Professor Kal - Chapter 84

“Slow… and steady. Slow… and steady.” Ryan repeated to himself over and over as he slowly cranked the rib-spreaders, wincing as the man’s sternum cracked open like an egg.

Professor Kal had told him that the first thing that needed to be done, was to give the ‘meat puppets’, as he so tastefully called them, a power source. The small wagon of mana stones that Princess Alessandria had given him, proved useful in this aspect, only taking a few moments for the man to find two stones the size of two of his fists put together.

Once you found one that met your needs, you needed to remove the heart of your ‘puppet’, making room for the stone. This was Ryan’s current step, and he was having a few issues with dissecting a human. When Professor Kal had originally told him that necromancers were not inherently evil, he believed him. Now, as he was actively removing parts from a member of the Church of the Dawn, he was beginning to think otherwise.

“Alright. Once you have the ribs opened up, the heart is easily accessible. Take your scalpel and just cut it out.” Professor Kal instructed, as he quickly removed the heart of the priest as an example.

Taking ahold of the cold metal tool, Ryan clenched his jaw as he used his free hand to move aside the lungs of the paladin. Residual warmth reminded him that the man had not died too long ago, that thought made him sick to his stomach. He’d killed men before, that night that he and Laura were attacked. He didn’t feel remorse for taking such actions but digging around someone’s insides was quite a bit different and would take some time to get used to.

Once he had cut the organ free from the man’s chest, he held it in his hand, feeling the weight of it. For such a large man, it only made sense that his heart would be large as well, and Ryan inspected it with fascination. Surgery was viewed as barbaric, as such, there was very little knowledge on the anatomy of the human body. So, having a chance to have a peek at what was hidden beneath the skin was irresistible for Ryan to pass up, his hesitation at dismembering another human-being nowhere to be seen.

“Here.” Professor Kal handed him a clear crystal jar filled with a yellowish fluid. “Put it in here, you can play with it later.”

Doing as he was told; Ryan plopped the organ into the jar and picked up the glowing mana stone that was sitting on a small table next to him. The next step in the process was to place the stone inside the now empty cavity, making sure to anchor it to the surrounding tissue with mithril thread. He had a little trouble tying a sufficient knot around the stone to keep it in place, but after a few failed attempts, managed to secure it.

“Good.” Professor Kal said. “Now sew him back up and we’ll move on to the next step.”

The professor was much faster than he was, his sutures were aligned perfectly, and were of equal length. It was clear that the man had done this sort of thing several times before, causing Ryan to start to question his past. Alas, he knew better than to pry, he valued his life much too highly. After cutting the final stitch, Ryan backed away from the operating table, relieved to be finished with the grisly work.

“Now we need to place the bodies on top of the magical arrays.” Professor Kal said, pulling out his macabre looking pipe and igniting it with the tip of his finger.

Ryan was halfway back to the tables by the time he realized the Professor had no intention of helping. “You can’t expect me to do this by myself!”

“Of course not, I’ll take care of mine.” Professor Kal said, waving his hand, causing two large summoning circles to appear on the ground on either side of where he was sitting.

The runes and geometric shapes spun as the circles grew in diameter, finally stopping at about five feet around for each. Out of the hard packed dirt that the basement floor consisted of, two massive embodiments of death clawed their way into their plane. They were outfitted in coal black armor, each of the same make, but boasting different etchings that decorated their surfaces.

Ryan was close enough to see their rotted skin through the gaps in the full plate armor. Two pairs of ice blue eyes followed the boy as he walked around the hulking brutes, inspecting them with eyes full of wonder and excitement; he even ran his hands over their textured armor, feeling the chill emanating from their undead bodies.

“Are these death knights? I read about them in the Necronomicon you gave me.”

“Don’t get too close, they could kill you with a sneeze.” Professor Kal said with a chuckle as the boy pulled away with a start.

“Such a scaredy cat.” The Professor said before giving an order to the two death knights.

The two summoned undead marched over to the priest’s corpse with surprisingly silent steps. With one on either end, they lifted the drained body off of the cold table and brought it over to the magical array on the ground. After gingerly placing the body over the circle, taking great care not to smudge any of the runes, the two death knights took up position off to the side, motionless.

“What about the other one?” Ryan questioned.

“Consider it a part of your training. Move that big ole slab of meat over onto the circle without ruining it, should be easy enough.” Professor Kal said, leaning back into his furry chair and attempting to make rings of aromatic smoke with his pipe.

Ryan stood there for a few seconds, slack jawed and frustrated. He was already exhausted from the several hours of magical array construction and amateur surgery, now he had to move a near three-hundred-pound man nearly twenty feet by himself, all without ruining the chalk drawn magical array. Closing his open mouth, he cursed his lot in life yet again that day, rolled up his sleeves then set about moving the man’s corpse.

After a few failed attempts of rolling the man off the table and onto his shoulders, he took a step back to catch his breath. His current approach would never work, he could try summoning like Professor Kal had, but his level of proficiency in that area of magic was lacking compared to the others. He could summon about five goblins, maybe two zombies, or a single ghoul, but that was it. None of those would be able to help accomplish the task he was given, he had to think of another way.

Pulling the grim looking Necronomicon that the Professor had given him out of his storage ring, he began to flip through the yellowed pages looking for any spell that might be useful. There were several summoning spells that would allow him to summon monsters large enough to lift the man, but his mental fortitude was far from strong enough to overpower the creatures. If he failed to control them with his mind, they wouldn’t hesitate to attack him, devouring him whole.

Skipping over the summoning section, he found himself skimming through the curses, then the mind control, which would be helpful if the paladin was still alive. He paused at an interesting spell that allowed the user to enter the astral realm through astral projection. Astral projection allowed the mage to walk through walls and ignore other physical obstacles, but still be able to observes the physical realm without being detectable. Impure thoughts raced through his head as he envisioned what a few of the female guests were hiding beneath their clothes, what Laura would look like in Professor Treffle’s room…

Shaking his head and filing those thoughts away for later, he dogeared the page before moving on. Turning the last page, he reached the end of the Necronomicon. There was nothing in there he could use, either due to his lack of experience, or his poor mental fortitude. Thus, he was forced to think outside of the box.

After racking his tired brain for a few more minutes, Ryan came up with a solution. “Hey Professor, I bet you can’t…”

“Don’t even try it. You’re nowhere near smart enough to try and trick me.” Professor Kal said mockingly as his smoke rings gradually began to form perfect circles with each attempt.

Grumbling, Ryan returned to rubbing his temples in a vain attempt to coax his brain in producing a miracle. Like a steel trap, nothing escaped from the pit that was his imagination. Finally in a fit of frustration, he decided that if he couldn’t move the man to the circle, he would move the circle to the man.

Reciting from memory, he spoke words of power as the ground began to shake subtly. With an explosive ‘crack’, a fracture appeared between the two magical arrays. Adjusting his spell, he turned the hard-packed earth that made up the basement floor into a liquified state that led right up to the table holding up the paladin’s corpse. Continuing to chant, Ryan coaxed the slab of hard ground he had broken off containing his magical array into the river of rolling earth, guiding it on its journey across the room.

Once the slab was in position, he cut off his mana from the spell, then pushed the body with all his might. Rolling off of the table, and landing onto the hard ground with a sickening ‘thump’, the paladin’s body lay splayed out over the magical array. Nodding his head in satisfaction with another job well done, Ryan turned to find out how he did on the test.

Professor Kal was standing there with his arms crossed and shaking his head. “You ruined my floor, and I hope the king appreciated all the shaking while he was taking a shit!”

Ryan’s face reddened with embarrassment as he tried to downplay the raucous he caused. “It wasn’t that bad… see, it didn’t even knock over your jars.”

He pointed over to several jars containing varying specimens, sitting precariously on some shelves hanging on the stone walls. Although their contents sloshed around quite a bit, the containers they were in were unharmed. Professor Kal shook his head once again in disappointed resignation, standing from his chair and moving over to where his magic circle was drawn on the ground.

Taking a seat and crossing his legs, he continued on with the lesson. “Now, as long as your little stunt hasn’t damaged anything, everything should be ready for the next step. Listen closely.”

Professor Kal adjusted his position before continuing. “The spell, like I said before, is called ‘Transference’.. What that means is that you will move, or transfer, your soul into the body you have prepared.”