Serenity kept his eyes on the unmoving figure of the undead man on the stretcher. “Tell me about him.”
Elder Lizven paused, then gave a nearly imperceptible nod. “I don’t know much. He arrived through a portal into the Nibili dome with a group of people. When they separated him from the group, the others went onto the Hirui dome and left him behind. He was receptive to commands but didn’t say anything and none of the people with him talked; we assume no one wanted to be known as the necromancer.”
“If there was one with them,” Serenity muttered. He took a good long look at the man; his Vital Affinity was clearly one of the relatives of Death, probably Undeath. That wasn’t surprising; it was what the runescript used to determine its targets and to some extent how it worked. Far more important was the fact that whatever he was, he probably wasn’t above Tier Two, yet there was very little mana or essence left in the monster core powering the rune.
To make matters worse, the man seemed to be a zombie, relatively poorly preserved flesh held up by bone. He wasn’t rotting, but it also didn’t look like he had any innate capacity to heal, given the injuries Serenity could see in the aura that covered his body. They were all covered by clothing, but that wasn’t enough to stop Serenity from noticing them.
Serenity frowned and tilted his head a little as he turned his attention back to Elder Lizven. “Is Nibili a long way from here? The rune is almost done for.”
Elder Lizven looked surprised at that. “Not too far; it’s just three days’ travel. The new runes aren’t much farther than that, yet; it takes time to make them.”
Serenity frowned at that. “See if you can find out what sort of monster core they used, then. This shouldn’t be nearly out of power yet unless they used a weak core; he’s not that powerful and the spell should be highly efficient.”
There was one possibility he hadn’t mentioned for why the rune might be more drained than expected and he didn’t like it: if the zombie was set up to be maintained by the necromancer and the necromancer abandoned the link. The circle would deal with it, but Serenity had to admit he wasn’t really surprised. That would line up all too well with raising zombies.
With the lack of information and interest in gathering it that Elder Lizven showed, Serenity suspected he wouldn’t find out anything more from her. He’d have to talk to the undead man himself. That could be dangerous; you never knew what a necromancer might have commanded an undead being to do. At the same time, you never knew what someone might do if they found themselves suddenly moved and separated from everyone they knew.
Serenity couldn’t predict the future; all he could do was prepare for it. In this case, that meant preparing for the zombie to react badly. There were several ways to deal with that; he could try to take control of the undead, overawe him, kill him, or simply paralyze him again. Containment was also an option; it was probably the one the dryads would be the most capable of.
Serenity sighed to himself. He didn’t like simply trapping another being, but it was probably best to give an example of what the dryads should do, which meant he shouldn’t use a spell that relied on his own Affinity. He’d prepare one in any case, but he’d try not to use it. “Please carry him into the circle and leave him there.”
Serenity watched as the stretcher bearers did as he’d asked. When they were done, Serenity walked over to the circle and made certain the man’s extremities were all within the warded area. They were, so he didn’t have to move them. He was about to move on to the next step when he realized he needed to slow down and explain things. “The circle has a few different things you can do when you use it. The one I’m going to start with is containment; it will prevent anyone who is undead from passing through the barrier, regardless of their actual Vital Affinity. As a word of warning, it won’t stop things that are simply dead or never lived from passing through the barriers. Anything that isn’t undead, including you or me, animated skeletons, and Spirits of Death will all be able to pass through.”
Serenity looked over at Elder Lizven. She nodded; the warning must have been clear enough. “You need to make certain that nothing crosses the inner lines when you want to use the containment. Depending on what it is, it can have all sorts of effects. Part of a zombie like this man would simply stop it from activating, but if your hand was across it, it might well kill the part of your hand that crossed it. Other things can have other effects, so just make sure it’s clear.”
Serenity expected another nod; he didn’t expect Elder Lizven’s question. “How do you know he’s a zombie?”
Serenity blinked. It wasn’t exactly a hard deduction. “He’s roughly Tier Two and he has deadly injuries that haven’t healed at all. With flesh on his bones and a lack of the scent of rot, that generally means a zombie; there are a couple of other options, but unless you’re a necromancer or Death Mage you probably don’t care about the fine distinctions. Zombie is a temporary state; it has to be maintained by a caster. A draugr will slowly heal, while zombies will not, though they can be repaired. They’re maintained…”
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Serenity cut himself off. He didn’t need to give the entire lecture on basic types of undead. “I can see the way the Death mana is flowing around him; there are injuries where it’s not flowing correctly on his side, left leg, and right arm.”
Serenity leaned over and pulled the zombie’s shirt out of the way. It clearly wasn’t what he’d worn when he was injured, because it was clean and uncut while the zombie’s side looked like it had been caved in with a maul or some other large impact. “This is likely his death wound; it’s certainly large enough and most likely means that he didn’t bleed out from his other injuries. Whoever raised him, and it does look like he was raised rather than climbing out of his grave on his own, was not a very good necromancer; they simply left his injuries as they were. That’s self-limiting; a zombie will generally not develop at all in such poor condition. In addition, it’s bad practice as anything but an emergency spell; a low-grade zombie is not a good combatant.”
Serenity didn’t like the way some necromancers would raise nearly anything and keep it until it fell apart without taking care of it. It gave necromancy a bad name for both the detritus it left behind and the poor fighting capacity of the marginal undead. Worse, it was wasteful and lazy and severely reduced the necromancers’ power. He’d taught better practices to the people he’d taught in the Tutorials, but he knew some of them wouldn’t bother to spend the extra time and effort to actually have good undead. Some people thought there were always more bodies and didn’t think about what would happen if you ran out of the power to raise them in the middle of a fight.
“You sound more upset by their lack of skill than by what they actually do.” Senkovar’s comment was unexpected. He sounded amused but not surprised.
Serenity paused for a moment, then chuckled in appreciation. It was good to have someone understand him sometimes. “Probably because I am. There’s little harm in raising someone who’s already dead as long as you didn’t help kill them. I’d prefer if people raised animals rather than people, but I know that’s …” Serenity couldn’t find the right word. For all that he’d raised people before, he wanted to respect whoever he raised.
Well, unless there was a good reason to do otherwise. He’d only raised one undead as Serenity: Stojan Aith, the former City Lord of the Necropolis, and he’d done it for a very good reason. If he hadn’t, she might have returned from the dead on her own and he couldn’t allow that. As soon as that was no longer a threat, he’d set her to rest properly.
Serenity didn’t need or want an undead army. He didn’t even need undead servitors; he had more than enough living people who wanted to work with him.
A glance at Elder Lizven told Serenity that unlike Senkovar, she wasn’t amused by his words. He probably shouldn’t have admitted he didn’t have an issue with raising the dead, but that was her problem, not his, and it didn’t seem likely to become his at any point in the near future.
“Back to the circle. Once you’ve made certain it’s clear, you come to this small circle near the edge and feed it mana. It’s fairly straightforward; there’s a longer ritual that can empower it more. You do have a copy of it, don’t you?” Serenity set his hand on the circle and pushed mana into it. He didn’t include an Affinity; the circle was designed for pure mana, manipulated with the Arcane Affinity as needed. It could handle other Affinities, but they were less efficient.
Elder Lizven nodded without saying anything. Good enough.
“It would be better if you’d managed to talk to him from the beginning, but I can take care of that now. The next step is to wake him up. While the ritual will work on someone who isn’t conscious, it isn’t designed to override people and it definitely isn’t designed to function with the runescript in the center.” Serenity wished he’d thought to disable the ritual when the runescript was there. He wasn’t certain what the reaction would be and he had no desire to test it.
Unfortunately, that would require modifications to both the runescript and the ritual circle; it might well require modifications to the ritual itself, at least when anyone other than Serenity cast it. He could use the simplified forms with very little loss of power because he didn’t need the help to shape his Intent; others would. He had no interest in spending the next two months or more on Berinath trying to make that change.
“It isn’t? We always had Echa’s rune in the center.” Elder Lizven sounded startled.
Serenity knew he’d included that warning in the packet. He’d realized it late but that was still earlier than he’d delivered the ritual information. She must not have read it in detail yet. “Your old ritual was based on Echa’s rune; you needed it in the circle. This ritual is complete. You don’t want anything that might interfere in it.”
He wanted to ask if she’d ever done another ritual and if she thought that adding random semi-related magical artifacts was a good idea, but that seemed a little too aggressive. He simply watched Elder Lizven until she acknowledged his statement with a bob of her head.
Serenity walked into the circle. “Use the longer activation if you aren’t skilled with rituals. Once it’s active, you can walk through it the same way I’m doing right now.”
He reached down and tugged the runescript clutched in the zombie’s hands. The zombie didn’t seem to want to let go, so Serenity tugged a little harder. It still didn’t let go, even though it was lifted a little into the air. He was afraid that if he tugged much harder than he already had, he might rip some of the fingers off the zombie; the man really wasn’t in good physical shape. Serenity knelt down and carefully peeled the zombie’s fingers away from the rune.
The next time he tugged, the rune came away easily. Serenity stepped back a step and watched to see how the zombie reacted.