A Cure For Boredom

The jewel pulsed, sending glowing ripples of an eerie green hue out into the world. Imperceptible to normal eyesight, only visible to he who set the enchantment; the necromancer smiled to himself slightly. The end would come for the town soon enough, the villagers would be torn limb from limb by the undead.

Skeletal hands broke through the earth, some with bits of flesh attached, the rotten stench filling the necromancer’s nostrils. The clambered up out of their graves as the jewel pulsed again, sending the waves of entropic power farther outward with each emission. The graveyard lay a small distance away from the town, making it an ideal starting place for the raising of an army.

The necromancer closed his eyes, stretching out with his senses. There were plenty of dead buried in the forest nearby or left unburied. The carcass of a bear, skin removed by the hunter that had felled it, rose with undead fury and hunger and began making its way slowly to the graveyard. A stag rose, goring the creature that slew it with its antlers. With the next pulse of the necromancer’s jewel, the creature also rose.

Before long the necromancer was surrounded by the dead, in various states of decay. The creature that killed the stag was the freshest, the thick blood still oozing out of the rent in its neck. It stood upon its hind legs, jackal head snarling. This one was smarter than the rest, the brain still being intact and having not begun yet to fester. The jewel’s enchantment would cease any further degradation; the beast would retain the intellect it had in life and would make a perfect general for the necromancer’s needs.

As long as he lived the necromancer would retain total overall control, but his general would be able to organize the finer details so that the necromancer might defend himself in the battle yet to come. The village lay not far from the cemetery, the assault would commence shortly before dawn. In the darkest part of the night, when all the pathetic souls that lived there would be at their most vulnerable. The necromancer allowed himself a slight chuckle at the thought of their predicament.

More undead carcasses arrived, many times the amount that the necromancer had suspected had lain within the depths of the forest. The animals he had expected, though fewer in number, but the human and humanoid skeletons outnumbered them significantly. It was then that the necromancer recalled hearing of a battle that had taken place nearby, not too many decades earlier. He looked at his jewel in admiration of its powers; the necromancer had far more soldiers at his disposal than he had felt the task required.

The necromancer clambered atop the back of the freshly slain stag and began to lead the procession out of the forest’s depths, towards the clump of shadowed buildings that was the village.

The necromancer’s minions were silent but the attack itself was loud, ferociously so. Once the fires began and the first villagers started screaming in terror and agony the rest of the populace were alerted. Many fled, a few standing to defend those with whatever weapons they could grab at short notice. One stood above the necromancer, now afoot himself to revel in the carnage that his minions had wrought. The young man drew back his sword, blade trembling.

“I can’t do it!” The young man called to his friend who hefted a large hammer, swinging it about to obliterate a nearby skeleton before hurling himself back into the greater pack.

“Do it! Kill him and they all fall!” It was not true, but the fool did not know that. The jackal-headed general would take total control of the army and they would keep fighting.

The young man could not force himself to swing his sword. Not at him. The child had disappeared from the village nearly a week ago without any trace. His parents had already mourned his passing. Yet now he stood before the young man having led an army of corpses to destroy them all.

“Why? Why do this to us?” He demanded of the child necromancer.

The boy shrugged. He was perhaps six years old. He lifted the jewel towards the young man as he grunted, the spear of the jackal-headed general bursting through his chest as he made the sound. The last words he heard answered his question, though not satisfactorily.

“Because…” The necromancer screwed his face up, thinking as hard as he could. This was a question that even his young brain knew deserved the truth. “I think I was bored here.”