My familiar floated out of Gungnir and hovered directly in front of my eyes as his own lone pupil darted back and forth between my own. [You can’t be serious, only perverts of the worst kind make that kind of shit! I’m serious! They kick wizards out of the Arcaneum for that kind of weirdness, it’s almost as bad as what the necromancers do!]

I ignored Kraken’s pleas because he was fundamentally wrong, and apparently ideologically prejudiced. I had a plan, a solid plan, but every plan needs a test case proving that the plan is viable, which is what I was doing.

I waved him out of my way and rolled my eyes. “I’m not going to fuck it, you idiot, I’m going to use it. Surely you can think of another use for a flesh golem than having sex with it, hmmmm?” I stared at Kraken as he didn’t even have the sense to look ashamed. “Cause I was thinking of using it to absorb the bodies of the dwarves, minotaurs, wyverns, and some of Rath and maybe making some workers or shock troopers out of it.”

[But everyone else-]

I cut him off, seeing the visions playing through Kraken’s mind. “Seriously? That’s it? People use Flesh Sorcery to make living flesh dolls to fuck? Disgusting, oh come on . . . yuck dude, where’s the creativity in that?” Disgusted by the lack of intelligence that my forebears had, I mentally smacked Kraken in the back of the head.

“Ok, listen, this isn’t that hard. I DON’T want to fuck it. I’m going to make one flesh golem as a test for the group of humans. If I do this right,” I stressed. “It will be able to assist them with healing when they need it and the experimental part is that it should be able to upgrade them. Like if they drag back some kind of spider, one kid might use the flesh elemental to give him Spider-Man like powers. See where I’m going with this?”

[You’re outsourcing the creative aspect!]

“Exactly. If they come up with something awesome and it works, then I could probably do it better. Like the Chinese liked to do with Western technology. Steal and improve and then sell it back.”

[So what now?] Kraken asked.

Picking up Gungnir, I walked into the Lab and placed it in a slot on the crystal vat holding the floating brain of Rath. “You my friend, are you going to work on this brain. I want anything and everything that a dragon knows that might be useful. I’ve got what I needed from the other one so I’m going to put it to work.”

Reaching into the vat, I pulled out the clone Reeanth brain and walked to my stasis freezer. The slimy gray organ barely pulsed as my magic kept it alive outside of the tank. What I had planned was gruesome, morbid even, but I felt that it was necessary. Sticking the clone brain in a small stasis box off to the side, I pulled out two different minotaur bodies, one shaman and one normal, and put them on my workbench, taking care to make sure that they were still unconscious. Taking out the youngest looking dwarf, I put him next to the others and undressed them.

“Yuck time,” I muttered, taking out the clone brain again. Gathering a veritable fuckton of mana, I set up a thin link between it and my stores of mana. Then, once I was assured it would stay alive, I created another link between it and my own brain. Treating it like a desktop computer via my Consciousness Sorcery, I began the process of wiping the brain clean of memories. Every feeling, every hint of a thought, I purged from that organ until it was pristine. Every memory file and unconscious process including instincts. Then, I began forcing the brain to split into two sections until I had two smaller, but complete clone brains. Putting one away in the stasis box, I took the other and held it in my left hand. With my right hand, I arranged the three bodies so that they were laying each at a point in a triangle with their arms spread so that they were holding hands.

Placing the clone brain in the middle, I forced the clone brain to grow an extra flap of square flesh on top of itself and then inscribed the rune for flesh in it. Quickly conjuring a stone knife, I cut the wrist of each body and used Flesh Sorcery to direct the blood so that the pouring crimson connected to each cut like a cable bringing life. My strange bloody ritual was laid out almost perfectly, but it was missing the spark, the generating event to get it going.

“Fuck,” I growled, calling Gungnir to my hand.

[What? I had just gotten started deep in there-] Kraken sputtered.

The bodies weren’t bleeding out but their lifeforce was draining, already weakened from when I tore a good chunk of it out a few days ago to make my vine giant. “No time.” I said, cutting him off. Pulling from the stores of power in my weapon, I poured mana into the bodies while I used Flesh Sorcery to force the bodies to join together, the different kinds of skin and flesh melding into a single unit.

With my complete control over uncontested flesh, the mindless bodies were like clay to my will. The arms joined and the formation tightened as each body moved closer, the three heads eventually touching the clone brain in the center. Reaching out with Gungnir, I placed the tip of the spear on the brain, inputting commands and directives as the brain absorbed the bodies. The folds of the gray matter smoothed out as the different races flowed together to become one large beach ball sized blob.

[Don’t fuck this up!]

“That’s the plan!” I said, gritting my teeth as I pushed the tip of Gungnir in with one hand while I speared my other hand straight into the blob. I didn’t relax until I verified that my Flesh Sorcery had complete and utter control over the blob, the new flesh golem. Gungnir’s tip and my hand completed the circuit of magic I had flowing through it.

The blob didn’t move or undulate in any way at all to show that it was alive. It had no thoughts of its own, no will to make it independent, it was just a tool, although a particularly odd one. Kraken began putting together a thought control construct, a mental matrix if you will, and stuck it in the heart of the flesh golem.

[Okay. Let’s reiterate this plan so I get this right.] Kraken said, syncing up via our mental link. [So in order for a normal person to use it, they have to touch it. Then they can have the golem heal their wounds or various external changes such as change their hair color or remove deformities.]

I nodded. Kraken continued, putting the final touches on the control center. [And you can even break off a small piece and use it to heal other people, and it will get bigger or smaller depending on how much you use or feed it. So if they give it a deer, the flesh golem will consume it and break it down for raw materials.]

“Don’t forget enhancements as well,” I said, still channeling large amounts of mana. “Gotta give them options. I want people to be able to fix hormonal issues if those pop up, add muscle or tendon strength for flexibility. This needs to be a doctor as well as a personalized body augmenter device.”

[Doctor . . . workout machine . . . flesh enhancer . . . anything else?]

“Uh, yeah. It needs to be secure. We can’t have a Carol Baskin running around killing people and feeding it to the flesh golem to cover her tracks.”

[A what?] Kraken asked, his focus turning to rifle through my memories.

“Forget it,” I said. “Just allow it to be imprinted by up to three people who have the authority to use it, or we can do it when we present it to them. We don’t want kids running amok with this kind of ability, it needs to have someone administering it.”

Pulling out another minotaur body from stasis, I lay the body next to the flesh golem and then promptly cut the minotaur’s arm off with a knife and then closed the wound with Flesh Sorcery. “Testing time!” I said, sticking my arm in the golem. Using the rough control interface to guide the golem instead of my own magic, I allowed it to use my senses to understand me. The blob reached out a pseudopod and picked up the arm, swallowing it into its own flesh. “Now fix it.” I commanded.

The flesh golem reached out a new pseudopod and stuck it on the shoulder of the minotaur, the connection of flesh morphing into a new arm, forming a minotaur arm complete with hair and bones and knuckles until it was whole, disconnecting at just the right point of contact. The remainder of the pseudopod shrank back into the flesh golem as I pulled my own arm out and inspected the newly crafted one.

“It worked!” I crowed, dancing a quick jig of excitement. “Who’s the man? I’m the man! Wait, one last limiter on its capabilities before we hand it over.”

[What now? This is already way beyond generous.]

Rolling my eyes, I pointed at the flesh golem. “We do not want this thing getting out of hand. This is why we have movies, to show us why some ideas can be dumb, like giving robots too much autonomy, like the Terminator. Why don’t we make dinosaurs? See Jurassic Park. Why don’t we let flesh golems make new life and grow without limit? Watch the Blob. So, this creation of mine cannot be allowed to consume flesh without direction, and it cannot create new life ever. Its functions extend to healing, enhancing, and regrowing.”

[Fine, even though it's a lame reason.]

I glared at my familiar. “It’s not lame, it’s smart. I’m not going to give someone else the equivalent of a biological nuke, in fact, we’re not even gonna go there.” I thought for a minute or two, gathering a couple possibilities. “Do you think it’s too much if I put a bit of dragon in the golem? Ya know, just to give some more DNA options for the settlement?”

I could almost hear Kraken rubbing his hands together. [Why not? Put some wyvern, giant deer, fire dragon, put all of that in there. Don’t forget to put human in there too, the golem needs the base material as a starting point.]

“I don’t know if I count as that anymore thanks to all of my sorceries,” I replied. Looking down at my own hands, I shivered. “I mean, am I even human anymore?”

[Doesn’t matter, maybe it’ll give someone the ability to use magic however small.]

Taking a chance, I cut my hand and poured a bit of blood on the flesh golem before closing up the wound. Taking Gungnir and shifting it to its knife form, I cut off a bit of haunch from Rath’s leg and then the same from the big wyvern and put it in front of the golem. Sticking my arm into it, I ordered it to consume the pieces of meat and then make the minotaur grow scales on his newest arm.

It worked like a charm, the golem reached a pseudopod forward and absorbed the meat like jello swallowing a dropped pebble. Then, as soon as it had assimilated the material, it reached over and slapped a pseudopod over the minotaur’s arm covering it completely. After a minute, the pseudopod retracted and there on the unconscious minotaur’s arm was a set of blazing red scales.

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I made the golem put the arm back to normal to reestablish a baseline. For the next hour or so, I had the golem add and remove all kinds of modifications to the minotaur. My favorite was the four armed version of a minotaur with scales on the arms and chest. It was a bit tricky as we had to alter the spine, shoulders and ribs a lot to accommodate a second set of shoulders, but all in all it was pretty easy. The golem was more than able to keep the subject unconscious on its own, easily manipulating the hormones and nerves so that the minotaur stayed in a state of unconscious bliss.

[I can’t believe you found a way around their natural immunity to magic!] Kraken said, absolutely geeking out in the middle of my experiments.

“It seems to be concentrated in their skin,” I explained, poking and prodding the minotaur. “They’re malleable enough once you get underneath it and to the blood, or maybe it has something to do with the fact that he’s unconscious and can’t resist without focusing on it. You saw the same thing I did during our fight, they were using magic, all of them, but the shamans were directing it.”

[True, true, anyways, I deem this a success. Just to let you know, I added a couple more useful side functions as well. The golem can function as a medical kit in combat. It has a portable function, just touch the blob to the wound and it’ll close it up. A blob of flesh golem in your back pocket can replace a blown off hand or foot or face. You’ll need the main golem for all the fancy stuff.]

“I like it,” I said, smiling like an idiot. “Imagine all of the lives that could have been saved if hospitals had something like this.”

[You know all of the men are going to use this to make their dicks bigger, right?]

Even though he was definitely right, I couldn’t just down my own race like that. Ignoring Kraken for the moment, I shoved the flesh golem into Gungnir and put the minotaur back into the freezer.

“If you have time to think about dicks even though you don’t have one, then you have time for what I originally wanted you to do,” I said, walking back to the Lab and sticking Gungnir into the slot on the brain vat. “Useful info, chop chop.”

I ignored Kraken’s good natured grumbles as I snagged a quick meal cube and jogged outside. The rest of the day was dedicated to replenishing my stores of conjured crystal ammo and updating the sunstone solar panels with expanded surface runes so that each panel could grab several times more worth of surface area. After building up an impressive stock of them with accompanying platinum covered batteries according to Kraken’s latest blueprints, I stored them away in the lab and pulled out a dwarven rifle.

What had been bugging me for a while was I did not truly understand some of the magical tech in my possession. The runic channel in the barrel of the Centauri rifle shone too brightly for me to get a really good look at it, which I just realized that Kraken might be able to help out with. The dwarven rifle was something I hadn’t had a chance to delve into either, but the biggest frustration was my lack of success with my own freaking crystal grenades. It took awhile for me to fix the crystal rounds to actually achieve the effect I wanted, but the grenades were just a bit too dangerous for me to screw around with.

Laying the latest test grenade and both the Centauri and Dwarven rifles in front of me, I used Mana Sorcery to peer through everything to get a general sense as to how they worked. From earlier inspections, I knew that the Centauri rifle shaved off metal needles from the magazine block, charged them with mana from the wielder and blasted a part energy/part matter projectile that could do some incredible damage. The dwarven rifle, from what I’d seen in our last fight, shot pure mana, raw energy. It puzzled me because their rifles don’t have any power packs or batteries that I can make out, just a complex set of runes that seemed to change the basic structure of the energy bolts.

With Kraken riding shotgun on the scanning process, I could make out lines of tiny runes to change the rifle output to act like a flamethrower, some kind of short range shotgun taser, and there was also a kinetic blast function as well. The barrel rotated to align the runic sequence with the power output, allowing for a quick test of the weapon to change their ammunition type. There was a barreled chamber on the side for what I was guessing was specialized rounds or bombs.

What I wanted to do was combine the two rifles into one, adding in the unique long ranged firepower of the Centauri rifle with the versatility of the dwarven one. And then if I get my crystal grenades figured out, I’d be able to change them so they could be fired out of the rifle. Now, I didn’t really need this particular form of weaponry, personally, but what American son doesn’t love an awesome gun?

Using Earth Sorcery, I banished the grenade crystal and resolved to get to that later. Now, my Earth Sorcery gives me a decent amount of control over metal, I can work with it but it’s gotten a lot harder lately. Harder in the resource since, as metal is oddly requiring more energy to work with lately. Conjuring a wall of stone or earth is almost an instantaneous process, but trying to do the same thing with metal is far slower, probably due to some great science I don’t understand yet. What Earth Sorcery did excel at with metal is the detail work, allowing me to very carefully take apart the magitech carbines.

An hour’s worth of careful work later, I had both rifles in segmented pieces laid out in front of me. What was missing was the technology that I had, the crystal battery. The magazine for the Centauri rifle was something I didn’t want to get rid of, and the barrel of that rifle with its rune channel went with this specific kind magazine to produce the energized projectile. Taking the multi-barrelled part of the dwarven rifle, I used my Earth Sorcery to bond the Centauri barrel to the multi-barrel and then hollowed out the dwarven grip and put a new crystal battery inside of it. The dwarven grip was thicker than the Centauri allowing me to put a bigger battery inside when I hollowed it out.

“Flamethrower function I stole, Centauri shard rounds, kinetic blaster and taser cannon from the dwarves . . . “ I said, putting the best pieces of each rifle together, using Earth Sorcery to cheat to force the pieces to fit together. To finish off the first iteration of the rifle, I added one more barrel with a summon and fire function allowing it to summon the crystal rounds directly from the storage area in Gungnir so I could use my own personal rounds.

Looking it over, the design looked good. It was reminiscent of someone combining an old school six shooter with a modern AR-15 rifle that had hit the gym. It was bulkier than I expected. The barrels would rotate when you flick the safety and a thin layer of blackened platinum covered up the energy signature of the crystal battery which I made sure to fill to the max.

[Oh the dwarves would storm a mountain for that beauty,] Kraken said, his mental voice all breathy. [Let me see! If you’re gonna stick me on brain duty then I get to see the pretty rifle!]

[Yeah yeah, hold on,] I sent back, triple checking to make sure that everything lined up perfectly. I jogged back to the Lab and held out my new masterpiece as Kraken popped out of Gungnir.

[Oh it’s gorgeous! Look at those sleek lines, and damn that was a good idea, having the rifle pull from a battery instead of you. The dwarves' standard design pulls extra energy from the surrounding area or a ley line if they stumble across one. Wait, where’s the grenade launcher? And what did you do to that rune channel?]

“I uh, took it from the Centauri rifle and put it in this one,” I said, worried that I screwed something up.

[This would have blown up in your face! There’s no alternating connection between the barrels and the battery? One would have worked, exploded, and the other barrels wouldn’t have done shit. Good grief, gimme that.]

We spent the next hour ‘improving’ my design. It was both irritating and reassuring to know that I still had a ways to go. The main function I was missing was an ‘alternating’ pivot enchantment that allows for multiple outputs. The channel of power from the battery was only connected to one barrel and required the necessary pathways to power the others.

[We’ll need to put the grenades off till later if you want me to make any headway on the dead dragon brain. That thing is thick.]

“Sure,” I said, waving my hand. “It’s not a serious priority, just something that needs to be done one piece at a time when we actually have the time. The last thing I want to do is make some scaled down versions of this rifle for the group of people as well as giving them two of the new solar panel setups for when they get their settlement going.”

Standing up with the new rifle, I waved it around a bit. “And just imagine, once we get these perfected, we can stick a couple oversized rifles on a vine giant and we’ll have our own plant mech! Or, long range weaponry for Everest! I freaking love magic!”

Kraken put his tentacles up to slow me down. [Don’t get ahead of yourself. Everest doesn’t possess the humanlike intelligence for a gun. Just give him a big ax or a stone pillar. And for the love of god, do NOT give Kong a modern human weapon! I saw your King Kong movie memories, let’s avoid that snafu.]

********

It took days for me to get ready. It wasn’t just crafting solar panels, new rifles and loads of ammo to go with them, or even the research for the grenades, it was being too chickenshit to go out and see new people.

Damn, it was hard enough to do that kind of thing at a bar before all this went down and now I actually have to follow through and go say hello to a group of two hundred strangers?

Shoot me now. I’ve fought a dragon, their grayish feral cousins, witches, some kind of nightstalker, beefed up goblins, and Centauri warriors not to mention freaking nephilim controlled by dwarves in the middle of a fight with minotaurs. My safety really wasn’t in question.

[It can’t be that hard,] Kraken pressed as he flew over the river’s current. [Humans have done ‘social interactions’ for literally all of their history. You can’t be the one retard can you? You show up, you give gifts to ease your conscience, explain the gifts to them so that they don’t kill themselves with it, and then dip.]

Sitting on top of a barge-like boat that I grew out of a tree near the river, I leaned against the huge stone container in the middle. This box held thirty rifles, sixty sealed cases of ammunition, a hundred grenades that actually worked, and my flesh golem. Part of me was still going over the really stupid, really small issue that initially prevented the grenades from working, they were made too well.

I ended up having to make a small flawed crystal battery in the middle with a metal spike who’s point was embedded in the flaw. Pushing that spike in all the way activated a rune channel which would overload itself after four or so seconds. Once I got that down, I just had to pump the grenade full of mana and coat it in scaled down penetrator rounds facing outwards and voila! These babies had an instant kill radius of about twenty yards, a horrible injury and probable death radius of forty, and I didn’t have time to test them out further than that.

“Huh? Sorry, wasn’t paying attention, what?” I checked in again with Spot through our mental link just to make sure for the thousandth time we were going in the right direction.

Kraken sighed. [People, they’re just people. You can talk to people. And then, when you’re done talking to people, you can leave and not talk to people for a long time.]

Great. People. Persons. Humans. Woo fuckin’ hoo. The trip didn’t take long. An hour and a half of coasting up the river, we arrived at the entrance of the valley just as Lyra popped out behind a pointy outcropping of rocks. The valley was ringed by thick forests crawling up giant mountains, an idyllic place for any settlers as the river cut right through the middle of it continuing on for another almost thousand miles. There was plenty of arable land for farming and the forest would provide all the necessary lumber for housing. I brought some tools I invented just for these people, I couldn’t bring tools only related to death and destruction.

The moment the barge touched the shore and I hopped off, Lyra appeared out of the treeline. Dashing in front of me, her head hit the ground as she kneeled, completely bent over in a position of absolute submission. “My lord! I have failed you! Take my life in penance, remove your gifts from me, I seek your forgiveness and mercy!”

“This is weird, get up,” I said, leaning back as if I wanted to not be associated with this over the top display of repentance. “Just tell me what’s wrong?”

“I couldn’t stop them! They took your companion and discovered me as well! Run my lord, it’s a-”

“It’s not a trap you melodramatic leaf!” I spun around, all of my gear lighting up with mana as I hadn’t even sensed anyone else nearby. “We just wanted to talk to your master, or whoever had you spying on us.”

An absolute vision walked out of the trees. Dark red hair with green eyes complete with a figure that would make any man stop dead in his tracks. This was the kind of woman that would cause beer bottles to fall from hands if she walked into a bar. It took all I had not to adjust my pants even through the sex drive inhibitor I had running in a background mental process.

“Get away from him, Lovera!” A loud series of crashes sounded through the underbrush as good ol’ Mark posted up on a nearby tree, his rifle trained right at my face. Several other men in camo did the same, spread out at least ten yards apart.

“Damn it Mark! We had this conversation!” Another lady stalked through the woods, this one holding a glowing staff. “This is a diplomatic mission that we agreed would be handled by the NICE lady instead of the MEAN man!” Spinning towards me, the stone adorning her staff winked out, no longer glowing ominously. “I’m so sorry about Mark and his friends, they’re just overeager. My name is Cassandra.”

I forgot how much I hate people.