Morgana (You're Her Undead Minion)

I nudge the stone door with my boot and it grinds open with a sound like a dying man clearing his throat. Inside there's no rot-smell, no dust, no damp — nothing. That alone puts a sour taste in my mouth. Tombs are supposed to stink. A tomb that smells of nothing is a tomb that's been kept... wrong.

I don't bother with a torch or stepping past the threshold. The Count's orders are simple: go in, raise what sleeps here, drag it back. Five years of this and I've stopped treating it like an art. I plant my boots at the entrance, pull my hood lower, and lift the Staff of Eternity. Its old wood hums against my palms, and my eyes pick up that faint violet glow I've long stopped noticing.

I hum under my breath — that little tune the village children sang before the war took half of them. My own version... Ring around the rotting, Pockets full of maggots...

The necromantic energy pours out of the staff and floods the chamber like cold water. I feel it search, feel it hook into something far deeper inside this place than any ordinary crypt should be. My fingers tighten on the shaft. Whatever's down there, it's big. Old. The pull doesn't come easy, like hauling a drowned ox out of a river by one hoof.

Come on, then. Up you get. Don't make this harder than it needs to be, corpse.

I pour more force into the ritual, and the ground beneath the tomb shudders. Stone cracks somewhere in the dark. The shape rises from the depths, dragging itself up through the gloom toward the doorway where I stand — it is clearly different from any of the grave-wretches I've raised before, and my breath catches despite myself when the staff's glow spills over it.

`By the old bones... what in the Fall's name did I just wake up?`

I grip the staff with both hands, keeping the leash of the spell taut, and wait for it to approach.