“Sometimes, a good example is needed to deter people from doing horrible things to one another in the name of greed.” - Saying attributed to Anduinus of the Strangling Hands, Merfolk Warchief, circa 104 FP.

“Well, that’s quick,” noted Eilonwy.

It had taken less than five minutes after Aideen’s trio left the trading house that evening for them to be accosted once more. This time, there were ten burly, rough-looking thug types that surrounded them a few city blocks away from the trading house. The assailants clearly heard about Eilonwy taking care of the Bey’s two bodyguards barehanded and decided that ten people should do the trick.

It was a mistake they would never get to live long enough to regret.

One of the things Eilonwy had trained a lot on during her days as an initiate in the Death’s Hand was how to deploy her undead rapidly without people noticing. She naturally carried the bones that would form her undead with her wherever she went, safe inside her storage artifact.

A little known fact about storage artifacts was that larger ones – which Eilonwy naturally possessed given her status – could “deploy” its contents within a range roughly as large as its storage size on the outside, though it took training to do that accurately.

So when Eilonwy quietly deployed her undead behind the thugs, none of them noticed until skeletal hands grasped their throats from behind and lifted them bodily into the air.

“Eilo, remember to keep one alive. We need one to guide us to their lair,” commented Aideen nonchalantly from behind. She was quite satisfied with how Eilonwy dealt with the situation. Rather than fight them herself, she took care of them in the most efficient manner that allowed no resistance from the enemies, minimizing risk to herself.

“Err… Which one should I keep, Aunt? I don’t think these guys speak common and I don’t speak their tongue,” pointed out Eilonwy. Their captives were already begging for mercy in the local tongue by then, as the skeletons Eilonwy summoned had not only held them up by the throat but also grasped their skulls with their other hands and applied quite a bit of pressure.

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The fact that they could also see the robust, fearsome skeletons behind their fellows likely played a role too. Eilonwy had upgraded her skeletal minions using Èirynn’s technique, and appearance-wise they could have passed for people wearing spiky bone armor at a glance. Eilonwy chose to keep the skeletal appearance of the visible parts of their “bodies”, however, for intimidation purposes.

As for the minions themselves, with the amount of mana Eilonwy possessed, she could maintain ten of the eleven at a halfway step between a bone champion and a death knight’s level of power, with the eleventh one being a full death knight. In the future, she would likely be able to support more of them at a death knight’s level of power, until one day she’d have all of them at that stage.

Needless to say, while regular skeleton soldiers – or even skeleton warriors, for that matter – were usually physically weaker than a living person, the same weakness did not apply to higher grades of undead like the ones Eilonwy used, much less after Èirynn helped reinforce their structural integrity.

“Right, let me take care of that. One moment,” said Aideen with a smile to her grand-niece while ruffling Eilonwy’s hair like she used to when the girl was still a child. Eilonwy didn’t protest, though it was a good bit harder to ruffle her hair now that the girl stood a head taller than Aideen herself. “All right, you sirrahs, which of you knows the way back to your lair? First one to offer to guide us there gets to live.”

“The rest get to join the skeletons behind you as undead,” she added after a short pause.

Almost immediately the thugs scrambled to be the first to voice their assent. Aideen just watched for a short moment before she finally pointed towards one of the thugs, the one who had come out first and stopped them earlier, saying that they had offended the wrong people. “Keep that one. He seems like he’d know the place and willing to blab,” she said to Eilonwy.

“Got it,” replied Eilonwy cheerfully as she snapped her fingers. A moment later nine skulls burst apart under the powerful grips of the undead she controlled, sparing only the one person Aideen pointed at. The sight must have scared the thug greatly as he wet his pants on the spot, a puddle of urine pooling beneath his feet.

“Ew, man, don’t dirty my babies like that!” Eilonwy complained even as she had the undead toss the last surviving thug to the ground, letting him fall into the puddle he created.

“Lead… way. Wrong… they eat,” said Kino to the man in a broken, horribly accented rendition of the local tongue. She had learned a bit of it in the past three days, but wasn’t able to learn much more than some rudimentary bits as of yet. Still, given the threat and the way Eilonwy had reanimated the nine headless corpses and had them march towards the one surviving thug in unison, he looked like he got the message.

Eilonwy hadn’t deployed her strongest undead, so she had a lot of leeway with her mana. Besides, she had stored her undead back after the mess was done, so reanimating the nine corpses and having them form a ring around the survivor was child’s play for her, even if she was more used to skeletons rather than zombies.

The effect of her gesture thoroughly intimidated the surviving thug, however, and the man meekly led the way for the trio towards where his superior’s hideout was. Surprisingly enough, while he led them through back alleys and smaller roads, they were headed towards the richer parts of Oajib rather than the poor part. Clearly this was one slave trader who wasn’t shy to flaunt his ill-gotten wealth.

Which just made it easier to inflict what was about to happen to him.