Reximus Boneclaw's Arc

Chapter 5 of 7

The pink crystal pulsed in his shoulder like a second heart, brighter each hour. Reximus knew the entity was reading every step he took. He could not raise an army with a beacon stuck in his flesh. He needed it out, and he needed the hunter looking the wrong way. He left his ossuary before dawn. He carried a crate of shattered glass shards wired to a small charge and walked to a broken radio station on the edge of the dead fields. He rigged the glass across its windows and fed a sliver of his own blood into the wires. The shards caught light and threw it in wild, pulsing patterns. To the thing watching, it would look like him, multiplied and moving. Then he ran for the old asylum. The cracked halls still smelled of rust and bleach. He laid out his tools on a steel tray: bone saw, pliers, a strip of leather to bite. A small reanimated lizard scuttled at his heels, eye sockets glowing, watching with patient hunger. Reximus dug the saw into his shoulder. Crystal screamed against metal. Pink light sprayed the tile. He sawed until the shard tore free and clattered on the floor, still blinking. He crushed it under his boot and the light went dead. The little undead lizard licked the dust. He felt the weight lift at once. The entity's eye, wherever it watched, was now fixed on a empty radio shack full of dancing glass. Reximus bound his wound and marched back to his ossuary unseen. He fed power into his shrine — the towering skeletal beast with fire pouring from its jaws — and the bone hill answered. Skulls clicked. Ribs rose. His army doubled before noon. By dusk he led them into a small town at the river bend. They broke doors. They broke men. Every body that fell, Reximus raised. Farmers, guards, a baker still gripping his knife — all of them stood again and joined the column. He marched out with twice the soldiers he came in with, and the entity, far away, still chased a lying light.