In a village in the forest. A busy village indeed, bodies kept going back forth going to workshops, manning fields with oxen and to the surrounding forest and back constantly. One man stood in the middle of the village, with a pencil and parchment.
In the front of the man the villagers were working on a wooden house and installing windows... Using iron tools to cut and sizing the area where the window was going.
The man with the parchment was Elian, the new Alex. He was continually guiding and building up a village with his corpses. He stopped, turned to face the east, where it was said the plague originated. Closed his eyes and stood perfectly still.
A bird sitting on a high tree stood still overlooking a different village, small and the same size as Oakhaven. The bird flew downwards in the direction of the village and circled it. And landed on a house.
Elian opened he's eyes in confusion... It seems that the plague wiped out more than just Oakhaven. Thorp of Wyllow was also a victim, he saw the desolation, the village was empty, there was a couple of corpses visible outside and on the streets and houses were left bare and with most of the contents still inside. The rat population having a festival and eating the exposed weather preserved corpses, my heart aches for the people and the corpses being destroyed by the rats.
It was about 20km away from Oakhaven and the corpses also showed bigger bite marks, which means something bigger had passed here, the woods near Oakhaven seemed less active... Are the animals actively avoiding Oakhaven... And which big animals are in these parts.
I quickly finished the supervised constructions within the village and reconnected to the bird. Flew over the village scanning and searching for anything that might hurt my corpses, it took precious dark mana to raise and maintain the corpses. I wanted to bring back the elements of death from the decimated Thorp of Wyllow and metal tools/weapons, any resources. And had to do it while I kept my corpses safe.
Followed the traces on the corpses, somewhere severely decayed and some the rats had gotten to the bone to see anything... The corpses close to a certain area had the most big bite marks and some were mangled and missing limbs.
And then I saw traces of an animal and sounds of them in a dwelling it was rummaging through. As I sat the bird down on a nearby roofing, I focused on the house and I saw the large dire wolf. I have never seen one before so I stared and analyzed. And as I focused it became more cautious did it know it was being watched? It kept pausing listening and looking around while smelling the air. It didn't find anything, it must have overlooked a bird and continued it searched for something... I continued following it. It seemed spooked and abodoned searching and left the village to go home. So followed it. Seems to have found a small dent in a hill covered by trees and built a family there. I got a little excited at the idea of adding some wolves to my ranks... I guess I'm getting more familiar with this peculiar powers, I've been entrusted with.