The game – part one
In the outer ring of Kingstown in one of the older industrial districts, workers moved with purpose from one warehouse to another, carrying supplies, packages and tools they circulated around old industrial complex.
Sounds of hammers hitting wood and metal could be constantly heard in the background noise of shouts and swears as people went about their business and lines of carts and carriages slowly made their way alongside wide water canal.
Three months had passed since one of the nobles bought the old warehouses and already there was a visible progress being made. Trade and commerce flowed back into the district and with some money to be made people came back to open up shops, inns and houses for workers who suddenly flooded the area.
Seeing the progress and possible benefits in these recent events, someone from up high in City council pushed for reconstruction of old water canal that fell in disuse and now, couple of weeks later, dredges moved slowly downstream, picking up crude waste while cleaning the canal bottom.
Groups of workers followed them and replaced old and damaged stonework, stopping every now and then to dig and widen the canal and make small ports for dredges and cargo boats.
Traders moved through the streets making deals and going from one shop to another, checking out competition and cementing alliances with different merchant groups, all in order to appease new Merchants guild hall that was being built near the entrance to the sixth City ring.
It was a welcome change for just about everyone, and old warehouses were being filled to the brim. Wood, grain, masonry, it was all stored inside one of the buildings, all except one.
Standing further away from the canal then the rest of the warehouses this building was constantly in the shadow of one of the inner-City walls, and was therefore both chilly and dry.
This made it perfect for storing meat and perishable goods which were always wanted in high supply, but right now the warehouse in question stood empty.
Not that anyone seemed to mind.
Reason for that was because its new owner wanted to reconstruct big part of it, which meant more jobs and more money for everyone.
Currently there were five teams of people working on said building, and much of the job was already finished.
New, deeper and wider basements were already constructed, as well as couple of ice chambers and one huge furnace in which all spoiled produce and rotten meat was meant to be destroyed.
It was a new type of building that housed butchery, storage and disposal array, removing the need for additional buildings that would take up both much needed space and resources.
While most people didn't really know nor cared about who owned other traditional warehouses, there was some curiosity about who was the holder of such strange new construction.
Some spilled beer and few free rounds managed to loosen the tongues of one particular merchant, and it was revealed to local innkeeper and therefore everyone else, that new owner was a man named William, or Willy for friends.
Supposedly he was a war veteran who did a great service for some nobility up north, but during his service he suffered terrible wounds, and so decided to come to Kingstown and try his luck in different trade.
So far, he was doing quite well.
Unbeknownst to anyone, deep inside the warehouse in one of the recently built secret chambers Edward was restlessly working on a body.
It was splayed out in front of him on cold marble altar and his fingers danced across exposed flesh and bone, twisting and bounding cords of muscle together.
Occupied as he was, he didn't bother paying much attention to what he was doing. It came to him naturally as breathing and for past few weeks he did this so many times he could have done it with his eyes closed.
So, he allowed himself to think of other, more distant things.
His plan was proceeding quite well.
For example, by reconstructing warehouses and making them into his base of operations he achieved more than one goal.
Creating an undercover hideout perfectly equipped for processing enormous amounts of bodies was most obvious one.
Other benefits were more subtle. By rebuilding local businesses, he started to produce income, which in turn replenished his private reserves. He was a prince, but unfortunately the former owner of his body somehow managed to spent huge sums of money on trivialities, so he was forced to get creative and compensate.
Even if he originally wanted to use only one warehouse as his base, he made sure to buy couple more, and not only warehouses. Few local inns and market stands also ended up in his property.
All of this served few purposes. One was to start business in the area, at first it was through construction and transport, but as renovations came to a close people continued to rebuild other structures in vicinity in hopes of better prospects in the future.
He encouraged this by getting in contact with local noble houses and making them invest in similar businesses. Because of his past behavior and bad reputation not many nobles gave him their attention at first, but as area kept expanding and more money poured in, they slowly started to change their mind.
That was another goal he achieved, by getting nobles into the play he basically put them on the same team as he was and that gave him much needed financial and political power.
It was also beneficial because it allowed commoners to earn some money. Local populace suffered bad living conditions for years and they welcomed the change with open arms, he also made sure that his name was mentioned often when people talked off all who invested into warehouses and other stores.
That way he earned some goodwill from ordinary folk while staying distanced from all direct action.
And for all legal and public needs he used Willy as a mediator.
As he suspected Willy was proving invaluable to his plans. His underground connections made a whole lot of illicit activities available to him and secrets chambers and hidden passages that now crossed under good part of the district were just one of the boons.
Poisons, drugs, illegal herbs and other shady materials filled many of the crates that were stored inside his personal warehouses. And with his help whole lot of criminal activity in the area was put under control of Willy. He had to say, for all his age and experience he was still surprised at how much money illegal trade earned him.
It did have some drawbacks; City guards were bound to find something out sooner or later but he had plans for that too. Already he was buying loyalty of certain guardsmen, nobody too high up but still, he had to start somewhere.
And it mildly amused him that for most part, his misdeeds took care of that problem themselves. Because those few guards that were incorruptible started to like him because of all the good that he did for townsfolk.
Since his hijacking of the prince's body and events that followed it, his identity as a prince was no longer a secret, word somehow leaked into the city and most of the people now knew his face, so he noticed how people bowed to him when he walked the streets. They didn't bow because of his loyal blood, they did it out of respect and gratitude.
He cultivated that image, of a prince who walked the streets on his own two legs without legions of loyal guards following him his every step of the way. Dressed in simple yet well-made clothes and surrounded by only one to two guards he conveyed an appearance of a penitent man, of a royal son who regretted his sins and made a complete turnaround.
He took time to stop here and there and talk with people in person, always leaving more coins then necessary and seeming genuinely interested in welfare of all he encountered on the streets, be they beggars or nobles.
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Word spread quickly and soon enough he found that even the palace guards were looking at him in different light.
His "brother" Dorian didn't like it at first, being concerned for his safety he tried to dissuade him from acting that way. But when he continued with the same behavior, he eventually stopped sending squadrons of soldiers after him whenever he left the palace.
Some nobles also didn't like the way he went about his business, but his newfound magical potential combined with his linage and financial power did a lot to quiet the worst of the whispers that circulated around the court.
All in all, he still found it a bit sad.
For all misbehavior and failings of his "predecessor" he was now awarded with faith that he most certainly didn't deserve.
He truly couldn't understand why people had the need to believe in reformed and repentant sinners. It was as if everyone wanted to believe that he was a changed man, and they did so with such intensity that they failed to see anything else.
Why they choose to forget all numerous evils he did in face of few good things he simply couldn't understand.
Not that it would stop him from making full use of it.
As it was, he was happy with how thing were going, his financial situation was improving with every passing day and warehouses he bought were almost completely finished.
It was this warehouse that he was currently in that gave him perfect opportunity to manage resources, both financial and organic. And while money seemed to flow into his hands in heaps, he purposely avoided doing the same thing with corpses.
People getting suspicious and local authorities knocking on his doors were last things he needed now.
No, he would do this patiently. After all he had neither need nor necessity to put his diabolic factory to work. Of course, he did have plans to create swarms of undead abominations but if he was right about how things were going to progress that stage of a plan would come much later.
For now, he was content with working on only two to three bodies a day, that they were the same three bodies every day didn't bothered him too much. Because his current project was focused more on quality then quantity and it required a whole lot of precision and focus, and since he had more than enough free time he got to work with passion.
Turning his attention to the body on the altar he sent specks of his power to sarcophagus on the other side of the room.
It was a well-lit room that was made mostly out of white marble and was built underground beneath the two ice rooms upstairs, that made it quite cold so Edward was dressed in thick white robes with a bleached leather apron over them.
The room in question was connected to outside world by a series of small vents and shafts so that quiet breeze constantly blew through it and small canisters filled with mixture of alcohol and healing herbs were attached to the ends of ventilation shafts so that everything positively reeked of herbal fumes and alcohol.
If Edward could describe it with one word it would be "sterile", which was exactly what it was.
Sarcophagus was situated on the other side of the room, near the elevator through which the bodies were lowered inside.
Bleached bones rose from it and started to assemble in a humanoid form.
Powered by Edwards's magic, two skeletons stepped to the other side of the altar.
They were no ordinary undead; Edward invented this particular form of abominations himself.
They stood a head taller than ordinary man, heavily bleached they were whiter than surrounding marble was and they sported six hands each.
Centuries ago, it took a whole lot of time for Edward to figure out a way to connect all bones in such a way that they retained full mobility and precision they had before necromantic fumes animated them.
Now his constructions were improved, perfected. Not only that they had more limbs and far better grip control and fine precision than any living man, Edward also built them with eight fingers on each hand, and each finger was carved into a different tool. Some resembled scalpels and other needles or pincers.
With the help of two undead constructs Edward shifted Samuels's body so that he was faced down to the altar, his back exposed to the probing skeletal fingers.
The altar was heavily enchanted, covered in runes and symbols that put everyone on it in magically induced sleep.
It was not the only measure Edward took when operating on his patients, so Samuel was carefully dosed with high quality painkillers and sleeping potions, Edward also personally put a spell on him, a variation of eternal sleep spell that dwarves liked to use but better, improved, without that entire kissing bit.
This way Samuel was completely safe in his sleeping, dreamless state. Even his blood flow was all but stopped by magic that emanated from the altar.
A vast improvement over that patch up job he did on Willy, it ensured that almost no visible scars were left once the procedure was finished.
This was not the first time Samuel was on this table. Through last two months Edward made extensive surgeries on both him and his other guardian, the girl who he decided to name Chains.
She was still recovering from lifetime of mistreatment and slavery so for now he spared her much of what he did to Samuel.
He did a lot of research on Samuel in his spare time but he was still far away from the answer: what made guardians who they were. Why were they stronger, faster, smarter? Why did they imprint to a master figure, why where they so loyal, he had so many questions… it was like a puzzle that he didn’t really see. But he would get to the bottom of it. He had the pieces right under his fingerprints after all.
To be frank, Edward suspected that Samuel was somewhat defective, as far as guardians were concerned. Even when compared to Chains in her wretched state he was slower and weaker than a usual guardian. Mentally he was the same, loyal, sharp, smart. But in physical sense he was more akin to a normal man than a guardian. But Edward aimed to correct that, soon enough Samuel would be just as deadly as Chains was.
Yes, Chains.
Even in the state she was in, weak and malnourished Chains was deadly as they came, of deceptive build she was still stronger than she looked and far more tenacious. To top it all off, Edward was carefully building her up from the ground up. However, through the first months of her new life Edward just let her recuperate; there was no need to risk her wellbeing for a faster recovery time anyway.
So, he ordered her to rest and supplied her with daily doses of healing salves, strength potions and huge amounts of food.
Soon enough she started to recover, and astonishingly fast too, and whenever he deemed it possible Edward operated on her. She didn't undergo all of the procedures Samuel did, but even so he changed her physiology drastically. But even with her superior healing abilities and Edwards constant attention it would be some time before she got back into peak condition.
And that was only physically.
Edward was aware of mental wounds and scars far better than some of the best healers in the world, and he knew exactly how much things like that could handicap a person.
However, Chains was something of a special case. With her being a Guardian, she was already mentally handicapped, he was sure of that. In this short time he spent with Samuel he became aware of a whole lot of things Guardians just couldn't do themselves.
They were technically capable of everything anyone else was; in some things they were more than just capable. But without the natural drive normal people possessed they simply weren't able to accomplish most of the things other people could.
Personal ambition for example was a crippling factor in their behavior. Where other people would fight tooth and nail to improve their situation Guardians simply didn't care.
Or at least they didn't care for as long as their master didn't care.
This meant that without their masters need for clothes and food they would be perfectly content to starve or freeze to death.
It was tragic really, and personally quite handy for Edward, but still tragic.
He would have to do something about that sooner or later though, if they were to be his servants, he would make sure that they could at least take care of themselves properly. Elimination of all crippling factors was a necessity that he would take care of with absolute certainty.
On that same note Edward turned his thoughts back to the task at hand.
Samuel was in somewhat good physical form even before he started to work on him, but now he was so much more.
It was a long and complicated process, there were materials he needed, like flesh, muscles, tendons and bones but he got those easy enough from all the fallen warriors in the arena.
Second part of the process was treating the flesh in a right way, so he stripped the muscles from bones, flaying and twisting them into thick cords of hard tissue.
Then he treated both bones and flesh with various alchemical solutions, to strengthen and empower them, Star-silver dust was rubbed into the bones to make them tougher and more flexible. Finally, he put all of the materials into desecrated sarcophagus and quenched them in vile elixir of his own making.
There he left them to soak in dark energies and necromantic magic, and every day he pushed a little bit more of his power into dead tissue.
When all of the materials were finally ready to use, he was free to get to real work.
While he did some improvements on Chains it was Samuel who was first to go on the table, and through series of operations he underwent a particularly extensive change.
He basically replaced his entire body structure, added layers of intervened muscle tissue on Samuels's already impressive physique. He strengthened the skeleton and added more joints into his hands and legs, broke and mended his ribcage in such a way so that it could bend and shift in unnatural directions.
He also changed the mechanics of his skeletal structure, added a few more muscles in the right places so that his limbs could achieve far better leverage than normal, changed the density of muscles and remodeled the joints on his hands and legs so that he could grip objects both with inner and outer parts of his palm.
Internal organs were replaced and changed too. He added a few more chambers to his heart and changed the way it pumped blood, making it more efficient. Then, after he did some thinking he added another heart below his collar bone just in case.
To protect Samuel more efficiently he then thickened his ribcage and inserted all of his vital organs into his upper torso.
To fill the gap in his abdomen he added a secondary pair of lungs and entwined them with a whole lot of muscles that both helped to power the lungs and move his body.
Taking some inspiration from other life forms he also added two gills in place of his kidneys, they connected straight to his secondary pair of lungs so that no one could strangle him easily.
Protecting his brain was trickier part. He decided to insulate Samuels's skull with couple of layers of body fat and fine shock absorbent tissue, but that also meant that his brain would probably suffer some permanent damage due to the excess heat.
To prevent this, he inserted a few more arteries through the brain, and as a coolant he used blood that passed straight through lungs. He also knew that it would help Samuel by supplying him with more oxygen, helping him to think and move faster.
On the outer part of his skull, he carved his personal mark, surrounded by dozens of dark runes, in order to deepen the sympathetic link between their auras and make Samuel more susceptible to his power, and more dependent on his presence.
Having Samuel addicted to his magical aura was fine but there were ways for talented sorceress to use that against him and he didn't quite like that, so somewhere down the road he made plans for Samuel to bind his soul to his, which would put him completely into his mercy.
And when the time came his mark would help with that.
Chains too would have to pass the same procedure, but for now he let her rest until she was well enough for more extensive surgeries.
He sent instructions to his undead minions and they started cutting into Samuel's spine with perfect precision.
This would be final operation he would make on Samuel, at least for a while. He did want to carve some protective runes into his bones but he was a little more than an adept when it came to enchanting, and there was no need to risk catastrophic injuries because he botched up a rune.
He could've have paid a certified enchanter to do it for him but he somehow doubted anyone would be so open minded.
People were so stupid sometimes.
Not that it mattered; there was no need to go that far for now, so he satisfied himself with all he did last two months.
His skeletons made precise incisions over Samuels's spine and were already splitting it in two.
When they were done they shifted it to the side and started to cut surrounding tissue in order to make some space around it.
Piece by piece they inserted foreign parts of someone else's spine into Samuels back and started to put it all together.
Edward exercised his power and potent mixtures were poured over pieces of bone, nerves and muscles as Samuels "spine" started to knit together.
It was twice as thick now, and it looked more like an armored bony worm than a spine, but Edward knew that it would do the job perfectly.
Not only was it ten times more flexible than before, but now it was also tougher and capable of supporting much heavier body weight.
When all was done and Edward deemed it satisfying, he ordered the skeletons to knit the skin together and clean up the room.
Looking at Samuels naked body on the altar there were some anomalies on his anatomy, but nothing really noticeable. Some small ridge on his forearms, or a few strands of muscles on his shoulders that by all rights shouldn't be there, but it was all barely visible.
Even if someone with knowledge of anatomy took a look at him, they would have a hard time proving that there was something fishy going on.
Edward made sure of it, raising suspicion was out of the question so he did as much cosmetic changes as he could to hide and mask everything that was out of place.
All in all it was a very good job, probably his best yet.
But with resources at his disposal, it was nothing to be surprised about.
It wasn’t only the Edwards knowledge of anatomy that allowed him to make such changes on Samuel, it would be impossible to change a body to such a degree by surgical means. No, it was his magical power that did most of the work. The integration and animation of foreign tissue was the work of dark magics after all, and at this point Samuel was more of a corpse than a living being. Which suited Edward just fine.
He still had a few more plans to empower his servants but that would have to wait for now. He had more pressing things to do right now, like gathering information for example.
And so, after washing his hands in a nearby basin Edward took off his blood smeared clothes and went outside.