Necromanson (Beta) chapter 14 (Patreon)

Henry made it to the kitchen and found a bowl of macaroni and cheese waiting for him on the counter. With a sigh, Henry took it up and leaned against the counter while he ate. Henry’s distaste for mac and cheese sprang from a six-month stint in college fueled by nothing but the squishy pasta, but Henry’s eyebrows raised when he started spooning the yellow mush into his mouth.

Athena had apparently added some sesame oil and pepper, and probably a handful of other things, it tasted nothing like straight out of the box stuff. Henry happily devoured his bowl, wondering where the person who had made it went. After eating, Henry washed out his bowl and went to the study room, but it was empty.

His nerves beginning to get rattled, Henry moved on to the vault, calling for Athena as he went. Athena called back from the inside of the vault, and Henry relaxed, entering the Vault.

Athena wore a crimson silk sash tied around her waist, above a leather belt with the sheathed ancient sword attached to it, as she turned to face him, Henry spotted a necklace chain glinting against her dark skin, disappearing beneath. Her ear had a silver cuff attached to it, and it looked as though she had just pierced it. All told, Athena looked like she was showing up to work on Dress Like A Pirate day at the company get together.

“Hey, Henry,” she called out to him, closing her book, but saving the place with her index finger. “You bury the old man?”

“Mostly,” Henry said, nodding. “I tried using a spell to dig a hole, and the pit is a little bigger than it needs to be, it looks more like a crater.” Henry eyed Athena’s new ensemble, and his eyes caught the glint of silver threads forming patterns on the silk sask, and there were obvious symbols adorning the cuff on her ear. “So what’s with the new duds?” Henry motioned at Athena’s attire.

“Oh,” Athena said, lifting the book. “I’ve been identifying stuff that can help, it’s slow going, but I’ve found some amazing stuff.” Athena brushed her hair away from the ear cuff. “Protection from mind control.” She tugged on the sash. “Lightness of body.” Athena motioned to the sword. “You know this one.”

Henry nodded, his eyes returning to the chain disappearing under her clothes. “What about the necklace?” he asked.

Athena glanced away. “It,” She said, avoiding eye contact. “it’s pretty.” Henry thought about it for a moment, then shrugged.

“That’s fine,” Henry said. Henry was fairly confident she knew what the necklace did, but didn’t want to tell him. After all, would anyone just put something on that they found in a vault full of magic because it was pretty? Henry cocked his head to the side, thinking of some of the people he had known in the military. Come to think of it, there were people that would do that. Henry thought to himself.

“Find anything else?” Henry asked, looking around the treasure trove, there were so many unique objects competing for attention that the plainer things seemed to disappear between the cracks, resurfacing again as his eyes ran over them. “I’d be interested in reservoirs and focuses.”

Athena glanced around. “Zack was conscientious enough to put up warning labels on anything that was dangerous,” she said, pointing out a jagged symbol that looked a bit like a backwards three with extra bits poking out, drawn or chiseled onto nearly a quarter of the items and even a few of the boxes against the wall. “If you’re looking for a reservoir, look for something made of crystal or copper, bound into a complex knot. Focuses are…” Athena flipped the book open, and went to the index, before flipping to the first third of the book.

“Focuses are made of a material that efficiently refracts light, orbs and lenses were not uncommon,” Athena said as she read from the selected passage. “Over time, Focuses took on the shape of miniature spyglasses, with the widest end held in the hand, efficiently focusing magic over long distances. These gave rise to the common idea of a magicians wand.”

“Huh,” Henry said, “Learn something new every day.” Henry began shifting through the piles of treasure, looking for a focus. He eventually found pointed bone with two lenses embedded inside it, forming a narrow cone that tapered off into a handle.

“Why bone?” Henry asked, showing Athena the focus. Athena pointed to the book on the floor before getting back to digging through the treasures. Henry picked up the book and flipped through, but he couldn’t find a specific reference to bone focuses. Setting the book down, Henry tucked the focus into his pocket and turned to face Athena. “I’m going to work on that spellbook,” He said, glancing down the empty hallway, when a sudden ominous feeling struck him. “Be careful in here, there’s no guarantee that unlabeled things aren’t dangerous. And put something in front of the door so you can’t lock yourself in, that’d be a shitty way to go.” Athena sighed and rolled her eyes.

“Yes, dad.” she said, picking up a heavy stone slab and sliding it into the doorway with a grunt.

Henry nodded, the feeling in the pit of his stomach alleviated somewhat. Henry grabbed the spellbook and had a fire extinguisher float behind him as he limped back outside.

Henry set the book down in front of him, and opened to the first page, fire. without the impatience of earlier, he looked down at the spell, memorized it, then looked up, and flowed a gentle stream of power around the symbol, as if it were fixed in the center of a tube, cutting the flow of water into a complex symbol as it ran past it.

The fire spell was simpler than the other he had done earlier in the day, and yet, as soon as he looked away from the page, the complex structure of the symbol began to simplify in his mind, losing detail even as he mustered power to send through them. Henry figured out that he could make it work as long as he was staring at the page while he attempted the spell, proven by a small fire lit when he let the tiniest amount of energy out while staring at the page.

Henry wasn’t particularly frustrated, in fact he was elated. He had figured out the right way to channel the energy without a teacher in one day. Memorizing the spells and using them effectively would take a long time, but little could dampen Henry’s enthusiasm for it.

Deciding to take another break after more failures, Henry took the spellbook back to the study room, and sat in the recliner, searching through the pile. Henry took a few beginner books, and rifled through them to see if he could identify the problem.

Henry was presented with a few solutions. Working through the books, he found the ones he found the most acceptable. One method suggested by each book was years of training the imagination, allowing the spells to form in the mind with full clarity and without losing detail. Techniques for that included picturing a single dot, then doubling it, then doubling it again, and so on, until you could no longer picture them, then starting again.

Other methods included cheat sheets, and tattoos placed where the caster of the spell could easily use them as a reference. There was only so much space, and while reliable, that method limited what one person could do, and was considered a crutch. The last way was to inscribe the spell and the intent on a specific focus, allowing anyone to use it with little effort, which had its own drawbacks.

Henry flipped through the other books, but most things were variations on those three methods. Henry set the books down, closed his eyes and began doubling dots. Two, four, eight… when Henry made it to sixteen, his concentration began to waver, and he couldn’t perfectly picture all of them.

“Wow,” Henry said, shaking his head. “I suck at this. No wonder.” Henry kept his eyes closed, and began doubling dots again. Hours later, Henry had made it to sixty four clear, differentiated dots in his mind, far below the book’s recommended five hundred and twelve. Other exercises included growing a tree from a sapling in his mind, holding every detail as it grew and branched out. In a sense it was similar to the first, simply keeping track of expanding complexity, but more for right brained types who enjoyed the asthetic of their very own mind-tree.

Henry was deeply reclined in the chair, his eyes closed, When he heard Athena’s distinct footfalls stop at the entrance, causing him to lose track of the details of his tree. Henry cut it down and replanted his apple tree, watching it sprout.

“You killed my apple tree.” Henry said, without opening his eyes. Henry took the growth slower this time, dividing his attention between it and Athena.

“Working hard?” Athena’s voice came from the doorway, before her footsteps approached the recliner opposite him. Henry heard the springs inside twang as she levered it back.

“Yes,” Henry said, taking a deep breath, raising the hands folded over his chest before he exhaled slowly, watching the sprout grow its first two leaves. “Thought exercises.”

“Just looks like napping to me,” Athena’s voce came from the recliner.

“I did fall asleep for a little while,” Henry said, picturing the two leaves spreading out as another sprouted between them even as the sapling’s height grew, and its bark darkened from brown to green.

Henry dropped the exercise and opened an eye to peer at Athena. She rested on the dark brown recliner, her hand shading her eyes. “How about you?” Henry asked. “How’d you do.” Henry spotted a number of new things on her person, and a small pile of gear beside her.

“I looked at the book entry on the Maculat Mulieres, and picked out anything that would help us kill it,” Athena said, her eyes still shielded. “It’s got weaknesses, but it’ll be a bit difficult for us, I think.

“How so?” Henry asked, idly doubling dots as he asked. distracted as he was, his limit was sixteen.

“So from what I read, your average, everyday Maculat would be killed by beheading and being shot in the heart,” Athena said. “But apparently if a female relative of their original body stabs them with a silver dagger, they collapse into dust. It just isn’t done very often, because getting a woman close to one without getting her killed or turned is rather difficult.

“He took a lot of Bullets from me and shrugged it off like it was nothing. Are you thinking the turning to dust thing would still work?” Henry asked.

Athena shrugged. “It’s all I’ve got,” she said.

Henry grunted, leaned back and closed his eyes, starting his apple tree from seed again. “Sounds like a pain in the ass,” he said, closely following each branch, but never quite making it beyond a sapling before he began losing details.

“How about sucking the immortality juice out, and then ganking him?” Henry said, waving his hand in the air above his head.

“Maybe, but you’d have to be sure it would work,” Athena said, glancing over at Henry. “And how would you even do that?”

Henry shrugged, “Scientists figured out how to unboil an egg years ago. From those books, it seems to me that the magic world’s come a long way too, maybe they know something.”

Athena chewed on her lip in thought, “So you’re saying we should go crying for help to people who may or may not be just as bad as the guy who tried to perform a live harvest on your organs?”

“Fair point,” Henry said. “But the rest of the wizarding community won’t know the circumstances of Zack’s death, and maybe we did them a favor.”

“That’s optimistic,” Athena said, frowning. “In my experience, people don’t like it when you upset the status quo, regardless of how bad things were before you did it.”

“I’d still rather seek assistance with the Manson problem, but let’s load for bear before we do it, so no one can fuck with us,” Henry said, laying his head back in the recliner and returning to his exercises.

“I’ve got that part under control,” Athena said.

Henry nodded, his eyes closed. “Alright then, let’s set some traps, shore up our defences, make an escape route, and call some of the numbers on the fridge,” Henry said.

“There weren’t any numbers on the fridge,” Athena said. “He did have a rolodex in his computer room, though.”

Henry raised an eyebrow, but didn’t comment. It wasn’t that strange for someone as old as Zack to have a rolodex. Then again, how old was Zack? Henry got the feeling the old man might have been more than a little older than he put on. If he was old as Henry thought he might be, that meant he had plenty of time to make enemies, but also friends. And who keeps the numbers of their enemies? They would have to be careful who they chose to contact first.

Henry closed his eyes, and began growing his apple tree again, watching it branch out.

They fortified the mansion, cautiously explored it, discovering hidden rooms and secret passages as they went. Henry made progress with his mental control, and each day, it seemed he could visualize more detail than the day before. by the end of these exercises, Henry became inexplicably exhausted, as though his brain had consumed all the sugar flowing through his blood, causing a crash after each session.

Beneath the mansion was a tunnel leading to the bathroom of a shopping mall four miles distant. The tunnel was something out of the running man, with a small pod that could shoot the two of them there in a matter of seconds.

Athena, for her part, took the rolodex to the local library in disguise, going through the public records of each of the men and women listed in it. The majority of them had benefitted greatly from associating with Zack in the past. From what Athena told Henry, they were either working for Zack, or friends of his, but one of the names, Shinichi Nakayama, was connected to businesses that often clashed with Zack’s interests with something bordering on vindictive aggression.

Henry took a deep breath and dialed the number. After a single ring, there was a click, and a woman with a soft Japanese accent picked up, “You’ve reached the desk of Mr. Nakayama, how may I help you?” she asked.

“Hello ma’am, my name is Henry Stein,” Henry said in his most polite voice. Japanese people valued politeness, until they didn’t need you anymore, apparently. Japanese people are weird. “I’d like to speak to Mr. Nakayama, please. It’s about Zachary Landon.”

The line on the other side went dead for a few moments, and then the woman’s voice came back. “Mr. Nakayama would be happy to speak with you, Mr. Stein, however he is unable to break away from previous engagements at this moment. May I record number, so that he can return your call at the earliest convenience?”

With these people, maybe meant no, so Henry asked her to pass a simple message. “Let him know that I’m calling from Zack’s home, would you? He should know what that means.”

Henry waited on the phone, and the receptionist came back again, “Thank you for calling, Mr. Stein, Mr. Nakayama will return your call as soon as he can. Is there anything else I can help you with?” her voice was strictly neutral.

Henry shook his head, despite being on the phone. “No, that should be plenty,” he said. “Thank you, ma’am.” Henry hung up the phone and pursed his lips.

“No go?” Athena asked, sitting beside the phone.

“Yeah,” Henry said, his brows furrowed. “But now at least two people know Zack is dead. Let’s just hope we picked the right guy.”

There was no call returned to the phone, And Henry spent the afternoon meditating beside it, now able to take the image of a sapling all the way to a young tree, with dozens of branches and hundreds of leaves. As the tree grew older, Henry let its bark gnarl, watched as some branches thickened, while others fell off… partway through, his head began to pound, and certain details began to be uncertain, from leaves to the wrinkles in the tree’s bark, they started to shift and waver as Henry lost concentration.

Finally Henry breathed out and restarted. In boot camp, he had adapted to mindless exercise, every soldier got their fair share of PT, but strengthening the mind, not so much. Henry’s brain felt similar to a worn out muscle, bathed in lactic acid, as a wave of fatigue washed through him. Having come to terms with mindless exercise, Henry subjected himself to the same harsh discipline he had received fifteen years ago.

When he woke up, He divided dots, when he brushed his teeth, he grew a tree. Before he allowed himself to eat, he would count a thousand leaves. The fatigue after each practice was growing deeper, but at the same time, he was able to picture more detail at once than ever before.

Perhaps it was the new discipline in his life, or perhaps spurred on by the combat boots he wore, Henry began working out his body too, doing pushups beside the phone as he waited for the unlikely return call. Henry’s stomach was the first thing to touch the floor as he lowered his body, unused muscles crying out in pain as his midsection collapsed.

Unwilling to take it easy, Henry retreated inside himself, focusing on growing his tree to escape from the pain.

As he lowered himself to the ground, Athena walked into the room. “There are cars pulling into the driveway,” She said, urging Henry to move.