Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead
Chapter 55: An Offer

A skeletal arm rose from a mound of rot, soon followed by a skull and ribcage, the cavern was loud, much louder than it should be, howls and shrieks sounded throughout the large expanse of rocky tunnels and deadly drops.

They didn't appear to be responding to one another, they were all directed toward the same direction, they surrounded the area Loimos had decided to recuperate his body in, though, it wasn't like they could just waltz in and start hitting up upside the head.

His rot had spread out defensively, filling up the room and surrounding him as the cradle of miasma slowly reconstructed him.

For now, his skull, torso area and left arm were the only things that had been put back together, even now, the process was continuing.

Loimos looked into a seemingly random direction, it wasn't the cries directed at him that had convinced him to shift his position and pay attention to his surroundings.

'The miasma was cleared' he quickly realised what this disturbance he had sensed was, as the miasma he had left behind in the miniature world was eradicated, not only could he distinctively know despite the distance separating him and his creation.

But it came alongside a flood of information as well, not about what had happened there, but about the potential of his primeval rot.

It was rather interesting, manifesting some rot in his bony palm, he tried to convert it into bones instead, the result wasn't immediate, in fact, he remained completely still, not doing anything else for several dozens of minutes.

The rot did eventually turn into the desired thing, but it wasn't great, all he had done was change the material, not the shape or anything else, and it was a small piece too.

Next, still completely ignoring the howls coming his way, he instead tried to change rot to miasma, it was easier to do, but he had no control over it, once transformed it began acting just like regular miasma.

Since he was rooted in place until he got the rest of his body back, he spent his time trying out a bunch of different things, and also perfecting what he could do at the moment, meanwhile, whatever was busy outside, yelling at him didn't stop at all.

It sounded like they were taking shifts screaming at him too, perhaps they were hoping to scare the massive mass of rot that was leaking sticky blood by trying really hard.

By all accounts, they probably weren't the smartest bunch down there, further proven when their incessant act of loudness attracted the attention of something from deeper into the caverns.

Loimos had been listening to everything whilst simultaneously doing his own things, so the arrival of a set of heavy footsteps could hardly go unnoticed, at least to Loimos's discerning, undead sense of hearing.

The monster's outside however, were too self-absorbed in their useless endeavour to notice the metal clunks of the newly arrived challenger.

It was something one would be expecting down there, it was a knight, or at least, it looked like one.

The way the iron sounded made it fairly obvious to any keen listener that this knight was made of nothing but iron.

The skinny, hairless ape-looking creatures outside only noticed the knight after he cleaved one of their own in half, prompting them to switch the target of their shouts.

They seemed intent on using their voices for everything that came up, as though it was the solution to everything they could ever encounter.

Truthfully, these monsters weren't completely braindead, the targets of their cries were supposed to experience some sort of mind anguish, they actually innately possessed the ability to rattle the mind of their targets directly.

Making them a great obstacle for anyone trying to explore those caves, they never let anything they had begun attacking alone, it would persist until either their target, or them, had died.

Unfortunately, today wasn't their lucky day.

Undead's were well known for their immunity to such parlour tricks, and the knight didn't even have a mind to target, so they were looking real stupid right now.

Thankfully, none of their targets would bother mocking them, the knight was missing an arm and was truthfully, looking pretty miserable, yet, the mind-trembling apes didn't stand a chance.

With a kick, the living armour stomped on one of them, those that received some brain matter directly on their faces stopped a moment to reconsider their actions, but they resumed shouting anyway.

It took a few more of them getting brutally slaughtered before they decided that fleeing was also an option, they were much faster than the knight, which didn't seem willing to exceed his walking speed, watching the apes retreat before turning to the rotten mass, and staying still.

It simply stood there, it didn't swing its sword, it didn't do anything but stand there as though waiting for Loimos to let it in.

It remained frozen in place for a few minutes before its helm twitched and began carving something into the rot.

Loimos let it do its thing, not filling the gaps in the rot for now, not only did it seem like it was trying to do something other than destroy, it also had the advantage of not being alive, a must if one was seeking diplomatic relations with Loimos.

The armour was writing, it was actually carving words, for some reason, an empty suit of armour knew how to write.

An armour without any mind or soul could do something the majority of the human population couldn't, truly, life wasn't nearly as good as it tried to appear as.

After writing its message, the empty suit of steel moved away with heavy steps.

Going back to the deeper parts of the caves, the armour somehow began making less and less noise as it went away, the noises of it moving around not reverberating against the surfaces all around.

'Faraday awaits you' this was how the message began, it was then followed by a series of instructions on how to encounter this certain 'Faraday'.

Though, he wasn't given any good reason to do so.