> Known advanced construct tiers of the Aken*
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> From the archives of Crimson Palace in Elauthin
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> Zargatoh’s Tangod Kobnot or Blank. A perfect product for advanced Bonemancers to work with. Used to build more complex models differing from the original dramatically. Various levels have birthed from it.
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> Suharto’s Nerot (N’rot), the common foot soldier. Mass produced and used in the Zilan-Aken war millennia ago.
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> Suharto’s Zugruk, (Z’Gruk) the four armed Ogre. A large special construct deployed at the Plague Isles campaign.
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> Suharto’s Glidurig, a rare massive but simple-minded construct standing at eight feet tall used in sieges.
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> *The information is outdated by almost two thousand years.
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‘Tin’
A bit subpar materiel
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“Hmm, yes.” Tin murmured digging in the morning dew soaked ground. “Uhm,” he exclaimed finding another piece of rotting flesh. The last of the wild-dog’s hiding holes a modest goldmine.
Um.
Uhum.
Ah very nice.
‘Tin’ thought clearing with the scalpel the shoulder blade from the gory material to reveal the broken scapula. Atae gathered the pieces of gluey flesh he’d dropped in her bag, the leather dripping gore at the seams.
Yeah, aha!
Uhm.
He hummed at the nice find, forked tongue wetting his lips. ‘Tin’ rolled the large piece of human skin on a stick and gave it to Atae as well.
“Never leave anything,” he reminded her, not that she needed reminding. Atae was an old girl many times rebuilt and improved. Tin was a perfectionist. He kept attacking a problem or bad iteration with gusto, never giving up.
Diligence, Tin thought, essentially patting himself on the back pleased. Hard work and dedication overcomes talent. Let Zargatoh claim that.
“It started turning to paste,” Atae whispered and Tin stared at her light green Cofol eyes and the blue-black well-combed hair. The modest tunic she had under her long cloak.
Um.
Yeah.
Very nice.
“We have most of him,” he decided and got up, old knees creaking at the joints where arthritis had amassed. He needed to clean that up soon. “But keep the spare flesh just the same. We’ll put it in a thicker bag and find a use for it.”
Atae nodded and got up. Tin followed her standing straighter himself, the heavy bone pendant clacking as he moved, far taller than the female. Much-much taller. He reached for a cloth to clean his hands, found a vial of distilled alcohol and poured it on lavishly to prevent any nasty infection. Sickly animals always fall upon the corpses, even when they are well-burned. Maybe more depending on the palate. They dig out the mounds of blackened flesh and charred skeletons, scatter everything about the ‘bone fields’.
Or hide them in the ground.
Quite a mess to shift through.
Ahum. Yep.
Eh, here he comes again.
Shit.
He turned to stare at the wiry hooded Lorian approaching them. They weren’t that deep in the woods but the fields were busy with scavengers. Days after the main army had departed patrols still roamed the lands but couldn’t stop the looting.
The forest was bristling with refugees, escapees and deserters.
Brigands also.
All realm’s creatures in their primordial habitat.
Aha. Um. Yes, yep.
Xago was a Nerot (N’rot), one of Suharto’s warrior variants. ‘The fast soldier’ as Suharto preached during the council meetings back in the day ‘brings more to the table’ while continuously building bigger and less mobile behemoths.
Open and close quotes.
His ancient ruffian.
Autocratic oppressing motherfucker, Tin thought but cast such thoughts away. You never know who is listening.
“Found them in the northern pile,” Xago rustled in his semi-Lorian semi-Issir accent. He’d taken to darken his skin with coal residue initially to better blend in. Now in his third century Xago wasn’t as fast as he used to be or as strong, but he’d learned enough skills on his own to pass as a ranger.
Cannibalistic scout.
Deranged assassin.
Suharto had never envisioned his constructs to survive for so long or grow on their own.
Tin had noticed they did though. Because Tin was a perfectionist, always looking to improve on a model. Details matter.
Ahum. Yep.
“Couldn’t you drag them back?” He asked disapprovingly and Xago blinked. Brown eyes cold and calculative.
Is the motherfucker talking with him?
Nah. Nope.
Am I grounded? What the actual fuck?
“A lot of Horselords about. It is what did them in,” Xago explained finally and used his tongue to work on cleaning his teeth from the inside.
Old rotting flesh has a tendency to glue itself on your teeth, ‘Tin’ reasoned glaring at him. Gets stuck in them gums and in the back molars.
Fucking disgusting.
That son of a bitch is lying.
Son eh. Sort of.
Probably killed them himself.
Fare thee well Trak and Lok.
You were moderately good servants.
Yep.
“Burn them both with the Issir dead, the Horselords did,” Xago explained switching his accent to throw him off.
Tin was no fool!
“Right. Ahem, any word from the boss?” He asked casually cutting him off while watching Atae carefully place the leather bag in a bigger hemp sack in the background.
Tidy and neat.
Ehum. Good job you did. Very nice.
“Not since the other winter.”
Good grief. That was more than a year.
Too far. The realm always moves forward.
Um.
Being busy ain’t easy.
“Anything else?”
“The Khan’s man wants to talk with Suharto,” Xago reported and stood back aggressively, a hand on the handle of his scimitar. Eyes looking behind the Aken.
‘Tin’ turned his hooded elongated head around to stare at a young vagabond watching them from behind a tree. An Issir, probably a slave, he thought. About ten.
Nobody else at the near.
Too old though. Hmm.
Still. He debated with himself quickly. One can produce good stuff with extra but a bit subpar materiel.
Experiment without wasting valuable stock.
Maybe another set of lungs?
He raised his arm to greet the human in a friendly manner, the gesture scaring the teenager that watched the long limb unfurling out of his saggy cloak. The youngster bolted towards the opening with a loud scream.
Eh.
“Grab that little shit,” Tin ordered Xago but the construct was already after him.
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Two hours later ‘Tin’ looked down on the silver mask of the guard standing outside the massive field tent. It was built on a wooden base, raised a foot from the ground. Still, one had to duck to enter the large square opening and keep himself uncomfortably stooped forward which always caused him intense pain in the spine bones.
Repair them was a hell of a difficult job, unless you trusted another Aken with a scalpel to work on you.
Tin didn’t trust his own maker.
No one really.
Maybe Atae.
Uhum. Yep.
Healthy attitude drives a person forward.
“That’s close enough,” that stooge minister Phanti warned. Advisor, Tin corrected himself.
Talk about a fucking oxymoron!
Burzin was seated on a wooden throne covered with hides. A desert leopard resting at his feet, gnawing at a bone. Tin squinted his snake eyes, the Khan was twenty meters away for fuck’s sake, to determine whether it was from a human.
Tibia. Ayup.
Antelope.
Nah. Too thick.
Deer?
Eh. Ahum.
Yep.
“Suharto is a very old friend Phanti,” Burzin rustled in his Horselord difficult to understand dialect. Not a man of the letters for sure. Living and ruling from the saddle for most of his life.
Most because old age had him more sitting than walking, never mind riding in his later years.
“He can approach us,” the Khan added. “Come old friend, we need to talk.”
I ain’t your friend, Tin thought but walked with difficulty, stooping his head to avoid scrapping the ceiling of the tent. Nor am I that Suharto.
Tin was number thirteen.
Most of his more talented predecessors had gotten shafted in the field, croaked or the like. Most of those that had come after him, had also kicked the bucket and so forth.
Necessity meant Tin was to be used as well. His inability to produce decent soldiers had forced Suharto to keep him out of the action. But events and time had conspired to unleash Tin into the world.
“You look a bit different but also the same,” Burzin decided, talking of Tin’s looks and not anything else. “I heard you were still around and sent for you. You seem like you have just plowed a whole field. What happened?”
“I walked. It’s a great distance,” Tin explained and used a long finger to gather the sweat from his collar. The Khan’s tent was very hot and not well ventilated. The finger turning white from the paint.
Plus I did a little bit of digging.
Work never waits.
“I can’t fathom why you won’t use a horse,” Burzin griped eyeing Tin’s covered in mud legs, the grime reaching well above the knees and filth covering his long robes. “It’s been decades. You just have to ask me and I shall provide the best stallion you ever seen.”
Well, it’s been much longer than that, Tin thought wetting his lips to keep from chuckling at the Horselord presuming he couldn’t get anything he wanted without asking for permission.
And I really don’t enjoy horse-flesh.
A rabbit though. Now that’s a delicacy.
Tin had a refined palate, which wasn’t always an asset in his kind of business.
Um.
“Learning to ride is not for me,” he said and Phanti raised his trimmed brows. A fine job was done on them actually. Atae could use some of that skill, Tin thought, then he realized Phanti had slaves doing his makeup and frowned.
“Well, I heard that in my court. A sign of our times,” Burzin said with a weary sigh. Something amiss? “Your man almost ruined the battle for us,” the Khan continued soberly answering him the voiceless query.
“The battle you won?” Tin asked just to be sure the old man hadn’t lost his marbles.
“You need to address the magnificent Ruler of all Steppes properly Aken!” Phanti snapped, all the pent-up anger coming out.
Hmm.
Ahum.
“Suharto is the reason I’m still around,” Burzin corrected his advisor. “But the matter is concerning my friend. I’ll need an answer.”
“What was the problem?” Tin asked trying to sound at least a little interested.
“The 3rd moved. It was supposed to head for Issir’s Eagle,” Burzin explained. “Instead it reinforced Est Ravn which almost destroyed Ota-Khem but for Sepa remembering his orders at the last moment. I don’t know if I should praise or flog him.”
“Grogoceq had worked on that,” Tin started but paused seeing the Khan’s perturbed expression. “The… Tangod Kobnot…” he couldn’t for the life of him remember who they were talking about.
“What’s…?” Phanti asked deeply confused.
“The… agent. Yes. Uhum. Yeah that’s it,” Tin hissed with a grimace.
“Sir Luke?” Burzin asked trying to figure out if they were talking about the same person.
Tin hoped they were.
“Ahm. Yep. Him.”
The Khan stood back on his chair, his weathered face distorted. “You’re not making any sense Suharto. Usually you are more coherent.”
The leopard raised its head to stare at him curiously. Then let out a low guttural growl that ended with a snarly cat-like sound.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
Tin hated cats. Both in the Old and the two Realms.
Big cats he hated even more.
Fast, sprightly motherfuckers.
Always going for the throat.
He reached for a bone just in case.
“Well?” The Khan asked seemingly getting impatient.
“Well, we haven’t seen Grogoceq for a while now,” Tin explained and Phanti blinked his slanted-eyes in surprise. “Since that incident… in a…” both men were stooped forward to hear him murmuring under his breath. “Rida.” He cleared his throat. “Yep, that’s it.”
“Since my son was killed?” Burzin asked a little frustrated.
“Which son?” Tin asked as he could never tell the Horselords apart.
“Prince Sahand!” Phanti snapped irate.
“Yep,” Tin agreed unperturbed. “I knew that.”
“Suharto I…” Burzin started, his left eye not moving at all, milky. He needed a new one but Suharto (the other one) had counseled him not to broach the matter with the Khan. “You were with Grogoceq before we departed,” the flushed Khan reminded him.
Or so he thought.
That wasn’t the same Grogoceq.
“That’s another,” Tin explained getting more blank looks. The leopard shifted, snout sniffing at his arsehole lifting the long tail and then lashing it down with a snarl.
“He has a brother?” Phanti asked through his teeth.
Well.
“Uhum. Aye that’s it. He worked with the… Luke, hmm. So when we lost him, the link… line of communication was severed.”
“AredRavn still worked for you, didn’t he? You could still have messaged him right?” Burzin asked puffing out in exasperation.
AredRavn is dead for a couple of years.
Or was it four?
Seduced by Wiris’ sultry female charms or whatever, the last woman he bedded a former man.
The point being that’s not how it works at all ‘old friend.’
Aha-haha. Don’t laugh, they might take it the wrong way.
Yep.
“Left without supervision, he might have taken certain liberties. Veered off course,” or lost control, Tin continued, assuming an academic tone that wasn’t that well received or even understood. Um. Eh. Truth be told, he’d no idea what happened. A construct left without a master was a headless chicken. Thing. Person. Ehem. “But still you folk got what you wanted,” he finished and stood upright, bones crackling, the top of his head painfully scrapping at the ceiling.
Argh.
Ouch.
An upset Tin slowly lowered himself a little, knees bending backwards which always freaked people out. Not that he cared at that moment.
Just use a bit more fabric for crying out loud! You thrifty horse-faced sack of turds! Think of the taller folk, Others curse you!
Burzin stared at him in silence, then pursed his wrinkled mouth tight whilst scratching his forehead with crooked fingers leaving a red impression on the skin.
“What happened to Grogoceq’s brother?” He asked with a tired voice.
They had no idea. The other Suharto thought nothing of it, but Grogoceq himself wasn’t as sure since Six and Nine always worked together. The two replicas much alike and pretty close.
The matter a little disturbing but Tin didn’t partake in gossip of that kind.
To each his own.
Nevertheless it was a blow for Grogoceq to lose them for sure and it had kept both elder Aken on Eplas to investigate giving Tin his opportunity to follow Burzin into new lands.
Fresh opportunities.
Ahum.
Yep.
“The realm is full of dangers Khan,” Tin replied and decided to look into the matter a bit more himself.
Burzin puffed out and reached to pet the leopard with his left hand. The big cat turned its head sensing his intentions and licked the Horselord’s fingers with a long pink tongue. Tin furrowed his brows as he’d expected it to just bite the Khan’s hand off initially.
Eh.
Never mind.
“We don’t have a man in the capital now,” Burzin murmured and stared at the standoffish Phanti.
“Luke wasn’t going to assume command, oh ye undefeated Satrap and the walls are still unrepaired. The north gates ruined,” Phanti replied and Tin nodded as if he cared about the matter.
He didn’t.
He was there to guarantee max-casualties in every battle fought.
“We’re spread out too thin,” Burzin griped with a dissatisfied grimace. “It means we must keep an eye at Boar’s Horn and bring enough of a force to surround the capital forward. We don’t have the supplies for that. Osahar complains about shortages also.”
“He’ll have his port soon great Burzin,” Phanti assured him. “As soon as Binra-Kot arrives.”
“He doesn’t have the ships to secure both routes. He’ll either guard west of Capri or east,” Burzin grunted in frustration. “We need to blockade Caspo O’ Bor and might have a slave situation soon.”
“What kind?” Tin asked just to be involved in the conversation some more. He couldn’t justify standing there stooped, his back and knees hurting, whilst there was work to be done elsewhere.
“There are a lot of civilians in the capital,” Phanti explained.
“Use them.”
“Well, not everyone can be used. They don’t have the skills and it’s unrealistic.”
Tin was talking about something else entirely.
“Don’t you sell them as slaves as the Khan said?” Tin casually asked changing course, using his index finger to clean a nostril. He had trouble breathing with all the incense burning inside the tent for no plaguing reason. He did both of them as a matter of fact but felt no better.
“Again, needs to be a certain value behind such a sale,” Phanti explained. “And we have no idea what the market is with all that happened in the Peninsula.”
“They won’t buy slaves?” Tin asked unsure.
“The matter is,” Burzin interrupted them a little frustrated again. “We can’t feed them all, so the city needs to keep working. The fields cultivated and businesses kept open. This needs oversight and manpower, in order to keep them under control.”
“You could always get rid of them,” Tin suggested and seeing the perturbed looks on the Horselords faces he added. “Or drug them to maintain order.”
“Drug them?” Phanti asked. “The whole city?”
Tin stared at him numbly. Was it a difficult to fathom concept as well? He’d thrown it in there to add some variety.
Options of sorts.
Ahm. Um. Right.
“Anyway,” Burzin continued still playing with the leopard at his feet. “I assume you’ll follow us? We are leaving in two days.”
Hmm. I’m not sure I want…
Oh wait. He was supposed to.
“Of course,” Tin assured them hoarsely and started coughing, his throat full of phlegm. “Now if there’s nothing more dear friends… I have left Atae unattended.”
Burzin stared at him curious.
“Your slave.”
“Um. Yep. That’s it.”
“She must be quite capable to satisfy your needs. You were never fond of human females in the past,” the Khan added. She is. “We’d like to see her.”
Ah… nope.
“Well… she’s a bit busy now,” Tin explained and Phanti glared at him.
“The slave will sleep in the Khan’s tent,” the advisor translated.
Tin eyed the Rin An-Pur bureaucrat austerely. “Atae isn’t that kind of slave.”
“She better learn fast,” Phanti retorted with a smirk and the leopard growled standing on four legs.
Hmm.
“Atae works with the sick and gravely injured,” he explained since that was their official capacity and the advisor frowned. She wasn’t in that sense, working with the sick or a healer that is, but she was his favorite construct, not to be passed around like a toy. “She might contaminate this tent.”
“You brought her here?” Burzin rustled.
“I didn’t,” Tin replied patiently. “For that very reason.”
“You don’t fear her?”
“I’m an Aken,” Tin admitted what they both knew. “We are built to endure,” he added succumbing to another bout of coughing. His eyes watering and feeling dizzy.
Not to mention it was a lame excuse that probably wouldn’t work. Atae needs to polish her pleasuring skills. Then again the Horselord would probably use her as a mare which required no skill at all.
Ahum. Yep. She could do that easily.
“Ah. Fine then,” the Khan said tiredly surprisingly giving up on the matter. “You may go Suharto. We’ll talk again on the morrow.”
Eh.
You’re spared the old horse’s cock girl. Uhum.
Yeah.
Well, twas a good summit then.
Very nice.
Despite that and on the matter of talking with the Khan so soon, Tin would look to avoid it.
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Three hours later, very deep into the forest at a small hidden meadow between two groupings of old oak trees, Tin found Atae working on reconstructing the skeleton. Most of the bones were there, but they had missed the right kneecap which Tin promptly replaced with another one he’d picked up, two pieces of the phalanges and half a rib near the sternum that a spear thrust had broken and then some dog had gnawed away. They had enough bones gathered to replace the whole skeleton but they needed at least one bone from the original. He used such old bones for the tips of the fingers, stitched them with gold thread and insoluble resin glue. Then repaired the missing rib bone, using a saved part of his.
Tin had removed it earlier that month, a painful procedure, but Atae had done an excellent stitch job and the scar left behind was pretty small.
The Aken’s body was covered in much more gruesome scars anyway to bother with looks.
But he did.
The attempt to correct stuff must be done either way.
“Uhum,” he murmured appraisingly at the female. “Yep. Good. Let me see that,” Tin said and knelt beside the blanket she had deposited the remade skeleton. The light from the four torches she had lit and attached on broken branches illuminating the ghastly procedure.
Two cold bloody lungs and a warm much younger heart. The trachea and the carotid. Use a headless spoon as stick to shove it fully into the base of the cranium. Or your finger. Liver, bladder and rolls of smelling colon no amount of washing can properly clean. Place them correctly and care to avoid sharp turns or any leaking holes.
Yep.
Uhum.
Lovely.
He reached a gory arm inside one of the buckets with the grinded flesh for a generous amount of construct salve. Atae had worked it into a nice thick paste, mixed with lard dissolved in chemicals and then left in the sun for an hour. It was now hardening like a red bloody gum or more-like grotesque dough made out of finely grinded meat. Tin rolled it thinner with a thick steel rod on a square piece of wood set on the ground, whilst expanding it and started covering the exposed bones with each new piece of the malleable membrane.
You had to do several passes, create arteries and veins using specific tools, cut and repair again and again. Add tendons and craft muscles twisting several layers of material together. The more the merrier. Heh-heh. Yep. Uhum. Remember everything. Be precise. The better preserved the body, the more easy the reconstruction but it wasn’t vital for the final outcome. It needed skill and artistry, because it was in a sense like sculpting with flesh.
Yeah. Ahum.
Tin kept murmuring to himself as it was his habit. The night turned into day and then night again. Xago guarding the approach to their hidden camp and Atae dutifully helping out as she already knew most of the core procedure. Insects gathered and those he had to keep away as they could nest inside and lay eggs, then birds they scared off easily and finally larger predators Xago had to take out permanently, which Suharto’s construct did.
His maker’s construct.
This was to be his.
Like Atae.
But not a blank.
Another Nerot.
Umm. Yeah.
That’s it, he thought working on sculpting the face from memory, cutting out the eyeholes first using a very thin razor sharp blade, then the nostrils and the mouth. Added material to the lips and slotted a long finger through the mouth gap to add more artificial flesh under the cheeks. Checked for missing stuff from the exposed brain next and reinserted the eyeballs. Glued the sawed off top of the cranium back on and even used fasteners to seal it proper. Cursed as he didn’t remember whether the eye color was light-brown or a dark honey and settled with two close ones he dug out of the eyeballs bag. Had to wash them as insects had snuck inside. A devastated Atae apologized for that and Tin patted her gently on the head for he was really a decent guy.
Not many good folk around.
Yeah.
As for the internal parts of the body, the long ‘maturing period’ would repair eventually using the extra material he’d strategically deposited inside the cadaver. Fill the cavities. It didn’t have to be from the original for this part. Any subpar materiel would suffice.
Yep. Uhum. Good, good.
Very nice.
When he was satisfied he’d gotten everything right, dedicating most of his time on the face, Tin cracked open a fibula bone, he promptly replaced with a new one, then closed the lower part of the emaciated leg again and stitched it back up leaving the final touches to Atae.
She could work the long needle better than him, especially with his badly reconstructed fingers after so many centuries and the corpse’s difficult to work with outer skin that had started hardening now. They needed to roll the body into the blanket to avoid calcification, pour wax over it to seal it tight and then cocoon it carefully in a coffin or the ground and leave it to simmer in its juices for a night.
Tin used a thin long pin to extract the burned marrow out of the cracked bone. He gathered the material in a small bronze bowl Atae brought him. Then she returned to work on setting up a fire pit. Placed an iron cauldron filled with water over it.
With a sigh, for this part Tin didn’t much like or was as skilled in, he cut open his index finger and poured the contents of the bowl inside the boiling cauldron.
Add a touch of lead pounder, a young asp’s venom and a spoon of arsenic in the mix.
Let it simmer, force the soul’s cracked shard out, then trap it with a touch of your blood.
A drip of refined Mercury and a pint of saved necrotic plasma.
Whisper the Nameless psalm.
From the beast gods to loud Kattah in life’s start and the angry Sabbath in the middle,
To solemn Eatoth lurking between reality’s echelons after the end.
What Allgods cast aside the Others keep in the lands that never sleep.
Find the thread in your mind and tug it, so the memories can unravel
And the dead can sing and in madness’ weep
Thrice grounded and twice sluiced
Here goes, Tin thought and grabbing the shimmering gold cup with the foul concoction Atae offered him, he gulped it down quickly. Teeth hurting, molars bleeding and vomit clogging his throat. He doubled over, then dropped on his knees with a groan, feeling the skin pulling away from his body, the bones crackling as if coming apart.
The corpse’s memories crisp.
> You’ll serve the lord’s son? A peasant woman asked dropping a pile of dry wood down. Issir face split between pride and despair.
>
>
>
> Rise Sir David Bril, a knight of the Three Kingdoms a tall man recited soberly a smile on his face, Uher’s servant and the most faithful of squires. For you are one no more.
>
>
>
> Uhum. Not useful. Yeah, move on. A desperate Tin thought, rolling on the ground in spasms of agony.
>
>
>
> “You get out of the woods as soon as you can,” the same man from before said, much older now but wearing the same armour. The one depicting the beast goddess. “We need to shorten the field for them.”
>
> “Get out,” the construct Luke agreed or not and Tin growled trying to keep control of the thread to glean out more. “Don’t face the Khan.”
>
> “Gods damnit, what’s the matter with you!” The knight snapped and turned to look at Bril. “You’ve been out of it since we closed with the Horselords Luke. I need you to remember who you are now kin. Where you and I came from.”
>
> Hmm.
>
>
>
>
>
> “Remember,” Luke droned and then nodded a smirk on his face. “Out of the woods. Attack the Khan. Kill the lurking heathens.”
>
>
>
>
>
> No you idiot. Ah, never mind.
>
> That was strange, Tin thought not fully grasping what was going on inside the set loose construct’s mind.
>
>
>
> Go, someone yelled in desperation, the images getting hazier and various scenes getting mixed together rapidly, jumping back into the past. Back and forth the memories went. A tourney and a grinning Lady’s shawl wrapped on a lance, legionaries behind their shields in the field and over them a king’s banner.
>
> “HERE’S YER CHAMPION. THE PEASANT KNIGHT!” A herald roared at the ululating crowd and thunderous cheers erupted.
>
> The bird’s croak disturbingly even louder and its words cutting like sharpened blades.
>
>
>
> GO AWAY NOW!
>
> LEAVE LITCH!
-
“ARGLH! ERGLH!” A shuddering Tin growled and let go of the thread, blinded by pain and vomiting his guts out. Atae tried to help the Aken stand upright but he collapsed weakly, his joints not working and the skin shagging on his body. Fingers crooked weirdly or clenched closed tight.
A worn out Tin lay for a time staring at the sky over the canopy with blurry eyes and feeling acid flooding his mouth. With a pathetic groan he spat it out turning his head and then another torrent of acidic phlegm mixed with vomit erupted, some coming out his nose, ears ringing and bleeding from the eyes.
Eh, ouch.
Oh… the pain is excruciating!
Argh.
Umm.
That went… pretty well.
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It took Tin three days to recover, but he used the time to gently tug at the thread again and repair a set of workable memories, leaving useless parts out or adding others. On the night of the second to third day, Atae heard the buried corpse moving under the ground. They promptly dug him out and cut open the hardened sheets and crystalized blanket. Atae used a soaked in a solution cloth and a sharp knife to scrape away at the naked man. A tall Issir. A little emaciated still but in relative good shape all things considered.
Tin checked for any missing toes just in case, saw some imperfection on the right ear he could remedy later and decided he’d fucked up a bit with the eye-color. Not by a lot.
Eh. Umm.
Ahum. Oh, well.
Good enough.
Yep.
Yeah.
The construct cracked open his mouth and breathed out hoarsely while Tin checked to see if all the molars were there. Minor details, but you need to keep at it. Get the best possible product out.
“Suharto,” Bril rustled coming about slowly.
Technically yes. Tin thought with a tired but pleased grotesque grin, forked tongue wetting his mauve lips. But not exactly. Heh-heh.
“What is my purpose?” Bril asked still very confused.
He would eventually start working better once all the internal repairs finished.
“You are a knight. A warrior before that,” Tin explained and looked about him for Xago. But Suharto’s construct had gone exploring and hadn’t returned yet. Good. There’s plenty of time. “I want you to kill someone for me. Yes?”
“I’ll need a sword,” Bril rustled hoarsely and tried to get up but failed. Atae gave him a cup of water, but he couldn’t drink anything yet. Too much toxicity in the blood. Tin gestured for her to take it away.
“A dagger will suffice,” he told his construct. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t move.”
Yep.
It’ll work lovely. Uhum.
That’s it.
Very nice.
Tin thought and went to find a good dagger. They had found plenty of weapons discarded near the battlefield the previous days, so he could give Bril his sword if Tin choose to do so.
Any sword would do.
Or something close enough.
One shouldn’t get bogged down in the details.
But since Tin was a perfectionist he’d gone the extra mile and picked up the knight’s actual sword from the spot where he’d perished. He didn’t give him the sword immediately though as it would have been too visible on him. For this first simple task Bril only needed the dagger.
They could work building him up from there.
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