-The Still Going-
Few creatures that walk the earth are more abominable than the wretched things known as the Living Dead. It pains me to even include such beings in my cataloging of the beasts and monsters that roam our land, but alas, what is the body of a man but a beast when deprived of its humanity? And so, I must speak of the undead horrors known collectively as the Living Dead, but commonly referred to by their slang title - the Still Going. For still-going they are, long past the point where their travels should have ceased.
Living Dead may refer to any of the creatures that are animated by dark magic rather than the light of a proper, healthy soul, but it is customary to apply the title to human bodies specifically. Sometimes called zombies, ghouls, ghasts, and a host of other unpleasant titles, these befouled specimens lay no claim to the natural order of our world, and a concentrated effort to eradicate them entirely from the planet has been ongoing since ancient times. One would have thought beings created by magical influence would have ceased to be a problem in our new world without magic. One would be deadly wrong on that count.
These creations, like other mutations born of magic, but not inherently magic themselves, live on past their creators and the power their creators used to move them, earning their title of Still Going with unearthly ease. As long as a Living Dead can find living flesh to feast on, it will remain animated and dangerous, even without the magic currents that once gave it endless fuel. This is one blessing our non-magical world provides, though. Before, these abominations could survive any assault or period of time and keep moving down the corridors of history unperturbed, thanks to the powerful magical spells still active throughout their rotten flesh. Now, the spells have decayed, and the flesh quickly decays as well without a source of renewal. A Living Dead deprived of a living food source for more than a day will fall to dust in this new world bereft of magic.
But with this blessing comes a curse - faced with true death, the tainted spark of life within these monsters seeks the living with all the more rapacious vigor now that magic is gone. After the Fall, wild magic saw the resurgence of magically-fueled undead all over the world. Where once these creatures lived their non-lives in the dark, secluded corners of the world, such as forgotten tombs and the Phantom Forest, now they roam the land wherever they please, given endless range by the massive surge of magic that flowed over our world, warping it forever. And what could enrage them more than the sudden cessation of all that free magical energy?
So it is, that while their numbers have dwindled, their violent rage has only increased. And, unfortunately, the living bitten by certain of the more fiendish undead will soon find themselves an unwilling member of the zombie army themselves. These sad creatures will not go silently into the night, it would seem, and have put up an almost psychotically aggressive effort to survive for that last bit of time before the combined effects of a magic-less world and a world that hates, fears, and despises their very existence wipes them out for good. That day cannot come soon enough.
Being a student of the ways and minds of monsters, I usually try to empathize with the plights of even the most foul creations of our world. But not this. The Living Dead are not creations of the world, but after effects, ripples from the War of the Magi and perhaps before. They are experiments gone wrong, living weapons used by the cruelest of warlords, or victims of unhappy magical accidents. They are the forsaken, the lost, the damned, and it is our duty as those lucky enough to be blessed with true life to see them on their way to the afterlife as quickly and mercifully as possible. It was man that brought such beings into the world, and it is man's duty to see that they are removed from it.
Those who join the group usually associated specifically with the name "Living Dead" are the saddest examples of the unholy brood of undead in general. This title is reserved for human beings that have been given the curse of non-life as opposed to animals, plants, and other entities. The exact method by which a living human, or the corpse of a human, is turned into a Living Dead is lost to history, and I am thankful for that. There is no known spell in the common compendium of black magic for such a state, and no mage I ever met knew the forbidden art of zombification, or at least would admit to it. If I had met such a person, I would have turned them into the Thamasan Magic Council for permanent Silencing at once. No, the only way to create a zombie human like the Living Dead nowadays is to be bitten or otherwise contaminated by very specific types of undead creatures whose cells carry the viral spell that triggers the transformation. Thankfully, the common breed of Living Dead does not have this capability, and merely wander from place to place, crying out in pain and attacking anything alive that they stumble onto.
As it is, our world is still infested with more than enough Living Dead from bygone eras and wars to be a cause for concern. Much of them are from the War of the Magi and its chaotic aftermath, and have been roaming the dark Phantom Forest for a thousand years, their wails ripping through the stale air and dead branches like a never-ending siren. My friends Sabin and Cyan encountered a great many on their strange journey through the Phantom Forest long ago, and tell of many frightful horrors in that haunted wood and the ghostly train that once ran through it. Some were far more dangerous than the Living Dead, but none more numerous or painful to dispatch.
What did they see when they were attacked by the vengeful spirits riding that train to unknown realms? They saw human beings who once cherished life, but now held nothing but hate in their unbeating hearts. They saw men, women, children even, all draped it rotting clothes and carrying whatever rusted, broken things they could find for weapons, to hack at the living they hated with such horrific passion. The train itself was and still remains a great mystery, both in form and function, but it is safe to say some of its passengers were not happy with their travel accommodations, and would lash out at my living friends as soon as they entered each car.
Cyan tells of seeing his own family reduced to mere phantoms on that train, but mercifully they were not Living Dead, merely wandering spirits seeking their natural rest from the trials of this world. No, the Living Dead took the forms of soldiers and guards of long lost nations for the most part, all foreign, strange, and unknown to either man. Why it had taken these poor creatures so many centuries to find their way onto the train and into the afterlife I do not know. The hand of Death is an otherworldly force, not to be understood by mere mortals such as I.
However, a few Living Dead wore the clothes of the Narshe City Guard, and one can only guess how these former men found their way to such a place. I have my theories, of course. The Imperial assault on Narshe on that snowy night years ago created many corpses of the loyal guard as they valiantly, but impotently, tried to stop the power of Magitek with mere pick-axes and short swords. Most of these were charred beyond recognition, but a few remained intact, and were thought to have been buried with honors. Upon returning to Narshe to find the truth, I discovered many graves empty, apparently dug up from below. I suspect the powerful, barely understood magical energies used to create the horrific beams unleashed by the Magitek Armors had unexpected reactions with these poor souls. Long after death, the build up of this impure and improperly focused magical energy remained in the bodies of its victims, circling and howling for release.
Magic is not something to be tampered with by the untrained non-Magi, but the Empire did not care, did not heed the warnings of the past, and as is often the case in this cruel world of ours, it was others who paid the price for their ignorance. Magic such as the Magitek Armors utilized is not proper magic at all, but a distorted, diluted version of it, not meant to co-exist with the other forces of this world. It is artificial elemental power, ill-understood and ill-used. This fake magic, still deadly enough to targets with no magical defenses of any kind, is like a disease and must be properly stored, properly controlled, and properly disposed of. The method by which Magitek devices perform these functions is woefully inadequate, which is as to be expected from scientists who no nothing of the workings of magic. The result is Magitek Armors prone to malfunction, weakened magical effects except when utilized by true mage knights such as Terra or Celes, and the last, and most unpleasant side effect: a lingering of magical essence long after the "spells" - if I can even call the parlor tricks of Magitek such a thing - have been cast and forgotten.
This lingering creates a build up of energies in whatever object was bombarded with the crude magical beams. This energy must be accounted for and shaped eventually, and sadly, that shape and accounting were terrible indeed in the case of the Narshe guards who suffered before the merciless power of those early Magitek Armor models. The energy, rather than dissipating naturally as properly channeled magic does, stayed within the bodies and ravaged the flesh until it could no longer be held in. After several days of decomposition, the carcass was decayed and weakened enough to be fully propelled and operated by this magical malingering. The mind long gone, only the pain of a mutilated body remained, forcing the corpse to roam the land seeking release from this horrible punishment it did not deserve.
I interviewed several eye-witnesses who claim to have heard these pain-wracked vessels on their unknown journey onto the ghostly Phantom Train. For several weeks after the fateful Narshe raid, the moans of these Living Dead could be heard from the forests and caves around Narshe, but by the time they were investigated, the strange sounds had ceased and no sign could be found of their source. Scraps of dirt-covered vomammoth hide armor were found, alongside several half-eaten corpses of Leaf Rabbits. The bite marks were determined to be human, and one of the pieces of clothing found had a name tag still visible on it. It belonged to one of the dead soldiers from the raid. Where these Living Dead went upon entering the cold forests of the Narshe plains I can only guess, but it is a good guess I think. The Phantom Forest may not be the only forest where the ghostly train travels, and it may have picked up these sad voyagers during its unmarked meanderings through our world of the living. A train's whistle was said to have been heard during the search for the howling demons of the forest, but it was assumed to have been from the town. Perhaps it was, or perhaps ther hand of Death itself took pity on these innocent victims of foul magic, and spirited them away personally to the other side. I can only pray that wherever they may be, they are not still going.