“So this is her, then?” Tim asked, his green fingers lifting Moonslight’s very dead eyelids in turn while another digit poked her in the eyes.

  “Yeah. Why are you poking her in the eyes?” I asked.

  “Wrecking the lead,” Simeon muttered, then snapped his mouth shut as I glared at him.

  “No bloody rhyming slang,” I growled. “Don’t you have bunnyborgs to make?”

  The mod doc opened his mouth, closed it, and poked Tim in the shoulder.

  “Hmm? Oh yes. He said I’m checking she’s dead. We’ve largely automated the cyborg manufacturing process now. We need a skilled surgeon to vivisect the uni-bunnies, but after that, we feed them onto a conveyor belt and out pops the final product a couple of rooms over. It’s got enough pilots in the system to keep churning out bunnyborgs for days. The dwarves were very interested in the process. I suspect their clan look to introduce similar mass production techniques back in their tunnels.”

  The lightly chewed body was in pretty decent condition, all things considered. Moonlight’s corpse was laid out in what looked suspiciously like a dentist's chair in one corner of Simeon's workshop. I was focused on ignoring the feral, gleaming eyes of still living yet partially dismembered uni-bunnies. I really hope the creatures counted as evil, so this horror show was actually a moral good, but I suspected I’d need to do some epically good deeds to balance it out in the end.

  “Simeon, go prep some more pilots, please. She got shot in the throat with an arrow, and then I had a bit of a nibble. How could she not be dead?”

  “Different types of dead, Bob. She is what we necromancers would class as ‘very thoroughly dead’. It’s a technical term.”

  “Is it a problem?”

  “A complication. The blood loss is actually an advantage; the body not being whole is a challenge. You must have swallowed her left hand.”

  “I don’t think so. I didn’t get any biomass, and I’m sure I spat all of her out.”

  “Then, somewhere near where you deposited her after having a bit of a chew is a very sad and lonely-looking left hand.”

  “It would be hard to pick it out. The bunnyborgs seem to use enemies like LEGO and make… odd statues.”

  “Interesting. They are exhibiting artistic expression in the limited way their magical programming permits them. I suspect their basic sapience is playing a factor in that. I’m going to need to get some equipment, but we shouldn’t have too much trouble bringing this one back. You’re moving into the undead army business? I can reanimate her and pass you control if you want, or I’ll set her to work in the lab.” Tim stood and turned to look at me, half of the mobile lenses in his glasses pivoting away from his eyes.

  “I just need to ask her a question, then she can go back to wherever she is now.”

  “She’s in Sheaven. Her gloomy gods were pretty pleased with her. Gimme a minute.” Tim bustled off to a side room, lab coat swishing behind him.

  “Shaven?” I asked Simeon.

  “Ah…” he closed his mouth with a clop and headed towards a sedated uni-bunny to do terrible things to it. I turned away, my stomach grumbling. Despite the medical carnage all around me, I produced a jar of gherkins and popped one in my mouth, chewing slowly as my tummy slowed its complaints. I needed to get rid of this bloody egg.

  Tim returned with a leather briefcase and set it on the bench next to his patient. He clicked the locks and opened the top, then reached in up to his shoulder and began pulling out equipment.

  A six-foot broomstick came out first, which was used to sweep the area around the chair. It was followed by a series of huge candles that he began setting up in a circle around the body, nudging me aside as he made his way around. Then came an oversized piece of chalk, and sweeping lines of some kind of magical inscription were stencilled on the smooth tiles of the workshop’s floor.

  I went and stood by the door as he worked. Smaller pieces of chalk were produced, and more detailed work was scribbled between the original outline, alien-looking scripts and weird geometric shapes that made me go cross-eyed if I stared at them for too long.

  More candles followed, being placed at key intersections of the diagram, and sticks of incense were put in little holders around the outside edge. The holders were all carved skulls of small animals with holes drilled in the top. They were made of various coloured woods, and a few appeared to, in fact, be the actual skulls of once living things. Four of these went on the cardinal points of the diagram.

  “Is all this really necessary?” I didn’t have a watch to check, but the urge was getting stronger with every minute that ticked past.

  “Ambience is very important in the necromantic arts,” Tim said absentmindedly as he rearranged a few candles he wasn’t happy with.

  “So the answer is no, then. Should I ask MJ-bunny to come and sing some Enya?”

  “Not really the vibe I’m looking for here. Bob. Think more along the lines of angry Beethoven with black hair dye. This is not a gentle process for the deceased.” He pulled four dolls out of the bag and set them behind each incense-skull in a cross-legged position, their arms crossed and facing inward towards his patient.

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  “I was expecting something a bit more… high tech from you?”

  “You think this has any similarity to things from Earth? Outside of fiction, reanimation of the dead is not a major area of study back home.”

  “The bunnyborgs aren’t that far off from stuff in films,” I said with a shrug as I opened a new jar of gherkins.

  “That’s just due to the Interuniversal Memetic Psionic Symbiosis. IMPS is just the universe talking to itself basically, and it’s mad as a box of frogs, but that’s why you recognise stuff from home.”

  “Is that anything to do with the WOO? I’ve been meaning to look into those bastards.”

  “Not really. IMPS is the system, or the database for it, I suppose.” He continued rearranging candles, then looked up and waved a hand, causing the lights to dim to almost nothing. There was a clang and a uni-bunny shriek that made me jump.

  “I’m jerking hungover deer!” Simeon snapped.

  “Apologies, Simeon, this should only take a moment.” In the dim light, I could faintly see Tim produce something from the voluminous pockets of his lab coat and click it. The candles all burst into flame, and smoke rose from the incense.

  It was a thick, cloyingly sweet smell that I’d never come across before, and the smoke all rose together to form a mirror image of the chalk lines Tim had inscribed onto the floor.

  He stood back, removed his lab coat, and drew out a black version of the garment from his briefcase, which he slipped over his shoulders. It had little skulls embroidered in silver threads around the cuffs.

  “Are you actually going to dye your hair black?” Tim’s lime green hair stood out in a traditional Albert Einstein-esque halo, the classic look for all mad scientists.

  “Nah. I would if we were going all the way for a proper undead army, but this is just hobbyism, so it’s not worth it.”

  “So an undead army is a real possibility, then? I thought you were joking about that.”

  “Of course it’s an option. But necromancy is one of those things, like being ginger, that can get you persecuted by narrow-minded Luddites.”

  “Gingers aren’t that bad,” I muttered as he began to chant in an eldritch language. The smoke hanging over Moonslight’s body began to swirl and rotate, keeping the pattern but slowly spinning anticlockwise. As Tim continued to drone, the smoke moved faster, the lights from the candles twisting in the opposite direction until the flames were almost horizontal. His voice began to build, louder and faster, and the candle flames stretched further until they formed a complete ring around the edge of his magical chalk art.

  “Una Vivica!” he called out as his voice rose to a crescendo.

  New Syntheticus unlocked!

  Una Vivica

  Eerie green light drifted from his outspread hands to wrap around the corpse. For a moment, nothing happened, then one finger on her right hand twitched. It curled slowly into a fist, and the head lolled upright, eyelids creaking open to reveal the yellow orbs beneath them. The fist rose shakily, a digit pointed at me, and a nightmarish croak emanated from her mouth as it spasmed open and closed.

  “Oh, my bad.” Tim stepped carefully over the circle of fire, mindful to keep his gothy lab coat from catching. He yanked the arrow from her throat and tossed it to one side, where it clattered on the floor. A roll of purple duct tape with black pentagrams on it came out of his pocket, and he tore off a strip which was stuck over the hole in the corpse's throat. “I swear half the world is held together with duct tape. Be a good zombie and stay there so you can answer Bob’s questions.” He stepped out of the circle and waved to indicate she was all mine.

  I was a little taken aback. Obviously I knew I had a soul, and I knew death wasn’t the end, but the only people who’d experienced it that I’d been able to have a chat to were reincarnated like me, and now that I thought about it, none of us had ever discussed how we died, or the deeper metaphysical significance of having answered one of the most timeless and mysterious questions on Earth. Huh. This presented a rare opportunity.

  “What’s it like?” I asked.

  “It’s like I’ve got nails being driven into my soul, you fucking sparkly idiot.”

  “No, I meant the other side.”

  “Gloomy, desolate, we wander. I can see the others, but I can never approach them, nor they me. It’s perfect,” Moonlight said reluctantly. Her jaw wasn’t working right, giving her a slight lisp that exacerbated the wheezing drone as she filled her lungs solely to speak, as breathing didn’t seem to be required anymore.

  “So that’s where Umbrati worshippers go? Some kind of lonely limbo?”

  “Yes. Release my soul, or my god's wrath will fall upon you.”

  “I think I’m already on his shit list, to be fair. You were saying something before that prick Halefire stuck an arrow through your neck. Something about it not just being humans in the war. I’d like you to finish your sentence.”

  “No.”

  “Please?”

  “Fuck off, glowy dragon.”

  I looked at Tim and shrugged. “Can you make her tell me? Some kind of compulsion as the master.”

  “Zombie, answer the question, or I will turn up the lights and fetch a mirror,” he said solemnly, and Moonslight winced, her fingers digging into the arm of the chair.

  “The Deep One and its cousins. The Black Elves and the Dankest Dwarves. The Shadow Flight is also coming to my lord's side in this war. You candle polishers are so fucked.” She cackled, the sound even more sinister due to the laboured breaths and ruined throat.

  “Who the hell is that lot?” I asked Tim.

  “I’ve heard of the Dankest Dwarves. They allied with the ancient evil that all dwarves ‘accidentally’ unearth as they mine deeper. As to the others…” He shrugged eloquently. “Are you done with her?”

  “Who are they, and why should I give a shit? I know a couple of them, and the black elves, setting aside your racism, are pretty self-explanatory. What’s the Shadow Flight?”

  “How stupid are you? I mean, I’ve known some pretty moronic beings in my time; it takes all sorts, and someone needs to do the scutwork, but how the hell are you still alive? They are the counter to the TOTS. A flight of evil dragons, you stupid fucking…” I ignored the rest of her rant and waved a hand at Tim.

  “Ad Lutum!” he said. The green light from before floated up out of her body and mixed with the swirling smoke, which then dissolved away towards the ceiling, losing its form. The candles flared for a second and sputtered out.

  New Syntheticus unlocked!

  Ad Lutum

  I stood lost in thought for a while as Tim began taking down the candles and mannequins to store them away. Evil dragons? That was a pickle. The thought prompted me to absently open my jar and take another gherkin out to chew on.

  “So it really hurts, being yanked back into this world after death?” I wondered.

  “Like slivers of bamboo being driven under the fingernails if your soul was a fingernail, so I’m told,” Tim said absentmindedly, a mop and bucket coming up from his briefcase to wash away the chalk.

  “Pretty bad then.”

  “Yup. One of the reasons people aren’t so fond of us dark artists.”

  “Una Vivica!” I said, pointing a finger at the body. Green light spread from my digit and into the corpse that twitched and spasmed as the soul was pulled back into this reality. A pained scream rang out, and Simeon dropped something with a clatter.

  “What the sh–”

  “Tell me again how stupid I am.”

  “Fu-”

  “Ad Lutum!” The corpse returned to being a vanilla dead thing.

  “Una Vivica!”

  “Aarrggghh!”

  “Ad Lutum!”

  I looked over at Tim as he stared at me in horror. “If I say missa instead of una will it do what I think it will do? And I knew all that stuff with the candles and chalk was bullshit. Una Vivica!”