by Wolfe Locke
“Alright,” he said, finally having taken in all the information. I can’t let the minotaur know that I want it or he’ll raise the prices on me. “I’ll take it.” He gathered his new weapons and sent them into storage. To his surprise, he still had a big bag of Sols left.
“What about any spells? I’ve more than a few to offer,” the Armorer said, trying to entice the skeleton. “Upgrades to your magic and abilities? Maybe something a little more form fitting for an undead slave?”
“I want more power,” Edd said, remembering the feeling of the glacial whirlwind spinning around him and how easily the revenant had almost overtaken him. “More power in every possible area.”
“This is easily done,” the minotaur replied with a serious expression on his face. “Maybe you won’t be another disappointment.”
The minotaur reached under the counter and set out an array of colored vials. The liquid inside glowed with internal light, casting eerie shadows on the wall behind him.
“Take these back to your cell and drink them,” he said. “They’ll improve your strength, stamina, agility, and magical power. When you take them, lock yourself in tightly. You’ll be down awhile, and even a skeleton can be destroyed.”
Edd nodded in understanding, hearing the warning for what it was. “What about control? I unleashed that storm but was unable to direct it like I wanted,” he said. “I don’t just want power, I also need precision.”
The Armorer reached back under the counter and set out one more glowing vial— this one a deep aquatic blue. “Done.”
There was still half a bag of Sols left. “What about Spells?” Edd asked, wondering how much he could acquire with the Sols he had remaining. “Attack and defense, as many of them as I can afford.”
“I can give you a spell for attacking and one for defending,” the minotaur said, moving to the rack of scrolls that held his spellwork on bound leather parchment. The minotaur grabbed the first, far more carefully than the giant Armorer seemed capable of.
“This one is for attacking. It’s called ‘Storm of Swords’. It’ll allow you to send a volley of sharpened icicles at an opponent. For defense, here’s a variant of that one called ‘Ice Blades’. Similar to Storm of Swords, but you’ll turn the icicles into an impenetrable wall around you or an ally. Good if someone’s rushing you. You won’t see it on any prompt, but you can also target it so that it appears directly under an enemy’s feet and use it as a disruption effect.”
Edd nodded and opened the scrolls. Images flashed through his mind as the new spells downloaded into his brain— deadly-sharp icicles impaling enemies, walls of glacial magic trapping his foes, and as always, screaming opponents.
He grinned, half-drunk on the rush of power. He felt better than he had since before the battle with the scorpions.
Notification: Abilities Gained
Storm of Swords – Creates a targeted volley of icicles. Can be area of effect or target
Ice Blades – Surrounds a target with blades of ice for protection.
The trappings of power vanished, and Edd looked down at the counter, coming back to reality. The scrolls had vanished and the minotaur was nowhere to be seen. How much time just passed?
“Don’t worry,” Crixa said as he escorted him and his new wares back to his cell. “The minotaur made sure I watched over you when you became enraptured by the upgrades. Heed this warning Edd, do not drink the strengthening potions until after Deathbringer has had the chance to recharge your magical power.”
Crixa looked at him with its monstrous eyes, appendages waving furiously. “If you get an upgrade on your capacity without a full reserve, things could go very wrong.”
Edd did not fully understand the reasoning behind this, but he had long since accepted that magic worked differently in the Great Empty than it had on earth when he had been a Necromancer. He followed the rules he was given.
Crixa left him behind, and Edd reached out to his golem of flesh Vilerend to check out its progress. He smiled as a sensation of satisfied hunger was replayed to him.
Chapter 13: Reunited
When he walked into the Champions’ Mess that night, his cohort looked shocked to see him. Each of them had assumed the skeleton had been sent back to the void that was the Well of Souls. All conversation stopped. The revenant Yarrl smiled, the leathery flesh around its mouth cracking.
“We thought you were dead, Edd,” Colubra said as a spider-monster brought him a glass of blood.
“I am dead. We all are, though some of us are more dead than others,” Edd said. “Technically.”
The gorgon narrowed her eyes. “Is that a joke?”
Edd shrugged and took a sip of his blood. Delicious as ever. Something had changed. Instead of the blood dripping on his bones or falling to the ground, it disappeared entirely.
“It was a poor one. Our master destroyed the manticore,” Colubra said, testily biting the head off a beetle.
“Why did they not tell us you were still alive?” Deathbringer asked. “We’d assumed our numbers had effectively been halved after that last battle.”
Edd shrugged again. “I do not know.” How was he expected to have the answer? “Maybe they did not know if I had survived. We are the first of their monsters after all.”
They ate in silence for a while. Colubra crunched her insects loudly, each of their thoughts dark.
“Deathbringer,” Edd said finally. “You fought bravely in the Arena. Crixa told me that your ability to restore magic was paramount. It is a victory. You have proven extremely useful.”
The centaur winced and shifted uncomfortably. “Hardly a victory.”
“Why do you hate your given name so much?” Colubra asked. “It is no worse than mine and far different from the name I would have preferred if I had been given the opportunity to choose for myself.”
“The Dark Lord gave you a new name,” Deathbringer said. “Mine was taken from my old life. He has allowed you to start over, but I am not able to do so. Every time I hear my name, it is a reminder of the life I led, that all that I was and every achievement I ever accomplished has been ground to dust. That now, I am nothing but a slave and cannot even find solace in that.”
Edd stood up. “Zekant gave you that name to humiliate you,” he said, “but you do not have to use it. You fought just as well as any of us. Should you choose a new name, I would honor it and call you by such.”
He looked around. Everyone at the table was staring at him. He finished his glass of blood in one swallow and stalked off back to his cell, ignoring the stares of the newer champions that had been created and the hostile glare of Yarrl.
That night, Deathbringer showed up at the cell of his door. Unlike Crixa, the centaur knocked first.
“I have been ordered to help restore your magic to where it needs to be,” he said, ducking his head so he could fit through the doorway.
Edd nodded. “Crixa told me. I’ve been expecting you.”
He waited for the centaur to start working his healing magic, but instead, the centaur was still standing in the middle of the room awkwardly looking around as if struggling to find his voice.
“Thank you for saying what you did in the Mess Hall,” Deathbringer said finally. “You are right. I will choose a new name for myself.”
“The Dark Lord controls almost all we do here,” Edd said. “But he does not have to control everything. The small victories add up.”
But do they, my minion? Do you even know what aims I have for you?
Edd ignored the intrusion into his thoughts. The centaur smiled. “Well said. It has been a while since I’ve had a real conversation.”
“I have a new broadsword,” Edd said, changing the subject. “The minotaur claims I need two hands to wield it unless I’m stronger. Can you help me so I can use it one handed?”
“Yes,” the centaur said thoughtfully. “I think I can. I’ve an ability that will help boost your strength permanently. That should do it, but I must prepare first.”
>
Edd felt uneasy after Deathbringer finally left. He had never intended to start befriending the other Champions. Comrades were a weakness he could not afford but leverage to be used against him. It was something he had learned first hand when he’d used the same tactics against others when he was still alive.
What if the Dark Lord found a way to exploit it in some way? What if he forced them all to fight each other? It was no use getting too close to the others. Many of them were likely to die here anyway. Except for the revenant, I don’t think I want to kill any of them.
The thoughts were troubling, and he shoved them out of his mind. He had work to do.
Edd shoved his bed against his cell door and made sure the lock clicked shut. Before sitting down on the floor, he reached out, summoning forth the potions from within his spacial ring. One by one, he drank the upgrade potions the minotaur had given him, smiling as he felt his strength growing. Tomorrow’s training session would allow him to test his new abilities.
Edd tried to spend the rest of the night working with his ice magic as the upgrade potions did their work. With some effort, he kept his mind empty. It was better that way. The magic of the upgrade potions had an effect on his skeletal form that Edd did his best to ignore.
Chapter 14: The Hero’s Soul
When the process was finished, Edd found that he had changed slightly. His bones seemed a little darker, stronger even. Within his ribcage, Edd could see, though it was faint, a swirling vortex of eldritch power.
On his right arm, he could see red flesh where newly formed tendons connected the bone. He flexed his hand but didn’t feel any different. Not yet, though it did give him an idea.
Edd reached out with the portion of necromantic power he had been able to recover so far. Looking in the dark spaces and recesses of his cell, Edd called the flesh he had animated and hid to him, summoning Vilerend from where it was left alone to continue the task he had given to it.
Edd held down his arm with the newly grown tissue and willed blackened flesh in the room into his arm to fill the spaces. He couldn’t assimilate it, but he could carry it on him as an unexpected trump card if need be, and no one would ever know of it in advance.
The skeleton smiled as it looked down at the bony arm with pieces of flesh seemingly lashed on to it. That’ll do. I have the perfect use for these. I’ll call it the Flestrik.
Crixa summoned him early for drills, and as he left his cell, the information about the change greeted him.
Spectral Arena
Name: Edd the Conqueror
Specialty: Frost Magic
Race: Greater Skeleton
Current Unlocked Abilities:
Frost Nova (On Touch) – Unleashes an explosion of ice.
Frost Nova (Targeted) – Unleashes an explosion of ice at the impact site that causes area of effect damage around it.
Ice Wall (Targeted) – Creates at target location a wall of ice that is resistant to damage. Ice wall cannot be passed through, it must be destroyed.
Storm of Swords – Creates a targeted volley of icicles. Can be area of effect or target
Ice Blades – Surrounds a target with blades of ice for protection.
Shard Storm – Summons blades of ice to rain down in a area of effect. These shards are twice as sharp as the users weapon. Shard Storm continues casting until interrupted, or the caster depletes their magic source. Caster will be rendered incapacitated until their magic has completely recovered.
Current Passive Abilities:
Vampiric Aspect II – Bloodlust – Cannot retreat when an opponent has been bloodied. Receives a boost to strength and durability.
Sustenance - Receive a minor healing buff when consuming blood.
Flesh Crafting - A lesser-known school of Necromancy, Flesh Crafting allows for the creation of flesh golems and other constructs.
Strength: 19
Magic: 21
Stamina: 55
Speed: 17
I got stronger— in some ways a lot stronger— but what's this? Greater Skeleton? Is it because I hit a stat threshold, or because of the potions? Edd guessed it was likely a combination of the two, and he was interested to see how the changes would affect him in battle.
The skeleton followed behind Crixa. The monster seemed in an uncommonly foul mood, but all it would say was, “Something has been killing the master’s spiders.”
Edd had his guesses but kept those to himself, sending a mental note of appreciation for a job well done to Vilerend. Soon, he entered the Mess Hall, and as had somehow become a usual thing, he was the last of the Champions to arrive. The others were already armed and ready at the Training Grounds waiting for him.
“I have decided on my new name,” the centaur said when he showed up, leaning in with a whisper. “Deathbringer is dead and no more. I will now be Selesius.”
Edd nodded as he fastened the straps of his new armor tighter around him. The centaur’s action was a strike against the Dark Lord’s total control of their lives. As such, it got his approval.
They quickly got to work. Crixa’s new set of drills was harder than the sequence they’d done the previous week and required all their attention to get into it. Edd was pleased with his new strength and speed— Crixa had given him a wooden broadsword to practice with that was the same weight as his real one. Between the potions from the Armory and the centaur’s magic upgrade, he was easily able to wield it one handed. So much for the minotaur’s warning.
After some time, when the training had started in earnest, Yarrl the revenant had not returned to join them. No one but Edd seemed at all concerned or surprised about it. It had been reassigned to a different group of Champions— a werewolf, a sphinx, and a man with a ram’s head— and was currently drilling with them across the Training Grounds.
Several times, Edd caught it staring at him, grinning. It was not lost on Edd that Yarrl had gotten strong as well. The revenant seemed to have filled out and the flesh was not quite as leathery as it had been.
“Let it go,” Colubra said when he brought it up. “No one liked Yarrl. He’s someone else’s problem now. Embrace your good fortune. That monster would have just as soon killed at the first chance.”
But the whole series of events unsettled him. Something else is going on, why separate us like that? Unless… Does Zekant mean for us to fight each other?
Magic practice that day was exhilarating as the increase in his base magic ability had brought him to a new level. His new spells were impressive, although they required a substantial amount of power to control that he was struggling with, even with his recent advancement.
Edd found himself trying to control how long he could use Storm of Swords. If he could use it for a one-off effect rather than an ongoing, it would benefit him more in battle and keep him on his feet.
When the Training Grounds fell quiet around him, he looked up. The revenant was walking toward him with a purposeful stride. This time, it wasn’t smiling, and Yarrl had an aura of violence that Edd recognized only too well.
“What do you want?” Edd said, irritated and ready to defend himself if the revenant should attack.
“You and me, in the practice arena,” Yarrl said, the monster’s eyes yellowed with hate. “Now, or I can kill you here where you stand.”
Edd looked for Crixa, but he was nowhere to be found. “It’s not time yet. You know we do one on one fighting in the afternoon and no duels between each other without Zekant’s sanction.”
“I don’t care. It’s time,” the revenant rasped as its arms began to shake. “It’s been time. It’s been a long time coming. Long have I dreamt of this.”
Edd narrowed his eyes as his hand curled around his blade ready to attack. “What are you going on about? Say what you mean or piss off.”
“Don’t you remember me?” Yarrl asked, a wide grin expanding over its face, showing off the broken teeth in its mouth. “That hurts, Edd. I would have thought I stood out more in your memory. We knew each other so well
before.”
Something about the way the revenant tilted its head was very familiar. Something in the way it held its sword. Do we know each other from back then?
“Edd,” Yarrl scoffed. “How different your name is now. You looked very different before, a mass of flesh and fat, clutching your throat as you begged for life… Xanthus the Necromancer.”
With growing horror, Edd realized who he was talking to or at least had a good guess. “Pyke Wildwood.”
Chapter 15: The Duel