1) Emplace a proper ritual circle to capture the soul.
2) Perform sacrifice in accordance with the ritual.
3) Bind the soul to the construct.
By binding a soul to a construct, a near perfect animus can be created. Once the construct is in place, I must procure a proper specimen for sacrifice.
-Scrap of paper found in the destroyed remains of a Lich’s laboratory. Both the remains of the Lich and that of a mangled construct were found amongst the disarray of the lab. The lich appears to have been violently pummeled to death, whilst the construct looks to have torn itself apart.
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The two watchers need a little coaching on the seatbelts, but once they were instructed in their use and buckled in, Xander began driving out of the field and onto the nearby road, which was wide enough to accommodate his vehicle. He estimated that he had about a quarter of the city to drive around before he got to the governor’s estate. He wasn’t sure now why he hadn’t picked somewhere closer to build the APC in the first place. He shrugged to himself. He really just hadn’t thought about it at all, beyond needing the space of an empty field.
The people and wagons they passed all stared as he went by, unused to seeing anything even approaching a car in their lives, let alone something this large moving on a road. Space was tight, and Xander found himself half off the road in a few places to make sure that carts coming the other direction had enough space. Within the hour, though, Xander and his two passengers were at the gates to the governor’s estate.
“Would one of you mind hopping out and letting them know who we are?” Xander called behind him.
“Sure,” he heard one of the passengers say. There was a long moment of fumbling with the seatbelt that Xander could hear going on behind him, and then another period of fumbling with the ramp at the back to get it to drop down, but eventually he saw one of the watchers coming around the APC in his mirror and start to jog towards the guard building at the gate. There was a brief discussion and some pointing at the vehicle before the watcher returned and reentered through the same, pulling it up behind them.
“They didn’t want to let you in until I started throwing around Lady Grefelt’s name,” they explained. “They’ll lead us to an unused storage area that you can leave this… whatever you call it.”
“Perfect,” Xander said. One of the guards at the gate peeled off from the group as the gate was opened, and Xander slowly followed them at a walking pace through a wide path that seemed intended for large deliveries. It led to a few storehouses and a cobblestone courtyard with enough space for Xander to park the APC. He had installed a parking break of sorts on the APC, a ratcheted handle he could crank backwards that forced a pad against the tires, but just to be safe he’d also created himself some wheel chocks to place behind the tires. He didn’t want his new creation to roll off and hit a building. That would be an embarrassment, and probably cost him a hefty amount of money to repair the damage to the whatever it hit.
That left Xander with a little over a week to prepare for his upcoming travels. He didn’t need to worry about procuring food, water, or other mundane travel supplies, but he wanted to make sure he was at peak combat efficiency in case he was needed. With that in mind, he took some time to consider where he was underutilizing his skills.
The first deficiency he noted was in his [Golemancer] skill. Or rather, in his lack of using it. Once Atlas, Lynx, and Juniper had reached what appeared to be a ceiling of complexity, he’d fallen out of using the ability, and he had not created any more golems. By now, he could have a veritable army of golems, if he’d decided to keep making them – not that he wanted to manage a force of that size. But, having more than two combat golems would be nice. Xander considered what he could make, and more importantly easily transport. He could make a human sized golem and imbue it with motive force each day with [Golemancer], but then he wouldn’t be able to fit them all in the APC. They also weren’t exactly stealthy, especially with only one cast of [Golemancer]. Could he make a walking, reusable grenade, perhaps? Yes, yes he could. But why stop at grenade? For it to be reusable, he would need to use runes, rather than his lead picrate explosive. He could do far more than a mundane explosion. Why not have them explode in a freezing field, or acid, or electrocute anything they touched? In fact, why not all of the above? A variety would be best, after all. He could create a small swarm of golems, each with different effects.
The design was simple. A runed disk with spiderly legs, essentially, that was about a foot across in diameter. He’d added small, plier-like appendages to the tip of each leg to allow them to grip clothing or other surfaces and climb. The top of the disk was densely engraved with mana gathering arrays, to power the elemental effects and movement of the little spidery golem. On the bottom side of the disk, were runes for an elemental effect. Xander tried out ice first, but ended up giving up on that. He could get the steel of the golem to become incredibly cold, enough to cause it to freeze to flesh and probably cause frostbite, but he could not get it to project actual ice in an effect that would cause part of an enemy to become encased in ice or something similar. He was coming to learn that one of the weaknesses of runes was that there were certain limitations to rune crafting, and one of the most glaring was that it struggled with the offensive projection of elements. Fire was a little easier, since it only needed to go a short distance. Flame runes could at least produce actual fire, and that combined with some air runes that were tuned by another array to narrow the air, along with amplification runes for both, could produce a six inch gout of forge hot fire. He’d ended up engraving a fire resistance array onto the golem because it had begun to warp after an extended test. Electricity was the easiest one to do. He simply electrified the entire metal construct, similar to how he had with his chain weapon for the tournament. They could latch on to an enemy and deliver a debilitating shock. He figured if he got two on someone, and it went from one side to another through the chest, it would not be out of the bounds of reality for it to stop their heart. Acid was trickier than the lightning runed one, but less so than fire had been. It was the same acid projection array that his mace used, and the spider-legged disk would simply press itself against whatever it had climbed on to apply the acidic effect. Lastly, there was one that was simply just a tightened explosion. The bottom of the disk, which was runically hardened to resist the blast, contained several explosion arrays tied to amplification runes. Another array, similar to the narrowing array Xander had used on the air runes for the fire spider, tightened the blast until is was reminiscent of a shaped charge. So he had four types: fire, electricity, acid, and bomb. He’d make about five of each type for a total of twenty. He’d have to make some of them during down time during the journey, but he figured there should be more than enough time in the trip to do so.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
The other area he wanted to focus on were his more mundane explosives. It was far cheaper for him to completely fabricate a grenade filled with a nonmagical explosive compound with a single fire rune and ranged mana array than it was for him to fabricate one that functioned completely runically. He also got a better explosion from the mundane explosives, pound for pound, than runic grenades due to [Explosive Reagents]. He had not even tried yet to find any explosive materials that were natural to Tillania, instead relying on what he already had. But what if that ended up not being enough? Besides, how could more explosion per explosive ever be bad? Xander needed to browse through some alchemy shops.
It was the fourth Alchemy shop that Xander visited that yielded real results. All the others had either professed to not keeping explosive compounds for sale or had refused to sell them to him without proof that he was licensed as an alchemist, or at least experienced. The fourth one, though, was not in the nice part of town. If there were railroad tracks in this world, then this shop would be on the wrong side of them. Inside the shop, which managed to look ramshackle and somehow dusty even from the exterior, were a great number of things that Xander had not seen in other Alchemy shops. A full quarter of them seemed to be dedicated to different methods of contraception, according to the labels. Others seemed designed to be ingested or smoked, by their packaging. Xander assumed they were some kind of legal narcotic or similar. The cluttered counter was manned by a tall, gaunt man with limp hair who looked like he sampled more than one of his own wares on the regular. He was puffing on a pipe behind the counter, eyeing Xander, though with no sense of smell, Xander could not discern if it was tobacco or some other substance. His eyes followed Xander nervously as Xander headed to the counter after his brief appraisal of the shop.
“Ah, hi?” Xander said awkwardly to the still silent shop keeper.
“What can I do for ya?” the man mumbled out past his pipe, still eyeing Xander up and down.
“Uhm… do you have anything, ah… that explodes?” Xander said, unable to find a better way to ask for what he wanted.
The shopkeeper’s eyes darted back and forth for a moment, considering his answer whilst simultaneously ensuring the rest of the shop was empty. “What for?” He finally asked.
Xander was caught off guard by the question. “Uh. Well, I’m a mercenary, you see. So, sometimes it’s really handy to blow stuff up? Doors, locks, monsters, you know?”
The limp haired shopkeeper nodded lazily. “Uhhuhh. Thought you weren’t part of the watch,” he stated. “I ain’t really supposed to sell ya stuff like that, you understand?”
Xander realized there was a lot of room in that ‘supposed to.’ “Right,” he said with a nod. “Not supposed to. Would it help if I were to assure you that it’s not my first time dealing with explosive compounds, and that I would be willing to pay a premium for quality ingredients. I’m looking to upgrade my arsenal, as it were. So, I’m looking to buy the best you got.”
The man’s eyebrows raise a little bit at hearing that that Xander would pay a premium, and then again when he heard that Xander wanted the most powerful explosive he could provide.
“Best I’ve got? Are you sure you can handle that? It’ll cost ya.”
“I can afford it,” Xander stated, hoping that he could afford it. He was pretty well off, after all. He still had a few hundred gold in his inventory he could spend without having to go to the bank to withdraw from his account. “And I can handle it.”
“How much do you need? I’ve only got a little.”
“I only need a little. What you deem to be sufficient to blast through a lock would be sufficient.”
“A lock? With this stuff? Bit overkill if you ask me. More than a bit. Must be one damn sturdy lock.”
“It was more of an example, but yeah, I find myself wanting to blast through some pretty sturdy stuff, from time to time,” Xander said, deciding to keep his intentions filling grenades with it to himself.
“Right, right, less I know the better. And you didn’t get this from me, ya hear?” The man said, seriously.
“Understood.”
After Xander’s agreement, the man shuffled off to a small back room before returning with a tiny vial. He was carefully cradling it with both hands and set it down on the counter with just as much care.
Xander bent lower to look at the small glass container, seeing it contained a light red, jelly looking material. “What is it?” He asked, curiously.
“It’s what fire dragons have in their belly,” was the reply. “Light this off and you’d get a fireball and enough force to blow through any lock you’d find.”
Xander nodded, thinking. “And how much?”
“Two hundred gold. Non-negotiable.”
“Phew. For a vial that would look at home on a pendant? This better be the best you have,” Xander said, as much to himself as to the shopkeeper.
“You won’t find anything better, at least not around here. Maybe if you got into the Alchemist college half a country away, you could find something.”
“I see. I’ll take it.” Xander had a feeling he was being overcharged, but considering he’d only ever need to buy it once, he wasn’t too upset. He paid his two hundred gold, and gently picked up the vial, before stowing it in his inventory.
---Material Analyzed---
Fire Dragon Blasting Jelly
Xander was not much of a judge of explosive power beyond determining if the fireball was bigger or smaller. But when he tested his first grenade filled with the new blasting jelly he’d just bought, it was easy to tell that it was more powerful. The crater it left was an order of magnitude larger than what his lead picrate or runic grenades left behind. Those left what amounted to a small furrow in the ground. This new, explosive, however, at least tripled the width and nearly doubled the depth of the depth of the hole it left behind compared to the old ones. Xander was pleased, feeling that his gold had been well spent.
The rest of the time before Xander had to leave passed quickly, and peacefully. He alternated between visiting Valteria, spending time with his teammates and Freyja, making new grenades both for himself and for the APCs grenade launcher, and creating and animating one elemental spider golem a day.
He occasionally wondered when Brinn Grefelt would contact him about meeting the rest of his team, but no messenger ever came. He only received another message from the noblewoman on the day that he was to depart. The courier found him at first light, knocking on the door to Xander’s room at the inn urgently. It didn’t take Xander long to answer, since he didn’t sleep – he’d been making four additional camouflage cloaks for his new teammates, to help with their stealth efforts.
“Yes?” Xander asked, opening the door to face the courier.
“Xander Jones?” The courier asked in return.
“Yeah, that’s me.” Xander said, confirming it by flipping his abridged status around to show the courier.
“Letter for you,” the courier stated, handing over the letter as she spoke. Xander took the letter and watched for a moment as the courier trotted off without a word. He wondered if they ever got tired of running.
Xander tore open the envelope to find another small notecard, similar to the first that he’d received from Brinn.
Team assembled. Meet at the governor’s estate, in the courtyard where you stored your transport.
Brinn Grefelt.
Short and to the point, the letter managed to sound urgent all the same. But Xander didn’t want to leave his team or Valteria with no word at all. He took the time to pen his own letter, letting his teammates know that he’d been called to leave on his contract and that he would see them as soon as he could get back. He also added a note for them to pass on the letter Valteria once they’d read it themselves. He slipped the note under Gabrelle’s door.
With nothing else to do, Xander donned his matte black armor, gathered Atlas and Lynx, and stepped out of the inn. As he walked, flying hindered by the fact that he was followed by his two golems, Xander took some time to observe the city as it awoke, people stepping out from doorways and into the street to start the hustle and bustle of their daily lives. With any luck, they would never feel the effects or even know of whatever it was that Thrask might be planning. Luck, and perhaps the targeted application of high explosives.