by Sarah Lin
"Eww..." Danniah stuck out her tongue and looked away, while Bloodwraith and Meara stared at the bloody spectacle.
As the skulls bit into it, the jackal corpse slowly just... disappeared. He tried to keep his eyes on exactly how it worked and it seemed that the flesh the skulls tore off dissolved into power, which they immediately absorbed. Soon the skulls had reduced the corpse to a bloody stain and a few scraps. Slither moved around, scooping up the last remnants in the sand, while Stompy bounced in what might have been satisfaction.
[Stompy Necromancy Points +1!]
[Slither Necromancy Points +1!]
[Skeleton57 Necromancy Points +1!]
[Skeleton61 Necromancy Points +1!]
"Well, that's useful." Meara bent down beside him as they prepared a second jackal corpse and let the skulls at it. Bloodwraith nodded.
"They appear to have gained raw power from the boxes, and more importantly, it's separate from the power I earned for the deaths. With this, we can benefit from each kill twice."
"That may be true, but I was thinking of something else: you could completely dispose of a body this way."
"Hmm." Bloodwraith stopped working, considering that for a moment. "The question would be if the magic, either from the necromancy or the boxes, leaves too much of a trace. There are many ways to dispose of a body via magic, after all, the question is getting away with it."
"Not that we have anyone we want to kill right now. But good to keep in mind."
Indeed, it was another benefit he hadn't considered. Bloodwraith finished with the jackal corpses more cheerfully, letting the skulls consume them in different patterns to test the system.
It appeared that they earned Necromancy Points based on how much of the corpses they ate, so he couldn't share the bodies between many undead. He also thought there were diminishing returns as they ate the same thing over and over, which was disappointing. But still, just from consuming the jackal corpses, Stompy had earned 5 NP, Slither had 4 NP, and the newest two undead had 2 NP apiece. If he let them feast frequently, he might be able to increase their strength rapidly enough for them to be useful in combat.
"Are we finally done?" Danniah stood nearby, trying not to look at the bloody remnants. Bloodwraith replaced the undead in his bag and nodded.
"I believe we are."
"Maybe not." Meara gestured around at the bloody sands. "You were able to raise undead in places of death, like graveyards... have we just created our own place of death?"
"A good thought. I will try..." Bloodwraith tried not to overthink the necromantic magic and just reached for the skill...
[Unable to raise new breed of Undead Companion!
Undead Companion level inadequate.
Necromancy level inadequate.
Insufficient necromantic capacity.]
Then it might be possible to create more than skeletons - that was encouraging, but it didn't matter at the moment. Deciding that he might as well test the box gods further, Bloodwraith tried not to focus on the fact that jackals had died and focused simply on the most basic skill. He destroyed one of the weakest skulls in his inventory, then tried again.
A skeleton popped out of the ground. A human skeleton, just like all the others.
"Imbecilic boxes," Bloodwraith muttered. He reduced the newest undead to a skull and put it with the others. Beside them, Danniah groaned.
"Does this mean you're going to have to stay here and do a whole bunch more testing?"
"We shouldn't ignore the opportunity."
When Danniah sighed, Meara moved beside her. "You need to take some time to relax and recover anyway, Danniah. I've been testing if I can't make my potions taste a bit more pleasant, would you care to try?"
The two of them moved a short distance away to a scraggly tree to sit in the shade. As they went, Meara met his gaze and glanced toward the horizon. He nodded, understanding that they would need to remain on alert. Though the pack's failed attempt would probably keep others from attacking, and the lack of bodies wouldn't draw scavengers, they couldn't afford to be careless.
But with Meara watching as well, he could focus on his necromancy. Bloodwraith stared down at the bloody sands and got to work.
~ ~ ~
As they drew closer to Manascas, they ran into other travelers more frequently, so Bloodwraith was doubly glad he had taken the time for more experimentation. Based on information gathered from merchants, they were within a tenday of the city. That meant he had a limited amount of time to make a final decision about his new necromancy skill.
His skill's level had advanced three more stages, which allowed him to control up to six skulls at the same time. Though he hadn't tested, he suspected that he wouldn't be able to control more than one full sized undead, however, so it was only good for testing.
At least that testing had progressed well. In addition to the two skulls Danniah had nicknamed, he had a third that had survived many fights. It had been given a combination of Kiting and Defense Growth Factors that made it excellent at avoiding damage. Danniah had yet to give it a nickname because she said it was creepy to see a skull sliding around the ground so smoothly.
Bloodwraith continued to generate new combinations, setting them against the three proven skulls. Unfortunately, he'd had a bad run of luck when it came to the randomized base stats, so none of them had been able to compete. There were a few pairings that seemed to contain interesting emergent properties, though, so he would go back and try those combinations again when he had time.
"Ow! Hey!" Across their fire that night, Danniah frowned at her side. "Stompy is headbutting me!"
Surprised, Bloodwraith looked up and saw that it was the case. The skull was ineffectually ramming into Danniah's hip where she sat on the log. Perhaps it wanted to sit there? As they continued to exist and gather Necromancy Points, the undead had gained more developed personalities, which he thought was a promising sign. But even if it was a positive sign overall, Stompy was becoming irritating.
"Bloodwraith, do something!"
"Stop that." His command immediately made the skull stop headbutting, though instead of growing still it bounced to the end of the log and sulked. Or at least, that was how he interpreted it.
Meara had been reading a book she'd purchased from one of the traveling merchants, but now looked up. "Are you sure there's no way these undead can turn against us?"
"The boxes say it is impossible," Bloodwraith said, "but the question is how much we trust the boxes. I believe these undead are basically obedient, however. Right now I am giving them free rein in order to test their development."
"Well, I hope you don't choose Stompy." Danniah rubbed her hip and frowned. "He's turning into kind of an asshole."
"An skeleton cannot be a 'he' - they are all 'its'. They lack bodies or any other substance beyond obedience."
"Maybe normal skeletons, but when they start getting personalities that feels weird. I mean, you were still male even as a lich, right? I always thought about it that way, anyway."
"I suppose that is true, but..."
Meara wiggled her eyebrows. "Spend a lot of time thinking about his lichy manhood, did you?"
"Oh no, you don't!" Danniah folded her arms and barely flushed at all. "I'm just trying to think about things all formally like Bloodwraith does. If we're going to have undead working with us, it's important to be thinking about them properly!"
"Your commitment to ontological necromancy is admirable."
"Is that... even a thing? Bloodwraith, is Meara just making things up?"
He waved a hand vaguely at both of them. "You should always assume Meara is just making things up. What's important is that we need to make final decisions before we enter Manascas, otherwise we risk getting involved with trouble again. I need to focus on necromancy, so I'll trust the two of you to learn all you can about the condition of the city and make plans for us there."
Danniah grinned and nodded. "You got it!"
They had to travel for thre
e days before he got another opportunity, this one coming in the form of a second jackal attack. Fighting more cautiously this time, he and Danniah didn't take any serious injuries that Meara's potions couldn't cure. He asked Meara if she could assign him quests to kill more, but she said she would need some time to feel the patterns of Manascas before being able to create any quests.
That gave him more time to experiment with the last combinations. He prevented the current undead from feeding until he'd created several more with solid stats. Though he considered resolving everything at that time, when he looked over the set of skulls he'd created, he didn't feel that any made for a good final choice.
It was a risk, but he decided to wait. Days later, getting troublingly close to the city, Bloodwraith knew that he couldn't put it off any longer. Perhaps he could get away with more necromancy within Manascas, but he had been delaying for long enough. He tucked Danniah in, got a large number of potions when even Meara needed to sleep, and set about to work until he was finished.
Currently he had three strong builds: Stompy, Slither, and - Bloodwraith sighed to himself - Bouncer. One of the skulls he'd created after the last set of jackals was an Aggression and Support hybrid that showed some promise, but lacked the base stats he would have wanted. Maybe he could start there.
Bloodwraith currently had a limit of seven skulls, so he had six of them compete with each other while he repeatedly summoned and destroyed a seventh, hoping for a perfect set of stats. He was doing particularly poorly that night, though. Skill level, fatigue, and other variables didn't seem to have much impact on the randomized results, but that was little comfort when he faced so many failures.
After smashing yet another summoned undead, he took a moment to stop and massage his forehead. While he was taking a break, he noticed something odd: instead of the usual three survivors, a fourth skull remained fighting with the others.
It was the newcomer, agilely darting around the others, better than its stats would have suggested. Faster than Slither and smarter than Bouncer, it had somehow survived beyond what he'd expected. Bloodwraith watched to see how long it would last.
While he watched, the newcomer backed off as Stompy and Bouncer teamed up against Slither. Though they also struck at one another, they did a good job of pinning down the third skull. Eventually Bouncer slammed into Slither, making it strike a rock and fall onto its side. While it struggled to right itself, Stompy leaped into the air to finish it off.
At that moment, the newest survivor moved in and pushed Slither out of the way. Bloodwraith forgot all about his current experiment and focused entirely on the skull fight.
Honestly, it was stupid of the newest skull to prevent one of its enemies from being smashed, but he was still intrigued. Temporary alliances were common among the undead, but the newcomer continued not attacking Slither while it was weak. In fact, it hopped behind the other skull and pushed Slither upright.
Always one of the smarter undead, Slither didn't strike back. Instead it and the newcomer carefully circled the other two skulls as they attacked each other again. When the two of them struck each other and rolled back, Slither and the newcomer pounced, hitting Bouncer from both sides until its skull cracked and broke apart.
One of his core combinations had actually been defeated? Through teamwork, true, but Bloodwraith was intrigued. This new hybrid was smart, perhaps enough that he should pursue the Aggression and Support combination more.
The newest skull clacked its jaw happily, not noticing that Slither was moving behind it. Abruptly the craftier skull bumped into it from behind, sending the newest hybrid rolling into Stompy. It immediately did what it did best and began smashing down against the smaller skull.
Though it managed to escape once, Slither hemmed it in, pushing it back. Clearly, Slither had learned a lesson about teamwork and planned to finish off its new rival. The newest hybrid was obviously not going to last long.
Yet as it was battered, the skull turned and looked at him. Bloodwraith hesitated as he realized that it wasn't random: the skull looked directly up at him, the glow of its eyes flickering plaintively. Was it begging him for help? That was pure idiocy, since the entire point of the experiment was to see which combinations were the most powerful. As the skull slowly lowered its eyes sadly, he scoffed at its foolishness, believing there was any mercy to be had.
Somehow, he found himself reaching down and plucking it out from between the other two.
The new hybrid's eyes burned brighter and it began bouncing and clacking its jaw, so exuberantly that he couldn't deny that it was happy, at least so far as such an entity could experience happiness. Bloodwraith stared at the skull in his hand, trying to convince himself that he hadn't just made a stupid, emotional decision.
It was just a tool, but it wasn't a weak tool. The stats weren't distributed quite how he'd like, but it had some of the better growth values of any of the combinations and it had performed fairly well. Besides, it wasn't exactly fair to expect a new hybrid to defeat its more powerful predecessors, was it?
When he set down the skull beside him, it hopped up onto his leg. Bloodwraith scowled down at it. "Don't distract me."
To his surprise, the skull immediately ceased moving, though its eyes still watched him. He tried to ignore it, telling himself that this was just another data point. If the combination of Aggression and Support could be effective, then he'd make more until he got one with better combat statistics. The bravery of this early model wasn't wasted, as it had taught him a useful lesson about his goals.
Yet as he created more undead with the same combination, none of them satisfied. When he sent them against the experienced skulls, they stood no chance, and even against each other they displayed no real innovation. And through it all, the surviving skull watched him, eyes flickering and watching his hands as if it wanted to understand the necromancy.
There was a spark there that simply didn't exist in the others, even if they were based on the same combination of Growth Factors. Were there more randomized variables involved that the boxes wouldn't grant him access to? Clearly, he couldn't dismiss this one so easily.
He used some of his power to heal the cracks on the skull, then set it back down. This was an experiment, not a matter of sentiment. So he created several new hybrids and gave them some of the more potent combinations he'd discovered, then set them against his newest hybrid.
It managed to beat them all, ending each match bouncing and clattering happily. Though it couldn't gain any NP in such experimental fights, it seemed to be improving. When he added Stompy and Slither back into the fights, the newest success regarded them skeptically. It offered no more support and avoided letting them team up against it.
Eventually he realized that he was barely watching the fights, his head aching and his eyes unfocused. It didn't matter anymore: this newest success would be his choice. Though it might not be as strong as Stompy or have the potential of Slither, from all the randomness had emerged something valuable. A little more power might not make a difference, but a more intelligent Undead Companion might be exactly what he needed.
Bloodwraith rubbed his eyes, then put away the older skulls and picked up the newest. It stared up at him, not in the mindless obedience of the simplest undead, but something sharper. This wasn't the decision he'd expected to make, but he thought it was the right one.
"Is that the one you're gonna pick?"
He jumped at Danniah's words, turning to see her standing beside him. "Danniah... sorry I woke you. You should sleep while you can."
"Uh, Bloodwraith?" She pointed past him and he realized that the reason he had needed to rub his eyes was the first rays of sun lancing over the desert. Had it really been so long? He had entirely lost track of time in his experiments. "Geez, I hope you're not too tired. But are you satisfied with the one you picked?"
"I suppose. It could prove a worthy undead." Bloodwraith started to put it into his bag, but the skull bounced away into its lap. It hopped up his
chest and began rubbing itself against his neck.
"Aww, it likes you too!"
"Nonsense! It merely knows I am the source of the necromantic power that gives it life."
Danniah leaned down, patting the skull on the head, and it clattered its jaw at her. "I like this one better than Stompy. Does it have a name yet? Hmm, I think..."
He raised a hand to cut her off. Not this time. "I have already given thought to this subject. It is not unreasonable that an undead that will be our ally for some time should have a name, but it should be an appropriate one. I dub this undead..." As he spoke, a box emerged in response to his will.
[Rename this Undead Companion?]
"It is named Izilthor." As soon as he finished speaking, the naming box disappeared and the new name appeared on the undead's box. The skull bounced up and down, almost as if it understood, but that was impossible. They responded to commands, not actual language.
"Hmm." Danniah's lips twisted as she thought about it. "I guess that's not a bad name, but it's not a very cute one for such a brave little skull."
"Undead are not meant to be cute! Izilthor means 'Great Devourer of Flesh' - one day the name will be feared across the land."
"I guess so. Anyway, you picked it just in time."
"Just in time?" Bloodwraith winced as more sunlight hit his tired eyes, yet he still instinctively looked toward it. As he did so, he understood what Danniah meant. As the sun rose above the horizon, it glinted off something else. It was no mirage, instead the twinkle of light reflected from metal.
Manascas lay on the horizon.
Chapter 9
As they approached Manascas, they all took a moment to marvel at the massive walls surrounding the city. In times past, they had been essential for repelling raiding parties from across the desert, though now they were just a legacy of a past age. Though the walls appeared to be made of yellow sandstone, the material proved harder than sandstone and he could feel magical reinforcement rising from the foundations.
They were a few travelers among many, waved through by the guards without any need for checking. As they entered the city Bloodwraith eagerly began to summon boxes for those they passed, but to his disappointment the majority of them were declared Level 0. Manascas might be popular with adventurers, but it was popular with many others as well. The guards were generally Level 8-10, which was a good reminder that he shouldn't cause unnecessary problems.