I watched as our newest companion Vott slammed the wolf currently clamped down on his forearm into the ground. There was a loud snap, and the wolf went limp. Blood flowed from the wound freely, but he didn’t seem to mind in the slightest. He turned towards the next three with a grin on his face, his mace in his hand.

I didn't have the time to worry about it, though. Four more of the beasts were closing in on Henry, Carra, and myself. Carra stepped forward. A battered shield held forward in a defensive stance, the sword in her other hand making quick probing strikes. Suddenly a wolf lunged at Carra, only to be blinded by a flash of light. Next to me, I felt Henry heat up as his body channeled the magic into the form of the spell. I took a step back and closed my eyes. Trusting the combined threat of Vott and Carra to keep them away from me as I focused on casting the spell. Most magic was not fit for combat. At least not frontline combat. It required incredible focus and powerful magic that could take a great toll on the body, especially if interrupted.

  I sunk down into my own mind and could feel the energy of the world around me as it ran into my body through my soul anchor. With an effort of will, I began to shape that force into a tried and true spell. While I was never a combat mage, I had been instructed on the importance of having a few ways to defend myself from the beginning of my training. The spell I was about to cast was a combat variation of the very common mage hand spell.

  When my eyes snapped open, and the magic flowed from my hands in a wave. Immediately I felt lightheaded and cold, but years of training kept my focus. In front of me, the four wolves that had been harassing Carra found their paws held by spectral hands.

  I called out loud, “Carra now,” and she wasted no time stepping forward to make use of their disadvantage. The hands weren’t enough to stop the wolves completely, but they did slow them down quite a bit.

  With the wolves we had been dealing with dead or dying, I turned to face Vott. His mace was now coated in blood and the third, and he had the third and final wolf held by the scruff before bringing it down onto his knee with brutal force. I watched in fascination as the blood of the defeated wolves snaked towards Vott through the grass. Those veins of blood would work their way up his body and into the few wounds he had sustained. As the blood filled them, they would heal before my eyes. What was really strange was that when there were no wounds, the blood would move towards his center mass where most people's Soul Anchors were and would simply soak through the skin.

  I liked to consider myself a well-learned man and had read about the champions of the gods in the past. Vott's claimed immortality was a pretty common gift for those that served Chole though the changes to his anchor were very interesting. I don’t think that Vott knew I could see magic. I was going to tell him eventually but wanted the time to get an unfiltered examination first. The ability to see magic is not rare among those with the gift of magic. Though I do like to think that I had a bit of a gift in that realm of the field.

  Vott’s magic was unlike anything I had ever seen. Most cultivators, whether they be warriors or mages, had a passive connection to the world around them at all times. Even most animals managed such a rudimentary connection. Vott was like a corpse; not a single bit of energy entered or left him. It looked as if his anchor had been replaced by something else in his deal with death though I am not sure what. What I did know was that even though it was dormant most of the time. When around the dead, it became very, very active. The energy of those defeated around him would first heal his wounds and then stream into his changed anchor, and after that, I wasn’t sure. I assumed it would allow him to cultivate further though I wasn’t yet sure how.

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  In the aftermath of the attack, we decided to move off a mile or two before setting up our camp for the night. After leaving the battlefield, we met Vott and headed out into the spires. So far, it had lived up to its reputation as a dangerous place; though the wolves had been the first to attack, we had seen signs of many other dangers. We had just entered the mountains proper now. Leaving behind the low grass-covered foothills for the Spires' rocky peaks and green valleys propers.

  We decided to camp beneath a large rock overhang. We weren't the first to have picked the spot either. Henry, the one with the most travel experience in the group, pointed out the dashed remains of a stone circle and the blacked stone above it from the smoke of a fire. Vott went off into the wilderness to try to find a fire. He left behind the two wolf corpses he had carried with him from the fight. I set to work dressing the wolves while Henry and Carra did their best to make a comfortable camp.

  I was no hunter, but I was a scientist, so it was not my first time breaking down an animal. I made short work of my task and set the pelts out on a large stone to dry as best they could. We had left the organs where we had slain them, but it was still messy work. Wolf meat was exactly on the top of my list, but we also weren’t in a position to complain about any source of food. I stripped all the meat away before sitting down cross-legged and focusing on a spell.

  When I opened my eyes, I saw those scraps of flesh left on the bone dissolve away as if eaten by a powerful acid. After a few moments, all that was left were clean white bones. I would get to work on animating them later. I felt naked, walking around without any magical servants. Bones were not my first choice of materials to do to the association with necromancy, but they would have to do.

  I began to set up the ritual to animate the bones when Vott returned from gathering firewood. He walked up to me quietly and waited for me to come to a stopping point.

  “What do you have going on here, Charles?” he asked. The question took me a bit by surprise. In the few days I had known the man, I had yet to figure him out. In battle, he was the epitome of brutal efficiency but outside of it, he was friendly and oblivious to so many things it became endearing.

  “I am going to empower these bones with a magical spirit from the ethereal. The ritual circle around them will both summon the spirit and hold it within the space until we agree. The good news is that for such mediocre vessels, the cost for the service of the spirits should be pretty light, probably just food, maybe a jewel of some kind.”

  “Cool, cool, I’ll be honest, I don't really get magic, but that sounds good to me. Where did you get all this salt, candles, and stuff, though? Your pack isn’t big enough for it.” He asked, looking at the large ritual around the two white wolf skeletons.

  “A wizard has to keep a few secrets don’t they Vott,” I said, grinning to show the fanged teeth of my tiefling heritage.

  “Oh, come on, I’m sure that you have other secrets; just tell me.”

  “Alright, but only because Henry will lie to you about it if I don’t tell you. One of the pouches of my pack is a dimension space. It's not a very big one, but it was enough that I was able to get some material for a few basic rituals in it before we had to flee.”

  “That's Incredible. I had heard about those. I think that some of the quartermasters had some for water. One barrel, but it held the same amount of water as twenty with the same weight. I always thought that stuff was cool. Well, I won’t keep you from it anymore,” and with that, he walked away to help Henry start the fire and start dinner.

  The rituals were indeed pretty simple, and after an hour, I had completed all of the needed preparation and was ready to complete the ritual. I sat in a smaller circle connected by lines of salt and runes drawn with salt on the stone beneath me and began to pull the ambient mana through my body and into the circle. It took about twenty minutes to fill the circle with power. Once that was done, I spoke the incantation. Magic did not use words in the traditional sense but more a series of symbols meant to invoke specific intentions in the caster’s mind. Two casters could perform the same ritual in vastly different ways. For me, it was speaking a short chant to properly focus the magic,

  "Spirit of mana and motion I offer these bodies to you in the wish to parley for your services.”

When the words were done, I felt a pop in my ears and a pinpoint tear in the magic at the center of the circle. From it, two small orbs of green energy drifted down into the skeletons. There was a brief moment of inaction, and then both skeletons began to rise. I rose as well and grabbed two large slabs of the wolf meat I had butchered earlier.

  “I offer two of you this food as a means of binding and a similar offering once for each cycle of the moon. If this is satisfactory, then kneel, and I will release you from the circle.”

  Both of the skeletons dropped down. I threw the meat at the two of them, which vanished as it entered their jaws, and then kicked away the line of salt freeing them.

  “Guard this camp if anything living is discovered, make noise if it doesn’t run, then attack it.” Both skeletons nodded their boney heads and clacked their jaws before moving to the perimeter of the camp.