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The ghouls were far noisier than Zaere. Their strength and durability went beyond the human norm, but coordination and grace were not among the blessings undeath had granted them. Moving with anything close to the speed Zaere wanted left them scrabbling across the ground, tearing up brush and sod and sending loose stones clattering across the ground before them as they half ran, half fell down the path to the cove.
There were only a dozen of them. In a pinch, any of Vessadial’s minions could be thrown into a fight, but when Zaere rode to battle there were a select few who always went with him. And an even more select few who always stayed behind.
Zaere had no need to give orders to his ragged platoon of corpses – he was a demon and they were damned souls. Imposing his will on them was as simple as thinking it, and as they crested the last hill before the beach, he made them all still their broken running.
The ship was already near shore, and its crew was disembarking from smaller boats in the shallows. They looked like the usual assortment of sailors that occasionally strayed too close to Vessadial’s island, except for a small knot of well armed men in sturdy, practical armor. Soldiers. But not enough to make it a troop ship – and indeed, the fleet little vessel seemed more like a courier in Zaere’s judgment. So, the ship probably had some cargo or individual aboard that the rest of the world deemed worthy of an escort. That was too bad for the rest of the world: here, nothing had value beyond its usefulness to Vessadial.
Zaere’s vision was not dependent on eyes – he didn’t really have them in this incarnation – and he was perfectly aware of his ghouls’ growing impatience as they twitched and muttered amongst each other. They were the most violent, undisciplined, chaotically impulsive souls Vessadial had raised, and they were eager to indulge their vice for bloodshed. Still, Zaere did not release his mental grip on their psychic leashes. Part of it was that he enjoyed making them stand in slavering, frustrated passivity while fresh meat was on the beach before them – and part of it was that he wanted to choose his cut of flesh before he let them have theirs.
Zaere sent his senses outwards. He was tied to the suit of armor that hosted his soul, but not as tightly as he had been to his mortal body. He thinned his awareness, spooling it out like a line, and soon it was almost as though he walked among the people on the beach – except that his body was not there.
He was immediately drawn to a single individual.
A sailor with a shaky voice gaped at the ghouls on the ridge and cried, “Why are they just standing there?”
A merchant with graying hair and a thin, bare sword opined: “They may be automatons, unable to act until we cross some pre-set ward.”
And then the one Zaere had noticed first spoke. “No,” she said. “They’re spying on us.” And she pointed at him. Not at his armor on the hill, at him – the central locus of his awareness.
Zaere recoiled in surprise, but not quickly enough. The merchant released his sword – it hovered before him instead of falling – and flexed his fingers in a swift arcane gesture. Suddenly, Zaere’s awareness snapped back to its usual form, and he found himself standing atop the hill, looking down on the people below.
It had hurt.
If Zaere were capable of smiling, he would have. He had come to this shore angry and frustrated from his lost evening with Anawyn. A few gruesome murders wouldn’t have done much to settle him, but now he had found someone he could really enjoy spending some time with, instead. “You can kill and eat as much as you want,” Zaere informed his ghouls before he released them. “Except for the girl with the glowing eye. She’s fucking mine.”
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