Variance equalled dominance. There was no more need to join a horde and strength almost never meant numbers. Well… not anymore. I rejoined a troupe after following the sounds of a catch in its final throes. I remember seeing the youngling rise up to dash not away from the mob, but ahead of them, to be first. But this one didn’t. It looked at me, and then they all did. I was surrounded if only in the name of some deep-seeded thing the hand that guides us put in there. It was the most mindless form of reverence that could ever be mustered and I couldn’t have cared less. A primal form of function had awakened in me then, the second since the change with the first being hunger. Rage.

Even the dasher fought its nature and followed my blind ambition to no longer infect or feed, but to slaughter. I still had a decent pace for a shambler, which means we lost the slower ones and gained faster ones. My grip on the weapons never lightened from that white-knuckled clasp from each hand, my sharp edge and my blunt end. One let me cut branches and roots so the dashers wouldn’t damage their legs so early, letting them run much longer than they would otherwise. The other broke windows, showing the shamblers new ways though obstacles they’d never find their way through otherwise. My band became so successful that something feral in me was starting to realize how often by the time I got to the catch there was nothing left for me.

Once more an undetermined swath of time passed. A horde of nearly dozens followed me and something inside started having me avoid the bigger groups, the ones that would absorb us. The ones that would not be mine. During a raid on a small village, I was clearly targeted, as the role of variants had surely been recognized by the red-bloods. I faced off against their own variant, so much larger than the rest that I just had to add him to my roster. Neither of us accounted for muscle memory to survive through the passage to undeath, so when my edge came up, his crown was sliced clean through without either of us realizing it.

The dashers swarmed but immediately lost interest once it was sensed conversion was impossible. Not me. I was still interested. The blood was speaking to me in a language it actually took no mind to understand. As time went on, the substance lost worth, so I had to act. The sharp edge and the blunt end were discarded so I could cup my hands under the font. There was a massive rush of heat through my broken, rotted body – the essence of life surged, prompting cycles from organs that hadn’t been used since the change. The pain of my existence became real and with a loud snap, I realized my broken leg had been put back in place. No. It was stronger.

That stupid moan I’d been making for who knows how long now deepened, splintering into a growl. If the others were only following out of instinct before, I had their full attention now. This town had no chance. I opened doors, broke windows, smashed through fences and demolished walls in the name of recruitment. This time, however, I did not feed from the strongest, but from the fodder we had enough of. Those who would turn slow and lag behind we used for their blood. Towards the end of the raid, I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror, transfixed on the image, now only slightly worse off than before the change. No wonder they were hesitant to attack me. I could almost blend in.

While we left the town looking like it did when we arrived, it was dead quiet, as it would stay until whoever hid well enough was able to breed it back to a functioning society yet again. We were no longer a horde of shamblers surrounding me as a nucleus; we marched now, with some semblance of organization. The blood in my brain and those I compelled to feed with me further bastardized the process of life and for once, we knew it. There was something missing of which we were now aware, so we continued until we found it, quite certain it was a new fruit growing hidden among the crop of the living.

Stragglers were few and far between by this point, however long it had been. When we found one, my runners, so starving to stretch their legs, bolted before I could lean into my own sprint. They were deaf to my rabid wails of fury, but thankfully none dared to do anymore than capture the terrified wanderer. They hadn’t turned, which meant they didn’t hurt them, whoever it was, as if they even could. It was impressive, this armour sealed around the living thing I could not identify as he or she. Had we not grown as a horde, a legion even, we could have done nothing about this paradox. But we had me, and apparently that was the answer.

Compulsion raised my hand for me, where it not trembled, but vibrated. Through the space between the atoms of that accursed suit something sifted so fine through the air from it to me. A soft green light that coalesced at my fingertips as even the dumbest of my minions looked on in awe. They discarded the empty vessel, where surely there was only dust rolling around inside it now. We all perceived the true nature of what this was all about. The essence of what we’ve been after all along, it, the thing that drives us, what it really wants. I willed the energy into me where it was in them and once more, the game changed. I was running surrogate blood in my veins and now I’d install a surrogate soul into my heart, invoking a crash of senses and the concept of actual, intelligent thought.

I started as a man, became a dasher, was reduced to a shambler and ascended to a variant, but those were all behind me. The lack of memory but overabundance of ability and function made me more than I’ve ever been, but only a fraction of what I could be. I know what to do now and how to do it and all I could do when not enacting a scheme to get it, schemed constantly the next steps. There was much to learn, more to do and a vast, vast wealth to claim. I am angry. Excited. Hungry. My mission is clear – assimilation of the living flesh into any mass but their own. This was a war, between forces of which I was promoted from a simple pawn to something else…. Something I would call a Lich.

I could sense others, their hordes, and their numbers. My ranks were easily able to overrun a settlement or even take a small town, but with promotion came revelation. Time was once more a concept I was aware of and soon realized that it moved quite a bit since I last measured it. A monstrous legion was moving towards us, surely due to their Lich sensing my coronation. Since I’d adopted keeping my numbers small, all but of the quickest were able to gain distance until my peer turned back for whatever reason. We were climbing a hill, and the dashers were fixated on what they saw above, at the top. The others were piling on each other to make a staircase for me but it was taking longer than my curiosity could tolerate.

It was like second nature, the ability to see through their eyes, blurry and damaged as the eyes viewed through remotely were. Still climbing the pile, I shifted perspective until I found one up there that could provide a decent enough image. This stopped me, stopped my legion, but when I came to, I ran to the top so I could see it for myself. Far, far below sheer cut edges that ran thousands of feet deep was a mass of the living I remember once calling a city. The manmade wonder of the new world ran on for miles, isolating the city and its rural surroundings by the one thing my undead could not outrun or survive: gravity. I sent one ahead and watched through its eyes as it plummeted towards this semblance of civilization. The digit smashed flat against the flat rock placed along the edge to ensure that nothing which took the leap made the landing. Interesting.

I wanted it. All of it. Every last one of them mine to command and feed on, to harvest and leave the only thing passing through this makeshift valley was a sickly breeze carrying the stench of death. It was a riddle I had to solve, to get down there, or rather, in. There had to be a way for them to leave, multiple passages even. I remember this, how cities worked – if there was one, there had to be more. There had to be trade and therefore there had to be convoys. Protected, surely, from us. It was becoming clearer how much time had passed since I changed, but time was all I had, until I also had this purpose.

Surely the minion I sent over the edge would draw attention at some point, so I felt it best to fall back and dispatch the legion to begin searching. But it wouldn’t get that far. There was another group with us, one which approached without notice, who left the majority of my horde butchered in their wake on their way up to me. I held the dashers back, combing for their Lich, only to realize there wasn’t one. There was many. Nearly a dozen, of which all stood out and therefore none stood out. Except one. Him. And he was not a Lich. Whatever he was, it was from before all this and his aura foretold he would be from long after it as well.

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