CHAPTER 31 - ANIMATED DISCOVERY

There were way too many of them to safely handle. I was growing more confident by the minute, both in my spells and my fighting skills. But I counted eleven of the things approaching now. It was time to get clear, regroup, and find a new strategy.

I ordered the zombies to withdraw, but they were locked in melee combat with a pair of skeletons. It wasn’t simple for them to just disconnect themselves. I dropped a Drain on the one facing Rosie, and it died on the spot. My zombie had damaged the skeleton enough that the spell finished it off. That allowed Rosie to smash the one still fighting Guildenstern and free them both up to withdraw.

Which was good, because the second casting of Drain left me staggered. I couldn’t cast a third time if my life depended on it. I backed up, using my zombies as cover from the oncoming monsters.

One skeleton sidestepped the zombies, coming danger close to me. I blocked its first blow with the axe haft, but it was too near to get in a good swing. That left me fully on the defensive, and weak as I felt from casting the spells, it was all I could do to keep those bone hands away from my neck!

Hope shot past my legs, grabbed the skeleton by a tibia, and yanked the bone free. Suddenly hopping around with only one good foot, it was an easy kill—I swung for the bases with my axe and knocked its head clean off.

That was the only one still close enough to be a threat. The others had been too slow to catch us before we were back under the protective radius of the gate. I set all three undead into guard mode, just in case of weirdness. The skeletons might not be able to get me there, but they weren’t the only threats. Then I walked my way back to the fence where my pack rested and slumped down on the grass beside my bag, utterly exhausted.

This wasn’t working. I mean, it was, but I’d killed—counted up the piles of bones—eight of the things now, not counting the one on the hillside earlier. There were tons more of them, too many to count while they were all moving around. I fished the three black crystals I’d gotten from my pocket and jostled them in my hand. They might help. Come to think of it, the other five might, too.

“Hope! Come here, girl,” I said. The bone dog rushed over, bone tail wagging. “I have a special mission for you. I want you to grab a skull from one of the skeletons we killed.”

She cocked her head at an angle and looked at me quizzically. It was a complex instruction, to be fair. Maybe a mental command would work better? I glanced out into the field and focused on the nearest pile of bones, my gaze centered on the skull. I envisioned that skull in my mind’s eye, then sent that visual to Hope, with the command, “Fetch!”

The dog took off like she was shot from a cannon. Fetch must have been one of her favorite games, back when she was alive, because she tore up the grass racing to obey. She rushed in, dove into the pile of bones, and came up with the skull in her boney jaws, then raced back toward me. Once she was in front of me again, Hope plunked the skull down beside me and sat on her haunches, the image of a proud canine.

“Good girl, Hope. Good dog,” I told her.

I had no idea if this was going to work. I needed to touch their remains to get a crystal. Was touching a skull enough, if it was separated from the rest of the body? Only one way to find out. I reached out, gingerly but hopefully, and touched the skull with my fingertips.

A small, clear crystal appeared in my hand. “Yes!”

That made everything a lot easier.

There were four more piles of bones to loot. I sent Hope at one of them after another. The skeletons just ignored her. I wasn’t sure if it was because she was like them, wasn’t bothering them, or if they just recognized she was too darn fast for them to catch. Whatever the case, they let her be, and ambled off to wander aimlessly as far from the gates as they could get.

One by one, she brought me the skulls, and each time I tapped them for a crystal. I ended up with four more black stones, so I had seven black and one clear unidentified crystal to figure out.

Magical Stones

Point 1: Black Stone (Tier 3) - Control Undead

Point 2: Clear Stone (Tier 2) - Agility

Point 3: Black Stone (Tier 2) - Drain Life

Point 4: X

Point 5: X

Spare Stones

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Black: Heal Undead, Animate Dead, Nightvision, Unknown x7

Green: Entangle (Tier 2), Entangle

Clear: Will x2, Unknown (Tier 2), Strength (Tier 2), Unknown

My problem was, I really didn’t want to lose any of my spells, but taking stones out risked that. Nonetheless, I needed to do it. Worse, I knew precisely which spell I had to take out. That Agility had saved my life a stack of times, but of the three stones I had embedded, it was the weakest link. I needed more Will so I could cast more spells. I needed to get Heal Undead socketed so I could heal my zombies, both of which were looking ragged as hell now. And that Animate Dead spell would be awesome, too.

Doctor Carver had used his to raise dead bodies, and I had a bunch of dead skeletons over there. If that let me increase the size of my fighting force, it would make a huge difference.

I crossed my fingers and removed the Agility stone.

It didn’t shatter. I heaved a huge sigh of relief at that. It was one thing to recognize I needed more options, another to lose something that had kept me alive over and again. But now I had a free socket. It was time to test the stones I’d just obtained.

I figured I’d check the black crystals first. Those were the ones most apt to help me in the long run, so that was where I’d start. I slotted the first—Heal Undead! Now I had two of the things. I quickly pulled the second one from my pocket and held it in my hand. It merged with the other, forming a tier two Heal Undead spell.

That done, I cast it on Rosencrantz.

My zombie had taken a beating for me on so many occasions. His left arm was barely still attached. His ribs were half flayed open. His right leg was savaged, and his back was a mess from getting tossed across the room by the demon bear. As I cast the spell, all of those injuries vanished. Even the rot and decay shrank back, healing itself so he looked…well, he was clearly still dead, absolutely still a zombie, but he wasn’t quite as offensive as he’d been thirty seconds earlier. I’d take that as a win.

I’d had enough time to recover since my Drain spells, so I cast the Heal a second time, this time on Guildenstern. Like Rosie, he’d been through the wringer for the last couple of days, and he had all the wounds to show it. Just as before, the spell undid all of that, healing his wounds and making him look basically as good as new. He was upwind, so I could tell he even smelled better.

The spells took a lot out of me, though. I rested for a bit, waiting for the exhaustion to fade like it always did. Getting a Will stone embedded was really going to be helpful, but this Heal spell was, too. So many choices, and too damned few spots! I crossed my fingers that the other stones included something to rank up my Control Undead spell. I needed to get that to tier four so I could add a fourth power.

Once I was feeling more myself, I cast the Heal Undead spell on Hope, too. She wasn’t too banged up, being fast enough to avoid most injuries. But she’d taken a few blows, and I wanted to make sure she was in the best shape possible before I risked taking the Heal Undead stone out. I winced as I removed it, but it didn’t break, either. Phew!

Time to check more stones.

The next black stone was another Control Undead. Finally! Now I just needed three more of the things. I glanced out over the cemetery. With all the undead out there, I was sure there’d be enough of the stones to rank me up. I just needed to kill a lot more skeletons first.

I quickly went through the others. The next was Darkness, which sounded interesting, especially if I coupled it with Nightvision. Sounded like the basis for some sort of rogue or assassin build, if I were looking at things from a gaming perspective like Alfred talked about. Then I got an Augment Undead—a nice replacement for the one which broke.

Next up was something called Shadow Walk. It would let me become a shadow-like figure, semi-intangible and mostly invisible in darkness. Not very effective in broad daylight, but it could be useful for slipping into someplace. I popped it back and tried the next stone, which was Harm—like, the opposite of Heal. It would do damage to someone within a short distance. More damage than Drain Life, from the looks of what it was telling me, although my tier two Drain did about the same. The main difference was that Drain Life also healed me, and Harm would not. Still, might be useful.

I took it out and socketed the last stone. Another lucky find this time—a second Animate Dead. I fished into my pocket and pulled out the one I’d already identified, and held it in my hand. It merged with the first, and now I had a tier two Animate Dead embedded alongside my Control Undead. That was cool. I needed to experiment with that some, but first, I had one last crystal to check. I gingerly popped out the Animate spell, and then added the unidentified clear stone, which came back with Agility.

Another great find! If I gathered a few more of those, I could get another tier three stone! But it had to come out, for the time being. I needed to experiment with the Animate spell, first. I quickly removed the Agility crystal and heard a pinging sound as it popped into my palm. Glancing down, I saw the stone had broken.

“Shit!” I swore, glaring at the shards. That sucked! I’d never had one shatter during the initial ID before. If I was going to lose stones when I just checked them, that made the whole process much more fraught.

Still, I was in a lot better shape than I had been.

Magical Stones

Point 1: Black Stone (Tier 3) - Control Undead

Point 2: Black Stone (Tier 2) - Animate Dead

Point 3: Black Stone (Tier 2) - Drain Life

Point 4: X

Point 5: X

Spare Stones

Black: Heal Undead (Tier 2), Nightvision, Darkness, Augment Undead, Control Undead, Shadow Walk, Harm

Green: Entangle (Tier 2), Entangle

Clear: Will (Tier 2), Strength (Tier 2), Agility (Tier 2)

I stood back up and walked partway to the nearest pile of broken bones. Oops—I still needed the skull. Which one was for this skeleton? It was the first one Hope had brought over, so I grabbed the skull and rolled it the rest of the way to the bone pile. Then I gathered my focus, and cast the Animate Dead spell.

Black fire shot from my outstretched hand, wreathing itself around the bones, filling them with new life. They stitched themselves back together in front of my eyes, and moments later there was a new skeleton standing there—but this one was under my control!

“Okay,” I said, ordering the skeleton to march closer to me. “Now, it’s time to get back to work.”