Blaze walked up to the creature a bit slower than Serenity did. He had his right hand clutching his left forearm. A slight haze of magic in the area told Serenity that he was probably healing his left arm. “What was that?”
“I don’t know,” Serenity stated. He didn’t like that fact, either; it meant that the strange Affinity had done something unexpected when he lost concentration. The question was whether it was his lost concentration that was the problem or if it was really from the Affinity. “I’m going to cut it apart and find out.” He needed to do that quickly if he wanted to do it at all; the creature would dissolve quickly now that it was destroyed.
It wasn’t difficult; now that it was dead, there wasn’t anything protecting the creature. Unfortunately, all he found was a weirdly shaped layer of muscle and skin over a wooden center. There was a monster core in the wooden golem, but it was tainted with the odd feel of the black fire so Serenity dissolved it rather than collecting it.
“I think it was still a golem,” Blaze said as he rubbed his upper arm. “Just a weird one. You said the monsters form based on what you’re thinking of, right? I bet you lost focus, like during Intent-based casting.”
Serenity nodded. He couldn’t come up with anything any better. This was the reason he avoided Intent-based casting. Well, one of the reasons. It was all too easy to end up with an odd result that didn’t entirely make sense. Loss of concentration from being unexpectedly slapped wasn’t the only reason for that, of course; purity of Intent was hard to maintain.
He stared down at it; like any dungeon monster, it was already turning into air and wisps of raw unattuned mana. Serenity was fairly confident he saw some essence, as well, but like the mana it was colorless and easy to miss.
“I bet you’re right. If that’s true, then the Affinity didn’t actually do anything other than get used.” Serenity still wasn’t happy about having to fight it twice. “If I have to do this again, we’re going to end up fighting a single larger monster. I’m pretty sure I need to do it again, too; the weird flesh-and-wood golem left behind an Affinity stain. It’s a lot smaller, at least.”
“Right.” Blaze didn’t sound happy about it. He backed up near one of the walls - the one with the door in it this time, Serenity noticed. “Let me know when you’re ready.”
Blaze hadn’t even asked if Serenity was injured. Serenity wasn’t certain if he should be glad that Blaze was finally starting to trust his healing or if he should be worried because it showed how rattled Blaze was. He suspected that “worried” was the correct option.
Serenity looked up at his friend. “Are you all right?” He didn’t know what else to ask.
Blaze seemed a bit paler than normal as he nodded. “Yes, I got all of it. It’s nasty stuff; I hope that’s just because of how it was used.”
Serenity had no idea what Blaze was talking about.
“You didn’t feel it, where it tried to make you keep part of it by strengthening you?” Blaze shook his head. “No, that’s right, you wouldn’t have. It didn’t do that to you; it wanted to remove part of you first. You’re antithetical to the Night Fire.”
He seemed to relax a little. With a grin, blaze added jokingly, “It’s almost enough to make me want to worship you. Not quite, but almost.”
At least, Serenity hoped that was a joke. “Please don’t. It’s too late to stop Ita, hells, it was too late as soon as I decided to let her live, but I don’t want to be surrounded by worshipers.”
The smile fell off Blaze’s face at Serenity’s response. He looked like he started to say something, but instead he closed his eyes for a moment as he nodded. Serenity didn’t feel any resonance from his Detect Believer ability, so at least that hadn’t changed. He could still call Blaze a friend without having to worry about being considered a superior.
Serenity turned his attention back to the site of the battle. They were both fine; why did he feel like he’d been run through the wringer?
It was probably because of the injury earlier, the one that wouldn’t heal. Yeah, that had to be why. He was having a delayed reaction to the injury, or more likely to the stress of it not healing the way he expected.
“Are you ready? I’m going to try to make another wood golem, they seem to work well. This time it’ll be just one, probably about twice the size of the four before that thing,” Serenity waved at the wood-and-flesh golem but didn’t look up. “I don’t think it’ll be all that tough but I want to get it all in one attempt so that we don’t have to worry about the black fire again.”
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“I’m definitely in favor of not facing more Night Fire,” Blaze agreed. There was an odd note in his voice. Serenity didn’t even know where to start with that so he ignored it. “I’m ready.”
The last golem was just what Serenity expected; stronger than any they’d faced before but no worse than a Tier Two monster. Either of them could have handled it alone. Serenity didn’t even try to control it; he simply wanted it gone so that he could get on with the reason he was here.
Serenity gave one more sweep of the area; it was clear. Like the rest of A’Atla, there was now only the nexus itself overlaying the area, and that wasn’t enough to interfere with anything Serenity was likely to do. He could harness it if he needed to but it wouldn’t act on its own.
Unlike the black fire. Serenity still wasn’t certain what happened there, but the more he thought about it the more he thought that the summoner might not have made the decision to attack. It was hard to say; he’d gotten out the rod he used to direct the fire; once it was ready, he’d almost immediately attacked.
A rod that now seemed to be missing. Well, wasn’t that ominous.
Serenity didn’t think he’d seen it since he came back; now that he thought about it, he wasn’t certain he’d seen it for the entire fight with the summoner, either. He’d have to rerun the video later to figure it out. Perhaps it was consumed by the black fire?
Right now, it was time to raise the dead summoner.
“What does it take?” Blaze stood on the other side of the summoner’s corpse but looked at Serenity instead of the body. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you talk about how to actually raise the dead.”
“I didn’t,” Serenity admitted. “It was a great way to get attention in the Tutorial, but even then what I was doing wasn’t what I’m going to do here; I was animating bones in a very limited fashion for a planned demonstration, that’s not the same thing as actually raising the dead. I’ve actually only animated one body since I came back, er, since the Tutorial. That was on Tzintkra, to prevent a necromancer I killed from returning as undead.”
From what he’d learned since then, there was a decent possibility that Stojan Aith, the former City Lord of the Necropolis, might not have been able to return automatically. She was a dhampir and her connection to Life Affinity might have interfered. It was still a good precaution to take.
“I’ve threatened it a few times, but most people talk if you tell them the alternative is killing them and asking their corpse. It works; people believe you. Probably because you’re going to get what you want either way, it’s just how much extra work you have to do.” Serenity stared at the corpse. He didn’t want to see Blaze’s expression at his admission. “You don’t usually have to follow through with it. It wouldn’t have worked in this case, though; I don’t think he believed I could kill him. Even if he had, I don’t know if he had the chance to make his own decision.”
“Torture’s like that,” Blaze stated quietly. “It works best when you don’t have to follow through with it. If you can just get someone to talk at all, have a Truthseer in the room and let them talk. Lies are fine, the point is to get them talking. You’ll get the truth eventually, even if they try to work around it. Actually resorting to physical methods is generally slower.” Blaze paused. “You still have to know them if you’re to be believed. Trust me, there are all sorts of things a healer can do that you don’t want done.”
Serenity looked up at Blaze. His expression was nonexistent; to Serenity, it looked like he was looking at a well-made mask of his friend’s face instead of the face itself.
“There are better options, ways to get people to start talking…” Blaze shook his head as he trailed off. “That’s a discussion we don’t need to have; just know that I have options for you if you need them that work well and don’t require that. So. What do you need in order to raise his corpse as undead?”
Blaze was clearly trying to change the subject. Serenity was happy to let him.
“I don’t really need anything other than mana and skill,” Serenity informed Blaze. “There are things that can be used to help and they can be important if you don’t work with spellforms, but you know me. All my spells start with spellforms.”
A smile spread across Blaze’s face, almost as if he knew Serenity was shading the truth. He was, but it wasn’t significant. The vast majority of his spells were spellforms; it was his preferred technique, after all.
“This is part spellform and part mana control; they’re not that different, really. First, I need to sweep his body for residue.” Serenity held up a hand to stop Blaze from interrupting, whether he’d planned to or not. “Yes, I know I said it’s not necessary, but that’s outside the body. It is necessary inside. I have to have control.” Serenity suited his actions to his words.
“Then you saturate the body with Death mana. It’s usually a matter of jumping back and forth between checking for anything you need to clear out and the saturation; some people have protections against being raised, which means you have to take care of them in this step.” Serenity was careful as he completed the step. He checked everything twice, then performed a third check once the body was completely invested with Death magic. As far as he could tell, the black fire itself was the only protection against raising the body and he’d already taken care of that.
Serenity had no intention of raising a powerful undead servitor; he simply wanted someone who could talk. With that in mind, he used only as much essence as was necessary to hold everything together. It was more than he’d expected, at least twice as much as Stojan Aith required. Whoever this summoner was, he was badly damaged after he died.
“The best thing about using Death Affinity is that it preserves,” Serenity informed Blaze without looking up. “Whatever he knows now he’ll know when I de-animate him.”
When Serenity finally finished, the corpse just lay there. That was where they all started. “Stand up,” Serenity commanded. It was time to find out just how much was left in the corpse’s brain.