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The teen drew his chalk stub across the ground in a painstaking pattern, returning time and again to check his work against a double-spread tome before resuming his meticulous art, careful not to disturb the dusty earth too much on each pass. Everything had to be precisely correct; otherwise his labour would be for naught.
Eventually, he was satisfied enough to retrieve a collection of gemstones from a corner of the cavern he was hidden in. He ticked them off in his mind as he shuffled through the tiny polished half-stones: a diamond, two topazes, two aquamarines, an opal; two rubies, a turquoise and a garnet.
He set them down in the particular order he had memorised: mind, eyes, hands, throat; feet, lungs, heart... He mumbled them repeatedly as he set the gems down in order; book awaiting his eventual return.
It took him a long while to start the next phase of his plans, intently studying the faded pages, painfully aware of the seconds trickling past. Once more, he took up his small stick of chalk to draw a separate, smaller fonic circle, thinking absently with what little of his concentration wasn’t already consumed.
In the past, humans had been able to focus fonons to create fonic circles without hours of strenuous, attention-sapping preparations. However, with the departure of the Seventh Sentience, Lorelei, back into the fonbelt, the ability to channel fonons with such precision had long lost to the past.
Fonic artes could still be cast from one’s internal fon slots, dangerous and exhausting as it was: the slightest distraction or miscalculation of stamina could prove fatal; hence why fonic artists had since ceased trying to focus using self-induced fonic circles, instead resorting to drawing them. They had been quickly banned from everyday use for the safety of the general public, not that it had really been needed; as they were no longer as conventional as they had been.
Despite the fact he was forced to work at a slow, methodical pace, the boy longed to make more progress, and faster. It was a race against time, one he was bound to lose; he only had so long before he was found and dragged back to the commune. If he was lucky, he conceded a moment later, sitting back to examine his handiwork with a critical eye.
What he was attempting was against the laws he lived under; laws everyone had and ever would be under. He was working to revive the dead.
Even the greatest minds of Old Auldrant and — somewhat surprisingly — the Dawn Age forbade it; condemned it as the road to eternal failure. Death was intended as the end. Not even Lorelei held the power to reverse the end.
Across many generations, theories had been formed and tested — often with terminal consequences. However, one man had reached further than most, before moving to ban his own creations. It was this man’s theories in particular that the boy had based the majority of his own around, regardless of the scorn of his peers. They, after all, didn’t have the same knowledge as he.
Everything appeared to be in order. Taking a breath to steel himself, the boy stepped into the smaller glyph, careful not to smudge his efforts.
He stood in the centre, staring at the empty circle opposite. He was so close to proving his objective, but never had he felt so uncertain with his postulations. So much could so easily go wrong; from mispronouncing or mistiming his spells, to his ideas being entirely incorrect. After all, there was a reason why this, why fomicry was a forbidden art.
A shiver ate its way down his spine. Well, he had to start at some point.
The seven syllables of Creation were easy enough, and, as planned, it was a matter of just over three seconds before a shapeless mass of pure fonons formed in the larger glyph. The boy waited a beat, and, breathing steadily, spoke the necessary words to bind the fonons into a human guise.
As the light began to fade, trapped within the growing body, the boy spoke the words of Summoning, reaching out for the exact fonic frequency he needed.
He spoke the departed’s name three times, body twitching but voice remaining impassive as a regular sound faintly reached his ears. The screeching of armour, he realised.
Panic seized him. He needed a minute, perhaps less if pushed — nine for the spirit to hear its name, one for it to wake, six for it to return from the fonbelt into the world, ten to seal the spirit to its new body, and just over three more to bind it to his will.
Knights spilled through both entrances to the cave he stood in, weapons drawn, helmets down. Clearly, he’d crossed the line this time; he wasn’t going to return alive. It had certainly taken them long enough to comprehend that he wasn’t about to be dissuaded from his ideas.
The boy’s heart skipped a beat — was that his sister he could hear sobbing, somewhere behind him? Not that it really mattered; he couldn't stop now, even if he wanted to. The only way to stop was either die or complete the proceedings. And even that could all-too-easily end in death as well.
Almost unconsciously, his foot had been tapping out the seconds as they passed. Now was the tricky part: speaking the first syllable of Confinement exactly as the spirit formed.
Sharp eyes caught the slightest disturbance to the essence of the matter in the larger glyph, the boy speaking the first syllable as his eyes slid shut. With any luck, the knights wouldn’t realise his intentions until it was too late. He had tried to keep his voice resigned.
His foot continued to bounce away.
The knights were no fools, he realised that much. They were simply waiting, wondering the risks of interfering: after all, no-one knew the consequences of interrupting the casting of a fonic arte; too much time had passed for true accounts to be recalled. Even so, it was only a matter of time before one thought to throw his sister into the nearest glyph.
Hopefully, it would take more than ten seconds for that to occur, or the results would be rather messy, he thought.
Four...
Unfortunately, somebody realised exactly what he wished they wouldn’t: his sister was shoved forward, and from the sound of it, stumbling over his feet in fear.
Three...
She had better not step against either glyph, he thought angrily, or all his studying would be rendered useless by that simple movement.
Two...
Surely, she could stall for a second or more; it wasn’t that difficult to stumble and fall on purpose. She would certainly be shaking enough for it to be mistaken as genuine.
One...
No such luck, he thought sourly as his foot counted the final second. He spoke the second syllable, binding the spirit to the body he had created.
Pure energy crackled in the air as his sister was forced against the outer edge of the glyph, his voice still ringing. But which had happened first?
Now it begins...
His nerves drummed. That had all seemed a little too easy, a little too fast. Had he forgotten something, made an amateur mistake? No — surely, in that case, the fonic imbalances caused should have destroyed both him and anything else in the immediate vicinity.
He turned to face the knights behind him, unable to observe the fruits of his design, too afraid of failure. His sister’s gaze as she fell against him wasn’t much better; disgust and terror struggled for dominance.
The circle was broken — everything inside either glyph was free. Free to be killed.
He had known, deep down, that it would come to this. No doubt the knights now moving behind him had already destroyed his art, failed or not; next would be him and the girl shuddering by his side.
Boots crunched over the gravel, somewhere behind him. The boy didn’t look — although he did wonder why he could only hear one set of footsteps — too preoccupied by the knights fanning out around him. For some reason, their body language seemed repulsed, but more importantly they were still intent on his elimination.
Had he been the religious sort, the boy would have dropped to his knees and prayed to Lorelei for a quick death, as his sister was doing at that moment.
‘O darkened storm cloud, loose thy blade and run mine enemy through!’
Odd, he thought distractedly; the voice sounded too mature by far to be mistaken for a person foolhardy enough to cast what sounded like a fonic arte in the old fashion. And yet, he could feel the fonons resonating with an unparalleled power in the spoken chant as in the air around him.
‘Thunder Blade!’
The cavern seemed to convulse in size at the sheer amount of power drawn from the surroundings without prior warning. Lightning blazed, blinding the boy as it crashed against the company of knights, killing them all instantly.
Ice sunk through him as he slowly tore his gaze from the charred remains and twisted to meet the piercing, red-eyed gaze of the man behind him. He’d forgotten to bind the spirit to his will — he had no control over it. His cursing, however, was buried beneath a prickle of excitement: he’d succeeded where all others had failed.
He had revived Malkuth’s infamous Necromancer.