Published at 31st of August 2023 9:50 am

Chapter 7

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Heskel looked up from the work he and Jakob had been engrossed in.

The young boy noticed this. “Has he returned?”

The Wight nodded.

Four days had passed since the Thief had gone on his errand. Jakob was not sure which part surprised him most: that he had returned at all, or that he had taken so long. By now, he already knew something had happened in the Mage Quarter, given that it was all people talked about when Jakob snuck out under the cover of dark to observe the Market.

Limping through the door into the former Thieves’ Den, came Veks, left arm swollen and purple, and right leg and foot no better. But the Thief wore an uncanny grin and patted the satchel slung over his shoulder.

“I got you your Blood, boss.”

“You did well to bring me this,” Jakob said with a pleased smile, hidden beneath his scent-mask. Not only had the Thief brought him over four litres of the rare Demon’s Blood, he had also brought two tomes of immeasurable value.

The first, a blood-rag-bound piece, was a nameless in-depth thesis on high-level Demonological summoning rituals, and it also contained many useful spells that surpassed the Ritual of Abeyance in terms of complexity and efficacy, such as one aptly-named Ritual of the Loyal Spawn. There were also some quite peculiar rituals and spells that he yet had no use for, as well as an extensive list of named Demons.

Named Demons were those that had been summoned and bound by a name, giving the Summoner direct control over them and allowing them to resummon the Demon, should they be slain or banished. There were a rare few Demons who, from birth, had been named by the Seven Saints of Vice, such as Karrmeig, Duke of Devastation, whom Raleigh often talked about in the past, given that he was subservient to him. Raleigh had seemed to take pride in serving a Demon born with a given name.

The second book, a flesh-bound tome, was what really made Jakob grateful to his Thief. Branded onto the skin, above the forehead of the face that covered the front, was the blocky letters of Necroscript, and after a quick study through the pages of the tome, with the aid of Heskel, he could actually decipher what the title said.

The scent of Misty Reminiscence vented from his mask, the floating particulates swirling about his face before vanishing into the air.

“Of Undeath and Bone,” he muttered in reverent awe.

Heskel grunted approvingly.

“You have done well indeed,” Jakob repeated to the Thief. “The coins are yours, as well as anything else you might desire of me.”

The Fleshcrafter looked Veks up-and-down.

“I can fix those injuries. I can even make you stronger. Remake you beyond the limits of your beastly flesh.”

Gripping the mirror-blade tightly in his fist, Veks’ face distorted into a huge grin.

“I have some ideas in mind.”

Any thoughts of going to the Church of the Eight Saint seemed quite distant now. Veks’ mind was too preoccupied by the whisperings and buzzing of the strange sword in his hands to remember which direction his moral compass ought to point.

To prepare for Veks’ transformation, Jakob needed several things, such as specialised tools, healthy samples, as well as a new assistant. To this end, Heskel and Holm had been sent out on errands, while Veks lounged in the laboratorium, observing him assembling bones, ligaments, and tendons with practiced efficiency. The Thief seemed to Jakob to have changed some, though it was perhaps due to his windfall, but he did not behave very subservient anymore. However, it was not that Jakob minded, rather, he preferred someone who did not waste time on platitudes, as many ritualised subjects were wont to do. And the Thief might do as he pleased, for all that Jakob cared. He had already returned thousand-fold what any other servant had been capable of, so if he saw it fit to lounge around, it was his reward by right, even if Jakob naturally abhorred laziness. Also, he supposed that his bound-up leg and arm warranted his restful state.

“What are you making?” Veks asked.

Jakob paused and looked at the man where he balanced on the back-legs of a stool. “I was unaware that you spoke Chthonic,” he replied, curious.

The Thief put a hand to his lips, as though he had not even noticed himself suddenly fluent in the dead language. Before he could try and excuse himself, Jakob simply waved a hand to stop him. It did not matter, after all, it made things easier when he did not have to mindfully switch to Novarocian to address the man.

“To answer your question,” Jakob started, in Chthonic, “I am making a bone construct. The Necromantic tome you brought me has given me not only the inspiration, but also the means, particularly the section concerning giving life to the inanimate and dead.”

“What do you need a construct for?”

Jakob pointed at him. “I need it to remake you as you wished of me.”

At about sundown, Jakob had finished his assembly, his creation laid out in front of him on a long operating table. It sprouted about forty legs, each made of a set of finger bones, with the two bones of the various thumbs he had collected going towards the four large mandibles it sprouted near its head. For its central spine, he had simply combined five human spines, rearranging the sections so that it was widest at the head and thinnest at its tail.

Unfortunately, it seemed that Necromancy did not have anything quite as handy as Grandfather’s Amalgam Hymn, as all the instructions from the tome seemed to indicate joints being combined with screws and hinges, which would result in very limited flexibility. Thus, Jakob stuck with his tried-and-true way of grafting mismatched bones, ligaments, and tendons, chanting out the verse as he moved down his creation, hand hovering above its massive length.

A peculiarity of the Amalgam Hymn was that its length and verses varied based on the size and complexity of what was being grafted together. This meant that Jakob had to continuously perform the Hymn for over twelve minutes straight, but he had practiced a lot, so it was not too taxing an ordeal, though Veks seemed impressed.

Following the amalgamation, Jakob dragged the bone centipede from the table and to the floor, the heavy construct more akin to ten metres of thick chain than bone. Once he had curled it into as tight of a circle as it would bend, he started drawing out the hexagram. It was identical to how he had given life to his tail, but differed vastly in the complexity of the Necroscript required.

For the Reanimation Rite it took three words in Necroscript. For the Birthe Sentience rite, it took twelve. To make matters worse, Jakob had never drawn Necroscript before, always relying on Heskel for the task, but armed with the tome and its lexicon and instructions, he felt confident that he could do it.

He had been studiously repeating the required chant in his head to make it stick, and he had already written every block-letter of Necroscript twenty times. It was a blessing that the placement of the words did not matter, but, as he added them to the hexagram, he kept them evenly distributed nonetheless.

After triple-checking every facet on the hexagram and his drawings and writings, he knelt before it, hands touching two corners of the star, where they overlapped with the surrounding circle and candles were placed. Then he slowly began the chant and the six tallow candles of human fat burst alight with white flames, tinged blue at the edges. As he reached the halfway-point of the chant, he raised the tempo and pitch, and the candleflames followed his guiding tone, growing a metre tall and taking on a slightly-purple hue.

Then, as the chant reached its finale, the flames bent inward, diving straight into the coiled centipede. Immediately, all the flames went out and the room seemed to have been robbed of light, their handful of scattered candles now less vigorous.

Jakob hardly noticed this however, as his eyes were firmly locked on the creature within the hexagram and its innermost circle.

Ever so slowly, the bone centipede unfurled itself and rose to greet the world around it, an intellect now within its abnormal form, where naught but void had existed just moments prior. Its mandibles chattered with some sort of emotion, before it moved towards its Creator, coiling about him where he knelt.

“By the Seven…” Veks muttered. He had fallen off his chair at some point.

Jakob affectionally patted his construct on its head.

“Now we simply wait for the others to return.”

Heskel and Holm found their way back into the basement laboratorium sometime before dusk, dragging behind them two men and a woman. Given Market West’s clientele, slaves were quite easy to acquire without needing to provide permit or identification.

As well as the slaves, Heskel carried a sack full of tools and miscellaneous materials.

Veks observed them sceptically when they entered. “Where did you get the coin for all this? Were you holding out on me, little boy?”

“Heskel is resourceful,” Jakob replied with a shrug, ignoring the jab.

Perhaps sensing the need to placate the avaricious Thief, the Wight pulled a coin-laden pouch out of his bountiful sack and tossed it to where he was once again balancing on the back legs of a stool.

Veks caught it in the air without even flinching, before quickly rifling through its contents with apparent child-like glee.

Jakob smiled at his simplicity. “Blame not the beast,” he muttered, venting spent vapour into the stagnant basement air.

One of the slaves shrieked when they noticed the Fleshcrafter and what he was sitting on. As the man tried to run, the bone centipede shot out from under Jakob, skittering across the floor on its forty bone legs, seizing the attempted runaway in its powerful mandibles and bringing him to the floor.

Before the slave could brain himself on the solid stone, Heskel caught him by his unkempt hair, arresting his momentum.

“Break not,” he scolded the construct. It struck Jakob as peculiar that the Wight had not even acknowledged its presence until now, but perhaps he was used to seeing constructs, having long served under Grandfather, who was fond of chimeras.

“It will learn in time,” Jakob commented.

Heskel looked at the construct, as he pulled the slave upright, his fist a vice about his neck. Then he grunted somewhat-approvingly.

“What are we gonna do with them?” the Thief asked, pointing at the three frightened people with his mirror-sword.

Jakob sent Holm back out on guard with a curt gesture, then brought the centipede back to him with a thought, sitting back down on its coiled body where it gathered beneath him.

“We disassemble them, obviously.”

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