048

  Paul’s POV

  Paul did not remain at the clay pits.

  There was nothing left there that required his attention tonight. The work would continue whether he watched it or not. What mattered now was compliance, timing, and the elimination of ambiguity.

  By the time he reached the interior yard near the northern palisade, the first of the undead had already taken position. Skeletons spaced themselves along the perimeter without instruction, spears grounded, skulls angled outward. Their presence closed the space more effectively than walls. Anyone inside would feel watched. Anyone outside would not approach.

  The yard was dry, packed earth worn smooth by feet and carts. Torchlight threw long, uneven shadows against the palisade logs. The smell here was different than at the pits—less wet clay, more smoke and old blood. Familiar ground.

  He considered spacing. Sightlines. Where the goblins would cluster if left unguided. Where Grag would stand if uncertain. Where Pasxi would place herself if present—close enough to hear, far enough not to be singled out.

  None of it required adjustment. This was not instruction yet. This was staging.

  He did not announce purpose. Purpose created speculation. Speculation created variance.

  An animal was a simple requirement. Everyone understood animals. They hunted them. Trapped them. Ate them. Sometimes they kept them alive longer than necessary for reasons Paul did not catalog unless those reasons interfered with output.

  If there was confusion, it would surface soon enough. Confusion was data. Paul folded his hands behind his back and waited.

  Two of the air tethered goblins returned first. Both had verdant leapers. Giant spiders native to the Deepwood. The verdant leapers were about a foot long with leafy green bodies and iridescent blue along the legs and fangs. Their giant eyes observed everything around them. Since arriving in the Deepwood, Paul had noticed its assortment of spiders and the fact that the goblins of Gravewell seemed to keep some as pets.

  More fire tethers showed up with verdant leapers as well. These goblins must have just run to get their favorite pet and ran back. The necromancer couldn’t decide if they were lazy and didn’t want to go look for an animal, if they were smart and just knew they had one on hand, or scared and wanted to be fast. He supposed it didn’t matter in the end. As long as he got results.

  The sound reached him before the animal did.

  Not a bark. Not a birdcall. A thin, torn yelp, sharp enough to cut through the camp noise, rising and breaking in the same breath. It had the rough pitch of a raven’s croak, but stretched too tight—wrongly mammalian, strained by lungs that weren’t built for volume.

  It wasn’t loud so much as insistent. A sound made by something small that knew it was being carried and knew resistance was pointless. Panic without thrashing. Fear compressed into voice.

  Paul turned as Pasxi entered, the fox clutched under her arm. The creature’s mouth opened again, the yelp hitching halfway through, collapsing into a hoarse rasp before it could finish. Not pain. Not yet. Stress vocalization, he noted. Alarm. Submission. Useful.

  Pasxi looked around and when she saw an unoccupied spot, not far from Paul, but not close either she went and sat down, calming the fox. The fox was small, lean, red dulled toward rust. Healthy. Young adult. No visible injuries. Its breathing was fast but controlled, the chest never quite losing rhythm.

  It struggled only when Pasxi shifted her grip, then went still again, muscles held rather than spent. The sound it made—thin, rough—cut off the moment pressure eased. Learned restraint, not exhaustion.

  The fur lay cleaner than it should have. No matting, little debris. Stress present, panic contained. Pasxi carried it aside. The animal watched her hands, not her face. Paul marked it as viable and turned his attention back to the work, content to let it settle until he decided what it was for.

  The other tether started making their way in, with a variety of animals from small birds, chickens, rats, squirrels, rabbits, and one carrying a raccoon beaten nearly to death by a larger fire-tethered goblin.

  Grag came back in the middle of the group with a giant verdant leaper. At least twice the size of the others. It wasn’t brightly colored. Female maybe. Grag sat beside Pasxi, looking at her fox.

  “You were tested today for runes and strength.” Paul said finally, slowly. “I will demonstrate to you tonight what magic really is. You will use it to bind a familiar.”

  The necromancer scanned the faces of the goblins that were gathered. They looked attentive, but they just may have been too scared to look otherwise.

  “A familiar is a creature bound to your core that will attempt to drain you of mana. You will have to constantly fill your core with mana and resist the pull from the familiar. This constant drawing and resisting will strengthen your core and tether a lot faster than just practicing runes.

  “You must be careful, however. Not resisting enough can get you killed with a vicious mana backlash that will corrupt your core and drain it beyond the ability to keep you alive. This is about survival. When you gain strength, we can kill the familiar, so you no longer need it as a training tool, but until the familiar dies, you are at risk.

  Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

  “The bond will be painful and confusing at first. This is normal, but once you have gained strength you will be better for it. Make no mistake, this is as dangerous as any battle you will fight against another tribe. You will bring strength to the tribe if you survive or weakness will mean your death.”

  The goblins nodded. They understood strength. The need to empower the tribe. To bring more in, be more.

  “Grag, come up here first.”

  Grag got up and came to the front.

  “Grag is the strongest of you, but he can still get stronger. We need strength. Gravewell needs strength. Be strength.”

  “Yes, Master.” Grag said proudly and the other goblins mimicked him in an uneven chorus.

  Walking around Grag, Paul wrote the runes for the spell in the dirt around Grag. When it was ready, Paul gave him instructions to call mana to his core. Using his Will, Paul sent his power into Grag’s core. The goblin flinched when he felt a foreign Will touch his own.

  “Don’t resist.” Paul instructed.

  Grag swallowed and nodded. After connecting to Grag’s core, Paul sent his Will into the verdant leaper. It tried to struggle against Paul, but he dominated its Will with ease and the creature stopped struggling almost immediately. Weaving the runes he needed, Paul bound the core of the verdant leaper into Grag’s core.

  Feeding his own mana into the runes in the dirt, the necromancer could feel the mana ignite. Magic was being birthed through ritual. Nothing purer existed. Closing his eyes as the mana formed the binding spell, Paul let the spell come to life. From his core he could feel the mana wanted to live in the world. If his heart had beaten, it would have quickened. Undeath did not dull the sensation of magic, but it was different, and Paul reveled in it.

  The runes from the dirt, began to glow with white light soft and silvery. They moved along the ground, swirling towards Grag and his spider. The runes made their way up Grag’s legs and wove themselves into the new tether that bound him and his spider. Now mana would try to flow from Grag into the spider.

  “How do you feel?” Paul asked, “Let you fellows know what to expect.”

  “It reminded me of when I battle the lightning mage.” Grag said. “Like a Will battle.”

  Paul tilted his head. A Will battle? Were Will battle as simple as a dominance play like binding rituals, but with no magic? If it was that simple, what else could be weaponized?

  “Good.” Paul said. “Now you will feel the spider pulling on your tether.”

  “Yes, Master.” Grag said. “Rshikki.” The goblin swayed slightly, putting a hand on the spider. “Her name is Rshikki.”

  “Don’t let it get you killed.”

  Grag smiled down at the spider with affection.

  “Next.” Paul said.

  Paul did not repeat the explanation. They had watched Grag endure it. That was sufficient.

  He moved through the gathered goblins methodically, selecting by tether strength and core density rather than order or confidence. Fire. Air. Fire again. The weakest were left waiting. Waiting sorted itself.

  Each binding followed the same structure. Runes scored into the packed earth. Mana drawn into alignment. Will imposed. The animal’s resistance crushed, redirected inward, and folded into the goblin’s core.

  The reactions varied.

  An air-tethered goblin bound to a squirrel gasped as the familiar latched onto the connection and pulled hard, draining faster than his core could replenish. His knees buckled. Paul let it continue for three breaths, watching the core thin, the tether strain.

  “Draw,” Paul ordered.

  The goblin fumbled, then obeyed, dragging mana back into himself with clumsy effort. The familiar’s pull slowed. The goblin sagged, shaking, but remained upright.

  Exhaustion. Not collapse. Paul marked the threshold silently.

  A fire-tethered goblin paired with a chicken fared worse initially. The bird panicked at the sudden bond, pulling in erratic bursts that left the goblin pale and unsteady. He did not resist in time and slumped to the ground, chest heaving, eyes unfocused.

  Paul did not intervene immediately. The familiar continued to draw until the goblin’s core thinned to a narrow, quivering thread. Then the pull stalled. The chicken faltered, confused by the lack of flow.

  Paul severed the bond cleanly.

  The goblin lay still, breathing shallow but intact. Alive. Drained. He would recover eventually. He would try again then, and if the goblin didn’t die, Paul would continue until the goblin succeeded or died.

  Paul filed the outcome under failure state — survivable. As the bindings continued, the goblins adapted.

  They learned to anticipate the pull. To let the familiar draw just enough to strain without hollowing them out. Resistance became measured rather than panicked. Those who found the balance stabilized quickly, cores swelling under constant pressure like muscle under load.

  Paul felt the pattern emerging through the bindings, a lattice of strain and recovery. This was inefficient instruction, but effective conditioning. Across the yard, Pasxi remained where she had gone earlier.

  When her turn came, she did not rise. The fox lay quiet in her lap, eyes half-lidded, breathing slow despite the sounds of strain and groaning nearby. When another goblin faltered and dropped to one knee, the fox did not react. When Paul severed a bond, it did not tense.

  Paul registered the absence of stimulus response and returned to the work. The raccoon came late.

  It was badly injured — one eye swollen, ribs cracked, foreleg hanging at an angle. Paul would not have selected it under normal circumstances. Broken tools produced irregular data. But the goblin holding it looked expectant in the dull, hopeful way of those who had already decided the outcome.

  Paul allowed it. When he imposed his Will on the raccoon, the resistance was immediate — and oddly shaped.

  Not stronger than expected. Not weaker. Compressed.

  The raccoon’s awareness pulled inward instead of scattering, compacting around something Paul could not immediately isolate. The sensation passed quickly, leaving only a faint afterimage of structure where there should have been none.

  He completed the binding. The goblin staggered as the familiar began to draw, then steadied. The pull was uneven but not aggressive, as if the raccoon were testing the connection rather than exploiting it. The goblin laughed once, sharply, then clenched his jaw and focused on drawing mana back in.

  Paul stepped away, unsettled only in the way the unknown was.

  The yard was changed. Some goblins sat or knelt, drained and sweating. Others stood straighter than before, cores visibly denser to Paul’s senses. No one was dead. Several were empty enough that they would need assistance before morning.

  This was acceptable. Paul glanced once more toward Pasxi. She had not moved.

  The fox remained calm in her arms, head tucked against her elbow, breath steady. Its tether — unformed, unbound — rested uncomfortably close to her core without making contact, like a tool placed beside a workspace rather than inside it.

  “Your turn.” He said to Pasxi.

  The goblin nodded and got up. The binding was faster than Paul expected. The fox didn’t resist and neither did Pasxi. They bonded quickly and seemed to meld into one another with ease.

  “Those who endure,” he said, voice level, carrying across the yard, “will keep their familiars alive until I say otherwise. You will feed them. Protect them. Resist them. If you exhaust yourself, you will recover. If you fail to manage the strain, you will be removed from training.”

  The goblins nodded, some grim, some proud.

  Paul turned away.