Chương 32: Undead Potters

The night was bitterly cold, and the village at the base of the mountain was completely silent. Up in the castle, Jack sat in his high-backed wooden chair, wrapped in his heavy cloak. He had locked his door hours ago, ensuring no one would not walk in on him. He closed his eyes and let his mind sink down into the crypts beneath the castle. He bypassed the three armored mages—Bones, Rusty, and Dusty—and reached for the dormant threads of the fifteen skeletons that made up his Night Shift.

The moment he connected the links, the familiar pressure settled over his brain like a thick woolen blanket.

"Awake," Jack commanded mentally. Down in the dark, the fifteen skeletons rose from the dusty floor near the breached stone wall of the old coal mine, exactly where he had left them after they dug the ventilation shaft. Jack directed them to march back through the main crypts and out of the castle through the lower cellar chute. They emerged into the freezing, pitch-black night. The winter wind was howling, which was perfect.

The noise of the storm would mask the clattering of their bare bones as they walked down the icy mountain path toward the village. When the squad arrived at the center of the abandoned village street, Jack looked through their empty eye sockets at the massive pile of freezing, rock-hard river clay the humans had abandoned earlier that afternoon. Beside the clay were dozens of small, rectangular wooden boxes that Giles had nailed together to serve as brick molds.

"Alright," Jack projected his thoughts to the group.

"We need thousands of bricks by morning. Plunge your hands into the clay. Knead it until it is soft. Push the air bubbles out." The skeletons did not hesitate. They moved forward and shoved their bony hands directly into the freezing mud. To a living human, the freezing clay felt like reaching into a bucket of crushed ice. It caused immediate, agonizing numbness and threatened severe frostbite within minutes. But skeletons had no blood to freeze and no nerves to feel pain.

They possessed unyielding mechanical endurance. They grabbed large chunks of the stiff clay and began to knead it. Squish. Slap. Squish. Jack quickly realized he had to be incredibly specific with his instructions. Skeletons had no common sense, and they certainly did not know their own strength. Through the mental link, Jack watched one of the skeletons grab a massive handful of clay, shove it into a wooden mold, and press down with all its might. CRACK.

The wooden mold instantly splintered into pieces under the crushing force of the undead worker.

"Stop," Jack sighed mentally, rubbing his temples in his bedroom.

"Do not use your full strength. Press the clay firmly into the corners of the box. Once the box is full, stop pressing. Scrape the top flat, and turn the wet brick out onto the ground to dry." He guided them through the process step-by-step until they found a perfect rhythm. The skeletons moved like a flawless, tireless assembly line. Five of them stood around the main pile, aggressively kneading the freezing mud until it was smooth and workable.

They tossed lumps of the prepared clay to the next group, who packed the mud into the wooden molds, scraped the excess off the top, and flipped the perfect, rectangular wet bricks out onto the snowy ground in long, neat rows. It was a logistical masterpiece. The pile of clay steadily shrank, and the rows of wet bricks grew longer and longer. Jack sat in his chair, maintaining the connection for hours. It was a mental marathon.

He didn't have to direct every single movement anymore, but he had to keep the overall command active. He slipped into a sort of waking trance, listening to the wind outside his window while his mind hovered over the village street. Eventually, the deep blackness of the night began to fade. The sky over the mountains was turning a faint, pale grey. Dawn was approaching.

"Halt," Jack commanded. The skeletons instantly stopped their work, freezing in place like statues. Jack stretched his stiff legs in his bedroom. The job was done. The massive pile of clay had been entirely transformed into thousands of perfectly shaped wet bricks, ready to be loaded into the updraft kiln the moment the human workers arrived. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

"Before you return to the crypts, let me inspect the work," Jack thought. He selected one of the skeletons standing near the rows of bricks and took direct control of its vision. He made the skeleton lean down close to the ground to examine the top layer of the wet clay. Jack looked through the empty eye sockets, expecting to see smooth, flat surfaces. Instead, his heart completely stopped. He felt a massive surge of panic flood his chest.

His eyes snapped wide open in his bedroom, and he gripped the arms of his chair tightly.

"Oh no," Jack whispered in pure horror. Skeletons did not have human flesh. They did not have flat, smooth palms or soft fingertips. Because Jack had commanded them to press the clay down into the wooden molds to pack it tight, they had used their bare hands. Every single wet brick in the entire village street had a deep impression stamped directly into the top of it. They were the unmistakable impressions of skeletal finger bones.

The joints, the long finger bones, and the carpal bones of the palm were pressed flawlessly into the smooth clay, looking exactly like fossilized skeletal hands trapped in mud. There were thousands of them. If Giles, Old Miller, or any of the villagers walked down the path and saw thousands of bricks stamped with literal skeletal handprints, the secret was completely ruined. The entire cover story about 'ascetic, private human mages' would vanish in an instant.

The villagers would know that undead monsters had been roaming their streets in the dead of night. They would panic, abandon the fief, and send word to the Holy Church before the week was over. Jack looked out his window. The sky was getting lighter by the minute. Giles was an early riser. The carpenter would be leaving the Great Hall and walking down to the village in less than an hour.

"Smash them!" Jack screamed in his mind, his thoughts frantic and desperate.

"Smash the top layer! Ruin the prints!" The skeletons immediately reacted to the panic in his command. They stomped forward, raising their bony fists, ready to obliterate hours of hard work.

"Wait! Stop!" Jack yelled mentally, halting them just before they crushed the bricks into dust. If they smashed all the bricks, they would have no materials to build the hypocaust heating systems for the Winter Cabins or the bathhouse. The entire village expansion would be delayed. He needed the bricks, but he needed them to look normal. Jack frantically scanned the village street through the eyes of his undead. He was looking for anything that could solve the problem.

His gaze landed on a pile of scrap wood leftover from the ruined huts they had dismantled days ago. There were dozens of flat, rectangular wooden roof shingles lying in the snow, along with frayed pieces of old hemp rope. A desperate, absurd idea formed in his head.

"Grab the flat wooden shingles," Jack commanded the Night Shift, pushing his mental processing speed to the absolute limit.

"Grab the scrap rope." The fifteen skeletons scrambled toward the scrap pile. They picked up the flat pieces of wood and the frayed ropes.

"Place the flat wood against the palms of your hands," Jack ordered.

"Use the rope to tie the wood securely to your bones." It was a clumsy, awkward process. Skeletons were excellent at raw labor, but tying tight knots with bony fingers while holding a piece of wood was difficult. Jack had to micromanage several of them, guiding their fingers to loop the rope around their radius and ulna bones, strapping the flat wooden shingles directly to their hands. Within ten minutes, the Night Shift was fully equipped. They looked completely ridiculous.

Fifteen terrifying undead monsters were standing in the snow, wearing flat wooden paddle-gloves tied to their hands.

"Now," Jack commanded, his heart hammering in his chest as the morning light grew brighter.

"Go down the rows. Press your flat wooden hands against the top of every single brick. Smooth out the bone prints. Move fast!" The skeletons descended upon the rows of bricks. They moved with terrifying speed, their bodies blurring as they slapped the flat wooden shingles against the top of the wet clay. Smack. Smack. Smack. The flat wooden boards easily crushed the skeletal handprints, pressing the top layer of the clay smooth again.

Because the wood was rough and unfinished, it left a faint, natural wood-grain texture on the surface of the bricks. To anyone looking at them, it would simply look as though the bricks had been packed and smoothed out using normal, flat wooden carpentry tools. Jack pushed the connection as hard as he could, making the skeletons move faster than they ever had before. He could see the sun breaching the peaks of the mountains. The morning shadows were stretching across the snow.

Any minute now, the heavy doors of the Great Hall would open.

"Faster!" Jack urged. The skeletons scrambled down the final row. They slapped the last few bricks flat, completely erasing any evidence of necromancy from the clay.

"Drop the wood and the rope behind the ruined huts," Jack commanded instantly.

"Run back to the castle! Full sprint!" The skeletons ripped the ropes off their wrists, tossing the paddle-gloves into a hidden snowdrift behind a collapsed wall. They turned and sprinted up the mountain path. They reached the side of the castle, threw themselves down the cellar chute, and scrambled back into the dark depths of the crypts.

"Dormant," Jack gasped, violently severing the mental links. Jack collapsed back into his chair, panting heavily. He wiped a thick layer of sweat from his forehead. His heart was beating so fast it felt like a bird trapped in his ribcage. He slowly stood up, grabbing his cane, and hobbled over to his bedroom window to look out over the courtyard. Down below, the heavy wooden doors of the Great Hall slowly creaked open. Giles stepped out into the crisp morning air, stretching his arms and letting out a loud yawn.

Old Miller and several other men followed him, pulling their wool caps down over their ears as they prepared to head down to the village to check on the clay. They had absolutely no idea how close they had just come to discovering the horrifying truth. Jack let out a long, shaky breath and leaned his forehead against the cold window glass. Managing a fief was difficult, but managing a crew of literal-minded skeletons was going to send him to an early grave.