View Full Version : The Complicated Unlife Of Malefor Kolwezi
The Complicated Unlife Of Malefor Kolwezi (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pnfFiXxOWQ&feature=related)
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Set an hour or so after the eye popping conclusion of The Near Psychosis Of Ashley Turgor (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?22920-The-Near-Psychosis-Of-Ashley-Turgor/page2)
They overeagerly anticipate my demise,
Looked upon with deceitful eyes,
Becoming a victim of their aggressive lies,
But with keen discernment, I could,
See beyond their foolish disguise.
Sabotaging my creditability,
Deforming my character trying to,
Subjugate my development.
Their envious cognition has spited their soul!!!
Hatred beyond comprehension,
Beyond imagination,
My pleasure has sparked up their indignation.
My comedy becomes their drama,
My worst could easily surpass their greatest feat.
I am left in perplexity, thoroughly disgusted,
I am picked apart and wounded,
by the people I once trusted.
Larry Gore Jr.
Bargaining with the dead was a bit like bargaining with the devil, only with less horns and lots of extra syllables.
Bargaining with the dead when they were talking over everything you tried to say was as close to being impossible as you could. It was about as enjoyable as running into a brick wall at exceptional speed, head on, without your hat.
Ashley put down the scalpel very slowly, tempering his need to resort to violence and a little cantrip or two to put his point across. He settled for something much more potent in his mind; a blank stare.
If Malefor Kolwezi, once grand necromancer and resurrected better of elven rivals had a body, he would have felt the stare cut right through his ageing skin and start to slowly and delicately sever veins, tendons and capillaries in order of importance to the function of the heart.
“I am trying to concentrate,” he said flatly.
The dead wizard looked up from the feet of the simulacrum. The creature was stitched together from the remnants of many things, some of them even Ashley's learned mind had failed to accurately categorise, and they had spent several hours debating it's chemical decomposition. He stared back at his pupil with an equally blank expression.
“Oh I’m sorry, was I talking out loud again?” The flat tone of his voice told Ashley that he genuinely hadn’t realised, the dryness in his sarcasm practically drew moisture from the air.
“You have been mumbling something about electrolyte flatulence and mirrored synchrony patterning of the limbic system since I went upstairs to fetch us some tea.” Malefor’s cup still sat steaming on the opposite edge of the autopsy slab, a metaphorical drink more than a much needed source of nourishment.
The wizard smiled, the notion that he was being annoying was obviously a new discovery to him. The lonely life of a forbidden wizard, more so than the lonely life of a wizard who had to suffer the company of others had not afforded the old man chance to realise he had such an effect.
“I have been mumbling about it, as you put it, because it is something vitally important to the simulacrum preparation process.” He jabbed a ghostly finger at the creature’s stomach, or where Ashley presumed a humanoid’s stomach might be under normal circumstances. “Press hard on the left side, if you’d please?”
“Why do I get the distinct impression I am going to be horribly let down if I listen to you?” Malefor answered only with a second jab, before picking up a larger knife and ducking to one side to loosen the stitches between the hip of an old woman and the youthful limb that he believed had once belonged to a city guardsmen.
Ashley prodded, hard, but leant back at the same time. He didn’t need wizardly instincts to realise that moving out harm’s way was a good idea.
The body let out a rather prolonged stream of air, which the more immature practitioner of the black arts might’ve giggled at.
“All of that anatomical language to describe trapped gas?” He said dryly, raising an eyebrow with a dead panned expression.
Malefor paid him no attention, choosing instead to continue his work adjusting the thick chord so that there was less seepage and more elasticity in the simulacrum’s movements. Apparently, preparing a corpse for even the briefest of occupations required a perfect balancing of excess fluid, weight and muscle strength. They had drained the body first, and now had to spent far too long ensuring the harvested parts weren’t actively working against one another.
“You live a very complicated unlife, Malefor. Have I ever told you that?”
The ghost nodded, feigning interest without removing his gaze from his artistry. Ashley shrugged, and glanced up at the dusty cuckoo clock which kept a lazy sort of time at the foot of the spiral staircase. The big hand pointed at the ten and the small at the seven. In necromantic time, which was complete opposite to what the normal folk of Beinost followed, it would soon be time to sleep.
“I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me how we get this,” he picked up his knife once more and prodded the ribcage of their creation with its blunt handle, “to spring to life as if it had been living all along?”
He settled the blade onto the opposite hip and adjusted the chords in the same fashion as his mentor. He had certain quickness about him, and an attention to detail that only the living could manage so he consciously slowed his handiwork down to match Malefor’s pace. They worked in silence for several minutes and the voices in both men’s minds chattered away to themselves idly.
“It is,” the ghost tightened a not and cut it loose, before standing upright and making a show of removing a non-existent kink from a long rotten spine, “something that you will learn in time. It would be better if I did it, and you watched.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” Hallow said with disappointment, “I thought I was supposed to be…” he swallowed a lump in his throat, as if he were about to say a dirty word, “learning?” A scholarly connotative required a scholarly voice.
“Oh, you will, it’s just…if I mess up the incantation, I won’t be torn limb from limb by the undead souls that guard the border between this life and the next.”
Ashley mouthed surprise, but couldn’t quite find the strength to speak in any of his many voices.
“We will start you tomorrow on something smaller, perhaps a sparrow; though I hear you’re quite good with tits, too.”
“Wizards usually are,” he replied with a cheeky smile.
“Would you fetch the copy of Lemay’s Grande Symmetry from the study whilst I hem the neck stitch and prepare the soul stone?” The ghost said, missing the point of the joke entirely and finding the circumstances uncomfortable to the point of blissful ignorance.
Ashley stood chirpily and waltzed to the foot of the stairs. As he started to climb up through the warmth of the tower, illuminated by lanterns, ectoplasms and the hope in his heart that this was going to be worth it in the end, he cocked his head sarcastically and said in his best wizard voice, “Yes master,” before he disappeared out of the ghost’s sight.
As his head popped into view of the grand desk in the centre of the library, he was almost sure he heard Malefor whisper, “One day, one day indeed…”
“You keep saying it,” Ashley muttered, tipping his hat through the floorboards, “I’ll keep denying it.”
Malefor said many things, both with spite, and with an honest heart. It had taken Ashley many months to work out which was which, and many months more to pry his story out of his cold, beat less heart. He had become so used to listening to the tragic tales of mourning ghosts and vengeful spirits he had expected no different from the wailing occupant of the ruined tower he had stumbled across three years ago.
“How wrong I was,” he muttered as he paused to stare at the daemonic chair he had spent many nights in, fully engrossed in anatomical reference books and accounts of the greatest of Althanas' necromancers.
Malefor Kolwezi had been many things in his long life, according to one such book. He had married young, had children, many, many children and proliferated his good name across Anebrilith for thirty years. He had always had a spark of magic inside him; he had even enrolled in a course or two at the College to better himself and to support his family when it was appropriate (a wise wizard knows when to not be a wizard, after all).
When the Corpse War broke out, his wife had been one of the first to fall in the calamity.
Ashley had always expected that that single event had turned Malefor from the honest path to the zealous pursuit of an answer he should never have found.
The fact that he had found it was precisely why his wife refused to leave the bell tower of the ruined Sway church in the docklands. She was as stubborn as he was, but half as clever. She could still be heard screaming in the small hours of theological holidays, her cries mistaken for the wrath of the long dead Saint Denebriel. Superstition in Raiaera has as much power as belief, and because people believed it to be the case, she had started to become the minor personification of a distant tyrant, raucous banshee cry and all.
He swiftly fell into madness, but not the sort that shattered minds. Night after night he poured his longing into books, searching for ways to return his beloved to his side so that they could live out the life they had dreamed of. He found the answer in the winds of magic, the colour black, and beneath the city in the darkened catacombs where actioners of necromancy who do not wield as much restraint as the Order of Hem reside.
Ashley shook his head and continued upwards, his feet becoming heavier and heavier and his back slouching more and more as the long day began to take its toll. He had never pried the rest of the tale from the ghost, but vowed to ask him one day.
“The things we do for our passions,” he mumbled, before falling back into the swirling memories.
As Malefor became more and more consumed by his pursuit for an answer, he abandoned his children and his life. They saw less and less of him, until he vanished from their lives for good. When the infirmary of Crows was destroyed, he found refuge in its towers and withdrew from Anebrilith forever, until the day came that he unlocked the secret of unlife finally.
Ashley stepped up into the last room of his home and walked over to the small bookcase on the far side. Here he kept his rarest and most prized books, tightly protected with magic, in case their owners ever came to reclaim them.
“Revellium transom!” He roared at the mahogany furniture, releasing the cantrip which defended it against the wily fingers of daring thieves with a suggestive tone. The bookcase burst momentarily into life before returning to its quite ordinary and worn state.
“Symmetry,” he reminded himself as he dragged his finger over the spines, left to right, top shelf to bottom.
A wizard had instincts about many things, one of which was a magnetic pull to his magical desires. He felt a tug on the third shelf and read the spine with satisfaction. He pulled the book from it's resting place with a satisfying release of dust and precariously balanced the volumes on either side against one another. He stepped back to rediscover the immaculately inscribed copy of the rarest of anatomical volumes. It's cover displayed a naked elf, etched and gold leafed onto ageing green leather.
“I do not want to know what he wants with this,” he said slowly, turning on a quick heel to make his way back to the surgery without lingering on his thoughts too long.
“Not without giving birth to another schism or two,” he chuckled, his feet connected with the cold stone and the weight of gravity pressed down on the Shadow Brand as he flapped quickly back into the bowels of the tower.
He stepped into the autopsy room to find Malefor stood by the corpse, arms folded behind his transparent back and head craned to the top of the stairs, as if he were waiting impatiently.
The lack of hair on his head was quite a shock. His sudden transformation paused Ashley dead in his tracks. He held the book out as an offering, as if he had confused social situations.
"I...what happened?"
Malefor smiled, but more as a way of breaking the tension and covering up for his apparent error than for comic timing.
"It would appear I miscalculated the belief required to charge this," he produced a small sphere of jet black material, which Ashley recognised as Onyx, and set it down on the edge of the autopsy slab. It rolled conveniently into a sluice of congealing blood so that Ashley could not investigate. He was one of the rare breed of necromancer's who did not like getting blood on his hands.
"You look..." He hesitated.
"Older?" The ghost said with hindsight. "Yes, I do, rather, though I am glad my hair is gone. I look more like the liche I had become."
"You look like death," Hallow replied, clearly without thinking.
Malefor waved him down and the wizard dutifully rushed to his side. He produced the requested book with shaking and over eager hands.
"Hold it out on page thirty. We will find out where I went wrong and then perhaps we retire," the liche paid the wizard no attention, despite the constant admiring stares, and read the first lines of the book as he sharpened his surgical blade with a whetstone.
Several awkward minutes passed until Malefor’s scrupulous need for perfection allowed him to set the porous rock onto the edge of the autopsy table. He admired the razor edge of his instrument under the candle’s glow. The lantern was merely a symbolic tool, as Hallow knew all too well that the liche’s death afforded him a creatural infravision, one which pierced the darkest of shadows and the brightest of lights without difficulty.
“Right then,” he said with satisfaction, setting the edge of the blade onto the tip of the simulacrum’s nasal bridge. He peered at the first line on the page and read it to himself, the occasional syllable slipping out in the form of incoherent babbling.
“It says I over charged the crystal and did not slice open the aorta near the heart to avert any pressure based…incidents.” The liche expressed a curious grin that Ashley did not find comforting.
His discomfort wasn’t helped by Malefor’s quick motion and release of pent up frustration, which took the form of a long surgical line down the simulacrum’s chest. The skin tore easily beneath the keen edge and pulled away under the tension of haggard, dried flesh.
“Ribs…” Ashley muttered, not quite as adept at ignoring certain bodily parts as Malefor was. He was getting over his inconvenient aversion to blood fairly quickly, but bare bone scraping on bare bone was another Achilles' Heel in his arcane repertoire.
“Something tells me you’re going to need a bucket, so if you do, leave the book propped up against its scrotum and tend to your…weaknesses.”
Hallow cast the ghost a dry look, but remained standing and still like a lectern with a particularly dreary sense of humour.
“I’m alright, thank you very mu-” he nearly dropped the book as he pulled his hand to cover his mouth, thinking he was about to vomit as the liche drove the knife into the breast bone and cracked open the rib cage with a well-timed knock to the necrotic walnut.
“There’s one on the shelf behind you,” Malefor said, without looking up from his pulling and yanking.
Ashley set the book quickly onto the bent knee of the soul vessel. He turned on a heel to scan the cluttered bookshelves and rows of rusting instruments for the mop bucket. He saw it, and with great relief and plenty of prenatal wizardly speed, ran towards it with snappy footwork.
"Shit."
As Malefor pulled apart the ribs like a child tearing into a present with far too much excitement, Ashley deposited his insecurity into the pall and drowned out the sickening noise of sinew snapping and wet muscles rubbing. He pictured the liche’s hands as they dove through the chest cavity and felt for the horse’s heart they had sewn into their creation.
He vomited again.
“Oh splendid, simply splendid,” the liche exclaimed, and Ashley looked up briefly, unable to resist.
As the ghost reached for his knife remnants of the simulacrums’ blood clung to his spectral form. It was though it were driven by common sense and somehow unable to discern corporeal from ethereal. It dripped realistically from his bony fingertips and the hem of his eccentric robes.
“What?” Hallow asked bluntly, gobbets of sick sliding down his chin. He did not look well, and he regretted making such harsh judgements about the appearance of his friend. No doubt he looked worse than death now.
“The heart,” Malefor said with a glint of evil in his eyes and perhaps a smattering of childish exuberance.
“What about it? Apart from the fact we stole it from a still living stallion.”
Malefor darted a devilish glare across the corpse and shook his head, “No no, don’t be silly. Or snide, for that matter,” he popped his head virtually into the open wound and sniffed, as if he were discerning the vintage of a fine wine.
Hallow waited for the ritualistic necromancer moment that seemed to happen on a daily basis in his tower.
“Oh, just devilish,” the liche said softly, pulling up the aorta as he re-emerged. He was not indulging in the feeling of the vein or indeed the smell of death, which he obviously couldn’t sense.
Ashley rose very slowly with the bucket still sloshing in his hands and stepped closer to the table. The aorta, contrary to what he had expected based entirely on Malefor’s incident with the soul stone, was beating.
“Good lord,” he mumbled.
“Let there be death!” The liche exclaimed, digging his knife into the blood vessel to release the spiritual residue from its cage. It set the last of the barriers between success and failure tumbling down around his empty skull along with sprays of trapped blood all over the carpet.
Malefor pushed the aorta back into the chest, still beating and still grinning in sporadic moments of cackling. It was almost as if the liche was holding his own heart, and feeling what it was like to be alive, or rather, properly alive once more.
“Was that it?” Ashley said wryly, teetering in the cover of his bucket as the thought of the simulacrum’s innards moving, pulsating and twitching under false promises irked him closer to a third volley.
“No, no,” Malefor pointed to the book on the thing’s scrotum and gestured for it to be brought closer.
Ashley stepped closer, picked it up with his right hand and held it at arm’s length before his master. He did not like what he was seeing, but in the grand scheme of his duties to the Order, he guessed it was a worthwhile ordeal to suffer. He swatted away the blood stains, which were still strangely warm, as if the had just been drawn from a living body and not something that had been dead for a week.
“No, no,” the liche repeated, rolling his finger in a circle. Ashley took a second to realise what it meant, and put the bucket down to turn the pages. His fingertips left little stains of stomach bile on the corners of the pages, implanting a little bit of him in the essence of the spells that lingered in the ink and crusted inscriptions.
“Last page, very last page. There lots of writing that looks like it would eat you if you gave it the chance,” the liche forced the ribcage shut and only through humming could Ashley drown out the noise.
“This?” Hallow asked, pointing at the last page of the book with curiosity and temptation written across his voice.
“I really wouldn't touch the writing, but yes, that is the summation ritual.”
In the many colleges of magic, a summation ritual was like the grand gesture you made at the end of a party. It was a parting gift, to seal the deal for people to want to come back the same time next week, and to bring even nicer bottles of the forty two vintage to keep the long steady rise to competitive hosting going. For necromancers, for the unwilling and willing practitioners alike, the summation ritual was the last binding contract on a simulacrum, spirit or zombie to keep it working. It powered the vessel to keep its dead heart beating and most importantly, to keep its mind empty for its new owner.
“May I?” Ashley pleaded with a boyish gleam in his eyes. Despite the vomit stained chin and the flustered robes, he was a necromancer, after all. He wanted to at least do things besides stitch wounds closed, run from wraiths really quickly and occasionally banish wailing ghosts.
Malefor stared into his disciple’s eyes with the sort of expression a father gave to a son he didn’t quite want after being asked to play catch in the park.
“Oh alright then, if you must. But if you mess it up, you’ll look a lot worse than I do!”
The liche stepped back from the simulacrum and waved at the creature's mouth. Put the stone into it's throat, and read the inscription, it is all he has to do... He thought. Malefor utterly expected something to go wrong.
Ashley took the book back into his confidence and cleared his throat, puffed up his chest and wiggled the fingers on his free hand. In the dim light of an uncertain dawn, he took on the visage of a wizard that knew what he was doing, which in the wizard world, was halfway to godhood and a long way from resurrecting sparrows underneath your bed on a hot summer’s day.
He read in a simple, plain voice, without any distinction from wizard and man. He made the hand gestures as directed by the small pictographs next to each of the archaic verses. It was written in a language he did not understand, but he somehow knew how to pronounce the words as if he did.
Conviction, his father had once said, about a week before falling to a horde of neurotic skeletons in the siege, was half the power behind a spell.
“<Isaiah mamma ferula Hama!>”
Malefor nodded, as if he were a tutor in an elocution lesson, brandishing his non-existent cane to ‘correct’ his pupil if he made the slightest hiccup.
“<Mamma ferula Hama Hama!>” A little spark of energy danced over the simulacrum’s head, before vanishing like a burrowing worm into he still half ajar crack in its chest.
Ashley continued to trail his finger down the page to keep his place, careful only to bring it to rest on blank paper in case the book decided to taste human flesh for real, instead of plying the rhetoric of dissection for others to relish the delicacy for themselves.
“<Limber Hamah Mamma gonad!>”
By this point the notion of the ridiculous had crossed Ashley’s mind and firmly been knocked aside. Though he stated the words with authority and malice and a lot of heart, it wasn’t so much what they said, more what he wanted them to say that sparked the air. His conviction sent many more worms of blue light dancing over the stitched together flesh and rotting teeth in its grinning skull.
“There’s only one more line to go!” The liche proclaimed excitedly, as if he could see through the leather cover at where his charge’s finger rested.
Rolling out the big guns, Hallow put on the mantle of a wizard and let his true voice shine through the culmination of the ritual. He formed a circle with his free hand and held it up to the thin rays of light that shone through the room’s solitary window. The shadow landed on the simulacrum's forehead.
“<Limber Hamah Limber Hamah!>”
The sparks flickered out of the creature and danced up it towards the circle. Hallow watched them with baited breath as his voice echoed around the room, through Malefor’s shimmering form and back onto the brow of their creation.
Everything came together, and dug through the skin to dine on the rotting brain.
“Let there be life!” Malefor cackled as the creature convulsed and swung its bulky arms wide, knifes flying everywhere in its life throes.
By the time the creature came to a standstill its arms were splayed and its body half hung off the table. Malefor had practically followed through with sadistic glee and Hallow’s gut was churning and tied in knots.
“That was…difficult to watch,” he said softly, mesmerised yet disgusted at the same time.
“So it should be, it was your soul being sundered,” the liche said as if it were part of his everyday vocabulary.
If bombshells had existed, one would have dropped on the crooked roof of the Tower of Ravens without mercy.
“I’m sorry?” Ashley asked eyes half crossed with frustration.
Malefor reconsidered his words as Ashley set down the book, still open on the last page, onto the dusty floor of the surgery. Despite the fact that he was dead, the liche looked mortally wounded at his own stupidity. He floated up from the floor and tried to look more malefic than he was, his lanky hair, a Spartan smattering of dead strands covering his cracked scalp flapped in an unseen wind he willed into existence.
“Do you not think it would have been at least polite to tell me that was going to happen before you made me read the incantation?”
“Would you have read the ritual if I had?” Malefor asked with dry contention, falling back to earth with a soft thud. His energy rattled over the floorboards and climbed up the book cases with unseen violence.
“No!”
“Thus, the old adage, a wizard never tells comes to mind.”
Ashley blinked, too stupefied to rise to the liche’s challenge. He was being tested, he was sure of it, but no amount of hidden agenda and trickery would tease away the tenements of the Order that bound Ashley in his black iron cage. His oath was all that was keeping him from falling into depravity, just as Malefor had done long ago.
“Kindly tell me what you mean by sundered?” He glared at the liche through clenched teeth. Little gobbets of spit leapt from his lips.
“Whenever a new life is creature in this way, part of the conjurer’s essence is temporarily stored in the new life’s soul.”
“ Conjurer? That would be me I take it…” Ashley looked down at the book and tried to make sense of the strange language he had spoken. He vowed to pay attention the next time the Lecturer in Archaic Runes bored him to death. If I ever make it back to the College alive…he added.
“It is a temporary loan, no harm will come to you, and you will get your soul slither back when the next moon rises and our creation dies.” Malefor almost seemed sad to give credence to the idea that the simulacrum was only a temporary vessel for the wailing relative of a distraught client. Ashley knew all too well that if the liche had his own way, there would be zombies walking freely around Beinost dancing the tango and chanting elven bard songs in broad daylight.
“Oh, I guess that’s okay then!” He bit his tongue almost with his contempt, but decided against a cantrip to show his anger. Instead, he stooped to pick up the tome and slammed it shut as he stood upright. With his eyes ablaze with malice and his heart beating in time with the pulsating aura of frailty that his soul cast around his flesh, he let it go...for now.
A Brief History of the Order of Hem
An Idiot’s Guide to NeRomancey
By the Wizard Hallow
The idea of necromancy (Romancing the dead to their graves) is universally reviled as a form of necromancy, and it is thus considered by most as tainted, perverse and best left well alone. When the College of Magic drew on the forbidden to use necromancy to rebuild Anebrilith, to use life to create another instead of using life sources to empower yourself or prolong living, there was a spark of hope for the less psychotic members of the discipline.
Thus, when the greatest practitioner of necromancy ever to live (at least, until Malefor finds out how to leave the tower) walked into Anebrilith and levelled it (or at least, got his minions to cause a bit of a kerfuffle) few people ever thought necromancy, the very thing to nearly end Raiaera, would in fact became it’s salvation, and from the most ironic of gifts, Beinost was born.
It was in this troubled time, seeing itself at the foot of a temple of opportunity that The Order of Hem came to be. As the ideological bastard child of the Arch Mage Hemlock Alabaster (Bastion to the citizens and the other heads of the College Schools) and the chance encounter one has with the premier necromancer himself, it seeded a need to put to rest the wandering dead with death itself. At the heart of necromancy, the Order believes, there is in fact a great deal of good waiting to be set free.
It is only a poor wizard after all that blames the pitch forks, screaming and excommunication on his tools. Thus, Hemlock has vowed to teach the practitioners of necromancy its virtues, so that the art of necromancy itself can change, and be welcomed alongside thaumaturgy, sorcery, destruction and evocation as a discipline to be studied without fear when the College Arcana is restored to its resplendent and ritualistic opulence.
Sadly, the Order has come to hold itself in quite high regard amongst the hierarchy of Beinost. High Bard Varalad Del Tirin has declared the Order to be a temporary ally and crucial gear in the rebuilding process of Beinost, but it is only a matter of time before the Bards swing their blades at our necks, eager to find a new enemy to blame for the corpse war.
Perhaps we are tolerated because we are doing a good service, as many outcast tribesmen and actioners of once forbidden practices have been in the past. Perhaps it is because the Tel Aglarim and its citizen levy are desolated, and virtually without impetus to defend the country against opportunist neighbours who would seek to subjugate the High Elves…
Personally, it is the view of this particular historian (it is the victors who write the annuls of time, after all) that the Order of Hem is tolerated, because all of the wayward hedge mages, festering shadow shamans and high browed and hatted criminals who turned to necromancy under the turn screw of the Death Lords are kept firmly in place, firmly in line, and the Order has become a form of penitence for the crimes it still believes will one day, with the guidance of the Black Iron Helms, become an inspiration and wizarding tour de force.
Ashley continued to repeat the pages of his hobby book to steel his nerves, and to prevent himself from raising his fingertips to the liche's scrawny neck to snap it like a twig. Of course, he possessed no such power, and the thought of trying seemed ludicrous. It was precisely because necromancers tricked, stole and enslaved the lives of others that they had become so reviled and hunted down throughout the long march through history. Ashley was sick of it.
He eventually plucked up another form of courage, which wizards across Althanas preferred to swords and indeed, most of the time, to magic itself.
"Don't do it," Malefor said bluntly.
Ashley didn't listen, he had gone beyond reasoning.
"Not since Aroen the Lightforger and Gerth of the Crying Wolves gave their lives on the Plains of Gisela has Althanas seen such a sorry excuse for sadness!"
Being clever was deadlier than even the wizard Blueraven's Siege Arcana.
Hallow, quite attuned to the angry shadow magic the liche brandished every now and then to reaffirm his authority as the master, and not the pupil, saw the blast coming seconds enough to clench his teeth. He felt naughty, like a school child who had dared to challenge his teacher.
Instead of a cane, however, the force of a mountain falling collided with the Black Iron breast plate and knocked him so fast of his feet he barely had time to scream.
"I warned you."
There were once three hundred and fifty thousand people in Raiaera. It was difficult to answer the question of how many people there were now, but the literacy level remained approximately at a percentage of ninety two. It was a large enough number of people, Hallow thought as he pushed himself away from the stone wall at the foot of the stairwell to be universally understood as he swore.
“<Son of an elf!>”
“Half-elf, actually,” Malefor said snidely, tucking his hair behind his pointed ears. He kept one skeletal finger pointing accursedly at the wizard.
“You can smite me a thousand times; it won’t change the fact that what you did was wrong.”
“Wrong by the standards of which Thayne exactly?”
Hallow walked forwards a few precarious steps, his head still reeling from where it had shot back under the duress of his impact and collided with the brickwork. He didn’t dare investigate, but it sure felt like he had left some of skull clinging to the architecture.
“Absolutely any of them I wager.” He spat.
“The thing with the gods is, Hallow, they tend to change their minds about their reasoning. I am not bound to the Thayne, because I have gone so far beyond their reach.”
They stared at one another in the dawn light and candle’s glow, ignoring the heaving corpse that stood as a barrier between them. Every now and then, its arms convulsed and the sound of its heart beat grew so loud they both subconsciously thought it would crack open the rib cage and dance across the carpet to spite them.
“You used me.”
“What do you call keeping me here, then? We use one another, which is the very nature of intuitive learning, of mentorship, of…” the liche stumbled with his words, and flies flew out from his ethereal lungs, “friendship.”
The Tower of Crows shook, the Tower of Ravens wobbled, and the half derelict Tower of Owls rattled.
“I’m sorry?”
Malefor examined the pained expression on the young wizard’s face, and couldn’t quite be sure if he was having difficulty breathing on the merit of his well-placed hex, or if he was struggling to come to terms with some age old conundrum.
“I said friendship, was that not the right term?”
“Friends don’t fire Amanita charges at one another!” Ashley’s voice rose on its own merit, without the need for vociferous lies or the application of a well-timed flourish.
“Oh.” Malefor almost sounded disappointed, but only almost.
“They certainly don’t trick their friends into tearing their soul apart to empower forbidden magical conduits,” the anger started to slip from his tongue and he slumped his shoulders forwards. His chest was growing tighter with every breath, and he looked down at the intricate golden spiral work on his enchanted armour.
Even in the seconds he had allowed himself to extend the Shadow Brand down over his neck and into two long streams over his chest, the sheer force of Malefor’s spell had dented the framework of the Order’s traditional garb without a thought for the empowering defence enchantments that had kept it gleaming.
“Or ruin their best robes,” he fanned out his arms and looked with disappointment at his tattered vestments.
“At it's core, necromancy is blood magic. I cannot offer my soul for the workings of the spell, so you had to. The living have become somewhat attached to the notion of their spiritual selves, so I didn’t ask, for fear of letting our efforts go to waste.”
He floated forwards through the autopsy table and set his surgical knife onto the edge as he passed. The candles burnt brighter as he gained momentum, and died as he picked up the book and snapped it shut.
“You only had to tell the truth,” Hallow dropped his arms to his sides, defeated and worn out.
“I shall remember, next time.”
“I sho-” Ashley caught his tongue, and stared at the liche, or rather, through the liche. “There’s going to be a next time? You mean I have to do this over and over?”
Malefor thought for a moment, before raising a finger to the metaphorical wind of ideas and opened the book. He rifled through the pages, careful as he heeded his own warning to not touch any of the words until he found the spell he needed.
“Here,” he turned it and held it out, as Hallow had done as his assistant. He offered the incantation as a wizarding oath.
The page began ‘On Blood Magic in Surgery’, claiming its author to be a Doctor Kolwezi of the Tower of Crows Infirmary, in the Grande City of Anebrilith. Someone had crossed out Anebrilith and carefully inscribed Beinost in red ink next to it. Ashley scanned it, taking another note to ask the liche about his life when they weren’t at war with one another over ethical codes.
“Merely a formality, apparently, my soul is in the small obsidian stone we have quite casually placed on an autopsy slab, next to a patchwork man and I’m supposed to be okay with formality.”
Malefor snapped the book closed, content Hallow had understood the meaning but clearly hurt. He floated back through the table and turned, pausing to set the book on the small table next to his utensils of enquiry before he picked up the soul stone.
“Blood magic is an oath. A life, however temporary, must be given death in bargaining. This spell however, is a temporary exchange in every sense of the word.” He waved a finger at the incision in the simulacrum’s chest and it snapped open under the duress of his command.
“When the moon rises at its next full cycle, the soul stone will shatter and you will regain what was levied against your success.”
With a gentle hum of energy the liche placed the stone into the chest cavity and pressed the folds of bone and muscle closed.
“Do you promise?” Hallow asked pleadingly, slowly shuffling to the table edge to tend to stitching the wound closed.
Malefor smiled in a way that promised to at least try, but he couldn't quite bring himself to give his word. He smiled as his pupil threaded a large darning needle with leather string, and leant in to get a closer look.
Ashley nodded and pierced the skin with a hiss of air and a sickening soft tear, “that is good enough for me.”
A wizard’s promise, however, was only worth its weight in words if the wizard speaking it was the sort of person that believed in oaths. You could bind a man to stone, sunder him with iron and cleave him in two with a well-placed curse, but to truly tie him to his promises, you had to have conviction, honour, and preferably, actual blood to swear on.
It was a wizardly practice to take on your master’s strengths and mannerisms and eventually, outright become him. In that tradition, Hallow only pretended to believe Malefor. Though he was slowly becoming aware of the man’s once good intentions, he had no doubt in his mind that one day, his decision to allow the liche to remain in resident in the Tower of Ravens would be a tragic mistake.
He pulled the last knot tight and cut the leather string with surgical scissors.
“Good.”
“What now?” He looked up at the liche, twiddling the loose ends with his fingertips. The smell of worn leather comforted him, like a fine whiskey or wood smoke.
“Now? Now we sleep, it is nearly night fall and we have been through too much today to warrant a trip to see your client.”
A liche had one simple weakness, sunlight. Even as the dawn turned to morning Hallow could see the once radiant and spectral form of his master waver. He nodded with a yawn before he stood back from the table.
“I guess I shall see you in the morning.”
Malefor nodded again and looked one last time at the simulacrum. It almost seemed peaceful, despite the occasional twitching and the intense heat which radiated from its chest. Without further fanfare, he vanished.
Hallow observed the curious movements of the abomination they had created. With fatigue swiftly setting in and his armour in much need of repair, he pulled the tattered edges of the Shadow Brand into a neat scarf and turned to make his way to the stairs.
“You live a complicated unlife indeed,” were his final words before he clapped three times and extinguished the dying embers in the candle wicks. The simplest expression of a tired man's mind cast the autopsy room into silence and twilight at the end of another long day.
Somehow, he didn't need a wizard's notion to know that tomorrow would be a lot, lot longer.
"I suppose I'd better read up on a few small things before he surprises me like that again," he chided himself as he climbed up the stairs with weary attempts at grace. By the time he entered the very pinnacle of the Tower of Ravens he had managed to feebly unbuckle the straps of his chest plate to set it down at the top of the stairwell with a heavy clunk.
Relieved of a heavy burden he returned to the bookcase with a spring in his step. He reached up to the very top shelf for the copy of Care And Feeding Of A House Corpse and fell into the comfort of his well worn reading chair. It would not be long before his mind met the narcoleptic end of a studious devotee to the tutelage of Malefor Kolwezi, but he opened the book and read on all the same.
The silence of dawn and the cawing of crows from the three spires of the crumbling infirmary echoed out over the hubbub of waking Beinost.
Spoils:
The Churlishness Of Beinost: Hallow's skill with surgical instruments has progressed swiftly, and he now understands the finer points of stitching together flesh, anatomy and it's associated knowledge. He gains one skill level in Surgery and Anatomy.
Craft Soul Stone (Below Average): Hallow can craft and enchant soul stones, anchors for spirits to tether them to corporeal bodies for the time between creation and the next full moon. Any creature created with a soul stone cannot and will not harm the creator, but each stone requires a part of the owner's soul to exist - as such, only one such item can exist at any one time, and it allows some of the pain and senses and memories of the host spirit to transfer between the simulacrum's mind and Hallows', so has considerable repercussions for him if he is not ready for the temporary and traumatic union.
The International
06-26-11, 08:47 PM
The Complicated Unlife Of MaleforKolwezi
You’re getting a big high five moment in this one. I’m starting to get you now. You’re what the professionals call a ‘seat-of-the-pants’ writer. You have an idea, you sit down, and you pump it out in a few exhilarating sessions. Your intrigue and enthusiasm shines through your writing. However, it makes for a tough editing process if there is one. There are a few other approaches to first draft writing. Look them up and see which one may be fun to try or just hit me up on AIM (even if I’m not on). Edit-as-you-go, Snowflake, and Outline Paradigm.
Plot Construction 18 /30
Story 7 /10 – Is JK Rowling your next door neighbor, because I’m almost seeing a Harry Potter for the grown and humorous, which is great because I’ve always aspired to make a Harry Potter for the grown and sexy. Anyways job well done. It provides what a conventional story should provide, and you kept its progression simple, which was a wise thing to do since the subject of your story (necromancy and other forms of wizardry) was complex in a beautiful way.
Strategy 6 /10 – Loving the wizard’s voice, and how you had your characters interacting, but I felt that your setting was a bit lost to the reader at times. That hurts this score.
Setting 5 /10 – As amazing as your dialogue was I got the bare minimum when it came to the Setting. Now I think you’re on the right track with the setting, because most of what you gave me was through Ashley in a third person limited description. If Ashley is the focus of your narrative then you’ll have to make sure whatever you mention is important to him or will serve a significant purpose later on in the story. What you have to do is make more of the setting important to Ashley.
Characterisation 21 /30
Continuity 9 /10 – HIGH FIVE. If anyone else besides Hallow reads this, if you want The International to jump for joy, take Althanas lore at level fucking zero use it, and build upon it like he’s done. Amazing job taking the concepts of wizardry by way of College Arcana, giving it detail, life (no pun intended) and running like an Olympian with it! What I would love for you to do is apply these concepts on a slightly larger scale. This was a personal story. Now take it to a community very much like you do with Lillith Kazumi.
Interaction 6 /10 – The characters were very back and forth with dialogue which kept things interesting. There was a lot of narrative summery throughout this quest that could have been turned into action, dialogue and description. Take the point where you mentioned Malefor’s wife for example. Instead of just outright explaining it to the reader you could have done a flashback to the scene where she had been lost, or used some more dialogue between him and Ashley to talk about it.
Character 6 /10 – Me likey Ashley, but I’m going to go back to your best character (in my opinion) Ruby La Roux. The reason I like her may be because I’ve perceived her to be a bit of a drama queen (haha. Get it?!). Most of her dialogue is enhanced significantly with facial expressions, body language, tonality notes, very little internal dialogue (which is a good thing), and no narrative summary. We know how she feels about something because of that little smirk on her face or that hand on her hip. Put that in Ashley especially if you know your story is going to be dialogue heavy. It gives your reader a powerful emotional experience.
Writing Style 19 /30
Creativity 7 /10 – You’ve always been good at the straight forward literary devices.
Mechanics 6 /10 – Watch your spelling in terms of fanciful vocabulary that we can’t use spell check on. “An Idiot’s Guide to Neromancy” comes to mind. I wasn’t sure if you were doing that on purpose for something that went over my head.
Clarity 6 /10 – Nothing much to be said here. It was all understandable. The lack of setting and some description might have taken away from this category.
Wildcard: 8/10
Total 66 /100
Hallow gains 858 exp and 200 gp
The spoils are humble enough. I'll grant them.
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