Bleak cold permeated the body of the struggling traveller as he trudged further down the seemingly endless road. Snow choked the way and dragged at his already exhausted muscles. It was the bleakest of situations.Despite innumerable previous failures, again he tried to chase away his dark thoughts by remembering warmer times, when he knew the meaning of love. He had been a well-cared for son, a respected soldier, and at the last, a valiant hero saving the infirm from a deadly conflagration. It seemed as if all the warmth in his life had been lost in that fire, a lifetime's energy drawn out to feed the flames. Since that night all his memories were of cold. Vicious, biting cold intent on devouring his mind as well as his body. Every day, every night, as cold as beneath the thickest glacier. He wondered how he could possibly still be alive.
He ceased his trudging, and let the wind pile drifts around his knees. He realized the cold would never kill him if it had not already done so. It would torture him forever unless he could somehow regain the spent warmth of his earlier days...
Or unless he could end the torture himself.
The wind bit into his face, and suddenly all was perfectly clear. A lifetime of purposeless agony, or a swift if unorthodox escape into eternal sleep. It could not be any worse than this - this eternal blizzard from the Edge of Hell.
He reached a tatter-gloved hand under his shredded, once-fine cloak, and clasped the hilt of his short sword. It came free of its sheath with a rusty creak. Gazing into the flat of the blade he could make out his own wasted visage, partially obscured by the tarnish of the steel.
It would be quick, but it must be now. A silent prayer, a final salute, and the blade came streaking down, cleaving skin and bone, driving relentlessly to the buried depths of his heart...
"Mooooom!" cried Moom.
Virtok sighed, stopped, and looked over his shoulder at his pack-zombie. Moom was standing in the middle of the road in his favorite dramatic stance, legs apart, eyes skyward, left hand thown back with his three fingers fanned out. He was also busily poking himself repeatedly in the chest with a steak knife. One of his ill-aimed blows had severed a packstrap, and Virtok's precious collection of arcana now dangled precariously from the zombie's right shoulder.
The young necromancer gently set down his own pack with an exasperated roll of his eyes, and slowly moved over to Moom. Moom continued to stab himself, oblivious to all else, and with a deft movement Virtok snatched the knife from the zombie. Moom, bereft of his weapon, simply beat his chest with a clenched fist.
"Honestly, Moom, I don't know where you keep getting these things. Three in one week! You've probably made some very nice people very unhappy," Virtok scolded.
"Moom!" Moom replied.
It was hopeless. The zombie was an imbecile. Although it was true no zombie was ever particularly bright, Moom suffered from some uniquely peculiar quirks. Unlike most undead servants, he was almost incapable of obeying all but the very simplest commands. "Fetch" was often too much for him. Worst of all, he had a strange penchant for melodrama and attempted suicide - which was of course futile, since he'd been dead for at least forty years.
"I'm of half a mind to not bother sewing you up this time," Virtok continued. "You are a bad, bad zombie."
"Moom!" Perhaps sensing his master's displeasure, Moom finally stopped pounding on himself. Virtok quickly made some temporary repairs to the zombie's pack and with one last reproachful glare (delivered more for his own sake that his servant's) reshouldered his own. Even though Moom was far from being the best of the wizard's helpers, he was Virtok's first creation, and an unusually loyal one - yet another odd trait for the walking dead to display. Although it turned even a necromancer's stomach to seriously consider a zombie worthy of anything resembling love (even of the variety one feels for family pets) Virtok could easily admit Moom was a special creature.
Besides, he required no food and was relatively good at protecting Virtok's thin skin. He was better at it than Virtok, anyway.
Casting an eye skyward in an unskilled attempt to judge the weather, the dark-haired youth continued down the road to the village of Quicksley, leaving his tracks in a thin dusting of unseasonable October snow, with Moom obediently in tow.