M.J. Markgraf
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Norman the Necromancer Chapter 63
🕑 Added 2023-02-17 13:00:04 +0000 UTCThere were two main goals Norman was striving for with this newest line of research. He needed offensive and defensive magic.
Technically he had both already covered. His offense was covered with his Orb of Decay, Corpse Explosion, and Conversion Bolt spells. But the orbs were only effective as far as he could throw them unless he imbued a feral zombie with the energy, but they weren’t exactly fast or smart. Conversion Bolt required a spell circle, making it not an ideal spell to use quickly. It also wasn’t very practical unless he worked on his air casting.
As for the orb’s energy, Norman hadn’t yet tested to see if the energy worked on the greykin. He was loath to test it on any of the current residents, he pretty much liked everyone in town. Even the priestess wasn’t annoying enough to use as a test dummy for his experiments. He would have to capture some animals to test it on.
That left Corpse Explosion as the last of his offensive spells, which again, required a spell circle and wasn’t honestly that effective. The attack by the zealots after leaving that village had been the first time Norman had even used the spell. To say he was less than impressed would be an understatement.
It was also wasteful since the body couldn’t be reused after it was detonated. Norman would rather repurpose a dead feral than waste it in an attack to slightly injure people in a ten-foot radius. The only reason it had killed the one man was that they were literally touching when the zombie popped.
While it was useful in a pinch it was not something he could rely on. Norman didn’t like fighting. It was also foolish for him to be in the melee. If he was going to be forced to fight, he would rather do it at a distance, preferably beyond what the enemy could achieve.
His defensive spells were a bit better. Especially now that he resolved the issue with the Bone Armor so that it now covered his entire body. Bone Wall was still kinda meh, but it served its purpose rather well for what it was. It's possible he could improve upon it, but he didn’t feel the need at the moment.
With those limitations in mind, Norman jotted down the weaknesses he needed to cover. The biggest issue Norman saw was his range or lack thereof. At best he could reliably hit something forty feet away maybe fifty if he really gave it his all to chuck the orbs. Norman didn’t know how far Conversion Bolt would travel as he had never tried casting it at range until the attack.
He wrote that down as test one, the results of that test would determine if he needed to come up with another spell or just practice more with that one.
Another shortcoming Norman needed to address was his defense against magic. He hadn’t bothered before because people who could sling magic were pretty rare, but he needed to factor that in. There was no guarantee he wouldn’t run into a magic-wielding zealot in the near future. And while his armor protected well against physical attacks, he didn’t think it would hold up against magic. His own magic was proof that armor wasn’t all that effective. Norman’s Conversion Bolt had struck the zealot in the chest where he was protected and the man’s armor had done nothing to stop the spell.
A forcefield would be ideal, But Norman had no clue where to even start with something like that. So he would have to rely on what he knew best, and that was bones.
Norman began to take notes and sketch out possible spell ideas. It was several hours later when he finally stuck his head out of his workshop.
He had settled on a defensive spell to test out and even crafted a few into spell anchors. Now he just needed someone to help him test them.
When Norman looked around though, he wasn’t able to find Eugene or Grobert anywhere inside the castle. With them being gone, Norman decided to go to plan B.
After a quick walk, Norman found himself a few miles from the city, where one of the groups of grazing animals liked to roam. They avoided the village for the most part, but Norman knew the critters could be territorial. He had his armor on and a readied orb in case things went bad, but he needed to test the newest spell.
Bone Shield wasn’t anything too fancy. It just consisted of a circular plate of molded bone, much like Norman’s armor. Only, this shield floated off the ground and about a foot away from him. Norman could will the shield to intercept attacks or even move it away from himself, although doing that cost more mana. The spell itself was also mana intensive. Bone couldn’t just float by itself, mana provided that lifting force. But Norman could only stuff so much mana into the spell. Every action performed by the shield depleted that stored energy until the shield ran out of stored mana and fell to the ground.
So when Norman first tested the spell in his workshop, he just let it float there. The spell lasted about a minute before it ran out of energy and that was while not doing anything. Not great, but better than when he gave the shield any mental instructions. Each movement seemed to cut the shield's active timer by anywhere from five to ten seconds. And if Norman moved while the shield was deployed, it was the same issue.
He would have to research the spell further. Maybe he could come up with a fix for the issue of adding mana to the spell. As it was the spell was not all that useful. He could still test it today though.
Norman had originally come out here to test the range on his Conversion Bolt, but one of the local grazers was glaring at Norman from a hundred feet off and stamping its hoofed foot. Norman stepped toward the animal, eliciting an angry snort moments before the thing started to charge at him.
It looks like he was going to be testing his shield first. Norman waited until the animal covered half the distance before crushing the spell anchor he was holding. The shield flowed into place and Norman sent it zipping forward to see how it fared against the charging animal.
Horn collided with bone and the shield was sent spinning away, barely able to slow or redirect the creature's charge.
Norman quickly tossed his orb in front of the charging animal, killing it before it got to him. He hadn’t expected the complete failure of the spell so he was almost too late. Norman walked the five feet that separated him from the remains of the charging beast, its head and front legs were completely stripped of flesh and blood by Norman’s spell, leaving only pure white bone behind.
He stored the body for later research or conversion, into another spell, not an undead, he made that mistake once already. Mindless beasts were mindless, even when undead and he hadn’t been able to sic them on the living like the ferals.
After he cleaned up the mess, Norman went to look for his shield. He found it lying in the grass, completely out of mana. Norman wasn’t very optimistic about this spell based on this test. Then again maybe this wasn’t an ideal test of its capabilities. It was designed with intercepting spells in mind, so maybe he would just continue to use it that way.
This was only the first iteration of Bone Shield, Norman was sure there were improvements he could make to the spell. He would keep testing and see if anything changed.
Norman moved on to his other test, the one he had originally come out here to perform. He took a series of bones out of his pocket and practiced throwing them while trying to quickly draw the magic circle as he had on the day of the attack.
It was a good thing Norman was out here alone, otherwise, he might have died from embarrassment. He failed nine times out of ten and just looked like a goober throwing bones in a field. The sad fact was, this was better than he usually did when he tried air casting.
Despite his embarrassment at failing over and over again, Norman did get a few of the spells to work. Although they kind of flew in whatever direction they seemed to want to.
He realized just how lucky he had gotten during that fight when it worked on the first try and actually hit the guy.
The only thing that seemed to be consistent about the spell was how far it would travel before it fizzled out. It seemed about sixty feet was its maximum range, but Norman could tell it wasn’t at full strength even at half that distance.
Honestly, he wasn’t all that surprised since the spell wasn’t an attack spell and had never been designed to use at any range other than close-up. Norman pulled out a sheaf of paper with another spell circle on it. He examined the sheet, tracing the lines of the spell circle with his finger. He found this helped his muscle memory when he went to cast the spell.
Once Norman was satisfied that he had the spell down, he pulled out another bone. This wasn’t just an ordinary bone like what he had been using with the bolt spell, this one was stuffed with mana.
Norman used the short bone like a wand to trace out the glowing red spell circle in the air. The circle itself was rather basic and only a little over six inches in diameter, but it didn’t need to be complex for what it did. Norman had gone back to a staple of necromantic magic from stories and video games and created a ray. A ray of what, he wasn’t quite sure yet, but he was about to find out.
As the spell circle was completed, the bone began to vibrate in Norman’s hand and he quickly aimed it at one of the animals in the distance. Then Norman crushed the end of the bone between his fingers, releasing the magic stored within.
A ray of sickly black-green light shot into the distance and struck one of the grazing animals, making it bleat in distress. Its pained bleating increased in tempo as others of its kind tried to find the source of its distress. Ten seconds after the beam hit, the creature fell over dead. Norman thought that was the end of the spell and was about to turn away when the dead body exploded, covering more of the nearby grazers.
These too started to bleat in distress before falling over dead in the same amount of time it took the first to die. They did not explode like the first one though, but it was enough to cause the rest of the herd to hightail it out of the area.
“Well… that was unexpected.”
Norman waited a bit before walking over to the corpses. He judged the distance from where he had been standing to the corpses to be about two hundred feet. Not exactly a huge distance, but infinitely better than the fifty feet he could chuck an orb.
The first thing Norman inspected was the creature that exploded. Norman could see dark black boils all over the thing's skin, what remained of it anyway. He wanted to grab a sample of the fluid within the boils but thought better of it. He should be immune to the effects of the spell, but there was no point risking it.
When Norman inspected the rest of the creatures, he found what looked like red lesions, as if something had melted through their skin. He noticed it was only on the sides of the creatures facing the original target.
“Some sort of plague?” Norman wasn’t certain. But he was glad the spell didn’t seem to have exponential growth. Norman pulled out orbs and tossed them at all of the dead animals. He didn’t want to risk the spell spreading until he had a better handle on what it was capable of. With that done, he named the spell Plague Ray.
After cleaning up his mess, Norman headed home to ponder his results.
As he neared the town, he noticed how much of the wall had been erected. He was surprised at how fast the people of the village were building the wall. He probably shouldn’t be though, they had a reason to see it done quickly. Almost a quarter of the town was already surrounded by a ten-foot-tall wall. It was only wide enough for one person to walk along the top, but it was enough to keep normal people out and significantly slow anyone else.
Norman walked past the workers, nodding at them. A few paused to nod back, Norman even saw one give a sign that Norman had seen the priestess use before. He sighed, it seemed he had been right. Some of the greykin in town were starting to worship him. It seemed there was no getting away from it. The more he spoke out against the practice, the more people seemed adamant to take it up.
Perhaps if he ignored it it would go away? Nope, he wasn’t nearly that lucky.
As he approached home, he spotted Nolix, the ratar guard he had managed to resurrect. Nolix approached Norman and bowed.
“Grobert asked me to tell you that he is waiting in the main room for you.”
“Thanks, Nolix. You still doing ok?”
“I am doing better, thank you for asking. It just took a bit of time to adjust my balance.”
Norman nodded. “I’m glad to hear that.”
The ratar species were another lizard-like species, but unlike the lizna, these had a more human-like appearance and a short vestigial tail that was only a few inches long. They were also culturally and technologically on the same level as humans. The only other trait that set them apart was the lack of a protruding nose, instead, they had two slits that ran vertically where a nose would sit on a human. Norman had learned they were able to close these slits to swim underwater. Apparently, the ratar home world was filled with wetlands that stretched thousands of miles. Although they did have a few smaller oceans.
The differences in the worlds really fascinated Norman and he hoped to see them all one day. When time permitted of course.
At Nolix’s urging, Norman bypassed his workshop and headed straight for the main room. He froze when he entered, spotting Grobert and Eugene standing near something on the raised step at the far side of the room. He couldn’t tell what it was as it was covered, but he had a good guess.
Norman made to turn around and leave, but Grobert spotted him first.
“Ah, good, you’re here.”
With a sigh, Norman turned back toward the pair. “My answer remains the same,” Norman responded instantly, trying to cut off the argument before it began.
“I told you he would say that,” Eugene stated, crossing his arms.
“I never refuted that fact, I only said I could convince him otherwise.”
Norman sat down at the end of the table, as far away from that thing on the raised step as possible. “speak all you want, I’m not changing my mind.”
Grobert gave a wry smile. “I do like a challenge.”
