They say hindsight is twenty twenty. While not apt in all situations, Emmeth was truly understanding the truth in those words. 

Or rather, he would be if he had ever heard the phrase before.

He felt like a complete fool.

An utter idiot.

An absolute buffoon. 

Many other terms went through his mind as he lay beneath the dirt, doing his best to remain still. He figured that it was probably Peak who had buried him. If not, well… there wasn’t much he could do now anyways.

So, while buried, he continued to go over exactly how poor his choices were in the previous encounter.

He willingly walked up to a group of soldiers when undead were hunted within the kingdom. He was able to notice that they were scouts and didn’t realize that there would be other soldiers nearby.

He was… distracted. Absentminded? He stopped paying attention to his surroundings during the conversation.

Perhaps, pondered Emmeth, it was a skill? It would make sense for soldiers to have learned skills to help make ambushes more successful, skills that would prevent others from noticing them while they were striking.

It did not stop Emmeth from feeling as though he had completely cocked it up.

“Emmeth?” Emmeth sensed Peak communicating with him. “Are you alright over there? You didn’t die again, did you?”

Emmeth didn’t say anything for a moment before responding. “Yes, Peak. I am here.”

Okay. That’s good!” Peak seemed to perk up at that. “Really good. Now, don’t move. They’re searching for us right now, and they know we’ve gone underground, but I’ve slowly been moving us away. Soon enough, they won’t be able to find us, but you might disturb the dirt above and give away our location.”

“That’s… good.”

“Yep.” 

Silence reigned between the two.

Emmeth considered a few things. While he had once considered Peak rather unhelpful, the stone had proved itself to be quite useful multiple times. Despite it being incredibly irritating and immature, it continued to follow Emmeth, despite there being no obligation for it to do so. 

Emmeth was not entirely certain why Peak was following him, but it probably wasn’t for any reason as stupid as “friendship.” He believed it might have been a combination of pity, the desire to annoy him, and him also being the only person the stone could converse with. If Peak came across a town in which it could talk to someone, it might just abandon Emmeth.

Emmeth didn’t want that to happen. Peak had just proved once again to be an asset, and after the mob of zombies all died, there wasn’t really anything else he had.

“So, Emmeth…” Peak began and Emmeth knew he was going to be badgered on how stupid he was and how he shouldn’t have fallen for such an obvious ploy.

“Peak, I am aware of my stupidity.” Emmeth cut Peak off.

“No, not that. That is true though.” Peak almost seemed to murmur it, but it didn’t matter as Emmeth could easily listen to it anyways. “I was wondering how they’re still tracking us.”

“... Oh.” was all Emmeth could muster in response.

“... For fuck’s sake, snap out of it and give me something useful.” 

“Are you disturbing the topsoil at all?”

“Topsoil? No. I’m more careful than that.”

“Are you disturbing the grass at all?”

“No, I’ve gotten us below the roots.”

“Do you move earth using magic?”

“... What?”

“Do you use mana to move earth?”

“Oh. No.”

“Then I am unsure how they would follow us.”

“Yeah, me--”

The ground violently shook once.

“... Peak?” 

“Now, I’m not too sure on this, but…” 

“... But?”

“They may or may not be doing some explosion magic at the ground.”

“... May or may not?”

“Look, I’m mostly blind. They’re doing some sort of mystic shit to cause big impacts that seem like explosions.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah. I’m gonna need some help with this in case they start coming up with better ideas.”

“... Like what?”

“Getting shovels.”

Emmeth agreed that might make things difficult for them.

“So, what should I do?”

“Can you dig deeper?”

“If I go any deeper, we’ll hit solid rock. I can’t dig through that.”

Emmeth stayed silent, pondering a solution.

“... Can they hear us digging?”

“I… I don’t think so?”

“What makes you say that?”

“I’m not sure how well the vibrations from digging translate into sound, but I doubt it would make much noise.”

Another explosion went off above them.

“Could they sense the vibrations you’re making?”

“No, that’s not… Ah.” Peak said in realization.

There was a long pause between the two while Peak thought.

“Well,” began Peak, “you’re fucked. It was nice knowing you. I’ll hold a candlelight vigil in your honor.”

“Please don’t leave me here.”

“I don’t know what to do!”

“Cause a distraction.”

“A wha-- Yeah, I can try that. One sec.”

Emmeth wasn’t able to tell what Peak was doing, but the rock was pushing dirt around in a different direction to try and throw the soldiers off.

When the next fireball hit the ground and it was farther away, Peak knew they were onto something.

“Alright, it’s vibrations or they can sense the earth moving. That, or we’ve missed something.” 

Neither of the two said anything for a while until they felt the impact of another fireball somewhere above them.

“Okay, I still don’t have any good plans. How about you?”

“This situation is outside of my area of expertise.”

“Well I’ve never done this before either, so I would really like it if you were to give me some fucking ideas!”

Emmeth pondered the conundrum.

“... Magic?”

“... Perfect. Thanks.”

Peak wasn’t sure what it had been expecting, but it supposed that it would have to figure this shit out itself. 

So, its ideas included…

…

‘Magic?’

Fucking magic. That was all Peak could think of. 

Something to fix the vibration problem, so some sort of… mute magic? Quieting magic?

Muffle, that’s the word Peak was thinking of. Muffle. Now, how to do muffling?

…

Fucking magic.

‘Shit.’

Peak wasn’t sure how it was going to do any muffling. Despite being able to sense vibrations in the earth, the stone knew fuck all on how reducing vibrations worked.

Well, it had some idea. Softer things vibrate less, so if it could figure out how to make all the earth really soft, it might not vibrate as much.

…

No, that was a stupid idea. It was going to have to think harder.

If Peak were to hold the earth in place, would vibrations pass through?

The stone mentally shrugged. It was probably worth a shot.

So, the stone focused on two bits of earth at once. The stone moved one bit of earth while trying to prevent vibrations from getting through the other.

It failed. Turns out that by focusing on keeping the object still, it instead made it easier for vibrations to pass through as the entire object shook at once.

A fireball hit above the location Peak was experimenting in, reminding the stone of the importance of its task. Luckily the stone wasn’t stupid enough to start messing with the earth directly around itself. What kind of idiot notices that people are launching fireballs at wherever they’re moving and then proceeds to move around a bunch? Not Peak. The stone was a different sort of idiot. It was the kind of stupid that can sometimes come back around into being smart.

That was why Peak started trying to shake the dirt to get rid of the vibrations.

It wasn’t a bad idea, just unorthodox. Shake a few rocks in key locations while keeping the rest of the rocks around it firm so that vibrations wouldn’t immediately go upwards and maybe the vibrations would cancel each other out. 

There was the challenge of matching the wavelength of the vibrations such that they were completely equal and at such a distance that the waves would be in opposite locations at the right times, but Peak didn’t understand any of that science. Peak’s genius was driven by the caveman thoughts of “Make rock hard not help. Can’t make rock soft. Make more rocks shake! Problem solve itself?”

Luckily, the rock had the mystical powers of high school level physics on its side.

What Peak did not know though was how vibration wavelengths (and wavelengths in general) add to each other. Sure, you can eliminate some of the vibrations…

But the other parts? Those parts tend to become even stronger due to overlap.

Then, you send all the shaking parts twirling around each other and… well, weird shit happened.

The stone unfortunately did not discover a way to muffle sound.

Instead, Peak created what might be considered the vibrational equivalent of a disco ball. That or twirling spotlights, but it’s hard to make an exact comparison to something that relies on other senses.

And, while that’s not exactly muffling, it certainly made things very confusing for the soldiers above. It’s hard to figure out where something is when you’ve got interference like that. They just couldn’t handle the disco fever.

Unfortunately, it made things almost as confusing for Peak. Luckily, Peak did not rely on vibration perception, but mostly on earth sense, and that was enough.

“Okay, I magicked the shit out of that problem. Let’s go.” Peak said to Emmeth.

Emmeth nodded in assent. 

And so, while the group of soldiers were distracted and confused by the fantastic performance Peak set up for them, the stone and its undead made a slow but steady getaway. 

[ ) ( ] [ ) ( ] [ ) ( ]

Slow and steady, while an accurate descriptor, was also a misrepresentation of just how slow it was.

Dragging a corpse through the earth is a slow and laborious process, not at all made easier by the fact that Peak had to do it sneakily.

Peak could only make the “Disco Dirt Distraction” so long as it was within a range at which the stone could manipulate the earth. As it got farther away, the stone had to concentrate harder and harder. This was made more difficult by the fact that the soldiers realized that the vibrations were a distraction, but couldn’t do anything about it, and so were attacking the area with more fireballs. 

Eventually. Once Peak had gained too much distance, the stone was going to have to drop its distraction.

“Emmeth, I’m going to need you to stay very still.”

“I am being sti--”

“Shh! Don’t distract me!” 

“...” Emmeth got the distinct feeling that Peak was enjoying this a little too much.

For once though, Emmeth was entirely wrong about how Peak was feeling. Peak was feeling pretty damn stressed out. Emmeth was unable to understand just how great of a challenge Peak was undertaking and couldn’t feel the same level of anxiety from 

That said, Peak did derive some pleasure from shushing Emmeth. There was some irony there. 

Peak was watching the soldiers very closely, waiting to see if they would find the two of them.

One of the soldiers kneeled down to touch the ground. He seemed to be caressing the earth. 

Honestly, it seemed a bit creepy to Peak, but the soldier just seemed to be trying to feel vibrations.

Peak inched forward, waiting to see if the soldiers would follow them again.

Sure enough, they soldiers didn’t seem to know where they were. The one on the ground continued to keep feeling up the ground.

For Peak, the relief was palpable. At this point, they stood a good chance of escaping, so long as they didn’t fuck it up.

So, Peak continued onwards through the grassland. If a soldier wandered over, Peak stopped moving and waited for them to pass.

Unfortunately for Peak, it was really, really, really fucking boring. Life as a rock was normally boring, but Peak was normally able to entertain itself. Alas, Peak had to keep focus the entire time. It was tense and scary, but it took an hour of slowly moving until they stopped seeing soldiers and another two in which Peak kept going anyways, in case they would find the buried duo.

Peak was more willing to be a bored rock than a dead rock.

So, once Peak was reasonably certain they had escaped, it decided to move to the surface.

“AH, FRESH AIR!” Peak shouted to Emmeth as they surfaced. “Oh how I missed feeling you caress my rocky exterior. How liberating it is to be free of that dark and earthy prison!”

Emmeth pulled himself out of the ground, absolutely caked with dirt. He looked around to try and figure out where they were.

Peak had brought them up in the middle of a field. Emmeth took a look at the plants and identified them as oats.

“Peak, be careful.” Emmeth warned, realizing the possible danger.

“Oh fuck, did they follow us? I thought I lost them!”

“No.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“Farmers sometimes get skills which allow them to sense if someone is trespassing on their territory.”

“Oh… Well, they’ll be easier to deal with than those soldiers, right Emmeth?”

Emmeth stayed silent as he warily looked around.

“Uh… Hey, you’re joking, right?”

“Many farmers learn skills for warding off thieves.”

“... Crap.”

Peak kept looking for souls and sensing the earth for movement but sensed nothing. Emmeth, likewise, wasn’t able to spot anything.

“Follow me slowly. Let me know if you notice anything that seems wrong.”

“... I’ll do that from the safety of my earthen prison, thank you.” Peak responded before reburying itself. 

Emmeth stayed bent over as he crept along through the field, keeping his head below the oats. While doing so, he checked the damage to his body. There was still an arrow in his shoulder. He needed to pull it out, but it was in a bad position and he wouldn’t be able to pull it out. Even if he did manage to yank it out, the wound wouldn’t heal and the damage had already been done. He could barely lift his right arm. 

It was getting harder and harder for Emmeth to imagine a way he could still get revenge. Without his arm, he wouldn’t be able to fight very well, even if he somehow learned how to use his non-dominant hand. He was going to have to come up with a solution and he already had a few ideas.

For example, skeletons were known for being able to move despite not having any muscles. Though they were much weaker than zombies as a result, it would allow him to keep using his arm. Another solution would be to get a replacement arm, but he didn’t know how he would attach a new arm. 

“I sense something.” Peak said to Emmeth, interrupting his thoughts.

“What is it?”

“Let me check.”

Emmeth waited silently as Peak continued to burrow forwards beneath him.

“Okay, it’s a small building or something. I don’t know what it is above its foundation. It’s empty other than the nest of some kind beneath it.”

“What kind of nest?”

“I don’t know, some kind of small rodent?”

Small rodents usually were not usually monsters. Luckily, poison rats were an alchemical creation and spinmouth voles were more common to the south. Emmeth peeked above the crops and spotted what Peak was talking about. It was an old, rundown wooden shed.

“Are you sure the interior is empty?”

“Pretty sure. Like, 95% sure.”

Emmeth stuck his head back down before making his way over.

[ ) ( ] [ ) ( ] [ ) ( ]

“So, I think now’s a good time to discuss things.” Peak said, once they were both situated inside. 

The interior of the shed was orderly and lacked mold, but was still dusty and unused. It was some sort of resupply point for the frankly rather massive field. There was a shovel as well as some dried grain, but it was otherwise empty. Not that Emmeth or Peak minded. This was a pretty good spot to hide out in for at least a little while.

It was also where Peak was going to finally confront Emmeth about what the fuck happened.

“... I suppose you want me to re-evaluate my quest for vengeance?”

“Yes, and I want to know what the hell happened back there!”

“What do you mean?”

“Why did those soldiers just attack you? And why didn’t you pay any attention to things when they were sending in people to kill the zombie?”

“... I am not entirely sure. However, I would guess that it was a skill of some kind that they would use to distract targets for ambushes.”

“What about my first question?”

“... Undead are not welcome among the living, for reasons that should be considered self-explanatory.”

“I’m not good at explaining things to myself. Just tell me.”

“Aside from religious beliefs, of which there are many, there are several reasons. Most undead are mindless and attack random people. Some are criminals that will continue their crimes in death. Many people are also disturbed when they see a corpse walking around and will automatically assume the worst.

“The relatives of the deceased are also known for being greatly disturbed by their relatives if they still have a mind. The undead usually seem less emotional than they were in life.”

“That explains a lot.” Peak cut in.

“... One of less divulged reasons is that the dead are unable to divulge any secrets, but the undead are known for having more loose lips.”

“So essentially… You guys are kind of creepy?” Peak attempted to summarize.

“Yes.” Emmeth answered.

“Great! Great. Well, now that I know why the hell that happened, we can get back to the important part: What the fuck are we gonna do now?”

While Emmeth had been transported underground, he had already considered this question. “First of all, I need to discover a way to repair my body. Otherwise, I am destined to lose. If I lack the ability to heal or maintain myself, my body might slowly decay. Even if I never get injured in combat, my body might fail me.

“The second thing I require is strength. I need to improve my skills, and not with the hackneyed idea of fighting monsters. The soldiers showed that numbers will not be enough.

“The third thing I need is a method to catch up to and track down my enemies. Otherwise, I will never have an opportunity to claim vengeance.”

Peak considered his words. “So, heal, get strong, and track them down?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a shitty plan, but we can make it work.”