Bancroft stared down at his latest experiment in disgust. Another failure. Again. The sight of it alone was enough to make him want to pull out his own hair, but his servants were still nearby and such displays were beneath a man of his power. Not that most of them could say anything, the undead weren’t usually talkative.
Which is exactly the problem. Bancroft thought, restricting his frustration to a single stroke of his magnificently long, silver beard. What am I missing?
Peering again at the blood-soaked mess of flesh and bones on his wooden summoning table, Bancroft considered the problem. The corpse itself was fresh, that much was obvious. Death mana practically poured out of it, consuming the lingering traces of disgusting life mana inside as his magic converted whoever this had been into an undead servant at Bancroft’s beck and call.
That much was fine, and indeed was possibly the easiest step of this whole process. A necromancer who couldn’t turn the living into the unliving wasn’t worth the bones in his own body, after all. It was the next step that had failed miserably.
“Useless.” Bancroft muttered, his eyes tracing over the unmoving form of the dead woman before him.
Her eyes were every bit as lifeless as one might expect. Though he could tell she was fully his minion by this point, she did not move without permission. The corpse simply lay there, obediently awaiting its orders. Devoid of personality. Devoid of intelligence… and most damning of all: devoid of any of the abilities of its past life.
“Useless.” Bancroft growled again, a bit louder this time.
He wanted to blast this insolent waste of time and materials all over the walls. To have his minions that were actually worth something tear this failure limb from ragged limb, and somehow extract his squandered efforts. Seeing as that was blatantly impossible however, Bancroft did the next best thing.
He reached over and pulled a nearby lever. If he did so with enough force to nearly break it, none in the room dared comment on that fact.
With a squawk of rusted protest the trapdoor behind the table opened, revealing a dark chute that fell into the floors below. Bancroft gestured dismissively at the corpse as if its very presence offended him – which, of course, it now did. Then, turning on one heel in a whirl of black robes, he strode back over to the books stretched open across his work desk and began to study them once more. Muttering followed.
Behind the necromancer, a squat, yet powerfully built old man lumbered forward. He was much older than Bancroft, with gray hair and a horrendously disfigured nose that twisted in on itself. His dark, patchy robe was sewn in with various symbols at odd intervals, symbols the old man was careful not to let touch any of the blood or ichor from the corpse as he unceremoniously shoved it down the trapdoor with his bare hands.
Brushing them clean with a rag he pulled off a nearby table, the old man moved back over to the lever. He grunted as he shoved it back into place, causing the trapdoor to slide closed once more. Wiping his brow, the old man stared over at his young master who was still muttering to himself as he flipped rapidly through old pages.
The old man cleared his throat. Bancroft ignored him, as the young man often did, and the old man sighed internally. Why were nobility always like this? All it did was waste time.
I s’pose there be nothing for it. The old man thought, walking forward after waiting what he judged to be a mollifying time. Not like he be learnin’ any more manners out here without the mistress around.
Staring out at the rather expensive books on long-forgotten rituals that had brought them here, the old man decided to hazard another prompting. His stomach was gurgling at this point, so if they weren’t going to continue, then he was going downstairs for some food.
“Pardon, m’lord. But are ye… sure ye be reading that book right? May be that I ought take ‘nother look for ye. See if we can–”
Bancroft didn’t let his servant finish another word, grasping the main book he’d been staring into and lifting it off the table away from him. “Keep your filthy paws off my book, Sabin! Of course I’m reading it right, you decrepit old fool! Now just… just get the next sacrifice in here already, I should be ready to try again soon.”
Whirling away from his servant once more, Bancroft held the ancient book in his hands up to a nearby lantern as if straining to make out its secrets. Sabin sighed internally once more, and turned to do as he was bid. He had expected the young master’s reaction, but a part of him had still hoped decorum might win out.
Base respect be harder to squeeze out of new magi than common sense these days. Sabin grumbled to himself mentally, though externally he simply said. “As ye command, m’lord.”
Hobbling his way over to the door, Sabin made a quick command to the armored skeletal warrior on the other side of the door. A minute later, it dragged an already beaten and bloodied man wearing a torn cloth sack to the top of the stairs. Gesturing to indicate the table where the failed experiment had just been, Sabin strolled back over towards the far wall where various leather bags hung from hooks.
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A whimper sounded from behind Sabin as the undead warrior unceremoniously flung its cargo onto the table, then turned and stalked out of the room. Sabin selected the ingredients his master needed from their quickly dwindling inventory of ingredients. He frowned at the last bag, which had needed him to upend it entirely to get a sufficient quantity of its contents.
Last try for the evenin’, then. Sabin thought, with no small amount of relief that the pangs in his stomach would be tamed soon. Praise be to the endless night.
Bancroft paid no attention to his servants. The necromancer ignored the hulking skeletal warrior when it entered the room, and as it left. It was one of an uncountable many that he had already created since arriving in this village, and its worth to him was negligible. He also shut from his mind the whimpering sacrifice it had left behind. The beaten man did not dare flee from his given spot, though he could probably guess some portion of his swiftly approaching fate.
Much like the skeleton, the broken man was merely one among an uncountable many here to serve the necromancer’s purpose. Bancroft had run through roughly half of the village’s population subduing it, and half again had already been lost to suit his needs. To pay the costs involved in casting a spell that would cement him as one of this continent’s premier necromancers.
Bancroft was attempting to mix conjuration and necromancy into an entirely new fusion, melding the powers of both to create a servant of unmatched power. Ideally, this ritual would not only call another being from another world - but empower them. Enrich their future growth…
… and bind them, forever, into his service.
Just the thought brought a smile to the necromancer’s gaunt face. He licked his lips hungrily, as if tasting the idea could bring its realization to him that much sooner. He stared into the distance, imagining just how much land he could conquer with such a powerful servant at his command.
Seconds passed, then minutes. Time stretched on, and only the slow sobs of the soon-to-be sacrifice marked its passage. Eventually, Sabin cleared his throat pointedly once more.
Though the sound itself irritated him enough to want to stretch the old man over a rack, Bancroft reluctantly admitted that his servant was right. He withdrew his mind from daydreams of his own future conquests and began chanting. The second he did, the room began to change.
Darkness rose up from every corner of the room, and wisps of something darker still rushed out of the trapdoor like the rise of death itself. Cerulean blue light shone out from each of the expensive piles of materials placed in a half circle around the sacrifice, creating inch-thick bars from floor to ceiling. Opposing them, standing so stark against the dwindling lantern light that they seemed to shine themselves, were mirroring bars of purest black.
When the final one locked into place, vibrating in the air like the notes of a haunting symphony, the man on the table began screaming. Sabin found this part of the ritual the most disturbing. Mostly because the man’s screams reverberated in time with the bars, creating haunting musical notes that sent a cold shiver down the older man’s spine.
Bancroft noticed none of this. He was too busy attempting to marshal the dark mana spilling forth both from himself and the room. Sweat poured down his arms and off his chin as he tried to force the energy before him into the patterns required to complete this damnable ritual. To meld his reserves of death mana with that of the astral before him. To merge long-lost magical theory with his own research into one grand, experimental spell that would shatter modern understanding. One Bancroft could use to forcibly pull another soul into their world.
As before, the bars of mana above and below the table bent inward, forming a spherical cage around the still-screaming man. At Bancroft’s urging, they compressed further, and the man was split apart like a freshly-sliced apple. His screaming finally ceased, and with it went all sound in the room.
Then Bancroft slammed his hands together for the final somatic component of the spell, and the remaining lanterns in the room briefly winked out. Red flames vanished, flickering back to life an instant later as dancing blue that gave off sparks of inky black. It was mesmerizing to watch, but Sabin didn’t allow the sight to hold his gaze for long.
The show’s finale was about to start.
A portal ripped itself through the world where the bars intersected, and the sacrifice - flesh, blood, and living soul - was sucked into it as if down a hungry whirlpool. A life for a life. As was only appropriate for a spell of this caliber. There was a pregnant pause, a frozen moment in time, as both men held their breath. Unwilling to even exhale in case that small disturbance interfered with the spell’s chances for success.
A thunderclap sounded throughout the room, reverberating off the walls and chipping flecks from the stone as the tear in the world spat out the ritual’s result. Right back onto the table where the sacrifice had been only seconds before. Onto the wooden table, that hadn’t so much as been singed despite the energy that had passed through it slicing a grown man into clean sections.
Without even a glance at one another, the two men rushed the table.
Its occupant was still smoking, the summoned creature’s form still adjusting to their world after its no doubt tumultuous journey. Bancroft’s breath caught as he reached the creature’s side, eyes searching for what he hoped would be–
– Bancroft’s fist crashed into the table, and Sabin flinched despite himself.
“Damn it all to Life!” Bancroft roared, slamming his other fist down into the wood.
“What? What be wrong?” Sabin asked quickly. “Did the soul not come with ‘im again?”
Despite his advanced age, the young master was considerably more advanced in necromancy than Sabin was. The old man had just begun a closer inspection of the corpse when it gurgled up a clear death rattle.
“Oh, shut it, you.” Bancroft snapped at the swiftly decaying corpse on the table. “I don’t want to hear a single word. You’re useless to me. Just like all the others. Useless!”
Throwing his hands up in frustration, Bancroft made a disgusted sound and strode back over to his ritual book. Muttering to himself, the necromancer began angrily flipping through its pages. Sabin returned his eyes to the corpse, trying to figure out what had gone wrong.
“Well, he’s a big one, ain’t he?” Sabin remarked. “I know he be goin’ all clammy now, but–”
“For the last time I do not get to choose the target, Sabin!” Bancroft snapped, marching back over to the table and pointing at several patches of blackened skin as if the act of instruction itself aggravated him. “Look there. You see? This one is such a poor host the rot is already setting in, how could he possibly be of any use?!”
Dark energy crackled at Bancroft’s fingertips as he considered actually blasting this one apart to make his irritation known to the world. Seeing as that would also destroy his table and probably at least one of his servants below however, the young necromancer simply glowered down at the offending experiment for another minute. Then he turned, and strode over to the door.
Sabin, who had backed up considerably when his master started gathering power, wisely sensed that now would not be a good time for the whole ‘throat-clearing’ method of asking questions. Instead, the old man raised his voice to the minimum he possibly could to be heard before his master could retreat to his private quarters.
“What uh… what do you ye be wanting done with this one then? If it be of no use, m’lord.” Sabin said, gesturing at the very expensive corpse his master had just pulled through reality itself.
“Just… toss it down with the others.” Bancroft said dismissively, one hand already opening the door out of the room. “I need to figure out…”
The necromancer continued muttering to himself all the way up the stairs, but seeing as how Sabin now had his orders he had no reason to continue listening. Grasping the nearby lever, he opened the trapdoor behind the table. Once it had swung wide, the old man grasped the corpse’s feet with both hands.
“Off ye go then, lad.” Sabin said, roughly shoving another corpse down the trapdoor for the second time in less than half an hour. “A man’s got dinner waiting on ‘im, ye know.”
After wiping his hands off once more and returning the lever to its original position, Sabin left the room. The old man’s mind already envisioning the meal that awaited him on the floor below.