“Is that it?” Mori asked, “You can stay here for a bit longer, you know. We certainly don’t mind hosting a dragon,” she laughed.

Xylgst shook his head in response, taking a deep breath of mana, “I must get going. I have already been here for almost a day more than I planned. My sister and parents must be worried about me. Besides that, my wounds have already long healed and my strength has long returned,” he replied, “Before I go, I have to remind you about your undead.”

Mori nodded, “I remember what you said. I’ll make sure they develop their new blood properly. Hey, maybe one day they can reach the dizzying heights of lich like me,” she said, smiling.

The decay dragon eyed her for a few more moments before nodding solemnly, “Thank you. If I were able, I would oversee their progress, but I cannot commit so much time, especially now. These new Clockworks…”

“They’re bad news, I know,” Mori finished, “They’re threatening your air superiority and can actually hurt you. They probably aren’t that easy to make for the Hive, though, so I think we’ll be able to hold out long enough for you guys to get here.” She paused, “You are bringing other dragons with you, right?”

Sighing, Xylgst leveled his head with hers, “As much as I want to say that as a certainty, I cannot. We dragons are a reclusive people without much incentive to make big moves. I’m sure a fair few dragons will make a move to battle this new foe, if this event horizon is happening everywhere… Well, our kind will be very busy. Very busy.” The dragon smiled, “Nevertheless, I will take my leave. Stay safe, Mori the Lich Extraordinaire.” The decay dragon lifted off with a scant few beats of his wings, soon propelling himself into the sky and off into the distance, moving faster and faster as he continued on his way.

Mori sighed, drooping her shoulders and looking at the mountains to the west, watching the sky slowly become darker and darker. “Alright then. Now we wait?” she questioned herself. The familiar presence of Unio tickled her mind once again, but she simply patted the little slime behind her as she thought. ‘So, I’m waiting for the seven of them to wake up, waiting for the mecha-hoplite-- wait! That’s a good name! Maybe something better’ll come later, but it’s up there for my best ones. Anyway, waiting for death knights, waiting for mecha-zombie, waiting for Aetra to get the news to the main force… Hasn’t my life become just a series of waiting for things to happen? I mean, waiting for the skiff, waiting for the trip to end, waiting for everyone to appear… Once this is all over, I’m either going off to find some fun adventure or I’m holing myself up in a tower to study for the next hundred years… after I make Fara immortal. It can’t be that hard, can it? I mean, I could just modify some strain of vampirism. Whatever, that’s for another time,’ she thought as she stood.

“Mori, is the dragon gone,” Fara said, standing beside her. Mori whipped her head to the side, finally noticing the woman. Fara noticed the confused look, smiling at Mori, “I’ve been here for at least a minute, you know. I was waiting to see how long it took for you to notice me,” she laughed.

Mori sighed, looking around to see if she had missed anyone else, “Sorry about that. I was just thinking about how I haven’t really done anything for myself in… oh gods… weeks. I’ve spent half of this life here, waiting for something or other to happen. Most of the rest of it I’ve spent waiting for people to get their shit together to stop the apocalypse…” She looked at her human companion with weary eye-flames, “I’m ranting, I know, but I really want to spend some time doing the stuff I want to do. Like explore, battle cool mana beasts, make really awesome undead, stuff like that.”

“It’ll come, Mori,” Fara soothed, rubbing the lich’s metallic back, “It’ll come eventually. Besides, I doubt you’re that easy to kill. You’ve got plenty of time to have fun later.”

Mori thought for a moment, “Alright, before any of that, though, I’m making you immortal,” she said with absolute certainty. In total honesty, Mori was not entirely sure if her vampirism idea would really work, but it was a good last-resort solution if every other solution she came up with did not work.

As Mori thought, Fara’s face exploded into confusion and bafflement, “Mori, it’s not that easy,” she replied, “Unless I want to become a spirit or a vampire, it’s pretty difficult to become immortal… not to mention the fact that the Creators have expressed that they do not want vampires spreading their vampirism too far…”

“Fara,” Mori said, pulling the woman into a side-hug, “Don’t worry about it. If the gods don’t want us to stay in this world, if worse comes to worst, we can ask to go to another world. Maybe even ask for a way to go between worlds! I mean, no matter the payment, as long as our souls and your body are fine, we have eternity to pay off any debt!” Mori explained enthusiastically.

Fara grumbled a bit, leaning into the hug, “Mori, I can’t think about the infinite so easily. Let’s stop the end of the world, then we can talk. Also, please don’t bother the Creators if it comes to it.”

“Can’t make any promises!” Mori laughed, pulling away from the hug, “Anyway I think we should- Oh, look at that,” she said, squinting her eye-flames at the eastern horizon, “I think our fourth prototype is nearly back. That was quick, he’s still got half a day left… Fara, I’m going to wait for him to get here. Can you go get some medics to take care of any survivors he found?”

Fara peered into the distance, but she failed to see anything if her expression was telling, “Fine, I’ll get going. Just don’t do the whole memory-take thing around anyone. Alright?”

“That’s a promise I can make,” Mori joked as Fara got going. Mori watched as the metal undead slowly trundled its way closer. He was slow. Very, very slow. Compared to Mori, he was pathetic. Just as Mori’s annoyance was rising, she remembered when she first sent him out into the desert to find enemies to fight. He was much faster back then, which left the question as to why he was so slow.

Mori’s first thought was that the undead expended a bit of mana to fight something, which was supported by the condition of his weapons. Her second idea was that he was being slow to avoid throwing around whoever he had found. Her idea was indeed supported when she saw the odd woman he was carrying on his shoulder, careful to not let her fall off.

As he got ever closer, Mori noticed the poor state of the woman’s clothing, being torn and nearly shredded. She also noticed the more obvious things, like her blue skin, green claws and teeth, blonde hair like Fara’s, and the scraps of clocksteel stubbornly clinging to her clothing and nails. “A melee fighter, then? Maybe with a Trait that reinforces her claws into something really strong? But, why are her claws so similar to my armor? Does that mean that there are Traits to change bones and nails into this stuff,” she said to herself, poking at her armor.

After a few more minutes, a team of medics arrived, all with fancy semi-automatic clocksteel sidearms hanging from their waists and interesting gloves with runes painted onto them. They all waited silently as the metal undead finally came close enough for Mori to see without focusing her vision much. With the newfound closeness, Mori was suddenly inundated by multiple system notifications.

[Your undead minion has defeated a Clockwork Scout. Experience has been awarded.]

[Your undead minion has defeated a Clockwork Crasher. Experience has been awarded]

[Your undead minion has defeated a Clockwork Soldier. Experience has been awarded]

[Your undead minion has defeated a Clockwork &^*(@^_*(##(. Experience has been awarded]

[Your undead minion has defeated a Clockwork Headhunter. Experience has been awarded]

“What the…” Mori muttered.

“Ma’am?” one of the medics asked, shifting on her feet.

Mori shook her head, “There’s something strange here. Don’t worry about it, it’s fine,” she replied, shaking her head.

“If you say so, ma’am,” the chitin-covered chimeric replied.

They waited for another few minutes until the undead finally reached the outpost, stopping with the odd woman on his shoulders as the medics took over, taking the woman on a stretcher and dashing off with her. Mori wanted to poke around a bit, mostly to confirm her thoughts on the nail-conversion Traits, but it could wait. While the woman did not seem hurt, she did seem exhausted, which was enough reason to put off visiting her until Mori could figure out what her new undead had gone through.

Getting her undead into an empty building was easy enough-- they had plenty of those lying around-- but the hard part came when she tried to decipher what the undead had seen. Plenty of it was obviously just the undead looking at the sun and looking around, but the harder parts to understand came when the fighting started. Some bits and pieces were easy to figure out, like when the weird needle-Clockwork showed up during the undead’s first fight, but she was only able to decipher most of the fight against the Headhunters after many minutes of interpretation.

What she saw suddenly made her worried.

The woman who was just carried to the outpost over the course of a half-day had managed to kill eight Headhunters all alone, helping Mori’s undead kill the last. Mori carefully detached from her metal hoplite’s mind and speed walked to find where the medics put the lady. She had plenty of questions to ask and Mori would waste no time in waiting for her to wake up.