Successful introduction of break days had helped to keep Heidie’s temper and cracking mental health from from reaching critical lows.

Her mastery of her known spells increased as she used them and studied their sigils. Improvement was happening.

Heidie still wasn’t sure it was enough. She felt that her current abilities were too highly specialized and therefore something of a danger to herself to rely upon.

This was not enough to guarantee self-defense. Heidie was starting to become frustrated.

Still, after one full month of nothing but physical training during the day and trying to master her current spells during the night, Lome’Matar finally added more circulation to the table and taught Heidie another spell: a means of draining the life from living creatures. It was fairly gruesome. Heidie hated it, but grudgingly admitted that a means of ranged attack, one that also healed and rejuvenated the caster, would be helpful.

Heidie wasn’t very good with the spell yet. Her range was barely twenty feet at her current level of mastery. Better than nothing but not great. Heidie could move while casting it, but found it extremely difficult to maintain concentration. Frequently the spell would drop as she moved.

Circulation to advance further into the first circle was rigorous, but Heidie made rapid progress. She was now in the fifth step of the first Circle.

Additionally, Lome’Maar now set aside two hours a day for his student to practice molding flesh and bone. Heidie would form complicated parts of various species before the demon’s critical eyes. Functioning joints of different species limbs, Making them more functional by proper use of tendon and muscle, learning how the bodies of different species moved. Many local fauna became test subjects. Heidie’s need for Gracey’s hunting increased.

Heidie had plenty of paper and notebooks so she started keeping a list of her spells and mastery of their sigils. Increased mastery of the sigils made using the spell much easier and increased the potency of their effects quite a bit.

List of spells

Lesser mold dead flesh and bone (60% mastery) Lesser animate dead flesh and bone (50% mastery) Lesser regeneration (60% mastery) Drain Life(20% mastery)

Relations were still strained between teacher and student. Concern over the demon’s nature and past aside, Heidie had still not forgiven him for biting her when the kindle she’d given him ran out of charge and died.

Heidie had no clue how to process that demons would start to invade the universe, or Multiverse as the case may be, within a few centuries. It seemed like an issue far removed from her, terrible though it was. It was difficult to really imagine getting through the next year, let alone living hundreds of years.

Making matters worse, Heidie was still not sure what she thought about her demonic teacher. Needing the severed head to help her survive and wanting to be around it were different things. Most of the time Lome’Matar’s personality was almost kindly. Brutal training aside, of course, and if you could get past the horns and teeth and the fact that he was a fully conscious severed head.

After a month of physical training Heidie had gained a great deal of stamina and muscle. She could run for hours without stopping now. Heidie was grateful to Lome’Matar for what he had done to help her survive, but she couldn’t bring herself to like or trust him.

Clearly the demonic head was not, in fact, kindly. By its own admission it was certainly the most cruel, terrible, and monstrous existence Heidie had ever met. She repeated this in her mind and resolved to never trust the demon fully.

Worry and paranoia grew. Heidie believed that she had to grow much stronger to truly be safe in this world, but the current state of affairs was starting to get to her. Rest days were not enough. Heidie longed for someone who was not undead or demonic to converse with. Being isolated and surrounded by the dead was not doing her any good. Mock tea parties with Gracey Charlston the Fourth, originally a means of venting frustration and annoying her teacher after he bit her, were starting to feel like they were an important part of her daily life. Someone to talk to, someone who wasn’t dead or a demon, would be very nice.

In the past month Heidie’s minions had scouted the area more fully. The immediate area around the ruined village was generally free of dangers. There was a large pack of wolves that sometimes entered the area to hunt. Heidie’s minions were under orders to retreat whenever they were spotted. She’d had to use quite a lot of flesh meant for her meal to patch up Gracey after the cat had gotten into a fight with the pack during a hunting excursion. She’d been very badly torn up. Heidie was furious at the damage, but decided it wasn’t worth entering further conflict with the pack for now.

Wildlife included a fairly diverse ecosystem of small animals and insects, as well as larger fauna. Most notably, herds of large-horned bison roamed the plains. They composed Heidie’s primary diet and necromantic shaping specimens.

Gracey was a magnificent hunter and provided so much extra prey that Heidie eventually raised an even dozen of the bison to serve as patrolls, scouts, and lookouts so her soldiers could stay closer.

The bison minions were slightly modified. Heidie thought they would serve their purpose very well. Lome’Matar’s teachings of manipulating undead anatomy had not gone to waste: The undead did not need eyes to see, but Heidie had learned to control how many points and from where the minion’s visual input would stem from. She applied this knowledge by adding extra eye sockets to increase the field of vision of this new brand of minion and applying extra mana to the areas when raising them to ensure their sight saw far and accurately.

To ensure that they would be helpful in combat, if needed, Heidie had reinforced and modified their jaws to be similar to Gracey’s; Teeth sharpened and strengthened to be suited for powerful bites. Horns too, were lengthened, reinforced, and serrated along their entire length.

All in all, Heidie felt they were quite intimidating. Five to six feet tall, with many glowing blue eye sockets across their head and shoulders. Strong, unnatural looking jaws full of sharp teeth. the bison minion’s modified horns coiled around their ears and were angled directly forwards, ready for combat.

Ready for combat minions were good. The area starting few miles or so from the village was quite dangerous.

The area outside of the village had a large number of predators. Heidie’s minions had spotted many animals. Several species of bear, wolves, and large cats that inhabited the plains. Lome’Matar told her that some of them were certainly magical beasts and would have abilities like the lightning aura Gracey had wielded before her death.

The distinguishing factor between an animal and a magical beast was the formation of a physical mana core inside of them; a crystallization of mana somewhere within their body. The formation of the core would lend the creature greater strength and intelligence as it grew with the beasts. Their growth potential and lifespan would skyrocket, and over time they could become extremely powerful and dangerous.

Magical beasts were known to sometimes mutate in body or mind, typically becoming grave threats when they did so. Given enough time to grow and enough mutations a magical beast could threaten entire cities or civilizations.

Heidie hoped nothing too threatening lived nearby. Her numbers of minions were growing, but Lome’Matar cautioned her against expanding her retinue too quickly.

“Each minion holds and diminishes your reserves while they function. The larger or more elaborate they are the more they will diminish your capacity.” The demon told Heidie. “Your reserves are quite significant, but you will have difficulty progressing in your circulation should you allocate too much to maintaining your minions for now. Thirty or forty undead should be your maximum limit until you reach the second Circle.”

As a result Heidie did not try and overdo things with her new bison minions. Her plan was that two of them would scout around the area while the other ten would patrol around the village, just in case something nasty decided to try and get too close. Lome’Matar’s mana sense was an amazing warning system, but Heidie had learned that some things could be very dangerous even if they were detected five hundred feet away.

Regardless, Heidie was quite happy with her roster of undead. She added a list of the minions she had created to her notebook.

List of scrapped minions

3 zombies. Now scrapped into 2 soldiers.

List of active minions

Nine reinforced soldiers. Halberd and Shield. One with a halberd arm and shield fused to his hand. One animated tiger. Former magical beast. Modified back and sides to include saddle and stirrups. Twelve bison. Modified. High field of vision. Enhanced vision. Reinforced molded jaws. Sharpened teeth. Sharper, better angled, serrated horns.

There were more plans for her undead, but Heidie had other concerns at the moment. Mainly, Sergeant Spear-Arm. Lome’Matar decided that Heidie needed to spar a bit.

She’d shaped herself a quarterstaff and was getting her ass absolutely handed to her by her first undead minion, his namesake had been modified to be blunt and he avoided vital areas, but it still hurt like hell. Lome’Matar didn’t give any martial advice so Heidie was on her own with terrible form and no training.

Eventually Heidie gave up trying to go on the offensive and took to a strategy of avoidance instead. It was difficult. Sergeant was frighteningly quick when it tried to be. Still, she eventually found very meagre success deflecting what she could and running away for her life, measuring success in minutes not getting beaten to the ground. She failed to dodge or deflect and got hit more often than not though. Heidie didn’t think she was suited for close combat.

Getting knocked to the ground again with a cry of pain, Heidie struggled to get up. Something had fractured. She fought to her feet and started concentrating on a regeneration spell. Sergeant’s blunted arm was lashing out again. Heidie barely managed to deflect it but lost hold of her quarterstaff. It went spinning away. Spell dispersing, Heidie was struck to the ground once more.

“This is Bullshit!” Heidie gasped. “Halt, Sergeant!” Her undead minion froze in place. “What am I supposed to learn from this?” Heidie fumed at her teacher. The demon head perched upon some nearby ruins. “You’re not even teaching me how to hold this thing properly! How is it a good idea for me to just make it up as I go?” Heidie asked Lome’Matar, picking up the bone quarterstaff and shaking it a him.

Lome’Matar was about to answer that it was mainly for the valuable experience of having someone beat you down over and over when a Bison minion galloped into the ruins. Heidie froze. There were only two reasons one of them would come back here: the scouts had either discovered something very dangerous or had discovered humanoids.

“Mistress!” the Bison called in ghostly voice “Humanoids are on the plains.”

Heidie grilled the scout about what it had seen. Apparently a group of around twenty to thirty were traveling in the general direction of the ruined village, just two or three miles out. Children were among the group.

From the Bison’s description the group had low obvious combat potential. Only a handful were armed or seemed dangerous. They were also under attack by one of the larger packs of wolves.

Wasting as little time as possible Heidie rallied her forces and set out atop Gracey at a fast lope. Lome’Matar safely stuffed in his backpack and attached to the saddle. Every soldier and Bison ran with her.

Tired, ragged, and bloody, a group of short, swarthy humanoids on the plains were locked into a defensive circle, wolves circling them, as Heidie’s small militia came into view.

The student’s heart jumped in excitement. Finally, someone she could speak to. Even better, they looked like dwarves. Heidie felt excitement swell within her at the prospect of meeting a fantasy race. Hopefully they didn’t get too put off by the undead.

Well, good relations were probably salvageable even if their initial reaction was fairly negative. They did seem to need help. Hopefully their culture didn’t care too much about the use of sorcery.

“Bison, charge the wolves.” Heidie ordered. “Soldiers, protect the dwarves!”

It only took a few more moments for the bison to reach the encircled group and their attackers at a full charge. With pounding feet, snapping jaws, and impaling horns, the Bison entered combat and the wolf pack devolved into chaos. After watching their pack mates get impaled on the Bison’s horns and crushed in their unnatural crushing jaws the wolves began to retreat.

Heidie and her soldiers now formed a wall between the melee and the small caravan of dwarves. Seeing that the wolves were now running for their lives, Heidie turned Gracey Charlston to face the dwarves. She put a friendly smile on and tried to act unthreatening.

“Hi!” Heidie said “I mean you no harm.” She elbowed the backpack that contained Lome’Matar’s head and whispered “Hey! Can they understand me? Translate for me.”

One of the large, armed dwarves came to the front of the small caravan. He slowly put two-handed axe on the ground and sank to his knees. Heidie took in his pallid, hopeless face. She had a bad idea where this was going.

“Durrz” The dwarf said, bringing his hands together, obviously in entreatment. “Vre Durrz Jotin.”

“He is begging for you to have mercy on the children.” Lome’Matar said.

Heidie frowned. This might be troublesome.