The Third Gate: Chapter Sixty-One

So, I actually really found doing the two chapters on Wednesday to be convenient for writing schedule. I think I'm gonna keep doing that, if y'all are alright with it?

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“What do I know about necromancy,” I said, flopping down onto the grass and sprawling out. Orykson gave me a disapproving look and sat down on a chair that appeared beneath him. 

“Well, I know there are five major branches,” I started. “Zombies, bones, shades, ghosts, and souls.” 

“Please, start from the top,” Orykson said. 

“That would be zombies, or carnomancy, which is the reanimation of decomposing flesh. They can show up naturally in any area with high levels of ambient death energy. They’re not too dangerous in small numbers, but they can spread to things that they kill. A lot of the jobs I’ve seen that are cheap and easy are just wiping out a pack of zombie rats before they become a problem, or something of that sort.”

“They typically can only pass on their reanimation magic when they’re either very old and on the verge of falling apart, or while they’re fresh, but yes, a horde can become self-sustaining. It’s one reason carnomancers are frustrating, and the reason you’ll be putting down several naturally occurring hordes in Crysite. What else?”

“Skeleton and bone magic. Osteomancy, I think it’s called? I’m not sure how it’s different from a zombie, other than… you know… Zombies being rotting, and skeletones being bones.” 

“They’re very different. Zombies are reanimated by the death flows in their body imitating life, a crude facsimile. It gives them power, but hastens their body’s decay. Their spread is like removing a leech from a bloodless corpse to force it into a new host.”

“I get the sense you don’t like zombie magic,” I said.

“Osteomancy is an elegant art,” Orykson continued, ignoring me. “Instead of creating a core of power that simply imitates life, creating a skeleton involves programming instructions and spellcraft into bones, threading them together with threads of ectoplasm. They’re capable of being trained and instructed on complex tasks, and can run spellcraft of their own. While a zombie horde might produce vast swathes of mana that allow it to run out of control, a squad of skeletons is as exacting as its maker.” 

“So yours are the best in the world?” I asked, half-teasingly. 

“Yes,” Orykson said. “I created the Animate Skeleton spell that modern models are based off of. Before I designed a way to program routines into them, skeletons were essentially puppets.” 

I paused at that. 

“Oh.” 

“Indeed.” 

He snapped his fingers, and a skeleton appeared, burning with fifth gate power. It raised its hand, and a bone sword forged itself out of its mana, where it dropped into a fighting stance. Orykson waved his hand, and suddenly strings lit up around the skeleton, stitching themselves into the joints, swirling around and connecting together like a puppet. All of them drove into the heart of the skeleton, which was suddenly burning with a bright purple sphere of mana, pumping out and helping guide the movements of the strings.

“These are the ectoplasmic strings that bind the body together,” Orykson said. “The heart is the core.” 

He waved his hand and the skeleton vanished, instead being replaced with the flickering image of a man. 

“That’s a ghost,” I said. “I can feel it. Not a terribly strong one.” 

“Correct, I just stole it from the nearest graveyard, and I’ll put it back in a moment. What do you know about ghosts?” 

“They’re frozen memories and fragments in time,” I said. “I fought a ghost that was screaming about Vivian, Pryderi, and Tayvon, and thought I was working for them, even though tons of time had passed.” 

Orykson simply nodded for me to continue. 

“They’re third gate beings, but not very strong, I was able to take them on at first gate.” 

“No, they’re created at the stage of the person who created them. Their specific legacies are designed to work in conjunction with a dominion they form, if they’re strong enough, but can operate on their own.” 

“Oh, okay. I know their power vastly depends on what exactly they were wanting. Like… a ghost of a swordsman who died in a battle will probably have a lot of power that helps them act that way. Exert their power to cut and chop and stuff. But they don’t have their original magic.” 

“They often have a dominion and legacy that give them similar abilities, but you’re correct,” Orykson said. “What else?” 

“Uh… They’re made of ectoplasm, but don’t have to be?” 

“They can forge death mana into an ectoplasmic shell with their innate spellcraft,” Orykson said. “They’re also entirely made of mana, in a way very unlike elementals. Their power only is able to restore itself while they’re acting in line with their legacy and dominion. A ghost guarding a pass who agrees to join you will need a lot of mana to do anything other than guard you. What about shades?” 

“They’re echoes of –” 

“No,” Orykson said. “They’re not echoes. They’re spiritual remains, which is rather different. They are the bones of the spirit, so to speak, though it would be more accurate to say that they are the shadow that is cast by a person’s magic, now free to move on its own. This is the same power that creation mage summoners tap into.”

“Oh, okay,” I said. “They’re the spiritual leftovers of a person’s magic. It needs to be pretty concentrated to leave anything. I’ve seen the shades of death crows and death ravens before. They absorb mana from a person too, I fed them some and let them eat bugs. They can cast spells, I assume from their own being, like ghosts?” 

“Indeed,” Orykson said. “Shades and ghosts both represent diversity, albeit in different ways. Someone with ghosts usually attacks in a more indirect sense, going for the mind and spirit with some physical attacks. Someone with shades is almost like fighting a plant mage – they fight with a hodgepodge of spells. They have their own mana, but it recovers abysmally low, so to unleash attacks, they’ll need mana from you.” 

“Alright,” I said. “Then there’s soul magic. Which you said I couldn’t access yet.” 

“Correct. There are some minor things to strengthen the soul, but as things stand, your power is too immature to deal with it. It would be like attempting to plant seeds before you’ve even dug in the soil. You’ll begin doing it when you’ve got the power.” 

“Sometimes that’s how you want to scatter se–”

“It’s an example, not a direct literalism,” Orykson said. “But we should go over some of the advantages and weaknesses. Starting with carnomancy… for all that it is an inelegant power, it’s far and away the strongest for third gate mages. Your horde’s power snowballs, reliant only on a mountain of corpses. A single third gate mage can start a horde that grows beyond them and crushes cities, if the stars align correctly for them. The libraries classify it as restricted magic for a reason.” 

“Not for me,” I said. 

“Nor me,” Orykson said, and I raised an eyebrow. 

“Really? I’d expect that you’d want them for their power.”

“I don’t shy away from death,” he said. “Steel sharpens steel. But killing that’s reliant on continual killing? That’s just wasteful. Zombie hordes were a frustrating problem when I grew up in the Death King’s empire. I’m glad you said no – now we can move on.”

I nodded. 

“Osteomancy. You said it was stable.” 

“As long as a skeleton isn’t pushed beyond its limits, it can keep working as much as you need it to. Like your broom – some models have advanced enough magical cores built in to allow themselves to fly at top speed essentially indefinitely. Others can only fly for a bit before they need to restore themselves. They also pair marvellously with enchantments. Since they produce death mana, a sufficiently powerful core can produce enough to power enchantments as well, and you can build focuses for specific spells in. Conjure Bone Blade, as you saw. Pinpoint Boneshard. Bonespear. Even things like spirit trap.” 

He steepled his fingers together and leaned forward. 

“The downside is that they can only hold as much power as the framework itself. You want bones that are from something that’s strong enough to have left good material, or from something that died a long time ago, causing the bones to build up enough death energy over time to boost their strength.”

“That sounds like it could have some synergy with time magic,” I said. 

“Absolutely,” Orykson agreed, pulling his pocketwatch out. “This little beauty is bonded to space for that reason. It allows me to imbue a variety of temporal effects into my spells – alter the time limit on simulacra, the flow of time in pocket spaces I create, and more. It’s an excellent synergy.” 

“Did they even have pocketwatches when you were a spellbinder? You’re old, wouldn’t it have been like… A sundial?” 

“We did have hourglasses, but I rarely saw them,” Orykson said. “The pocketwatch shape is just a containment shell. But before we get off track, we should continue. Yes, time mana has excellent utility in conjunction. While it’s not as simple as just casting a spell with a streak of time in it, there are options for aging bones and creating self-upgrading skeletons. Perhaps even overcharging them to have skeletons a gate above you.”

“Fascinating. That’s a good option for sure. How about ghosts? I can deduce versatility, but there’s likely more.” 

“Skills, information, and scouting,” Orykson said. “I make some small use of ghosts for my own magic, but mostly I rely on Aerde. Ghosts know things that are relevant to the moment they come from. A thief who died after a great heist might know how to pick locks, and pass that on to you. Particularly lucid ones are capable of learning new things. They can become invisible eyes. They’re also beings that are, fundamentally, echoes. All of your echo magic from time can be used in conjunction with them, as can psychometry. You can reach for echoes that almost had been forgotten and spark them back to life.” 

“I worry though,” I said. “How often will ghosts actually be able to be reasonable, instead of just wanting to kill me?” 

“More than you think. The largest reason for an impact is dying with a strong desire in a place with high death energy. Unfinished business, so to speak, for good or ill. The second largest is a worn in routine, your spirit becoming so accustomed to something specific that a memory lingers after your death. Unfinished business isn’t inherently bad. The other blessing and bane of ghosts is that once they have fulfilled their business, or accepted that they can never do so, their power detonates. This creates spiritual leftovers that are unpredictable but depend on the ghost. A spirit-slaying sword. A mana source. A bowl that always mixes salads in the way the spirit did.”

“I see how that could be useful, if for no other reason than to serve as a keepsake. That just leaves shades, then.” 

“Yes,” Orykson agreed. “And no, but yes. Shades are flexible, and can give an average mage a way to access power outside of their usual abilities. If you had been my apprentice, osteomancy and umbramancy are what I would have taught you.” 

He tilted his hand one way, then the other. 

“You’re not, though. Your plant magic has advanced enough to give you options for power outside of your gates, your hudau mana has done the same. I’m not certain that expanding your capacities even further is the correct choice. But collecting some more beast or human spells can be useful. Their personalities are also an advantage. They’re not people, or even the imprint of a person. A shade’s personality is derived from the mana type they had and the way it’s applied, like an elemental. It means that some are easy to work with.” 

“It’s definitely something worth considering,” I mused. “It’s still incredibly useful to be able to cast spells that you’re not capable of using, though.”

“And that brings me to something that I can’t in good conscious simply put aside. Do you remember the largest flaw with autumnal, also called detritus magic?” 

“It’s almost entirety death ma…” I started, then trailed off. 

“Yes. Animate Scarecrow is a third gate spell, as are a few other cloth, leaves, and rotting spells. You could place it entirely within your death gate. That’s what most who use the branch do. You’d gain some advantages from the synergy of having plants, dead plant matter, and mushrooms. There are a few autumn spells that intersect with shades and ghosts – not so much that you can truly specialize, but a spell here or there, such as Empowered Poppet.”

“The disadvantages are pretty steep, though,” I said. “If I’m keeping it contained entirely to death, that means very little of the other branches of magic. It doesn’t synergize with time at all, and it’s also something that would all but require me to do some enchanting. That’s the downside of osteomancy, without the upside.”

“It is,” Orykson said. “I won’t lie to you, this isn’t a simple choice. All four are viable paths to power and integrating with your skills, just in different ways.”