Lord Daemoniumm's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Lord Daemoniumm swore an oath over an empty field. He would build a company of the dead and the living, sworn to him alone, and he would do it without more blood on his hands. But a sworn company of the dead needs a dead man to swear. He had none. He had the gift to raise fallen soldiers, yet no body lay before him. The last battle had ended two days ago. Villagers had already buried their fallen and burned the rest. Word of him traveled faster than he did. People fled his black blade and his shadow-glint eyes before he could offer them anything. He stood at a hollow tree older than the village, its heartwood wide enough to shelter a man. His sister found him there. Lady Daemmonaa wore her blackened plate, warhammer slung across her back, braid pulled tight for travel. She studied the field before she spoke. She always thought before she spoke. "You frightened them off," she said. "The gravediggers won't come near. They think you'll rob the fresh graves." "I won't," he said. "I take no one who isn't given freely." "Then you'll have an empty company." Her grey-green eyes held his. "Your reputation walks ahead of you, brother. Fear clears a road, but it clears the road of allies too." He had no answer. The silence stretched. A woman stepped from behind the tree. Sera. Brown hair tied back, a black robe bordered in grey, his own sigil stitched at her chest — the skeletal hand, the thorned vine, the crescent of shadow. She had sewn it herself and sworn to him weeks past. Next to her, an undead hooded figure walks very slow. He has a hooded robe covering most of his body and face. That undead, Corwin, was Sera’s brother. In Sera’s arms she carried a bundle wrapped in cloth. She set it down with care that said it was a person. "My mother," Sera said. Her voice stayed steady, but her hands did not. "She died of fever in the spring. We couldn't bury her before the frost broke the ground. I kept her." She looked up. "I didn't come to you because I feared you. I came because I didn't." Daemoniumm knelt. He drew back the cloth. A still face, eyes closed, skin preserved and pale. A mother, not a soldier. "If I do this," he said, "she may not wake as she was." "I know," Sera said. "Do it right. Ask her first." He placed his hand over the woman's heart. Shadow curled along his fingers and sank in. He did not command. He invited. For a long moment nothing moved. Then the chest rose. The eyes opened, clouded grey. Her gaze fixed on Sera, and some old knowing crossed her face. Daemoniumm sat back, drained. His company had its first sworn soul — raised with consent, not force. But the risen woman turned her clouded eyes to him and spoke one cracked word. "Why?" She remembered dying. She had not agreed to return. And Sera, watching, had not thought to ask what her mother would want.