Poking the thickish but almost prehensile dragon tail with her finger, Reeanth scowled. “What part of me not wanting a ‘convenient handle’ did you not understand, my lord? Am I to be picked up and hurled by the first troll or ogre that comes my way?”
Narrowing my eyes at the disparagement of my creation, I sighed. “Fine, you’re right. I got a bit carried away. But it’s fun! Come here! When’s the last time you have some fun?” Taking her hand and putting it on the clone’s forehead, I put my hand on top of hers and let my flesh sorcery communicate with the golem while taking directions from Reeanth, sort of acting as an interface between her and I and the golem. “Oh, wait!” Taking a quick moment, I extended my consciousness to real-Reaanth and fixed her allergies to head off potential problems. “Ok, now. Imagine what you want, how you want to look, how you want to be, pretty much anything at all. The golem has a whole bunch of different kinds of DNA to choose from so go crazy! Literally, I can put you back to normal at any time.”
With less hesitation than I expected, Reeanth’s focused mind with the assistance of my abilities caused a wave of change to ripple out over the clone. The tail faded back into the tailbone as the dark scales and everything went away until it was baseline clone Reeanth on the table, a veritable outside copy of real-Reeanth as if nothing had changed at all. “Well, that’s lame.” My comment earned me a quick glare which I simply shrugged at. A moment later, the composition of Reeanth’s skin and hair morphed into minotaur skin and hair, granting the body a great degree of magical resistance. The bones were tuned to be dwarven in nature but the marrow within was altered to be dragon marrow. My vassal showed a lot more consideration for her work than I ever expected as she slowly altered her muscles, ligaments, and tendons to be draconic in nature. Before she got started on the organs, I stopped her.
“Pause right here. I’m guessing you want to make the rest of the innards mostly draconic, right?” She nodded at my assumption. “Ok, I’ll take over for this part.” I worked as I talked, giving updates as we went along. “Giving you a dragon stomach will give you odd hunger cravings, like for the flesh of pretty much anything living and maybe for precious metals, so gotta tune that part down. Gotta alter the esophagus a bit so that it is more durable than normal cause dragon stomach acid is insanely powerful, the back muscles may try to instinctively fly even though there are no wings so let’s alter the innate muscle memory here.”
Moving slowly and carefully from system to system, I paid special attention to the heart and lungs, making sure that we wouldn’t have the problem that Jamal had back when he carelessly threw a dragon’s heart into a human body, not prepared at all for the fact that that’s like putting a rocket engine on a kid’s tonka truck. The lungs were several times more efficient than a humans which would certainly grant superhuman endurance and the brain itself had to have some rewiring done. First, to put all of the connections of the body where they should go but also to make sure that the new organs did not send out discordant signals to the brain.
The eyes were easy, adding the ability to slightly morph into a slit and bring the draconic rods and cones to bear would give Reeanth on-demand dragon vision. And last but not least, I altered the hormones in her brain to make it so that any wound Reeanth sustained would not be healed with scar tissue but with stem cells so that her function would never decrease, meaning that she could always recover from any kind of wound as long as she didn’t die. Strokes and ligament tears, spinal breaks and knee blowouts, given time she would recover back to full strength.
As the process drew to a close, Kraken peeked through my magical senses to double check my work. [Looking good so far . . . looks like a sixty percent increase in weight but a three hundred percent increase in strength resulting in making a body a little over twice as strong and fast as the original. Test driving would be the real make it or break it and it doesn’t really look different from her original schema. Ok, yup, good neuron change there, allowing for a new set of pathways to update muscle memory at will.] After making a bunch of studious ‘hmmm’ noises, Kraken highlighted a couple parts of the clone body for me. [I bet if you design the dragonish parts a bit better you’ll make it easier for her soul to channel fire magic. See right there?]
The tendons and muscles of the clone body formed an incomplete circuit in the body. The dwarven bones were interrupting the overall flow of the design. Making note of it, I carefully wove thin trails of dragon in intricate runes inside and around the dwarven bone so that there were no breaking points in her body for the magic to flow. [Perfect!] Kraken exclaimed. [If I’m right, then she may even be able to use dragon fire itself, especially if you can get her to eat a bit of that lizard. Wizards and mages are more body dependent than sorcerers as a sorcerer’s power is more rooted in the soul than any other magic user.]
Taking another liberty just because I could, I put thin caps of crystal mana batteries underneath her humeruses and on the backside of her sternum as emergency backups. Following the same concept, I plated the backsides of bones with large-ish surfaces areas with crystal mana battery plating. With another tweak or two, I put runes of impact resistance as well as growth on there so that if necessary, the desire for the batteries allow them to grow bit by bit. Overall, this would help prevent mana overflow issues as well as double her mana capacity.
Going over the clone body for the last time even as I scoffed at Reeanth’s lack of adventure, the test project was finished. “Whew, fuckin’ damn good job if I do say so myself! Mighty fine work for an up and coming sorcerer!” Dusting my shoulder off with a bit of pride, I downed a mug of conjured water and a Centauri ration cube. I looked at Reeanth’s mocking expression and then back at the clone body. “What? It looks just like you!” Scanning it again, I turned back to Reeanth. “What?”
“I’m thinking my lord!” Staring intently at prone form in front of us, Reeanth walked to the foot of the table and picked up a foot. Slowly examining every inch, she began moving up, running her fingers over it as tiny bits of mana sparked where she touched it. Finishing her look-see, she sat down and sighed. “Is there nothing else we can do my lord? Am I simply to be what you call a ‘meatshield’ or ‘tank’ for you?”
“No, the point here was to give you an upgrade, but only if you wanted it,” I answered. Gesturing at the body, I slapped the thigh. “I don’t know what your scans told you, but any fire magic would be seriously enhanced due to the fire dragon nature of this body. And the minotaur enhancements mean any kind of wizard fight would be heavily in your favor. Shit, you can try it out and if you don’t like I can put you back the way you are in no time.”
“I need to think on this, my lord. This decision should not be made lightly.” Turning on a heel, Reeanth solemnly walked out.
[What crawled up her butt?] I thought at Kraken. [What part of ‘I can put you back’ doesn’t she understand?]
[The Centauri take great pride in their genetic recombination treatments. They went from five foot weaklings to mini-giants with inherent magic in one fell stroke, and now you’re showing the discrepancies of their decisions. Their treatments removed any chance of someone being born with sorcery, removed their chances of having immense power so that most of them could have adequate power.]
Putting the flesh golem sections back together, I decided to take a step back with the body enhancements. Looking over at the dragonscale armor that I’d made for Acantha, I quickly made another set of similar armors for Reeanth but in her size, one with runed bone, another with runed bone with minotaur leather coverings and then the dragonscale for the last one. There was no point in replacing Reeanth’s mana-maul so I decided against new weaponry for her but I did fill a leather pouch up with flash-bang pebbles and planttrop seeds. Now that my morning work was finished, I rolled the grey refrigerator sized mass of flesh back to the corner of the Lab. After taking a few seconds to make sure that the plans for the Reeanth-clone body were still saved in the genetic storage, I headed back to the clearing to check on my non-human compadres.
What greeted me was a bit of a shock as I walked outside into the crisp morning air. Johnny, Reeanth, Meliad, Lyra, Everest, Spot and Fuzzy were all relaxing either in the clearing in front of the Hole or in the spaces between the trees ringing the clearing. Acantha was at the center of the gathering, animatedly talking as a floating hologram made up of different colored flames morphed in front of everyone.
“My lord!”
“Master!”
“Guar-dian.”
Spot’s excited greeting slammed me into the ground, drowning out the rest of the surprised greetings. By the time I’d gotten my mutt off of me and he flopped on the ground to deign to allow me to give him tummy rubs, the rest of the crew started peppering me with questions. The one that grabbed my attention first was from Johnny. “Dude! Have you ever seen a zombie fortress before?!”
If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
Ignoring the rest of the questions, I honed in on my cultivator friend. “Uh . . . what?” My eyes came to rest on the hologram sitting above Acantha’s hand. Ice blue flames formed a pretty good visual of the windswept Arctic landscape, but the scary parts were what towered over the miles of ice. Deeper blue flames skewed upwards in a mad twist of architecture that almost hurt to look at, hooks and spires and sheer walls that jutted out without logic formed a horrifying palace of ice and death. Skulls and bones were either carved or grown out of the ice making up the fortress and there were even small yellow flame incarnations of zombies. As I stared at the hologram, Acantha noticed me trying to parse out the details and zoomed in. Every horizontal surface was covered in frozen undead, everything from human to polar bear and even some skeletal structures that I didn’t recognize.
“Are those?” I stuttered, peering even closer. “Are those dragons? Skeletal dragons and fuckin’ dinosaurs too? And what are those?”
“Bone-topi! What octopi would like if they had bones and were alive again!” I couldn’t stand the look of excitement on Johnny’s face. “And look! Zombie giants and zombie wolves! Holy cow! Your new hottie can make her fire look like anything!”
Acantha blushed at Johnny’s gushing, even as he didn’t realize that he was giving her a compliment. “Where did you get this? Is this accurate, as in real time or a snapshot of a while ago?”
“I did prepare for this. Sybella told me of your goals and I gathered sufficient intelligence to assist you. My affinities were part of the reason that I was chosen to be a suitable stand-in for your brother and my preparations were what clinched it. The undead fear fire for its purifying nature and I have that in abundance.” Taking a deep breath, Acantha waved her hand through the floating flames. “This was current as of two of your weeks ago, and that fortress is like nothing this planet has ever seen before. It’s at least four times larger than the pyramid structures in Egypt and made directly from the glacial ice and frozen bedrock of the Arctic. Assaulting such a position without a team of fire drakes or fire elementals would be the definition of insanity.”
I raised one eyebrow. “What about an army of sunstone golems with the power of a desert at their beck and call?”
“I, uh, what? You mean to say that-”
“Yup. I have an army of sunstone golems out in the desert.” I couldn’t help but gloat a bit. “And I can make a couple more armies in a month or two.”
“It’s too dangerous, master! You can’t go! The forest needs you here!” Lyra and Meliad were almost in sync with their plea. Everest reached forward and gently pulled them back.
Hun-gry. Ones. Need. To. Die.”
“Thank you Everest for that stony endorsement.” The tension in the air was a bit strained. The forest ladies were instinctively scared of the Hungry Ones even as Everest understood the rock-hard determination I had to get rid of them. Johnny could barely hold his excitement in and Reeanth was still frowning, which hadn’t changed from our conversation earlier about the clone body, and Acantha simply looked intrigued. My guess is that she was wondering what the hell she’d gotten herself into and at the same time, did the crazy sorcerer with a hidden golem army stand a chance against this?
“Since the fuckin’ cat is out of the bag, might as well get this planning session started. Acantha, you have the floor. Tell us everything you know.” Taking a step back, I walked over and propped myself up against Spot who moved his head so that I could scratch behind his ears. Fuzzy lay next to us and nudged me with his nose, wanting some attention as well, which I obliged with a muzzle scratch.
“The undead known as the Hungry Ones come in as many flavors as the Hive. The most basic of them are simply reanimated corpses, fused with mana and a hunger that drives them to attack anything with a pulse. Some of the usual favorites used as shock troops are the larger creatures who’s bulk can be used at battering rams or to disrupt formations. It’s important to note that the undead do NOT tire and they do NOT need to rest. They also operate on what is called ‘mana-vision’. Their eyes don’t work but they can sense life, warmth, and mana without error.”
“Do they do crazy shit like Left for Dead?” Johnny asked. “We got like spitters and banshees and shit?”
Acantha’s puzzled look prompted me. “Ignore him. It’s a video game from before.”
“If I understand correctly,” she mused. “You’re asking if there are special kinds of undead?” When we both nodded, she laughed. “Of course! The vilest of the bunch are completely rotten on the inside and split apart easily when attacked, spraying disease and corruption from every orifice and wound. Some of them are experiments like devourers, who eat fresh bodies and spew spiked bones from eye sockets or mouths, growing new limbs to fight from all directions. My least favorite are the bone warriors, magically enhanced skeletons that are infused with incredible amounts of mana. As they do not have any form of soft organics such as muscles or tendons to assist with movement, the vast amounts of mana do the work.”
“Which means that the skeletons will be nigh indestructible, hard to burn and even harder to break,” Reeanth added with a scowl. “If left alone for a couple centuries, it is said that some skeleton warriors may even gather enough mana to become sentient, growing in power to be skeleton mages, wielders of death and raisers of the dead.”
“That is correct, my fellow vassal,” Acantha agreed with a smile. “Now what your Norse mythology called ‘Draugr’, we call ‘Draugen’ but the differences are minor. They are not as hardy as bone warriors but they are more powerful overall. Think of them as empowered zombies but without being as fleshy. They are mummified corpses of warriors imbued with spirits of the dead that hate the living. Equipped with the skills that the body had while it was alive, Draugen can go toe to toe with Centauri warriors without tiring.”
Each part of the lecture came to life or maybe unlife thanks to Acantha’s skill with her flames, flashing between ghosts, poltergeists, exploding skeleton bird bombs, zombie behemoths, and liches. Every new picture made my butthole pucker just a bit tighter as I kept mentally adding how many damn sunstone golems I’d need to make to freaking annihilate what I’m now calling the Northern Fortress. So far, I have gotten up to at least a thousand basic soldier golems which means twenty elemental sergeants to command them, which comes out to about another two months of prep . . .
“Hey!” Johnny called out, interrupting my calculation. “You’re missing the best part!”
The flaming hologram was now showing a massive portal darker than Satan’s butthole, carved out of a stone so black that it appeared to suck in all of the light around it. Green wispy light that evoked the feeling of sickness radiated from the outside of the portal around its frame and was pulled into the blackness.
“The key to the hordes lies with their very own portal system that allows for constant reinforcements. Any assault on the area will result in this becoming active and spewing uncounted enemies to drown attackers with sheer numbers. We believe that it is drawing power from the Aurora Borealis which is active every twelve hours. From what we’ve detected, the Aurora Borealis is even more active now that the Veil is rent and mana with Chaos from outside the atmosphere is battling with Earth’s natural magnetosphere and ionosphere.” The pretty northern lights simulacrum exploded into existence over the holographic portal, which sucked it in and spewed out the flaming mini-zombies for us to see. Acantha continued as the lights vanished. “This means our best shot of a successful assault would be right as the power supply for the portal is waning.”
********
After the presentation from hell, I grabbed Acantha and Spot and took all three of us to Sunstone Castle. After telling Spot to go check in on what I assumed was his litter, I gave my new partner the grand tour. Kraken assisted me in the background, pointing out various enchantments and systems we had in place so I could elaborate for her. Placing Gungnir with Kraken inside the golem pedestal, checked in on the giant batteries buried below the fortifications. The overall charge was hovering around eighty percent at the moment which was good enough for now since I had Kraken devote all of the available resources towards making the additions to the golem army. Setting aside enough basic soldier golems to make up the required number of commanding elementals, I got busy summoning earth elementals and placing them inside their sunstone bodies. I had Kraken overlay the basic set of instructions to which he easily set into the sunstone bodies.
“This is INCREDIBLE!” Acantha gasped, running around and looking at everything. “Are these runes INSIDE of the bricks themselves? And it’s not even hot in here even though this is the desert and you’re harnessing heat and light for power?!” Turning to me, she saw me point out one of the windows. Rushing over, she watched with her mouth wide open as sunstone golems were slowly conjured by the dozen, each body part slowly coming into view as the castle via Kraken was directing the conjuration process. “You’re conjuring them? Are you a sorcerer? But what kind of a sorcerer would be able to do this? Not just an earth sorcerer . . .”
[Might as well come clean. She’s gonna figure it out eventually but you should get an oath to protect yourself.] Heeding my spirit familiar’s advice, I waited until Acantha was done talking to herself.
“My secrets are worth more than your life,” I said softly as Acantha turned to bombard me with more questions. Gungnir glowed brightly in its pedestal as I reached over and gripped it, power pouring into me as I joined the circuit. “I will need a magically binding oath that you will not ever betray to your clan what you learn from me or about me while you’re here.”
Acantha shivered as she looked around at the majesty of the Yggdrasil baobab tree as it brimmed with raw power, felt the bone deep hum of the solar panel rune work keeping the condensed heat and light at bay, the increasing number of golems being grown piece by conjured piece with their giant stone axes and hammers at their feet. “I would give my life to learn secrets such as this.” Pulling an athame from her calf sheath, she lightly cut her palm, smearing it once across her forehead, once across her neck, and twice across the bare skin of her barely exposed chest. “May my flames burn the knowledge from my head and the secrets from my heart if I ever betray what I learn from you. May my fire carve out my throat if I dare utter betrayal in voice or spirit. May my lungs be naught but ash if I breathe what I have learned.”
Crimson fire erupted from the smeared blood as it ran down the streaks across her head, neck, and chest. The flames increased in intensity as they moved downwards, evaporating the blood until the only spot burning was the point just above her sternum. For a moment, it looked like she was going to be drilled through by her own flames and then they abruptly went out and in its place was a small blood red tattoo of a flaming knife pointing upwards at her neck. Fainting where she stood, I was so surprised that I didn’t even catch her.
[I’d say that’s pretty binding, boss,] Kraken remarked. [Her magic is now actually linked to her brain, throat, heart, and lungs and one wrong action will cause her to go up in some pretty hellish flames. Shit.]
“Maybe I should’ve gone to school and let Andy mind Earth for a while,” I muttered, kneeling down to examine Acantha’s prone form. Poking her with a finger, she groaned and sat up, cursing under her breath. “None of that now,” I assured her, pushing her back down as I forced a bit of healing magic into her to block the pain. “Your oath is plenty good enough for me, a bit over enthusiastic but I’ll take it.”
“How, how did you do this? All of this?”
“Well, it all started about the time magic came to town.”