Grey woke up slowly to the feeling of something nibbling on her ear. She rolled over and kissed the thing on the lips opening her eyes to a wide awake Willow.

  “Good morning beautiful.”, Willow greeted, squirming her way under Grey`s arm and into their favourite cuddle position.

  “Good morning yourself.”, Grey replied, holding her girlfriend close embracing her with the same enthusiasm she had since they moved in together a couple of days ago. They say longing makes the heart grow fonder but Grey was beginning to wonder about that. With each passing day she spent more and more of her time with Willow and with each day she found herself growing fonder.

  Willow caressed Grey`s body gently up and down hypnotised by the life she now lived. Every day she would wake up and hardly believe it was real, it all felt like a dream. A dream she hoped never to wake up from. Adjusting her home to welcome Grey was no easy task but once they had sorted out the bed situation the rest came easy. How fortunate they were that the house was designed by Humans and only built by Goblins. If it had been Grey would have to be in a constant crouch just to get between rooms.

  Grey had been a negative influence on Willow`s work schedule keeping her in bed at least an hour longer than she was used to. Willow didn`t mind, the energy Grey brought into her life more than made up for it. In fact she found her performance at work actually improved, in spite of the distractions.

  “So what`s your dad teaching you today my little Necromancer?”, Willow enquired, giving Grey multiple little kisses on her cheek and neck.

  “Nothing new really. I still haven’t managed to drain the rat completely. It`s a lot harder than you would think, I can`t even begin to describe it.”, Grey replied, rolling over and on top of Willow giving her a hungry look.

  “I might not fully understand it but I am confident that if anyone can do it, it`s you.”, Willow encouraged her, wrapping her arms around Grey`s neck and pulling her in for a passionate kiss.

  [---]

  Grey met up with Whiskers who stood ready for her outside. As spry as always he never needed rest and never grew bored. He was the perfect hybrid between animal and machine. He was more than that however; he was an extension of herself. Without him she would not be able to travel as she did, so freely without limitations.

  He carried Grey through the streets of the Undercity with ease having memorised many of the routes through time wasting trial and error. Clearly his re-animation had been more complicated than Grey first thought. Thinking on it herself and what it meant to bring something back to life she wondered at how her father had gone about it. She herself would soon find out no doubt.

  Rounding a corner Grey and Whiskers found themselves almost colliding with a very clean and well-dressed half-orc who looked very familiar. His hair was a striking bright red contrasting wonderfully with his olive green skin. It was swept to the right and on the left where his scar would have been was a pretty pink bow. He smiled with cy pinked lips upon realising it was Grey and patted down his pink dyed mushroom fibred dress. Clearly he was looking to impress.

  Grey was caught off guard not just from running into the boy but by how strikingly beautiful he was. She was left speechless and sensing an opportunity to strike the half-orc boy went in for the kill.

  “Fancy meeting you here stranger.”, he began, hands on his hips showing off his curvy figure. “I see my good looks have charmed you into submission.”

  Whisker`s growled softly bringing Grey back to her senses.

  “I would say I am charmed less by you and more by the dress you are wearing. Where may I ask did someone as contemptable as you find something so elegant.”, Grey responded, changing the subject to hide her arousal.

  “Please. Lying doesn’t suit you. Stick to telling the truth little dy. You and I both know I`m the hottest thing you have ever seen.”, he replied, teasingly biting his lip and giving her a pyful wink, his little tusks poking out the sides of his mouth.

  Grey rolled her eyes at the boys confidence, or was it arrogance? Regardless she found herself being slightly charmed to her annoyance.

  “Clearly you haven’t met my girlfriend not to mention my lil friend Whiskers here puts you to shame on even his worst days.”, Grey quipped back, starting to enjoy herself. “You know I would love to continue this little exchange but I have more important things to attend to. I`m sure you understand”.

  She gestured Whiskers to move around the feminine boy and payed him no attention pying hard to get in a way that made her feel guilty. She noted that she would have to reflect upon these feelings and maybe bring them up with Willow, but for now she had work to get to.

  The boy turned around and raised his voice to bridge the growing distance, “My names Max, tell me yours and I might tell you where I got the dress.”

  Whiskers kept walking and Grey turned her head and yelled back, “The names Grey.”

  “Grey. It suits you.”, he yelled back louder. “I made the dress myself. Maybe I`ll show you how sometime.”

  Grey turned her head back so he wouldn’t see the huge smile she was attempting to stifle, a feeling of guilt growing inside her. She was definitely going to have to talk about this flirtatious encounter with Willow. Especially since Grey found herself wanting it to happen again.

  [---]

  Thanatos stood watch over Grey patiently observing as she readied herself to try her hand once again. Before her in a cage sat a common rat, easily found in the dark corners of the Undercity.

  Grey took her hand and hovered it above the creature concentrating with all her mind and body. She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply opening herself up to the world of the unseen all around her. Before her burning like the fme of a mp was the soul of a living creature, small yet feisty.

  She extended her will, using her hand to act as a conduit, to channel its direction. She let it ooze out of her palm with tendrils of dark energy and grasped the creature tight. It writhed and squirmed against her hold trying its hardest to fight back against her. The first time she had attempted this, she had passed out from exertion. Every day she would try and each time she would st a little longer before passing out. The toll of performing such dark magic was extraneous on anybody who used it. It didn`t help that Grey had a frail disposition and little to no endurance. Today though she was ready and determined to remain conscious all the way to completion.

  She had used her free time well; training her body. She exercised when she could and forced herself to eat extra helpings of bone porridge to gain some mass. It wasn`t much but every day she grew stronger motivated to keep pushing forward.

  With all the might she could muster she forced her will down on the creature and with one harsh motion ripped the life from its body and drew it into herself. It colpsed with not even a death twitch.

  “Good job.”, Thanatos announced pinly. “How do you feel?”

  They had grown cold with Grey ever since they started her studies. She assumed it was to make themselves a better teacher. To focus purely on the craft so she got the best education. In truth they were afraid. Afraid of having to repeat the past. They tried to separate themselves from Grey little by little with every lesson. Anything to lessen the ultimate pain they might have to one day experience all over again.

  Grey looked at her father, breathing heavily, her blood flowing fast, adrenaline pumping through her system, except it wasn’t adrenaline.

  “I feel amazing. Invigorated. Alive.” She stood up from her chair and without struggle walked across the room. “Is this because of the rat? Did I absorb its life force?”

  “You did. Not exactly how I had intended for the lesson to go but that`s okay. It`s been a while since I st taught. Progress is progress.” Thanatos expined. “When you draw the soul of a living creature out you can choose to make it apart of you. Once that is done you can decide what to do with it. Transfer it to something dead, use it as fuel for a less conventional magic or consume it.”

  Grey was amazed and would have jumped for joy if her legs hadn`t failed her. She colpsed to the floor feeling as exhausted as always.

  “Rats don`t really count for much I take it.”, Grey asked rhetorically, reaching out for her father to help her stand.

  “Obviously. Find something rger and it will st a lot longer but I`m sure I don`t have to expin the morality of draining the life force of sentient beings.”, Thanatos answered, lifting Grey with no effort and parking her back on her chair.

  “But what if I consider them to be inferior beings?”, Grey asked jokingly, immediately regretting her in poor taste decision to lighten the mood.

  Thanatos stared at her unamused.

  “The next lesson, which we will begin tomorrow, will be covering reanimation. Understand that it is not the same as resurrection. Once a creature has had its soul removed it`s very being is erased. It can never be made whole again, never returned to what it once was. Instead it is more like creating new life in a way.”, Thanatos wandered over to the rats corpse and pulled it from the cage pcing it on the floor. “Observe.”

  They raised their hand and channelled some of their energy into the corpse and it started breathing and twitched back to life. Well something resembling life that is.

  “The first step of reanimation is basic bodily function. Restart the heart, get the blood flowing if there is any. The less intact the body is the more energy is required to make up for it. But simply giving it life again isn’t enough. It needs to be given purpose.”, they continued twisting their wrist.

  Grey watched as the rat jumped back into action running in a small circle.

  “How do I give it purpose? Doesn`t seem as easy as giving an oral command”, she enquired like a good student.

  “You can. If a reanimated creature is linked to you a simple oral command will do. But those kinds of instructions don`t go very deep. When you give it purpose with your mind you impart with it your intentions. If I had simply spoken the word ‘run’ it would have done so in a straight line. But by thinking it I subconsciously imparted a little more information.”, Thanatos expined, to Grey`s encapsution.

  “Information such as how to run and for how long. Amazing!”, she commented, completely blown away. Grey pyed over everything that could mean in her mind. With enough power anything was possible. You could py God creating new life and making it serve you. It was terrifying, the true danger of such a thing only now became truly clear to her.

  [---]

  Grey`s success had earned her an early trip back to Willow. Her father had told her to go get some rest but in all honesty she was probably going to continue training. She had the taste of Necromancy on her lips and was eager for more. Wondering through the streets again Grey was afraid of running into Max and having to refrain from taking part in another flirtatious conversation. Lucky for her he was nowhere in sight, most likely at work.

  The rest of the way she thought about Willow and the subsequent conversation they were going to have to have. Grey could not deny that there was an attraction to Max and she would be a fool to deny it. She was unsure if she wanted to act on these feelings but felt it right to talk to Willow about them. The two of them could talk about anything together, free of judgement. It was just one of the things that Grey felt made their retionship work so well. Despite that fact, a little part of her mind still had a way of filling her with doubt.

  Upon returning to the farm Grey was greeted by the shocking sight of the farm under siege. Feral rats swarmed in an endless tide amongst the fields. They tore down and consumed every mushroom they could find with total devastation. At the centre of all the chaos was Willow; bloodied and bruised as she attempted to fight the rats off. She brandished her shovel like an axe and hacked at as many of them as she could. Some of them fell to precise well timed blows, but wherever one fell there were hundreds more to take its pce. The creatures ignored her attempts to dispatch them with and simply continued their destruction. In a matter of moments everything Willow had worked so hard to build would be gone. Consumed by the unfeeling horde of the Undercities rat popution.

  Grey would not stand idly by and let that happen. She jumped into action urging Whiskers to leap into the fray with her. He lunged into the swarm snatching up as many rats as he could in his mighty jaw. Left and right he swung his powerful cws eviscerating multiple rats but barely leaving a dent in their numbers.

  Grey leaped off the back of Whiskers and nded on two rats grabbing each of them around the neck. She concentrated and drained them of their life force invigorating her own. With her new found boost in energy she dashed around grabbing up and draining those too fat, slow or uncaring to evade her.

  She reached Willow and stood stronger than she had ever felt, eager to assist in the defence of her loves home.

  “Willow! What on earth is going on here? Where did all these rats come from?”, Grey yelled in between kicking a rat towards Whiskers for him to devour. He might not have had a stomach but that wasn`t stopping him for trying to eat as many of the little bastards as he could.

  “I don`t know. Rats aren’t anything new but I`ve never seen this many before. At this rate they are going to destroy the entire farm, I`ll never recover!” Willow cried out desperately, striking another rat with her shovel. Grey continued to snatch, kick and stomp on rats their numbers seeming limitless.

  “We need help!”, Grey yelled urgently.

  “There`s no time! They`re eating everything!”, Willow yelled back, tears forming in the corners of her eyes as her life was being devoured before her very eyes.

  “It`s hopeless.”, Willow uttered through the pain and tears. She dropped to her knees and let herself get overwhelmed by the swarm.

  “Take my hand Willow! Don`t give up!”, Grey pleaded, reaching out towards her. There was no hope in Willow`s eyes, she had given up. Faced with such odds all she could do was let nature take its course. Even if that meant being consumed by it in the process.

  Grey began to panic looking around for a solution, a way to save Willow. Their numbers seemed limitless, with only three of them there was no way to stop it. If only there were more of them. More of them! That was it!

  Grey took a deep breath and cleared her mind. She dropped to her knees and fought against the pull of the rats. She let her hands drift amongst them and tried to feel them. Not physically, but magically. She closed her eyes and shut herself out from the physical world. She opened herself up to the world past that until she could feel their souls, their hearts, their blood. Thinking, feeling, consuming creatures that existed all around her like an ocean. She reached into that ocean and let her influence spread like a bck ink. All around her the rats began to writhe in agony feeling their life force slowly being pulled from their bodies. All of it ripped away and flowing into Grey`s being. They dropped by the hundreds but it still wasn`t enough. Grey took a deep breath and began the second part of her pn. With a great thrust of her will she ejected all the life she had drained into the bodies of the deceased. One by one she bled a little bit of herself into them. A twitch of the ear, a kick of the leg and their eyes opened glowing and green.

  Grey felt herself growing weak pushing herself too far, she didn`t care. Behind her she heard the concerned voice of Willow shouting for her. She had regained her senses once she had realised what Grey was doing.

  She forced herself back into concentration and fed three basic instructions into the corpses; KILL! GATHER! REPEAT! With that st action the bond she had constructed severed and she fainted. Willow was there just in time to catch her.

  To her surprise though the recently deceased rats sprung to unlife and began hunting and sughtering their former brethren. The writhing horde began to panic knowing it was under attack by a formidable foe. They tried to fight back against the interlopers but it was useless. The reanimated rats were brutal in their efficiency. Unfeeling and shrugging off wounds that would be fatal to their living brethren. Fast and nimble they struck in a split second ripping the throats of those not re-animated by necromantic energies.

  Willow watched in horror and amazement as a perimeter formed around them and spread outward. It grew rger leaving more and more death in its wake. When the swarm sensed its nearing end some of them attempted to flee. They were all hunted down and sughtered to the st.

  By the end Willow sat holding Grey, Whiskers supporting her staring at a field of corpses. The rats who`s eyes glowed green stood vigint amongst the deceased. with no way to fulfil their commands further they colpsed.

  [---]

  Grey woke up a few hours ter to the grateful surprise of Willow. She y in her arms still in the middle of the massacre. Willow was too afraid to move her, she simply y there and waited for her love to wake up. Willow colpsed onto Grey relieved to see she was awake and well.

  “What happened?”, Grey asked, feeling as close to death as one could get without meeting it.

  “What do you mean ‘what happened’?”, Willow screamed at her. “You nearly killed yourself. You idiot, you stupid idiot.”

  Grey struggled to lift her head and looked around her at the devastation she had wrought.

  “Looks like my pn worked?”, Grey stated pinly brushing off how fast and loose she had pyed with her own life.

  “You big stupid idiot! That`s not the point! I could have lost you!”, Willow cried, fighting back tears, holding Grey`s limp form close to her.

  “But you didn`t?”, Grey remarked jokingly to the vexation of Willow.