While Rivi and I were ice bathing and going out of town for a picnic, Rufi was left all alone in the house the Grenir had assigned for us. Normally on a day like this, Rufi would have just spent all day lazing about, content with a little bit of sun, and whatever food her caretakers left for her, but today wasn't that day.

Ever since she met me and started going on adventures with me and fighting monsters with me, she'd reignited a spark that she had thought had long since died out. In her youth she had been quite the fierce beast, diligent in training and savage in fights. For years she had dominated her generation of Shadow Chimeras in trial after trial, even helping to reaffirm the prestigious place the Shadow Chimera clan held in the Beast world through various tournaments and contests, but that all ended the day she was chosen to be the next divine companion for the Goddess.

While certainly some divine companions went out on missions and served to further the glory of the Undead Kingdom and Melphinoe's domain more broadly, in general Rufi had entered the Goddess' service during a time of peace and slumber. Instead of fighting gloriously for the cause, like she had imagined, she was spoiled rotten by the lazy Noe, who used her far more often as a lap warmer than a honorable divine warrior.

And while she had bristled at the treatment at first, and quarreled with the other divine companions, and protested fiercely to the indifferent Noe whenever she got the chance. Eventually the years of luxury had worn off her edge, and she grew to like the ambiguity of speaking only in beast's tongue (referring to when beasts make animal-like noises that are more emotionally expressive rather than actually articulate), and being scritched under her chin, and being fed three meals a day without labour or contest.

So when she was finally called upon for a mission, she found herself a little reluctant to actually go, though of course she pretended otherwise to Noe so that she could still be selected. But now, after tasting the thrill of battle once more, as tame and low-level as the fights she had been in with me were so far, she found her bloodlust rising in her once more, and she felt the inexplicable urge to tear, claw, and bite whosoever was unlucky enough to stand in her way.

And so it was with this in mind that Rufi slipped out of the house she had been left in, sneaking into the shadows of the village, eager to find some monster or villain, upon which she could unleash her newfound bloodlust.

"Have you heard?" Rufi's ears pricked up. Naturally as a candidate for the Goddess divine companion she had long since learned every major and minor language spoken on the Lost Continent, and Grenir was no different. "They say old Tal on the mountain has gone missing."

"Ahh, scary, do you think it's the shadow again? Is there really someone going around kidnapping Grenir?"

"Who can say? The elders probably know, but with guests here they're probably trying to keep the whole thing quiet."

Rufi slipped away from the gossiping Grenir, now flowing rapidly in her shadow form towards the mountains. She stopped at last a small Grenir-style snow house that seemed, from the state of the interior, only recently abandoned.

After a quick look around, Rufi popped out of her shadow form and started sniffing around, looking for clues, only to immediately recoil. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.

There was a new scent in this building, a scent she had never smelled before in all her long life, and it smelled foul and vaguely…necromantic in nature? Her eyes narrowed. Necromancy? Around beasts? In the mind of mortals like Rufi the rule that beasts could never be raised as undead had been around so long as to become a sacred tenant of the Goddess' religion. Her fur bristled and she felt faint chills even at the thought of it.

I have to get to the bottom of this, Rufi pawed at the ground in thought, this is no longer about curiosity and bloodlust, this is about my honor as a divine companion to the Goddess.

With that thought, she soon started galloping away, following the nefarious scent that she had picked up in the house deeper into the mountains. It's a shame the Grenir have such a terrible sense of smell. She shook her head as she went. Otherwise this might have been dealt with long ago.

***

In a cave deep in the Ice Kingdom's mountains sat Feno the Necromancer, deep in thought over the body of his new corpse.

Of all the beings in this world Feno hated the Goddess of the Dead the most. For it was she who had denied to his kind the power of resurrection. Living on the edge of the Kingdom of Undeath his whole mortal life, how could Feno not notice the beings whose beauty and strength never failed them. Who, year after year, remained the same as when he was a child, while all of the Verouth's (a race of humanoid beasts with ears like a cat and strong stocky bodies) around him aged and withered away, including himself.

At last he couldn't stand it anymore, and left to find seclusion in the middle of the mountains so that he could raise himself away from prying eyes, and enjoy the peaceful life of immortality that was so cruelly denied him.

But necromancy isn't such a simple art to practice on one's own, and the little he managed to steal of the craft from the Goddess' people didn't directly correlate to the process for raising beasts. Each species seemed to have their own requirements for being raised back to life, and after so long being outlawed perhaps only the Goddess herself knew the process for raising a member of the beast clan.

But what choice did Feno have? With limited resources and the necessity for absolute secrecy, he could only experiment on animals, and then hope that the process would transfer over to himself. When the final day came, Feno brought himself to the sacrifice table willingly, thinking that whatever happened he'd either not be around to see it, or he'd have at last succeeded in achieving his long-held dream.

Reality was not so kind, though, it seemed. He had raised as an undead, that was certain, but it was a twisted half-formed creation, nothing like the simplicity and beauty of the Goddess works. He had flesh like a ghoul, but it was constantly rotting off of his bones, and once the flesh melted away, his bones fell with it, seemingly unable to be animated without the fleshly medium. Creating a horrible stench as one side of his body seemed to be melting away into nothing.

But the worst was his mind. In the process of resurrection his soul had been broken into dozens of different fragments. One moment he'd be standing in a corner whispering to himself about things that had never happened, the next raging like a ghoul with horrific bloodlust, the next carefully planning and analyzing his next moves, so as to avoid suspicion from the Goddess' forces.

Feno, as such, was no longer capable of being aware of his failure. Instead he now acted more like an intelligent version of a monster—all instinct, bloodlust, and cunning, rather than a turned humanoid. And one of the few things that remained in his insanity was his hatred of the Goddess and his search to 'perfect' the monstrous thing he had become.

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