“Well, that’s not a problem.” Nolis commented after Gilliam explained his request and situation. “I want to see it to make sure I explain it properly, but just go get it and we’ll begin.”

Nolis got up from his chair and led Gilliam out of his room. “Come here, there is a room we can use for this.” Exiting into the hallway he turned and entered another one of the doors.

Gilliam followed, closing Nolis’ door on the way out and entered the other room, it was simple; another rectangular room but a third of it was closed in behind bars, the non-jail part of the room had a desk with writing utensils, and another desk with tools and items reminding Gilliam of torture and surgery at the same time.

Deciding not to ask too much he kept focus on the task. “So, if we’ll get the guy and put him in there?” He pointed at the barred side of the room as a confirmation.

“Pretty much, yes.” Nolis nodded as he took a step away from Gilliam.

“Ok, that shouldn’t be a problem, we’ll be back in a minute.” Gilliam nodded as he was untying Savia from his hair again.

“Can you take us back to the smelly man in the basement?” Gilliam requested, to which she nodded rapidly and started gathering energy before he found himself blinded again.

As the light faded he found himself out of arms reach of the zombie he had inspected earlier. And he now had to find out how he should restrain the creature so he didn’t attack them on the way, as teleportation required physical contact. He could perhaps put him in the ring but... he didn’t want to.

Looking around, as he remembered they were in a storage area of sorts, he found a large enough bag to shove him in. This was done surprisingly simply with powerful enough telekinesis magic, keeping his arms next to his body and stopping him from squirming allowed him to shove him into the bag. Though the bag wasn’t designed for this and would tear apart in not long, it should give them the needed seconds for the teleport.

“Savia, we need to get him back with us, but as soon as we get back to Nolis, I want you to get this one into the cage before you fly out. Can you do that?” Using his hands to help explain the point she ended up nodding rapidly with a wide smile.

Opening the cell door to the still-held-in-place zombie, Gilliam grabbed the bag with their new friend inside. Savia jumped down onto the bag and did her thing.

He was again blinded and felt moved, as soon as he could move he pulled his hand back and could feel the little puff of mana as she did a very short-range teleport. By the time he could see again, she came flying out through the bars and crash-landed in Gilliam’s face.

“Savia do good?!” She asked and remained stuck to his face until he picked her off.

“Yes, you did very good.” He smiled at his little friend, who returned the widest, most satisfied smile on being complimented.

He put her back in his hair as he looked at Nolis, who was looking back a bit surprised. It seemed like he wanted to say something to Gilliam but as if on cue, the undead tore itself through the bag and rushed towards them, stopping as he crashed into the strong metal bars. Nolis’ focus changed to this right away and was more fascinated by it than whatever he planned to confirm with Gilliam.

“Yeah, this is a standard and simple way of creating undeath.”

Gilliam waited for Nolis to inspect and relay information to him.

“Yeah, yep. This is something you can do easily.” Nolis continued after a few more seconds of inspecting the creature before turning towards Gilliam. “If you make a Darkness mana crystal and just shove it in a corpse, it’ll animate on its own. The life force in the crystal will be slowly drained by the body and it’ll just wake up. Without the crystal, someone would have to carve a magic circle on the body and channel energy into it. The body is naturally aligned to life force, after all, so it’ll just do it on its own.” He added to the end with a strange smile.

“Now, this does mean that they will die... again, after some time, however, this is longer than you might think. And if you recharge them now and then, let them kill and absorb some life, or if you’re just clever enough to make something to let them recharge passively, they can exist forever.”

“Oh, so a zombie won’t infect you?” Gilliam was a bit surprised. He didn’t think that the zombie virus as modern media portrayed it actually worked like that, but at the same time, parts of his mind were also tainted by that very media to think that way.

“Oh, it’s a living corpse, it’ll absolutely infect you. A bite or scratch can infect even between you and me, and that guy is far from clean.” Nolis motioned to their prisoner as he referred to him, turning back to the zombie after the end of his sentence to inspect him a bit more.

“And though extremely rare, the rotting flesh can spread from them to someone they attack. There’s also the life absorbing I mentioned, most attacks from creatures like this are filled with hunger, and that hunger gives you some nasty bleeding wounds.”

Gilliam considered that for a moment, ignoring the bleeding or life-absorbing aspect, he had heard of rare cases where necrosis could spread from one person to another, though he didn’t know if that was real or just something people thought. But it seemed that it was real here.

Nolis turned back to Gilliam a few seconds later. “Though, I don’t imagine that being a problem for you. Most healing magic can take care of any of that right away, especially if you know what you’re dealing with. The problem is if the creator injected the undead with something, or gave it different magical attacks.”

This made sense, as the undead was... dead, you could inject whatever you wanted into it, and perhaps the fake life could have it spread around in the body, which in turn could have it passively inject something into anyone or thing they attack.

“Besides that, they tend to be mindless, unless the creator creates or ties a mind to them, and will follow the creator’s orders the best they can.”

“But why undead? Wouldn’t it be more practical to just create something specific? Remove the need to dig up bodies or... such?” Gilliam wondered, it just felt oddly inefficient.

“Oh, not really. First of all, this is much easier, even novice Darkness mages can do this, another thing is the fear factor if you need an army. If you fight one of them, pain, dismemberment and so on, won’t affect them. You need to destroy the crystal or magic circle, and this can be anywhere in the body making it potentially hard to kill them. If the circle or crystal is not in their head, decapitating them won’t necessarily stop them.”

Nolis seemed to speak from experience, which wasn’t too weird given that he was the academy’s only proper Darkness mage.

“Another thing is that it costs less life force, as you don’t need to create anything, just put life back into it.”

This also made sense. Instead of using energy and effort to create a body, you just recharged it.

“It’s also kind of practical, when you create something you need to consider limbs, sensory organs, if it can eat... and so on. With undeath, all of this is already present. They just wake up and... work.”

Nolis walked over to the table of writing utensils and seemed to take some notes, continuing to speak as he looked down. “Lastly it comes with bonuses, if you do it right you can bring their mind back as well, gaining access to their memories and information, in some cases even their magic if they were a mage. It’s really just a shitty resurrection, though I’m sure some serial killers would love it, as long as they keep killing they would be close to immortal. And if you either use Light magic or have them expend more of their Darkness energy, it could even keep their bodies fresh enough to work normally, letting them eat to a certain degree.” He ended his explanation with a smile, seeming to like talking about the topic.

“Well... that’s much worse... and better... than I expected.” There were several things in Gilliam’s mind. Suddenly the whole undeath thing seemed more practical and not as bad as he expected. He could see mages taking advantage of this in several ways, and a skilled mage could even have them live amongst normal people. Though another mage could sense the Darkness mana within these creatures, that could probably also be masked if you were skilled enough.

“What’s the best way to fight them?” Gilliam asked his local expert.

“Since you can hide a circle in them as well as using a crystal, just taking the crystal isn’t enough as they can pretend to be dead... convincingly so.” Nolis sported a dumb little smile at that comment. “The best way is to disintegrate or crush them, but that’s not practical. I would say dismemberment. That way even if they are alive, they can’t do shit unless you get too close.”

He stopped the flow of his explanation for a brief moment as he was pondering something. “You could also just absorb their energy. If it’s just one or two that shouldn’t be a problem, but if it’s a room of 20 it would be... a lot of energy.”

Gilliam liked that idea. But absorbing too much energy didn’t sound entirely good either. “What would happen if I absorb too much energy?” He had to ask, feeling a bit worried that it might go overboard if he didn’t know what to do.

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“Oh, you’d most likely die.” Nolis smiled. “Like pumping too much water into a waterskin, you’d burst... magically... But since magic is in your body one of the common ways this would happen is that your mind or heart would pop.” Still sporting the smile at the end of his explanation felt a bit macabre.

Though if anyone would be used to that shit, it would be Nolis.

“Ah... that... that’s not optimal.” Gilliam’s eagerness faded a bit, though it would be a good tool to have, it didn’t sound... the best.

“Though, in your case, you could probably just channel the excess energy into a new crystal, using the tattoo I gave you, you can absorb a room and just make yourself a new crystal.” He made it sound so easy.

However, from experience, making the mana crystals required a surprising amount of focus to do it right. At least if he wanted a proper one. Now, if he was absorbing and being energized at the same time, it could be surprisingly hard, taking up all his focus. Though, if he could clear a room like this it sounded almost too easy.

“That sounds like a good idea, but it almost sounds too easy... Not counting the focus needed to do this, and that I could be attacked during the process... What’s the catch?”

“It would take longer than you’d think.” Nolis replied. “Absorbing life from a person to use for yourself is easy, it’s life, it’s already there and normal. But absorbing energy that is either crystallized or embedded in a magic circle requires more effort to draw out. I don’t recommend doing it during a fight, but it’s a good way to clean up after taking care of things.”

“Ah.” Gilliam didn’t have more than a single sound-byte to comment. It made sense to a certain degree. If the energy was tied up in a circle or crustal it was just that, tied down. Harder to get hold of than what is already circulating among people.

“But, if you can sense the Darkness mana in them, can’t you easily find them? In groups if they are hiding?” Gilliam finally asked something he considered a bit a minute ago.

“You’d think that, but unless you are finely tuned into Darkness magic, from a distance or if enough stuff is between you, it’ll just feel like ‘life’.” He made air quotes with his hands as he stated that. “Light and Darkness are different applications of Life, so both are life in very different forms. You can probably tell with a wall or door between you, but even that wouldn’t be easy unless there is a lot of it.” Nolis didn’t smile this time, he seemed to be remembering something during that explanation.

“Well... fuck... I don’t suppose I can bring you in on this job?” Gilliam felt that it would solve a lot of problems just having him along.

“Nope, not allowed. And I can’t exactly say that I’d like being a Darkness mage in Albion.” He smiled, letting Gilliam consider that thought for a moment.

Arcane mages were already a problem, Darkness magic was outlawed for several reasons... A Darkness Arcane mage would be... problematic.

“I suppose that’s fair.” Gilliam couldn’t consider any good reason to bring him with, as he’d probably be killed in sight by the Inquisitors.

“Well, if that concludes the information you need... Can I keep him?” Nolis asked without any restraint.

Gilliam chuckled. “I don’t see why not. I don’t need him and I was told that I could do what I wanted with him. Suppose if you learn anything neat or practical for the job I’d like to be informed.”

Nolis didn’t respond but rather looked ecstatic in starting whatever he was planning.

“I’ll leave you to it, then.” Gilliam commented to the non-listening Nolis before he turned towards the door and left the Darkness mage alone.

Finding his way out of the dungeon was not a problem, it was only down two hallways and the room with the guard in it before he was back in the spiral staircase. Walking up to the ground floor he nodded at the halfling woman still sitting behind the desk as he left through one of the side doors out into the Aether Field.

The weather was still windy and grey, and the weather barrier was still keeping that under control. It didn’t take more than a cursory glance to find his group, Rhyan was easy to see from afar, and though the academy had plenty of Beastfolk working there, Cera stood out in her own way.

Well before he was in the range of conversation, Cera’s ears perked and she turned to face Gilliam, seeming to have heard him from some distance. She started walking over to him right away. Rhyan noticed him mainly from her reaction and movement, joining her in walking over shortly after.

“So, you got what you needed?” Rhyan asked as they got closer to each other.

Cera just walked over to stand next to Gilliam, seeming to relax a little as soon as she did.

“Yes, at least sort of.” Gilliam used a few minutes to bottom line the information he learned, at least the things that could be worth knowing for the group. How easy it was to create the undead, why one would perhaps like to, their passive life drain, their strengths and so on. Also mentioning that they are hard to sense due to being fueled by life, so they would have to investigate with less magic and more asking around.

“Well, this is good info.” Rhyan commented as he was writing things down in a small notebook he had taken out of his bag. “It’s a shame we didn’t get anything that would make this easier, but understanding things is always a good step.” He seemed genuine in his smile before he closed his little notebook, putting it and the pen back in his bag.

“I suppose we can go back and report to Yeta, and see if she has any good ideas before we continue.” Gilliam commented as he poked the harpy in his hair. “Savia, can you take us back?”

She mumbled some sleeping noises that might have contained the word ‘teleport’ or not, hard to tell. But after taking a few seconds to wake up she seemed more coherent.

“Savia teleport?”

Gilliam smiled, though she wouldn’t see this as she was on the other side of his head, she could probably feel it over their bond.

“Yes, I would like you to take us back to the Guild in Fairviig. In the basement where we got the smelly man the first time.”

“Savia knows! Saiva can teleport!” Without waiting for confirmation she started building up energy, which had Gilliam place his left hand on Cera’s shoulder, and reach out for Rhyan’s hand.

After Rhyan took his hand, Gilliam felt that they were ready. “Whenever you’re ready.” Gilliam commented to Savia, who seemed to get the order and pulsed the gathered energy as normal.

As the bright light faded from their vision, letting them again look around, they were indeed back in the basement of the Fairviig’s Guildhall, exactly as planned. The next step was to get back up to the Guild master.

Starting to walk up Rhyan seemed to have pondered for a moment. “I’ve been meaning to ask, your... friend-” He pointed at the back of his head, clearly referring to Savia. “-seems to be sleeping a lot. Is that... normal?” Though his voice sounded mostly curious, there seemed to be a tiny bit of worry in there as well.

“Yeah, this is normal for her. I talked to her about it a while ago, and teleportation takes a lot out of her. Though I can recharge her mana easily enough there is a mental and physical fatigue. She also just likes the comfort of being able to relax as much as she wants to compare to her life in the forest before she was summoned in the familiar ritual.”

“Oh, that’s interesting. I have read that most familiars are called from somewhere else, and are kind of asked to become a mage’s servant.” Though he didn’t ask anything specifically, the end of the sentence was lifted in a questioning tone.

“Yes, Savia confirmed this when I talked to her about it. To her, it was like a thought explained itself to her... I think, but she at least knew what it would mean if she accepted. She never regretted it, she gets to eat as much as she want and sleep whenever, which is an entirely different life to her time in the forest, constantly living in fear of something bigger catching her. I think that’s why she likes to harass birds at times, I think owls or predatory birds might have chased her a lot...” Gilliam had talked to her about this before, as she’s a fully sentient familiar he was able to ask her and talk to her about it, learning things from her life before she was called.

This talk took up most of the time back to the office, it wasn’t that far. Cera didn’t join the talk and simply kept following Gilliam two steps behind him to his side, where she usually kept herself.

Gilliam knocked on the door as they got back up, Yeta’s voice commanded them to enter. And as they opened the door she looked happy to have an excuse to stop whatever she was doing.

“Ah, great! You’re back. Did you learn anything good?”

“I did, but there is also a slight problem.” Gilliam commented, having Yeta raise a questioning eyebrow.