Eli
The first part of the capital we saw was the slums. The road led straight into the slums with no walls, or protections or anything. Buildings just started appearing. Buildings made of mud, and brick, the entire place gloomy, and almost immediately they began to stack upon each other.
Mud, and wood huts, precariously stacked upon each other, some times, even arching over the street with out of place stone supports put in probably by the city to keep it from collapsing.
Alleyways in between buildings littered with shit, blood, and a variety of effluvia, but most prevalent were the people. A huge wondrous variety of people, of different skin colors, genders, and even species.
Crouched in sketchy alleyways, groups of armed men, and women hang. Boots planted firmly in the mud, hands locked on their wicked assortment of weaponry.
We keep our eyes down, and we roll forward. We finally peek through, to find a bridge. The space around the bridge is empty, no buildings, and a group of 8 or so armed guards stand around talking to each other. Long kite shields hanging from their backs, and longswords strapped to their belts.
The river has been reinforced by concrete, as it seems to have degraded, and the real river, is 20 feet lower, as the bottom of the concrete ditch. Pipes protrude from either side of the ditch, and sewage, waste, blood, and whatever waste is produced by the city flows into the river, before eventually traveling to the sea.
“Halt!” A guard throws up a hand, and tells us to stop before turning to one of his buddies. “Always wanted to do that.” He whispers to him with a grin, who laughs at him.
They walk close, and one of them begins to speak. “Fuckin necro.” He mutters, and scowls.
Alistair frowns, and opens his mouth as if to speak but is interrupted by the guard before he can finish.
“It doesn't matter what you have or what you are doing, those wagons would tear through these bridges, and fall into the river below. You want to trade something, make the deal, and then meet at the industrial docks on the east side. Got it?” He explains promptly his scowl never leaving his face.
Alistair nods, and smiles. “That is fine.”
The guard smirks. “I know. Now get ye bastard.” He waves us off, and we slowly turn our carts around, damaging the stone tiles we roll over. Once we've turned around we head our way back out of the city. As we cart ourselves away we get lots of glares from people.
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
We quickly roll out of the city, where we park the carts in the dirt, and Alistair quickly says. “Eli, you stay here with the carts, make sure nobody steals anything.”
I nod and respond. “Sure. Do I keep our guards?” I say with a gesture to the skeletons in our cart, as well as the other beasts guarding us.
Alistair shrugs. “Go ahead. I don't care.”
I throw a thumb up, and nod his head while Alistair, and Amelia get off to hopefully find a trading partner.
I wander back into the cart, and I begin working. First I remove a head from a jar of preservatives, as well as forearms, and the attached hands. I lay each out on separate sheets designed for dissection. Next I remove the teeth, and the lower jaw from the head.
I then replace it with the lower jaw of a goblin, slowly, stitch by stitch I attach the flesh, before using mana to bind the bones in place. Goblins have extremely high bite force, as well as sharp needle-like teeth.
Next I snip off the ears, and replace them with joints, held in place by mana, and a big bulb of tissue, after the joint is the arm, and the hand at the very end. What is left looks like a demonic bat of some sort. The lower jaw protrudes out slightly, and the teeth run out of the mouth, and over the lips above.
The arms sprout from the side of its skull, the base being surrounded by a cancerous growth of tissue, all stitched in with shoddy craftsmanship, a needle, and some string, as well as a little bit of magic.
Finally he removes three forearms from a barrel filled with arms. Each arm has no hand, but has the elbow joint, and the wrist joint.
He quickly attaches the arms together but as he does so, he adds a secondary joint made of mana. This allows the arm to rotate ninety degrees, and then bend with the help of the fleshy joint. Once it was all attached he attached the end of it to the base of the skull right at the neck area. Finally using a strip of tissue from the stomach area of a human he creates a sort of belt made of human flesh. He attached to the side of it, and then attached his new appendage to his belt.
What I am left with is almost a snake-like appendage protruding out of his waist, and at the very end are two hands, as well as the head, which was creepy as hell, which is a big bonus, as well as being strong enough to deal some serious damage.
This was all actually very mana efficient as I retained most of the muscles in the body by using pickled parts instead of bones or rotting flesh. This means I only have to place blobs of mana throughout to tense the muscles, and un-tense them allowing me to control the whole thing while barely using any mana. As well as the mana needed for the joints of course, which were the most expensive, but very helpful.
The downside of this Is I need to learn what each muscle does individually, and learn how to control them. Which is a bit awkward, but I'm sure ill figure it out.
Finally I stand, and peek out the caravan to find the sun has set long ago. If I had to bet its probably around midnight. I wonder where Alistair, and Amelia are?
I shrug, and look around. We parked ourselves in an empty field just outside of the slums, so I wouldn't be surprised if shady characters made some visits around here occasionally. In fact… I swear I can see a group of people walking around way over there…
I quickly give the order to my loaned undead guards to not let anyone get close unless they were Alistair, or Amelia, and then I climb up to the loft above the rest of the place, removing my fleshy belt, which was rather creepy, and heading to sleep.