Death - Construct life

"Haste is essential now," the Crowfather announced. "I can only hold the crow's spirit for a few moments before it must dissipate as any animal's would. Weave your necromancies, Rider of the Charred Council. Summon life, however temporary, however meaningless, however mindless, to this artificial creature. And I will provide the necessary essence."
Death had never practiced his magics on a soulless construct before. He'd never had cause; as he'd explained, without a spirit or mind, there was precious little difference between dead metal or living metal. Still, the Crowfather was wise—if also eccentric, standoffish, rude and overbearing—so it seemed sensible to give him the benefit of the doubt. Besides, it wasn't as though Death had any better ideas.
The magics coursed through him as they normally did—if anything about breaching the barriers between life and death could be called "normal." He experienced the same sensations of cold and heat, fear and fury, that invariably accompanied his necromantic spells. It felt like it was working. He saw no reason it should not be working.
But he had no way to tell. Constructs did not breathe, did not bleed. Without a mind to tell it to act, it lay there precisely as it had when it was dead.
As Death neared the end of his incantation, the Crowfather knocked knelt beside the construct, laying the little avian corpse on the ground behind him, and pressed a hand to the brass-coated rock of its chest. Death staggered as an unfamiliar magic intruded on his own, a second energy intertwining with the stuff of unlife.
"Keep your questions straightforward, Horseman. I may be able to commune with it, but it's still the mind of a crow. It may have difficulty with complex notions or interpreting the memories of the construct."
"I only have a few. Who sent you here?" The Crowfather once more closed his eyes, willing the essence of the bird within the carapace of the automaton to understand. For some time, nothing happened, and Death had begun to believe their process, innovative as it was, had failed, when . . .
"Our creator," the Crowfather intoned softly. "He says 'our creator' sent us."

***

Chapter 8