Chapter Two - A Butler a Day

“Necromancy, for all that it once had a terribly black reputation before I used it to sow chaos and destruction across the world, is actually one of the more grounded kinds of magic. Not that someone like you would understand that.”

***

In order to make a proper manservant of the undead sort, there were a few key ingredients that you needed to have on hand.

First, a willing corpse.

Now, the fun part here is that all corpses are willing.

I currently had the bottom three-quarters of a corpse already. One arm was missing, and a piece of its ribcage and spine as well as the head. Some of those parts were a little difficult to replace at times. I could have just transmogrified some stones into bone, but that would be lazy.

Bones were more than just a bit of carbon and calcium, they had their own lattices and molecular structures, not to mention the complexity of marrow. The magical properties, while certainly some that could artificially re-create, are rather unique.

Simply put, while I could have made new bones from scratch, it would be a difficult and time-consuming affair for very little by way of reward.

“Rise.”

The body on the ground twitched. Its legs bunched under it, and with a swing of its arm, it came to a wobbling stand. A slightly skewed stand, with the one heavier side dragging it off, but a stand nonetheless.

“Right-o, follow me,” I told my soon-to-be new butler. I tucked the horridly misinformed book under one arm and stepped on over to the crack in the wall. I had to give it to the young man that had snuck into my tomb. He must have been quite flexible to make in through the present passage.

It was a narrow and quite crooked path. I feared that I might dirty my tweed jacket against some of the rocks jutting out of the sides, and the walls of the passage were certainly anything but smooth.

“Well, nothing for it,” I said before moving in. Fortunately, I was quite light on my feet, and very spry for my age.

When the path grew even tighter and I had to wiggle my way through, it was with only minimal difficulty.

In the end, it was far more difficult to instruct my butler-to-be to follow me, so I abandoned the corpse when it wedged itself between the walls.

The crack ended in a natural cave, one with a floor smoothed by the passage of water. For the moment, that water was little more than a trickle in the middle of a room filled with stalagtiites and stalagmites, huge stone pillars often meeting in the middle to form great columns.

I could see some light off to one end of the cavern, while the other side ended in a sheer wall where a crack let water flow off into what I presumed to be an underground aquifer.

I patted down my pants as I straightened up, then stretched my tendons a little.

You could say that I had old bones. Oh-hohoh!

A further inspection of the cavern revealed a few interesting things. Notably, this area had been used as a camp of sorts, at least once in the very recent past, probably more often before that.

A small fire was smoking away in a pit formed into the rocky soil. Some stones stacked around the wood kept it nice and neat. Beyond that, a stick wedged across a thinner section of the cavern had some full waterskins hanging from it, and there was a neat pile of blankets off to one side.

I was beginning to imagine a small scenario. It seemed as though the young man that had distrubed my rest was perhaps a traveller of sorts. This location had been his camp for the night, and while bored--and who could blame the man with only tripe nonsense to read--he had stumbled across an accidental path into my tomb.

The fresh water flowing past was likely drinkable, and the ventilation, while poor, wasn’t so terrible as to be dangerous to someone with lungs.

That left a few things unanswered though. Why would he go through the effort of bringing his bag with him when he had a camp?

A low growl seemed to come from the entrance of the cavern, as if in response to my query.

Turning, I found myself facing the stalking form of a great cat. A leopard I guessed. The spotted fur seemed to suggest that it was something akin to the leopard I remembered. The glowing eyes less so.

A magical variation of the common big cat?

“Observe.”

Earth Stepping Leopard of the Path of the Falling Leaf, Level 50

What a ridiculous name for such a weak creature.

The cat growled and began stalking forwards. It seemed quite intent upon eating me. An inspection of it revealed some gauntness to its skin, and its ribs showing along its side.

“Now now, kitten, I’m hardly on your menu. Go along. Shoo.”

The leopard pounced.

I sighed.

“Magic Missile.”

A bolt of bright, colourless magic formed in the air between myself and the leopard, then drew a line in the air that passed through the cat’s skull and torso, no doubt doing irreparable damage to its brain and piercing through its heart faster than it could even begin to process the appearance of the magic.

The big cat hit the ground with a dull thump and began to bleed all over.

“Well, now I know why the young man found my tomb,” I muttered to myself. No doubt he had been attempting to hide from the local predators. A good idea. The small passageway would make reaching him difficult, and any creature that did try would be in something of a bind if he tried to defend himself while they were stuck.

None of that mattered.

“Teleport.”

The body still lodged in the crevice flopped by my feet, rolled once on the uneven ground, then tried to stand.

Teleport was one of those terribly exacting spells, where you need to calculate every last variable, and where even the slightest failure can lead to an untimely death. Most don’t think on it much, but seeing as how the world is round, and spinning at approximately fourty-thousand necrometers (my own unit of measurement) an hour, moving from one part of the world to another means calculating your relative speed compared to that of the planet.

There’s nothing quite as exhilarating as appearing somewhere foreign while moving at speeds that would make any bird blush.

Then there’s the differences in pressure from changes in altitude, the shift in degrees and angle when appearing over a long distance, and a host of other issues.

A long distance teleportation done poorly can mean that the mage will appear in mid-air sideways, moving at great speeds, and with his lungs trying valiantly to exit from his mouth.

Oh, and of course one would usually rather not appear buried in stone or halfway into something. You don’t often hear from those mages though.

Portals, inherent risks of ending up in some hellscape dimension aside, are far safer.

I rubbed my hands together and looked upon the ingredients before me.

First, a proper manservant to take care of my lesser needs so that I could focus on grander, more important things. Then, a bit of exploration and discovery.

Then, once my curiosity was satisfied, it was back to sleep.

A day or two, no more.

Deciding to get things done quick and cheap, I cleared out a bit of space with some cleaning magic (not to be underestimated, that) and levitated my butler-to-be’s corpse over. Then I glanced at my new source of meat and bones in the form of the leopard.

It would be a little unconventional, but certainly doable. And less effort at that.

Desicion made, I brought the big cat over too.

Grinning as only a skull can, I pulled the lid off my necromantic powers. Magic spilled into the room. The fire that had been withering away was snuffed out, the fresh water gurgling by turned rancid, and the air stilled and became heavy and motionless.

My arms raised like a composer before an orchestra, and the twin glow from my eyes flickered and blazed and cast the room in verdant greens.

Skin peeled away, sloughthing off and twisting. Muscles twitched and spasmed. Bones groaned and cracked.

“Greater Word of Death: Graft.”

The two bodies crashed together with the slap of meat on meat. Light flashed and flesh sizzled as actinic arcs melded everything together. My fingers twitched and my mind raced as spell circles formed of dust took shape in the air around me and began to fill with the precise runes and mathematical evocations needed to turn mere flesh into unlife.

The bodies, now melded, took shape beneath me. I contemplated merely restoring the human body to a whole state, but the leopard did have some interesting magical properties that could be enjoyable to experiment with.

Soon, the spell circles were eaten away by the ambient magic, and I was left standing above a body, whole and spry, with a nearly-human visage and a pair of triangular ears. A tail slid out from behind its hips and its hands and feet had a distinctly cat-like appearance that wouldn’t interfere with its work.

“Good enough for a few minute’s work,” I said.

A glance beyond the corporeal showed me the lingering remains of the man’s soul fusing quite nicely with the soul of a... female leopard? Well, regardless. I bent down slightly and pressed a hand to my new butler’s chest.

“Word of Divinity: Animate Death Butler.”

The actual, original spell was designed to create death knights. Fearsome warriors empowered by the divine to fight for the causes of the less scrupulous gods.

I never needed knights though. On the other hand, a good butler was incredibly useful to have, so I tweaked the spell a little over time.

Divine magic, the magic that had once belonged to the gods, swept through the cavern and warred with the necrotic forces I had unleashed. Were any mortals in the room, they would have been torn apart with the force of the conflicting powers.

As it stood, I enjoyed the nice breeze against my unfeeling bones and watched as the spark of divinity burst like a newborn star in the midst of my new butler’s soul.

The eyes of my new butler snapped open, two glowing blue orbs with neither pupils or iris. I sensed the newly made creature scanning its environs until it regarded me. Slowly, carefully, it rose to its full height.

Half a head shorter than me, if you didn’t count the ears, and I wasn’t exactly setting records for tallness. Oh well. “I do believe I’ll name you... Alex.” A perfectly sensible name for a young butler.

The butler, Alex, blinked. “Papa?”

“Pardon?”

Alex smiled, big and bright and far too cheerful for something undead. “Papa!”

“No,” I said. “Not that.”

I may have made a mistake somewhere along the line. I was considering the steps I’d taken when Alex raised his arms in the optimal position for a hug.

“No,” I said. “None of that either. Go into the tomb over there. I think there are some clothes left in a bag.”

Alex’s arms lowered, and for a moment he looked chagrined before he scampered off.

I’d kill and remake Alex later. For now he’d be sufficient for my needs. I cracked my neck from side to side and let out an unneeded sigh. It felt good to stretch one's magical muscles after so long, even if there had been some... minor mistakes along the way.

Alex came tumbling out of the crevice in the wall, hugging a pile of clothes to his chest. “Do get dressed. I’ll transfigure those rags into something appropriate once you’re ready.”

“Yes papa.”

“Please don’t call me that,” I said absently. “Perhaps use one of my titles? Lord of Bones? Father of Magic?”

“Magic Bone Daddy.”

My fingers twitched. “Harold. Call me Harold.”

Alex nodded rapidly, eager to please. “Papa Harold.”

Another sigh. At least the exploring couldn’t go as poorly as this.

***