Caladin’s Climb—Part Four (Patreon)

This story was brought to you by a cooperation between the Tuan'diath's Morph and No.1 Brorn Stan, who requested to continue the story of Caladin's Climb.

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          It wasn’t hard to figure out where Brorn had been last night.

          Caladin just used the spell he’d used during his heist. View Past. It really did render investigations trivial. No need to gather evidence and try to piece together what had happened. He could just look into the past and see for himself exactly what had happened.

          Brorn had a lab in his basement that he normally used when working on dangerous magic, but around midnight he left his lab. He left with a small contingent of undead, and he took Belorian’s Crown with him. It was pretty obvious that he was planning to do something with it.

          Unfortunately, Caladin’s mastery of this particular spell had some severe limitations. Perhaps a skilled ariolamancer would know how to pause what they were seeing and wind back the image, but not Caladin. He only knew the basics of it. Once inscribed, the spell played a view of time that kept going backwards until he stopped feeding mana into it. Simple. But that also meant that by the time his vision of Brorn walked backwards into his lab it was too late to see where he’d come from. Caladin had no choice but to backtrack to the edge of the scene and cast the spell again. Then he had to wait until the vision played itself backwards once more and he could spot Brorn and his contingent of undead guards walk backwards up the steps and down the hall, out of sight once more.

          It was tedious. Each vision took a bunch of mana and at least ten minutes before he got a mere glimpse of Brorn. Then he had to move to the next location and cast it again. It took two hours to get to the source of the vision. It was a good thing he had the house to himself and plenty of time to work. The mana well also helped.

          “Gaaa?” An undead servant asked, while holding out a large burlap sack. Well, Caladin had the house to himself relatively speaking.

          “What’s this?” Caladin asked the zombie.

          “Gaaa?” the zombie repeated. It stood perfectly still and held the proffered sack out. This was just like the one that had offered Caladin the Torture spell earlier. If he tried to ignore it so he could focus on what he was doing it would just follow him around everywhere until he took what it was trying to give him.

          Caladin took the sack. Inside was a white, chalky substance. Salt. “Oh, right,” Caladin said. “The salt. I almost forgot about that. The sensory deprivation tank was kind of a bust anyways, but thanks for the salt.”

          “Gaaa?” The zombie repeated. It really was pointless to try to talk to them.

          The zombie with the salt started to trudge off the way it had come. “Wait,” Caladin called out. “Can you tell me where Brorn is right now?”

          “Gaaa,” The zombie said. It pointed off, away from the manor. That didn’t tell Caladin much, but it was probably safe to say he had some time. The last rays of sunlight had faded over an hour ago. He doubted Brorn would be back before morning.

          Caladin turned back to his task. He was standing in Brorn’s transport room. The room was rather spacious and was right next to the room for spare bodies. Not a coincidence. From what Caladin currently understood about teleportation circles, they were inscribed onto the ground and created a sort of “teleportation gravity” effect. Anyone attempting to teleport anything close enough to the circle would be automatically teleported directly to the center of the circle. It was a safety thing, as it prevented most mishaps. It also extended the range of teleportation magic done while standing inside it. Teleporting from one circle to another was significantly easier than teleporting the same distance without a circle. And safer too. Very convenient. For Caladin’s current purposes though, it was very inconvenient.

          Brorn had teleported away. That meant he could have literally gone anywhere. That didn’t narrow down his search very much.

          “Okay,” Caladin said to himself. “Think. You can figure this out. There’s got to be a way to track where someone teleported to. I was hounded by security guards when I first showed up here. It’s clearly possible.”

          Yes, actually. That was it! One of those eldrin security guards would know exactly how to track a teleportation. The answer was so obvious. One of them was still at the manor… in a manner of speaking, anyway. Caladin had recognized him a few times. After the guard had been killed by Brorn’s undead he’d been reanimated. His body had been injured too badly to be let inside the house, but he wasn’t so horribly disfigured yet that he was relegated to the swamp outside. Brorn had been using that particular body to trim the hedges at the edge of the property.

          Caladin marched off with purpose. He handed his bag of salt off to the first zombie he encountered and told it, “Put this away. Somewhere dry!” He had no idea where salt was supposed to be stored, but he also didn’t need to know. Brorn’s undead servants had a limited level of awareness of each other. The next time he needed to retrieve said salt he could just ask the closest undead and they would know exactly where it was. Their organizational system was pretty chaotic, but it worked. Caladin had given up on trying to cook anything for himself in Brorn’s kitchen. Opening a drawer was as likely to contain a handsaw as a spoon. It was a nightmare to try and make sense of.

          The undead with the roughest faces were usually given tasks that didn’t require Brorn to see them very often. He said the ugly ones were best at keeping the riff raff away. The guard that had chased Caladin all the way from Eldira Savings and Loan was in pretty rough shape. Its throat had been rather violently ripped out when it died, and several months of trimming trees in the sun had done little to improve its complexion. Soon, it would start actively rotting and Brorn would force it to submerge itself in the nearby bog to “extend its useful lifespan” as he would say.

          Luckily, it was dark out. That meant Caladin wouldn’t have to search the whole property to track down the specific zombie he was looking for. It would be in storage. A small, unassuming shed was where the majority of undead were stored at night. The shed led down into a small cellar that Brorn was designed to keep the bodies cool when they weren’t in use. Caladin had never actually been down there, but he had seen zombies shuffle to and fro plenty of times. As soon as he got outside he made straight for the shed in question.

          It was dark outside, and the inside of the zombie storage shed was darker still. Nothing a little magic couldn’t solve. Caladin inscribed a quick spell. A ball of light popped into existence and floated over Caladin’s hand. He regretted casting the spell immediately. A hundred pairs of eerie green eyes stared out at him from the darkness at the bottom of the shed. “Gaa?” One of them said. “Gaa?” Another asked. Their way of asking if he needed anything. He knew it wasn’t supposed to be threatening, but it still creeped him out. His instincts nearly took control of his body and forced him to bolt back up the little set of stairs.

          Caladin had to consciously stop and force himself to calm down. No. Zombies were safe. They were friendly. They just looked like scary monsters. He steeled himself, then continued deeper into the zombies’ lair. The undead stood stock still in rows, all except their heads. They turned to follow Caladin with their gaze wherever he went. He did his best to keep his head down as he scanned their outfits one at a time. He didn’t need to lock eyes with the things, he just needed to—there it was! The emblem for Eldira Savings and Loan.

          “You,” Caladin commanded the undead eldrin. “Come with me.”

          The dead guard obeyed without question. Caladin left the shed and only barely resisted the urge to make a panicked dash up the steps on his way out. Caladin’s new undead servant caught up to him on the empty, well-manicured lawn. His little globe of light floated between them and lit up the creature’s features with a bit more detail than Caladin was comfortable with. This particular undead looked like he’d had a rough go of things in the weeks since Caladin had first arrived. Caladin had mostly gotten used to the scores of servant zombies inside the manor. They weren’t really that hard to deal with; just strange eyes and particularly pale skin. They didn’t even smell bad. This one was nothing like those. Its flesh was a putrid grey-green and the wound in its neck had rotted away enough to consume half its face and expose most of the bones in its collar and neck. It was hard to look at. And there was a smell to it like nothing else. Caladin didn’t know what magics Brorn worked to keep the servants in the house smelling so nice, but he was more thankful of the effort than ever before now that he experienced first-hand what the alternative was.

          “I, uh, I need to know how to track a teleportation spell,” Caladin said. “I know you knew how to do that. Back when you were alive.”

          Some of the exposed tendons in the creature’s neck flexed and the remains of the creature’s jaw bobbed up and down. No sound came out.

          “Right,” Caladin said. “I don’t think you can talk. Hold on.”

          Brorn had given Caladin a short lesson about how he maintained his undead minions. He hadn’t gone into too many specific details. All Caladin knew was that he used some kind of advanced repair spell that functioned a bit differently from a standard visceramancy healing spell, as that kind of magic didn’t work on dead things, anytime they became too damaged to function. Caladin knew a simple repair spell himself. He’d never used it on a corpse before, but there was a first time for everything. He inscribed the repair spell onto a slip of paper with his lithomancy, then pressed it onto the zombie’s forehead. He triggered the spell. An amber-colored fire spread outward from the rune and jumped from the paper to the zombie’s skin. The paper burned away… and then kept burning. That didn’t seem right.

          “Shit,” Caladin said to the zombie, “I probably screwed this up. Sorry, buddy.”

          He wasn’t sure how to stop the run-away spell so Caladin was forced to watch helplessly as the strange fire spread without stopping. After the fire caught on the creature’s skin, it continued down over the rest of its face. When it reached the gaping wound on the side of the dead man’s face the flames flared brighter and started to sputter noisily. Flames continued to burn down its body and stop at specific places to burn brighter. It was like his spell had taken on a mind of its own. Caladin was suspicious about the amount of power at play here. Surely the spell should have expired by now, no? He looked down at the mana bars on his belt just to be certain and was shocked to see their light winking out one at a time. He’d been nearly fully-charged! How could such a simple repair spell require so much mana?

          As the glow of Caladin’s last mana bar faded away, so too did the orb of light he was using to see by. He was left in darkness.

          “Uhhh, uhhh,” The zombie moaned. So. He had fixed the vocal chords at least. Caladin tried not to dwell on the fact that he was now standing in the dark, completely depleted of mana and defenseless, next to an undead monster.

          “Tell me what you know about tracking someone through teleportation,” Caladin commanded the zombie again. All of Brorn’s undead were supposed to obey his commands. Within reason, of course.

          “Uhhh, uhhh, I, I,” The zombie moaned. That was good. It was able to make words. “I died,” it finished.

          “Uhh, yeah,” Caladin said, a little hesitantly. “Just answer the question.” Caladin tried to fumble through his pockets for some kind of light source. He only needed a tiny drop of mana to make another light. He grasped a roll of parchment. The papers he kept for casting spells were always flat, to be as efficient with the limited space in his pockets as possible. They only rolled up after he used them. He tried to remember what the scroll he was holding was inscribed with. He was pretty sure he’d written down that Torture spell earlier while waiting for one of his View Past castings to come into focus. He cannibalized the mana from the scroll to inscribe a light spell on the blank side of the paper.

          The paper burst into flames. Caladin got a good look at the zombie standing before him. It was in absolutely perfect condition. In and of itself that wasn’t terribly impressive, as any number of servants that worked in the house looked the same, but that gave Caladin a small measure of pride considering the condition this one had been in. The guard’s eyes went wide with recognition at the sight of Caladin. Then… it lunged at him!

          Caladin threw up his hands to block the attack. He wasn’t much of a fighter when he didn’t have magic. He braced for a punch or kick that never came. A groaning sound came instead from in front of him. Hesitantly, he opened his eyes. He found the zombie squirming on the ground in a pile of limbs. That was as unexpected as it was welcome. It seemed there was still at least a small amount of mana left in that Torture scroll. The zombie on the ground moaned some more as it rolled from side to side, gripping its torso with both arms. It didn’t sound like the typical moan Caladin was familiar with when it came to Brorn’s undead servants. It sounded… strained.

          “Uhhh, what the hell did you do to me?” the undead guard groaned. “Y-you bloody thief!”

          That definitely didn’t sound like a zombie. A moment of clarity brought the thought to Caladin’s mind that maybe there was a reason Brorn didn’t let his zombies retain enough intelligence to talk. With at least some measure of memory returned to it, Caladin could no longer be sure of how loyal this particular undead would be. What if his unruly repair spell had decided it needed to “repair” the enchantments Brorn used to bind it to his will? The thought was a sobering one and at present Caladin didn’t actually have a way to defend himself if it tried to attack him again. He took the opportunity his accidental Torture spell had given him to take charge of the situation. “You lunged at me,” he told the undead guard. “That’s what happens when you try to attack your masters. Try it again if you don’t believe me.” The cold dew of sweat began to form on Caladin’s brow as he wondered if the zombie would take him up on that offer.

          The undead guard slowly climbed back to his feet. “Dear gods; that hurt worse than dying! No thanks. I’ll take your word for it.”

          “Good,” Caladin said. “And if you don’t tell me what I want to know, it will happen again.” Of course that was another bluff. Caladin wasn’t really the type to torture someone who didn’t do what he wanted. He hadn’t even cast that spell on purpose, and he was totally depleted of mana now. He just needed to buy himself a little more time until he could recharge his mana bars.

          The guard rubbed the back of his head. “Sorry, I uh, my memory’s a little foggy. I remember chasing you into the Necro-King’s territory, then some undead beast ran out and… killed me. Then this. I feel like there was something about tree branches in there somewhere too. Tree branches that were… too long? And I had to make them shorter? I don’t know. That last part might have been a dream.”

          It was eerie. Caladin had somehow restored this undead to life. Or at least some approximation of true life. His eyes still had a slight green glimmer to them, but there was also intelligence there. None of Brorn’s undead servants had ever so much as uttered a single sentence. Caladin decided he could blame Brorn for this later. If he’d bothered to give Caladin a lesson on zombie safety precautions even one time this could have been avoided!

          “Excuse me there, Caladin. It’s really important you not try to cast any spells directly on one of my zombies. They could regain the memories of their life and try to kill you out of spite.”

          Really. That’s all it would have taken… How was Caladin supposed to know a simple repair spell was so fraught with potential peril?

          “Well, you’re a zombie now,” Caladin told the guard. “You can forget about arresting me. If you even stepped foot in Eldira Savings and Loan again I’m pretty sure they’d destroy you. Probably with fire.”

          “Oh my gods!” the guard shouted. “What about my parents? I was supposed to—”

          “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Caladin said. “I don’t need any details about your life story. I just wanted instructions for tracking a teleportation spell. That’s really the only thing I knew about your skillset. Let’s keep it that way.”

          “Uh, and if I don’t help you…?”

          “More pain,” Caladin said. He waggled the fingers on one hand at him threateningly. “So you better do what I say.”

          “How long have I been dead for?” the guard asked. “I mean, last I remember you were running here to hide. Now you’re already a master necromancer working for the Necro-King. That seems like the kind of thing that would take a long time.”

          “I’m a faster learner. It’s only been a few weeks,” Caladin told him. “But you don’t need to worry about that anymore.” He turned in the direction of the main house. It was easy to see due to the light seeping out from the windows. “Now follow me. I need your help.”

          “O-okay,” the guard replied hesitantly. Caladin led him back towards the manor. The first thing he did was make his way to the mana well.

          “Excuse me,” he heard the guard say on their way, “do you know what’s going on in this place?”

          Caladin looked back over his shoulder and saw his guard trying to talk to another of the zombie servants. “Gaah!” The zombie replied in a slightly higher-pitched groan than usual.

          “Don’t bother trying to talk to them,” Caladin advised him. “Just follow me.”

          “I don’t understand what’s going on with me. I feel… different,” the guard said as they navigated the various halls.

          “Well you are dead,” Caladin reminded him. “That could be part of it. I’m not terribly well-versed on the specifics of your situation. I’ll have to ask Brorn about it later.” He led them to the compound’s mana well. The thing was separate from the rest of the house in a little courtyard of grass that was open to the sky. There was even a small apple tree that provided a bit of shade during the day. Caladin sat on the mana well’s stone seat and pulled up the hem of his shirt so he could watch the mana bars on his belt fill back up.

          “This place is actually kind of nice,” the guard said. “I always sort of assumed Necro-King Brorn lived in a spooky run-down castle in the swamp. Not this, this… manor.”

          “Yes,” Caladin said idly. “It’s all very fancy. Brorn has a pretty sophisticated sense of taste. Say, can you cast spells on your own?”

          “Me?” the zombie guard asked, pointing to his own chest. “I mean, I don’t know. I haven’t tried. Is there a reason why I shouldn’t be able to?”

          “I don’t know,” Caladin said. “Probably because you’re a zombie now.”

          “Wait, why don’t you know what I can or can’t do?” The guard narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Do you actually know what you’re doing?”

          Caladin shrugged. “Not entirely,” he admitted. “Brorn’s a little close-lipped about how all his necromancy stuff works. Just see if you can cast a spell or not.”

          The zombie guard did as he was told. His hands moved through the motions for a simple spell. A small flame flickered in the air above his hand, then winked out. “Seems to work,” he said.

          “Great. Now charge up and come with me,” Caladin instructed him. “I don’t feel like trying to figure out how to cast your tracking spell with hand signs. You can just cast it for me.”

          “No hand signs?” the guard asked. “How else would you cast a spell?”

          “Like this,” Caladin said. He held out his hand, then inscribed a few quick cantrips onto a piece of paper in his pocket. It was the same trick he’d use to impress Brorn. He was certain it would impress his undead minion just as easily. A crystal of ice conjured above his hand, then melted into water before boiling away to reveal a small flame.

          “Was that… are you some kind of archmage?”

          Caladin preened. “Why yes,” he said. “I most certainly am.”

          “Does that mean you could bring me back to life?” the guard asked next. “Like real life, not”—he waved his hand vaguely over his torso—“whatever this is. It feels wrong.”

          “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here,” Caladin cautioned him. “I’m still a, uh, ‘Apprentice’ Archmage. Maybe if you help me out we can discuss restoring you to life later.”

          That perked the guard right up. “Yeah, that sounds like a deal. Whatever you need!” he said. “Just show me what you want done.”

          It was a little weird, suddenly having a conversation with one of Brorn’s undead servants. And not in a good way. Caladin was pretty sure he actually preferred the non-verbal kind. A thinking, self-aware undead kind of made him uncomfortable. It was already making requests, and he didn’t know how well he could trust it. If it suddenly decided to bash him over the head he didn’t think there was anything to stop it. At least for the time being it thought attacking him would result in sudden pain but he wasn’t sure how long he could keep that farce up. Offering a chance at a second life might work as a secondary motivation for now. The carrot and the stick. It made for a powerful set of compulsions in the absence of Brorn’s more reliable ones. Caladin would just have to be careful what he said so the living zombie didn’t realize both his threats and promises were mostly hot air.

          When they were done charging up their mana, Caladin led them to Brorn’s teleportation room. He gestured outward at the circle of runes etched into the floor. “I’m sure you know what this is,” Caladin said.

          The zombie guard nodded. “Of course.”

          “I want to figure out where the location of the last place this teleportation circle was used to teleport to.”

          “No problem,” the zombie guard said. He stepped up to the circle and started moving through a series of slow, deliberate hand signs. The air swirled with faint shimmers of yellow light. “Okay,” he reported after a minute. “I’ve got something. Someone used this circle around three hours ago. I can give you the coordinates if you want.”

          That was too soon. Caladin had been expecting to find that the last use had been the night before, when Brorn had gone off to wherever the crown had been left. Three hours ago was about when Brorn had left earlier this evening. He must have gone by teleportation circle. “No,” Caladin said. “Not that one. I need a location from a few hours before that. Probably close to twelve hours ago.”

          The guard nodded. After another minute of careful spells he reported, “Okay. I have the coordinates. Do you want to write them down?”

          “On second thought,” Caladin said. “Why don’t you just teleport us to that location right now.” Caladin didn’t see any reason to wait any longer, and he also didn’t want to admit that he’d never actually used a teleportation circle before. He didn’t want to mess it up trying to do it himself.

          As for the rogue zombie using Belorian’s Crown, Caladin wasn’t worried. He had already prepared as much as he thought was necessary. He patted the roll of prepared scrolls on his hip just to be sure. They were still there. Three spells; a scroll that used ferromancy to pull a metal object up and away, for removing the crown; a scroll that used kinomancy to decapitate the nearest target, to separate the head from the rest of the body if the first spell failed; and a lithomancy compulsion if all else failed to force the bearer to remove the crown. There was no way all three spells wouldn’t work. All he needed to do was remove the crown from the rogue zombie’s head. Brorn was blowing things way out of proportion, and once Caladin succeeded where the great and powerful Necro-King Brorn had failed he would be forced to admit that Caladin was the superior wizard. Maybe give him more of that one-on-one training he deserved.

          Caladin pulled out the first of the three scrolls and held it at the ready.

          “I’m almost ready, boss,” his zombie guard replied. “Just stand inside the circle.” Caladin stepped forward. “These coordinates are pretty far away,” his guard warned him before releasing the spell he was working on. “It will probably be a little more disorienting than you’re used to.”

          “I can handle it,” Caladin assured him. “I’ve been to space, remember? Just get us there.”

          “Loco voco et voco!” the zombie guard intoned. There was a rush of displaced air. The light of the room they were standing in disappeared. It was replaced by a field of starlight. They were… somewhere outside. Caladin looked around to get his bearings. An intense vertigo wracked his body the moment he turned his head. The world spun out from under him and he fell right onto the ground.

          The ground was made of jagged rocks. It hurt.

          “Whoa there,” Caladin’s zombie guard said. He stood over Caladin’s field of vision, looking down. “You okay there? I tried to warn you it would be disorienting.”

          “W-where are we?” Caladin asked without getting up. He examined the starlight in the sky. He was pretty sure he could figure out where he was based on starlight alone. And as a bonus it wouldn’t require him to get up. He was pretty sure he was bleeding.

          “Beats me,” the guard responded. “Those coordinates were completely unfamiliar to me.”

          “That’s not right,” Caladin said. He was looking at the stars. He was just starting to realize how wrong they were. The patterns were completely impossible and some of the stars weren’t even star shaped. They were more like star… splotches. How was that possible? “I don’t think we’re in Eldira anymore,” Caladin said.

          Caladin’s zombie looked around. “Hmm,” he hummed to himself. “That some friend of yours?”

          Caladin shot to his feet. The feral zombie Brorn had warned him about! He had nearly forgotten. He held out his scroll like a shield. In the dim starlight he saw a figure approaching him. Wisps of darkness flowed off its body like steam. He caught just he hint of a silvery gleam about its head. That had to be the target.

          Caladin triggered his ferromancy spell.

          The scroll burned up, but nothing happened.

          The figure kept stalking towards them. Caladin grabbed for his second scroll. He triggered it. This time there was a flash of purple light at the figure’s neck. That was it. It kept stalking towards them. Caladin pushed down the panic building in the back of his throat. He grabbed his lithomancy scroll. He triggered it.

          Nothing happened!

          The figure slashed its hand downward at him in a cutting motion. Everything went black.

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