Norman walked out of the building with a skip in his step and a smile on his face, only to be startled by Eugene appearing from nowhere.
“You should kill him and be done with it,” the man stated flatly.
“Gah! Don’t sneak up on me like that.” Norman smoothed his hair back to give himself time to think and for his heart to stop racing. “If I asked you to kill Sin, would you?”
The big man was silent for a bit before replying. “No.”
Norman nodded, having expected the answer. “Because you have a history together?”
Eugene grunted noncommittally as they walked.
“Well, it’s the same with Toby. We were friends for years before I realized what he truly was. The guy may be a sleazy piece of shit, but I don’t believe that means he should die. That would be too good for him.”
Norman saw Eugene quirk an eyebrow at his statement.
“You see, now he has to suffer with the knowledge that he can’t do anything to me directly. Sure he can try an indirect approach, and I expect him to at least give it a go because that’s who Toby is. I certainly won’t give him the opportunity to pull any of his nonsense though. Eventually, the fact that he failed to capture me will eat him up inside. Similar to how it still bothers him that he failed with his plot against Sin.”
“Wait, that was his plot? I thought you two were in it together?”
Norman shook his head. “Nope, I only found out after the fact.”
Eugene grunted. “All this time everyone thought you were the mastermind behind it.”
“Wait, really? Me?”
Eugene shrugged. “Made sense at the time.”
“Huh, I suppose it made sense if you didn’t know the full story. But enough about Toby, how did your errand go?”
Eugene handed over a bag filled with glowing spell anchors that made Norman’s eyes sparkle in delight.
“Excellent! Did you find anyone that matched your stature?”
Eugene plucked a single glowing bone out of his pocket.
“Good. Let's head back to my apartment and I’ll get you fixed up.”
“You sure this will work?”
Norman was surprised by the hope he heard in those words. He didn’t want to squash the man’s hope, but he wasn’t about to lie to him. “No, but it won’t hurt to try, now will it?”
Eugene was quiet on the trip back to Norman’s place. Which was fine with Norman, it gave him time to think. It was hard to believe Norman had more trust in Eugene not to stab him in the back than a former friend. But it seemed Eugene was a man of his word, far more so than Toby, that two-faced bastard. Ever since Norman had agreed to fix Toby, he had had his doubts about the man’s intentions afterward.
It was ironic to Norman that he had more faith in a lifelong killer than he did in an alphabet soup agent.
This is why Norman developed the Blood Oath spell in the first place. He needed a way to ensure Toby couldn’t fuck him over when everything was said and done. There was a chance those magic orbs used by customs could remove the blood oath, but that was fine. Norman only needed it to slow Toby down and get him out of his hair, and in that, it worked perfectly.
Sure Norman could have left his former friend as an undead but that wasn’t fair to the undead. Norman didn’t think Toby deserved to be undead and to keep enjoying the perks provided to him in that form. Norman thought of it as more a punishment than a gift to change Toby back. Not that his selfish friend would think of it that way, but the man was no longer Norman’s concern.
He changed his friend back and simply waited for Toby’s true nature to show itself. And Toby didn’t disappoint when he thought he had the upper hand. Only Toby wasn’t as devious or as smart as he thought he was. And Norman wasn’t as gullible or trusting as he had been before.
Norman chuckled at the thought of Toby having to tell Anna about their separation. Norman’s chuckle froze in his throat though, realizing if Anna found out, she would quickly stomp over to Norman’s place to change his mind.
“Uh… let’s actually find another place to do this,” Norman said, heading for the nearest teleporter.
Norman wasn’t afraid of Anna in the traditional sense. But he was concerned about what he would agree to if she confronted him. Best to prevent that from happening at all.
The two arrived at Norman’s place of work. He was supposed to be working, but it was mostly fine. At least until he entered his workroom. There were bodies piled up all over the room. He cursed himself, he had forgotten to jam the doors to prevent the teleporters from activating.
“Can you get that side? I’ll get this side,” Norman groaned as he got to work storing the bodies.
After they cleaned up the mess, Norman extracted the body of a human that was clearly a physical classer like Eugene. Even so, this man was not quite as big as Eugene was. The man on the slab was like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime while Eugene looked like one and a half Arnolds. It was really quite terrifying just how large of a man Eugene was.
It turned out to be a good choice to head to work to do this procedure, as Norman had to saw off the dead man’s arm. Then he converted the rest of the body into a set of bone armor for Eugene. Waste not, want not.
“Alright, sit down and get ready to drink this when I tell you, but not before.”
Eugene grunted as he took the bottle of healing potion from Norman.
Norman examined the man’s wound. It was quite disgusting, seeing the man’s arm bone just sticking out when Norman removed the bandage from around the stump. He could tell someone had sawn away the exposed bone as close to the skin as possible but it still left it looking like a grilled steak the way the meat pulled up and away as it had healed.
The wound ended about halfway up Eugene’s bicep, meaning Norman would have to remove that part of the arm up to the shoulder to see if this would even work. He didn’t know if replacing the missing arm with another person’s body part was even possible. But he would never know if he didn’t try. And he had the perfect patient right here to attempt it with.
“Alright, lay down. I’m going to have to remove the rest of your arm to get this to work.”
Eugene was surprisingly reluctant for a bit before he sighed and lay down on the cold metal table used to cart corpses around. “Just… no needles, ok.”
Norman paused and looked at the big man for a moment before shaking his head. He decided not to comment on the fact that the man was a wall of muscle, and undead yet was still afraid of needles. Not that Norman was going to use any needles. He doubted any normal anesthetic would work on an undead anyway, not that he had any with him to try. Eugene would have to rely on the reduction of sensation that the undead enjoyed to get through this. With his patient on the table and ready, Norman walked over and grabbed a saw out of the cabinet, and got to work.
Eugene looked away and tried to hold the remaining bit of his arm still as Norman cut through the muscle and tissue around the bone until he exposed the shoulder joint. The sound of ripping tissue and skin filled the room as Norman worked. Once that was done, he switched to a scalpel and cut away the connective tissue that held the bone in place. He had to give the bone a sharp twist backward – earning a grunt from Eugene – before the bone popped out of the socket. Norman stored it in a spare spell anchor and brought the new arm over.
It took a bit of finagling for Norman to figure out how to connect the new arm to give it the best chance to work. Norman decided to carve the skin and muscle like a flower, meshing the two sections of skin and muscles together as he shoved the bone back into Eugene's socket. A generous amount of stitches, thanks to some surgical thread that was in the cabinets, and Eugene had a new arm. Not that it was functional or anything yet.
“Ok, drink the potion, and let’s hope it works.”
Norman took a step back and watched as Eugene downed the potion. He certainly wasn’t a surgeon by any stretch of the imagination, and it looked like a blind man had stitched the arm up but Norman had done his best to connect the blood vessels and parts together that looked right. He could only hope that the magic would handle the rest.
Was this Norman’s first Frankenstein monster? The atmosphere only needed an ominous storm and some lightning to complete the ambiance.
The arm that Eugene now sported was a bit tanner, or the person was of a darker complexion. It didn’t much matter for this experiment, but it did make Eugene look like he had a weird tattoo that covered most of his arm.
“Ugh, it's starting to itch,” Eugene said, reaching to scratch at his arm before Norman slapped his hand away.
Norman only realized what he did after the fact but he swallowed and stayed the course by admonishing the big man. “That sounds like a good sign, but don’t disturb it, that could screw up the process.” Honestly, Norman had no clue if it was a good sign or not, but feeling where there was no feeling before couldn’t be a bad thing.
Eugene let out another grunt, And Norman watched him grip the side of the table with his good hand hard enough to bend the metal.
“How’s it feeling?”
“It's burning, feels like I was stung by a thousand wasps.”
“It looks like it’s working.” The arm was starting to turn a dusky tan that matched the dusky look that the rest of Eugene’s skin possessed after he was converted. It seemed like a common trait amongst their type of undead.
There were more shrieks of tortured metal as Eugene endured the pain in silence. Not that Norman had anything to combat the pain. If he had the gron analgesic with him, he could try that, but he wasn’t sure if it would work on humans let alone undead. He probably should have tested that beforehand.
The grey color slowly swept down the new arm, making it look slightly less out of place than before. Norman waited for it to finish before he walked back over and poked the fingers. “Can you feel this?”
“Yeah, a little bit. Feels like my arm’s asleep, full of pins and needles.”
“Hmm, let me know if it changes. We might need more potion, but that was my last bottle.”
Eugene sat up and tried flexing his new fingers. They moved a bit but not much.
“Give it time. The process may not be fully complete.”
Eugene dropped the arm and looked at Norman. “I didn’t believe you when you said you could restore my arm. I thought you were fucking with me or you were just using me for another sick experiment…”
“But?” Norman asked.
“But I see I was wrong, yet again. While I had hoped you weren’t lying to me about fixing my arm, I was prepared to kill you if this turned into some cruel joke. I’m glad to see I wasn’t completely wrong. So, Norman the Necromancer, as long as you deal with me in good faith, I will try to serve you to the best of my abilities. If you break that faith, however, I will break you, no matter the consequences to me, just so we are clear.”
Well, Norman really wasn’t sure what to say to that. He actually admired the man for sticking to his convictions. “I understand. And there won’t be any serving. I’m certainly not your master or owner. Think of this as a mutually beneficial partnership.” Norman held out his hand.
Eugene glanced at it for a second before grabbing it in his beefy good hand and giving it a shake.
The man was surprisingly gentle with his handshake. “Good, now that that’s out of the way, we need to gather everything we need and get out of this weird ass town before Toby or his sister catches up with me. Is there anything you need before we leave Grothlosburg?”
Eugene thought about it a moment before replying. “Maybe just one thing. In the meantime just point me in a direction and tell me what to do. This newfound autonomy will take some time to get used to.”
Norman nodded, “fair enough. If you want to help me, I do need a few things.”
Norman handed the man a list of items. A few of them got a curious look from Eugene, but the man remained silent as he pocketed the list.
“Meet me at the same warehouse where we met earlier today, before the end of the day tomorrow.”
“That’s doable. My business shouldn’t take more than an hour to complete. Um… could I borrow one of those things you threw at me?”
“The orbs? Sure, why not. Only one, or would you like a few?”
“One is enough.”
Norman unclipped one of the powerful ones from his belt and handed it to Eugene. “Be careful with this, just rub a bit of your blood on it to activate it. That will give you about a minute before it goes off. It can’t hurt the person that activates it, but it will destroy almost everything else within ten feet.”
Eugene looked at the small green skull covered in wax and smiled. “That’ll be perfect.”
Norman watched the man go, knowing full well he was probably gonna kill someone with the orb. He shrugged, it wasn’t his business. If Eugene thought it needed to be done, he trusted the man. The cleaner their departure was the better it would be for everyone involved.
MJMarkgraf I will be taking the rest of the week off for my birthday. Next chapter on 3/6
Norman walked out of the building with a skip in his step and a smile on his face, only to be startled by Eugene appearing from nowhere.
“You should kill him and be done with it,” the man stated flatly.
“Gah! Don’t sneak up on me like that.” Norman smoothed his hair back to give himself time to think and for his heart to stop racing. “If I asked you to kill Sin, would you?”
The big man was silent for a bit before replying. “No.”
Norman nodded, having expected the answer. “Because you have a history together?”
Eugene grunted noncommittally as they walked.
“Well, it’s the same with Toby. We were friends for years before I realized what he truly was. The guy may be a sleazy piece of shit, but I don’t believe that means he should die. That would be too good for him.”
Norman saw Eugene quirk an eyebrow at his statement.
“You see, now he has to suffer with the knowledge that he can’t do anything to me directly. Sure he can try an indirect approach, and I expect him to at least give it a go because that’s who Toby is. I certainly won’t give him the opportunity to pull any of his nonsense though. Eventually, the fact that he failed to capture me will eat him up inside. Similar to how it still bothers him that he failed with his plot against Sin.”
“Wait, that was his plot? I thought you two were in it together?”
Norman shook his head. “Nope, I only found out after the fact.”
Eugene grunted. “All this time everyone thought you were the mastermind behind it.”
“Wait, really? Me?”
Eugene shrugged. “Made sense at the time.”
“Huh, I suppose it made sense if you didn’t know the full story. But enough about Toby, how did your errand go?”
Eugene handed over a bag filled with glowing spell anchors that made Norman’s eyes sparkle in delight.
“Excellent! Did you find anyone that matched your stature?”
Eugene plucked a single glowing bone out of his pocket.
“Good. Let's head back to my apartment and I’ll get you fixed up.”
“You sure this will work?”
Norman was surprised by the hope he heard in those words. He didn’t want to squash the man’s hope, but he wasn’t about to lie to him. “No, but it won’t hurt to try, now will it?”
Eugene was quiet on the trip back to Norman’s place. Which was fine with Norman, it gave him time to think. It was hard to believe Norman had more trust in Eugene not to stab him in the back than a former friend. But it seemed Eugene was a man of his word, far more so than Toby, that two-faced bastard. Ever since Norman had agreed to fix Toby, he had had his doubts about the man’s intentions afterward.
It was ironic to Norman that he had more faith in a lifelong killer than he did in an alphabet soup agent.
This is why Norman developed the Blood Oath spell in the first place. He needed a way to ensure Toby couldn’t fuck him over when everything was said and done. There was a chance those magic orbs used by customs could remove the blood oath, but that was fine. Norman only needed it to slow Toby down and get him out of his hair, and in that, it worked perfectly.
Sure Norman could have left his former friend as an undead but that wasn’t fair to the undead. Norman didn’t think Toby deserved to be undead and to keep enjoying the perks provided to him in that form. Norman thought of it as more a punishment than a gift to change Toby back. Not that his selfish friend would think of it that way, but the man was no longer Norman’s concern.
He changed his friend back and simply waited for Toby’s true nature to show itself. And Toby didn’t disappoint when he thought he had the upper hand. Only Toby wasn’t as devious or as smart as he thought he was. And Norman wasn’t as gullible or trusting as he had been before.
Norman chuckled at the thought of Toby having to tell Anna about their separation. Norman’s chuckle froze in his throat though, realizing if Anna found out, she would quickly stomp over to Norman’s place to change his mind.
“Uh… let’s actually find another place to do this,” Norman said, heading for the nearest teleporter.
Norman wasn’t afraid of Anna in the traditional sense. But he was concerned about what he would agree to if she confronted him. Best to prevent that from happening at all.
The two arrived at Norman’s place of work. He was supposed to be working, but it was mostly fine. At least until he entered his workroom. There were bodies piled up all over the room. He cursed himself, he had forgotten to jam the doors to prevent the teleporters from activating.
“Can you get that side? I’ll get this side,” Norman groaned as he got to work storing the bodies.
After they cleaned up the mess, Norman extracted the body of a human that was clearly a physical classer like Eugene. Even so, this man was not quite as big as Eugene was. The man on the slab was like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime while Eugene looked like one and a half Arnolds. It was really quite terrifying just how large of a man Eugene was.
It turned out to be a good choice to head to work to do this procedure, as Norman had to saw off the dead man’s arm. Then he converted the rest of the body into a set of bone armor for Eugene. Waste not, want not.
“Alright, sit down and get ready to drink this when I tell you, but not before.”
Eugene grunted as he took the bottle of healing potion from Norman.
Norman examined the man’s wound. It was quite disgusting, seeing the man’s arm bone just sticking out when Norman removed the bandage from around the stump. He could tell someone had sawn away the exposed bone as close to the skin as possible but it still left it looking like a grilled steak the way the meat pulled up and away as it had healed.
The wound ended about halfway up Eugene’s bicep, meaning Norman would have to remove that part of the arm up to the shoulder to see if this would even work. He didn’t know if replacing the missing arm with another person’s body part was even possible. But he would never know if he didn’t try. And he had the perfect patient right here to attempt it with.
“Alright, lay down. I’m going to have to remove the rest of your arm to get this to work.”
Eugene was surprisingly reluctant for a bit before he sighed and lay down on the cold metal table used to cart corpses around. “Just… no needles, ok.”
Norman paused and looked at the big man for a moment before shaking his head. He decided not to comment on the fact that the man was a wall of muscle, and undead yet was still afraid of needles. Not that Norman was going to use any needles. He doubted any normal anesthetic would work on an undead anyway, not that he had any with him to try. Eugene would have to rely on the reduction of sensation that the undead enjoyed to get through this. With his patient on the table and ready, Norman walked over and grabbed a saw out of the cabinet, and got to work.
Eugene looked away and tried to hold the remaining bit of his arm still as Norman cut through the muscle and tissue around the bone until he exposed the shoulder joint. The sound of ripping tissue and skin filled the room as Norman worked. Once that was done, he switched to a scalpel and cut away the connective tissue that held the bone in place. He had to give the bone a sharp twist backward – earning a grunt from Eugene – before the bone popped out of the socket. Norman stored it in a spare spell anchor and brought the new arm over.
It took a bit of finagling for Norman to figure out how to connect the new arm to give it the best chance to work. Norman decided to carve the skin and muscle like a flower, meshing the two sections of skin and muscles together as he shoved the bone back into Eugene's socket. A generous amount of stitches, thanks to some surgical thread that was in the cabinets, and Eugene had a new arm. Not that it was functional or anything yet.
“Ok, drink the potion, and let’s hope it works.”
Norman took a step back and watched as Eugene downed the potion. He certainly wasn’t a surgeon by any stretch of the imagination, and it looked like a blind man had stitched the arm up but Norman had done his best to connect the blood vessels and parts together that looked right. He could only hope that the magic would handle the rest.
Was this Norman’s first Frankenstein monster? The atmosphere only needed an ominous storm and some lightning to complete the ambiance.
The arm that Eugene now sported was a bit tanner, or the person was of a darker complexion. It didn’t much matter for this experiment, but it did make Eugene look like he had a weird tattoo that covered most of his arm.
“Ugh, it's starting to itch,” Eugene said, reaching to scratch at his arm before Norman slapped his hand away.
Norman only realized what he did after the fact but he swallowed and stayed the course by admonishing the big man. “That sounds like a good sign, but don’t disturb it, that could screw up the process.” Honestly, Norman had no clue if it was a good sign or not, but feeling where there was no feeling before couldn’t be a bad thing.
Eugene let out another grunt, And Norman watched him grip the side of the table with his good hand hard enough to bend the metal.
“How’s it feeling?”
“It's burning, feels like I was stung by a thousand wasps.”
“It looks like it’s working.” The arm was starting to turn a dusky tan that matched the dusky look that the rest of Eugene’s skin possessed after he was converted. It seemed like a common trait amongst their type of undead.
There were more shrieks of tortured metal as Eugene endured the pain in silence. Not that Norman had anything to combat the pain. If he had the gron analgesic with him, he could try that, but he wasn’t sure if it would work on humans let alone undead. He probably should have tested that beforehand.
The grey color slowly swept down the new arm, making it look slightly less out of place than before. Norman waited for it to finish before he walked back over and poked the fingers. “Can you feel this?”
“Yeah, a little bit. Feels like my arm’s asleep, full of pins and needles.”
“Hmm, let me know if it changes. We might need more potion, but that was my last bottle.”
Eugene sat up and tried flexing his new fingers. They moved a bit but not much.
“Give it time. The process may not be fully complete.”
Eugene dropped the arm and looked at Norman. “I didn’t believe you when you said you could restore my arm. I thought you were fucking with me or you were just using me for another sick experiment…”
“But?” Norman asked.
“But I see I was wrong, yet again. While I had hoped you weren’t lying to me about fixing my arm, I was prepared to kill you if this turned into some cruel joke. I’m glad to see I wasn’t completely wrong. So, Norman the Necromancer, as long as you deal with me in good faith, I will try to serve you to the best of my abilities. If you break that faith, however, I will break you, no matter the consequences to me, just so we are clear.”
Well, Norman really wasn’t sure what to say to that. He actually admired the man for sticking to his convictions. “I understand. And there won’t be any serving. I’m certainly not your master or owner. Think of this as a mutually beneficial partnership.” Norman held out his hand.
Eugene glanced at it for a second before grabbing it in his beefy good hand and giving it a shake.
The man was surprisingly gentle with his handshake. “Good, now that that’s out of the way, we need to gather everything we need and get out of this weird ass town before Toby or his sister catches up with me. Is there anything you need before we leave Grothlosburg?”
Eugene thought about it a moment before replying. “Maybe just one thing. In the meantime just point me in a direction and tell me what to do. This newfound autonomy will take some time to get used to.”
Norman nodded, “fair enough. If you want to help me, I do need a few things.”
Norman handed the man a list of items. A few of them got a curious look from Eugene, but the man remained silent as he pocketed the list.
“Meet me at the same warehouse where we met earlier today, before the end of the day tomorrow.”
“That’s doable. My business shouldn’t take more than an hour to complete. Um… could I borrow one of those things you threw at me?”
“The orbs? Sure, why not. Only one, or would you like a few?”
“One is enough.”
Norman unclipped one of the powerful ones from his belt and handed it to Eugene. “Be careful with this, just rub a bit of your blood on it to activate it. That will give you about a minute before it goes off. It can’t hurt the person that activates it, but it will destroy almost everything else within ten feet.”
Eugene looked at the small green skull covered in wax and smiled. “That’ll be perfect.”
Norman watched the man go, knowing full well he was probably gonna kill someone with the orb. He shrugged, it wasn’t his business. If Eugene thought it needed to be done, he trusted the man. The cleaner their departure was the better it would be for everyone involved.
MJMarkgraf I will be taking the rest of the week off for my birthday. Next chapter on 3/6
