The young mage felt the void bleeding him. It felt like his phantom wounds had opened and the howl in Cats chest was bleeding through his own body. He had come close to the border before. Never had he touched were life becomes death. The place where the dead leave the matters of the flesh behind.
The weakness and fear crawling through his mind belong to the sick and dying. The sensation of bleeding out on a street crawled thorough his body. Followed by the exhaustion of pneumonia in a dark alley. Closing his eyes for the final time sick of not being able to breath.
Albie lay on the ground suffering the pains. The smell of rotting bodies filled his nose as he looked into the void trying to find a will on the boundary. Some semblance of a mind to deal with and attack back. His probes all melted into the nothingness of the afterlife never to return. He could sense no other mind. No one watched this border for trespassers. All were welcome and everyone was expected to pass through the border. Everyone will cross over eventually. None will wish to remain on the border for long. It would always be easier to cross over and leave the burdens of flesh behind but turning back after touching it might still be possible.
A new not unpleasant feeling entered his mind. Tiredness and warmth. A blanket and a straw bed. A warm hand wrapped around his own weakened knuckles. It didn't hurt. It was just calmly passing. His mind drifted to draining Cats reanimated body. He wished he had been there to comfort her in her last moments. To cradle her in his arms as she slipped away. Instead she died likely unable to breathe in the cold mud as all the village burned around her.
The thought angered him. For a moment he felt his mind twist as the sensations of dying in a warm bead filled him with anger. The warmth he felt was pleasant to the touch, but it came with no feeling of relief, or sorrow. No regret no memory of the person holding the withered hand. Sensation was not his, but the feelings and memory were his own.
The feeling ended and the violent lonely deaths returned. Decapitation, sexual assault and bleeding to death assaulted the young man's mind. The pains and sensations became increasingly dull in the absence of emotion. The feeling of bleeding to death became less desperate. The mage touched his perceived wounds to feel his body was fine. He looked at the room through the eye of the wight.
He saw his twisted body culled into a ball. He was surrounded by the work of lord brands men and lying on a large stinking scab. He remembered his village and the murder of his people. His rage filled his heart. He felt the pains but chose to blame them all on her majesty. He let the hate warm his hart boil his blood and melt all the feelings in his body.
If the wight had no mind he would make one for it. He pulled a pair of sun rings from a pouch on his harness. The sun rings were a binding of two spirits. At least one of whom was a mage. They might not hold ghosts, but they held memories. His had bound his life to Cat who had crossed over. These held the memory of those slain in the city. He pulled a moonstone kept in the hospitals lab from another pouch and combined the two. He cut the siting corpses chest open and buried the ring and crystal next to the dead bodies black heart.
The semblance of a will grew in the body. A will began to grow it was connected to the boundary but separate. Albie used his magic to help it grow. Could feel his magic being sucked into the beyond. He felt like he was blowing a soap bubble made using the final border as soap. It grew and began to solidify. His hatred became its first emotion and the hunger of the next world its first feeling. A tiny ego formed in the bubble It screamed angry and hurt the mage overpowered its tiny will with his own achieving dominance over the young mind. Soon after something changed. The mind came into its own. A reflection of him.
The new mind was a reflection of Albies Anger cast in a pool of liquid unlife. Hatred and hunger were its core and the moon mage its master. The rotten eye of the dead priest aglow with fell lite looked at its creator. A memory of the border fresh in its mind.
"Father," The flesh wight hissed with a rotten tongue. "What is your command?"
Albie grabbed the bag of oats from the floor and pulled Bags who was fearful of the newcomer from it before eating the oats in the bag. Bags from the wights view as best she could. The young mage felt both Bags fear and the wights hunger for her life.
"Dead!" squeaked the rats mind. "Predator, wrong, dead moving… Bags afraid!"
Albie pet the rat on his shoulder denying the wights petitions to drain the life from the rat. He felt his stomach churn as the oats were touched by the liquid unlife in his stomach. He walked to the decapitated priest and released the contents of his stomach onto the dead priest. The black goo soaked into the corpse that began to move.
"Take control of it," ordered the moon mage. The Red eyed wight raised a hand and the headless corpse stood waiting for its next command. "Good, declared the moon mage. I name you Scab. You will assist in building an army of the dead and use it to kill and eat the men in orange coats. Any creature that does not share my blood is fine to eat. We will not stop until all the orange coats are killed."
Albie untangled another body from the rotting mass around him and placed it on the broken alter. He put more oats in his stomach and awaited its return.
"Yes father," said Scab a misshapen grin on its face.