Keeping in line with our biggest priority, Kraken kept his squidgy nose on the grindstone beefing up our golem numbers after we determined that Acantha was no longer a danger to myself and this castle. We didn’t know how she was going to react, if at all, to my efforts at healing old wounds and smoothing over the scars of her suffering mindscape. And because of that, we needed those sunstone golems completed in case I couldn’t take her. I probably could but always have a backup plan. In reality, she could’ve gone full nuclear with wounds that deep.
While Acantha was knocked out, I took a much needed look at the geographical issues we were going to face such as the fact that when everyone said the Hungry Ones were in the ‘North’, they meant to say ‘Greenland’. And of course, ‘Green’ land is a land of ice and snow, mostly devoid of vegetation. From my memories of elementary school education, they colored Greenland ‘white’ because of all the fucking snow. Perfect place for zombies to hole up and wait for a couple centuries for people to forget about them. In the winter, their humongous island masquerading as a mini-continent would be even harder to penetrate. The Antarctic was exactly what we were expecting though, hard as fuck to get to which is why it was going to be secondary. I can worry about that later.
Greenland is located northeast of the North American continent, up past Alaska and Canada and right up Santa’s butthole. Thousands of miles away. Months worth of walking. It took me three hours of communion with the World Tree to even figure out if there was any flora there and another three to find an area strong enough to host a fledgling World Tree which I could use as a base. The view of the planet is a bit fuzzy in my mind as trees don’t necessarily use English to communicate with us humans. They look at the Earth in terms of fertile soil and nice sunlight, or bad soil and harsh climate. Southern Greenland has just enough of a nature leyline to barely fit my energy-heavy butt and one more person. By the time Acantha came to, I had a plan.
Of course, Acantha didn’t want to hear any part of my plan even though it was really well thought out. I had the sneaky entrance, the clandestine goal, AND the clever getaway all ready to go and written down for easy presentation, but noooooo. Someone had to have a stick up their butt about ‘invasion of privacy’ and ‘boundaries’. The ‘discussion’ was loud, long, and a bit screechy. And it didn’t help when I waited for the inevitable deep breath for her to continue said rant to poke her in the head saying, “I’d do it again.”
The subsequent eruption was spectacular. Maybe I deserved it. Maybe I didn’t. But with the flames dramatically flying everywhere without actually burning anything, wild epithets that would make a sailor blush, I was forced to endure a long eloquent dissertation about a donkey inserting itself somewhere in my family ancestry.
Impressive, really. In fact, her venom-fueled diatribe was so long and intricate that she was forced to use her native language. But the moment did come where I had had enough. I tried to insert an explanation, an apology. Couldn’t get a word in.
Suddenly drawing on my power, I let the aura of my sorceries flood out as I encased Acantha in a personalized stone pyramid prison stone up to her neck. The stone creaked as runes of chains cracked across the surface, further sealing her in. Two conjured masses of water, one ice and the other liquid, appeared above her in the form of giant bladed spears while spear-form Gungnir was an inch away from her nose.
With the backing of the Sunstone Castle’s deep mana reserves and my own considerable stores of power, I was the epicenter of a storm. The thin grass at my feet was blowing away from me in all directions as I very calmly smiled.
“Feel better yet?” I snapped as her eyes went cross-eyed trying to look at the point of my weapon. “My sincerest condolences at my incredible invasion of privacy but I had to do it. You were unbelievably messed up on the inside. I get needing to unload but I did what I did because I had to do it. It’s not your fault that Sybella sent me a suicidal fire witch with an inferiority complex, but I can’t have someone like that watching my back. I’m in charge here whether you like it or not, and technically, you’re my charge, my ward. So . . . I fixed you, or rather helped you fix yourself. At any time you could have said no or reversed it, but you didn’t. Shit, it was and still is your mind, which means you have all the power ALL the time in there. So unload your crap somewhere else.”
Taking a moment to reel my power back in, I cracked my neck and put Gungnir back into its pedestal. “Oh, and get yourself out. You have an assignment. Go meditate. Spend some time getting to know yourself for three days in the desert or I’m sending you back to Sybella.” Stalking away, I headed back to my house under the willow tree and kept reviewing my plans, making sure to keep a magical eye on Acantha. Kraken timidly knocked on our mental link.
[Maybe that was a bit harsh?] He asked, prodding at my own settling turmoil.
[Maybe,] I half-heartedly countered. [But maybe not. I might be misplacing my anger a bit here. Sybella sent me a broken witch, literally broken! What if I hadn’t known? What if I had a suicidal witch as my backup? Yes, she has a ton of potential, especially against freaking zombies but dude, come on. Nuclear reactors are great too if they run well but all hell breaks loose if they pop a screw. Besides, it was a huge red flag that I was able to slip into her mind as easily as I did. There should be some kind of resistance to get to the mindscape.]
[All I’m saying is that the actions you took against your own ally were possibly out of line, probably skirting the bounds of what you’re allowed to do to your own vassal,] Kraken explained. [It is justifiable however to administer corrective actions in light of being gifted a flawed minion, which is probably how you should frame this issue if it ever comes to light.]
[Sybella can kiss my skinny un-tan-able ass. Damaged goods! It’s all I ever get!] I ranted, mostly to myself. [Are the hot ones always crazy? They have to be, it’s a prerequisite of being hot!]
Pulling my hoverboard and rifle out of Gungnir’s storage space even though my weapon was still on the pedestal, I tossed the hoverboard on the dry desert ground and hopped on, taking off towards the river. I spent the next two hours skating around, doing my best to get proficient at hoverskating at speeds over a hundred miles an hour. It did wonders for my mental health. Nothing like speed to distract you.
I’ll tell you what though, misjudging sharp turns is painful without airbags, especially with the hot desert winds fiercely blowing out of nowhere. My mistakes blasted me through a few wind-torn rock features and down the side of a hidden canyon. My armor prevented what would have been disgustingly painful cases of road rash, but the high speed crashes did manage to severely crack more than a few bones. Terminal velocity is a bitch. Another reason to not skydive.
With my daredevil experimentation out of the way, I had time to kill, so I decided to go for a quick normal flight and get a good lay of the land. I put away my hoverboard and then dusted off SAW’s wings. One good jump off a nearby ravine followed by a blast of mana through the repulser runes and I was off!
Being this high up allowed my thoughts to wander. Part of me thought about how Fernando and Remy were doing, if they’d made any headway in cleaning up their post-apocalyptic city. The paranoid side was in the midst of arguing if it would be better to harden my Sunstone Castle so no one would ever dream of attacking it but the other part didn’t like the idea of a potential hotspot anywhere near me. The memories about Phoenix that I’d taken from Fernando didn’t bode well for this part of the country. Demons, necromancers, vampiric zombies gone wild and power hungry wizards was obviously a hellish recipe for disaster.
Noting the safety at which great height affords me, I clutched my rifle to my chest as I turned towards Phoenix and then turned right back around again. No way in hell I was going to go to a place like that without all of my weapons, especially my main one. Gungnir was serving as the power focus for Kraken who was busy making my golem army at the moment, and heading to a potential firefight without it was basically committing suicide. Mentally putting Phoenix on my to-do list, I winged my way back home and then followed the course of the Colorado River up north. I remember Reeanth telling me that Vegas was bombed out by the Centauri a while ago and the river’s path where I’m at goes right near Vegas.
Following a roughly northern path, a quick trip at two hundred miles an hour got me there pretty quick. What I had pictured in my mind way back when Reeanth told me that Vegas was bombed, was either one of two things. I imagined that Vegas were a giant crater that would be almost visible from space then it would make it easy for me to find. Then again, if it were a landscape speckled with gutted hulks of burned down buildings then that shouldn’t be too hard to spot either.
[Hey! She’s out already!] Kraken wailed through our link. [The witch turned into a flame and then whooshed out?! Now she’s yelling at me and I don’t know what to do! I didn’t stick her in a stone cone, you did!]
[Is she attacking you?] I wondered.
[No . . . but her screaming is really loud!]
Sighing internally since I was going fast enough for the air to catch in my lungs, I hightailed it back to Sunstone Castle, my solar-powered wings allowing me to fly faster than I ever thought I would under my own power. Thank all the Scions in the sky that my base was not in shambles when I returned. The hour it had taken to get back had allowed Acantha to cool her jets even as I stuck a mediocre landing on one of the castle walls.
“I’m impressed you got out so quick!” I yelled from way up high. “I got a job for ya!” A glare that powerful from a woman that tiny was not easily missed. It was, however, easily ignored. Taking my time, I let the inevitable tide of yelling that I knew was coming buildup as I slowly walked down the stairs, taking my time and stretching as I did so. Her face was almost purple from holding it in. “Before you say anything, I need to know. Can you fly?”
Disbelief flooded her features at the switch of what she wanted to yell at me for versus the seemingly random question perfectly designed to fluster a fountain of fire magic driven rage.
“Can you fly?” I asked again. Her mouth snapped shut as she looked at me like I was insane even as I snapped my fingers. “You know, flight? The ability to move through the air and defy the pull of gravity while moving at speeds faster than running would afford?”
Small fiery women always respond well to mocking, and thank goodness for my years of hard-earned skill. Each word she spoke sounded like she chewed them up and spit them out. “I don't know!”
“See? That wasn’t that hard?” Smiling like a lunatic just to bring her closer to a boil, I turned around and started conjuring and shaping a whole new-to-her contraption. Ten minutes of working and ignoring her later, I fashioned a brand new hoverboard that I’d modified just for her. “Now you won’t need to fly! Behold! The FireRider 3000!”
My beautiful creation resembled a six-foot surfboard but the front nose of it curved up just a bit. The sides were adorned with sections of foot-long curved crystal batteries that were attached to the bottom, looking sort of like gleaming skids for it to rest on. The rune work allowing it to hover and direct the propulsion power was on the bottom of the hoverboard but covered up with a layer of thin steel with imprinted runes of durability. Pushing the board over to Gungnir, I set up a mana feed from my spear to the new board and started the charging process as I made a small quartz crystal with a simple rune sequence embedded in it.
“Your task, my vassal, is to do something I don’t want to do nor do I have the time to do it. The map crystal here,” I explained as I tossed it to her, “has the location and pages of information, everything I know about Phoenix, Arizona.” Her glare didn’t stop me from talking. I learned long ago that in order to ride out the anger of a crazy woman, all I had to do was distract her. So I kept talking. “I need this place generally cleaned out. All demons, cannibals, evil necromancers, basically any kind of filth that needs to be purged from a good society, I want it gone. Burn it out. Maybe find some allies or make some friends while you’re there. This hoverboard will get you there in under three hours and can be charging in the sun. I’ll be doing sorcerer things and you be doing burny witchy things.”
Pulling out all of the experimental gear I had made for her from Gungnir, I laid them in front of her on a conjured stone table. “Different kinds of wands and staffs with sockets for different kinds of gems, take some or take’em all, just tell me what happens when you use them. This here is a suit of fire dragon armor made by yours truly. Don’t die on me, okay?”
“Yes master!” Her overbearing anger flipped way too quickly from hostile to eager and obedient supplicant. Quickly stuffing herself into the armor and doing that pants dance women do, she grabbed all of the wands and shoved the gems into her pockets. Putting the map crystal to her head, she absorbed the info and hopped on the hoverboard, blasting out of the castle.
[You know she’s going to burn the entire city down, right?] Kraken remarked, as Acantha disappeared into the horizon like a bat out of hell. [That entire place is going to be one big ash heap.]
[Shouldn’t be that bad,] I replied, returning my focus to Gungnir and the state of my growing army. Kraken casually floated the numbers and various statuses over our telepathic link. [Besides, I put all of the flat data from Fernando’s memories in there, so there’s a solid chance she might seek him out as a starting point for cleaning up Phoenix. And, if that happens, we might establish another neutral city for when Earth becomes populated. Cleaning that place out will also help that lady get used to her abilities and test out all of her new experimental gear which will be killing three birds with one stone in my book.]
I get it. Kicking Acantha out like that might be seen as irresponsible by some but I’ve been in her mind. I’ve seen her strengths and weaknesses. That woman is powerful. She has depths of magical power inside of her that I would be a fool to not be afraid of. She clearly lacks experience and discernment though, Sybella’s coven has done a good job of making powerful witches but they do not test them well. The trials of life season a person in a way that nothing else ever truly does. It’s why young people run away from home, why intrepid explorers set out to seek their fortune, why men and women live and breathe at horse races and casinos, it’s more than just the rush of winning that gets them going. It’s the experience.
It also doesn’t help that I might have made a less than great impression on the two residents of Phoenix that I actually knew. I straight up killed Fernando’s and Remy’s friend, even though she enslaved them, and I wrecked the zombie dino army they brought with them. But maybe the sudden intervention of a flaming heroine to save their city might be just what they need in order to say, ‘hm, maybe he ain’t that bad’.
While my vassal went off to save a city, I went on a much more important errand, to find my damn dog. Following my mental link, I lazily flew four hours east where a set of craggy tan hills overlooked a small lake. There, my faithful canine companion was playing without a care in the world on the dusty shores of that lake with a pile of roly-poly puppies the size of grown warthogs. In hindsight, maybe landing right next to the happy family wasn’t such a good idea. A dark tan blur smashed into me like a runaway train, knocking me clear into the lake. I skipped across the surface a couple times as my mind tried to catch up to my body.
Checking to make sure that I was still in one piece and saying thankful prayers that my shields kept me conscious and well, I used my Water Sorcery and climbed on top of the water. Standing on the disturbed surface, I stared at my attacker. Mama wolf was standing at the edge of the lake, her growling causing waves in the lake to come towards me. The tiny piece of me that was sane, my fear, belligerently tugged on my hindbrain screaming that maybe some more distance would keep me safe.
“Spot!” I yelled out, carefully controlling the surface of the water to slowly pull me further away from shore. “Control your woman, dude! Tell her I’m just the absent uncle!” Walking slowly adjacent across the surface of the lake, my brain kept reminding me that I left Gungnir at Sunstone Castle. I didn’t think I’d need my weapons to see my own damn dog.
“Hey! Relax . . . mama wanna snack?” I called with my hands up to show I meant no harm to her or her pups. Something grabbed a hold of my leg while I wasn’t paying attention and dragged me under. The teeth couldn’t penetrate my shield or my armor but the thrashing kept me from getting a handle on whatever the fuck it was. Grabbing at all of the water surrounding me and my attacker, I used Water Sorcery to hurl both me and my attacker up on shore.
“Fuck me,” I gasped, staring in disbelief. I didn’t need Kraken to identify the mean beastie. That right there, if my eyes don’t deceive me, is a water dragon! The unlucky bastard probably came through a temporary portal that closed before it could realize that this was a lake surrounded by a desert. I’d put money on the fact that it was hoping for a much larger body of water to grow undisturbed by visitors. This is exactly what I need though to start working on upgrading my own body. I already have DNA for the giant sand lizards from a while ago and now the water dragon will give me the other base piece to get this next important step started.
Beautiful creature. I felt like Steve Irwin staring at this magnificent beastie and it made me want to break out my awful Australian accent but I refrained. This was too good of an opportunity to let it pass. There weren’t any wings on the slender frame. I noticed that the scales were slicker than I expected, like they were coated in something to help her slide through the water. The teeth were long and thin, perfect for snatching slippery fish out of the water. Webbed feet and a long, powerful tail with a decently webbed fan at the end of it.
Getting over my admiration and focusing on what I needed, I pulled hard on my stores of mana. Grasping outwardly with my hands, the earth responded to my call, enveloping the young dragon’s limbs in dirt that hardened into tons of solid stone. Wishing I had my flesh golem with me, I decided to improvise. Killing the creature was not required to get what I needed. All I needed was a bit of flesh, like maybe a scale with a bit of skin and blood on the end of it should be perfect. Exercising my power again, I erected a giant stone wall behind me that grew further and further out to create an obstacle between me and my first attacker. I didn’t want mama wolf to get in the way of this.
The long blue tail of my prisoner lashed about, frantically slamming into the stone holding it down even as the dragon blasted high pressure water at me to keep me away. Multitasking my ass off, I diverted the water off the side just enough to keep it from actually hitting but not enough for the dragon to realize that it wasn’t affecting me, all the while I was forcing the imprisoning stone to grow up and around the dragon’s prone body.
Ten minutes of intense concentration and manipulation finally had the dragon still and in the position I wanted. Its head was canted off to the side and its tail was firmly cemented down so it couldn’t lash out. I didn’t want to get it by that tail; I saw how powerful it was as it was the reason it took so long to imprison it. Each lash of the tail was strong enough to powder stone and almost get it free. The only exposed part of the animal was along the ridge of its belly on the right side.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
“That’s a good girl,” I cooed, slowly walking forward, projecting calmness and the thought that I wanted us to be friends through my Mind Sorcery. The young creature was simply gorgeous, a beautiful shade of blue mixed with streaks of black and purple. I could tell she was female, and smarter than she should be. She used her instinctive obsession with finding a good place to nest for eggs as the rock upon which she attempted to fight off my mental domination efforts. I wish I could examine her without all of this stone to hold her down but she was half a step away from feral fear dictating her actions.
With a bit of Flesh Sorcery, I was able to simultaneously numb the area of extraction while pulling out a scale with a bit of flesh and blood intact. Gently waving my hand over the wound, I sped up her natural healing so that she wouldn’t have a weak spot in her natural armor for any predators to take advantage of. “Good girl,” I soothed as I backed off towards the stone wall I’d made. “Go on now, get,” I commanded as I transmuted the stone covering her into simple dirt. In a blast of sand, she turned tail and shot towards the lake like a blue missile. Acting quickly to preserve my sample, I conjured a crystal box and put it in, making sure to seal it tight.
The deep menacing growl behind me told me however that the danger was not yet over. The thick stone wall that had separated me from Mama wolf wasn’t much of a distraction, especially with her babies so close at hand. Clutching my prized sample close to my chest, I decided to leave Spot and his kids for now and come back maybe when they’re a bit more grown. There’s no arguing with protective mom instincts. Taking advantage of the fact that Mama Wolf couldn’t see me or get to me that quick, I took off in an excited sprint and spread SAW’s wings, taking off for Sunstone Castle.
*********
“Don’t fuck it up, don’t fuck it up, don’t fuck it up.”
I knew I wasn’t going to but dear god I felt like an epic and unplanned screw up was just over the horizon, skimming on the edge of possibility if I made one bad move. On the way back home I took an opportune moment and dive-bombed a lone sand lizard sunning himself on an outcropping of rock and froze him completely to the ground, killing him quickly. This horse-sized gecko would provide more than enough flesh for fuel for my golem.
Getting back to my flesh golem at Sunstone Castle, I inserted the chunk of water dragon skin and the entire sand lizard into the bulbous mass and waited for it to completely break them down before I cracked my knuckles and chuckled, channeling the mad genius from Pinky and the Brain and the Black Eyed Peas. The flesh golem enveloped the lizard, incorporating the bio-material and growing in size until it stilled.
“Let’s get it started!”
[Are you sure you want to start with this?] Kraken asked as soon as I shoved my greedy fingers into the flesh golem to start playing around with the DNA sequences. [I don’t get the obsession with, as you call it, upgrading your body. Simply due to the undeniable fact that your sorceries and enchanted items more than make up for the fact that you’re a squishy mortal. Why? Why do you want this? There are dangers to the process.]
[Look, if you know something I don’t then spit it out,] I replied with my eyes closed, mainly concentrating on the golem. [I have my own original DNA set aside in case I fuck this up too badly, I have a flesh golem which can function as a test dummy before I do anything to myself, and I have Flesh Sorcery as the end-all be-all to fix my own mistakes. So whatcha got?]
Gathering himself up, Kraken mimicked a very human action, he cleared his throat. [My advice as your spirit familiar is to first upgrade your armor similar to how you made fire dragon armor for your witch vassal. Combine the water dragon DNA with the sand lizard DNA, grow a set of that. Once you have viable living scales to work with, maybe feed a bit of the newly generated flesh to Svalinn and also see if it’ll combine with SAW. Your body at this point should be your last concern. You’re so much further ahead in regards to your weapons and armor that your body is almost not worth it. According to your memories, you call this ‘min-maxing’?]
I chuckled as I explained his misunderstanding about pre-apocalyptic gaming. [Ok, you’re half right on the min-maxing, but that only works in video games. The concept that you’re referring to there is to only focus on your strongest stats to make you specialized. Life isn’t as forgiving as a video game. Humans generally don’t get second chances when we die. My abilities are fantastic at keeping me alive, helping me escape, being a veritable magical tank. It would help if I brought a truckload of innate durability to the table, like that of a dragon perhaps. You can’t really one-shot a dragon, can you?]
[Not unless a deity or Greater Demon gets involved.]
I groaned. [You get the point. The only thing falling behind at this point is my body, my soft, squishy, mortal human body.] Kraken fell silent as I pulled out a handful of the flesh golem, directing it to only contain a solid packet of my original DNA, just in case. Setting it off to the side and sealing it in a runed stone box, I turned back to my test subject. Within a minute, the original almost house sized flesh golem spit out a human sized version of itself which I picked up and sat on one of the stone benches.
Putting my hand on it, the gray flesh rippled until an inert clone of my current self was laying there. Pulling another human sized blob from the original golem, I rolled it over till it was next to me, ready to provide extra raw material if need be.
“Breathe in . . . breathe out.”
What sucks is that I had honestly thought that I’d never get this far. I did not expect to live this long past the end of the modern world, I mean, I had mild prepping tendencies back before the Ripples but who would have fucking that it would be magic that ended the world?
According to numerous projections made by plenty of brilliant scientists, we were overdue for a solar flare, which was my personal favorite of all the apocalypses, and the rest of the prepper community that I followed on social media were generally split between predictions of economic collapse or a natural disaster. A significant portion also had their money on a supervirus and the rich preppers prepared for everything by buying fully sealed and stocked renovated nuclear silos. Most of my family, if I asked them about it, figured the world would end with a nuclear war or devastating World World III. I’m actually happy it wasn’t the last option.
Shaking my musings away, I got started on my project that’s been a long, loooong time coming. First, I covered the upper-left side of the clone’s chest in blue water dragon scales and the upper right side in sand lizard scales, then I left the lower right portion as normal human skin and the lower-left I altered to be minotaur skin. To keep things organized, between each section of differing alien skins, I made sure that they were separated by human flesh so it kind of looked like a four piece puzzle that hadn’t fully been put together yet.
Putting one hand on the dragon scale part and the other on the lizard part, I pushed them together as my Flesh Sorcery alongside the golem’s innate shifting abilities started to combine the different scales where they met, forming a dark brown line of scales between the two.
“So the reptilian scales join together with absolutely no problem,” I muttered, concentrating on how seamless the differing elemental scales just meshed. “Makes sense, earth plus water equals mud, hehe. Ok, part two.” Leaving the successful join where it was for the reptilian combination, I moved down to the lower portions of human and minotaur skin. Repeating the process, the human skin almost seemed to want to bond with the minotaur skin, as if the human part was a blank template just waiting for some direction. They flowed together seamlessly.
I scratched my head. “Ok, cool, things are working out so far.”
[It makes sense. You humans are virile, uncommonly so. You can mate with practically anything and have a half-decent hybrid. Prolific, is that word I’m looking for?]
I ignored Kraken’s side jab at humanity. So the two upper halves bonded no problem and the two bottom halves did as well, which meant that so far so good. The problems started happening when I tried to bond the minotaur skin to the water dragon scales above it, they both kept sliding away from each other like two magnets of the same polarity.
[Almost correct,] Kraken interjected. [The minotaur skin functions similar to your understanding of duck feathers. They have just the right amount of ‘oil’, so to speak, to shed the water which in this case is magic. Water dragon scales are chock full of magic, so they’ll pour over anything but the minotaur skin is essentially magic-proof.]
[All right, makes sense. But for science, we’ll approach this logically. Minotaur skin and dragon scale don’t mesh instantly, which is fine. So, let’s see how minotaur and sand lizard skin play together?] I returned the lower half of the clone’s torso back to plain human skin and then turned the portion underneath the sand lizard part into minotaur and attempted joining them together. The same repulsion effect was still there, although noticeably less in power.
[Minotaur skin on its own seems to be a no-go, but,] I thought, twanging on my mental link to Kraken. [If you’re right about humanity being the blank template that’s compatible with anything, then maybe there’s a workaround here. This also makes it clear that the water dragon scales are more magically attuned than the minotaur flesh.]
Pushing at the flesh golem, I combined the lower half of the torso into the amalgamation of minotaur/human skin and kept the top as water dragon, ‘mud’ scale, and sand lizard scale. [We have two working combos so far with one being the logical base. I’m going to do this step by step to find the best one, which means finding the worst one first, usually.]
The experimentation took a while as I tried combining the different sets of DNA into a cohesive whole. I couldn’t seem to get rid of or work around the influence of what I could only call ‘the oil’, the strange repelling factor.
Kraken hummed for a moment as he gave me a mental prod to stop working on the clone. I could feel his buzzing as he ran through an incredible amount of calculations, using my brain as extra processing power. I couldn’t read all of the threads that he was working with as my familiar was able to sort through all of the information at an incredibly higher rate than I could even read it.
[Try this,] he said, rearranging the picture of the clone template in my head.
“That makes sense!” I agreed, grabbing the torso and flooding it with magic. With a few subtle twists and reordering of minotaur to human, the new ‘base’ of flesh was better able to grasp onto the combination of water dragon and sand lizard scales. The minotaur percentage had to be lessened so that the magically attractive human part wouldn’t be overpowered and have the ability to bond with the scales. With the mostly human and lesser part minotaur torso as a base, the attached mud scales formed a solid attempt at magically cohesive scale armor.
[I still don’t think it’s right,] I grumbled to Kraken, poking and prodding at the golem. [This is more along the lines of what I’d do if I wanted to make some cool armor, not as a replacement for my skin. I don’t want to look like a medieval knight in massive scale plated armor, that screams ‘I’m here for war’. This won’t blend in with any social situation.]
Kraken shuffled through a few pictures of animals in my mind. [Let’s see here, less pangolin looking scales, which are cool by the. Snakes have a tighter weave of scales, hey look! Why don’t you just make the scales smaller? More akin to a snake instead of a thickly armored lizard? Or better yet, like the tiny scales of a fish? See, it even allows for more flexibility, and you can pump the scales full of magic to make them grow if you need heavy armor!]
Perfect.
The KISS method fixes my problems yet again. Keep-it-simple-stupid. Morphing the scales into miniature versions of themselves about half an inch long and wide from the original size of six square inches, it took far less coaxing to get the base skin and the mud scale to bond. I frowned at it, forcing the scales to shrink yet again until they were two centimeters in length and 1.5 centimeters in width. The scales shrank and new, smaller scales grew in to fill in the gaps. My Flesh Sorcery poked at me as I noticed that while the join was successful, the project was literally starting to die. Where the small scales met the skin, the red blood cells underneath started dying.
[MANA! IT NEEDS JUICE!]
“Shit, shit, shit . . . come on!” I cursed, almost smacking myself for the obvious misstep. Trusting my partner, I channeled raw power through my Flesh Sorcery, forcefully keeping the scales alive as the innate magical bonds strengthened, finally completing the perfect join. Cursing under my breath again, I dragged the clone body over to the pedestal holding Gungnir. “So I actually have to pull a frankenstein huh?”
Forming a link between Gungnir, myself, and the batteries below the castle as well as the power-gathering ritual, I funneled the stores of energy into the golem as I screamed, “FOR SCIENCE!”
The clone body spasmed as waves of raw power washed over it, the skin morphing into the some minotaur yet mostly human sorcerer flesh base as thousands of tiny brown ‘mud dragon’ scales sprouted up like opening seeds and then lay down, each draining copious amounts of power to strengthen the magical bonds holding it together. Barely clinging on to the wave of power, Kraken helped direct the flows so as to make the changes as seamless as possible, leaving the right parts of the clone body scaleless like the face, palms, armpits, groin and more. The point here was to be enhanced, not to completely remove all traces of humanity from the body.
Fifteen minutes of intense concentration with mountains of power dumped into the clone body yielded a result that was scientifically beautiful. I couldn’t help but admire my own damn ingenuity as I hoisted the clone up onto a stone table, examining the placement of the scales, noting the smoothness as well as its durability. Bowing to another whim, I released another wave of power, turning the scales from dark brown to my natural light tan so that it wouldn’t appear to anyone casually looking that the clone was covered in armor-like skin.
[This is a fine experiment,] Kraken said, congratulating me. [Are you going to work on the insides next or were you thinking of putting runic tattoos on the scales?]
I picked at the scales and poked at the edges to get familiar with what was going to be my future body. [Actually, I was going to work on the insides and I didn’t even think about that last one. How bout’ you work on a nice rune schematic for the scales and I’ll get started on the inner workings?]
[Fine by me.] Kraken agreed, mostly withdrawing from our connection.
While the minotaur skin was awesome to work as part of the base for the epidermis, the rest of the minotaur DNA didn’t really hold anything else that I’d want as part of my future body. I didn’t need the extra stomachs or extra molars. The cranial horns were unnecessary and the hoofed feet were definitely not on the agenda. Water dragon and sand lizard innards were simply better in just about every way. They were just better options for the types of sorcery that I had.
For instance, the clone lungs were altered to be partially water dragon so that breathing under water wouldn’t require magic. The sand lizard and water dragon eyes respectively contained the ability to get a thermal reading of the surrounding area; basically they could ‘see’ heat. The water dragon's ear canals were perfect for picking up sonar and the blood marrow of both creatures were far more robust in terms of natural healing and red blood cell production. The golem clone’s skeletal structure easily accepted a combination of water dragon and sand lizard bone tissue as well as the combo of muscle, tendon, and ligament tissue. The next three hours were spent painstakingly going over the body, making slight adjustments after the initial inputs of variant DNA.
As I worked and neared the completion of my side of the project, Kraken just wouldn’t stop bugging me about going further. [Are you sure you don’t want to put a tail on it? How about natural wings, oooh, ooh! How about retractable fangs or internal poison sacs? Maybe incorporate poison sacs into sweat glands? If we’re going this far we might as well make you full on bizarre!]
[Great word choice,] I mused, loving how much Kraken was getting into this even though it was a bit annoying. [But the goal is to meld the best of humanity with reptilian durability while still maintaining the overall form and function of a human body. I don’t need wings because my Centauri suit, SAW, has wings, and Reeanth is right, tails are unnecessary handles. I’m not averse to hidden weapons though.” I scratched my head for a moment as I took a breather. [I’m on board with the poison sweat glands and maybe some retractable bone blades, just not really sure where to put the blades, hmmm.]
With another wave of power, some of the clone’s sweat glands morphed into miniature poison sacs. The issue was that I had no variety in the poison department, only the sand lizard in my DNA collection had poison and it wasn’t very good, simply a mild paralytic to keep prey from struggling too much to help the lizard pack drag it down through force of numbers.
I shook my head, deciding against taking the time to create my own poison from scratch. I probably could but if I was going to make my own poison, I’d want multiple options for different situations such as the sea snake neurotoxin or the rattlesnake hemotoxin. [Ok, revisit the poison gland thing later. Blades! Where should they go? Svalinn has the forearm blade part covered, so where?]
Kraken conceded the point. [Actually, yeah, you’re right. Blades aren’t really necessary for you. Gungnir plus Svalinn covers your bases for bladed weapons and ranged weapons. Without good poison, there’s no point in making venom glands to spit the stuff. What about a retractable frog tongue?]
[Human, Kraken! Human! Trying to stay mostly human here. Planning a future body here that children won’t point at and scream. Avoid ‘monstery’, ok?]
[Fine,] he grumbled. [Be boring. My part is way less fun. The rune schematics are done. I went with the basic defense rune formation. Since the skin is partially minotaur, it sort of does most of the magic bleedoff effect which is great in fights against wizards, witches, and sorcerers, but the scales will have a different purpose. Remember, due to forcing the join between the scales and minotaur skin with copious amounts of mana, it did reduce the minotaur magic bleed-off efficiency.]
I nodded in agreement as Kraken floated in and out of Gungnir checking on the holographic notes he had taken. [Back to the scales, mainly, they will be the last line of physical defense. I have a kinetic-energy diverting rune within the standard defense rune, and I figured out a tricky part that had stumped me for a while. After going through your memories, you read a lot of stories about assassins and how they used a thin sharp blade to puncture vulnerable spots. So, I figured out a way to link all of the scales together to ripple when impacted to turn the point of the blade so that it would divert the puncturing power. Basically, the assassin would have to land a perfectly placed attack with a crapton of power to get through the scaly parts.]
[Holy shit!] I thought, almost gasping. [I’ll be un-one-shotable?! Anti-assassin runes! NICE!]
[I guess? Not sure that’s proper English . . . moving on. There are also leyline conductor runes on the bottoms of the feet so that if you’re ever without your boots you can top off on power just by standing in the right spot, and the best part is, all of the standard rune tattoos that you have on you right now work just fine on the minotaur skin underneath the scales!]
Right then and there I almost started the process to make that body my body. [WAIT! Don’t get ahead of yourself. We have to look at the downsides here too.] Kraken warned.
[What now?] I snapped, pointing at the clone. [Come on, this is perfect!]
[Maybe, or maybe it’s got a serious downside. You haven’t tested this body out fully yet because it cannot use magic the same way you can. So if you morph your body into this framework, it might hinder how you use your magic. I don’t think you noticed but minotaur skin doesn’t really like magic all that much, and covering most of your body in it may hinder how much power you can pull in or push out at any given time. The upside-]
I frowned but Kraken continued before I could object. [The upside is that the dragon scales love magic and may actually be enough to balance out the minotaur skin or enhance your control by a little bit. I’m not sure if they’ll channel the Nature Sorcery you have that well but your earth and water control may experience a dramatic spike in overall control.]
Groaning as I worked through the possible arcane gymnastics, I slapped the chest of the clone. [And if that’s all true, then I might have to rely even more on my tools instead of myself, shiiiiiit!]
Taking a few minutes off to the side, I relaxed and relished the feeling of the castle’s mana washing over me as I refilled my personal stores of power from the incoming flow of the solar panels. There’s always another way and every path to self-improvement doesn’t need to have downsides. Maybe the answer wasn’t in completely redoing all of the work, but simply adjusting it a little bit.
The minotaur combination with the human skin was right around seventy percent minotaur with thirty percent human, which allowed for great elasticity and incoming magic projectile defense. The one that an enemy wizard would never see coming is if they threw magic at me and it slid off, but even more surprising is if that very same offensive magic was absorbed, right?
If I could alter the ratio of human to minotaur and find the perfect balance between the two, it stands to reason that I could hit upon the right proportions where the minotaur part could blunt the incoming mana just enough for my sorcerous human skin to absorb the power instead of it getting deflected by the final product. If I’m right, my future skin could function like that cool modern concrete that is just porous enough to let the water drain right through it but tough enough to withstand cars driving on it.
Reading my thoughts, Kraken interjected. [Ok, this line of thought requires proof of concept. Therefore, my initial projections are that we start with an even fifty-fifty split on the human to minotaur skin mixture and set that up in the middle. Then, moving out from the center, we have examples that go up or down five percent respectively. With the examples set up, blast them all with raw mana and verify how much damage each skin mixture takes. If we do it right, then that means we have a much better starting point for figuring out which skin ratio will perfectly handle your ability to tank damage as well as outwardly project mana, which hopefully won’t be hindered at all!]