Author's Note: At reader suggestion, I'm adding a trigger warning here. This chapter includes graphic violence, as well as specifically violence against innocent people by a point of view character. That specific part will be in spoilers, although it is an important plot event that will be referenced later. For the TL;DR, open the spoiler below:

  The revenant Baldwin murders a family, including one child, to bring their bodies to Tybalt for transformation into undead.

  Baldwin’s footfalls accelerated—the skeletons automatically adjusted to his pace, though they would not have been able to match him if he started running—until he drew within sight of a cabin. The building stood by itself, though in the distance, he recognized rows of other smoke columns.

  Every one of them meant an inhabited building. A bunkhouse full of potential future zombies.

  His eyes traced the rows of smoke columns to the other cabins, and the layout of the camp fell together in his mind.

  Most of the miners’ cabins were arranged in neat rows, not far apart from each other. But this one cabin was two hundred feet away from the nearest one, set on slightly elevated ground, and seemed to be a little larger than the others.

  It probably belongs to the overseer, Baldwin thought. His smile turned nasty. They’ll definitely notice him missing in the morning, but they’re also a lot less likely to hear him scream at this distance.

  He reached a hand behind his back to check that he still had a dagger sheathed there, just above his hip. After he lost his fight with Tybalt, Baldwin had rearranged some of his equipment for better performance in these situations.

  Then Baldwin pointed to a pair of tiny structures.

  “You four—” he gestured to the left half of the skeletons—“that way, inside of that outhouse. You other four—” he pointed at the other small structure—“inside of that one. Ambush anyone who enters as quietly as possible. Kill them quickly.” He drew a finger across his throat. “Cut the throat or stab here.” He pointed at his heart.

  From playing with one of these creatures the previous night, Baldwin felt he had a decent grasp on the level of comprehension they had. It would be roughly comparable to a small child, one that understood the rudiments of simple language but virtually nothing else about the world.

  As the skeletons marched off, Baldwin decided to report in to Tybalt. The bastard might be in the middle of his beating already, but regardless, getting some good news probably couldn’t hurt anything.

  We are about to launch the attack on the mining camp now, master, Baldwin sent. I found a spot where I should be able to kill someone without witnesses. The skeletons are going to camp out in the latrines and wait for one or two victims.

  Excellent, Tybalt replied. I never doubted you.

  Baldwin gave a low rumbling chuckle at the twisted compliment and didn’t bother replying. Tybalt had never doubted Baldwin’s capacity for cold-blooded murder.

  All right, then.

  The revenant cut off his laughter in an instant and began ascending the slight elevation that led to the lonesome first cabin.

  When he reached the door, he gave it a slow, firm knock-knock with his closed fist. He tried not to smile; he imagined that it would give him away.

  The night air was silent except for a slight rustling. It might have been the wind blowing across the sand dunes in the distance, but Baldwin focused for a moment and knew it wasn’t that.

  The dunes were all behind him. The cabin, and the sound, were ahead of him. The other cabins, further beyond Baldwin, had been constructed in an area the miners had either flattened or found flat when they arrived.

  So, someone inside the cabin had heard Baldwin’s knocking.

  Just to ensure they didn’t roll over and go back to sleep, and to fit with his preexisting plan, Baldwin knocked again, trying to convey some extra urgency.

  He heard a lock click.

  Just one lock?

  Then the door opened.

  A man stood there in the dimness, eyes groggy, but fully dressed.

  “What’s the matter?” the man said, his voice slightly hoarse. Baldwin smelled the slight odor of alcohol on his breath and had to restrain his urge to smile again. This would be too easy. Like taking candy from a baby.

  “Thank the gods you opened up,” Baldwin said in an urgent hiss. He turned his body sideways as if to look at something off to his right that the man in the door couldn’t see from his vantage point.

  “What’s going on?” the man asked, the beginnings of curiosity taking hold.

  “Are you the mine foreman, sir?” Baldwin asked. “There’s been an incident—I’m with the army, you see.” Baldwin was still wearing his soldier garb, so he had decided to make use of it to boost his credibility.

  The foreman nodded. “I am,” he said. “What sort of incident?”

  “It would be better if you came out and had a look, sir,” said Baldwin quietly. “It’s not far, but one of our soldiers was hurt nearby, chasing the demihumans. A miner was involved, too. I’m hoping you might know where your medic sleeps…”

  The foreman looked more fully awake now.

  “Right,” he said, shaking his head—trying to throw the sleep off.

  He stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind him. Baldwin did not hear a lock click into place.

  Good. That just makes my job a bit easier.

  “Where are we going?” asked the foreman, stepping forward past Baldwin.

  The dagger slid from Baldwin’s sheath, and in one smooth motion, he buried the blade in the side of the man’s neck. Blood began quickly pumping out onto the sand, and Baldwin jumped back to avoid getting any on his gambeson. He already had a few droplets spattered, he was sure, but he could find some explanation for those if it was just a small amount.

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  The foreman didn’t have the chance to cry out or even properly react. He hissed, his eyes bulged in their sockets, his fingers touched delicately at the edges of the wound, and then he collapsed to his knees.

  The blood continued to pump out of his neck like the dagger was a spigot.

  Baldwin stepped in close for a moment, gave the dagger a yank to remove it, and hopped back again.

  His victim collapsed face-first into the sandy ground, his blood gushing out even faster now. In death, he made no sound.

  Baldwin only knew he was gone because of the alert he received.

  Oh, yes…

  Leveling up was a damn good feeling. It was just a fractional increase in his stats, but there was a euphoric sensation that came with it as every part of him grew that little bit stronger.

  He walked past the dead man and opened the door to the cabin.

  “Christos?” called a woman’s voice as Baldwin stepped into the residence. He ducked his head a little to make the size disparity between himself and the dead man a bit less obvious, and he closed the door behind him to keep the time that she would be able to see him outlined against the moonlight to a minimum.

  Then he moved further into the cabin.

  “Christos, what was it—mmph!”

  Baldwin lunged in, grabbed the foreman’s wife around the throat, and began to squeeze. The most important thing for him was to prevent an alarm from being raised. The second most important was to do as little damage to the bodies as he could manage while still killing them, so that Tybalt’s creations would be in the best shape possible.

  That was why he strangled the woman instead of using his dagger again. A calculated decision. Yes, the kill would take a little longer, but it was better if she was left as close to intact as he could manage. The skeletons needed time to do their job, anyway, and they would probably have a much longer wait before they encountered their victims than Baldwin had.

  The woman tried to claw at Baldwin, but his arms were longer than hers, and she could not reach his face. The skin of his arms was protected by the long sleeves of his gambeson.

  “Ma? Pa? What’s going on?”

  Baldwin saw the shape of a ten-year-old boy emerging from the darkness.

  He stepped to the side, dragging the foreman’s wife along with him, to put a piece of furniture between the woman he was strangling and the boy’s line of sight. As the ten-year-old approached, Baldwin felt the fight leave the woman’s body. He continued to hold on for almost another minute while the child drew closer to him.

  “Pa?” The boy squinted sleepily, and then his eyes widened. “Wha—you’re not Pa—”

  Then Baldwin’s large, murderous hands were around the boy’s neck, too.

  Innocence was no shield from his wrath tonight.

  Anyone and everyone who crossed his path was a target.

  —

  Tybalt could feel it when they reached the endpoint of the journey.

  Something in the air about the group changed. The walking slowed first. Then it stopped. The hands on Tybalt’s arms jerked him to such a sudden halt that he almost stumbled. There was a pregnant pause, and he held his breath.

  He thought he knew what was coming, but the fear of death still hung over him. It was always possible that the other men had been lying to him. They might have brought him out here to kill him and simply pretended they were there to teach him a lesson so that he would go quietly.

  A sharp kick took his knee out from under him, and he collapsed to the ground.

  At almost the exact same moment Tybalt hit the sand, there was a voice right next to his ear. The Sergeant’s. He spoke in a harsh but rational tone. Like a man who could be reasoned with. It was a shame that he said such unreasonable things.

  “Endure this, Specialist. Endure it without complaining or begging. One of the most important rules of a squad like ours is silence. Show that you can be silent.”

  Tybalt almost felt it when the other man’s body withdrew from beside him.

  There was a moment of stillness, in which Tybalt guessed that something was quietly communicated between the men.

  And the beating commenced.

  A kick under his ribs took the air out of him. A stomp directly onto his rib cage came next. It felt like something broke. There was a sharp pain, and Tybalt began coughing uncontrollably, his hands writhing and clutching the sand. The blows kept coming. Someone kicked his thighs. Another person simultaneously tried to crush both of his arms, then moved onto stomping his hands. Fortunately, the soft sand cushioned the latter blows.

  Tybalt just lay there and tried not to make a sound aside from the little gasps and coughs that he could not prevent as the air was repeatedly forced from his lungs. The beating continued for several minutes, repeats of the same painful blows from earlier.

  There are only so many ways one can strike a man using just hands and feet.

  A few times, the loose bones hidden under Tybalt’s clothes cracked and broke instead of a blow landing on him directly. They blunted a few hits, then scratched against his skin and cut into his abdomen in a few places, but he didn’t think any of them actually stabbed him deeper than the surface level. Mostly the bones were protected from being hit by being in the front of his shirt or his pockets, since he was face down.

  Tybalt tried to ignore the pain, just use it to keep track of the condition of his body, but it was hard. Every hurt felt like a wound, even if it was just a place that would bruise. At some point, sand got into his shirt and started rubbing into the bone fragment cuts, a raw, grating pain altogether different from the blunt force trauma.

  He felt his fingers burst and bleed as more stomps managed to smash their flesh, and he knew that they would be swollen, torn, and borderline unusable in the morning—but not broken. Not from this.

  He took a blow to the head, tasted blood in his mouth, and lost track of his injuries for a moment.

  Agh, I bit my tongue…

  It wasn’t important on the surface, but it could be more impactful than it seemed. Even if they broke bone, he could get well in a matter of days with health elixirs. But if he bit off a piece of his tongue… accelerated natural healing wouldn’t fix that.

  Tybalt gritted his teeth and tried not to let himself open his mouth again. He was meant to avoid crying out, anyway; that was apparently part of the point of this exercise.

  A sharp pain in his side grew worse with another blow. And another. Someone was deliberately pounding his ribs, and he could feel the broken ones caving in more and more with repeated blows. Maybe he would heal with concave ribs.

  Someone kicked Tybalt’s face—it had to be a kick, it left little black spots all over his vision, and he sensed he had almost been knocked out cold with that blow alone—and he felt his mouth fill with blood.

  “Careful of the head,” the Sergeant’s voice rumbled. “Easy to kill him accidentally there.”

  Good to know they won’t kill me accidentally, Tybalt thought sarcastically. Real professionals. The words came to his mind slowly, dully. His brain wasn’t quite its usual self.

  More blows fell on his arms and legs and lower back, but his awareness of the pain seemed a touch delayed. That blow to the head seemed to have dulled all his senses.

  He felt a pain blossoming throughout his body and realized his eyes were streaming tears, but parts of his mind were elsewhere. Thinking of Baldwin and the skeletons, off killing on his orders. Thinking of Lieutenant Sperry’s face as he told her the things that provoked this beating. Thinking of Vidalia waiting for him in a candlelit bedroom. Thinking of Brandy, earnestly proposing that the two of them make a life together as they shared a pint of ale. Thinking of the Baron and Baroness and their beautiful daughter Miranda. That beautiful intact family. Thinking of his own mother and her solitary funeral.

  Is my life… playing before my eyes?

  As he thought that, the corners of Tybalt’s vision seemed to be growing dark. He could not endure much more of this and remain conscious. It suddenly dawned on him that the group might not realize how physically weak he was, his level having reset to zero when he acquired his classes. A massive oversight, and one which he could do nothing about now.

  Perhaps Tybalt had made a mistake, choosing not to fight.

  They’re not actually going to kill me, right? This would be such a stupid fucking way to die… If they knock me out, I wonder if… maybe I’ll dream. I bet Vidalia could take the pain away for a while…

  Come to Patreon... you know you want to.