After a few long seconds of dwelling on how all this was going to work, I felt a mental tug from Locke and started paying attention. Oh yeah, everyone was looking at us. Quickly switching places in our mental cockpit, I let her slip away back to wherever the rest of my other selves waited when I wasn’t talking to them. Which was another thing I needed to explore when a chance presented itself.
For now, however, I focused on all the people who were here physically and weren’t mental duplicates of myself. “Okay, right, I get it. I’m not gonna freak out. I mean, not any more than I already have. I just need to think about this for awhile and let the whole thing digest. Maybe for a long while, to be honest. But in the meantime, how about we actually explore this building and figure out what we’ve got?”
Snorting audibly, Bastet gestured. “We came up here first for a reason, remember? We’re about to make it much easier to move around this place, so you don’t have to start using flying spells just to get up and down the stairs. Come look at this screen.”
Pushing the dwelling thoughts of just how different I now was out of my mind (well, to the side of my mind at least), I stepped over that way to look at the nearest control orb thing she had indicated. Laein and Percy did the same, as we crowded around to get a look at what turned out to be an image of the corridor right outside the bridge.
Giving Laein an amused look, Bastet announced, “Your partner here has already discovered some of the ship’s capabilities when it comes to resizing and decorating rooms. All of which you seem to have worked out pretty quickly,” she added directly to the girl with a note of approval in her voice.
If the pint-sized figure hadn’t already swelled with pride as much as physically possible when she was referred to as my partner, she certainly would have when she was complimented for working out how to design her room. A broad smile appeared on her face, along with a slight blush. “Yes, well, it’s not very difficult, is it?” After a brief pause, she seemed to reconsider her own humbleness and added, “At least, not for someone of sufficient mental fortitude, who puts the time and effort into properly studying it.”
Smiling a bit to myself at that, I leaned over to look at the screen she had been working with. The girl really had designed it pretty well. She had already managed to shrink the proportions of the room down to better fit someone her size. Only, no, she hadn’t completely shrunk it down. The area she put her living space in was clearly designed on a smaller scale, but it opened up into a much wider open space. Raising a hand, I pointed that way. “What’s this area for?”
The pink-skinned girl squirmed a little before lifting her chin. “That’s where the plants go. We need a lot of plants, as many as possible. I mean, I demand my quarters be filled with every plant imaginable, as tribute! I shall have the undead servants gather them through day and night, until a proper living area has been constructed!”
“Sure, like I said, there’s a forested area somewhere around the middle of the ship,” I replied easily. “We can go check it out and see if the plants there will work for you. I’m pretty sure they’ve got some really exotic ones.”
She was clearly intrigued by that idea. But before we got too involved in that, I needed to learn how to control the design of the ship myself. And on a larger scale than a single room.
“Put two fingers against the image,” Bastet instructed once I was paying attention, “and give it a firm flicking motion toward the main screen up there. As though you’re trying to throw it that way.”
With a shrug, I followed her instructions. Immediately, as my fingers flicked the image on the smaller orb, it appeared on the larger one at the front so we could see better.
Bastet gestured that way. “Any time you want to share specific words on the screen, or part of the image, run your fingers around it like you’re circling the part you want to share, then flick it toward the screen you want it to appear on. It’s part your physical motion and part your intention. The system knows if you’re trying to send it to, say, a screen over there, or to a handheld version someone else has. Motion and intention together. That means a lot in this place.” After getting all that out, she frowned before muttering under her breath, “Apparently.” So it seemed most of what she was telling us was just what the Reapers had sent to her. She was still annoyed that they ignored her other than that. And why wouldn’t she be? The whole situation was kind of bullshit. And given what I understood from the future, they weren’t about to start sharing a lot more with her after this. Actually, I’d be surprised if they ever directly contacted her again after this. Which was just… yeah. No wonder she was annoyed.
Still, she moved on easily enough. Gesturing to me, the woman instructed, “First things first, hold two fingers against the image of the feisty one’s room. Press firmly until you feel it hum a bit under your touch. Then make a triangular motion and release. This will lock the room so it won’t be affected by other changes until you unlock it.”
Once I’d done that and received an approving smile from Laein herself, Bastet continued. “Now, to change the rest of this floor, put your hand on the smaller orb there, the control on the left. Focus on the image on the screen while you’re holding it, and picture how you want it to look. Imagine a corridor that actually fits you better.”
I did so. And then we watched as the corridor on the screen visibly shrank down. The very materials of the walls, floor, and such turned to liquid form, changed size, then solidified once more. Instead of being built for fifteen foot tall people, it was now clearly meant more for people who were more human-sized. The other massive doors were all resized as well, up and down the hall. At the end of the hall, a set of stairs that I would’ve needed my grappling hook or rocket burst to climb also shrank and reshaped themselves to fit.
Once that was done, Bastet instructed me to use my finger to circle the whole image of the hallway on the orb in front of me (the smaller one rather than the main view screen at the front). Then I had to place my hand flat against the image while she changed the one on that main view screen to show a blueprint of the entire structure. Fifteen miles worth of massive floors, rooms the size of entire buildings, and more sections that would have been anywhere from hard to impossible to properly navigate.
Except under Bastet’s tutelage, I gave the image of the hallway I had reshaped a flick toward the blueprint on the main screen. Immediately, it went dark, and I felt things shifting all around us. The entire tower was reforming itself to follow the basic size principles I had ‘taught’ it with that corridor. Now, once it was done, the whole structure would be rebuilt using the smaller scale rooms, halls, stairs, elevators, and so on. The chairs, the tools, the consoles, all of it would change itself to fit people on our scale. There was still the same amount of space, of course. There were just more rooms, more hallways, more everything to take up that space.
Leaning against the nearby console, Bastet muttered something about being sooo glad the Reapers found her useful for something. Then she focused on me again and waved it off. “Never mind, it’s not your fault. Anyway, apparently you can experiment with that some more on your own time. Reshape this entire place, change the rooms however you like, get into more detailed decorating. The whole structure can change inside and out to your whims. And only your whims. Like I said, it won’t listen to anyone who doesn’t have some sort of Reaper connection. A real Reaper connection, not the Bosch bullshit.”
“Does that mean we can’t even control anything in this place?” Laein sounded distraught and annoyed. “We have to wait for him to open doors and everything?” Immediately, she realized her mistake and pointed dramatically at the screen she had used. “I made it work for me! I am even more of a genius than I thought! Fear me, Reaper security systems, for I am your doom!”
“I think it knew you were with me and gave you access.” I murmured that before Bastet could answer. “I mean, that’s the impression I get, anyway. I sort of… have the idea that I can pass off that sort of authority, right? Make doors and consoles and stuff like that listen to them. The Reapers had to have servants in these ships. It knew she was with me when I opened the door to come in here in the first place. When it restructured this bridge to better fit people our size, it made that console for her.”
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Bastet, for her part, tilted her head as though listening to something else, then muttered an almost-silent curse in response before nodding to us. “Apparently so, yeah. Only someone like you or me can actually control the full system. But we can give others the authority to use lesser systems. Make the door listen to them, allow them to use the consoles, certain weapons, that sort of thing. And you can give them the authority to redecorate specific rooms, as we’ve seen.”
Right, sure, why not? Now I had billions of years worth of memories locked up in my head that would leak out now and then to make me say or even possibly do something I didn’t mean to, my body had been transformed into a Fae version that gave me full Reaping instead of the Boscher partial, and I had full control over a fifteen-mile tall Reaper spaceship slash tower that could apparently transform its entire inside and outside according to my whims.
Giving a low whistle as all that ran through my head, I focused on the others. “Well, what are we waiting for? It sounds like we can actually move through this place properly now, and I think that means it’s time to go exploring.”
“Thank you,” Laein blurted, sounding utterly exasperated. “I don’t care what else you are, you’re a Necromancer. That’s what matters. So let’s see what Necromancer treasures they’ve left us to begin plotting our inevitable universal conquest with!”
********
It turned out that exploring a place the size of this ship was a rather lengthy process. Even for someone with all the help that I had. I sent all my ghosts through the various corridors, now shrunk down to better suit people our general size, and had them help map the place out, one level at a time. I made sure they didn’t grab anything that was lying around, simply noting what they saw and where it was. They accomplished this by passing the information to Doctor Manakel while he stood right outside the bridge. With a little help from Bastet, I had convinced a large part of the wall there to turn into what amounted to a touch screen white board. A person could draw on that board by applying any amount of pressure against it, so the Seosten ghost was able to create a map with notations of where everything was. Meanwhile, I was carrying around a computer pad that the ship had also provided. Which basically involved simply drawing what I wanted on one of the control orbs while thinking very intently about what I wanted it to be able to do, then pulling it out of the nearby wall. Like Bastet had said, intention mattered. The ship could basically read my mind when I was focusing on what I was trying to draw. It was a little creepy, but also incredibly useful. The pad I had created was linked to the wall map, so I could look at it and zoom in on specific details from wherever I was.
It was a fairly simple system. The ghosts would spread out, note where things were and report that back to Doctor Manakel, who made notations on the map. Then I could see those notations on my own computer pad. That continued as the ghosts spread out to other floors as well. We would follow gradually behind them, looking into the rooms where they marked anything interesting being. It took us longer since everything that was magical had to be very carefully analyzed, tested, and then put away for future deeper examination. I had turned about half of this top level into a storage room (there would undoubtedly need to be more later, but one was enough to start with), and had a few zombies carrying crates around. Each crate would be filled with the things we found, carefully labeled with exactly what was inside and what we knew about it, then carried off to that storage room.
Of the rooms on this top level, we first found an armory. In there were–well there were a lot of weapons that were either entirely too big or too small for us to use, or designed for beings with several extra hands. But of the ones that were properly sized, we found half a dozen long silver and red pikes that were capable of cutting through most metal fairly easily and would return to your hand a few seconds after you threw them. They could also burn incredibly hot along the blade. There were a couple swords along the same lines, a solid twenty or so laser rifles, an equal number of ballistic rifles that looked like elephant guns (I said that term and immediately made Laein fall over laughing at the thought of elephants carrying guns), about forty bracelets that could project energy shields of varying sizes in front of the wearer, a whole crate full of explosives of both the magical and mundane variety, a handful of these interesting shovel things that could auto-create a long, deep trench in almost any material within a few seconds, five seriously powerful sniper rifles that seemed pretty similar to the one Sarah used, and a handful more weapons like that. Oh and ten or so suits of armor that looked like ordinary blue and white jumpsuits but would immediately resize themselves to fit whoever put them on, and were capable of withstanding some pretty hefty damage. They also projected a personal atmosphere around the wearer and could sustain you in the middle of deep space for up to three days. Which, to be fair, wasn’t a lot if you were in deep space, but still.
We moved on from the armory fairly quickly after making sure there was nothing in there that would be immediately hazardous. They were interesting weapons, but we wanted to get into the Necromancy stuff. And boy did we. In the next room over, we found a pile of equipment just sort of lying there. It was like whoever had been wearing it had taken it off and run away. Or, far more likely, been killed and had their biological remains recycled while the equipment was left behind.
Either way, the first thing we found in that pile, beyond some clothes, was a gold medallion about the size of a silver dollar, on a matching chain. The medallion had a bunch of tiny ancient script etched into it, along with a blue gem in the center that was as small as the head of a pin. The whole thing radiated powerful magic. After making sure it wasn’t dangerous to handle, we examined it. Apparently, the thing would allow whoever wore it to animate a dozen corpses without using any of their own magic. I gave that to Laein since she needed it more than I did.
There was also a small box of four rings. They looked simple, three were just plain silver bands without any stone while the fourth looked like it was made of ruby. But it turned out that if a Necromancer wore that last one, the remaining three could be worn by ghosts. Doing so would give the ghost the ability to become tangible at will while only taking a tiny bit of energy from the Necromancer, even if they remained tangible for an extended time. Yeah, those rings would be shared amongst the ghosts. Laein got one of them for her own use while I kept the other two. I would keep the main ring too since I had the energy to spare.
Beyond that, in the pile there was a black arm bracer that could absorb large amounts of ambient Necromantic energy and hold onto it to be used later. Then there was the matching bracer which could project an energy blast, drawing from the user’s own magical energy (or from its twin), to destroy or at least damage any Necromantic construct or spell, turning it back into energy for the first bracer to absorb.
We also found three more rings that enhanced Necromantic power (basically magnifying the energy you were putting out), a pair of glasses which identified active spells, a stopwatch that could create a fifteen-foot-wide bubble where everyone within aside from the user was slowed down to about a quarter of their usual speed for thirty seconds once per day, a dagger that could cut intangible beings and absorb their energy, two pairs of boots that could make a person themselves intangible as long as they had charges left (they could be refilled through a person’s own spell energy), and a deceptively simple-looking red scarf that could extend to a whole fifty feet in length and was able to be mentally controlled by whoever was wearing it.
Finally, in that room, we found a magical staff. At least, we thought the staff itself was magical. But it turned out only the golden metal bracer things attached to either end of it were. Those metal bracers were made out of some incredibly rare material that could basically hold any number of spells drawn on them and then activate it later. Whereas usually when someone drew a spell on something, the space it used was taken up until the spell was activated, in this case the spellform would vanish and leave a blank-looking surface once you drew it, touched the metal, and spoke a single word. Any word would do. When you spoke that same word again, the spell you connected it to would appear and be ready to activate once again. Each piece of metal could hold up to a hundred separate spellforms. You still had to manually draw them in and empower them, but still. Even with my image inscription ability, this would be useful. Especially since this would allow me to set up spells that required multiple stages of preparation and energy. I could just set it all up aside from the final trigger.
Yeah, I attached one of those to my staff to play with later, and gave the other to Laein so she could put it on something.
All of that was just one room on one level. There was a lot more to come as we moved through the rest of this ship. While we all moved to do just that, I glanced back toward the image of the full tower that was displayed on another large screen on the far side of this room. The sheer scale was staggering. It was going to take a long time to sort out everything that was in this place, get the hang of even navigating, let alone controlling it, and everything else that needed to be done. There were weeks, if not months worth of work and practice ahead of us. But hey, I had just taken several truly massive steps toward actually creating the Necromancy school I wanted. This would be our base of operations, our actual school itself. It could move around, reshape itself to anything we needed, and help protect us from threats. Reaper weapons had to be good for that.
Was this whole thing part of Ehn’s plan? Did he know I was going to do all this? I had no idea. I didn’t know what he was doing now, where he was, or what his future plans were. Hell, I didn’t even know what I was going to do about who and what I was now. I didn’t know how to even start to comprehend everything that had happened to me. And I probably wouldn’t for a long time. But I did know one thing.
It was time to get busy.