They spent the evening in Wali’s room as Yacob reshaped the Deep Jasper. The stone was rough, cut from somewhere deep underground with a pick. Wali first had Yacob separate the jasper from the ordinary rock, then remove all impurities and imperfections from the remaining jasper. They were left with a milky brown stone; flecks of glittering black material seemed to flow through it, pulled on a slow current. The head-sized chunk of rock had been refined down to a fist-sized orb. Using techniques Darron had taught them, Yacob further reshaped it into three medallions the size of his palm, which Wali then inscribed with a circle of glyphs to gather and store mana. Yacob hardened it, restructuring the stone’s surface into a strong crystal lattice. Each would now act as a battery for Yacob, and he could fill or drain them with a touch. This effectively quadrupled Yacob’s pool of Earth mana.
In the morning, they ate and found the shop known as Stone Seer in the sixth segment. The city was divided up like an orange into numbered segments, nine in total. The shop was a tiny stone storefront attached to a residence. It was a rock hunter’s dream. Crystals, polished, rough, cut, and uncut stones covered every surface, and geodes with myriad hues and glittering cores sat all over the place. A shadowkin woman sat at a table covered in rock dust. She wore goggles and a mud-spattered smock as she worked at a water saw polishing a large agate. Wali could feel hundreds of tiny wards scattered around the place, anti-thievery wards, he assumed. There was also a noise barrier keeping the room silenced from outside noise.
She turned as they entered and set her work aside. The air smelled of the deep earth, fresh cut stone, and clean mud. She lifted her goggles and squinted in the daylight, her overlarge eyes sensitive to the sunlight behind them. She had black hair and bubblegum purple skin; her eyes were dark and had horizontally slitted pupils. Trickster informed Wali that Shadowkin were native to the deep places in the earth, and few lived on the surface. Most traded with dwarves and never saw the sun. Her voice was just a whisper as she greeted them, “Good day, sirs. How may I help you?”
“We are looking for some Fire aspected stone if you have any?” Wali replied with his voice low. Shadowkin’s senses were very sensitive, and he did not want to be rude.
She stood and bowed, “My thanks for your consideration, I have lived on the surface for much of my life, and I am prepared for you noisy folk.” She turned her head, and Wali saw colored wax stuffed into her ears. Yacob looked on puzzled but followed suit in keeping quiet. They watched her walk over to a shelf with an assortment of black and red crystals. She indicated the shelf, “These are the fire-aspected stones I have in stock, though if you need more, I can acquire some from my family below given time.”
Wali had Yacob feel the stones to pick the “right one.” There were three crystals, one long thin piece that started orange at the tip and darkened to red in the center and black at the thickest part. The second was a double handful of smaller cubic crystal formations resembling a pixelated fire. The last was a murky red-brown lump of stone, shot through with white veins about the size and shape of a rugby ball. Yacob held his hand out and concentrated. Wali and the shadowkin woman watched as Yacob’s hand drifted toward the long thin piece. “This one has the best affinity,” Yacob said.
The shadowkin woman nodded, “Yes, Bloodfire Spike is known for its fire aspect and clarity. Two gold for the piece. Be careful, however. It is very brittle, much like glass.”
“Can you take One gold fifty?” Wali asked.
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“That is much too low….” They bickered over the price before settling on one gold eighty silver. Leaving the shop, they headed toward a row of armorers they had seen on the way. The Bloodfire Spike was a pure fire-aspected crystal; messing with its structure would ruin the piece. Taking the spike and three jasper pieces to an armorer, they commissioned another bracer for Yacob. The Spike would lay against his skin on the inside of his forearm, the three pieces of jasper on the outside, all wrapped in a steel clamshell. The bracer with the Hunter’s Stone was on his left, the new bracer on his right. It would be ready in a week, the armorer estimated. The custom fittings were fiddly but doable. The bracer would act as a defensive piece and a battery for Yacob’s magics.
Once again low on cash, the boys walked around and saw the sights. They stood at the top of the ramp to the central tier and gazed out into the kingdom known as the Imperial Throne. The land beyond the thick wall was burned clean for three hundred meters beyond the wall. An open kill zone for the magical defenses and mundane siege weapons stationed on the border. Beyond that lay deciduous woods, too thin to be called a forest. A road had been cut through it straight as an arrow, directly from the gatehouse below toward the far horizon. A twenty-meter-wide slash through the woods. It was hard-packed earth stained with old blood and bone and discarded rusting weapons. No fortifications loomed on the Imperial land, but the burnt skeletons of ancient siege weapons remained, too wrecked to be worth reclaiming. The more they looked, the more evidence of years of failed invasions displayed themselves. The mana in the land was tainted with Death magic. Wali could see the stains of necromancy on the land. A powerful necromancer with a small troop of soldiers could quickly raise an undead army here.
Death magic was common everywhere. Those who twisted Death magic with other base magics could be called necromancers. Zombies and skeletons were simple puppets; infusing them with Mind or Clever magics could readily make them nearly independent. Add in some spirit to bind a ghost or a touch of life to create true undead like ghouls. The permutations were numerous, and anyone skilled enough or with a simple application of brute force could quickly make an army from a collection of corpses. Maintaining them was the hard part. Without some sort of fuel to keep them going, they deteriorated quickly. Decay was an aspect of Life and was the antithesis of Death magic. Creating a corporeal undead was impossible with nothing to animate, and most noncorporeal undead were too weak to do anything more than frighten a person. Those skilled and powerful necromancers could build siege beasts, grotesque amalgamations of corpses as large as they could make them.
As all of the Imperial Throne’s neighbors, the Harvest Kingdom had been fighting these sorts of incursions for generations now. Their armies were all veterans of the constant wars, professionals at breaking a body so it could no longer be used for necromancy. Warmages were trained to break the mana bonds to the masters, to drain the Death aspects mana, or disrupt it. There were almost as many ways to destroy the undead as to make them. Yacob and Wali stared out over the killing field, humbled by the power of the Harvest Kingdom and the tenacity of the Imperial Throne. Wali thanked whatever Administrator that he had not been marked with a Death glyph. He would have been hunted instantly within the walls of Belge, for there were passive detectors of Death aspected mana everywhere.
The killing field stretched along the base of the wall from horizon to horizon; no single mile was without evidence of the Imperial Throne’s greed and desperation. The nation was dying out. The bodies of their people fed their constant drive to conquer and consume their neighbors. There were few living left among the populace of the Imperial Throne. No one who had gone into the nation had returned unscarred by the desolate conditions, deprived citizens, and depraved nobility. Even here, at the very edge of their reach, there were no birds in the sky, no squirrels clambering across the branches, and not even the call of crickets came from the woods beyond the wall.
Humbled by the sight, the boys returned to the Hunter Society House. They had some time and not much cash; they might as well find some work.