Bone Golem

After the first day of waiting to receive orders of how to deal with the ocean, it became apparent to the army that I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with the ocean yet. They settled down to wait, bȧrėly able to contain their joy at not being sent into that…place. With one notable exception. Euri was extremely curious. She was the only one that investigated the ocean with her body, instead of the few that tried to explore it with their circuits and being given far more information than they bargained for. Most of them were still passed out, their will-cores desperately trying to ȧssimilate the information or erase it to regain control of their bodies, a week later.

Euri's method was much less hazardous for her, though it was far from safe. The first time she entered the water she'd lost contact with the ground almost instantly and immediately panicked as she flailed pointlessly while gasping water into her lungs. I'd had to pull her back out after she drowned. She was completely undeterred, and I was forced to exert force to get her to listen to a brief explanation about the hazards of suffocation and mentioning that without the air she'd need to learn to swim if she didn't want to float mindlessly through the ocean until something ate her before she was back into the ocean. It quickly became apparent that this wasn't a discipline I'd learn anything from her developing her own method. After she drowned the fourth time I taught her how the elves swam.

Her forays had inspired a few to try it as well, but they all panicked and drowned the first time. They didn't go back. Few even had the bȧrėst urge to try. The more often she went back drew some more curiosity, but she still got excited and often forgot about coming back before it was too late and she had to be resuscitated. After a while, she drew almost as much scorn despite her priesthood as those devoted to the brood construct.

Luckily for the widespread boredom that was threatening to erode the force's discipline, it wasn't long before I discovered sheep in the south and was given a solution to my problem. Spreading my will to the opposite side of the ocean wasn't difficult with the mana density, so constructing a portal on both sides of the ocean wasn't hard. What would have been hard was getting an army to enter the portal if that army didn't belong to Angie.

Many had been nervous at the sight of the black doorway that led nowhere surrounded by the dim glow of circuitry, but they were the example for discipline among my forces. Their fear didn't stop them from entering the portal. And immediately starting to build circuits meant for war.

I'd been a bit excited to test out the portal circuit and hadn't explored what was actually on the other side before I opened it. I'd been expecting a nearly identical stretch of plain in front of a wall of forest. I wasn't expecting them to appear on the edge of a city. I did manage to keep them from firing their circuitry, however. I'd managed to convince the elves that it was an honest mistake, but that would change if Angie's force started attacking. The elves were a new species. I didn't want to lose any subjects of research because I was too excited to see a new circuit than plan for its effects. Such a loss of composure…it was disgraceful.

Panic and curiosity were currently warring in the elven population. I'd realized almost immediately that they spoke using intent. A wondrous discovery. One that the Cannibal Conclave hadn't been able to share. From their records, elves were mute. They seemed to understand body language to a certain extent, missing or misinterpreting many signals, but that was the best communication available between the Conclave and any elves they happened to meet. Given that elves spoke using intent, the elves that the Conclave had encountered were probably enjoying the "lack" of communication. Either that or they were so offended at the humans' absolute inability to understand that they didn't feel the need to try to communicate effectively.

I had no such flaw. I was able to spread an explanation far and wide with a speed and clarity that the voice-based system humans used could only pretend to match. The alarm had bȧrėly been raised before it was relaxed. Their alarm had been raised, communicated, and relaxed before the first circuit had been built by a cannibal. All that while the elves were so lacking in awareness that the alarm being raised evoked no response from their military. A military so lax that they remained in their barracks after my explanation, taking me completely at my word.

Trying to find a leader to communicate with was difficult. Or rather, finding someone that was thought of as a leader by anyone other than themselves. Of all of my systems, the elves resembled Lagt's force the most. They pushed it even further, however. They had no leader, no unifying principle, no curiosity, and no purpose. The closest was their military, but even they existed entirely without discipline or standards. If they wanted to fight they could move into the military part of the city and laze around with others that had decided to be the military. Sitting behind the ocean as they were, nothing ever approached them. They had no records, or need to immortalize information. I had found a few bark scrolls with an individual's need to immortalize their information, but the civilization saw no need for it. The closest I could find was in stories. Stories communicated from one to another and warped slightly every time. Stories that weren't even supposed to be true or based on real events. Some were claimed as such, but that was never an indication of genuine accuracy. Nor did the audience for such stories care.

The "civilization" was built from the leftovers as the ocean left their tunnels behind. Tunnels that they left as they were, filled with water, in order to preserve their access to water and the concentrated mana within. Even calling it a "civilization" was an overstatement. Maybe three "civilizations" coincidentally sharing space. Three "civilizations" that were so interconnected that they could seem like one at a glance.

The differences between the three types of elves were quite apparent, if superficial. The leaf elves had flesh made of material that resembled leaves, if significantly thicker than the leaves on any tree I'd seen yet. The trunk elves had flesh of wood, though it was significantly less brittle than tree-wood. The root elves were the strangest, they had flesh that could have been called flesh, if extremely tough and dark. More similar to ogre flesh than anything I'd seen on a tree.

Apart from the physical differences, they were much the same. All were lazy, unmotivated, and lethargic. None moved faster than a walk, or had any reason to. The only real difference, the reason they could be divided into separate "civilizations" was that the types of stories they told differed. Leaf elves liked humor and lacked any intent to make their stories coherent so long as there was a joke at the end. Trunk elves were more grounded in how they told stories, but they still didn't care about accuracy. They just traded drama for humor. As the root elves prioritized gore and violence. Incompetent violence, as the root elves were the least violent of the bunch and as such didn't understand how it worked in the slightest. So long as the descriptions were visceral, the root elves didn't seem to care.

Upon my offer of worship, many accepted out of pure boredom. Every elf that didn't think they were particularly good at telling stories, anyway. Even if they'd found something else they were good at, they saw me as an avenue for something better. After seeing everyone else accept, the storytellers figured they wouldn't be able to have fun telling each other stories and decided to join my worshippers as well.

A definitive bonus of their communication method was that almost all of them were capable of basic circuitry. I wasn't sure the will-carrying green liquid they shot at Angie's worship rune was blood, but it seemed to function correctly. I hadn't even needed to try to conquer this city, not that cities were particularly difficult to conquer anymore.

The perspective that I gained by getting access to their wills was another matter entirely. So much potential, and so little drive. From their memories, each elf was at a genius standard for circuitry as far as cannibal wizards would judge. All of that potential was wasted in this city. An entire city of explosive talent wasted behind a lack of drive. Which is something that would be reversed by worshipping me. My curiosity was my primary attribute. That would bleed into them and they'd learn one drive or another. If that didn't work, I could alter the circuits I put in their bodily will-cores. It had worked on goblins, it would work on elves.

A large part of the problem was how this city was populated. All the elves with drive stayed in the ocean, fighting the endless war against the merfolk. The city was formed by the cowards that abandoned the war for the ocean. There were elements of change, several elves had awakened drive since they'd left the war. Not enough drive to return to the war, but drive to accomplish something. Anything. Those would have been the collection of individuals that left the carefree "city" to build their own civilizations. The type of elves that the Cannibal Conclave had encountered. The type of elves that were destined to eventually die out and leave a wooden husk on the landscape for goblins to use as a base to become an actual threat to cannibal cities. The cannibals hadn't been able to figure out why, but these elves knew that they didn't have access to any active breeding pools. Even if they'd had breeding mulch, without a source of water they wouldn't have been able to reproduce anyway. No matriarch had ever left the ocean, not even an inaccurate story of such an event, so even with water and breeding mulch they wouldn't have known how it worked.

Their lack of drive had even kept all of them at class one, retaining their bark and leaf instead of flesh. Now adjacent to my core, they were incapable of not feeling curiosity. Many decided to enter the water to advance their class, able to regardless of their previous status by my fixing of their circuitry. Elves, like goliaths, had very advanced circuitry. They advanced quickly, and with a much less aggressive process than goliaths. As they advanced to the peak of class one they gained features similar to hair; the root elves gaining thick ropes of white material while trunk elves grew hair that resembled grass and leaf elves hair that resembled green feathers. Possibly the most anticlimactic transformation for those that had an actual transformation.

The third class was where the largest change happened, they absorbed their root, bark, and leaf-like flesh and became different colored humans with their very inhuman hair. The trunk elves resembled humans the most, being a shade of bronze I'd seen among spawn and sporting a version of hair that could be mistaken for the humans' kind. The leaf elves with their green flesh could be mistaken for goblins, but their proportions and the alien nature of their hair made that comparison easily dismissed. The root elves were the oddest yet, though. Their coloration seemed to be dependent on the root elf itself, matching the coloration of the bulbs at the end of their version of hair. Some of the colors were extremely vivid while others were muted. The patterns were also numerous, from equidistant spots to randomized splotches to lines and gradients. The figures were all similar, though. If color wasn't a factor, each of them could be mistaken for a buxom, if short, human woman with very odd choices for hair style.

The resemblance didn't make sense, as internally they were still the same. If anything, they had a completely unnecessary profusion of teeth and claws where humans didn't have them. Looking more closely, that was probably the point. They didn't have a reproductive system, instead they had a leeching system. I hadn't encountered a creature that was so vicious with its feeding method before. Some hounds liked to eat their prey before they finished dying, but that was mostly impatience. Elves, if they fed the way their systems were built to, were actively forced to feed off of their prey while they were still alive. And keep them alive and useful for as long as possible. The root elves in particular had more confusion, glamour, illusion, and external vitality reinforcing circuits in their systems than I'd encountered everywhere else combined. Banshees were completely basic in comparison. In both functionality and intensity. A root elf could use confusion to increase the believability of illusions all while their victim failed to die. In direct combat it was a much more even playing field, but the root elves were even better in that regard. If compared to basic banshees, anyway. The ones I'd given full physiques to could shred root elves, but now I was seeing that as a possible mistake. A creature that focused on confusion and manipulation didn't need to be so physically imposing. The sheer versatility the elves had…it was truly a work of art.

I thought about removing the leeching system, as they didn't really need it for mana or sustenance, but they were built competently otherwise so I didn't have anything I really wanted to change it to. Maybe I could send a contingent of higher class elves into the spawn…Cacophony would probably notice them. Even if they didn't provide a direct use, the circuits were also valuable as a source of learning how to convert energies. Leeching was inherently connected to the devouring of energies that weren't supposed to belong to you. A very rare type of circuitry, as humans were squeamish about such things and even necromancers kept that particular taboo. At least, the caravans of necromancers I'd come in contact with so far held that taboo. From their records, they'd encountered necromancer caravans that broke it. Often resulting in a necromancer caravan being used to advance golem-craft in some way. .

Their fourth class broke the chain of keeping them small, each elf doubling in height as their proportions were exaggerated even further. Their hair grew to thrice the previous length, though, becoming long enough to mimic clothing even after being woven into ribbons or tied into straps. The elves even seemed to understand how to use their hair for this purpose inherently. In addition, they gained lungs. Sort of. They gained a system of pulling in air and ejecting it out again, polluted with their own particular poison. Each variety of poison more vicious than the last. The necessity for their prey to be conscious made for toxins that were utterly lacking in regards to mercy. Once again, the root elves were the source of most variance, seemingly giving each root elf their own poison. Trunk and leaf elves each had their own variety; trunk elves inducing targeted paralysis while leaf elves induced estrus beyond reason. Angie's force definitely didn't enjoy learning the effects of each poison, but how else would I be able to test? The utter mayhem caused when the elves had been "breathing" for several minutes and the clouds of invisible poison had mixed together into an extremely uncomfortable, if decidedly non-lethal, cloud. The days of experimentation afterwards created a more lasting impression, however.

Luckily for Angie's force, the swift increase in class for the elves stopped at class four. I wasn't sure what effects would occur at class five, the elves had surprised me at every turn of their development. Class four elves hadn't been encountered by the Conclave, so their poisons were a complete surprise. Even the leeching nature of the third class elves was unknown. It was unclear if the lack of records was due to genuine ignorance, embarrassment, or no cannibal having survived. What marvels would be uncovered by elves reaching higher ranks? From their circuitry, class four was far from their limit.

The question in addition to the steady growth of my need to have tree and grass worshippers drew a huge amount of my attention. The oddity that was the elves' circuitry was the last straw in my resistance to doing whatever was necessary to know how the trees and grass worked. So much that was unknown, so much to discover. It didn't take much exploration to find a tree with a defined will and a knot of grass. Pulling them back to the force as the newly combined army set out to the west drew a lot of ire from the elves, however. The universal grumble of "selfish bitch" in reaction to the tree made no more sense to me than the elves, but they felt it from the depths of their wills. Finding no real source, I had nothing to act against. I guess familiarity would have to do.

I flooded both creatures with mana, irritated to no end by my inability to see what was happening as both reacted with nothing but growth. The tree grew the most, stretching to twenty pedes before it stopped. The grass grew, but horizontally. The matted growth continued to expand until it covered a thirty pedes radius before splitting into eleven pieces, all of which roiled and writhed as if in agony. Pain was absent from their will, however.

After seeing that the writhing mess was indifferent to more mana, I turned my attention to the tree. It was stable enough, so I increased the amount of mana I was forcing through the leaves. It was finished growing vertically, instead thickening. Once again, growing more than any other creature I'd advanced so far. The tree had so much mass at the end of this growth phase that it made goblins and colossi of their own class seem pathetic in comparison. The next growth phase had it growing vertically again, though there was more detail to observe this time. The trunk and roots were splitting in two, becoming legs. The canopy was splitting in a similar manner. The changes remained incomplete, however, remaining something mistakable as a giant tree at sixty pedes. Pouring yet more mana into it I realized that it was not growing in either size or mana disruption, not that I could feel the mana disruption as more than an extremely inaccurate guess based on the width of the flows hitting the stilled mana. If it wasn't growing in class, what was it doing? Storing it? Storing it for what? Did trees have need of cores? Even more curious now, I continued.

The change from tree to creature was extremely abrupt. The tree ripped its legs apart at the same moment as it pulled its arms down, and immediately tried to sprint away from me. It was an impressive specimen, but nothing I couldn't manage. The headless human-type form twisted as it struggled, looking a lot like it was repeatedly turning in disbelief between the distance of freedom and the glowing avatar effortlessly holding it in place with one hand on a root. It couldn't even break the root to escape, as I was fortifying the root all the way up the creature's leg. If it tore free it would only have one leg. I hadn't stopped forcing mana into its system, though. It was advancing in class, even if there were no outward changes and the forest suppression made it almost impossible to figure out what class it was. I hadn't advanced this creature to look from the outside as it escaped. I'd advance it until it was capable of communication, and capable of worship.

Some sort of threshold was reached, because it started growing again. In every direction. By the time this growth phase was over it was sixty pedes wide at the waist and two hundred forty pedes tall. The crowning moment of the tree's growth was the loss of leaves. The air rejected each leaf with extreme prejudice, shredding the forest below the reaching fingers of the tree. I continued feeding mana into where the leaves had been, there was already some growth that indicated new leaves growing to replace the old, but I wasn't getting the same feedback. Finally, as the growth stopped, I felt intent from the creature. A legible communication begging for freedom. It didn't like my counteroffer, but feeling the flow of mana stop it realized that it had given up the chance of escape by begging. Seeing such a massive tree sag was quite impressive, as was the massive swathe of forest that was destroyed in the process. I wasn't even sure I'd needed to fortify the leg, given how not a single branch of the massive tree was destroyed in the fall. They even cut into the earth where the pressure was adequate, let alone such a weak target as a class zero tree. Even the leaves had been deadly to the trees and earth, remaining intact despite their impact.

Being given access to the internal workings of the tree, I was shocked. It was bȧrėly class four. Two hundred forty pedes was the lower limit for height of a class four tree. Another shocking development was that it wouldn't have accomplished anything to feed more mana into the leaves. The circuits had been reversed by the advance in class, generating mana-rich mist instead of absorbing it. I'd fed it so much mana that it could have advanced into class six, but instead it had built a very good mana-accumulation system hidden both behind and inside the mana-stilling system. It would be nearly impossible to find the tree despite it pulling so much mana that chickens would have thought twice. Mana-rich water flowed through the thing like blood, generating more every second. It didn't store any mana, it was just a system that was incredibly expensive for the tree to create. A circuit that had deteriorated by a lot. Fixing the tree's circuits improved the function of the tree so much that the leaves erupted from their buds and immediately started dripping water in complete drops. Drops that were quickly shredded into mist by the air, but they'd started as drops.

With the tree compliant, I turned to the grass bundles. Surprisingly, they each were fully coherent already. As coherent as the elves had been while lazing around the abandoned tunnels. As I looked closer, there were more similarities. The grass had writhed into a humanoid bundle, though they were all smaller than four pedes. Quickly establishing worship, which they had to supply strands of grass instead of a liquid to activate, I couldn't help but question their existence. As they advanced in class the questions became even more apparent. They were immature, having no circuitry at all. They were also…multiples. Every strand of grass had its own will, melted together into the whole like a coherent version of Cacophony. Ten was the minimum. However, as they advanced in class the wills became more entwined, having the formation of a will-core as part of their natural development. That was unique to grass. As was the fractured way they processed information, each original will retaining a sense of self despite conglomerating into a core.

Physically, they were similar to elves, except the male version. They remained small as the outer layers learned to mimic flesh, and they mimicked flesh better than elves did as they looked completely human. When they doubled in size, the effect was even more apparent. Their faces sometimes boiled in a very unnatural way, but that was probably something that could be trained out of them. Even their leeching nature was similar, merely a difference in design leading to a ċȯċk erupting with spikes instead of a pussƴ full of retractable thorns. At class four they even gained a poisonous breath, mimicking the leaf elves' poison almost exactly. A similarity I hadn't expected, given the differences of their methods. Were awareness and vitality required for their leeching as well?

The largest physical difference I could point out would be that the male elves weren't a single piece, instead being bundles of grass. As such, they could abandon their human guise and become at least ten bundles of grass woven into a singular creature at the center. As a result they were fundamentally weaker, but much more versatile. If they were good at concealment, I may be able to send them into the spawn cities, as the exact features of their bodies were different every time they reformed. If they had no choice but to form a different guise every time it could become an issue.. Another tick that they all had that I hoped was a tick that could be trained out.