Author's note:
I cranked this out in...two days? I think i need some sleep

Anyways, You should leave a review and favorite the story if you like it, because I appreciate feedback.
So, without further delay;

the second chapter

Naze cast his thoughts forward to what he would need soon. He would need a fresh corpse, a weapon to contend with the ones that he had seen, and the materials to make the fresh corpse what he needed it to be. He could have done all of this himself, but it would take far too long, and the result wouldn't have been nearly as high quality. He decided that he would awaken the rest of the sleepers in the dark corners of the temple. Something close to a smile worked its way across the stiff, old muscles in his face as he thought about the friends who would reawaken soon.

All of them had been locked in a deep, dreamless sleep for… Naze didn't know how long they had slept, but something had awoken him, and now he would awaken them. There were preparations that he wanted to make before doing this, though. There were libraries to clean, forges to light, rooms to secure, all things that he wanted to do by himself.

He reached a fork in the hall, the paths branching off both to the right and the left. Someone else might have gotten lost in all of the twisting and turning passages, but he had overseen their construction, and he knew his way around. He took the left path, and held his hand palm up, slightly away from him. With a small flexing of his magical power, he created a roaring flame in his hand. It was fairly small but gradually grew as he walked. He continued walking for several minutes, and by the time he reached his destination the small fireball had turned into a massive blazing inferno, almost twice Naze's size. It felt good to be in complete command and control of his full powers again.

He stopped in front of a large set of stairs that descended down into pitch black. Pouring the last of the power that the spell required to reach its full potential, Naze pulled his arm back and lobbed the raging inferno of magefire down into the darkness. It cut through the dark, until it connected with its target. The entire floor of the massive room seemed to ignite, jets of flammable gas and molten rock being expelled from the sudden reawakening of the vein of magma. He smiled again as he imagined the mad cackling of the friend he had who would be making use of this forge. He was a master at what he did, having discovered numerous ways to smith metal and create alloys. The room was almost a mile in length and width, and half a mile in height. Some who weren't involved in the smiting often questioned the need for such large and extravagant facilities, but most understood that extra time often led to extravagant design. The fiery floor spat another gout of red-orange paste, which engulfed one of the catwalks hanging from the distant roof then fell back through the grates that made up the majority of the walkway, not even causing the slightest change in the metal.

Naze turned away, feeling some anticipation for seeing the look on the face of his friend. For him to be reunited with his love would be amusing to say the least. The forge now working, he set off towards his next destination. The library was an incredible structure, nowhere near the size and scale of the forge, but no less impressive. Billions of books gathered from countless sources over millions of years were all housed here, each and every one maintained and organized on shelves that bore special enchantments allowing each individual row to hold many times its normal capacity. The order of the room was usually maintained by a large team of librarians, but they, like all the others, were still asleep. In their absence, a thick coat of dust had settled over everything. Naze toyed amusedly with the thought of their hurried scrambling to clean and inspect every single one for a moment before deciding to help them. He extended a hand out towards the shelves, and a breeze started to flow, disturbing the still air. It was strong enough to lift most of the dust off of the exposed books, but while he didn't know how long they had been asleep, he did know that it was long enough for the pages of knowledge that were so valued to be invaded by the pervasive force that grime seemed to possess.

The library in reasonable order, Naze left, going to the next facility that required his attention. On his way he passed one of the many other rooms that filled his facility. Through the darkness that filled the room he could see glyphs and runes glowing dully. He recognized all of them as demonic. While the presence of demonic symbols did not surprise him, it did that those conducting the research into demonic powers would have left their symbols up. He kept walking. Demonology didn't trouble him as it did many others. To him it was only knowledge, not any more inherently dangerous. Finding those who were willing to conduct research into the demonic was a difficult challenge, but the number of those willing was significantly increased when the dead were given the option. Options not available to the living became open to the dead, souls were easier to protect after they had left the body, preventing the twisting influence of demons to corrupt them.

He continued walking. The corridors turned to a steep slant upwards, and the amount of rooms on the sides started to increase drastically. He knew that in those rooms were the slumbering undead, lying motionless one the floor, waiting for his call to reawaken. But they had waited this long, a little more time wouldn't hurt anything. He walked past the rooms and soon found himself in the upper levels of the temple.

One of the final rooms that he wanted to check on was the enchanting room. It didn't hold any tools or apparatus that required any kind of start, but he wanted to check in for his own piece of mind. He looked in, and found numerous tables with countless kinds of powders, gems, and inscribing tools resting on their surfaces.

Naze was reminded of the gem that he had lost, now in possession of the girl Ruby. He wondered what had happened to her, and what she was doing now. He pulled a small wooden trinket from his belt and felt it. The charm vibrated softly in his hand, and he paid special attention to it. By feeling the intensity of the vibrations, he determined that it had been several hours since his exchange with her. Time seemed to pass very quickly within the halls he called home.

Finally, he arrived at his last stop. The heavyset door at the top of the hall's incline stared resolutely back at him silently. Naze smiled as he saw that the seal the door had been locked with had not been opened. He reached out to the door, his hand alighting on the top of the ornate carvings and magical inscription that covered it. He hadn't used the door when inhabiting the body of some teenager, instead making use of a teleportation spell to the nearest large settlement, which turned out to be Vale. He put some of his vast magical power into the door in a very specific pattern, and one by one the locks snapped open.

The immense stone door lifted, and reviled a lush, dark green landscape surrounded by high mountains. Naze knew better though. He knew that they weren't mountains at all, but that he and all he had built was in a massive crater.

He looked down towards the ground far below from the top of the large ziggurat that capped the massive underground complex. It seemed the same as he had left it, albeit slightly more overgrown with various vines and creepers. Something else grabbed his attention, something that shouldn't have been there. Several pillars of black smoke were rising out of the lush green capped jungle in front of him, and he traced them back to what looked like a clearing that hadn't been there before. He could just see the top of what looked like a wooden building. He raised an eyebrow and said to himself "What have we here? Settlers?" he snorted as well as an ancient dried corpse could "I'm afraid you've chosen a bad location."

He turned back into the ziggurat and stalked back in, now content that everything was ready enough for him to raise his companions. As he walked through the halls, he spread his arms wide and blasted necrotic magic in every direction. The engravings that covered the walls and roof of the halls lit up briefly after they were washed with the death-energies that Naze had mastered fervently. It sank into the stone that made the tunnels and sank down into the lowest depths of the halls. As he came within earshot of the many rooms that housed the sleeping undead, he heard the echoes of conversation. It silenced as he passed, and was replaced by the growing sound of hundreds of shambling footsteps.

He continued to walk, knowing that every single one of them knew already to follow him. He wondered how things would be if he had followed the example of the other liches that had both preceded and proceeded him and made his followers mindless slaves. Instead, what he had always done was to preserve the original personality of those he reanimated to join in his quest for knowledge. This technique meant that the reanimation process was rather lengthy, and that the resulting undead weren't automatically bound to do what he commanded, but he viewed the wide range of deviants incredibly useful. It would have been impossible for him to have gained as much knowledge as he had if it had been only him researching. As a result of this he was always very selective about who he reanimated. One of the most important rules that he followed for himself was that the person was willing to return to their corpse and resume the work their death had stopped. The amount of people who accepted the offer had always surprised him. There were those who were reanimated without their own wills, but they were used for combat or experimentation, the only thing brought back their bodies. Naze avoided making enemies of the dead, finding friends and allies much more useful.

He turned a corner and entered a large empty room with a raised section of flooring towards the back like a stage. He continued walking towards it, stepping up the stairs on the far side and taking a position facing the crowd of corpses and raised his hands above his head. A cheer rolled through the crowd, thousands of voices raised in cheer. He lowered his hands, and the cheers faded as well.

"We-" he called out to the crowd "-have returned!" Another cheer, small compared to the last one, rolled through the crowd. Naze nodded and said "And so our quest continues now! All of you remember your places well, and I want you right back there." He paused for a short minute and started pacing, then said "We have slumbered long, and I fear that the world has changed radically in that time. I have ventured out to inspect things, and it seems that we are all that remains of anything we knew. None of the kingdoms, none of the continents, even the moon has been broken into pieces! It would also seem that all knowledge of the arcane arts that we have vigilantly gathered is remembered. And so, it is for this reason that I am faced with something of a dilemma." Whispers worked their way through the crowd from one ghoul to another, than he said "We have always been gatherers, but things have shifted now. I ask you, for it is not me that has made half the discoveries that you have-"

That was fairly accurate. His research had always been focused on magic exclusively, it was the groups of scholars and masters of trades in front of him that had discovered methods of forging steel far beyond the quality any other could, rivaling the weapons of demons themselves.

"-has the time for us to become teachers come? I ask you, and I will leave the question to you, that when you reach an answer you may share it with me, and actions will be planned accordingly." He didn't think they would be very enthusiastic about giving away that which they had spent their entire undeath gathering, but they had surprised him in the past.

Naze felt that he had told them all that they needed to be told, and waved a hand, saying "Now, go back to your passions. Resume your work, and learn all that you can!" With one final cheer, scholars and masters started streaming out of the room, chattering among themselves about what had been said and about what they thought was going to be different.

Naze remained up on the stage, and sent a telepathic message to several of the undead that he needed to speak with. As he started to be able to tick them out of a crowd by seeing who was going against the general flow of the crowd he couldn't help but be immensely glad with the perks that being a lich came with, even after so many years.

One by one, the four that he had called met him. Brazen, a hunched ghoul with gangly limbs, sunken black eyes, charred sprouts of what was once point hair, and more burn marks than could be counted was the first to arrive, garbed in loose linen clothing. He was the master of the forges, and the one who made most discoveries having to do with metalworking.

The next was Azrile, a clean white skeleton who had shed his flesh completely when risen by Naze, who was regarded to be the best enchanter and scribe of them all, even better than Naze. He wore ornate silken robes with sashes of paper like leather prominently displaying archaic runes.

Trailing behind him was the crawling form of Morgana, her limbs twisted in ways that made it easy for her to crawl across the floor on her hands and feet nimbly. She was the resident flesh-smith of the hodgepodge of group, having devoted her time living to learning about chemicals and compounds that could change the way that things grew and lived. It wasn't long before she had found chemicals to change the dead as well. Unfortunately for her, she had been hunted down and executed, hung by the neck until dead for practicing her foul arts. Her execution had had a profound effect on her psyche, more than most did. As strange as it was; most people were able to simply move on, but she was not. The result of this was her still wearing the tight noose and burlap bag with beady eyeholes cut in the front over her head that she had been buried with. Fortunately, she used the resulting mental trauma as fuel for her creations and alterations. When an undead needed to be bigger, stronger, or healed, she was the one who was sought out. She taught few others, and had very little patience for failure. But fortunately, in her field "failure" was a very difficult thing to achieve. The first thing that usually tasted her chemicals and toxins was her.

It was a few moments before the last of the group arrived. The undead man who was possibly the most alive looking of all the corpses who called the ziggurat home, Daniel, was wearing simple farmer's clothes and had a large shovel over his shoulder. He was one of the very few in service of Naze who didn't have any great aspiration to gain knowledge. Instead, he was a mortician in life, and had become essentially the opposite in death. He had a talent that no one could really explain, in spite of their efforts. He could tell much about what kind of person was buried in a grave, even without any kind of magical knowledge or any detectable assistance. When anyone asked him about it, he simply said "It's just a feeling" in a tired voice. The reason that he always looked like he had died only a day ago was that the first thing he had done after Naze had resurrected him was to embalm himself. At first Naze had questioned the wisdom of keeping the man around, but his services had proven quite invaluable over the years, finding and singling out the graves of scholars for Naze to propose his well-rehearsed deal to.

The party of masters of their crafts stood (or in Morgana's case, supporting herself on her heels and palms) and started at Naze. He looked them over with a critical eye before saying "Welcome back to the land of the living." placing a small amount of emphasis on the last word of the sentence to point out the joke. Azrile made a sound that, if he still had any skin, probably would have been a chuckle. His was the only reaction that was obvious, Brazen twitched slightly, as he often did. Daniel and Morgana simply continued staring.

Naze continued. "While I look forward to your return to your research, I have some tasks for you to do. They shouldn't take too long, so long as you all work together on them." The individuals had had some conflict in the past, but he knew that they could work through it. "Brazen, I need you to forge me a weapon. Make it…" he considered for a moment, then continued "…make it a blade. I want the metal as strong and durable as you can make it." Brazen gave a few twitchy nods and replied "Yes sir"

Naze turned to Daniel and said "Your job will be to find a specific kind of body. I need a boy, about seventeen, mildly athletic, and not rotted. Find it, work your magic, than bring it back. You need to make sure that it doesn't rot." Daniel nodded solemnly and said "You will have it."

Naze spoke to Morgana, saying "Your job will be to make that body better. Make it as durable and strong as you can, but don't change its appearance too much. It needs to be something that doesn't arouse suspicion. Got that?" Morgana responded, her voice sounding like the bow of a violin being dragged across her vocal chords "Easy. So long as I get it soon."

She always had wanted to get assignments out of the way quickly. He turned to the last of his colleagues, Azrile. "Your job will be the most expansive, you'll have a hand in both the body and the blade. I want the blade enchanted and runed so I can put my own magic into it, and I want it inscribed with elemental runes of all kinds." Azrile nodded, then said "What of the body, my lord? What am I to do with it?"

Naze replied, saying "My last foray out into the world ended quite quickly. If I had been able to channel my power better, that wouldn't have happened. I want multiple domination crystals in the body, as well as a socket for another in the blade. Don't concern yourself with the one in the blade, I've already got one in mind for that." Azrile nodded again, and asked "How many crystals in the body, my lord? I'm sure I need not remind you that too many can have unfortunate consequences."

Naze said "Three should be enough. Enough, at least, to fend for myself. Distribute them through the body as you see fit." He turned and addressed the part as a whole "Now, go to it. I want to be informed as soon as any of you make progress. Daniel, get the help from a few of the mages to get you to the city quickly. It shouldn't be much of a problem once you get there." He turned, signaling that he was done giving orders. They all gave some form of affirmation before turning and walking to their places of work.

Naze looked at the ground, thinking about what he would do while they worked. There wasn't much that he could do to speed things up, each one of them was the best at what they did. He would just be in the way. He could, however, do something else. Not very useful to the overall wellbeing of the little collective he had built, but more a matter of personal curiosity.

As the last of the undead exited the room (Brazen moving the fastest of all of them, running as enthusiastically as a charred corpse could run) Naze prepared a spell. It was one that he normally didn't have need for, but he wanted to be sure that he was being listened to.

He threw one hand up in the air, a small ball of light hovering in-between his fingers. As he let more of his energies flow into it, the ball grew brighter and brighter, until eventually it was nearly as bright as the sun when it hung in the sky. Content with its brightness, he lowered his hand and let the ball stay suspended in midair. His spell complete, he sent out another mental command to a very specific group. It was only seconds before the inky black shadows came soaring over the heads of those who were still making their way out of the room. Very quickly, Naze was surrounded by thin silhouettes that tapered off into thin needle tip points on the ground with glowing yellow eyes that seemed to hold an otherworldly sense of perception about them, like they could see far more than any other thing that walked the earth. These creatures were called "shades" and they acted as Naze's eyes and ears in matters that were on a far larger scale, keeping him informed of matters on a global scale.

They didn't have individual identities, at least not that they cared to share. They were the souls of voyeurs, those who didn't have any specific field of knowledge, but simply sought to know things. They were spies, neighbors, and scouts, all people who wished to remain in the shadows and to stick their noses where they didn't belong. Naze was happy to facilitate this, so long as they were willing to report their findings back to him if he asked. They had been most useful in the past, bringing secrets and sometimes even warnings back. They were the only ethereal things that Nathan raised from the dead, for physical bodies would only impede their function. They often spent their time away from the ziggurat, and thus most of the undead didn't have well-formed opinions about them.

Naze addressed them as a group, much like he had the rest of the undead. "Much has changed since we went to sleep, and it has always been your duty to bring information from all corners of the world. This has not changed, so go. Go out and do what it is that you do best."

They all stared back at him silently before scattering again, soaring through the air and a few even seeming to melt through the walls. Naze held one in front of him, intending a particular assignment for it. It stood still, staring, waiting. He took a step forward and said "In the city, Vale, there is a girl. Her name is Ruby. When I saw her she was wearing a black dress and red hood. She is in possession of an item of extreme magical power. Find her and keep an eye on her." The soul in front of him stared blankly for a moment before flying off like all the others. He watched it go before starting to walk out of the room and observe the resumption of research.

Ruby woke up with a start, her skin covered in a cold sweat and a scream hanging just behind her lips. In a hurried motion she flung herself out from under the covers and away from the thing that had been so close to her moments before. Her body collided with the floor with a loud thump, and she squealed loudly and scrabbled across the floor. Something in the dark room moved. Ruby worked her way under the bed she was leaning against and prayed that whatever was moving wouldn't notice her.

Bright light smashed into her eyes and she held her hands up, trying to protect herself. Her body curled into a ball instinctively, trying to make herself as small as possible.

"Ruby? What are you doing down there?" Yang's voice cut through the silence that was roaring through Ruby's mind. She opened her eyes and looked up. Yang was looking at her with a worried expression from behind a flashlight, and Weiss was looking at her as well from her bed. She looked from one to the other for a moment before saying in a hoarse voice "I… I don't know. I think I had a bad dream." Her voice reminded her of when she was little and ran to Yang after having a nightmare. Yang gave her a sympathetic look and said "Aw, are you alright? What was it about?"

Bodies. Bodies and rot and disgusting dark fluids leaking out of gaping wounds. Her friends and family falling in battle and turning to a sickly mash, talking to her the whole while with their voices becoming croaky and wet sounding the whole time. Just like what had happened earlier today…

She looked at the palm-sized crystal clutched in her hand that she had removed from the guy's spine. It must have been her imagination, but she could've sworn that the fetid smell of the corpse was still clinging to the thing. It was impossible, she had washed the thing off nearly a hundred times, scrubbing it so hard that her hands felt raw. "It was… nothing." She said, shaking her head and climbing out from under the bed.

"Well, sis, you know you can talk to me any time you need to, right?" her sister said, clapping her on the back. Weiss spoke from the bed, her legs over the side of her bed, saying "Yes, we can help you if you need it. You don't need to keep anything from us." Yang gave her another worried look and asked "Is it what happened at the shop?"

Ruby shrugged off Yang's hand and said "Guys, I'm fine. I've seen stuff like that before." And started walking back to her bed. She climbed up onto her bed and threw her covers back over herself. Yang clicked her flashlight off, and the darkness covered her again. A tear rolled its way down her cheek before she clenched her eyes shut and forced the fear out of her mind. If she had another nightmare before the sun rose again, than she would just have to deal with it. Of course she was having a nightmare, it was only natural after what she had seen, right? It would get better over time, right?

She rolled over under her covers. She couldn't get rid of the feeling she was being watched.