V2Ch28 - Parenthood (Patreon)

I had shooed Sarah and Cameron out of the hold as I prepared to attempt the same processes Winnie had gone through on the other Wights, with promises to Sarah that I would not mistreat her beloved bear. Too much.

From what I could piece together, Winnie had taken strike of concentrated Fate mana straight to his mind. What the original spell had been meant to do — or if it had been meant to do anything at all — I could not tell. Little remained of it, its mana having merged with the rest of the construct to form something new.

Given that its source was a tree with limited intelligence, I began with the assumption that the attack was merely formless mana.

I had six Wights stored inside the hold. A limited number of attempts, at least until I could get my hands on fresh corpses. That would mean a detour to one of the Archipelago’s islands that weren’t dungeons, but if that was what it took, I would have to pay that cost. But a glimmer of intuition told me six was enough.

I beckoned the first Wight forth, and it stumbled out of the pile of limbs that had been his berth so far. One of the newer Wights, one I had made after losing my army.

I compared its mind to Winnie’s, and the difference was vast, not even counting Winnie’s specialized combat enhancements. It was obvious at a glance how Winnie’s mind had grown organically. The idea of replicating the feat was… daunting.

Excitement buzzed in my fingers, and I began forming Fate mana into a spear. A general shape, but not a framework — and I couldn’t help but bleed the tiniest bit of intent into the construct.

I discarded the mana and tried again — and then twice more until I finally had a clump of mana as neutral as I could get. Less of a spear, and more of a tiny, lopsided corkscrew — something I couldn’t accidentally derive meaning from.

Not waiting, lest I lost my concentration, I plunged the Fate construct into Wight’s mind, homing in on its propagation center. The impact tore the existing threads apart, Fate mana seeping around the old connections. For a moment, it looked as if the threads of Fate would tie themselves to the rest, and trigger the cascading effects I had seen in Winnie’s mind, but—

It didn’t. The mana simply stopped moving, the ends of the threads remaining inert, as if singed. A look at the Wight told me it was still functional, even with a part of its mind damaged — but I wasn’t sure a second attempt would be successful.

I tried anyway, a second construct of Fate piercing the remains of the propagation center — and passing like a hot knife through butter, shoving the severed threads of Mind out of its path — until it touched the first Fate construct. The resulting explosion was luckily isolated to the spell itself, and the Wight’s eyes flickered as its mind shattered into a myriad pieces. It fell limp to the floor and was sent into the wall as a wave rocked the ship.

I only had a single attempt per Wight, it seemed. And I was down to five.

I knew I could reanimate the corpse — yet my intuition told me that would be the wrong course of action. The answer lay in these five that remained here.

Sensing the connection, yet unable to tell its nature, I opened my status and sent my unassigned points into Intelligence. I had wanted to test out its effect, point by point, but I was on the precipice of something grand — I knew it. And I would not waste the opportunity. More stats I could gain later.

11 points went into Intelligence, bringing the total up to 36. Nearly half again as many as I had had before. And the spark of an idea formed in my head.

I glanced at the bear — there was a connection there. It had formed a link with Sarah. A much stronger link than the one I previously had with the Wight. I could still feel it drawing mana, its upkeep ever so slightly higher, but it paled before the thread that had grown between it and the girl.

The interactions they’d had before were important, though I wasn’t sure how. Sarah had spouted something about the power of friendship giving life to her beloved mount. But they disinclined me to believe that possibility. Emotions held power, of course, but nothing that would change the bear so drastically — at least not her emotions. But perhaps the bear’s…

Once again, I focused on Winnie’s mind. I had designed wights not to feel things — if they had, that would have made their existence akin to slavery. They were mere automatons — and yet the words rang false in my head. There was something there, an aspect that made them more than simple machines. But what was it?

Emotion was out, but not entirely. Winnie clearly had begun to develop his own, primitive as they were. Primitive, yet intense. I realized now that he’d ran to Sarah’s aid of his own volition. Called forth through their link. The Fate that had afflicted him had also triggered the development of these emotions — but they couldn’t have appeared out of nothing, either. He could have mirrored Sarah’s, but their contact after the Circle was brief. A week, on and off, hampered by the bear not being allowed to leave the hold.

Yet those emotions had to have taken root somewhere. Searching his mind yielded little — it had already taken the tangled aspect of an animal’s mind. At a loss for ideas, I sat on my haunches and looked Winnie in the eye. “What are you?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.

He didn’t reply — he couldn’t, for despite how well preserved his corpse was, bears lacked the necessary configuration to use words. But his mind reached out to mine, through our connected souls, and Winnie answered my question. Not with words, but with images.

The first was an image of myself — I could barely tell through the darkness, but after a second, I recognized the scene. Through his eyes, I saw the moment of his birth, in that dark cave near Ravenrock.

To me, he’d been just one of thousands. But to him, I was the first thing he’d seen. And of course he remembered — I had designed the Wights to remember everything.

The image carried with it a word, or the impression of a word. A query. ‘Father?’ he said without a voice.

I shook my head. If I was a father, then I was a terrible one indeed.

Winnie seemed to agree. A moment later, he sent another word. “Creator.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.”

The image changed, and for an instant it blinded me with its brightness. No longer inside the cave, and no longer just the two of us. From Winnie’s eyes, I could see Sarah talking to me. There were no sounds attached, the image a picture of still life, but I remembered the scene. She’d asked to take Winnie for her own.

The scene changed again — it was the same meadow, but Winnie was looking up. Towards Sarah, who rode on his back. Again, a word arrived alongside the image, and this one was backed by unyielding certainty. “Mother.”

And who was I to disagree? With just a thought, he’d proven to me how much more important the young knight was to him. I may have given him life, but she’d given him meaning.

That was what I was missing. I hadn’t messed up the Fate injection — that particular Wight lacked the one thing that made Winnie special. Memories — meaningful memories. Winnie wasn’t as old as some of my minions, but the time he had spent with Sarah had created that deep well of meaning that the Fate mana had drawn from — and it made sense. Fate magic was about actions and reactions, about cause and effect. The memories were the cause here, and it was a heavy one. The mana had expanded on that.

I went back to the pile of Wights. Five remained, but I knew now that only one of the oldest would do. One that had seen enough to have gathered meaning on its own, in the absence of a catalyst like Sarah.

The first was, like the previous, a fresh addition. Between being born and being relegated to the hold, it had gained no memory of note. The second was the same, and with a start, I realized they were both corpses of the followers of Yain, ones that I had missed the first time around. The townfolk had stripped them of their armor before discarding the bodies, with the metal going to the reconstruction efforts.

For a moment, I wanted to hurt them, like they’d hurt me. But they were already dead. What looked back at me were the empty eyes of my own creation.

I set the two aside and returned to the pile. The third wight was older. A brother of Bear’s, but one that had been spared army duty. It had patrolled Ravenrock, and it held memories of the townfolk — excellent memories, even. People going about their lives, some even greeting the Wight as they passed. A decent candidate, except for one detail.

In its memory, I spied the Wight’s partner. Wights on guard duty usually patrolled in pairs — not for safety, or for any practical consideration, but because that was how things were normally done. Guards patrolled in groups, and at the time, it made sense to follow suit, if only to meet the townfolk’s expectations.

I recognized its partner. An old Wight — a skeleton, from before I had given up on making fleshless undead, though you couldn’t see that under the armor it wore. The same armor that sat at the bottom of the pile.

I willed it to come, the others making way for the elderly Wight. What kind of person it had been in life, it was anyone’s guess. I raised its visor and stared into its empty sockets.

It could still see, of course. Skeletons required specialized spells in order to move and sense things, but they were part and parcel of the process. Dim embers glowed in place of eyes. I looked into its mind, and was beset by the memories.

A decade’s worth lay within. At the beginning, they were all centered around the tower. Menial tasks and various chores — and I realized that before I became a lich, this very Wight had made me food.

After a while, it became a guard in Ravenrock. Hostility, angry stares, thrown produce — it had seen it all. After a while, its presence became the status quo. Grudging acceptance — and less grudging acceptance. A young child, climbing on the shoulders of her sibling to put a crown of flowers on the top of the Wight’s head. A marriage proposal playing out at the edge of its vision. An elderly man suddenly falling in the middle of the street, and the crowd that rushed to help him, to no avail — he’d been dead before he hit the ground.

This Wight had seen much more than any other — it had experienced more life than even I had, and survived where its brethren had perished.

If there was one Wight on which the procedure would succeed, it was this one.

I took its hand, and we kneeled before each other on the floor. In his corner, Winnie watched with great interest.

The spike of Fate entered the Wight’s mind. If I’d had a breath, I would have asphyxiated at this point.

I couldn’t watch. I wanted it to work. I needed it to work. This creation of mine, it deserved to live in truth.

Seconds passed, with nothing happening. With every moment, I died a bit inside.

And then the embers in his eyes flared; I feared the worst. They glowed brightly — and didn’t stop glowing.

I dared not check what had happened, but it took barely a few moments for the Wight to assuage my worries.

Through our link, it spoke. “Father?” it asked — he asked. A plea, a wish, a prayer.

“Yes,” I whispered. And this time, I was determined to do it right.