717th Arc, #th Trial of Cylus
Etzos Farmlands
The desperation in the act did not elude him. He knew it was risky and almost insane. The necromancer was getting to the point where risk was mitigated by ability. He could kill most who would wander across him at this point. The necromancer had to remind himself that risk meant more than that though. His actions, if he did not find a safer, steadier source of bodies, would draw attention eventually. Graverobbers never made much around Etzos, so the empty graves would draw attention of some kind. He was sure with their prejudices, the people of Etzos would draw the correct, and worst conclusion. Necromancy.
He narrowed his eyes and squinted through the darkness of the surrounding countryside. He had spent more and more time outside the city as Cylus grew closer to its end. He needed to acquire enough to set himself up and some of his past attempts had...failed. He thought back to the near disaster at the farmhouse where he had lost one of his Marrows completely. The necromancy was now forced to shovel the dirt from the grave himself, all threw while set upon by the light rain that seemed to always be present here at the ass end of Cylus.
The soil churned Welty as he continued his work without complaint, not that there was anyone to listen. The rain puddled murkily around his feet where the hole was getting deeper. Occasionally some mud would collapse onto his robes and boots, but the necromancer didn't mind. The grime was nothing to him. It was what he had grown up in. It was simply the setting for his lonely journey to self-sufficiency.
Neronin felt his heart leap as his shovel made a dull, muffled thud in the soil as it touched wood. He bent and dropped the new tool outside the grave. Water spilled in a thin rivulet from the tip of his hood onto the dark wood as he searched with his fingers. He pulled muck away from the the hard surface of wood. He could not make it out in the dark, but felt for the coffin with tentative fingers. Neronin smiled and returned the shovel to his grasp, carefully beginning to clear the dark mud off of the grimy coffin. He had no idea how old the body would be or in what condition. The grave was a sad thing, tucked off the road near a dilapidated farmstead.
The mage had taken to wandering the nearby areas looking for such family grave sites to bring back to Mongrel's cave for study. It had mixed results. Some, like the farm he had visited a few days ago, had almost identified him, though that was the only one that had actually cost him any thralls. Some simply had corpses so far decayed that it took him almost as long to return them to a useable state as it would have taken him to simply make corpses out of the living. Some farmers had taken to setting torches out near their graveyards, clearly warned that some grave robber or other such monstrous being was about. It was a damnable inconvenience.
Neronin was jerked out of his reverie by a suspicious noise nearby. He stood straight up and surveyed the surrounding darkness with narrowed eyes. He began to gather his necromantic energies, just incase. He didn't have a thrall, but he could make a haunt if it was required...