It is the dumbest idiots who squeal like little piglets when their toes are chopped off for information. To any semi-experienced torturer, the sound of pain might as well be a sign that they’ve struck gold. They know the information will flow easier and faster; they know they’ll suck out all the information from the little pig-like idiot's noggin. The torturer will become emboldened and the idiot will die sooner, long before any savior can arrive to liberate him or her.

I gripped the handle of the glowing purple door. I probably should’ve opened it by now. The majority of competent, well-rounded people typically conclude that opening doors (especially doors with handles) is straightforward, and has been since the invention of handles and doors. Doors were never boulders and will never be boulders, and, unlike boulders, they’re meant to be opened. The problem wasn’t opening the door; it was what laid on the other side of the door that caused me to hesitate.

It was true that Malkor the Devourer was stabbed with some strange blade that Alric had given me. The way that the flesh of the creature rotted and festered suggested that what he had given me wasn’t cheap, especially for a grungy necromancer living inside the catacombs of Mudville. I had gotten lucky (more than once), but now I didn’t have a deadly dagger to discourage the beast from making me its snack.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go collect some bones for me, George?” I asked in the most pleasant voice I could muster.

“Like hell, I will. That monster will eat me. I can’t run fast enough if it comes barreling through the chamber. You go collect your own bones, you insufferable little weasel.”

I nodded, figuring that would be the outcome. I took in a deep breath and swung the door open. I hesitated for a second before I took in my surroundings, most notably the strange glowing mana sinking to the floor. It was gray in color yet it glowed ever so slightly. It was still too dark to see properly in the chamber, but I had a vision of sorts. It was akin to the vision of a nearly blind old hag who had to poke the ground with a stick to make sure she didn't fall into a snake hole.

With no stick in my hand, I tiptoed towards a large blob of the dark gray mana. My vision was not foolproof, and I grimaced as I stubbed my toes on what was probably a clavicle. The bone clacked as it skidded across the stone floor.

A roar echoed throughout the cave.

“You dare reenter my domain, after you made a fool of me! You were supposed to die, yet I am the one tending to my wounds.” Malkor spoke to me.

In the distance, I could hear movement. It wasn’t loud, but any type of sound was uncharacteristic of Malkor the Devourer. Whatever the dagger must have done to Malkor, must’ve damaged his legs, but not enough where if I stuck around I wouldn’t be dead.

I reached down and shoveled a bundle of bones into my hands, pivoted and ran like a rabbit. As I closed in on the glowing purple door, the sounds of a charging monster behind me grew.

“Open the door!” I shouted.

George slowly pushed the door open, slower than what I would’ve liked. I didn’t dare look back as I dived for the small opening. Malkor spoke to me, right before I left his chamber.

“It matters not what the Dark One tells you, no matter how much time you waste before you shrivel and die. I will wait until the end of time, to hunt you, to kill you. There is no escape from death.”

I dropped the mismatch of bones onto the floor, relieved that I wasn’t dead, less relieved when I realized that the bones I had weren’t enough to make a full skeleton. Two femurs, one entire leg, and a misshapen skull wasn’t the recipe for a complete humanoid. With Malkor healing, I knew full well that I wasn’t going to get another chance to pick pieces of bones without gruesomely dieing.

“That’s not a whole skeleton.” George commented unhelpfully.

“You don’t need to state the obvious, George.”

The Dark One rubbed his chin, as if deep contemplation. He smiled, showing off his gross black ichor covered teeth.

‘This is splendid. Yes. Yes. This will work well for what I have planned.”

“How can I raise the dead, let alone a cripple, with these bones?”

“Oh, you can’t raise a proper undead with that sorry lot of bones, but the fundamentals of live constructing can be learned. It’ll be harder, but struggles create stronger and sneakier necromancers. Golag the Benevolent was one such necromancer.”

“I remember Azog telling me something about him. Did he really feed off the nightmares of the living?”

“It is good to know Golag’s fame is widespread even if they misremember what made Golag so great. No, the nightmares the living faced were a side effect of his operations.”

“Like surgery?”

“Golag never had the luxury of full bones when he grew up, so he would graft undead limbs to the living. He was from a warring tribe that always had injured troops and never enough population to replace them. You’ll have to train in a similar fashion minus the surgery, plus the free casting.”

“And how do I go about doing that?”

“Your mana sight is the first step of free casting. You must learn to move the mana, connecting bone to bone, limb to limb like a puppet master.”

The Dark One didn’t utter a word after that. So much for a good teacher, I thought as I stared at the bones and the dark gray mana that seeped out of the bones. I reached out towards the mana, sculpting it, pulling it until it was woven into a fine string. It was a long laborious process, the mana did not want to stay in that form. Whenever my concentration dipped, the mana would spring back into its original form.

The mana was my menace, actively protesting against my will. It seemed so easy for the Dark One to manipulate, but I figured he had significantly more years of experience than me. My frustration kept growing as the mana kept springing back into a nebulous form. Hours passed, and I wasn’t making any progress. I was, metaphorically, bashing my head against the stone wall, and I really wanted to physically smash my head against the stone wall.

It was foolish to think that I could learn something so intricate, so soon. I gained a respect for magic users that I didn’t have before, even the bumbling drunk ones that could only do simple party tricks. I wondered if all magic was this hard to learn.

I decided to stop bullying the strange mana and began studying it. Maybe mana had preferences, it was true that the brown mana that clung to walls acted differently from the gray mana that seeped out of the bones. While the brown mana was rigid like stone, the gray mana acted more like a low mist that spread across the floor. It wasn’t very dense and it jittered.

“You stupid gray mana, work like you’re supposed to,” I muttered to myself, as I attempted to stab the stuff with an unattached leg bone.”

“Are you sure you're not going insane, Arthur?” George asked, as he stared at me like he had been doing since the inception of us being locked in the Dark One’s tiny prison. I didn’t blame George for looking at me; I knew I was easier on the eyes than the Dark One. Girls might’ve even called me slightly good looking if not for the burn marks across my body. His snide comments were a bit rude, though.

Happy thoughts and pretending George didn’t exist were the only reasons I could concentrate, as I thought about how to get the stupid bones to move around. I concluded that maybe the best course of action was to widen the strings of condensed gray mana, so they didn’t press against my will so hard. Long thick ropes used more gray mana, but I could now keep them in place.

I attached the long thick strands of mana to the ends of the bones, adrenaline pumped through my body as if Malkor the Devourer was in the Dark One’s little room. This was it, I thought. I was using magic. I willed mana ropes to lift the bones. Instead, the bones rattled on the floor. I frowned.

The Dark One laughed. I scowled.

“You’re supposed to be teaching me. Instead, you’re watching me fail.” I complained.

“If I tell you how to get the bones to dance, you won’t understand why they dance. You must learn the dance on your own.” was all I got as a response.

I wasn’t too fond of cryptic nonsense, and I figured that the Dark One was just a lazy and insufferable teacher. It was no use arguing with him, since the Dark One had an eternity to be silent and I only had the next few weeks before I starved, and that was assuming the small drippings of cave water didn’t dry up.