Editing Millennial King (section)

=== Founding of Arran'ak ===

Arran'ak? It's a hell of a place. I was there at the beginning after all -- but you probably could have guessed that. It's not every day you end up with a talking skeleton walking into a bar drinking whiskey. Especially without the stuff falling out of my ribs like nothing. Myrhan was a good man, and he was good to us, those of us who stood by him and wanted to keep fighting the good fight. Hell, I expected him to raise me up with a diamond when I died. He talked to me... he studied divine -and- arcane magic, and I was his bodyguard when he was away, but... no. Let me start from the beginning.

Arran'ak wasn't much more than a handful of villages to be painfully honest, and a family ruled it. Maybe it was a joke, maybe it wasn't, but the people called the family the rulers and it was their little empire. They were wealthy, but they were also traders and they were responsible for bringing trade in from places beside our hamlets. It went on like that for a few generations, but really, Arran'ak was tiny. I'm talking maybe thirty or forty thousand people. Anyway, the villages traded with each other, everybody's happy, and it's a running joke that it's a trade empire.

Well, the neighbors got greedy and decided that they'd rather cut this upstart little empire down themselves.

The two countries that Arran'ak was squeezed between, Florin and Guilder, weren't the greatest places... but that's why our villages were together. And the town militias were the military, of a sort. Mutual defense pact, we were only a step away from actually being a country, so why not just say we were one? But we were sandwiched on the border of two countries. They were both rather small, but not as small as we were. Myrhan's family had money, and sent him off to school, good distance away. Not in one of the bordering countries, but on the coast on the other side of the continent.

They sent me along. I was their master-at-arms, but I needed a vacation. Training militiamen gets stressful as hell after a while. Myrhan enjoyed my company. He was a great kid. He was in his twenties by then, but I was twice his age then, so as far as I'm concerned he's still a kid to me. When he's not studying, we're out hitting the pubs, and the kid could out-drink me. You'd think he was half-dwarf, not half-elf. Still, he had a lot of potential and everyone knew he'd go far. Maybe further than just helping the trade along. And his sister would be going to school too, the next year. So I'd just be making sure they both stay out of any trouble they can't handle, that's my job from now on, they tell me. Smart girl, maybe not as smart as him, but still damn smart and the prettiest little thing. She was staying a little longer, but they were twins, those two.

Then we got the message. Guilder and Florin conspired and invaded. The whole of the militia was slaughtered. Myrhan's family was being held hostage. We were to return, negotiate the surrender of the entire royal family so that everything was nice and official and they'd let them live a nice little life exiled somewhere. I smell a trap. So does he. But what else could we do? It was worth a shot. He promised me that if I fell defending him, he would bring me back. I told him it would be a snowy day in the seven hells before I'd ever stop protecting him.

We went back home and made record time. He brought everything with him that he possibly could, just in case, though the scholars didn't know any better. For all I know they still don't. All I brought with me were my shortswords, but the two blades had been passed down from my great-great grandfather to his sons. Just my luck that my uncle couldn't sire children and I inherited both. We showed up and nobody expected us, and we saw firsthand just what had happened. Everyone was hiding in their homes because no one was allowed to leave the village. The militia was slaughtered outside the manse that Myrhan's family lived in, and their bodies had been left out to make an example. I never expected to see Guilder infantry and Florin archers standing side by side, and it turned out they weren't. The news was a little wrong, but it was being played the right way by them. He was not any happier, but if anything it made him more determined, instead of scaring him off. Kid had big brass ones.

We snuck into the manse, but we weren't able to find his family. A few generals from either side were talking, so we made our presence known to them. And they laughed. They were talking about an armistice -- they'd been fighting and this was the only village that hadn't seen any civilian casualties because everyone surrendered outright, and they considered it neutral ground at the moment. Turned out that Florin snuck assassins in, killed all of Myrhan's family and was trying to rule in his name. The militia wasn't that stupid and rose up to fight them off, so Florin made an example of them, and posted guards throughout all the villages, declared martial law, all of that. Well, Guilder didn't want to let something this valuable slip through their fingers either, and the nobles of both sides knew this was turning out to be a pretty nice trade hub and didn't want it destroyed. Guilder invaded, and the fighting here was bitter, but they didn't break out into full blown war. Just a little one here, where we were. Nevermind the fact that they'd killed his parents, and they'd killed his sister, who he'd almost never been away from until he went off to study.

Seeing as the fact that we were still breathing was an obstacle to their continued negotiation, they were going to kill us now, they said. "I made a promise to your parents," I told him, though. "I'm not going to let anything get in my way of keeping you safe, not even death." That was pretty much the point where I found out that six generals aren't worth one good man in a stand-up fight. Too bad they came with guards, though. Those shortswords did a bang-up job, but they slipped a blade between my ribs, and that was pretty much the end for me. But I'd kept the kid safe, and while I was keeping him safe he warded the manse to keep the army outside where they belonged instead of letting them in. Problem with that was that the soldiers were riled up from hearing the fight inside. So they started fighting each other. And when that wasn't enough they started burning down everything that wasn't warded. Last thing I remember was looking out the window, seeing the village in flames and tears on the young master's face.

The next thing I know, I'm waking up, and it's daylight. And I know we got in overnight. Not to mention the manse's ceiling wasn't overhead anymore. I look up at Myrhan and he looks pretty rough around the edges. I look to my right, and there's the burned-down village, but it looks like most everyone lived, they're going through the ruins but most of the houses burnt down to the ground. I look to my left, and I see the manse, or rather what's left of it. Nothing left there but a charred husk. He's not really looking at me, but he's trying to organize the people who are still alive. Telling them that a lot has happened, but they need to stay calm, he's going to fight off Florin AND Guilder, and both Florin and Guilder are going to help him whether they want to or not. I try to get his attention but I can barely move, I'm sore all over, and my voice sounds gods-awful.

He turns back to me and says something I can't understand. Some dead language. I start feeling better. He asks how I feel, I tell him I feel like I ought to be dead. He tells me I am and says we've got a war to win. I stare at him for a few seconds as he keeps chanting in that strange language, and once I feel like I can, I get to my feet and I ask him what army I'm supposed to fight with. "Theirs," he says, and points over behind me. Skeletons. More skeletons than anyone ought to be able to control, by all rights, and I'm puzzled because I didn't figure Myrhan for a black sorcerer. He'd found her body while the manse burned around him, you see, and that's when he snapped... it wasn't that she was killed, but what they did to her. He told me he spoke with her spirit and she promised him that she would come back to him as long as he still walked the land.

He tells me it's time to buckle down, because there's a war to fight, and I trained the militia. They're just a little deader now. "But," he says with this evil gleam in his eye, "They can't kill what's already dead."

It's a little hard to lead an undead army, but at least now I know why the people are freaked out. But I get them organized, because they'll follow my every command to the letter. That's part of the problem at first, they do everything to the letter, no further. Myrhan says their souls are gone, and without the spark of life they're pretty stupid. I don't ask how he got the skin off of them. It's not a thing I want to know right now. The first thing they do, very somber, is bury the dead of the village. Or what's left of them. That includes his parents and his sister. The generals? He burnt their bodies to ash and scattered them to the wind. Felt a little better. Every other soldier, including the ones from Guilder and Florin, he brought back as skeletons to fight for him.

Obviously the people are still freaked out but they're a little calmer now. I start getting this skeleton crew in order and go to my old habits, getting them lined up, seeing what they're capable of before we march. The people dig through the rubble and every last thing that can be used as a weapon, they grab. They want to volunteer. They have nothing left. Myrhan tries to argue with them but they won't have any of it, they've got nothing left here that didn't burn to the ground, so he relents. Their jobs are to follow the army, for now, but he doesn't want them getting killed. There've already been enough people killed in all of this, and he doesn't want anyone to get killed fighting these bastards from now on.

And so we march.

We hit village after village. Skeletons don't really care much about arrows because for the most part they don't have to worry about them. They just fly between their ribs and such, and skeletons really don't care if they get stuck, because they'll just keep fighting. They might be dumb, but they were loyal. And every time we'd go through a village, he'd raise any of the military to fight. But he would absolutely not raise any dead civilians to do it. Them, he'd make sure they were buried properly and with all the rites they deserved.

Sure, some skeletons were destroyed in the fighting. But his army got bigger and bigger. He got more and more distant as time went by. Cared less about anything but crushing Guilder and Florin, but at least he went through the motions and had the dead buried. And it was all well and good until we cleared out the last village and both countries were out of our hair, when I got an arrow in my eye. I pulled it out, because it didn't really hurt, but still being able to see without an eye there was kind of a red flag, you know?

"Oh," he says. "I've been meaning to tell you about that."

I tell him it's not so bad and the important thing is that I can still taste ale. Ever ask someone "who wants to live forever"? You'll be surprised how many people will say "I do".

Anyways. Florin's military is pretty good. But they drew back to their border because, well, let's face it. An army of undead is pretty damned scary. Guilder kept throwing people at one particular village on the border and didn't understand that it was just a meat grinder, because for a while they didn't even know it was an army of skeletons. When they found out they started sending clerics along with the others, but Myrhan outclassed them, wiped them out. He looked more ragged every day, but kept up the fight.

Eventually they threw enough at us that they gave us a big enough army to hit them back. And we hit them HARD. We marched straight on their capitol. It was close enough to the border, there was only one village between us and them and when they found out an undead army was heading their way, they all pretty much ran. Nothing really useful for us to take from there, and the people who were following the army had gone to the villages as a sort of emergency militia, so there was no point in doing anything but marching straight through. It was when we hit their capitol that we hit a snag. Just a little one. You see, he wanted to burn it to the ground and see to it that every last person in there died screaming. And yeah. That's not exactly the best way to do it... even if their soldiers killed your family.

Myrhan was pretty pissed when I called the army to a stop outside the city, especially when I told him there was absolutely no way I was going to do that. It went against everything I believed in. Killing innocent people wasn't going to bring them back, I told him. He hadn't been able to raise any of them, and doing this wouldn't fix that. And that's when he told me that he could force me to do it, whether I wanted to or not.

I was quiet for a long time, just looking at him. And I told him, okay. You want to do that? Fine, I said, then go ahead and do it. Because I've known you since you were knee-high, and I've always watched your back. And ever since you were old enough, we've always been friends, even if you're two decades younger than me. And if you want to throw it away now... all those years of friendship, keeping each other's secrets, even him helping set me up with that cute twenty-year-old girl at the pub before we'd gotten the news, then fine. Throw it away, if that's what it takes, and take your revenge on everyone who doesn't deserve it. But I would not willingly take any innocent lives.

He didn't have anything to say, for a long time. And then, for the first time since this all started, I watched him cry. I put an arm around his shoulders, and for a long time, he cried. And when he was finally able to stop, he looked up at me and we came up with a new plan.

The army marched. But they didn't touch any civilians. They didn't even fight any of the town guard who didn't try to fight them first. Guilder was a country that was ruled by a collection of nobles, the closest thing they had to a leader was what they called the First Lord. First among equals. We marched on the castle. He was at the front of it, keeping the skeletons from harm from any sorcerers, but Guilder didn't really have many. We marched into the council chambers where the nobility was having an emergency meeting, because they thought they were safe. Once the doors were bashed open by a dozen skeletons at the front of the pack, they found out they weren't safe.

Myrhan walks up as the skeletons surround the hall at its edges, and puts it all in the open. Unconditional surrender. There and now. In return the nobility gets to live and gets to remain nobility. But Guilder is finished. There will be no more Guilder, he tells them; they will be absorbed into the empire of Arran'ak. And their jaws just drop, because up to this point... honestly, Arran'ak wasn't really even a country as far as most of the world cared. And here he is, turning it into one, right here and now.

He's got them by the throats. He tells them this outright; their options are to accept his offer or to be drafted into the service of Arran'ak as members of the interim militia, and he points to the skeletons. They weren't stupid. They all agreed to his terms, right then and there.

He marched on Florin. He gave their soldiers a chance to surrender, and they were kind of shocked, because Guilder (or what used to be Guilder, anyway) sent an envoy ahead to any villages they could to warn them of what happened, and implored them to throw down their weapons. Anyone unarmed would not be harmed. Pretty successful strategy, really. Almost worked -- the army got across the border practically unscratched, and the idiots who chose to attack the overwhelming force that marched across the border joined it.

We had some hit-and-run attacks on the march to the capitol, but it wasn't too bad, and the skirmishes that we fought we inevitably won. No supply train to attack, and the skeletons would just keep swinging and swinging until the other side got tired. And the ones who surrendered were disarmed and sent packing, and told not to return. Most of them were smart enough to do so. Made life easier. Send survivors out, tell people there's an army of undead but they won't touch you if you don't fight them. No, Myrhan was after the only nobility that Florin had. The prince and the count. Word was that the count had arranged for a series of unfortunate accidents for any competing nobility... hence why there wasn't any left. Anyone who didn't have an accident skipped town.

The capitol city itself, however... well, that was a bit of a problem.

The capitol of Florin was, of course, a walled city. It was built to withstand a siege. Sure, the food situation might not be terribly great, but the king was senile and on his deathbed, and the crown prince (who had no surviving brothers or sisters) ruled in his name. What he didn't take into consideration was that in order to withstand a siege, you need to be able to use weapons that will affect your enemy and keep them from scratching away at your walls day after day after day. Arrows really are not good at that, and there is only so much that you can throw over your walls with a catapult that will have any effect at all. And if there's enough of the skeleton... it can be brought back again anyway. They're funny that way. If you've got two halves, you can stick them together and get them running, they don't really care.

As for me, I just enjoyed myself during the siege, watching the walls slowly get worn down. Okay, the skeletons didn't literally scratch the walls until they fell, they had picks and shovels and all of that. Myrhan watched it all with a sort of grim satisfaction. We'd shift operations around the wall, trying to whittle them all down pretty evenly. It got the effect we were going for -- about four fifths of the wall that surrounded the city fell at the same time when we really hit it hard. We lost a lot of skeletons, but we had enough for the job ahead of us. And when we marched on the castle and kept it surrounded, most of their soldiers either surrendered or joined us. Hell, a few of them even joined us willingly without having to die first.

We sent the army up and secured the castle, level by level, starting with the ground floor and working our way down. Myrhan found some gruesome torture devices in the basement, and... for a minute I was afraid he was going to keep them for use on the country's rulers, before he screamed in disgust and destroyed them with some sort of lightning bolt. Once that was all secured, the army started heading upstairs, filling the halls. In the end, most of the guards deserted, and we let them go home to their families. The king was in the throne room, and he had trouble understanding just what was going on. I kept an eye on him for a while; every few minutes he would ask me if I was his new captain of the guard. Just to make life easier, I told him yes, and I tasked the Florin defectors to make sure he would remain safe from that point forward, because Myrhan had no intention of letting any harm befall the poor sod.

Myrhan ended up going back downstairs, and used what he could find from the castle's apothecary to mix up some sort of brew. He brought it upstairs and gave it to the king, before he explained to him what was going on, and why he was doing it. The king came around, at least long enough to understand it. Myrhan told him that so long as the king lived, he'd be able to stay the king of Florin, and he'd take some means to keep him cognizant that the apothecary should have been doing in the first place, but once he passed away Florin would be absorbed into Arran'ak. He was saddened but agreed. He had no choice any more but he was assured that his people would not have to worry about any oppression from Myrhan.

And once that was settled... we had to find the crown prince and the count.

The prince chewed through a number of skeletons, but in the end, their sheer numbers overwhelmed him and they captured him. Well, after he had thrown every spell he knew at them, anyway, until he was too tired to do it any longer. Turned out that the count was working as the royal apothecary after they'd gotten rid of the old one who was keeping the king's senility away, and as such keeping the prince from having carte blanche and doing whatever he felt like doing at the time. He was another matter altogether; he was a skilled fighter in addition, and got the best advantage that he could get. He knew he could never win, but he made them earn it. The prince took out a tenth of the skeletons who had gone into the castle, by a generous estimate. The count wedged himself in a narrow corridor, and between that and a doorway, had actually killed so many of them that their bones blocked the way. Fully half of the skeletons were destroyed by him.

Not that it mattered because they would just kept digging through and attacking him.

Still, he kept fighting until Myrhan himself confronted him. He insisted on doing it himself, but I gave him one of my swords to use. It was a long, arduous duel, and before the count had been stopped and immobilized by the skeletons, he had been greviously wounded. The blade was cursed, and Myrhan knew it the instant it pierced his flesh. He would die from this wound. But after the king had retired to his chambers to reflect on the situation and ten years of fogginess that he should not had suffered, the count and the prince were brought to the throne room, and confronted by Myrhan.

"You murdered my family. You raped my sister," Myrhan told them.

The count, a right bastard, added, "Personally. Twice. She was quite spirited." He knew he was doomed, so why hold back anything?

I had to hold him back at that point. He was grateful for it, after a moment, and said to them, "By all rights, your lives are mine. You incited a war for personal gain. You abused the man who sits in this throne and usurped his rule in your name. You do not even deserve to -exist-."

The prince sneered at him. "And I suppose killing us will make it all better. Well, let's get on with it. You'll be joining--"

The prince and the count both froze as Myrhan tilted his head slightly, regarding them. One moment they were normal and talking back as only a damned man does, and before you could say Momento Mori their bodies were comprised of ash, which began to blow away with the slight breeze coming through the windows of the throne room.

I looked at him. He seemed to age a decade in an instant. It was finally over. "How do you feel?" I asked.

"Better."

"So what did you do to them?" I asked, as the army filed out of the city. I walked beside him; he was on a litter, being carried. He was no longer in a state to walk, thanks to the cursed blade.

He looked at me for a long moment with a somber expression, before he spoke. "I destroyed them. Completely and utterly. Their bodies. And once they no longer had bodies..." He paused, then added, "Perhaps destroyed is not an accurate term for it, but their souls were shattered and pieces of them are probably littered about the lower planes. They won't even get an afterlife."

I nodded at him, and looked at the wound. It was dressed as well as could be, but his magics had no effect on it as we found out early on. The wound was black, the flesh around it growing that color, and ugly tendrils of purple extended beneath his flesh. I shook my head ruefully. "So the empire of Arran'ak is a reality. What will it do without an emperor to rule it?"

Myrham smiled at me. A weak smile, but a smile nonetheless. "Before we left to come home... I took certain measures. You don't think I'll let a little thing like death get in my way, do you, old friend? But I will die, this is unavoidable now. Perhaps within the day." I started. I didn't expect it that soon. "My only request is to be bured alongside my family where my home once stood."

I agreed. It was the least I could do for him. And he was right. He lived only three hours longer before death embraced him.

The funeral procession, the skeletal army that carried him to his final resting place, passed through every town that comprised what had been the small nation of Arran'ak before it absorbed Florin and Guilder. At every one of those towns, virtually everyone joined the procession to pay their respects to him. He did not want anyone to rebuild there, and they respected it; he had said that he himself would be the first to begin rebuilding, and no one wanted to infringe on that.

He was buried on that spot, by the citizens themselves. Every adult took a turn digging a shovel of dirt for his grave, and it was in no danger of being too shallow. His skeleton army stayed intact and cleared the last rubble from what had been burned, but much of the town had already been overgrown by the grasses that surrounded it on the plains. They only organized it and set it aside. And then everyone watched as they dug their own graves, each burying the one beside them, until there was only one left. It was only right that I bury that last one. As everyone paid their final respects, I told them that I would stand vigil over his grave. I was not fit to be among them, and everyone could see it. Sure, I looked human enough, but my flesh was beginning to show its age from my reanimation, though an eyepatch covered the empty socket. My other eye had begun to get milky, just from the fact that it didn't have any blood flow any longer.

Everyone returned to their homes. I stood there and watched the seasons pass. Honestly, I figured my vigil would end up being eternal, but when it comes down to it, what else am I going to do to pass the time? Hit up the pubs and go drinking?

I saw the summer pass. My flesh began to rot but I did not notice the smell.

I watched the grass grow long in autumn as it removed all signs that a human settlement had ever been there.

I did not mind it when the snow buried me, because it froze what was left of my flesh and helped it come loose from my skeleton.

When spring came, the insects loved me. Or what was left of me. The only thing that set me apart from any other skeleton was the eyepatch. A year had passed. It seemed surprisingly short.

The day after a year had passed, I heard a voice behind me. I didn't expect it, honestly, but I had held out hope. Hope was all I had left.

"You didn't think I'd let a little thing like death get in my way, did you, old friend?" he stated. I turned, and I saw him. I knew it was him, even if he looked no better off than I was, a skeleton. He motioned for me to come over to him and said, "I've got some building to do. Lend me a hand, will you?"

Really, the rest is history. He built the Spire. Yes, he did it himself, but I'm not giving away his secrets. The original people who made up Arran'ak joined the golden city he had built around it, and he brought the nobles into line. They thought they'd gotten off easy, but he made it crystal clear that it was not the case. Sure, Arran'ak is small, but when it comes down to it, he's everyone's Grandfather, in a spiritual sense... well, some in a literal sense, the boy did have a bad habit of sowing his oats with a lot of the pretty girls.

He found his sister, too. The Millenial Emperor and his Empress don't rule as husband and wife so much as brother and sister. It's a deeper connection, but I assure you there hasn't been any Empresses who are into all of that. She's stayed true to her word, and though she can't accept the gift of undying life, she comes back to him. And... well, you know about the Risen, don't you? The people of Arran'ak saw their king, or emperor, or whatever you want to call it -- he's got a lot of names after all -- still serving them even after death. The first person to want to help even after death was the first Sentinel, and you see how serious they take all of that, he won't let anyone touch anyone's body with unsanctioned black arts. His is... well, let's say it's different.

As for me, hell, he needed someone to watch him. And I told him I always would. He taught me how to throw around some of those flashy spells he's got, and it's come in handy sometimes. And I organized the Chronus Guard, to make sure the kid's always got someone to watch his back. I just wish I'd remember to make myself look human more often when I hit the pubs, but at least I can still taste the ale.

Speaking of which, pass me another, will you?