“Now settle down, the both of you.” Master Clavus coughed and sat down on a nearby chair. “For several weeks now I have deemed you ready to work on your own. You have great skill in both the production and selling of alchemical creations, whether they be for health or harm. I believe you are ready.”
“And you Arthur, one of the most talented students I have ever had the privilege of teaching. Your skill and curiosity of the art of alchemy is practically unmatched for your age and experience. I believe you are ready.”
“But what about this flesh golem manual?” Aurelio pointed to the folder containing the papers regarding the flesh golem. “You don’t actually expect us to create such an abomination, do you?”
“If you have no interest in the manual then just give it to Arthur, I can find something else to give to you.” Master Clavus said with a small frown. It wasn’t the reaction he was expecting from his apprentice.
“That isn’t why I am asking. Is it even legal to create such a thing? I mean this thing is literally made from the flesh of mortals sewn together onto a mortal skeleton. Isn’t this a sort of necromancy?” The worry and fear was now apparent in Aurelio’s voice.
Necromancy as Arthur learned while not illegal in the kingdom, the empire, and a majority of the lesser countries and city states, was still shunned and feared by many of their citizens.
Not only that but it was quite easy to identify a necromancer by the pale flesh like that of a corpse, and the ink black veins where black blood now flowed. Most ‘living’ necromancers would reside in their own heavily defended towers or spires where the only company they would find was that of their undead minions and other necromancers they share the tower with.
But the worst part was that a necromancer would live forever or until they were slain. This left them with a lot of time to think about their lives prior to gaining their immortality, and in some rarer cases where the former mortal was evil in nature, a twisted desire to harm mortals wherever they may be.
To put it simply, necromancy had a lot of baggage attached to it.
By this time Arthur had placed the papers he held back into the folder and was paying attention to the conversation between his master and fellow apprentice.
“Would learning such magic not make us necromancers? I have no wishes to ever become one. The cost is far too great.” Aurelio looked to his teacher and master waiting for an answer.
“This is not necromancy, it is a discipline that combines both alchemy and enchanting, a discipline most widely known as golemancy. The creation and maintenance of golems. It has been something that I for a long time have wished to learn, but my old age hinders me.”
“And so you wish for us to try to succeed where you failed.” Arthur said, finally joining the conversation. “Do you know how large the golem needs to be and how much material we will require to actually make it?”
“You can’t actually be considering it! What would everyone think if they saw such a monstrosity walking down the streets!?” Aurelio looked at Arthur as if he was a madman.
“I am considering it, because it might be useful in helping people. And just because it looks hideous doesn’t mean you can’t cover it up with armor, or clothes.”
“But would be sowing flesh harvested from mortals together. Does that not make you uncomfortable?”
“That would depend on where the flesh comes from. I have encountered many people, specifically bandits and criminals that I would have no second thoughts harvesting their flesh for such purposes.”
Aurelio looked at Arthur appalled by his answer, so he turned back to Master Clavus and said “I have no interest in such magic, I would prefer almost anything else.”
With a loud sigh Master Clavus stood up and motioned his distraught apprentice to follow him. “Very well, I prepared something else just in case neither of you were interested.”
While his teacher and fellow apprentice left the room Arthur took a seat at the workstation and started looking through all papers for the flesh golem. The first half of the papers was what Master Clavus recovered from the ancient ruins, the second half was his own personal notes regarding his research into either converting the divine magic into arcane or mimicking the divine with arcane.
Each paper was labelled with a time and date, but as they went on the dates became less and less frequent until the last paper that had the date of The Seventh of Slate 1147 Of The Third Era, about a year prior.
Stolen story; please report.
It was an experiment attempting to convert a small portion of the magic into arcane with a small amount of success. A portion of the runes he worked with functioned with arcane magic as its base.
But progress had been slow from the start and as time went on it only got slower, the progress Master Clavus made was no more than five percent than what was needed to create a fully functional flesh golem, and that was an optimistic estimation.
‘This is a good start. I have a lot more free time than Master Clavus had when he first started studying this and a lot less responsibility. So I should be able to put more time and effort into this than he could.’
Arthur smiled and placed the folder along with its papers into his dimensional bag for safe keeping. Tonight he would start studying the manual properly when no one could disturb him.
Soon Master Clavus returned with Aurelio behind him holding a deep blue gemstone not unlike the one encrusted into his magic amulet.
“I suppose you are happy with the gift I have given you Arthur?” Master Clavus asked Arthur who then nodded. “Good, I did have another deep blue mana stone for you as well just in case, but I am happy you have chosen to continue my work.”
Master Clavus then turned to Aurelio and presented a document. “But before you go I am expecting you to sign this.”
“What is it?” Aurelio looked the document up and down, he could feel dormant magic through the whole thing.
“This is what is called an oath of silence. When you sign this you need to swear that you will not tell anyone of what you have witnessed here today. And if for any reason you do tell anyone I will know.” Master Clavus handed Aurelio a quill and an ink pot with his other hand.
“So this won’t kill me like in the stories.” Aurelio sighed, in old stories similar oaths would kill the sigher if they spoke what they swore to keep secret.
“No it will not, not this one anyways. I can’t afford to buy something as expensive as that on a whim when I might not use it. So consider yourself lucky.”
With an audible gulp Aurelio swore that he would not tell anyone of the flesh golem manual and signed the document. As he did a small wisp of blue magic floated out from the document and into his chest right towards his heart. Aurelio gasped and clutched where the wisp had entered his chest.
“There, now we will not have any complications from this exchange.” Master Clavus smiled as the Oath of Silence lost its magic hue.
“And since neither of you are my apprentice anymore I will be expecting you to find somewhere else to stay.”
“Is there anything for sale in the city within the budget of a novice alchemist?” Arthur asked while he started counting up all the coins he had earned throughout his apprenticeship and mercenary jobs, totaling to seven gold, thirteen silver and five copper pieces.
“With that recent attack on the southern district prices became dirt cheap, although you might need to rebuild the property as many were burnt down.” Aurelio piped up, recalling his time searching for a home. “There is a bank in the southern district right next to the inner city wall where you can actually buy them.
“Thank you Aurelio, I’ll go do that as soon as I collect all my things.” Arthur then turned to Mr. Clavus. “And thank you sir for teaching me everything I know of alchemy.”
Mr. Clavus smiled and gave a small laugh. “No need to call me sir Arthur, I am no knight. Georgius is fine as you are now a full fledged alchemist now.”
“Of course Georgius, hopefully we will meet again and I can tell you of my success with the golem.” Arthur smiled and turned to leave, but he stopped when Georgius spoke again.
“If you don’t find anyone willing to buy your wares you can always join the alchemy club within the guild. They will buy anything you make and help you further with your training if you need it.”
*********
After Arthur had collected all his things that he did not keep in his dimensional bag at all times it was at least ninety percent full. ‘I should probably get rid of those old weapons I took from the bandits. When I find a blacksmith I’ll offer them to him.’
Arthur’s first objective was to find the bank that Aurelio spoke about. So he immediately made his way towards where he described it. While he was walking towards it he did find a blacksmith, a rough looking dwarven man was hammering a hot blade on an anvil.
Arthur casually approached the man who after quickly acknowledging him said “Just a moment.” After about fifteen minutes of waiting the dwarf finished with what he was doing and put down his hammer and the blade.
“What can I help you with?” The dwarf asked, clearing the fog from the goggles he wore.
“Do you buy old used weapons?” Arthur reached into his bag and pulled out one of the weapons he took from a bandit.
The dwarf looked over the weapon for about only a second before answering. “This thing is crap, the only thing of value here is the material.”
“That is perfectly fine. I don’t particularly care for what they are worth, I just want to be rid of them.” Arthur reached into his bag and pulled out all the weapons aside from the spear and longsword he used.
A pile of at least fifty weapons consisting of everything from clubs to war hammers, and swords to axes was left on the ground. The dwarf who did not show any surprise from the dimensional bags first use was now very surprised.
“By Nymbus, how many other weapons do you have in there?”
“Just the two that I am currently using. So how much would all these be worth?”
“If you would give me about half an hour to go through all these I can give you a fair price for the metal, the wood is practically useless, unless you want to use it as firewood.”