Half an hour later, Aleric silently stared at the smoked remains of his wagon.
All the personal comforts that he took pains to gather and fit in his travel home were either gone or made unusable by the fire.
Several other zombies were still sorting the things inside, while Ditrich directed the recovery of other supply wagons and the moving of surviving supplies to other ones.
"Master Fenn! We found this—it seems mostly fine!" a zombie servant said, showing Aleric a thick leather tome pulled from the fire.
He passed the Spine Staff to a staff-bearer and approached to take it.
The tome's leather cover was covered in soot, but didn't burn and even protected the thick paper pages inside. Aleric opened the book at the first page.
The original text was scraped over, and on top of it were written rows of repeating letters. Here, Aleric was practicing his writing.
