85th Day of Ash, 122nd Year of the Age of Steel
Emerande ushered him through the door with barely contained excitement after the meeting. She had made a complete transformation from the reflective, sad Matriarch on the walk over from the Grand Hall.
A body lay on the slab in the laboratory, covered by a linen sheet.
“So this one is an especially skilled thief, a burglar, a rogue.” Emerande explained, striding confidently over. “What will we use him for do you think, then?” She turned to gaze at Masagh as she asked the question.
Masagh grunted and shrugged. “Thievery I suppose?”
Emerande raised a finger and smiled, suitably pleased that Masagh dutifully walked into the obvious answer. “Ah, why limit ourselves. We will be extracting the ability of this master burglar to be stealthy, the light feet, the soft footsteps, all of it.”
It was a familiar dance set to new music. Masagh prompted her as he was meant to. “So what is the first step?”
“Like in the way of flesh, the way of remembrance begins with…” She pulled a cloth off a familiar stone container. “Ichor. I have a suitable amount here, but we should really have a bit extra for projects like this. Why don’t you grab the mortar and pestle and make some more while I gather a few more things?” Emerande said, indicating the waiting tools. “Go ahead and harvest some shoulder meat from the subject for your strips.”
Masagh sighed and pulled the dagger from his belt. He made his way to the corpse and began the grisly work. His mother began gathering some more necromantic tools about the work space. She wore a satisfied smile on her face. Masagh had noticed she was truly in her element here in the laboratory, wielding the forces of life and death. It had been a long time since they had shared such pleasant companionship like this.
He brought the strips of flesh to the mortar and let them fall in. Then he took a pinch of ground rosemary and sprinkled it in as well. The mundane herb was said to be useful for bolstering the innate power of ichor. Then the ghoul slid the dagger across his own forearm and let the ichor from it drip onto the mixture.
“After the ichor what’s next?” Masagh asked as he ground the mixture into a uniform consistency.
Emerande had a cleaver in her hand, a sign of what was to come. She set it down next to the body and removed a scalpel from her toolset. “Well, if we remove the material from the corpse without directing the latent aether in the body, the memories, the time spent honing the skill, it won’t work. So the first thing we need to do it carve runes of remembrance and direction. We need to direct those memories into this portion of the body, or at least lay out the roadmap for it.”
Emerande gestured with her hands while she spoke, probably a relic of a time when she would give lectures to much larger audiences on these self-same subjects. The razor sharp scalpel waved before her and caught the candle light. Masagh watched the edge move as she spoke.
“I have a copy of the specific script on the table there, you can see it. Just under the tome on animation there…” Emerande pointed to the somewhat haphazard desk he was sitting at. “They are good for this sort of thing, you can replace the bit about stealth and subterfuge with almost anything and still get decent results without having to rewrite it all. Although if you are building more than one skill into your work I would suggest Rol Thenk’s interwoven runes method. Much more comprehensive. Nevertheless, this is a great introduction into the stages of the Remembrance craft and undoubtedly will serve you well.” Emerande’s words were falling into a sharp cadence. She tended to become a bit long-winded when discussing the intricacies of her passion crafts, MAsagh had found since working with her. “Also, the greaves we’re making will serve you well.”
“Ah, I get to keep them?” Masagh said, eyes down on the ichor once again.
“Of course! I thought it would be a fun memento of the beginning of our work together.” Emerande said, smiling over at him as she worked on the runes. “Now these initial runes, as you can see on the parchment there,” she waved her scalpel at him. “Are called ‘Virtue Runes’ because they are here to carry the virtue from the host into the artifact to be created.”
Masagh eyed the Nio Uvverece script next to him while finishing the ichor mixture. “Always the first step?” He asked.
“Well you could make the circle first I suppose, but generally that’s a bad practice because it could get scuffed or the ichor could dry up in spots. Generally ichor rune work happens directly before its use in Necromancy. Carving script is less susceptible to damage and arcane skew.” His pale, gaunt mother gestured to the work she had just finished with the scalpel.
Masagh brought the ichor over to the work bench next to the dead body and examined her work. “See how the runes spiral out? That is to better help the aether evenly disperse across the skin. Useful for skins and hides.” Emerande said as he stepped up beside her.
After nodding approvingly at the consistency of his ichor she commented. “It is a simple part of the process, but mastering a quality ichor mixture is integral to every success you achieve in this art. No matter how complex the working, bad ichor makes for a bad creation. And you, my son, have an excellent ichor there. Good work.”
Masagh looked down at the bowl. “Thanks, I suppose. So what’s next?” He asked.
“The soak.” She moved over to the shelf and removed a large stone urn covered in runes. “Now we have the ichor and the Virtue runes in place, we combine them and let the aether imbue the runes material, in this case the skin.”
“Would you like to fill the jug with your ichor or do you want to remove the legs here?” Emerande asked.
Masagh paused. “Why don’t I remove the legs, mother. No need for you to strain yourself.” He moved over and took up the cleaver. It was different to chop apart a dead body rather than a living, breathing foe. While it seemed a colder, cruel thing, it did not carry the burden of snuffing out a life. Masagh hefted the cleaver and brought it down on the thigh area. While he was not practiced with the butchery of corpses, he had spent centuries perfecting his swordsmanship. He made short work of the task.
Afterward Emerande waited patiently beside the jug while he carried both legs by the ankles. “Good, now place them in the jug, I’ve added your ichor to the vat stored in here.” Emerande said. She lifted the lid for him and Masagh carefully lowered the legs in individually. “Any idea why we do this before removing the skin?”
Masagh grunted as he lowered one leg in with his new arm. “Ugh, because we need the runes to gather up all the ah, memory aether from the rest of the legs before removing the material?” He guessed after a brief moment of thought.
“Very good, that’s correct.” Emerande beamed, sliding the lid back into place. “We would have a weak and barely functional artifact if we removed it right away and without ichor to strengthen the imbued traits.”
“So the ichor helps solidify these traits we want to draw out?” Masagh asked
She nodded, touching the stone jug with one hand. “Ichor and blood both are aether conduits. With Rune magic you draw from yourself, with necromancy and other latent magics we draw from the world. That being said, you can still use these conduits to direct that aether. Especially in necromancy.” Emerande said.
“How long does it sit for.” Masagh asked.
“As a rule, about an hour for each trait.” Emerande said. “Although if the artifact is expected to receive some wear and tear, two is more prudent. For our purposes we shall do two.”
They spent the next hour with Emerande going over the script for the remembrance circle as well as the Virtue runes in excruciating detail. While the grisly nature of the craft was somewhat off-putting to the warrior, the deep well of knowledge and possibility inexplicably drew his fascination. Here were the building blocks for great works. The giant flesh golems of the Empire, the crown of bones of legend, the prism of a thousand ghosts, all of these stories and more he had grown up with. Ancient pillars of glory and achievement from the past that stood out as feats of power that burned throughout history.
It was a lofty goal to aspire to such workings, but increasingly Masagh found himself drawn to it. Why, his very first experience of the craft had been to attach a new arm to himself, thus saving him from a life-shattering wound. And if this magic could reach back into the knowledge of the dead what secrets could he dig up? He found his mind once again drifting to the logbook entry and the hints of a broken vault of necrotic knowledge somewhere up the coast.
“Right, that should be enough time spent in the jar.” Emerande said finally. She stood and grabbed a broom leaning against the wall. She carefully cleared away the space of the raised circular dais they used for their necrotic circles. “Why don’t you remove the lid and retrieve our legs. Then we can both remove the skin, I will show you how.”
Somewhat apprehensively Masagh moved to the jar. The ichor was not as cold as he expected, the aether must have agitated it into warmth. He reached in and wrapped both hands around the ankles of the legs and lifted. He struggled a bit with the wet and slippery limbs, but got them to the table eventually.
“We need to cut along the center of the back of the leg all the way down to the ankle.” His mother unceremoniously spun her limb around. “See here, where I left a gap in the runes. This comes with practice, but you will learn to space this way. It takes forethought to plan out the exact use of the skin and how you will remove it, but that all comes with time.”
Masagh followed his mother’s example and picked up one of the long curved blades that was razor sharp and gleaming with a vicious edge. “Be careful not to rip the skin up and damage the runes. It won’t be the end of the world, but can weaken the enchantment later on. Slow and steady.” She said as she began to cut.
The process was more difficult than Masagh would have guessed. The limbs were both slimy with ichor and the skin seemed thinner than he would have guessed, living in his own all this time. The carved runes were tiny and spiraling, a repeating pattern he recognized from the scroll. There was nothing for it but to take his time and make sure none of it became damaged in the attempt. He recalled now the careful flaying of the arm in his previous instruction with his mother and realized how pivotal surgical skill was for this.
In the end, Masagh finished a good twenty minutes after his mother, but didn’t feel bad about that. She had a few thousand years of experience on him in the art. Emerande too seemed pleased with his careful pace and lack of damage to the material. “Great! Now comes the harnessing of this skill we’ve painstakingly extracted.” It was like they were in some macabre kitchen and she was teaching him how to bake cookies.
Emerande exuded a calm and relaxed composure while slicing and enchanting the dead body parts. It was a grisly sort of passion.
“See the book there?”
Masagh went and dried his hands carefully before grabbing the book. Necrotic Imbuancy was the title written in faded red letters on a suspiciously leather-bound cover.
“Page ninety-three. Should be called ‘Runic Conversion in Uvverece’ or something like that.” Emerande waved a hand. Impressed she had remembered the exact page number, Masagh quickly flipped to the page. Runic Conversion in Uvverece for Remembrance lined the top of the page in archaic script. Impressive, Emerande had remembered the exact page and title. Masagh looked up at his mother happily bent over the skin, etching runes from memory already. He wondered what more was hidden away in her vice like mind. Exactly how much magic did this woman really know?
“I repeat this then?” Masagh asked, setting the open book next to him at his workstation. He picked up the tiny etching knife and looked over to her to confirm.
“Yes, under the others and going in the opposed direction. We want to stagger the aether flow to really trap it in there.” She said, winking at him.
“Right. Under and opposite.” Masagh muttered, bending to the work.
And so they toiled on. Masagh had lost his sense of time. It was not uncommon for the long lived undead who rarely needed food or rest. Cyran was known to go whole spans in the laboratory simply sitting, immersed in his research. Masagh found that despite the grisly nature of their work, he enjoyed the time with his mother.
She usher him over to the raised dais where there was chalk and a thin spindly tool Masagh did not recognize. “This is what we use to draw the circles of animation and recalling. Here we are recalling. Way of remembrance, memory, recalling, makes sense no?” She demonstrated how to dip the spindly bone needle into the shallow bowl of ichor and draw a rune with it. “Now use the index to find the ‘Circle of two source recalling’ should be near the front.”
Masagh opened the book and as he scanned the listed subjects she trudged on with her lecture. “These circles of recalling are almost all the same, and eventually you will be able to freehand from memory. The main difference is the number of sources, some workings demand more than one.” Emerande was outlining the dais in chalk, though not writing any script. “The source is just the mage doing the working, it implies a source of aether direction. We will use a two source circle since we are only two people.”
It was implied that Masagh would be the one to draw the circle within the bounds of the chalk. It this task he traded the inconvenience of a traitorous medium for the discomfort of an awkward angle. Crouching low he shuffled the book along as he copied rune for rune. On the occasion that he made a mistake of accidentally smudged a rune with his boot toe, Masagh went back with a rag and wiped the ichor up, remaking the script. All in all it did not take him very long to finish compared to the grisly task of carving runes into flayed skin.
“Now forgive me, but I will be folding the skin and sewing it into the shape for greaves myself.” Emerande admitted with a pained look on her face. “It’s a rather finicky process and not much is gained from attempting it without ever seeing it. You observe and I will do it.”
Then she moved over to the skin and expertly folded it in on itself. “Contrary to what you might assume, being a rune forger, we fold the script inward on itself. Like so.” She tucked the edges in and fold the skin so the script pressed against itself. Then she withdrew sinew thread and a needle with one hand. “We want to keep the runes from fracturing with damage also, so we try to cover them as best we can…”
Emerande began to sew the edges of what may eventually look like some grisly mimicry of a leather greave. The skin was still damp and limp, and only the shape vaguely resembled the piece of armor he knew so well. Eventually Emerande laid the twin skin slabs across the center of the circle and stepped into the half crescent nook at the northern edge of the ichor runes. She indicated Masagh should step into the opposite one.
When he did so, Emerande reached up and clutched the soul totem strung around her neck. Masagh reached up and touched the newly made one Emerande had helped him create out of a basic dragonshard aetherite. He felt the warm static of latent aether swirled about in the circle. Mimicking his mother’s technique, he began to mentally will the aether trapped by his runic circle towards the greaves.
Aether swirled with the air at first, chaotic and without direction. The soul totems began to emanate their conjoined wills and the aether retreated from it. It condensed in the center of the circle and eventually, with nowhere to go, sealed into the greaves themselves. He did not see this happen, he felt it like he felt all aether in every magic he used. The closest thing he could think of was the weird aether sense present in the Slipspace. It was there and the draw was what made him aware of it. As the aether moved, the circle of recalling began to glow with their combined breaths, their allied focus. The ichor soaked greaves glowed as well. The pulsing light entranced him and Masagh lost himself in the process for an indeterminable time.
After a time the sense of the aether was only present in the greaves. The runes encircling them dimmed and faded. Then, a moment later the greaves dimmed as well. Emerande sighed deeply and stepped down from the dais. She picked up the skins and motioned for Masagh to follow.
“Now they’re pretty much done. All that is left is the mundane task of drying them into shape. They won’t be much use for defense, but I think we have quite a solid artifact for stealthy needs.” Emerande said. She began to attach the greaves carefully to a wood framed hide drying rack near the forge fire. A semi cylindrical wooden brace latched on to form the curve of the greaves. Emerande clasped it around the skins and twisted the clamping latch. Then she stepped back and smiled at him.
“I can’t wait for you to try them on.” She beamed. Masagh smiled back.
“Will they work perfectly?” Masagh asked as they cleaned the tools and dais. “I know necromantic artifacts have curses associated with them.”
“Not curses, exactly.” Emerande said, carefully cleaning and tucking her tools back into the leather case. “I like to think of them as taxes on the power. Such skill is a powerful boon to have, and with necromancy it comes with a tax. We can’t tell what that will be until we attempt to use them, but the more careful you are in the crafting, the easier the tax will be on you.”
She brought the tools over to the shelf and tucked them there with the other toolboxes and leather wraps. “Thank you for showing me this, mother. I’m eager to learn more, especially concerning the way of flesh…” Masagh assured her.
“Someday the fates of ghouls will depend on your power and your skill, Masagh. I am glad you are learning to embrace that. I’m sorry there wasn’t more choice in your path.” Emerande smiled at him, wringing her hands in a rag to clean them off.
The conversation had taken a turn towards the morose again. Undoubtedly the Lady Creth was returning to the memory of the loved and lost. Masagh looked at the ground and ran a hand across his neck, rubbing are the soreness there.
“I hope they do depend on me. I hope I measure up.” Masagh said softly. To bear the weight of not only a house but the legacy of an empire on one’s back was a feat Masagh could only barely comprehend. Staring at his mother, the Lady Emerande Creth, he knew it was her reality. “I will grow this house mother.” He stepped forward and smiled at her. They had their differences, but he knew they both dreamed of the same thing. “We all will. Sabrione, Cyran, Parthena. All of us together.”
She closed her cold, hard claws over his hand and met his gaze. He saw the deep worry there that he had heard in her voice earlier. “I know, I know you will.” She blinked a few times and stepped past him.
“Tomorrow we will animate your first zombie.”
