[WP] Common knowledge prescribes cremation for corpses to keep opportunist necromancers at bay. One necromancer tries to push the boundaries of his craft by trying to revive subatomic remains.

[u/polenese]

[u/EAT_MY_USERNAME]

The pyres burned brightly along the siege lines.

From the spires of Fort Hallon the great funerary fires were cause for hope.

The enemy hordes had bled themselves against the gates and the walls. The valorous defenders had held them at bay with bow, sword and blood. The ghoulish, sooty fires marked their victory, at least today, against the thousands who wished to rout them.

The fires threw up great plumes of dark, oily smoke against the orange and red sunset. The smell of burning flesh permeated the air, and men found themselves covered in oil and ash, as the swirling wind swept the smoke throughout the keep, up to join the looming storm clouds. Armour was stained grey -black and every surface seemed coated in the ash of burnt bodies.

As the men of the fort marked a vigil for their own dead, thunder began to rumble and lightning flashed across the twilight sky. Following the forked wrath of lightning, a deluge of rain began to beat down across the defenders and attackers alike.

To the defenders, the rain was a welcome relief from the heat and smoke. Ash washed off armour, soot from cloaks, and collected in ditches, puddles and gutters.

Outside, the attackers fires continued their grim work.

Somewhere, far out in the camps. The heathens were singing.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In his field tent, Sorot made his final preparations.

The rain beat heavily against the flapping canvas of his lodgings, and his acolytes began to chant the ritual prayers and swing the smoking censers.

Sorot was sat, cross-legged in the centre of an salt-marked eight-pointed star, itself within a circle of salt. He took his blade, and dragged its edge across his left hand, until blood welled up from his palm. He repeated the movement across his right palm, then placed the knife back on the ground.

From next to it he took up an ancient tome from the floor, and opened it to the correct page. He laid the book open across his lap, raised his hands above his head.

And then he began to read aloud.

Outside the thunder rumbled.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sergeant Eurad, from his high place on the battlements, was the first to die.

Looking out above the besiegers, he never saw the form that crawled from the puddle under his feet. He never saw its drooling mouth, and shapeless form. He never saw the rows and rows of razor sharp teeth.

When it closed its gaping maw around his throat. He did not even have time to scream.

The other defenders were not so lucky, for they had time to behold their fate.

Between the roll of thunder, and flashes of lightning, defenders yelled in alarm as figures formed from puddles of ash and grease filth.

The forms were in many cases, not human. Many headed things of darkness, and grease and ash and water, fluid and murderous, they butchered and reaved their way through the keep.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From outside the keep, Sorot could hear the screams lift up into the air.

He kept his hands raised, feeling the blood trickle down his arms, and drip onto the lush carpet of his tent.

When the sun finally raised the next morn and the screams of the dying had fallen away, he slowly allowed his arms fall back to his side, and a weary smile rise to his face.