. He didn't want to be a nothing. He wanted to excel, to do right by the army that had raised him (from the dead).

It brought him genuine joy when he saw the Bone Father for the first time. Not just seeing the man who was an exemplar of undeath, but to see that the man's highest ranked servant was a Death Butler made from the corpses of two creatures just like Serpen Tine was. Of course, Alex the Maid was made by the Father, and was therefore perfect in a way he would never be but... well, it was something.

He came back to the moment as a ghost materialized from shadow nearby. He was currently hidden in the shade of a large stone that hung off the side of a cliff-face some two day's walk from Yu Xiang. This was very much near the centre of the Flamming Steppes. If he were to climb that cliff-face and squint into the distance, he would be able to see the heat-haze rising off of the main road that cut through the province.

"Sir," the ghost said.

"Yesss?" he replied. Serpen knew that he was far from wise or even smart, but sometimes he felt like his subordinates weren't even trying. "Report."

The ghost bobbed on the spot. It was one of the newer recruits from the city, a formless ghost who had forgotten their gender and appearance and who seemed more like a blob with some silken sheets wrapped over it than a proper geist or apparition. That same weakness of form made the ghost almost entirely invisible to the sight of mortals.

"The army rides east."