When fire witch Cassica decides to follow Kroza on her mission to find the reincarnated disciples of Death, she didn’t realize how much cardio would be involved. When traveling with Death incarnate, public transportation is out of the question and most pack animals startle and flee at the sight of her.

Because all living things begin to wither and die when in contact with Kroza’s body, the most compassionate choice for her is to use necromancy to gather agonized spirits, absorb their Suffering, and use the power from the reaction to reanimate a skeleton, with the purified soul returning to merge with the spiritual fabric of reality. If a full skeleton of a beast of burden isn’t available, Kroza assembles what she can find to piece together a suitable vessel to ride. Most minions aren’t autonomous, requiring the necromancer to consciously decide how each part of the minion’s body will move. This is an enormous mental drain on the energy of the necromancer, requiring intense focus and accurate anatomical knowledge of living creatures, and is one reason why the school of magic is so difficult to learn, let alone master.

On top of this, using one’s mind to move the body of another is an unnerving experience to most mortals, who are used to the sensation that their consciousness is located solely and firmly within their own individual heads. In this way, Kroza’s necromancy helps her disciples understand that all spirits are interconnected, as part of an invisible, magical matrix: all consciousness is linked, all living things are interdependent, and this is the great magic that connects us to the eternal and divine.

In the meantime, Cass will be walking.