Walter’s feet clacked hollowly on the stone floor of his ritual chamber as he rounded the great Work one last time. At least he told himself that it would be the last time. He had checked, double-checked, triple-checked, and then started checking all over again. Walter hadn’t found a single fault in his creation, but he could not overcome the sinking feeling that something would go wrong. He had worked tirelessly – most of the time, literally – towards this exact moment for so many years, that he had stopped counting. He should be overjoyed, and he had been when he had made the last breakthrough in his research, but now he was afraid. Terrified.

He took a deep breath to calm himself. He hadn’t needed to breathe ever since he had shed his frail human body so many years ago, and there were no lungs to be filled in his bare ribcage, but the same magic that enabled him to talk allowed him to send air whistling through his jaws and down towards his core. The simple action calmed him.

“They are just nerves, Walter.” He muttered to himself, the quiet words echoing through the chamber. “You have achieved what you have dreamed of, what nobody has managed before you, and your life is about to change. Don’t be a scaredy-cat and do it!”

With his newfound determination he finished the last round along the outside of the Work – he really needed a name for it now. He had always thought that this was a question he could answer once it was finished. Well, now it was – and his mind was blank. Mechanically, he checked the lines of the circle, the mana crystals powering it, the connection from the crystals to the Work, the moving parts. Everything was ready, just as it had been the last three times, he inspected them.

“The Walterizer. Gods no. The Transmogrifier. That’s already a thing. The Walter Works... Maybe leave my name out of it. The great…big…great…world…” He shook his head. “Maybe relax on the pretentiousness. I’d rather drown myself than being known as the inventor behind the ‘World Dragon Heaven’s Jade Three Lotus Winds Cauldron’ or some other nonsense. Come on, Walter, you’re a researcher. Be logical. What does it do?”

He looked out over the Work, and slowly his anxiety was washed away by pride and satisfaction. He had done it. He had actually done it.

The Work was, fundamentally, a ritual circle the size of a small village. He had built it in a chamber in his underground laboratory specifically hollowed out for this purpose. The room was a perfect sphere, with the circle inlaid on both sides of a stone floor half a meter thick that bisected the cavern in the middle. The thin layer of Magesilver in the inlays reflected the light of the crystals spread around the cavern wall, showing the magnificence, the artistry of his creation in all its splendor.

“The Immortalizer.” He said, and it sounded right. “Let’s do this.”

He walked back to the entrance and deposited his simple woolen robe in one of the cupboards that lined the tunnel. From another shelf he took one of a collection of identical crystals the size of a child’s fist. Now naked, or as naked as an animated skeleton could be, he strode towards the center of the ritual circle, carefully stepping over the lines inlaid in the ground. With every step his resolve hardened even more. The Work was perfect. He was ready. It was time.

Finally, he reached the center, a piece of stone bare of runes. In a sharp contrast to the rest of the Work with its meticulously calculated inlays, the outlines of two feet were roughly painted on the ground. He carefully deposited the crystal between them, then stepped on the marks.

“Here we go.” Walter whispered, absently aware that they would be the last words he ever spoke in this life. For a moment he wondered if he should try for something grander, more meaningful, maybe a small speech. Then he decided that they were right, too. Pure mana flowed out of his core, triggering his great work, and the Immortalizer came to life around him.