[Hider=Zilak and Matai do some planning]

Light streamed through Matai’s eyelids as he came back to the world of the living. His muscles ached as if he had been doing heavy labour constantly the day before. With a wince, Matai turned onto his side and squeezed his eyes tighter, trying to get back to sleep where the pain would go away. The throbbing pain in his head and his dry, scratchy throat soon won out over his want to sleep and Matai sat up slowly and opened his eyes.

He was quite surprised to see that he was outside. In a cart. With all the cultists walking along the worn road to a destination that was currently unclear to Matai. The memories of what had happened before he passed out came rushing back to his mind and he let out a whoop. The man pulling the cart jumped and stumbled with a curse before glaring back at Matai. 

“Good, you’re finally awake. Haul your ass out of that cart and lighten the load.”

Matai nodded. “Sure… sure.” With a groan, he jumped out of the cart. “Where are we going?”

The man grunted. “Alenius. If you want to know more. go speak with Father Cio. Take your ‘friend’ too.” 

Matai looked back into the cart to see Erick sitting in the corner of the cart slumped over his crossed legs. Matai winced, that looked like it would be a painful way to sleep. “Ok. Up and at’em, Erick, we’ve got things to do.” Slowly, Erick sat up and made his way off the cart. The man pulling the cart shook his head and muttered something under his breath. Matai glanced at the man before turning to Erick “Well, I guess we should go find Father Cio, but first, let’s find something to drink.” Matai wandered towards the front of the group in search for water, keeping an eye out for Zilak.

Zilak rode in front, feeling the wind against his newly rejuvenated body. He was currently the only one with a horse, forcing the other cultists to draw the carts by hand, not that any would dare question him. They were currently heading to a nearby fishing village to find a ship to take them across the sea. It would be a long trip to Alenius and Zilak did not look forward to being cooped up on a ship with all these other lesser necromancers, but he couldn’t risk flying ahead least the rest of them got ideas and deserted. As he looked behind him his eye caught the sight of the necromancer who had caught his curiosity back in the sanctuary. He signalled at him to come closer. 

The water he found had done wonders for Matai’s parched throat, but the pounding in the back of his head remained. If he had to guess, the headache would remain for the rest of the day. Movement caught his eye as he approached the front of the mass of people. Sure enough, Zilak was in the lead atop a horse. “How long has it been since I passed out?”  

“If you only awoke recently, then around a week I think”. Zilak had no idea how long Matai had been awake for, he hadn’t given much thought to the young necromancer until he had seen him now. “I must say I have never seen someone use necromancy in such a way. It is a unique talent you practise”. 

Matai’s jaw dropped. “A week? No wonder like I feel like death warmed over,” he mused as he stretched his arms to try to alleviate some of the cramps that travelled through his body. He smiled at the compliment he received. “Coming from a seasoned mage like you, that’s definitely something to be appreciative about.” Matai grimaced. “Though the uniqueness of it made it so damn hard to discover what exactly I had done all those years ago. I’m surprised it didn’t kill me the first time I did it.”

Matai took a deep breath of fresh air and held it in for a moment before releasing it with a puff. It was a marked difference from the cold, stale air of the cave system. “So what has got all of us braving the sunlight and going to Alenius?” Matai glanced at his hands, pale from the little sunlight he got from his years in the cult.

“There is a great source of magical power in Alenius that the Blackwells currently covert. I currently have an informant within their walls who tells me that a wedding will soon take place between Giles Blackwell’s youngest daughter and Patrick De Reimer of Cawanor. This will be our best chance to steal the source from them, while their guards' focus is on the wedding”.  This had been the same story he had told the other cultists. While it was true he had kept it deliberately vague and had even killed a cultist who had dared question his intentions.

Matai frowned as he looked down at his feet, old gears starting to turn in his head. Lessons of the theory on diplomacy taught to him from a young age came back to him at the mention of a wedding. The part of him that spent countless hours trying to discover the power he had bringing the dead back cognizant started to focus on this new problem. There was a problem, though.

 “Too many variables…” he muttered under his breath before looking back up at Zilak. “What’s the purpose of the wedding? What about the relationship between these two families? Using yourself as a baseline, how powerful would you say this power is?” 

“From what my friend back in deliverance tells me there are two houses that run two of the three factions that currently rule Formaroth. The allied with each other against house Mandarass, the marriage was a condition of their alliance. From what I gather it was an alliance made out of necessity rather than out of trust”. Zilak paused as he considered how much he wanted to tell Matai about the blood gems, he didn’t want him getting any ideas and betray him “They will provide us with a great deal of magical power, enough that the kingdoms of Formaroth will be forced to recognise our power. That is all you need to know”. 

Matai nodded slowly. “Okay…” he looked back at the long line of cultists behind him. “Sure, the guards might be focused on the wedding, but because this wedding is out of necessity, it’s doubtful that there will be only one house's guards watching the wedding. In the best-case scenario, chances are high that the number of guards will be increased by half. The worst case is that the number of guards will double. Necessity rarely means trust.” 

Matai frowned.

“This could give you an advantage, though. If someone were to cause a panic at the wedding, there would be a higher chance of you getting this source of power from the Blackwell family.” The name sounded familiar. It wiggled some memory from many years before, but he couldn’t quite picture it. It wasn’t important to the topic at hand, so Matai ignored it. 

“How versed would you say you are in the theory of diplomacy?” 

Zilak thought for a time “the wedding will be taking place outside the castle in a nearby forest, part of the Blackwell tradition apparently. However, causing a disruption of the wedding would turn attention away from us. What did you have in mind”?

Matai was silent for a moment as he stared down at his feet. “I have a couple ideas,” he said slowly. “A failed attempt of an attack on the soon to be wed couple by a guard of the opposite family would draw eyes to the would-be attacker. Hmm…that wouldn’t distract from the castle itself, so we could scrap that one. What about…” Matai trailed off. “We could attempt to sow distrust of the De Reimer guards among the Blackwell guards. Maybe find a way to give them a signal that they’ve been “betrayed” by the De Reimer family. The Blackwell guards in the castle would see it and… Gah!” He ran his hands through his hair. “That’s too many moving parts. We need something simple that would have a low failure rate.” He cocked his head to the side.

“Huh, that might work” Matai looked at Zilak. “Blackwell tradition? So your informant would know exactly where the wedding would be taking place? What if we create a wedding present from the Mandrass family, and destroy the wedding grounds with a few well-buried traps?” 

“The Blackwells guard their land well. Any traps laid out will be discovered by their guards long before the wedding even starts. But a present from house Mandarass would certainly set their tensions high. Perhaps I could set a few dozen undead on them. No doubt they will call for reinforcements from the castle to search the grounds giving us an easier way in.” 

“Sending in undead… that could work, but wouldn’t someone need to be..” Matai paused to peer at Zilak. “I guess normally that would require someone to be nearby to control the undead. But as I’ve seen, you are far from normal. Ok, we get in, do we know where this source of power is, or do we still need to do some information gathering?” 

“My informant knows exactly where it is. In fact, she’s the one…” Zilak cut his sentence short as a settlement appeared on the horizon. “Ah, it seems we are finally here,” He said with a dark smile. 

Matai gazed at the settlement ahead and chuckled. “And I seemed to have missed the most boring part of the journey. Talk about luck.” He looked back at Zilak. “What are you expecting here?” Curiosity buzzed in his mind at what Zilak had been about to say, but Zilak’s smile at the settlement intrigued him more.”Actually, where is [i]here[/i]?”

“The village of Rumshore, a quaint fishing village of little importance, meaning that when we take what we need the Blackwell are unlikely to even notice,” Zilak said as he raised his hands. As he did a number of skeletons rose up from the various wagons and carts that were being pulled by the cultists. “Capture the fishermen and their families, kill anyone else” Zilak commanded. The undead followed the orders without hesitation charging forwards towards the village before them. Before long the rest of the cultists followed in suit.

Matai watched as the amassed undead ran towards the village, his stomach dropping below his feet. His mind was screaming at him that something was horribly wrong. It made no sense. He had done experiments on the dead that had been brought in for over ten years, so why did this bug him so much?

[i]Oh.[/i]

He only had experience with the aftermath of whenever the cultists went out. He had no bearing on the dead brought in. They were already dead. It never mattered to him what happened before-no. That was wrong, it did matter at the beginning. But while he was training he had been able to make the disconnect between people and the dead. 

“I can’t do this…” Matai said under his breath. He looked over to Zilak as the man watched his army converge on the village. He spoke up to Zilak over the shouts of the cultists as they, too, started rushing towards the village. “I’m no fighter, and I just woke up after a week-long bout of unconsciousness. I’m going to grab a couple of people and set up an infirmary and morgue. There’s going to be a large influx of bodies, living and dead and I want to process them as efficiently as possible.”

Zilak raised his eyebrow, staring deep into Matai’s eyes. He continued to stare at him for a while, never blinking or averting his gaze before muttering a disappointed “So be it”. 

Matai nodded, more to himself than Zilak, and walked the opposite direction of the town. In the crowd of cultists with faces lit up with excitement, Matai spotted a few who looked like they were about to faint. He gathered three of them to assist in setting up battlefield infirmary on the outskirts of the town. Matai did the best he could to block out the sounds of screams as he gave his gathered cultists roles in providing medical attention of those that came through their tent or processing the dead into skeletons. 

It was going to be a long day
[/hider]

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