Norman sipped a cup of coffee as he sat on his balcony overlooking the west side of the city. Yeah, you heard that right, real fucking coffee! It had been a gift from the Admiral after the accords had been completed. And it was delicious.
That stressful time had been months ago, Norman realized. It had all been so hectic after the talks, and then the earthquakes that preceded another collapse. Most of the city had been fine, all except the castle.
A full third of the building had crumbled when the hill it sat upon collapsed and covered a few houses nearby in the resultant landslide. The thick stone walls could survive a lot, but it seemed like losing their foundation was too much.
It was really a blessing in disguise though. Turns out the dirt that made up the old hill wasn’t very stable. The old castle was torn down, and the earth was excavated and made more stable. The only thing that wasn’t removed was the testing chamber. The dirt that deep was deemed compact enough to remain in place. Norman wasn’t surprised, as the room itself sat lower than most of the foundations in Ashvale.
The new castle was around three times the scale of the old one. Which was both nice and a bit frustrating for Norman. On the one hand, he could now host actual parties in the throne room. There was even a separate dining room that was bigger than the old throne room, and there were multiple bedrooms now. It was also highly enchanted now, with decorative Bone Golems placed to look like statues or ornamentation as they wound around columns placed both inside and outside the building.
There was also a walled courtyard now with castle guards.
That was where the frustration began. He didn’t begrudge his people for wanting to ensure his safety, but it felt a bit excessive and claustrophobic being separated from the city like this. It was why he enjoyed spending his little free time on the balcony that overlooked the wall.
As he was sipping his coffee, a delicate hand settled on his shoulder.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t wake you did I?” He asked a still sleepy-looking Kalia.
The pair hadn’t slept together. She had simply passed out in the testing chamber last night and Norman had moved her to one of the bedrooms. But they had grown closer in the last few months of working together.
“Ugh,” she moaned softly, “Coffee.”
“Oh, right,” he chuckled. “Sit down, I’ll go get you some.”
“Thanks,” she managed to respond while yawning.
He returned a minute later with a pot of coffee and another cup. In the time since he had left and come back, she had found a blanket and was wrapped up tight in the cushioned chair.
“Here ya go,” he said, handing her the mug. “Fresh and hot.”
She blew on the surface of the coffee before taking a sip. “Mmmm, I missed coffee. Well, not coffee so much as the rush of energy from the caffeine. Now that I think about it, that was probably mostly from the tons of sugar in the stuff I used to drink. But this is good too.”
“Yeah. Not much of a demand for coffee around here or sugar for that matter, other than for taste. Caffeine has no effect on the undead, not that they need it since they don’t grow tired.”
“Ugh, don’t remind me. I feel like I’m wasting a third of my day by sleeping. …Do you miss it?”
“Hmm?” Norman asked, taking a sip of the deliciously warm drink. The warmth spread through his body as he swallowed, warding off the chill morning air.
“Being undead?”
“Sure, sometimes. But it isn’t like I can’t switch back and forth any time I want.”
“Oh, right. I suppose that’s true. How long has it been, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Not at all. It was probably shortly before the talks took place.”
“That long?” she asked in surprise. “I would have figured you changed weekly.”
Norman chuckled at that. “If it was a painless process, maybe I would. But dying sucks. Now that you bring it up, I could probably put myself through the same process you went through.”
She tightened the blanket around her even tighter. “I wouldn’t call that painless. I can’t imagine what it must feel like without that numbing agent you gave me.”
“Yeah, there are some painful ways to die. If I had to choose a way to go… probably disintegration. Maybe an explosion that tore me apart before I knew what hit me.”
A pillow thumped against his head.
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“What?” he chuckled looking at the slightly mortified woman wrapped in a blanket.
“That’s really morbid. And I know you, you got some silly idea in your head, and now you’re curious to test it out.”
He put his hand up in surrender. “You got me. But I don’t have a spell that disintegrates people, nor an explosive powerful enough to do that, so rest easy. This was only a thought experiment,” he smiled.
“Uh-huh, until you do. Promise me you won’t test stuff like that.”
The serious tone in her voice made him pause. “Alright, I agree to not testing ways to kill myself, either painfully or non-painfully. Trust me when I say I don’t like dying any more than the next guy, even if I come back each time.”
She seemed mollified by his answer and turned to look out over the city. “Any plans for today?”
“I’m working on a project outside the city, why?”
“I was wondering if you wanted to have lunch with me. But if you’re working on that project again, I assume it’ll be an all-day thing. Still not willing to tell me about it?”
“Fraid not, Top secret and all that.”
“I know, and I don’t mean to pry. I’m just curious.”
Norman walked over and booped her on the forehead, making her look up at him. “And that’s why I like you.”
“You don’t think I’m some sort of spy, or here to steal your secrets?”
Norman laughed. “If you are, you’re the worst spy ever. And hell, I should be stealing secrets from you.” He leaned down and placed a quick kiss on her forehead where he booped her before standing back up. “If all goes to plan, I’ll be back tomorrow. We can have lunch then.”
“Ok,” she squeaked, her face turning a cute shade of red as she tried to bury herself in the blanket.
He chuckled quietly under his breath as he left the balcony and prepared for the day ahead.
To be fair, he had been preparing for this day for months. It all started with purging Donovan’s spies. He could not afford for that bastard of a man to catch a hint of what he was up to. And it seemed to have worked.
For the past week or two, there hadn’t been a single sighting of the shapeshifters. Or smell he should say, as the hellhounds were primarily in charge of locating them. And he had expanded the amount of hellhounds to twenty-five to ensure nothing got missed. Now each patrol outside the city had a pair of the intelligent animals, and each guard group inside the city got a single one.
Princess seemed to be in charge of all of them though. He didn’t know if she was some special variant of the rodents but it seemed like none of the others had her capacity for independent thought. At first, Norman thought he wasn’t using enough spells on them, but after extensive testing, it seemed that wasn’t the case.
There appeared to be an upper limit of growth for what souls were capable of. That discovery put a kybosh on his attempts to make a new intelligent species like humans. In order to do that, he would have to start with a semi-intelligent species first. And that meant experimenting on already existing mana beasts, not something he was willing to tackle quite yet.
But that didn’t slow him down in other areas. In the last few months, he worked through a full half of his symbols. Few were new, but the new ones were always interesting. He uncovered a trigger symbol that allowed him to set any one of a dozen variables to activate a spell remotely. This was important because otherwise, spells would trigger as soon as their activation criteria were met.
Sure he had other triggers, but they needed him to be in sight of the spell. This new trigger symbol didn’t require that. He could set up magical landmines if he wished. Not that he would. Regular landmines were bad enough.
What it did allow him to do was experiment with souls a bit more safely. He had held off on those tests because he wasn’t sure just how much power a soul contained.
The other big symbol he discovered was capacitance. It allowed the mana to get stored for additional effects in the spell. Kind of like a firework going off, and the additional pops or explosions after the initial one. You could use it for other things than explosions though.
Norman could see using the capacitance symbol to combine multiple spells into one. Like combining Death Ray with Flaming Skull. It would automatically convert the target of the first attack into the required material for the second spell. He hadn’t quite worked out how to do that yet, but the possibilities were there.
The strangest symbol he had come across was one he labeled null. All of his tests came back negative. The symbol appeared to do nothing. It wasn’t just that though, it also seemed not to be affected by any other symbol. Even the spell fragment it came off of gave him no clue as to what it did. He would have assumed it was a fake symbol, except his intuition told him that it wasn’t. It was an easy theory to test. He had scribbled a random set of lines into one of his spells in the place of the null, and his intuition told him the spell wouldn’t work. Replace that with the null, and suddenly the spell functioned again.
He would have to come up with other theories for its function later, he was running late for the teleporter. Not that he could truly be late, it was his kingdom after all, but it paid to be prompt.
A carriage was waiting for him outside and he thanked Jacob. He stepped inside while Nolix and Lohr rode up front.
The trip to the teleportation center was swift and uneventful. As he stepped out of the carriage, Grobert was waiting for him.
His advisor handed him a silver card that sparkled with magic. “Don’t lose this or you’ll be walking back.”
“Good to know,” Norman replied, stuffing the magic card into an inner pocket on his jacket. “Everything’s ready then?”
“Ay, it’s all ready. Did you leave a sample?”
Norman nodded. In case this experiment went tits up, or Donovan had somehow stumbled upon the location, Norman was simply going to detonate his mana, like that woman had done to the first teleportation building. It would ensure nothing was left, and it would prevent Donovan from trapping him. The blood sample was to ensure he could be resurrected back in Ashvale after the event.
It was a bit paranoid but Norman was not taking any chances with these experiments. He wasn’t even letting Grobert, Eugene, or his guards come with him. The only other creature with him would be Scar, and that was because Norman wanted to move far enough away from the teleporter that someone couldn’t accidentally stumble upon him.
“Alright, wish me luck.”
Grobert snorted, “You wouldn’t need any foolish luck if you weren’t about to do something monumentally stupid.” The man looked around the empty room, but it was only the two of them. “You sure this is what you need to do?”
“You trust me?”
His Chief Advisor gave another small snort, “You know I do.”
“Then trust that this is necessary. If I’m not back by tonight, try resurrecting me, if that doesn’t work, come look for me.”
“Aye, and I’ll be bringing the whole Guard with me.”
Norman smiled and stepped into the teleporter.