Aedifex Venenatus: A Short Story

Aedifex Venenatus looked about his carefully cleaned store with satisfaction. The large stone and wood store had none of the gleaming marble and glass his father’s grand store in Medietas had once boasted, but the Venenatus family had to leave all that behind when they, like most of the skilled artisans, had fled the Hero-Cursed Kingdom’s crumbling cities. All of the new City states they had founded just outside the kingdom’s borders were still in the rough and functional stage, and Aedifex’s Enchantments was as high-class a store as anyone had managed to build yet. It’s just too bad that there were so few people who could afford high-quality enchanted gear these days.

Therefore, as soon as he heard a customer walk in, Aedifex hurried behind his counter, put on a professional smile, and gave his usual “Welcome to Aedifex’s Enchantments” line. That... might have been a mistake this time. The

With the combination of speed and precision only possible for a Master Enchanter, Aedifex began forming runes. Most he’d formed thousands of times... but there was one he’d never used before. Carefully, he took the rune for Life and fused it with a modifier meaning Opposite. Unlife.

The enchantment attached, but it didn’t solidify. Instead, it pulsed as though alive... or pretending to be alive. It was growing, he fed more mana in and it grew faster. Spreading first to the spine and then to the other ribs. Even the broken ones were included, in fact, they were actually straitening out and melding back together! No wonder necromancers always seemed to start with skeletons.

He should have emptied his mana pool by now, but strangely he felt like he still had more. He kept feeding the enchantment as it spread through his skull and down his legs. Finally, after spreading across his entire skeleton it solidified. Aedifex sighed (mentally) and opened his eyes... or tried