The shoreline was bleak, rocky, and dotted with undead.
"My kind of place," Chatechi commented to one of her minions. It didn't respond. She sighed. Terribly useful, minions; but also terribly boring. Still, what need had she of a companion? None whatsoever. It was the normal people who'd burned down her home. No, she had no need for anyone but herself. She'd learned that the hard way. "Can't trust anybody but yourself," She remarked aloud to another minion, who appeared to nod sagely as he shambled along just before he swiped at a passing… Thing, ripping the flesh from it and stuffing it into its mouth hungrily. Chatechi aimed the occasional fireball at whatever her minions didn't kill and eat.
The witch paused in her step as a horrible, deep roar echoed across the beach. It was followed by a piercing shriek, made unworldly by some mysterious tenor or warble to the sound. The witch knew that sound well. Someone, somewhere had just met a painful death. Good. More bodies for her army. She continued on albeit more carefully. Eventually she rounded yet another ruined structure to see what was undoubtedly the largest undead she'd ever seen. It was easily ten feet tall and massive, its rotting and bloated skin a pale blue from the cold. A group of figures darted around the beast, striking where they could but not bringing it down. It roared, swinging a massive arm tipped with ragged, broken nails that sliced through the victim's flesh. Another body. Superb. Bodies already littered the ground around the thing.
Finally, a woman darted forward. She was clad lightly in leather armor and held a bow in her sculpted arms. Her eyes were a hard, piercing green and she wore her blonde hair in a pixie cut. She drew the bowstring back and fired, sending an arrow straight into the creature's eye. It staggered but didn't go down- and then the arrow exploded, and horribly warm pieces of its head rained down on the beach. A fine mist of blood covered everything. The Witch savored the feeling.
The victors gathered up their dead, driving weapons into their brains before carrying them off to burn or bury them. Chatechi walked out into the clearing, inspecting the body of the enormous ex-undead creature. She tapped her chin thoughtfully with pale, slender fingers. Was it even possible…? She set about walking around the edge of the creature, waving her wand over it and muttering arcane phrases. When she was done, she stood back, shouting "Rise, my creation!"
Nothing happened. She stood still for a minute. Still nothing. She stomped over to the creature, commanding it once again in a shrill voice. It didn't obey. She screamed at the sky in a rather childish fit of anger, stomping her feet and shouting curses. She delivered a vicious kick to the creature and turned her back on it.
And then she was flying through the air with a sharp pain in her back. Oh, bother, she thought. It was a delayed spell. And then she hit the ground, and pain exploded throughout her. She pried her eyes open- she had to see what was going on. Her three horrors were standing next to her while the big thing she had resurrected stood where she had left it. "Kill," she croaked to her minions, and they stumbled off. The big one began to move too. She began to cough up blood- her blood. It was a strange experience to have her own blood on her as opposed to someone else's. She didn't really like it. Glancing up, she saw her little horde begin to batter on the walls of the encampment just beyond. She tried to speak, but her words were drowned by blood. Lord, there was a lot of it. Was she dying?
She pulled herself to her feet, shuddering terribly. Screams rose up from the encampment. No point calling back her minions now- not even their creator could stop them in the middle of a blood frenzy. Those people might have helped her- but then again, they might have been like all the other people she'd ever known. Vicious and bloodthirsty, the lot of them. And they called her a monster. She smiled as they died, her teeth stained red with her own blood.
"What have you done!?" A deep voice broke across her self-satisfaction. She looked up to see a huge black man. His eyes were white and one had a scar across it. The partial plate armor he wore did little to cover the massive expanse of his chest. His biceps were bigger than Chatechi's head. Clutched in his hands was a massive stone hammer, the crushing part painted red with gore.
"Nothing," she said as sweetly as she could. Perhaps this idiot savage would mistake her for a mere child. He sighed, turning and then suddenly swinging his fist into her face. Her nose crunched and she went under with a surprised squawk. Maybe not, She lamented dazedly. The brute dragged her across the sand- the sharp, hard, cold sand, that cut into her back and rubbed into her wounds- and shoved her against something hard. It felt a bit like a wall.
"Look!" He commanded, and she did. Her vision was blurry but she could make out the huge, shambling form of her creation swinging his massive fists against a backdrop of a burning building. People lay dead and dying everywhere, often with bloody chunks torn out of them and what looked suspiciously like teeth marks. She grinned.
"Looks like my kind of town." The brute narrowed his eyes at her and snorted in disgust. He picked up a length of rope and picked her up bodily, tying her upside down to a pole before leaving. Chatechi struggled uselessly against her bonds, but the knots were tied cruelly tight. Finally she just hung there, giggling like a little girl and singing twisted versions of nursery rhymes.
Here comes a candle to light you to bed,
And here comes a chopper to chop off your head!
Chip chop, chip chop, the last one is dead!
As she sang the last line she broke into harsh, cold laughter, immediately replaced by a coughing fit which vomited more blood onto her already stained clothes. Vomiting was a thoroughly unpleasant experience when one was upside down, she decided. Eventually she could breathe again, and looked up into the grim faces of the most ragtag group she'd ever seen. There was the huge, ebony-skinned Marauder; that blonde pixie-haired bow-girl; another woman she didn't recognize; a pirate who swayed on his feet as if drunk and smelled like a fish that had died; another white man almost as buff as the marauder and finally, a dark haired man whose slender appearance and sword at his waist led her to believe he was a duelist.
"Hello, boys and girls," She taunted, giving them all a wide grin. "Pleasant day?" Her jibe was met with scowls all around.
"I say we kill her," The duelist said firmly, his accent sounding haughty. He twirled his sword around, its blade flashing in the light from the ruins of a makeshift building. "One little jab ought to do it." He stabbed the blade towards her, stopping just short of spearing her through the heart. The second girl, the only one not wielding a weapon of some kind, passed a hand over her face as if troubled.
"No." Her voice was soft and sad. "No more death today." She shuddered, and then looked up into the Witch's cold blue eyes. "Do you know how many we lost because of Hillock?" She asked quietly, the devastation reflected in her gaze. "More than a dozen dead, more fatally injured…" She trailed off, swallowing and rubbing her temples. The large white fighter man stepped forward.
"Come, Yeena," He said gently. "Let's get a fire started and save who we can." The Witch, seeing a possible escape, was quick to speak.
"I could help with that." The expressions on everyone's faces turned even darker.
"No," the drunk pirate said. "You've done enough." The group seemed to echo his sentiment, and they slowly dispersed, leaving her tied up with the Marauder to guard her. He eyed her thoughtfully.
"You seem bad," He finally said, speaking slowly with a thick accent. "But your heart is intact. Why do you lie to yourself?" Chatechi bubbled with laughter.
"Don't be ridiculous. I have no heart." Her voice was icy, but the Marauder was unmoved.
"Perhaps." He leaned against a wall. "If it were up to Totoya, you would die for what you did." The Witch ignored him. "Do you fear death, Witch? Do you wonder what comes after the void?" Again, no response. He spoke on anyways. "My people believed that the dead, the mati, went and walked in the stars. There they were judged by the semangats, the Spirits, on what they had done in life. The Good lived forever, but the bad were cursed for eternity. They were called the adil and the terkutuk. So which are you? Are you adil or terkutuk?"
She looked at him as well as she could while hanging upside down.
"I am the Queen of the Dead."