A Different Kind of Deadly Read Online Free PDF Page B

"I
should."
    "If its bones you want," Diana chimed in,
"We're nearly at the Ivory Arch. Look over the top of my head, it's
right down the next hill."
    I craned my neck, and spotted brilliant white
against our dark environs. Diana upped her pace, leaping like a
gazelle over gas and steam fissures. Several times, when I was
convinced she was going to trip, her joints bent at impossible
angles to get the necessary traction without sacrificing hardly any
speed. Even Leo, modified monstrosity that he was, had trouble
keeping up when Diana moved this way.
    Sure enough, the Ivory Arch was an
arch made of bones. Bones the size of mighty oaks, and bones the
size of nails. Skeletons of a number of races hung from the top of
the Arch, meticulously pieced together in chains, forming the most
outlandish beaded curtain I'd seen in my life.
    "Diana... how dangerous is the
Moor?"
    "Extremely."
    That technically answered my
question, but not nearly as well as I would have liked. She set me
down on a bed of dirt that smelled heavily of rust.
    "What's this?" Leo asked, pinching the
earth.
    He rubbed his fingers and I
watched as granules fell like chalk powder.
    "Marrow," Diana answered in her nonchalant
way.
    It was almost comical how Leo's expression lit
up with wonder at this discovery, while I gripped my stomach in
disgust. More concerning was the fact that something could crush
these bones so finely that only powder remained.
    Well, I suppose it could be useful.
    "Leo," I said. "May I borrow a knife and some
water?"
    "Sure thing." He set the objects in the palm
of my hand.
    Leo stepped back, no doubt having
an inkling of what I was going to do.
    I may have serious problems with the practical
aspects of necromancy, but I knew the ins and outs of how the magic
worked. Like any sort of spell-smithing, there are as many ways to
go about it as there are magicians. The only component required in
spells of life and death was a drop of the caster's blood. In
necromancy, this is called the Anchor. It binds the target to the
one performing the ritual.
    And because bone powder was still technically
bone, I could customize the appearance on a miniscule
level.
    I drew a glyph in the powdered
ground with the tip of my finger, poured drops of water at points
of intersection, and ran the edge of Leo's knife against the outer
side of my palm.
    Blood trickled onto the powder, bringing out
the rusty hues of the marrow like a stroke of scarlet paint. Now
came the hard part: rune recital.
    " Reha em oyu'fo slehfeh nad taerh. Deln em royu h'getsernt;
royu r'wohpoe. "
    The center of my sigil began to shimmer
red.
    Runes were dangerous when used
improperly. They are the universal language of magic, and in a way,
alive. The nature of runes, besides being words of power, was to
impede those who would use them. I felt them trying to twist my
tongue into a knot as I spoke them aloud, my voice becoming less
familiar by the second.
    " Tatse shti, ym'cesesne, nad hurthog'ti, ym'letomra
losu. "
    The diagram glistened like crushed rubies,
branching throughout like pulsing veins. I needed to go on as long
as I could; the longer the rune during the summoning process, the
more efficient the summon.
    " E'atk shti, het pehsae ni'ym'dim'n eey. E'atk royu clehpae
ta'ym'eisd! "
    That was all I could manage. I felt faint, and
dug the heel of my palm into the earth to prevent myself from
falling face first into the ground.
    The water I'd poured on the circle of power
worked as an adhesive agent that bound the crushed bone powder
together. The golem that emerged from the marrow looked on its
hands, and quickly found an emerald chemical pool.
    I didn't have a very specific notion of what I
wanted from this golem, but I did require that it be capable of
protecting me, and by extension, be an able fighter in the
Moor.
    Leo, Diana, and I watched this humanoid figure
step into the corrosive liquid, and I was a bit appalled at first.
Did my spell backfire? Or was it that there was no way a