NOVEL NEXT 169- Ronan. Part II.
There were still a couple hours left before dawn when he and Tom were already at the academy compound's exit gate, with its guard post.
"You still can't leave," the guard started to stop him, until Ronan lowered his own hood so he could see his face. "Oh, it's you," he said with some apprehension. "Go ahead."
"Very kind, thank you," he replied sincerely.
The truth was, the first day he'd wanted to go out at night they'd given him problems, especially when he stated he was going to look for new friends to dig up.
Look, he did it at night because there were classes during the day, plus his dark magic professor—who wasn't a necromancer—had explained that those types of activities were better done discreetly, since users of other magics looked with too much envy upon the powers of those chosen by the dark affinity.
Ronan didn't believe for a second that anyone looked at him with envy (well, maybe his roommate, the professor himself, or some classmate); but some stomachs were indeed too delicate to witness the awakening of his friends, especially if they'd been dead for days and their flesh was decomposing. So he had no problem being discreet and doing it at night.
He trusted that his lady, in her wisdom, knew this. Still, he remembered that when she found out about his wolves and the other animals buried around the goblin cave and its surroundings, she had seemed surprised. Maybe it had been some kind of test—like the village building, which she had delegated to him. She hadn't said it outright, but she had been so grateful for the smokehouse, the forge, and the cold chamber. His angel's ways were sometimes mysterious, yet he trusted he was doing well as her main subordinate. Sergeant for now, but he had no doubt that as his lady's empire grew, so would his rank.
As for his nighttime outings, the guards eventually ended up waking his professor, who explained to them that a user with a high affinity for dark magic needed to go out at night for academic purposes. Since then, they hadn't given him any trouble. And while Ronan found sunlight both painful and the most wonderful thing in the world (at least until he saw his angel), so many years spent in the basement had left him more comfortable in the night.
Once on the road, he asked Tom to empty the sack. Carefully, Tom let the bones fall in a pile on the dirt and then Ronan raised them. It was just a horse that he and Tom would have to share. The creature, with dark flames burning in its eye sockets, didn't retain its animal soul. It had been dead too long when Ronan dug it up. Still, it recognized its master and bowed its head.
They mounted up and began riding toward their first destination: the corpse of half a cow that wild dogs had stolen from a farm and dragged away—only to be forced, mid-feast, by a larger predator to bury it in haste and flee.
Ronan, of course, could only sense the presence of death. He deduced everything else when he passed near the farm and saw the cows safe in their pen, when he kept on toward the small forest several kilometers beyond, and when he reached the spot where the carcass had been buried at a shallow depth. There, he noticed paw prints that might have belonged to dogs or wolves, and alongside them, the traces of something larger he couldn't identify.
The earth was churned up where the cow had been hidden, making the smaller tracks easy to spot. Yet there were no clear prints from the larger beast. Instead, the disturbed and flattened leaves nearby suggested something massive had lingered there. Ronan found that promising. After all, his goal was to craft his first abomination, and then use it to train with the mace.
With a smile that lit up his normally expressionless features as he imagined himself fighting the chimera, he approached the corpse. To create and animate his creature, he would start with the half-cow. So he got to work—digging it up, into the sack, and onto the horse.
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Then he set off on foot, following the path marked by the flattened leaves. After a while, as the trail became harder to follow and he feared he might have lost it—after all, he had no tracking skills—one of the two small birds he had sent ahead as scouts relayed a mental image of a faint glow among the trees. He instructed it to proceed carefully and get closer.
Then he set off walking, following the direction marked by those flattened leaves. After a while, where he was having trouble following the trail and knew he might have lost it (after all, he didn't have any tracking skills), one of the two small birds he'd sent ahead as scouts sent him images of a glow among the trees. He ordered it to be careful and get closer.
It revealed a clearing with a campfire, and what appeared to be human hunters sleeping, except for one keeping watch. Several animal carcasses lay scattered around their camp. Ronan studied the scene carefully, calculating his next move, and felt disappointed.
What he'd taken for a large predator was nothing more than some humans, possibly poachers. Being several of them, they could well have been the ones who'd trampled the leaves. And he had gotten excited, thinking it was a large animal he could use willingly for his chimera…
Well, that could still work: the poachers could be used for that.
However, he dismissed using them for one reason: Bianca would be angry. Besides, he didn't know if they'd attacked those animals for food or for money. If he could be sure of the latter, he'd capture them. But not to turn them into part of some glorious undead creation. No, rather, to hand them over to the authorities in his lady's name, so that the credit would go to her.
So he kept searching for death, riding toward where the largest and closest calls were, digging up several more corpses. He ended up in a secluded clearing where he began creating the creature.
With the half cow, which included a bit more than the front part of the animal, the deer, and the human he'd found, he created his abomination. Cow head, human torso fusing its back with the cow's, human arms, and everything else from the deer. That is, a bone deer with bits of flesh stuck to it, which he cut at neck height, removing all the cervical vertebrae, to insert the part that was a mix of human and cow. Plus, he reinforced the deer's four legs with the leftover flesh and bones from the cow, so they could properly support the chimera's weight.
He found the procedure curious, since with the spell active he could move the creatures' parts through the air so they'd follow his thought, what he imagined in his mind. Several times, he changed something to be more satisfied. When he finished and unlife illuminated the cow's glassy eyes, he asked it to gallop. He wanted to see its movement and strength, how it managed to move between the trees. He liked them. Then he ordered it to tear off a branch to improvise a kind of club, and to try galloping while wielding it. Time didn't run out—it lasted 60 minutes—but the creature collapsed into a tangle of flesh and bone. Ronan had done it, to recreate it.
This time the process was much faster, though he changed a few things to give the creature more strength in its legs and more stability when wielding the weapon. Basically, fix what he'd seen could be perfected. Then he drew his mace and gave it the order to fight him hand-to-hand.
He wanted both to test the chimera's potential and to train his mace mastery. When he wasn't with Bianca or digging up corpses or organizing the goblin village, he went back to training with his friends. He'd even gotten to the point of facing all three at once and wanted to try fighting a more dangerous enemy.
The abomination was quite a challenge because it definitely beat him. Obviously, it stopped before damaging its owner. It was powerful. With one simple blow without applying force, it launched Ronan several meters backward.
Ronan smiled happily. He'd created his chimera and it worked. As a bonus, he was training with the mace.
Though they took several breaks for Ronan to rest, he had about ten minutes left when he decided to call it quits. In the final combat rounds, he asked Tom to fight alongside him, and even then they were no match for the creature.
So he undid the spell and the abomination collapsed back to the ground. He left the flesh there and, with Tom's help, collected the bones.
The human's soul hadn't remained in this world. It was nothing more than an empty corpse when he found it, which is why he hadn't minded incorporating it into his chimera.
They tied the sack of bones to the horse and mounted again for the ride back to the academy.
His idea was to arrive in time for lunch and, in the afternoon, deal with the assassins who'd gone after his lady. He'd found out where they were and planned to find out who had given them the order.