Adamant Blood 446

Before Mark could just slot in a fourth ‘Ability’ and use it alongside everything else he had, Mark knew his soulhouse worked a certain way when it ca to using new Abilities. He had even given this information out to others, like Addavein and anyone else who cared to watch his house experint videos. System Pri had even told him how it worked, because Mark had asked about switching out Abilities before.

Either he could switch out one of his current Powers, which the System called Abilities, for sothing new, or he could put his whole house into a kind of ‘sleep mode’ and use the Ability without actually slotting it at all. This ca at the cost of completely disabling all of his current Powers. Mark hadn’t done this at all. Not yet. But only because he didn’t have any realextra Powers sitting around in his soulhouse until about 3 weeks ago, when he learned how to extract Bindings from other things, starting with the cows.

He had thought about slotting in Water Shaper, just because it reminded him of Dad, but… No.

He had made a few Incomplete Powers before then, mainly Healthy Body and a few others. Mark could have used those and subjected himself to all the horrors of having another Incomplete Power episode, with a body that lost all feeling and with a mind that slowly lost itself to Dragon Wake… or he could just go to sleep with his Incomplete Power and see what happened when he woke up. Probably nothing. According to System Pri, those Incomplete Powers needed to be grown and stretched by living life in order to make them stabilized Powers.

Ain’t nobody got ti for that.

Another thing that nobody had ti for was the process of shutting down and stripping out all the parts of his house that contained Adamantine Immortal, Adamantiumkinesis, or Union, in order to slot Necromancer into those places.

Mark did not want to start using 4 Powers at all. Not yet. Maybe not for a long ti.

But he still needed to experint with Necromancer, and fast. So Mark had a little think, sitting on the upper deck of the small ship, flying back to Domal’Takela after the mausoleum excursion.

The breeze was great, and Mark was mostly alone, decompressing properly this ti. Most everyone was inside of the ship as they had been when Mark went hunting for ghouls and ghosts and liches. It had been the work of a few minutes to completely evacuate the Green House, but everyone was in the small ship, though Derek was still also the Green House.

Addavein stood behind Mark, about 7 ters away, on guard.

Mark took a breath, and got to working out this Necromancer-Power-thing.

First of all, Mark didn’t want to permanently use Necromancer at all. It was a ans to an end. Secondly, Mark couldn’t ‘just use Necromancer’ without taking sothing out, even though he could, but he didn’t want everyone to know that he could use a Fourth Binding, which was long-thought to be impossible. Fourth Bindings turned a person into a monster, every single ti. Elves kinda broke that rule, maybe? Mark wasn’t sure. He wasn’t really an elf, even if System Pri said he was. So Mark wasn’t going to straight-up use Necromancer alongside everything else, even though he could. Thirdly, all of his other Powers were going to interfere with his ability to understand his new Ability.

So Mark was pretty sure he was just going to ‘make his house dormant’ and use Necromancer without actually using it.

And yet… What would that do to him? He had never actually tried using an Ability like this at all, but System Pri said it was possible… right? Actually, there was one easy decision to make. Mark could just ask again.

Mark said, “System Call, Help. What happens to my house and self when I use a stored Ability without slotting it?”

Archived Abilities that are Incomplete can be used at any ti, though their functionality will be greatly hampered until they are Complete.

Archived Abilities that are Complete can be used at any ti, at full strength, without slotting them.

In all cases of using Archived Abilities:

The user gives up all other Abilities while using a temporary Ability.

Familiars are unaffected, but you cannot use any temporary Abilities that exist in the category of your familiar. You must remove the familiar to use another Ability in that slot.

Houses cannot be changed and currently-assigned Abilities cannot be used or altered while temporarily using an Archived Ability. This is typically called ‘shuttering’ the house.

Should death result from the use of an Archived Ability, or during the ti when you are using an Archived Ability, then you will revert to your full, normal loadout, and revive as per whatever paraters you are currently set to use.

Special Warning: So Abilities you have slotted will function strangely if you attempt to shutter your house with them active, in your current setting. The affected Abilities are: Adamantium Immortal.

It is advised that you do not shutter your house with an elental body active, or else you will temporarily experience life as a non-normal existence.

“Ahh…” Mark said, looking at his skin.

It looked like pale flesh, but it was all adamantium. If he shuttered his house and just picked up Necromancy right now, that would make it difficult to practice Necromancy, even temporarily, because his body would… what? Die? Instantly? Or… Probably not, actually. He’d just be a ‘non-normal existence’...

“System Help: What is a non-normal existence?”

Invalid Query

“Hmm.”

… Maybe he’d just be an adamantium elental? Maybe switching out for Necromancy would cause… a loss of mana? For an elental? Mark had seen elental-body people lose all their mana before. He had even caused it in a few people, most notably that mist woman and gore body guy back in Kabberjaw, when they were invading the raider’s cove to get back their gravcrystal.

Mark suspected that if he temporarily used Necromancy, right now, he would turn into a tal statue. He might be able to still move around, maybe, but it would be difficult… But! He did have a Physicality setting in his status that let him toggle how much his Adamantium Immortal body was visible. Mark suspected that elves had had this exact sa issue he was looking at, and that’s why the Physicality system existed.

Mark asked, “System Call, Help: Can I turn my Physicality to Weak and not be subjected to the bad outco of that special warning you just gave ?”

Attempting to use an Archived Ability with an Elental Body will cause issues without first setting yourself to Weak or Strong. Weak will give you a PL of 0, across the board, while using an Archived Ability. Strong will give you your full PL, and you will be considered an elental, subject to the normal things elentals are subject to. Either solution works to alleviate the special warning.

Mark grinned, and then he said, “System Call, set physicality to Strong.”

Mark’s skin turned blacker than black, his slight hunger faded, he felt truly awake because his need for sleep was gone, and he put on about 3000 pounds. He cracked right through the chair underneath his ass and then right into the deck, tal tearing, wood cracking and snapping, and suddenly Eliot was on the comms.

“MARK! The fuck? Oh. Uh. You good? I don’t see an attack anywhere?”

Isoko and Sally were already sticking their heads out of the stairwell, looking at Mark—

“We’re fine,” Addavein said to the girls, and also to everyone down inside the ship, “We’re not under attack. He just switched his physicality to strong.”

“Sorry Eliot!” Mark said, levering himself out of the hole in the ship. Eliot’s vector swam through the ship, repairing it as Mark moved, steel replacing wood underneath, and soon the chair he had been sitting in was back, and full steel. Mark sat down. Several thousand kilos of adamantium did not break the chair, and wouldn’t, as long as Mark didn’t try and break it. “Thanks, Eliot.”

Eliot said, “50 kiloters to our destination in Central Aluatha airspace. Slowing down, as per regulations.”

Isoko and Sally eyed Mark… but then they went back down.

After a mont of silence, Addavein asked, “Are you trying to figure out which one to ditch for Necromancy?”

“Pretty much,” Mark said, as his feet crunched the surface of the ship and he winced. “I’m leaning toward Adamantiumkinesis, but I could just shutter my house and be an adamantium elental for a while and forgo everything, and then I can switch back fast. Kinda heavy, though. Forgot about that. The alternative is pulling Adamantiumkinesis out of my house and… putting that stuff in storage? But I got soooo much Adamantiumkinesis everywhere. It’s fundantal! So I’m leaning toward figuring out how to temporarily use Archived Abilities, which ans shuttering the house like it said— Oh. Sorry. I forgot to have the answers displayed to everyone?”

Addavein shook his head a little, saying, “Don’t worry about sharing everything… And shutter your house. That ans you can’t use Union, yes?”

“Yeah, which ans the Understanding Party will be logistically difficult, so… I’m trying to figure out how to thread this whole thing.”

Addavein nodded sagely, wing-cloak fluttering in the breeze. He had been looking concerned in a general sort of way ever since the eldritch threat was revealed this morning, but then Mark had co back from killing Buckler and Lancer, and now Addavein was looking concerned in a very personal, brotherly sort of way. Also a little proud, which seed to be strange for him, if Mark’s Unionsensing was correct.

Mark found himself liking that Addavein was proud of him, and that was kinda weird, but it was whatever.

Addavein suggested, “You won’t be using Necromancy at the Understanding Party, except intermittently. It’ll be a cram session of techniques and tool usage, because Arcane Bindings are not like any other Power. They’re tools with specific use-cases. So switch it out as needed, and just be an elental during those tis. I doubt anyone could do anything against you as an adamantium elental, anyway, and if you have Necromancy slotted then you’re automatically strong against anything a Necromancer could do against you, anyway.” He added, offhandedly, “Doubt they’d do anything, though.”

Mark nodded a little, saying, “That’s where I was headed with this, too… So what is Necromancy, exactly? What does the ‘tool’ look like?”

Addavein lined up his thoughts, and then he explained, “Bolter, for example, lets you shape your mana into a delivery system to impact a designated target. The Power of Bolter is a very simple thing that becos endlessly complex when you get down to it. Sam at the settlent with his Threadmaker that lays down trails of monowire-strong mana? That is a specialized Bolter Spell that doesn’t actually do what Sam can make it do without a lot of skill. You absolutelycannot get to Threadmaker with just Bolter without a lotof experience and personal skill,” Addavein said, “The Power Necromancy is more like Bolter than Threadmaker, but with Elental Death, and with the specific capability to imbue corpses with Elental Death in order to raise those corpses from death.

“Everything about Necromancy stems from that capability, because ‘what is a corpse’ is a huge question, and Elental Death is one of the most varied mana types in existence. It’s also one of the densest types of manas, being derived from iron, just like Elental Life, and it can replace Life Mana rather easily if you do it right. It can replace most mana types, most physical structures, and it can ld with all existing mana types rather easily. You can even imbue living things with Elental Death and kill them and raise them at the sa ti, thereby locking the dead thing and all that it is into a symbiotic relationship with you if you do it right, but that sort of system demands you know what you’re doing.

“Necromancers can kill things very, very well by shoving undirected Death into sothing and replacing necessary parts inside of the target with that undirected Death. That’s why we use Death Mana beams at the top of every pyramid of Crytalis.

“Perhaps the most important thing to rember with Necromancer is that there is nothinginherent to the Power that makes the created undead obey the master. Only the skill of the master can do that, and that skill requires a specific imbuent of the mories of dead things in a specific way. To do that you have to turn all positive vectors, like love and companionship and deference, toward you, but without turning the creature insane in the process. Any sort of emotional trigger-switching that puts the master high in the priorities of the living thing will cause the kind of deference that you see between a typical Necromancer and a summoned creature.” Addavein finished with, “And that’s basically the entire Arcane School of Necromancy, but to call that an adequate explanation of Necromancy is like saying all of dicine is simply making sure the body parts are all in the right positions.”

Mark had known so of that, but he had not known most of that. The part about how Death replaced Life was pretty well known to everyone who spent a few years killing monsters. Mark had learned that back when that big Elental Death kaiju turtle had shown up at the settlent, when their goblin problems had started. Mark didn’t know that Necromancer was basically an Elental Death ‘Shaper’… But that wasn’t really true, was it?

Mark began, “Rekaro Solari once told that the System gives no Powers that can Shape Mana directly, except for the three mana tals. But it sounds like Necromancer can shape Elental Death? Oh! And… I don’t actually have Elental Death mana, so… Uh. Can I use Necromancer at all?”

“The ability to shape types of mana with an actual Skill from the System, such as Adamantiumkinesis, does exist, but the theoretical ‘Prismatic Mana Shaper’ or ‘Water Mana Shaper’ or anything like that does not exist, but, as you are learning, theory and practice are two different things, and the Power Bolter certainly exists, and so does Necromancer. Both Bolter and Necromancer allow for the shaping of the user’s and the world’s mana. So the truth of that matter is a debated topic, so it’s not surprising that he would say that.” Addavein continued, “As for you actually using Necromancer without Elental Death mana, this is not a concern. No living person has Death mana without doing so very deadly things to themselves, but a lot of living people have Necromancer. What happens is that the iron in the person, which is where Life Mana cos from, is turned into Death Mana by Necromancer, or they use external Death mana, which is more dangerous and harder to do.

“And just as you know adamantium can mimic other mana types, other manas can do the sa… with difficulty, in most cases. I don’t foresee any issues with you using Necromancer.

“However!

“I knowthere will be issues. I estimate that you will have an issue with specificity versus versatility, because all living things need both, but you are adamantium and thus have an abundance of specificity. At the sa ti, if you give your constructs a goal, they will go out and achieve that goal.”

Addavein was doing that ‘explain too much and whatever sticks, sticks’.

Mark asked, “The purpose of all of this is to create books of life, so specificity seems good? But like with that life-sucking sword I made and which Tartu pulled apart, solidity ans no growth or change, which ans… What, exactly? For a book of life?”

“I have no idea, which is probably why that readout from System Pri said that to get to a book of life from Necromancer would take a great deal of personal skill.”

Mark nodded a little, thinking.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringent.

Addavein decided to continue, “The major use of Necromancer is to create constructs for defense or attack, and most living and unliving entities experience great emotional pain when being constrained by forces outside of their control. I imagine you’d be able to use Necromancer well enough to make a book of life, since creating constructs to deploy later is sothing Necromancer does. You just won’t include all of the usual constraints to control a monster to make sure it doesn’t attack you. Indeed, you’ll have to leave a lot open, and attempt as little control as possible. Just take a look at yourself and pretty much your entire adult life, now imagine that one of your friends just summoned you back to life, but they included normal Necromancer controls to institute loyalty from you.”

… The fuck?

Mark laughed, and then he scoffed at the very idea of Eliot or whoever summoning him and then controlling him.

Mark declared, “I would go fucking nuts.”

Addavein smirked a little, and he seed to relax so, the tension of his concern for Mark’s emotional state alleviating.

… Oh, Mark realized. Other people would be afraid of becoming mind-enslaved if they joined his soulhouse as a book of life. Addavein had been slightly worried about exactly that. Eliot would be terrified as fuck.

Oh.

Oh shit. Okay.

Uh.

Addavein watched Mark’s face and Mark knew that Addavein knew that Mark knew what Addavein was wary about. And then Addavein grinned.

Addavein said, “Exactly. But enough about that.”

“I think I need to know more about that, though,” Mark said.

Addavein shook his head. “As long as you’re aware, then that’s enough for now. Other problems co first.

“Necromancy also has the Conflicting Problems Problem. That occurs much more than master/slave breakdowns. These are living things, sort of, so being too specific with your instructions ans, for example, that if you tell your creature to attack sothing that you have already told it not to attack previously, then you’re going to run into a bad ti. That’s the Conflicting Problems Problem, and having your monster go out of control is practically a rite of passage for a Necromancer or even a non-Powered necromancer.”

Mark had an uncomfortable feeling about Necromancy that he never really thought about before now. He asked, “Are all necromantic constructs living things?”

Mark expected ‘no’.

And then Addavein humd, unsure how to proceed.

That was worrying.

“Weeeellll…” Addavein said, “Now this is a very specific, high level thing that I’m going to tell you, and it’s also a beginner lesson. Here’s the beginner lesson: When you use Elental Death to kill sothing, you fully replace its living existence with death, and the dead thing kinda acts like it did in life, if you left the corpse intact enough. It will even have mories from the brain and stuff like that. This absolutely kills the person. The soul moves on. What you have, at the end of the day, is a ghost in that body. That’s what ghosts are. Psychic impressions left over from a departed soul. Ghosts are 99% of the ti not souls. If you can control the Elental Death well enough, replacing mories and the like, you can make a loyal servant, etcetera etcetera.

“BUT!

“And here’s the high level part:

“If you can encapsulate the soulwith Elental Death, keeping it alive, in a manner of speaking, which is to say tricking it into thinking it is still alive and possessed of a body, you can do a lot with that living soul. You can rip out the soul, you can keep it in a crystal for later use, and when you put the soul into a body you have already healed with any number of corpse magics, you can sort ofresurrect a person, provided the body you stick them into is the sa as their old one, or… There’s a lot to that. Too much to get into, from how you can use Necromancy to heal the body in the interim, mimicking Life Mana but very much not, to how you can use Necromancy to have that body do sothing for you, mimicking the original person, and then, when you’re done you can put the soul back in and have no one realize what happened. If you are good enough, the original person won’t even realize they weren’t in their body.” Addavein added, “There are about a thousand caveats to that, but at the end of the day the original soul in any sort of bodyis still a living person, as long as you haven’t let them pass on.”

That was a lot.

Mark nodded a little, knowing that he would be looking at Quark’s recording of this talk when he got so ti. Mark asked, “Will you be at the Understanding Party later?”

“Undoubtedly.”

Mark had a sudden thought. During Nobody Important’s attack on the settlent, Addavein had done sothing like what he had just described. Mark asked, “Is that what you did to that guy with Parry, when Nobody Important attacked?”

Addavein nodded with authority. “Yes.”

Mark had another question. “You have adamantium mana now, don’t you? How has that affected your casting?”

Addavein easily said, “There are so nuances that I’ve had to learn. You’ll learn them, too.”

Mark nodded a little.

Domal’Takela was there on the horizon, like the biggest glass pyramid around, and all the sky was a sunset red and gold. The actual gastructure of the inner lands was deep below the glass, like a pile of white stones highlighted by the setting sun. Mark thought it quite beautiful.

And then Mark told Addavein, “Switching out for a minute to see if I die or not.”

Addavein nodded, focusing.

Mark closed his eyes, and then he was inside of his soulho, standing in his extraction room, in the secondary building of his demiplane. All of the Abilities he had gathered from the monsters of the mausoleum were inside of his filing system, in the New category of Abilities. Mark still hadn’t organized them into the rest of his system. He’d do that later.

For now, Mark pulled out one of the several Necromancer Powers he had taken from the liches, and he held it out, saying, “System Call, shutter the house and activate Necromancer.”

Mark woke up, still seated on the chair on the deck, still fully-black adamantium… But everything felt very, very different. Unionsense was gone, and so was his ability to shift and shape the adamantium in his body, and his body was… sort of the sa? Very different, though, or at least it felt that way. He felt… heavy. But in a simple way—

Addavein asked Mark, “Did it work?”

Mark had to pause.

Addavein was a beacon of brightness in his sight, like Mark’s fragnt of a divine mirror was on full-blast and that was absolutely the soul of a dragon, but Mark was also seeing sothing else, sothing deeper. Addavein was full of life, for sure. But Mark also saw sothing else. Sothing almost… tangible in the air around him.

It was not sothing he could control with kinesis, like how Mark had been controlling adamantium.

It was more like…

It was sort of like his Adamantiumkinesis’s sense of adamantium. Like Mark could see sothing that he could control, if he got close enough. The disconnect between seeing it with his eyes and not being able to control it already was fucking with him.

Addavein noticed, and said, “It appears that fragnt of a divine mirror you have is working even with your house shuttered?”

“Maybe? Could just be Necromancer itself? The PL is at 99 already. It would not be strange to have a suddenly-different set of eyes to see with.”

Addavein humd, then said, “So what are you seeing? What does it look like to you, to have Necromancer?”

“Like seeing adamantium I cannot touch. It’s just right… there. You’re full of it? But it’s also… purple and bright and dark at the sa ti?”

Addavein nodded, and he fully understood… or at least Mark assud he did. Mark was flying blind here, even if he could see really well. Unionsense was gone.

And his body was completely different, too.

Mark lifted his hands and flexed his fingers, and he was happy to report, “I’m an adamantium elental like this— Oh.” He held up his hands. His fingernails were kinda sharp and crystalline instead of black-colored-human-fingernails. The adamantium of his arms curved where it should have curved, but his elbows were angular. He touched his face, and his sense of touch was dim, but he could still feel how angular his jaw was, and the sharpness of his nose. “Does it look weird?”

Quark precipitated out of his forearm like rcury flowing through a sieve, saying, “You look rather solid, sir.”

Addavein said, “Looks like you didn’t die.”

“I did not! … Say? Can you Adamantiumkinesis ? Elentals hate it when you Shape them.”

“Let’s try,” Addavein said.

Addavein lifted his hand and brushed sothing epheral across Mark’s shoulder and bicep that caused Mark to flinch hard, anger flowing. Mark’s skin suddenly spiked out, his flesh turning draconic and sharp with scales and hate and… Mark took a mont. He didn’t breathe, but he still centered himself.

When Mark opened his eyes again his skin was back to being solid and angular, but there might have been a bit of scale-pattern to it. He wasn’t sure. It was kinda dark.

“Wow! Okay,” Mark said, voice rough with rage, “That was rough.”

Addavein had stopped a minute ago. Now, he said, “That’s an elental’s response to being Shaped alright.”

Mark breathed out, though he didn’t need to breathe at all, centering himself. And then he said, “I can see why elentals really do notlike being Shaped!”

Addavein asked, “Do you see the Elental Death in your body?”

Mark had to frown at that, because as he looked at his body, as he sensed out himself, he felt nothing. Mark said, “No. It’s just adamantium.”

“Usually Necromancers produce so Death mana, but they are usually living things to start with and Life goes to Death rather easily, and elentals never have mana in them that isn’t theirs… ” Addavein held out a bright hand, claws open, death funneling into the space above his palm. It was like bright purple darkness and light. Like everything at once. He simply said, “Here. Try touching this.”

Mark reached out and grasped the mana in Addavein’s palm and it was like he hadn’t realized he was dying of thirst until that thirst was suddenly gone. Mark gasped as Death flowed into his astral body, into ethereal veins and deep into his core, to the space where his heart would have been if it had been beating. That purple light beca a mockery of a cardiovascular system as it threaded through his body.

The harsh edges of Mark’s elental body softened, and though he remained adamantium-black, he felt more like a person. His claws turned to nails, and his elbows rounded out.

Mark chuckled a little, saying, “Wow, okay. That’s… Thank you? Was that just mana?”

“Just Death mana, yes. Hmm…” Addavein looked at Mark, eyes flickering with a certain depth, and then he pulled back and said, “Looks like you won’t produce Death mana on your own like a normal Necromancer, but you can still store and use it… Hmm. Switch back, and I’ll give so final thoughts before we land. It’ll probably be painful to switch back, just so you know. Necromancer has a lot of safeguards against Death mana.”

Mark nodded, and then he closed his eyes.

He opened his eyes on the porch of his house, and everything was darker. Drabber. He held the blueprint for Necromancer in his hands, and it shone with a purple-darklight brilliance that Mark recognized hanging in the corners of the sky, and below the grasses, and in the corners. Death was in his house, but it wasn’t hurting anything. It was rely there, existing as a part of normalcy.

“System Call, unshutter the house,” Mark said, as he put the blueprint for Necromancer back into the filing cabinet—

Mark opened his eyes in the real world, feeling sick and instantly coughing. A purple brightness left him like painful ooze, and Mark Unioned with Good and Bad and that helped a lot. The Death Mana evaporated into the breeze as Mark breathed, his heart pumping well, his body feeling better.

Addavein humd, nodding a little, as he looked down at Mark.

Derek, currently flying the ship, brought it through the check point in the glass, and headed toward the Green House far ahead.

“System Call, Set Physicality to Variable.” As Mark’s skin faded to a paleness that would embarrass even the most indoorsy of shut-ins, he asked Addavein, “You were saying?”

“All of the stranger Arcane Powers have so nuances, and the school of Necromancy has one, too. You need Death Mana in order to do anything with it, and it appears adamantium elentals don’t make Death Mana at all. Or perhaps it’s your Immortal body that you’re inheriting from your shuttered house that is causing this deficit. Necromancers can usually turn their Life Mana into Death Mana directly. But youwill need to do as everyone else does. You will need to make a small Death Mana collector to use when you’re Necromancing, or, you’ll need to make a twist in your Binding to allow you to transform Adamantium mana into Death mana. So practitioners of Death Magic have monsters that they keep around to create Death mana for them. I transform my Adamantium into Death. You can do that, or you can get a collector. A collector would work well enough for small castings, and that might be all you do with this.”

Mark nodded, and then he stood up, saying, “Thank you, Addavein, for all of that assistance. You probably cut my learning curve by a lot. And thank you for watching over everyone while I was indisposed.”

Addavein smiled, and then he nodded, almost as a matter of course, saying, “Say nothing of it; It’s what talzarki are for~”