After a hearty breakfast that left a strange but kinda nice aftertaste in Bobby’s mouth the group departed the bastion. Lucinda had lent them two electric scooters, so they rode tandem with Bobby and Mcgunkin on one and Gary and Michaela on the other.
They left Lucinda behind with most of the rats that seemed to have settled themselves down in some of the available nooks and crannies. The rats had meant to return on completion of the mission, but Wat-haf Wedon had wanted to stick around for a while and due to the slight complication of him being the very thing they were meant to go back with they had to delay.
Bobby quite liked them and Rho Dent had even asked to come grave digging with them. The small rat was currently sitting in his front blazer pocket, sticking her head out and trying to get her head around human words. She seemed slightly annoyed that her primogenitor was so much more fluent than her.
Behind Bobby, Mcgunkin held TODD, directing them towards the graveyard which was apparently less than 10 minutes away. Bobby wasn’t sure if it happened when the van got smashed up but the satnav had got a lot more talkative, to the point where it was even slightly starting to get on his nerves.
They reached a slight incline and he turned up the speed control of the electric scooter, causing its little motor to whine pitifully. “Come on, you can do it, not much further now.” he whispered to the machine just as they crested the top of a slope that the van could have made mean work of.
Once they were on the decline the scooter shot forward, nearly making him apply the brake, until he remembered they might need the speed. After that they made a few turns and eventually got to the first of the nearby graveyards.
They hid their scooters just inside the entrance and walked into the crammed yard. This one had quite a lot of above ground mausoleums dotted around. There was also no church in sight, which was unusual for a graveyard, but not all had them, after all they were expensive places to build.
Bobby surveyed the graveyard before opening his third eye. Like the last place (where they had dug up Michaela) a thick black miasma streaked through the air, almost flowing in a circle round the graveyard. Although this time due to the increase in his perception the way he saw the energy had changed, he could see much more of the ghostly forms through the miasma, but he could also see the miasma itself more clearly in some slightly paradoxical way.
Bobby put his mind away from pondering the intricacies of his perception stat and focused on the task at hand. He needed to find a target for the group, and preferably an easy target, he didn’t really want to spend hours and hours digging up one coffin again.
“Are the bodies in the mausoleums still buried?” asked Gary kicking the stone door of one of the more deteriorated looking morbid huts.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“Hmm, I don't actually know,” said Bobby, “Let’s break into one and see!”
Gary shrugged and looked through the sack he had over his shoulder for his crowbar before sticking it into the seam of the slightly dislodged door. He braced his shoulder against the metal bar and pushed.
There was a moment when the crowbar started to bow that Bobby thought the door wouldn’t be defeated, but with a slight crack and a grinding noise the door inched open until the gap was wide enough that they could put their hands in and pull. After some swearing and readjusting sweaty hands they eventually managed to get the door pulled open enough for someone to fit through. Bobby went first, as he didn’t need a torch with his third eye active.
The first thing that hit him was the musty stagnant smell, then he noticed how cramped the space inside was and that there were long slabs along the walls, which penned in coffin sized spaces. The end of one of the bottom slabs had broken off and after leaning down Bobby came face to face with a grinning skull.
“Yup it’s all above ground, we won’t need to do any digging around,” he called out to the others. ”Also Gary, can you pass me that crowbar?”
There was a sigh of relief from someone, then Bobby felt the large metal tool hit him on the ass and bounce to the floor. “Oww, I said pass not throw it.”
Bobby grabbed the tool and shoved it by the partly broken slab, then making sure he was clear of where it might fall, he levered the slab out. It took some work, but channeling his magic made the process a lot easier. Then there was a creak and the giant stone fell to the floor, revealing the skeleton of a long dead person.
The skeleton was big, like really big, the person it belonged to would have been almost seven feet in life. Bobby looked at the body and then stopped. When I resurrected Michaela, her own ghost led me to her corpse, but there don’t seem to be any ghosts nearby right now, the soul for this body could be anywhere.
Bobby scratched his head, there’s got to be a fix for this, there is no way necromancers don’t encounter this problem quite frequently. He delved into his mind and began sifting through the knowledge. He didn’t want to call on the magic for help as using it too frequently seemed like a crutch, he would have to be able to do stuff on his own for the cases when his magic ran out.
After a few minutes of searching he finally found something that would help. This procedure didn’t have a name, but after observing it and doing some careful consideration he figured out that it would allow him to use a small fragment of his soul as the seed for a future soul for the undead being, which would develop gradually over time. The beginning of the procedure he used for making thralls was perfectly reusable in this case.
According to the details the skeleton would originally have no autonomy and would only be able to understand orders given by him via the intent it received from the tiny soul fragment, it would be completely useless if he wasn't around and would have no self preservation unless told to protect itself. If we are dealing with gangs who have more bullets than brains then using these as minions is probably much more desirable.
That still left the issue of having no aetheric imprint to copy the internal anatomical architecture of the human body from, but Bobby had an idea on that front.
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