“Hey, Bones, will you join us for a game of Kong? I promised Gidin that we would play a few games today. He is still smarting from losing four in a row last time.”

With a distracted expression, Bones looked up from the tome he was reading. “What?”

“Did you even hear what I just said?” Broluf said with a resigned voice.

“Uhm, I did. You talked about meeting with Gidin because he is frustrated…”

“So, will you join us then?”

“…..”

“Bones!”

“What?”

“Are you coming or not?”

“Coming where?” Bones asked.

Broluf threw his hands in the air, and walked away, without bothering to respond, leaving Bones behind with a befuddled look on his face.

“What was that all about?” Bones muttered to himself.

Briefly, he wondered if he should be getting up and find out what was going on but then noticed a symbol in the tome in front of him, a symbol he had never seen before.

Not that this was particularly noteworthy, as Bones was not the best mage out there. And even the best mages regularly encountered things previously unknown, unless they had lived already for millennia, which very few mages managed to achieve – usually, those that were practically immortals, like Dragons, Demons, Spirits, and some of the undead.

But it was noteworthy enough for Bones to turn his face back to the huge leather-bound book that he had been studying for the last few weeks.

It was white leather, with some dark marbling, and it felt cold to the touch. At first, Bones had been reluctant to touch the book, because it had an odd similarity to the feeling of a corpse. But that was only fitting for a book on the darkest of arts – necromancy.

Of course, people debated whether necromancy was indeed the darkest art. Some proclaimed that death magic was the true pinnacle of dark power. Others argued that the summoning of demons surely was the worst out there.

Bones did not care about it one way or another. He just liked dealing with the dead - they talked less and did not mind his experiments.

Bones’ real name was not Bones. Rather it was Bolomer Combutkon… which was such a weird name, that everyone at the academy had quickly started calling him just Bones because, well, he liked dealing with bones. It also fit him fairly well, he had to admit. He was lanky, all bones as his mother used to say, and had a somewhat pale complexion that made his rather skeletal body even more apparent.

Bones did not mind. In fact, he liked that Bones was short and concise, which made it less likely that he had to explain to people how to pronounce his name or repeat countless times that his parents were from Gistan and not some faraway province that might have such strange names.

Not that any of that crossed his mind right then and there. He was studying a book on necromancy, after all, a subject that he had started investigating a couple of years earlier. Initially, it had been more of a morbid fantasy. It was oddly fascinating to see a skeleton or dead person twitch around, and then sit up and walk around. Most people were scared by the undead, but in Bones’ opinion, they just failed to realize the beauty of it all.

A body, formerly prone and unmoving suddenly animated and fulfilling one’s commands without any question or doubt – the perfect helper!

Of course, Bones had found out quickly that the undead were, unfortunately, not as good of a helper as he had thought, because they were just too dumb - give them a task that involved more than three or four words and they would inevitably mess it up. “Guard this room” or “attack that person” worked perfectly fine, but “clean this room without destroying any of the furniture” was already beyond the capacity of the normal skeleton or zombie.

Granted, there were smarter undead out there – ghouls, liches, undead dragons, skeleton lords, and vampires just to name a few. But those undead almost exclusively came from formerly living beings.

Not that skeletons did not come from something living. But skeletons and zombies had been dead first and then reanimated, whereas most smarter creatures were changed into undead creatures through unholy magic or, in the case of ghouls and vampires, a type of magical virus.

“Fascinating!” Bones muttered into his scraggly beard if one could call it that - it was more a few strands of hair that grew out of a few irregular patches on his chin. “Truly ingenious! I wonder if… hmm, no, this would not work…”

Bones flipped a few pages back and looked at a set of symbols depicted in the middle of the page.

“I need to try this. If it works, it will be a huge breakthrough. A revolution!”

Hurriedly, Bones copied down a whole page of symbols on a piece of parchment and then rushed out of the library to his room. On the way, he encountered several fellow arcanists, some of them mere students, but also a few adepts, and even a couple magisters.

He barely acknowledged anyone, though, too focused on his discovery.

“Yes, yes, this should do it. Finally! This will make me famous. No rich! Rich and Famous!”

He laughed loudly to himself, which drew a few concerned looks from the other arcanists. But they were used to his occasional outbursts and paid no further heed.

A few minutes later, Bones burst into his sparse chambers and eagerly opened the big closet at the side of the room, revealing a fully intact human skeleton.

“Marrow! Come on out, this is it!” Bones shouted excitedly.

The so addressed skeleton did not move a single bone, not that Bones had expected any differently. After all, he had dispelled the last reanimation on Marrow himself, after he had failed again to provide it with any kind of intelligence, beyond simple motoric functions. One of many such attempts.

Creating an intelligent skeleton was one of the holy grails of necromancy, at least for some necromancers. Others tried to make their skeletons more and more powerful, which sounded terribly boring to Bones but had admittedly met with a lot more success than his own fruitless attempts.

Not that many people were engaging in necromancy. It was not a well-liked discipline and only attracted the occasional odd social outsider, and some of the more sinister and power-hungry individuals one might encounter.

But this was it! His breakthrough!

He was sure.

Of course, he had been sure before. Many times, in fact. But this time was different, he could feel it. Only a few days ago he had discovered the huge tome in one of the more remote parts of the library. It had been covered by dust and spiderwebs, indicating that no one had touched the book in decades, perhaps even longer. Trash for some, but a real treasure for him!

The book was written in Azkera’tish, the language of the now perished empire of Azkera’t - a glorious time for those interested in the arts of necromancy. The king of Azkera’t had been one of the most famous necromancers of all time, commanding huge armies of the undead, which had helped him subjugate almost half of the continent. Unfortunately, the art of how to raise skeletons with more than rudimentary intelligence had been lost with the fall of the empire. A tragedy that Bones fully intended to reverse as soon as possible.

Eagerly, he sat down next to the skeleton, with a little carving knife in his hand, and the parchment with the various runes spread out in front of him.

“So, this rune connects the brain to the rest of the body, just like for raising a basic skeleton. But then this… I guess, this serves as some type of battery of the arcane… maybe akin to brain matter? And this series of runes will somehow connect the two. Otherwise, we might have an intelligent skeleton, that cannot use the intelligence because it cannot control its body.”

While Bones was talking to himself, a habit that he had picked up since coming to the Gistan Academy, he carefully copied the runes from the parchment onto the skull of Marrow. A slow process that most necromancers would avoid, even at the risk of reduced efficacy of their spell. But Bones was nothing but meticulous. Carving the runes into the body of the skeleton increased the permanency of the reanimation, to the point that the skeleton could draw mana from its surrounding to support itself, rather than having to rely on its creator for its energy.

Some might say that carving those runes before testing their effect was a waste of time and effort because the vast majority of new spells failed to work as intended, but Bones was extremely confident that his latest creation would work just as imagined. He always was.

After many hours, Bones had carved all the runes into Marrow – for most of them he knew exactly what they did, but some he could only guess.

A whole lattice of runes covered Marrow’s skull, and more of them snaked along his bones to the rest of his body. A masterpiece of carving, a testament to Bones’ skill in woodcarving, something that others frequently belittled as useless and a waste of time, but he saw as essential for quality work. And he was no fan of reusing old runes either - whenever one of his many experiments on Marrow had failed, he completely erased the runes on its bones with a bone-regeneration spell.

He liked to have a blank slate to create his true masterpiece from scratch.

The new runes had added another layer of complexity to the process that made the whole thing utterly unpractical for the typical, mass-produced skeleton used to swarm an enemy. It was way too labor intensive for that.

But this was not a concern for Bones. It was all about proving that it was possible to increase the intelligence of the typically mindless thrall-type skeleton to something that at least had as much brainpower as a dog. In the grand scheme of things perhaps not world-shaking, but a revolution when it came to magic, or at least necromancy, or at least the part of necromancy that was concerned with raising basic skeletons.

Or perhaps just for Bones.

Bones was excited. This was it! A new and superior skeleton.

Carefully, Bones cleaned the area around Marrow from bone chips and other dirt and then stepped back from the skeleton.

He raised his arms in a grand gesture, ready to summon the mana needed to activate the ritual.

But then he hesitated because he realized that he had not even drawn the curtain over his entrance. Not that he was afraid of any robbers or thieves. He really did not have much in terms of worldly possessions. No, it was the principle of it. Necromancy was accepted at the academy, but it was not generally well-liked.

Bones had learned a long time ago that even though everyone knew that he liked to work with skeletons and zombies, there was a difference between people knowing about it and actually seeing it. It made people just a tad irritated or even angry when they encountered the fruits of his labor.

So he was usually cautious about doing what he did behind closed doors or curtains. Which was also why everyone thought that he was somewhere around a level 15 Necromancer, even though he had already gotten well past that stage a long time ago.

Bones glanced up and down the hallway to see if anyone was lurking around, anyone that could have potentially seen what he was up to. Not that they would understand the significance of his work – the ignorant fools.

He thought he saw a movement from the corner of his eyes, something along the wall next to his room, but when he looked there was nothing there. Until he suddenly noticed the black cat that was standing in the shadow of one of the statues that adorned the corridors. The cat was staring at the entrance to his room.

“Psssst! Shush!” Bones hissed to the cat.

The cat looked at him and then focused back on his doorway, completely disregarding Bones’ attempt to get her to move away.

“Hey, you, cat, move away!” Bones tried again.

But the cat completely ignored him, as only cats can do.

“I hate cats,” Bones sighed despondently, turned around and closed the curtain behind him, immediately turning his focus back on Marrow.

Unbeknown to him, the cat stealthily moved around the curtain into his room, eyes fixed on the skeleton.

Back and fully ready to go, Bones raised his arms again in what he assumed was a striking pose, worthy of the monumental moment, and channeled his mana into the necromantic incantation that rolled off his lips.

Black energy started cackling in concentric circles around his arms and then shot in an undulating coil of pure black essence from Bones’ hands into the skeleton in front of him.

In the last moments before the energy hit the head of the skeleton, a small white head with long whiskers poked out of one of Marrow’s eye sockets causing the sinuous shape of the black cat to streak right at it.

Precisely at the wrong time.

How the cat could completely ignore the black energy twisting and churning in the air, was a mystery, but cats can be single-minded at times – this one perhaps more than others.

In the meantime, Bones was lost in a blistering inferno of dark magic pouring out of his body. A maelstrom of power, far more than any other time he had tried to raise an undead. He lost vision, smell, and even feel while buffeted by forces all around him. And then it was all gone.

He felt drained of energy and sank slowly to the floor, trying to understand what had just happened. This amount of power should have been enough to raise four, no five or six skeletons at once, and was close to the limit of what Bones at his current level could support.

At least the process had finished before he had been completely drained because running out of mana in the middle of a ritual led to a nasty backlash that Bones was not keen on experiencing.

And there was his masterpiece.

White, bleached bones, with softly glowing runes covering most of the surfaces.

But what was that? A patch of black hair on the skeleton? And the smell of burned flesh? But nothing seemed amiss with Marrow, beyond the unsightly piece of fur that partially graced his ribcage.

As Bones inspected the skeleton, the runes slowly seemed to recede, as if being sucked up by the bones themselves. And then the glow was gone.

Bones looked at Marrow expectantly.

But Marrow was not moving. No twitching bones, no rattling – nothing.

Bones narrowed his eyes. Usually, a newly raised skeleton would at least raise itself, awaiting the command of its master. But perhaps this skeleton was just going to be different.

“Hmm, I wonder…” Bones mumbled. And then, in a stronger, more commanding voice: “Marrow, stand up!”

Marrow turned its head toward Bones but did not stand up.

“Get up!”

“Move!”

“Rise!”

Marrow simply stared at Bones, with his hollow eye-sockets, not lifting a single bone.

By now extremely frustrated, Bones started shouting commands at Marrow, without any luck.

“Well, just do something, please!” Bones eventually pleaded, which was a first for him. One does not beg skeletons to do something, because it would just confuse them. But by then Bones was at his wit's end, and desperate for some type of reaction out of Marrow. And truth be told, the unmoving gaze of Marrow was a bit disconcerting.

But even begging did not get him any further.

Bones sighed: “Ah well, I guess it is not working as I had envisioned.”

And then he grabbed the pile of bones that he had labored on for the last few hours and unceremoniously dumped them back into the closet. He could always remove the runes later, there was no rush. He would have to do a lot more research before trying his next attempt.

----------------------------------------------------------

Marrow was in the dark. In a closet. Not that he, and he somehow was sure that he was a he, consciously knew what either one was, or that it bothered him in any way. He did not even know what “bothered” meant. Neither did it know what “pleased” or “content” meant or how to achieve that state of mind. No, Marrow just was. Which was a novel experience in and by itself. It was the first time that Marrow felt that way. Which was no surprise, because he effectively had been born a few minutes earlier.

At first, Marrow had just been. He had felt heaviness around him, and the boniness of his bones, and all kinds of other feelings that he had no words to describe.

And then a deep voice spoke to him.

“Special Skill: Skill absorber.”

“Skill acquired: Ultrasonic Hearing.”

“Skill acquired: Obstinance of a cat.”

“…….” was all that Marrow responded, for, in truth, he had no idea what any of that meant. He understood a basic set of vocabulary, anything that a normal skeleton would need to know, such as attack, guard, defend, move and so forth. Anything beyond that… was simply ignored. He also had for some reason random images in his mind of crawling through tiny spaces, hunting for scraps of tasty things, while being hunted by a scary creature. Which was disturbing somehow. Yet other images had him as a hunter of tiny furry creatures… it was all very confusing.

And then another voice spoke to him. A voice that somehow connected to him at a deep, almost primal level. It was almost as if the voice entered directly into his spine, urging him to move. And It nearly worked.

He didn’t mind moving, but he just did not see a point in doing so. When the voice told him to get up, a command he instinctively understood, he instead turned his head to find its origin.

And Marrow opened his eyes for the first time. Not that his eyes had been closed, as he technically could not close them. But for the first time, he bothered to actually see. A skeleton could activate its vision by extending its magical core, usually situated in a tiny pocket dimension in the brain or spine, to the eyes.

He was immediately assaulted with all kinds of impressions – colors, shapes, dimensions. It took him a while to sort through it all. He could not really name any of the things he saw, but one thing that attracted his attention quickly was the moving… thing… that talked to him. He subconsciously, which was pretty much all he had at this point, knew that this was his creator and master. Someone that he needed to listen to and obey. Maybe. If he felt like it at least. After all, there were many fascinating things around him.

The voice kept on talking to him, commanding him to do stuff. Each time, he felt a jolt go through his body, trying to make him obey. But somehow, he was good at ignoring the voice. He heard it, but he could blend it out easily by just staring at the “master”. Somehow, staring was part of it, he intuitively felt.

And then the “master” said, “do something!”

And for once Marrow did not feel any jolt. Which made sense, since after all, he was already doing something. In fact, he was doing a lot. More than he had ever done in his life. So he was content to just keep doing that – namely, look around and analyze all the sensory inputs. Perhaps analyze was too strong of a word. It was more categorizing or perhaps just looking.

But it seemed as if maybe that was not what his master had in mind when telling him to do something because the next thing Marrow knew, he was grabbed by his bones and stuffed into a closet. Not that this bothered Marrow all that much. After all, it was a new experience as well. And he kept on doing something, because, well, the voice had commanded it to do just that.