by Marty Myers
“ Once I have gathered my strength and am ready to march upon the world we shall simply have the skeletons tunnel a path up to the castle or out of the rock face of the pass,” Provoas said. Hank also showed Provoas an image of the lower end of the pass they were dumping the rock scree onto. He also asked about all the doors and wood and metal working accessories he thought they would need. Provoas was quiet for a minute before saying, “ I admit I had not thought that through when the Lord Darkness decided that we would bind Alastor into the dungeon’s design. I will need to make some other arrangements to supply them. Once you have a better count of what is needed have Alastor write it down and I will see about how long it will take. However, down here in the lower dungeon we will be bone crafting many of those items.”
Hank suddenly felt compelled to remind Provoas of needing his payment once the dungeon was built and the contract complete. It took him totally off guard that he had asked for it. Provoas looked at him and then said, “ you shall be paid as and when the contract stipulates and I will not punish you for that outburst because it likely is a symptom of the bond it forged when you signed it. If I were to break the terms with you the entire ritual I have woven upon you, the dungeon and Alastor could be undone or it could just backlash upon me and Alastor as the parties that renigged upon our agreement. The penalty for such a thing is incredible damage to your well being and magical core. No mage will willingly break a demon or soul contract for fear of it unless their willing to be destroyed in the process.”
“ Now that we have discussed that I want a demonstration of your spellwork.” Hank showed him what spells he had learned which took a depressingly short amount of time. Provoas chastised him. “ This is not adequate Hank. If you were a normal apprentice this would be good, but you have been gifted with so much more knowledge and power so much earlier than most necromantic students are by myself and the Dark.” Hank felt Provoas displeasure through the bond and could hardly help himself from bowing down and begging to do better. Inside he was once again angry that they had done this to him but it was hard to remain so under the influence of their magic. “ I will stay for a while and teach you as your mentor and master it falls to me. But you need to work harder and more diligently on learning and improving yourself.” “ Master, Hank said I will.”
First off Provoas cast some more wards and protections upon the altar room and the larger newly cleared cave rooms. Each time Hank watched diligently and also felt the wards sink into the stone walls of the dungeon and into his essence embedded within the walls. “ Now Hank you will cast the same wards I have been. First, you will cast it with me, group casting between master and apprentice is a tradition rooted in good practices, for combined two magicians are stronger together than either would be alone. If done properly group magic can be incredibly effective. Sadly few Dark magicians are willing to do so because it can open you up to treachery. Since that point has already passed between you and I …Oh, you are surprised I freely admit it. Hank, we will likely be tied together in this complex manner for a long long time to come. It is better to have that out in the open early on so we can move past it. I can somewhat sense your feelings through our bond too so I know you’re angry at me about this situation we find ourselves in and I understand.”
“ Although I am the master here it was not always so for me. Long ago I was the apprentice. Yes, our situations are not exactly the same, but they are closer than you might think. My master was an ancient lich who’s humanity had mostly faded by the time he took me on as a necromancer’s apprentice and then later ushered me onto the path of being a lesser lich. This meant I wasn’t strong enough when I was first changed to survive on my own. The master placed a bond upon me to sustain me. He told me it is only through more extensive time and study under a master’s care that most liches eventually become able to sustain their existences entirely on their own. So this is an accepted practice among our kind.”
“ I often thought my master changed me so that he would have another handle upon me and have an eternal dogsbody to do his bidding. My point is that just like I did, you can learn from your master and grow into your powers and continue your existence until one day you’re able to redefine yourself and take back your independence stronger than you would have ever become on your own.”
“ Think on this, eventually when the time comes for us to reemerge and march upon the world to vanquish the Light and their followers we will no longer have need of this burrow. At that point, if you have advanced enough in building up your necromantic arts and have come to accept your place amongst the Dark Host my apprentice, then you can join me in serving the Darkness in your own right, for there are ways to possibly uncouple you from this place and return your spirit to some sort of physical body. You could become like me a liche, or at that time you could possibly even become a great wraith king.”
At my look of surprise, Provoas exclaimed. “ Yes, necromancy is certainly a great and amazingly versatile tool. Serving the Great Darkness at this time of his coming ascension many things are possible.” The thought of truly selling out as Hank thought of it was really chilling. Right now he considered himself more of an unwitting dupe and prisoner and victim as much as anything else but obviously, Provoas had other ideas.
“Now enough idle chatter my boy,” Provoas said. “Let us get back to the lessons.” Provoas and Hank cast the wards repeatedly and then Provoas had him cast them by himself until he was satisfied with his spellwork. “ Good enough for now. I want you to keep working on learning more from the grimoire every day.”
“ I also give you Hank and you Alastor my leave to travel to the castle and begin building the first two floors of the dungeon we have discussed, whilst I must prepare to assist master Darkness in his preparations in the Altar room. “ Hank and Alastor quickly gathered their skeleton work crew together and their tools and Hanks backpack and began teleporting them into the castles great hall. Neither of them wanted another meeting with the Darkness right now if they could avoid it. Provoas might be bad himself, but the Darkness was unquestionably a far greater evil.
“ So Hank,” Alaster said, “that mostly went well. That bit with Provoas telling you his past and tempting you was a bit strange though. I am just a demon to him so he has never said or done anything like that with me. But there is some truth to what he said. I too was bound to his master for a long time and how Provoas described their relationship was fairly accurate as far as I saw.” Hank looked at Alastor and thought to him that he had no intention of drinking the cool aide which at first made the imp frown as he didn’t understand and then smile when he got Hanks mental explanation.
While they were here Hank sped around about the castle passing himself through its walls and up and down its stoneworks and hallways until he thought he had covered it all. He even tried flying up above it but couldn’t, for the same limitations applied here that he had suffered earlier. Like it or not the dungeon was his home now. Once he had got that out of his system he tried floating down through the solid rock following his silver cord down until he had reached the cave with the altar room in it. He then turned around and followed his own faint blue trail back up through the rock to create a connection between the two areas. By the time he arrived back at his starting point he was noticeably more tired but he could feel his reach and senses expand to include all he the rock he had invested himself in.
In the time that took Hank, Alastor had teleported the rest of their tools and gear up and had trooped down to the root cellar with their crew to get to work. First, he cleared out the rubbish and misc junk out of the cellar quickly by teleporting it away into an old trash dump near a farmers barn in the valley below. The imp realized his teleportation range was recovering from whatever Provoas and the Darkness had done to him to allow him to teleport things like this even that far.
He also discovered that his demonic essence was growing again. The much different dynamics in his new bond with Hank was allowing his aura to soak it in instead of b
eing smothered all the time. He also began to suspect that the cage he was kept in for so long might have been spelled to suppress his growth. He stretched out his demonic aura as far as he could with a mental shrug and found that it was indeed bigger and thicker than it ever had been. It felt so much better not to be starved and stunted and hunched in on himself.
Then they had the skeletons dig down to the rock’s surface and emptied the cellar once more. Hank looked over the area now that it was clear and began his planning of the dungeon’s entrance. He decided to stick to his plan of making it look like a dwarvish designed dungeon up here since that was what his real-world memories were of. But was he going to make it look like its purpose was to hold prisoners or perhaps to be a tomb to hold the remains of the castles lords or something else? He talked it over with Alaster and decided that the cells of prisoners and a guardroom would be a lot less interesting to adventurers than a tomb that could still contain lootable items.
They took great care that the skeletons were precise and smoothed out all their stonework properly as they went. They left the stone lentil above the entrance simple and unadorned for now. They carved steps leading downwards and Hank continued his practice of passing through all the nearby stone because he figured that way he could find any faults in the stone or anything else that might interfere in their work before their diggers reached it. Hours went by as the skeletons slowly carved down through the rock. They took occasional ten-minute breaks for them to both take turns practicing casting the spells they knew and working on learning new ones.
Every so often they would stop to teleport more of their waste stone scree out of the dungeon to the lower pile down in the pass. It was during one of these times that Hank made some remarkable discoveries. First, he realized that every time they dumped the waste rock out at the scree pile some of his essence and awareness was going along with the stone that he had previously passed through. This alarmed him as he thought he might be slowly killing himself a small piece at a time.
He called a halt to the work and showed Alastor what he had found. “ Look at this,” Hank said as he cast a scrying of the scree down the pass, to his eyes some of it was faintly glowing blue. “ I just realized some of me is still embedded in the stone we just cut out of here. I am worried I am chipping away at myself here. I can even somewhat feel myself down there when I concentrate on it. The sun is warming up those rocks that have been in the nice cool darkness down here for so long. I can even feel the rock still settling in the pile and I can see from that rock pile like I am standing there if I really try. Should I be concerned Alastor?”
Alaster looked, at first, he couldn’t see what Hank was talking about but with concentration, his arcane sight finally did detect the slight bluish cast to the rock that was Hanks aura. “ Have you tried calling it back to you? It’s your essence in there after all,” Alastor said. “ Focus on it and will it to leave the stone and return.” Hank did so and his sense of the distant rock stopped as his essence left the stone and returned to him. It felt like a nice warm breeze blew into him as his energies returned.
Alaster said, “I wonder if you shouldn’t leave just a little bit of yourself infused down there in the very top part of the scree pile to serve as a sentry point to give us warning of any adventurers trying to make their way up here?” “ Good idea, Hank said, “I will try that once we get most of the stone dug out. Maybe I’ll just dump some of my embedded rock a bit below the main pile for now so it doesn’t get buried.”
As Hank prepared to teleport some on down the mountain he was paying a lot more attention to the stone and his aura inside it and how he chose what he teleported. His unique relationship with the stone and his ability to see right into it and embed his aura in it or withdraw it let him differentiate between two parts of the stone even when they were still a solid unbroken whole. He cleared away his aura in one four by four section of the dungeon and then tried making a two by two block of stone inside of it, re-infused with his essence. Then he focused on it and tried teleporting it out of the larger stone. With a pop and a crack, the stone disappeared and reappeared right next to Hank.
Alastor looked at Hank in shock. “ How did you do that,” He said? “ It shouldn’t be possible to use teleport to do that Hank.” “ I think it’s because when my essence is in the stone its part of me and since I already have been teleporting part of me down the mountain this whole afternoon while the rest of me is here I knew I could do it,” Hank said. “Then there is the way I can see exactly what is in the stone and place my aura right where I want it to be. If this doesn’t take too much more energy than our regular teleporting then I think this here is going to allow us to cut down on the time it takes to make this dungeon by quite a bit Alastor.”
They discovered that only Hank could do this as Alastors aura was not embedded in the stone nor could he see it nearly as well or manipulate it so exactly like Hank could. Still, it was a breakthrough that revolutionized Hank’s Dungeon building. He could now quarry just about any shape or part out of or into the stone that he could imagine. This time saver allowed him to immediately spend half his time building the dungeon and the other half of it studying and practicing casting his necromancy. Alastor studied and practiced right alongside him.
They also began using the skeletons to practice fighting each other in single and group engagements. Hank found that the basic skeletons he could summon could be given orders to fight anyone who showed up and left in a spot without him having to concentrate and work them himself, but that they were mediocre at it unless he was controlling them. He talked to Alastor about it and he confirmed that just basic raised skeletons were so-so at fighting with melee weapons and absolutely pathetic with ranged weapons if left to their own devices.
They were hard to stop though because they were already dead so stabbing or cutting didn’t do much to them, you needed to knock them to pieces or crush their bones to put an end to them. Alaster warned him that a mage or cleric could also disrupt or dispel the necromantic energies inside them to either return them to a regular pile of bones or drive them from an area. Hank wished he could raise some zombies to compare them to but so far they had no fresh bodies around to try it on. He would either need to wait for some adventurers to come by and volunteer to join the ranks or ask Provoas if he could get some.
It was at this time that they felt the Darkness return to the Dungeon and enter the altar room below. Provoas had shielded the castle and the immediate area including the cave system that they were turning into the dungeon’s heart to try to avoid mystical detection by the forces of light, but they were inside them here and the emanations of Darkness and evil flowed quite strongly through the stone making Hank shiver in spite of himself.
They kept working until they had finished the 1st floor of the dungeon and were deciding where to put the hidden air shaft access to the 2nd floor when Hank had an idea, he decided that he would also use a few of the faux privy holes in the prisoner cells as access points. Let them just imagine what they are crawling through to get to me he thought with a chuckle. The second floor went even easier as he teleported stone blocks out of his way with ease. He would use his special abilities with the stone to cut it away and teleport it just a few feet to conserve his demonic essence reserves and then Alastor would finish teleporting the block out of the dungeon.
They had quickly realized that they weren’t going to be dropping the blocks into the scree pile in their current shape and breaking them up would be a useless time and effort waster. Instead they decided they would use them to build a decoy tower set somewhere high above the castle on the mountain passes opposite slope. Alastor was setting the blocks over onto a spot near the eventual building site for them to use later.
Thinking about it he decided he would use the old fairytale Rapunzel as his inspiration in setting this trap. He would build it with no door or ground access just one window high up at the tower’s top. He would make the window look out into the pass so that adventurers c
ould see it. He would then make the tower barely climbable so that even if they made it up the rock wall yet another dangerous climb awaited them.
He wasn’t sold on actually trying to get adventurers to climb up a rope of hair after all. But maybe he could get some big fierce territorial birds to nest at the top of the tower to swoop by and attack the climbers to add to the danger. Then he would have just one or two rooms at the top to house the honey trap. He would place some kind of a minion resembling a maiden there at the window to lure them in. Maybe a ghost or spirit once he began mastering more of the spells needed to summon them. Then he would have to have a room full of skeletons or other minions waiting behind her to do them in. Hmm, the skeletons didn’t fight that well maybe they shouldn’t even wait to attack until they climbed in after all that seemed way too sporting to Hank. They could just wait until the climber was close to the top and use poles or spears to cause them to fall to their deaths. Or maybe just drop rocks on them. As he thought about this idea it also occurred to him that having her look wealthy with a crown or jewels upon her might be even better so that greed might lure as many as lust, daring or curiosity.
He could really feel himself getting into the idea of building these real-life traps and obstacles and outsmarting the adventurers and heroes. Hank realized what he had been through so far and the unusual condition he was now in were changing him and not for the better. He had better try to find himself or he just might be signing up for Provoas ‘s plan after all.