14) Them Bones

  After Viola had turned up her nose at my request for her to check on Nictob’s animated remains, I pointed out “I would have thought you would have liked to watch him burn.”

  The fairy’s eyes narrowed, and she slowly nodded. “Yeah, even more so if he was still alive, but then I would have had to listen to his shrill voice as he screamed and begged. That would have gotten old quick.”

  Dark, but it worked, she flew off down the newly revealed hallway.

  “Oh, he’s still moving, a bit.” The fairy hovered at the top of the stairs for a moment, then suddenly dropped out of my sight, her sword held point down above her head in both hands.

  There was a rising shower of red sparks and thicker smoke that shot up to the roof of the stairs. “Bleahg.” Viola coughed and spit as she rose up in the air and began to fly back down the hall towards me. “Now he ain’t going nowhere. He was dragging himself down the steps toward the channel with one arm. Now he doesn’t have that arm anymore.”

  She began to twirl her burning sword around, then lost her grip and sent it flying off to the side, but she managed to dart over in the air in time to catch it by the handle before it hit the ground. Landing on her feet she looked away from me, giggled nervously, then struck a dramatic pose before sheathing her sword. “All hail Viola, slayer of the dead.”

  It was more of a team effort, but sure, why not? “Hail.” I had my minions give her a head nod or friendly wave as well, depending on their anatomy.

  The fairy blushed, “I’m going to go watch him burn for a bit more Fell. Really commit the sight of his burning corpse to memory for when I’m feeling at my worst. Don’t lock me out.”

  Oh yeah. That wide open door is going to be a problem, isn’t it? A problem I’m not fully sure how to solve.

  In the meanwhile, however, Blinky the blinking spot of light that hovered below the focus of my concentration, was blinking away.

  “Yes?”

  [ Rank 2 Hexed Corpse slain. 20 Merit points awarded. ]

  [ New title awarded. Bane of the dead. ]

  Hrmmm… Titles. Do they do anything for me? But first, there was something else I wanted to check on wasn’t there? Ah, yes. “What are my skill enhancements?”

  Brawling +1

  Tactics +1

  System lore +1

  Fairy lore +1

  Monster lore +1

  Bargaining +1

  Strategy +1

  That seemed… in order. From me lethally falling on Nictob all the way to not only figuring out the best way to kill his walking corpse, but where and when.

  “But what do these do for me?”

  Rather than give me an answer, the thought seemed to rise up from my own knowledge that they must add a multiple to my own skills and knowledge much like the points that I added to my abilities score did the same for them.

  That seemed reasonable.

  System Lore +2

  ...neat.

  For the moment I had the Undine, Spider, and Snake work together to push the door shut, and then put them to work dragging a chair over to it and try to wedge it under the metal look door handle. Getting in place right in time for Viola to begin yelling from the other side of the door. “Fell let me it! I got a present for you, and it’s too big to go under the door so don’t even try.”

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  The nice thing about summons is that they don’t whine and complain when you have them unblock, and open the door you just had them close up and block.

  An ash streaked fairy came through the open gap in the doorway clutching a dark gray orb in her filth stained arms.

  Blinky, what am I looking at?

  [ Rank 2 level 1 Vile affinity Corpse Core ]

  “Oh…”

  Viola stopped and set her hands on her hips, throwing her head back before running a filthy hand through her hair, leaving it streaked in ash and stuck up at an angle. “Look what I found! Praise me! Praise me!”

  “...good job?”

  She looked a little disappointed but then set the Core down just inside the door. “I pried it out of Nictob’s belly, it’s all black so it must be Darkness affinity.”

  I didn’t think and corrected her. “Vile affinity.”

  Her face went pale, which was sort of a grayish purple for her, and she jumped back. “Vile! Is that even a thing?? Ewww…”

  She stepped back and began trying to wipe her hands off on her armor, looked down at herself, and frowned. “Ug! Cleanse.”

  The filth seemed to fall away from her until it dripped down to the ground in the form of steaming misshapen pebbles.

  “Viola?” She glanced up in surprise at my tone of voice. “How?”

  She grinned. “Oh, that’s just low magic. Anyone can learn that stuff, it's just will, magic, intent, and lots of practice. Higher magic takes real training, various maths, and years of effort. That’s why people like Nictob try to take shortcuts.” She jerked her thumb back towards the once again problematically open doorway and the fuming remains far beyond it.

  I needed another minion with hands.

  If I took the dark Vile orb as a Totem, I might only get a tiny corpse. All of my summoned Dread Cockroaches became tinier versions of the roaches they had come from when I converted their Cores into Totems. And I had been warned that if I absorbed a Tier two Core I would only get a Tier one Totem version of it.

  So, a tiny corpse? I guess it would only prove that even in death Nitcob could never be the bigger man, but he would still have hands.

  The now clean fairy had walked up to me while I pondered, and promptly took a seat on top of me. “What are you planning Fell?”

  “Summoning whatever that Core will let me summon.”

  She pursed her lips, then slowly nodded. “Okay.”

  I focused my attention upward toward her skirt covered bottom and folded legs. “I thought you didn’t like undead?” She shrugged and began to count on her fingers, dipping her hands down in front of her to where I could see them from my Core. “One. We need all the help we can get since that will keep both of us alive. Two. Only your own god can judge you as Vile, and he doesn’t care, it's his thing, so you can get away with a lot before any of the other gods start complaining to him to do something. And three… I kinda hope that somehow Nictob finds out about the two of us using his body as a minion, and hates it.

  Then she hesitated. “Four… I’ll think of a fourth reason later.”

  She shrugged, drew her sword, and began poking under her fingernail with its tip, despite the polychromatic flames burning along its length.

  “Alright. Blinky, I want that Core. The Vile one.”

  This time I could pay attention to the conversion of Core to Totem as the Core began to shrink, unevenly, even as a silvery mist rose from it and began to flow towards me until it hit an unseen edge to the area considered my dungeon some six feet and eight inches away from me. Once there it just faded away.

  [ Rank 2 Level 1 Vile Undead Core absorbed.]

  [You are only able to absorb 10 Merit from this Core due to your Tier ]

  [ Totems reduced to Tier one due to your Tier ]

  [ Rank 1 Level 1 Vile Human Skeleton Totem acquired ]

  So… Viola began bouncing up and down on top of me. “What dya get! What dya get!”

  As I only knew one way to find out. “Blinky, Summon Skeleton.”