Bone Golem

I could only keep the circuit running for a few seconds before my mana ran out. All of my bodies approached the tower. If it hadn't worked, I'd need to start over again anyway. Angie was still in town, so she could be a conduit for my will to re-enter the city. She'd wandered around the library for a while, but it hadn't taken her long to realize I'd left her to absorb the knowledge. At that point she'd gone home to await further instructions and understand her new and improved abilities as a wizard.

As I entered the wizard tower, I realized that my circuit had indeed been effective. The air was filled with free shards of will. Something about the walls kept both the will and the mana contained, though, so I didn't feel the need to rush to collect all of the will that would otherwise be escaping into the surrounding mana.

Bodies were everywhere. None were wounded, they'd merely collapsed. From the postures of some, it looked as if they'd gotten comfortable. As if they were taking a nap. Others had fallen on their noses creating small puddles of blood. I claimed all of the bodies and the will in the air as well as my influence encompassed the entirety of the space. It was the largest room I'd been in yet, even larger than the library. Unlike the library there were books and scrolls scattered around like cheap goods. It had been a bazaar of sorts, still was if anyone had been around to operate it. I claimed all the objects that had circuitry ingrained into their structure as well, including the walls and floor. It seemed that this entire structure was a giant circuit. It started trying to draw out my mana to claim the entirety and I allowed it to do so, making sure the end amount wasn't beyond my capacity. It was insignificant, but the effect of claiming the tower was not.

I gained instant knowledge of everything that happened throughout the tower, including knowledge of all signs of life. Nearly fifty humans were still alive within the tower, as well as several non-human entities. None were mobile, however, so I thought it may be less dangerous than it could have been. I'd have to see one before I knew if it was dangerous or not. They weren't moving, so they either hadn't noticed the spell or were rendered immobile. One was very dangerous, the other a curiosity.

The open nature of the first floor couldn't be less similar to the construction of the rest of the tower. Every floor after it had a large room, but none were even as large as the library and every floor was filled with small rooms instead. As I pillaged my way up the tower I learned a lot from the random accessories and books owned by the apprentice wizards on the first three levels, even more from the accredited wizards of the fourth to eighth floors. I encountered my first living wizard on the ninth level. She was helplessly laying on the ground, magical paraphernalia surrounding her. She'd apparently tried using many objects before she realized she was bleeding will and laid down of her own will. She glared at me with hateful eyes as her body was slowly dying.

Finally, I understood why she was still alive. She had a solidified will-core. As anything that affected a will-core would affect intent as well I'd purposefully kept my circuit from destroying will-cores. She lacked any will, however. She was more helpless than a baby. That would end when her body died, though. Then she'd realize that she wasn't dead yet and start trying to figure out why that was. She would still be harmless, but she would at least be able to flee. As it was, I crushed her will-core and consumed her experience, emotions, hopes, dreams, sentience, awareness, and self. Of course, I ripped it into easily-digestible pieces so that her residue wouldn't influence my will-core, but she had a lot of useful knowledge. Much more polluted by grudges, biases, jealousy, l.u.s.t, and petty squabbles, but some of her life had served a purpose for me.

At the very least, I understood now why human circuits were filled with so much waste. Humans had a means of strengthening their runes via pseudo-composite merging them with words in their own language so laden with their own intent and meaning that it could influence certain phenomena. It stabilized otherwise unstable runes, allowing imprecise human rune-work to actually produce effects. It stopped them from forming actual composite runes, but it was an adequate work-around for incompetent humans to pretend to be capable. An unfortunate side-effect was that it held back truly capable humans. Those that could form composite runes in their will-core were incapable of using them in their spells because they were held back by their "common sense" and stunted. This was good news for me, though.

I ascended the tower, consuming the few humans that had managed to survive my spell and taking all of the enchanted objects and knowledge this tower had acc.u.mulated over the years. The largest regret I had was that they lacked a true library. Their library was a magical repository shared among all affiliated wizard towers and as such was held behind many safeguards. I hoped to penetrate into it, but I wasn't sure if I could.

The fortieth floor was the peak of the tower. There were two rooms, one was the domicile of the grand wizard. The other was the linking room that connected this tower to the rest of the human world. First the grand wizard. He was ancient, and as such had a delicious will-core. Unfortunately, he'd had enough time to die and figure out he wasn't bound to his body anymore. He sped out of the tower when my will slipped into the room, helpless and weak but mobile. I didn't bother chasing him as my will moved at the same speed as his will-core and he was terrified. He'd stop eventually, but my reach wasn't infinite. Instead of that, I claimed everything he'd acc.u.mulated throughout his life and turned to the pinnacle of human wizardry.

I touched it with my will and was immediately rebuffed. Only human wills had access. I used Angie to alter the flavor of my will and tried again, this time gaining entry but being stopped almost immediately by another safeguard. Only one with control of a tower could gain access. I pulled my own will from the tower and gave it to Angie by proxy. I tried again and hit a third safeguard, one that actually gave me pause. It needed a password and an enchanted seal branded onto the will-core itself. So the leaders of human magic knew will-cores were very difficult to fake. This made it interesting.

Instead of providing a password or seal I looked through the wall into how it worked. I examined how the two previous safeguards had worked. I examined the entrance plate that served as a conduit, piercing through the meager metal shielding used to keep the circuitry from prying eyes. The structure was immensely complex and had many runes I was unfamiliar with. This would take some time.

The rest of my bodies jumped from the tower, slowing their fall by controlling the force the air above could exert. Truly a useful circuit. So useful that it was very popular among the human wizards. I'd found the same circuit in almost every room above the fifth floor.

My bodies leaping from the tower didn't even garner a smidgeon of attention. Everyone was at the walls, exclaiming in awe and fear. My forces had become visible to the human defenders. Most of the humans had heard already about the attack of ogres that was imminent. They expected it, but they'd expected it later so seeing them so early was a shock. The more experienced the person looking at the army the paler their face. It was easy to understand why.

Civilians knew nothing. They looked out and saw tiny specks in the distance, marveling at how the ogres so much larger than the goblins that surrounded them. What massive creatures they were!

Soldiers would look out in the distance and remember the times they saw creatures exit the woods, and how small they were. Then they compared their memory to the size of the creatures that were approaching and felt dissonance…goblins weren't that big…right? Was that an army of hobgoblins? So many? All together? No infighting or squabbles? There could be losses this time.

Veterans saw the trees as my forces left. The shortest creature's head reached the canopy. None of them were goblins. That wasn't what they were ready for. The orders from on high hadn't mentioned this. They were ready for tens of ogres with thousands of goblins in support. Maybe a few hundred hobgoblins to make things difficult. Then they looked at the larger creatures. The massive creatures that dwarfed the ogres to such and extent that the largest ogre's head could barely reach the ribcage of the massive creature. Every step they took caused the woods to shudder and shake. There were creatures larger than ogres? How had the ogres managed to recruit them? There had to be some larger plot behind this.

Angie and other magically literate observer wouldn't be able to help but look at the massive creatures and reel in horror, completely ignoring the ogres that surrounded them. Class four monsters! Class four goblins! They would know the difference between a large creature and a class four form of a basic creature. The goblin fangs were still there, lips retreating and teeth growing larger and sharper with each progression as their jaws grew outward allowing for a more vicious bit than the previous class was capable of. The ears had followed the progression of goblins going from long things sticking out of either side of the head to drooping hobgoblin's to curling ogre's and finally hardened in the fourth stage into short hollow horns. The bald conical head was the same on all. The proportions, the build getting gradually thicker with each progression, the head being pushed farther forward with each progression, the heel raising until ogres and the fourth walked on their toes, toe and fingernails changing from human-like to claws from goblin to ogre and finally becoming talons for the fourth. All the markers were there and they would have the means to look close enough to see them in detail despite the distance. What monster could allow such existences to maintain order in such numbers? Getting even two ogres to cooperate was difficult…but class four creatures? What possible carrot could be so sweet? What stick could have such bite? I could practically feel their incredulity and horror as they desperately tried to suppress it such that the ignorant masses wouldn't panic.

Only one being was more horrified than the magically literate. Adrian CMXXVIII stood on the wall in armor etched with circuits across the entirety of her body. Her body was rigidly in a relaxed stance, but I could see the strain in her through her intent. I could see the fear mounting. I didn't doubt it was because she was doing the math from one of the monster encyclopedias I'd gotten from the library. Goblins as a class one creature were from zero to four pedes tall. Hobgoblins were class two creatures that could be from four to ten pedes tall. Ogres were class three creatures from ten to eighteen pedes tall. Doing the math, each class gave them half again the range of height that the previous class had. Assuming that, class four creatures from the goblin line would then be capable of being from eighteen to thirty pedes tall. Comparing the height of the creatures she knew to be ogres to the monstrosities…they could be thirty pedes tall. The walls were twenty eight pedes tall. No ogre could scale the wall, but those class four beings could simply lift them over it. She was also extremely rare in that she would know exactly how dangerous a class four creature was. Against one she would probably show no fear. Facing two she could still exe out a victory. Facing three she'd be forced to flee. What could she do against…I could almost feel her counting each monstrosity. What would she do? How would she react?

From what I could see, nobody even noticed my constructs, shorter than the average ogre but taking up far more space. My camp hadn't been the only place that monsters no longer knew to fear. Adrian didn't know what to fear either. Cheering and hooting the names of soldiers filled the air as clueless civilians blindly trusted the prowess of the soldiers defending them. Some sold goods, others asked for bets about how long the foes would last. My invasion was being treated as entertainment as projections of my forces were held over the crowds. There were faces among the crowd that started to understand, to fear, but they were the minority. It would be dark by the time my forces actually reached the walls, one could only hope that the population would realize their folly before then.