So it Begins

Amun stood in one of his many ritual rooms, lit with candles in a pentacle. There were magical runes scrawled over almost all of the wall’s surface and they glowed with a sickly green light. They were to aid in raising the dead, making them stronger and faster than they would be otherwise. Months had gone into crafting this room, and it wasn’t even his true ritual room. There were hundreds in his underground facility, and the biggest and most valuable had taken Amun years to finish, but that room was reserved for creating the most powerful of undead, and these were unworthy of it.  Before Amun was a pile of corpses half skinned, and half had everything but the skeleton removed, revealing all the gristle and muscle beneath. Chanting the words of power and calling upon his magic he channeled it into the bodies. The runes glowed brighter until they were almost blinding, and the candles flickered dangerously, threatening to go out. A foul wind stirred the room, whipping his robes about, despite them being a mile underground.

Raising his arm and claw into the air, his chanting crescendoed  as he reached the climax of the casting. The corpses twitched as lines of power flowed from Amun and the runes on the walls into them. Upon the final word of the casting, the bodies went into powerful seizures, before subsiding about a minute later. Amun lowered his arms, breathing heavily. It took effort to raise 26 corpses at once, especially to more than just shambling, mostly useless zombies. The newly created boneclaws stirred, then rose, first noting they only had three fingers, then growing and shrinking their claws experimentally. One accidentally skewered another when it grew it’s claw out to ten feet, to no detriment of the impaled. Amun grinned with the half of his face that was still there, and began chanting a binding spell. Upon its completion, the assembled horde of boneclaws stood silently, awaiting orders. Lifting himself off the ground, Amun spoke.
“Follow.”

He rotated midair and willed himself forward, towards one of his training rooms. Nibbler, who had been waiting outside, happily jumped onto Amun, clambering up to his shoulder. After feeding Nibbler a piece of meat, he whispered to Biter.
“Fetch me the damphir, it is time she began her true training.”

Nibbler hopped of and scurried away to find her. It would probably take him a while, but Amun knew Nibbler would retrieve her. Of all his servants, Nibbler was unusually competent, and almost never failed in a task, no matter what it was. Strangely intelligent for his kind, there was no confusion as to why he was head of the pack, and if any other ghouls grew unruly or tested him, he would ferociously tear into them until they backed off, whimpering. Amun grinned. Nibbler was definitely his favorite.

Upon reaching the training room, Amun took a seat in the throne he had had his undead carved into almost every room. Ordering the boneclaws to flank him evenly on either side, Amun waited.

Rhea's head snapped up from the book she had dozed off reading when she heard a scratching at the door. It sounded like a dog. The famous poem struck her at that moment, making her smile at the absurdity of the thought. "Once upon a midnight dreary..." She opened the door, and found not a raven, but a ghoul. It looked familiar, but then, there were so many ghouls around this ungodly place. How was one supposed to keep track? She still hadn't grown comfortable in this place reeking of necromancy, and she suspected she never would. Too much human in her blood. Looking down at the ghoul, she thought "ugly raven." At least the symbol of Poe's narrator's insanity wasn't undead. Then again, there was nothing to say she would go insane here. She could always leave, whether the self-proclaimed Heirophant liked it or not. He could get over himself, and she was sure she could escape. She had yet to get a good sense of whether she could benefit from this arrangement or not yet.

The ghoul made some bizarre noises and ran a few steps away, then looked back at her. Assuming she was meant to follow, she went back inside, braided her hair quickly, grabbed her katana, and left, shutting the door behind her. The little monster could wait; she wasn't going anywhere in this tainted place without a weapon.

The little hellspawn led her to a large, but relatively empty room where His Arrogance sat on a throne flanked by undead even uglier than the one sent to fetch her. She shifted her weight to one foot and waited for orders.

While Amun awaited the return of Nibbler, he turned his attention to his newly minted boneclaws. His voice rasped out orders and the boneclaws obeyed, gathering armor. Once they were all equipped, they stood in front of Amun, allowing him to inspect them. Satisfied, he ordered half of them to gather some of the still living Amun kept around for various unpleasant reasons, and the other half to resume their flanking position. Not that this fortress had been invaded since he first overtook it, but Amun hadn’t lived this long by being careless. He had layered the stronghold in warning, shielding, and trap wards. Nothing got in without him at least knowing. Not to say anything about the hordes of undead inhabiting the place. This was the seat of Amun’s power, and he would defend it viciously. The problem was he needed more truly intelligent undead. He required generals to be where he couldn’t and to direct his troops. He had one potential candidate now, but it was too early to tell if it would be a good fit for her. Hearing faint chittering down the hall brought a smile to Amun’s face. Nibbler was a good ghoul. Conveniently timed as well, it would seem as the boneclaws marched back in, herding a small group of emaciated humans. Upon Nibbler’s return with the Applicant, Amun noted her haughty, disrespectful expression. Narrowing his eye, he absentmindedly petted Nibbler, who chittered happily. Returning his attention to the ghoul, he ordered a human , who was promptly shoved forward.

“Eat well, Nibbler.”

The ghoul shrieked happily and dived on the human. Carefully watching the Applicant’s reaction, he spoke again.

“Welcome, Applicant. The time has come to begin your training. You are a damphir, half of the Blood, and half of the human. It is possible for you to master the power inherent in blood. Focus. Feel the blood being spilled on this floor. How it calls to you, makes your heart sing. Empowers you. Call back to it. Draw it in.”

The scene in front of Rhea only continued to grow more unsettling. The ghoul that had fetched her, such a loyal dog, returned to the necromancer to be petted, then the more threatening-looking undead brought forward a human for the ghoul to feed on. This might be the strangest encounter she had ever had. Did he just call the ghoul Nibbler? She was surprised the ghoul would be fed right there. Were their minds so simple they couldn’t understand a reward if it was given later, or in another place?

The necromancer clearly wasn’t bothered by the loss of life or the mess spreading on the floor in front of him, but necromancers always held life—when it wasn’t their own—cheap. It made her sick. Was this how humans saw her? She didn’t mind killing when it had a purpose, and had done it enough, but at least she didn’t defile the dead, turning them into these loathsome mockeries of humanity that only went on to spread misery and death. Whether the necromancer was of full human blood or not, she was more human than he could ever be.

After the ghoul had been tearing into the human for a minute, the necromancer finally spoke to her. Finally, it was time for her training to begin. The Blood? He was clearly speaking of her vampire blood, but he did phrase things strangely. Feeling blood? She had always felt some connection to it, thanks to her cravings, but she wasn’t sure what he was asking. This wouldn’t be the first time she had been asked to do things she didn’t see the purpose of for the sake of training, and she had learned that there usually was a purpose, whether she saw it or not, so she complied, focusing her mind on the blood spilling onto the floor and the body it came from. Her focus broke momentarily and her mind conjured an image of her lapping it up from one of the human’s wounds, and her craving grew. She saw the blood on the floor move unnaturally in her direction, but it hardly registered. It had been a few weeks since she had tasted blood. She reined in her thoughts, focusing instead on the image of the blood laying still on the floor, and the blood stopped moving towards her.

Noting the Applicant’s apprehension to the ghoul’s behavior and the proceedings, Amun made a mental note to bring her to most of his experiments and rituals to harden her heart against such things. He had no use for a General who couldn’t handle undead on a full stomach. He also could practically smell her disgust of him. That too would have to be rectified. In time, after enough exposure to his grand power, he was sure her disgust would slowly turn to respect, though it would most certainly be grudging at first. Though if her disgust proved troublesome, he had ways of accelerating the process. Inhumane, certainly, but Amun despised humans and the rest of the living. Though he refused to lose himself to undeath, Amun loathed to be referred to as human. He was so much more than human. A rogue Godling, eternally craving more power, and more time. As his mind turned these things over, he observed the Applicants attempts and Nibbler messily devouring the mangled woman. Leaving the bones as instructed, once he finished he wiped his mouth and gathered the bones before skittering off happily to put them in the great Bone Pit, a giant hole maybe fifty feet deep with a twenty-five foot diameter, about three quarters of the way filled with bones to be used in Amun’s experiments. Noting the blood unnaturally glide across the floor towards the Applicant, Amun nodded.

“Excellent. You’re not a complete waste of my time. You were thinking of drinking the blood, weren’t you? Try again, pull it to your lips. Drink it and become strong. Feel this young woman’s blood calling to you. I know you crave her blood. Feel that. Embrace your cravings.”

Gesturing at the boneclaws, they shoved another human forward, in case they needed more blood when the Applicant finished with the first victim. Spying a little girl in the group, he straightened, confused. Why had she not been brought directly to him? He sighed to himself. This was exactly why he needed more intelligent undead. The lower undead were certainly tenacious, but were far too simple to understand truly what he asked. Extending his hand, he muttered a brief incantation and a soft purple glow emenated from the little girl, who was maybe eight years old and terrified of the monsters she found herself surrounded by. Her terror mounted as she rose into the air and floated closer and closer to Amun, until she was placed in his lap. He ruffled her dirty hair. He’d have her cleaned up when they were done here. He whispered to her.

“You’re going to be a lot of fun, aren’t you, my dear? Just be good and I won’t have to turn you over to the nasty monsters.”

His hand trailed down to come to a rest on her thigh as he returned his attention to the Applicant.