Chapter 29: Little Talks
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Chapter 29: Little Talks
Tyron froze under the cool stare of the mage and the others turned to him with differing levels of confusion on their faces. Monica went to say something but Rogil cut in first.
"Keep it short. We'll wait for you inside the gate."
"No need for that," Dove smiled, "I'll catch up with you guys at the keep tonight. I've got a little business with a few ladies in town, if you know what I mean. Do you know what I mean?"
Aryll rolled her eyes.
"Yes, Dove, we know what you mean."
The Summoner looked around the group with a smirk on his face.
"I mean sex," he clarified.
"Shut up, Dove," Monica threw her hands up and turned to walk toward the gate. "Just don't do anything weird to Lukas, he's been very helpful."
"Nobody's worried about me doing anything weird to the kid, Monica."
"You're insufferable," she declared without turning around as she continued to stalk towards the gate.
Dove chuckled and caught Tyron's eye before giving him a wink.
"By 'something weird', I mean sex," he said and nodded solemnly.
Rogil fished around in his pack for a moment before he approached his young hireling and held out his hand, a small stack of silver in his palm.
"Pay for the trip, with a nice bonus thrown in. We don't usually hire rats, but if you're available, we might consider you for another trip. You weren't complete garbage."
"High praise," Aryll drawled, then reflected for a second. "Actually, from Rogil, that is high praise."
"Yes, yes, yes. All very nice, now will you lot piss off? I have some important words to share with this young man."
Rogil reached out and shook Tyron's hand.
"Don't let him talk you into doing anything illegal," he said seriously before he clapped him on the shoulder, causing Tyron to stagger and then walked away.
"See you around kid," Aryll waved before she too turned and headed for the gate.
In no time at all, the two of them stood alone, the Summoner and the Necromancer. Dove looked calm, a slight smile on his face as he kept his gaze lazily focused on the youth, whereas Tyron was a nervous, sweating wreck. He battled to keep his hands from shaking and the nausea from overwhelming him but a deep rooted sense of despair had taken hold of him. This was it, he'd already failed, his parents had suffered for nothing. He'd escaped for nothing. He wouldn't get even a chance to explore his own potential, to help people, to make his name heard. His world was crashing down around him and all he could do was stand and stare.
Dove held up his hands.
"Just relax, kid. Nothing's been decided yet, okay?"
He was so overwhelmed, it took Tyron several long seconds to process what he'd heard.
"W-what?"
Dove continued to stand in place, his hands held loosely up by his shoulders.
"I'm saying that it isn't all over for you, so there's no need to get emotional on me, I don't do well with that. I'm not going to kill you and I'm not going to hand you over to the marshals right now, okay?"
"Why would you hand me over to the marshals?" Tyron felt compelled to try, but his heart wasn't in it.
Dove looked at him with pity.
"You recognise it?" Dove sounded pleased as he raised a hand and ran it through the beasts fur. "Was an absolute fucking nightmare trying to contract this bastard, but I managed it in the end. Currently my best and strongest summon for combat. He's going to follow you around for the next two days."
The young man stared at the intimidating creature for a long moment.
"You want it to protect me?"
"Bingo. Two days should be enough for you to get some minions ready to go, enough to protect yourself at least. I'll meet you back here then, make sure you hide the fucking zombies, obviously, and I'll hit you up with some supplies to keep you going. I'm doing a lot for you here, kid, so don't go psycho and burn down the kingdom or whatever, alright? Do some good, help some people, level up, piss off the magisters, it's all good. Try not to die and do your folks proud."
Dove threw out a quick thumbs up.
"Now fuck off, I wasn't joking about that brothel."
He moved to turn around and then froze and turned back.
"One other thing. I don't want to know how, or why, or any of that shit. I just want to know, was it you who cast the ritual in town? The Abyssal summoning?"
There was a short pause before Tyron nodded. Dove stared at him for a moment.
"Fucking hell," he swore and turned around, shaking his head as he went. "That's just... fucking... great."
Tyron watched him go, scarce believing he was safe, then turned to look at the wolf, who stared back at him with barely concealed impatience and a hint of hunger. If it was going to eat him, there was absolutely nothing he could do about it, so he disregarded the creature and tailed the Summoner from a distance, confirming for himself the ritual he was required to perform just inside the gate.
It was a massive blow. Perhaps the measure would be lifted in a week? It would be difficult for him to survive outside the walls much longer than that, even with the support of someone inside. This wasn't just any wild country, he was on the edges of the broken lands, there were monsters everywhere. The star wolf had padded along behind him and now sat on its haunches, it's tongue hanging as it breathed, that same contempt in its eyes. He would have to depend on it for the next two days, as long as Dove kept his word, then the creature would protect him until he had the ability to protect himself.
He was tired, sore, hungry and in desperate need of a bath, but he wouldn't be getting rest any time soon. He stood with a sigh, there wasn't any point complaining about it, his parents had suffered through far worse on their rise. Determined, he turned and began to stride back toward the rift. He had a variety of locations marked where he could find remains. He'd originally planned on coming back out to retrieve them anyway, this just pushed his timetable forward.
"Come on then, Tyron," he muttered to himself, "time to do some magick."
Though he wasn't aware of it, the light in his eyes burned bright as he strode back toward danger.
Any reservations Tyron had about the star wolf Dove had lent him faded after the first hour. In that time he was found by roving packs of rift-kin not once, but twice, and each time the vicious summon had ripped them apart in short order. He wasn't keen to get close enough to check, but judging by eye alone he'd come to the conclusion that the wolf's fangs were longer than this leg was thick, even at the thigh. He'd managed to recover a few cores at least, putting his butchery skills to good use. If he were ever allowed back into Woodsedge, they'd sell for a good price. Perhaps he could get Dove to sell them for him? He dismissed the thought. The Summoner had been true to his word so far, but that doesn’t mean Tyron was about to hand over his money.
The frequency of the attacks had shocked him at first. When he reflected on it, he felt that he'd been underestimating just how much work Aryll and Rogil had done for the team while they were out, avoiding groups they didn't want to fight and keeping the group safe. He had no such protection and would have to blunder through as best he could.
I'll leave the heavy lifting to my undead army, he wryly thought to himself.
Dreams of a legion of undead servants felt a long way off when he didn't have so much as a single minion to his name, nor even a finger bone to work on. Soon, he would fix that. After another hour, he came to the first location he had marked on his map with only one more stop along the way. This was the furthest site from the rifts he'd found and hopefully it would provide enough for him to raise a minion, or at least get close.
It took longer than he'd wanted to get the exact location, his map wasn't nearly as precise as he would have liked, but eventually he found it. The dried brush crunched under his shoes as he approached the tree, looking down on the two skeletons huddled together at the base, vines and moss creeping through the gaps between bones. He didn't know the story behind these two, couldn't guess why or how they'd come to be here, together at the time of their death, but it didn't matter to him and he pushed such concerns from his mind. He had a limited amount of time to work with and he couldn't afford to waste it.
"Study, document, gather and move on," he told himself as he squatted down beside the bones. "Keep an eye out, please?" he asked the wolf, who studiously ignored him as it prowled impatiently amongst the trees.
No harm in trying to be polite, he shrugged. Alright then, better try this.
As he had the night he'd been on watch, he extended a tendril of magick toward the remains and began to attempt to saturate them, letting his own energy seep in. It was slow and taxing, but eventually he felt the same response as before, the dark tinged force that pushed back at him. In fact, it felt stronger here, and he leaned closer to see if he could find out why.
Not that getting closer did anything to help, since he was sensing through his magick, but he did it anyway. He frowned. The more he concentrated, the more he felt the energy within the bones was ... active. As if it were moving, or resonating, but on such a small scale as to be almost impossible to detect. He withdrew his probe and instead pushed it toward the other set of remains. After five minutes of careful application of energy, he found the same phenomenon, but the movement seemed to be in a different direction.
He puzzled over it in his head before realisation came and he palmed his face in exasperation. The two sets of remains were sharing energy with each other, of course the movement would feel different, it was going in opposite directions. The amount was so minute that he never would have felt it if not for his Unseen granted affinity for death magick, which this energy had to be.
This most likely explained how natural undead occurred. In a place with enough death, enough remains and sufficient magick, the energy would be shared amongst the corpses, magnifying over time until it became sufficiently saturated that the bodies rose of their own accord, fuelled by the death energy they contained. Such creatures were almost always bound to the location in which they were created, since they had no other source of magick to draw on, unlike his own minions, who he sustained with his own reserves.
But that also posed certain questions. Since it was possible for undead to share magick between each other, would it be possible for him to create the same feedback loop in his own minions? Or perhaps devise a way for them to draw on energy in the environment when it was available? Come to think of it, if he were to simply provide a set of bones sufficient death magick, would he be able to then perform a much simpler version of Raise Dead, since he would only need to create the conduit and mind construct, rather than fuel the process from the get go?
Too many questions for which he didn't have answers and didn't have time to learn. He shook his head in frustration. Having to use shortcuts and half-baked methods rubbed him the wrong way, but he had no choice at the moment. He bit back his negative feelings and started to go over both skeletons. He needed to know which bones were here and which were missing before he could pack them away. By the time he set up camp for the night he wanted at least one full set he could raise for the second day.
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Chapter 29: Little Talks
Tyron froze under the cool stare of the mage and the others turned to him with differing levels of confusion on their faces. Monica went to say something but Rogil cut in first.
"Keep it short. We'll wait for you inside the gate."
"No need for that," Dove smiled, "I'll catch up with you guys at the keep tonight. I've got a little business with a few ladies in town, if you know what I mean. Do you know what I mean?"
Aryll rolled her eyes.
"Yes, Dove, we know what you mean."
The Summoner looked around the group with a smirk on his face.
"I mean sex," he clarified.
"Shut up, Dove," Monica threw her hands up and turned to walk toward the gate. "Just don't do anything weird to Lukas, he's been very helpful."
"Nobody's worried about me doing anything weird to the kid, Monica."
"You're insufferable," she declared without turning around as she continued to stalk towards the gate.
Dove chuckled and caught Tyron's eye before giving him a wink.
"By 'something weird', I mean sex," he said and nodded solemnly.
Rogil fished around in his pack for a moment before he approached his young hireling and held out his hand, a small stack of silver in his palm.
"Pay for the trip, with a nice bonus thrown in. We don't usually hire rats, but if you're available, we might consider you for another trip. You weren't complete garbage."
"High praise," Aryll drawled, then reflected for a second. "Actually, from Rogil, that is high praise."
"Yes, yes, yes. All very nice, now will you lot piss off? I have some important words to share with this young man."
Rogil reached out and shook Tyron's hand.
"Don't let him talk you into doing anything illegal," he said seriously before he clapped him on the shoulder, causing Tyron to stagger and then walked away.
"See you around kid," Aryll waved before she too turned and headed for the gate.
In no time at all, the two of them stood alone, the Summoner and the Necromancer. Dove looked calm, a slight smile on his face as he kept his gaze lazily focused on the youth, whereas Tyron was a nervous, sweating wreck. He battled to keep his hands from shaking and the nausea from overwhelming him but a deep rooted sense of despair had taken hold of him. This was it, he'd already failed, his parents had suffered for nothing. He'd escaped for nothing. He wouldn't get even a chance to explore his own potential, to help people, to make his name heard. His world was crashing down around him and all he could do was stand and stare.
Dove held up his hands.
"Just relax, kid. Nothing's been decided yet, okay?"
He was so overwhelmed, it took Tyron several long seconds to process what he'd heard.
"W-what?"
Dove continued to stand in place, his hands held loosely up by his shoulders.
"I'm saying that it isn't all over for you, so there's no need to get emotional on me, I don't do well with that. I'm not going to kill you and I'm not going to hand you over to the marshals right now, okay?"
"Why would you hand me over to the marshals?" Tyron felt compelled to try, but his heart wasn't in it.
Dove looked at him with pity.
"You recognise it?" Dove sounded pleased as he raised a hand and ran it through the beasts fur. "Was an absolute fucking nightmare trying to contract this bastard, but I managed it in the end. Currently my best and strongest summon for combat. He's going to follow you around for the next two days."
The young man stared at the intimidating creature for a long moment.
"You want it to protect me?"
"Bingo. Two days should be enough for you to get some minions ready to go, enough to protect yourself at least. I'll meet you back here then, make sure you hide the fucking zombies, obviously, and I'll hit you up with some supplies to keep you going. I'm doing a lot for you here, kid, so don't go psycho and burn down the kingdom or whatever, alright? Do some good, help some people, level up, piss off the magisters, it's all good. Try not to die and do your folks proud."
Dove threw out a quick thumbs up.
"Now fuck off, I wasn't joking about that brothel."
He moved to turn around and then froze and turned back.
"One other thing. I don't want to know how, or why, or any of that shit. I just want to know, was it you who cast the ritual in town? The Abyssal summoning?"
There was a short pause before Tyron nodded. Dove stared at him for a moment.
"Fucking hell," he swore and turned around, shaking his head as he went. "That's just... fucking... great."
Tyron watched him go, scarce believing he was safe, then turned to look at the wolf, who stared back at him with barely concealed impatience and a hint of hunger. If it was going to eat him, there was absolutely nothing he could do about it, so he disregarded the creature and tailed the Summoner from a distance, confirming for himself the ritual he was required to perform just inside the gate.
It was a massive blow. Perhaps the measure would be lifted in a week? It would be difficult for him to survive outside the walls much longer than that, even with the support of someone inside. This wasn't just any wild country, he was on the edges of the broken lands, there were monsters everywhere. The star wolf had padded along behind him and now sat on its haunches, it's tongue hanging as it breathed, that same contempt in its eyes. He would have to depend on it for the next two days, as long as Dove kept his word, then the creature would protect him until he had the ability to protect himself.
He was tired, sore, hungry and in desperate need of a bath, but he wouldn't be getting rest any time soon. He stood with a sigh, there wasn't any point complaining about it, his parents had suffered through far worse on their rise. Determined, he turned and began to stride back toward the rift. He had a variety of locations marked where he could find remains. He'd originally planned on coming back out to retrieve them anyway, this just pushed his timetable forward.
"Come on then, Tyron," he muttered to himself, "time to do some magick."
Though he wasn't aware of it, the light in his eyes burned bright as he strode back toward danger.
Any reservations Tyron had about the star wolf Dove had lent him faded after the first hour. In that time he was found by roving packs of rift-kin not once, but twice, and each time the vicious summon had ripped them apart in short order. He wasn't keen to get close enough to check, but judging by eye alone he'd come to the conclusion that the wolf's fangs were longer than this leg was thick, even at the thigh. He'd managed to recover a few cores at least, putting his butchery skills to good use. If he were ever allowed back into Woodsedge, they'd sell for a good price. Perhaps he could get Dove to sell them for him? He dismissed the thought. The Summoner had been true to his word so far, but that doesn’t mean Tyron was about to hand over his money.
The frequency of the attacks had shocked him at first. When he reflected on it, he felt that he'd been underestimating just how much work Aryll and Rogil had done for the team while they were out, avoiding groups they didn't want to fight and keeping the group safe. He had no such protection and would have to blunder through as best he could.
I'll leave the heavy lifting to my undead army, he wryly thought to himself.
Dreams of a legion of undead servants felt a long way off when he didn't have so much as a single minion to his name, nor even a finger bone to work on. Soon, he would fix that. After another hour, he came to the first location he had marked on his map with only one more stop along the way. This was the furthest site from the rifts he'd found and hopefully it would provide enough for him to raise a minion, or at least get close.
It took longer than he'd wanted to get the exact location, his map wasn't nearly as precise as he would have liked, but eventually he found it. The dried brush crunched under his shoes as he approached the tree, looking down on the two skeletons huddled together at the base, vines and moss creeping through the gaps between bones. He didn't know the story behind these two, couldn't guess why or how they'd come to be here, together at the time of their death, but it didn't matter to him and he pushed such concerns from his mind. He had a limited amount of time to work with and he couldn't afford to waste it.
"Study, document, gather and move on," he told himself as he squatted down beside the bones. "Keep an eye out, please?" he asked the wolf, who studiously ignored him as it prowled impatiently amongst the trees.
No harm in trying to be polite, he shrugged. Alright then, better try this.
As he had the night he'd been on watch, he extended a tendril of magick toward the remains and began to attempt to saturate them, letting his own energy seep in. It was slow and taxing, but eventually he felt the same response as before, the dark tinged force that pushed back at him. In fact, it felt stronger here, and he leaned closer to see if he could find out why.
Not that getting closer did anything to help, since he was sensing through his magick, but he did it anyway. He frowned. The more he concentrated, the more he felt the energy within the bones was ... active. As if it were moving, or resonating, but on such a small scale as to be almost impossible to detect. He withdrew his probe and instead pushed it toward the other set of remains. After five minutes of careful application of energy, he found the same phenomenon, but the movement seemed to be in a different direction.
He puzzled over it in his head before realisation came and he palmed his face in exasperation. The two sets of remains were sharing energy with each other, of course the movement would feel different, it was going in opposite directions. The amount was so minute that he never would have felt it if not for his Unseen granted affinity for death magick, which this energy had to be.
This most likely explained how natural undead occurred. In a place with enough death, enough remains and sufficient magick, the energy would be shared amongst the corpses, magnifying over time until it became sufficiently saturated that the bodies rose of their own accord, fuelled by the death energy they contained. Such creatures were almost always bound to the location in which they were created, since they had no other source of magick to draw on, unlike his own minions, who he sustained with his own reserves.
But that also posed certain questions. Since it was possible for undead to share magick between each other, would it be possible for him to create the same feedback loop in his own minions? Or perhaps devise a way for them to draw on energy in the environment when it was available? Come to think of it, if he were to simply provide a set of bones sufficient death magick, would he be able to then perform a much simpler version of Raise Dead, since he would only need to create the conduit and mind construct, rather than fuel the process from the get go?
Too many questions for which he didn't have answers and didn't have time to learn. He shook his head in frustration. Having to use shortcuts and half-baked methods rubbed him the wrong way, but he had no choice at the moment. He bit back his negative feelings and started to go over both skeletons. He needed to know which bones were here and which were missing before he could pack them away. By the time he set up camp for the night he wanted at least one full set he could raise for the second day.
Chapter 29: Little TalksTyron froze under the cool stare of the mage and the others turned to him with differing levels of confusion on their faces. Monica went to say something but Rogil cut in first."Keep it short. We'll wait for you inside the gate.""No need for that," Dove smiled, "I'll catch up with you guys at the keep tonight. I've got a little business with a few ladies in town, if you know what I mean. Do you know what I mean?"Aryll rolled her eyes."Yes, Dove, we know what you mean."The Summoner looked around the group with a smirk on his face."I mean sex," he clarified."Shut up, Dove," Monica threw her hands up and turned to walk toward the gate. "Just don't do anything weird to Lukas, he's been very helpful.""Nobody's worried about me doing anything weird to the kid, Monica.""You're insufferable," she declared without turning around as she continued to stalk towards the gate.Dove chuckled and caught Tyron's eye before giving him a wink."By 'something weird', I mean sex," he said and nodded solemnly.Rogil fished around in his pack for a moment before he approached his young hireling and held out his hand, a small stack of silver in his palm."Pay for the trip, with a nice bonus thrown in. We don't usually hire rats, but if you're available, we might consider you for another trip. You weren't complete garbage.""High praise," Aryll drawled, then reflected for a second. "Actually, from Rogil, that is high praise.""Yes, yes, yes. All very nice, now will you lot piss off? I have some important words to share with this young man."Rogil reached out and shook Tyron's hand."Don't let him talk you into doing anything illegal," he said seriously before he clapped him on the shoulder, causing Tyron to stagger and then walked away."See you around kid," Aryll waved before she too turned and headed for the gate.In no time at all, the two of them stood alone, the Summoner and the Necromancer. Dove looked calm, a slight smile on his face as he kept his gaze lazily focused on the youth, whereas Tyron was a nervous, sweating wreck. He battled to keep his hands from shaking and the nausea from overwhelming him but a deep rooted sense of despair had taken hold of him. This was it, he'd already failed, his parents had suffered for nothing. He'd escaped for nothing. He wouldn't get even a chance to explore his own potential, to help people, to make his name heard. His world was crashing down around him and all he could do was stand and stare.Dove held up his hands."Just relax, kid. Nothing's been decided yet, okay?"He was so overwhelmed, it took Tyron several long seconds to process what he'd heard."W-what?"Dove continued to stand in place, his hands held loosely up by his shoulders."I'm saying that it isn't all over for you, so there's no need to get emotional on me, I don't do well with that. I'm not going to kill you and I'm not going to hand you over to the marshals right now, okay?""Why would you hand me over to the marshals?" Tyron felt compelled to try, but his heart wasn't in it.Dove looked at him with pity."You recognise it?" Dove sounded pleased as he raised a hand and ran it through the beasts fur. "Was an absolute fucking nightmare trying to contract this bastard, but I managed it in the end. Currently my best and strongest summon for combat. He's going to follow you around for the next two days."The young man stared at the intimidating creature for a long moment."You want it to protect me?""Bingo. Two days should be enough for you to get some minions ready to go, enough to protect yourself at least. I'll meet you back here then, make sure you hide the fucking zombies, obviously, and I'll hit you up with some supplies to keep you going. I'm doing a lot for you here, kid, so don't go psycho and burn down the kingdom or whatever, alright? Do some good, help some people, level up, piss off the magisters, it's all good. Try not to die and do your folks proud."Dove threw out a quick thumbs up."Now fuck off, I wasn't joking about that brothel."He moved to turn around and then froze and turned back."One other thing. I don't want to know how, or why, or any of that shit. I just want to know, was it you who cast the ritual in town? The Abyssal summoning?"There was a short pause before Tyron nodded. Dove stared at him for a moment."Fucking hell," he swore and turned around, shaking his head as he went. "That's just... fucking... great."Tyron watched him go, scarce believing he was safe, then turned to look at the wolf, who stared back at him with barely concealed impatience and a hint of hunger. If it was going to eat him, there was absolutely nothing he could do about it, so he disregarded the creature and tailed the Summoner from a distance, confirming for himself the ritual he was required to perform just inside the gate.It was a massive blow. Perhaps the measure would be lifted in a week? It would be difficult for him to survive outside the walls much longer than that, even with the support of someone inside. This wasn't just any wild country, he was on the edges of the broken lands, there were monsters everywhere. The star wolf had padded along behind him and now sat on its haunches, it's tongue hanging as it breathed, that same contempt in its eyes. He would have to depend on it for the next two days, as long as Dove kept his word, then the creature would protect him until he had the ability to protect himself.He was tired, sore, hungry and in desperate need of a bath, but he wouldn't be getting rest any time soon. He stood with a sigh, there wasn't any point complaining about it, his parents had suffered through far worse on their rise. Determined, he turned and began to stride back toward the rift. He had a variety of locations marked where he could find remains. He'd originally planned on coming back out to retrieve them anyway, this just pushed his timetable forward."Come on then, Tyron," he muttered to himself, "time to do some magick."Though he wasn't aware of it, the light in his eyes burned bright as he strode back toward danger.Any reservations Tyron had about the star wolf Dove had lent him faded after the first hour. In that time he was found by roving packs of rift-kin not once, but twice, and each time the vicious summon had ripped them apart in short order. He wasn't keen to get close enough to check, but judging by eye alone he'd come to the conclusion that the wolf's fangs were longer than this leg was thick, even at the thigh. He'd managed to recover a few cores at least, putting his butchery skills to good use. If he were ever allowed back into Woodsedge, they'd sell for a good price. Perhaps he could get Dove to sell them for him? He dismissed the thought. The Summoner had been true to his word so far, but that doesn't mean Tyron was about to hand over his money.The frequency of the attacks had shocked him at first. When he reflected on it, he felt that he'd been underestimating just how much work Aryll and Rogil had done for the team while they were out, avoiding groups they didn't want to fight and keeping the group safe. He had no such protection and would have to blunder through as best he could.I'll leave the heavy lifting to my undead army, he wryly thought to himself.Dreams of a legion of undead servants felt a long way off when he didn't have so much as a single minion to his name, nor even a finger bone to work on. Soon, he would fix that. After another hour, he came to the first location he had marked on his map with only one more stop along the way. This was the furthest site from the rifts he'd found and hopefully it would provide enough for him to raise a minion, or at least get close. It took longer than he'd wanted to get the exact location, his map wasn't nearly as precise as he would have liked, but eventually he found it. The dried brush crunched under his shoes as he approached the tree, looking down on the two skeletons huddled together at the base, vines and moss creeping through the gaps between bones. He didn't know the story behind these two, couldn't guess why or how they'd come to be here, together at the time of their death, but it didn't matter to him and he pushed such concerns from his mind. He had a limited amount of time to work with and he couldn't afford to waste it."Study, document, gather and move on," he told himself as he squatted down beside the bones. "Keep an eye out, please?" he asked the wolf, who studiously ignored him as it prowled impatiently amongst the trees.No harm in trying to be polite, he shrugged. Alright then, better try this.As he had the night he'd been on watch, he extended a tendril of magick toward the remains and began to attempt to saturate them, letting his own energy seep in. It was slow and taxing, but eventually he felt the same response as before, the dark tinged force that pushed back at him. In fact, it felt stronger here, and he leaned closer to see if he could find out why.Not that getting closer did anything to help, since he was sensing through his magick, but he did it anyway. He frowned. The more he concentrated, the more he felt the energy within the bones was ... active. As if it were moving, or resonating, but on such a small scale as to be almost impossible to detect. He withdrew his probe and instead pushed it toward the other set of remains. After five minutes of careful application of energy, he found the same phenomenon, but the movement seemed to be in a different direction.He puzzled over it in his head before realisation came and he palmed his face in exasperation. The two sets of remains were sharing energy with each other, of course the movement would feel different, it was going in opposite directions. The amount was so minute that he never would have felt it if not for his Unseen granted affinity for death magick, which this energy had to be.This most likely explained how natural undead occurred. In a place with enough death, enough remains and sufficient magick, the energy would be shared amongst the corpses, magnifying over time until it became sufficiently saturated that the bodies rose of their own accord, fuelled by the death energy they contained. Such creatures were almost always bound to the location in which they were created, since they had no other source of magick to draw on, unlike his own minions, who he sustained with his own reserves.But that also posed certain questions. Since it was possible for undead to share magick between each other, would it be possible for him to create the same feedback loop in his own minions? Or perhaps devise a way for them to draw on energy in the environment when it was available? Come to think of it, if he were to simply provide a set of bones sufficient death magick, would he be able to then perform a much simpler version of Raise Dead, since he would only need to create the conduit and mind construct, rather than fuel the process from the get go?Too many questions for which he didn't have answers and didn't have time to learn. He shook his head in frustration. Having to use shortcuts and half-baked methods rubbed him the wrong way, but he had no choice at the moment. He bit back his negative feelings and started to go over both skeletons. He needed to know which bones were here and which were missing before he could pack them away. By the time he set up camp for the night he wanted at least one full set he could raise for the second day.
