Raising Allies

by Sarah Lin

  Bloodwraith dropped back to the middle of the caravan, where he found Meara at the reins of their wagon with Danniah sitting beside her. It looked like she needed the break, as it couldn't be easy to keep up with the wagons while lugging her shield around. He started considering magical solutions to that problem before she noticed him and waved.

  "Hey, Raigar! Come join us!"

  He moved closer but just walked alongside them. His plan had been to listen to their conversation, but it seemed that he'd interrupted it, because Danniah kept speaking in his direction.

  "You've been so friendly with everyone else in the caravan lately. Are you going to get all soft and fuzzy on us, Raigar? Start hugging everyone?"

  "I am only speaking with them to further my own objectives." Bloodwraith smirked in Meara's direction, though she couldn't see it beneath his helm. "In fact, I am only speaking with the two of you to acquire two more people toward the quest requirement."

  Meara's eyes widened. "Wait, are you saying we count?"

  "You're members of the caravan, aren't you?" As if to emphasize his point, the next box appeared at that very moment:

  [6/10 Conversations]

  After a pause, Meara smiled wryly. "Damn, I should have thought of that. I wonder if I can make the requirements more precise next time..."

  "So long as you don't manage to make the requirement having a sincere heart-to-heart with ten people."

  "I wouldn't do that to you - it would be too cruel."

  For once, Danniah was smiling less than the two of them. She played with the straps on the back of her shield for a while, not looking at him when she eventually spoke. "There was, uh, something I was going to bring up. You haven't had any luck with your work, right?"

  He shook his head. "I am struggling to learn the new rules by which it operates. I may lack the raw materials."

  "Well... I was thinking about that while I was talking to the others. They said we're going to be moving past a town later today. Apparently they don't want to stop, because they think the people there will cheat them, so they'll just send a couple wagons in to trade. But a town probably needs a graveyard, right?"

  "Most likely." Bloodwraith raised his visor so that she could see when he smiled. "Good work, Danniah."

  "So you're really gonna..." Danniah trailed off, staring at him. "I mean, those are people's bodies."

  "That is rather the point, yes."

  "People's loved ones. They might be dead, but the survivors still care about them."

  Bloodwraith restrained himself from pointing out that the people were not making any use of their loved ones at the moment, since he didn't think Danniah would take that very well. He had extremely little patience for such squeamishness, but Danniah was one of the only people he'd tolerate it from. The problem was how to resolve the issue so he still got what he wanted.

  Before he could come up with anything, Meara spoke. "You said the skill limits you to a few, right?"

  "More likely one, to start."

  "Then it's not like you'll be tearing apart the entire graveyard to create an undead horde. Danniah, surely it's okay to quietly take one corpse? It's not like the villagers will ever know."

  Danniah shifted back and forth in her seat. "I suppose that's not quite as bad. But it would still be sad for them to run into the corpse later, wouldn't it?"

  It was an effective strategy against one's enemies, but Bloodwraith kept that to himself as well. Instead he focused on a better line of argument. "Most undead don't look like their original forms. I might have to start with zombies, which do retain a resemblance, but I have no interest in them. Skeletons usually can't be identified even before they're modified, and wights look less like the person than you'd think."

  "Hmm." Danniah looked between them slowly, then sighed. "Alright. I don't think I could do it myself, and I feel weird about letting you do it, but I won't say anything. I just hope it's worth it in the end."

  "Trust me, it will be. Our capabilities will significantly increase once my power is restored."

  He worried that Danniah might be holding back more objections, but after a time she began peering at him. When he raised an eyebrow, she smiled. "I'm just thinking about the fact that you must have had an original face. You know, in your old body, but before you turned into a lich."

  "Bah. While I had one in theory, I'm not sure I even remember what I looked like. It doesn't matter."

  Meara opened her eyes unnaturally wide. "Then are you sure you really had a face?"

  Bloodwraith rolled his eyes and scoffed. But it took him a long time to move on, even though he'd already gotten credit for the conversation.

  ~ ~ ~

  That night, Bloodwraith left camp along with Meara. She had learned the exact location of the town graveyard during the day and so led him there. Though Bloodwraith was running as fast as he could given the uneven landscape, she managed to stay ahead of him. The terrain didn't seem to impede her at all, as if she wasn't quite touching it.

  When they drew close they slowed down, creeping closer to make sure they weren't spotted. Reports suggested that the graveyard was barely guarded, just a plot on the edge of town where they buried their dead. Still, it was close enough that they might interrupt a midnight vigil or stumble across a town guard.

  Though the area seemed deserted, just a few lumps of stone and a mound of dirt from a recent grave, they observed for a while longer to be sure. While they waited, Meara looked over at him and spoke quietly.

  "Would you raise the whole graveyard if you could?"

  "No." The answer was true, but it didn't feel right to say only that to Meara. After a pause, he met her gaze and continued. "Mostly because it would be foolish. The power gained would be completely offset by the negative attention that came with it. Since the skill the boxes forced on me limits the numbers, I was thinking that I would begin with improving my core skill before building a proper army."

  "That's a reasonable strategy."

  "Are you concerned? Will you be raising moral objections like Danniah?"

  "You should know it isn't just that." Meara raised an eyebrow at him, then sighed when he just kept staring at her. "Read between the lines, Bloodwraith. She's less concerned about the necromancy than about losing you."

  He stared at her for a moment, trying to discern if she was just teasing him by trying to create drama. But no, Meara looked sincere, which meant she was looking out for him. Since he trusted her judgment on such matters, he nodded and tried to accept her words. "Did she tell you that herself?"

  "I did some reading between the lines too, but she did say more to me. She knows that you became a lich before, and now it seems you're on the same path."

  "But I said I wouldn't be taking the same path as before."

  "Then reassure her of that." Meara gestured toward the empty graveyard. "By all means, continue with the necromancy. But you're going to need to be more thoughtful about it if you want your relationships to stay simple."

  It was eminently reasonable advice, so Bloodwraith considered it as they dug up the most recent grave. Though his existence as an undead lich had been elegant in its simplicity, his new life had led him to reconsider that it gained that simplicity by sacrificing things of value. He still wasn't entirely certain what the optimal solution would be, but he suspected it involved Meara and Danniah. There were so few people he'd found tolerable before... maintaining the two of them was worth the trouble.

  Fortunately, the earth was not tightly packed and they soon dug up the simple wooden coffin. Normally Bloodwraith would have smashed it open, but he found himself thinking about Danniah's words and instead pulled out the nails more gently. Soon they faced the corpse of an old man, dried in the local custom with an amulet over his chest.

  Bloodwraith extended his hand, pushed out the necromantic energy... and nothing happened.

  He growled and glowered down at the corpse. Could the amulet have blocked the spell? No, it was a bauble of only sentimental valu
e. Perhaps the grounds were sanctified - no, that would have made itself obvious much sooner. Yet he was certain that his technique was correct. After all, he was a master of necromancy attempting to use the skills of a beginner.

  "Still not working?" Meara sat down on one of the headstones and examined her fingernails. "You're obviously the expert here, so I doubt I can advise you."

  "I've already considered the obvious barriers, yes."

  "If I had to guess, I would say that there's probably some kind of incompatibility with what you're doing and what the boxes expect you to be doing. Did you have trouble like this with any of your other skills?"

  "No, they're... mindlessly easy." Yet even as Bloodwraith scoffed, an idea squirmed at the edges of his thoughts. Perhaps that was the problem: he was over-complicating it.

  His execution and mastery of the necromantic skills were perfect, but the boxes had never cared about things like that. In fact, they seemed to value simple intuitive abilities over scholarly constructions. Perhaps all his finesse was getting in the way of using the simplified skill he was being offered...

  Without thinking about it, Bloodwraith thrust out a hand and willed the dead to rise.

  And a skeleton popped out of the ground.

  For a long moment he just stared at it, wishing that he hadn't just seen what happened. The corpse lay calmly in its coffin, untouched, whereas the skeleton had appeared out of nothing. There had been no grave underneath where it appeared, and when he looked closer he saw that the ground was only slightly disturbed, not torn apart as it should have been.

  [Congratulations! You have created your first undead companion!

  Would you like to give it a name?]

  "What? No!" Bloodwraith stepped up to the skeleton, glaring at its inexplicable existence. "What are you? How do you exist?"

  Meara laughed from her perch on the headstone. "Are you going to grab it by the neck and lift it into the air? Because I think a skeleton is just about the worst target for that."

  "I'm not sure it's a skeleton at all. It looks like one, but it must be some sort of magical construct. Do you notice anything unusual about it?"

  "Hmm... I can't say that I do. It does feel a bit... well, there's a different feeling to you and your boxes than most things in this world. The skeleton feels more like you than other monsters, even the undead we've met. But other than that, it seems like a normal undead."

  Bloodwraith folded his arms and examined the skeleton, which still stood mindlessly at attention. Several other details made it obvious that it was not a peasant skeleton: it wore no clothes, had no amulet, and carried a rusted sword. It was like... the abstract ideal of a generic skeleton. Perhaps the boxes had created exactly that.

  As he thought about it, he decided that this matched what he knew of the insane Outsiders. They liked details when it came to numbers and inventories, but they hated practical concerns. The precision of true necromancy might not appeal to them, so they would prefer a simplified form. No sophistication at all, just skeletons popping out of the ground.

  So that was what he had now. Bloodwraith sighed and bent his will to summon a box for the skeleton.

  [Undead Companion

  Name: Skeleton1

  Class: Skeleton

  Unassigned Necromancy Points: 10

  Health: 49/49

  Mana: 0/0

  Stamina: 0/0

  Statistics:

  Might: 7

  Vitality: 9

  Quickness: 5

  Intellect: 2

  Charisma: 3

  Willpower: 1

  Wisdom: 4

  Luck: 3

  Piety: 0

  Traits: None

  Skills: None

  Inventory: Rusted Sword]

  Good, no exaggerated nonsense. Seeing a box of numbers without any ego-based distortions was strangely comforting. It bothered him for a moment, but he decided that there was nothing wrong with preferring a precise numeric representation of reality to the recent lies he was fed.

  Yet the numbers he was seeing... "Strange, there seems to be little rhyme or reason to this. Meara, can you see the details?"

  "Not as easily as you do." She came to stand behind him, for a moment trying to look where the box hovered, then focused instead on the skeleton. "It doesn't seem impressive, but I can feel that there's more potential there."

  "Yes, unassigned points. I suppose there's nothing to do but use them." Yet when Bloodwraith attempted to place the points into the skeleton's Might, nothing happened. He frowned, then reconsidered his assumptions. This skeleton might be rated the same as other entities, but it was a new phenomenon, so perhaps the boxes used different rules.

  Instead of trying as he did before, Bloodwraith extended his will to the boxes in a more general sense...

  [Spend unassigned Necromancy Points on Undead Companion "Skeleton1"?

  YN]

  "There we are!" Though he could usually query words by willpower alone, this time Bloodwraith spoke aloud so Meara could follow along. "What are Necromancy Points?"

  [Necromancy Points: The measure of the power within a single Undead Companion. An initial set is granted by the spellcaster, but the number will increase when the Undead Companion consumes bodies. Necromancy Points may be spent on the following:

  - Granting unique traits.

  - Increasing statistics.

  - Granting new skills or proficiencies.

  - Modifying the Undead Companion's physical appearance.

  - Evolving the Undead Companion to a different class.]

  Bloodwraith's eyes widened as he realized the implications. The box gods liked granting points for everything, but these "Necromancy Points" were not merely another value to watch reach a transitory limit. They appeared to be the currency of power itself, capable of being spent far more fluidly than the EXP he was granted.

  Whatever expression was on his face, Meara smiled when she saw it. "A pleasant surprise, I take it?"

  "Yes, I have more control than I thought. The system is rigid compared to what I expected, but it still provides some interesting options. Let me see if I can use that potential to increase the skeleton's inherent strength..."

  [Undead Companion Statistic Boost

  Might: 7 (costs 5 NP)

  Vitality: 9 (costs 5 NP)

  Quickness: 5 (costs 4 NP)

  Intellect: 2 (costs 3 NP)

  Charisma: 3 (costs 3 NP)

  Willpower: 1 (costs 2 NP)

  Wisdom: 4 (costs 3 NP)

  Luck: 3 (costs 3 NP)

  Piety: 0 (N/A)]

  Frustratingly, it seemed the "Necromancy Points" were worth less than he had hoped. Then again, he would not know their true value as currency until he saw how easy it was to obtain more. For now, what he needed to do was perform experiments in order to test the exact limits of his new skill.

  First, he attempted to repeat exactly the same spell to summon a second skeleton to compare. He immediately got a box stating [Undead Companion limit reached], which blocked his efforts no matter how he tried. Not entirely unexpected, but disappointing.

  Second, he spent 5 NP on the skeleton's Vitality and felt satisfied as he saw death energy increase the resilience of its bones. But that was an unremarkable change compared to the more elaborate traits and transformations the box had promised. When Bloodwraith attempted to access those, however, he discovered that even the simplest of options cost far too much.

  "Bloodwraith? There's too much text there, I'm not following..."

  "The options are too expensive." He gestured at one of the lines before realizing she couldn't see. "For example, I could apply a trait called 'Fire Resistance' that seems quite valuable for brittle bones. But it costs 50 NP, which is five times as much as I started with. Which is a shame."

  "Why? Is such resistance difficult to acquire normally?"

  "Skeletons aren't suited to it, no. I'm not sure all of these prices make sense... most likely, the system will have glaring weaknesses compared t
o real necromancy, but also attain a few things that would otherwise be difficult."

  "It's a useful asset, then?"

  "Definitely." Having said that, Bloodwraith unhooked his sword and swung it directly through the skeleton, shattering it into bones. He didn't receive any EXP from the act, but he didn't expect to. All that mattered was that the magic binding it was thoroughly destroyed.

  Meara put her hands to her mouth in mock horror. "Raigar! How could you do such a thing to your own child?"

  "Creating one of these uses only a bit less than half of my mana. It would be a waste not to run the experiment twice."

  "Assuming that you can get two skeletons from the same graveyard."

  "A failed experiment is still a useful result." When Bloodwraith extended his hand, however, a second skeleton shot up directly in the remains of the first one. Another box appeared congratulating him and asking if he wanted to give it a name, but he ignored it. "That was... rather easy. I wonder how I never accidentally created one before?"

  "Maybe they can't be created anywhere, but only in certain areas?" Meara offered the suggestion with a shrug, but it immediately clicked in Bloodwraith's mind. He turned to her with a thoughtful nod, wishing he had the mana to run the experiment more... and then realized that he did.

  "Can you give me a Mana Potion?"

  She slipped one out of her sleeve without comment, utterly used to such requests. Bloodwraith drank it in one gulp, but hesitated before destroying the skeleton. Though he was more curious about the exact limits of his ability to create them at all, it was still important to confirm that the artificial skeletons were created according to the same model.

  This one certainly looked the same, and even carried the same rusty sword...

  [Undead Companion

  Name: Skeleton2

  Class: Skeleton

  Unassigned Necromancy Points: 10