Chapter 20:
A few weeks had passed since he had begun his new project, and Arkinstar still had made no breakthroughs. Already, three of his human lab-rats had been used up, and each had gotten him nothing but a bloody mess and a foul odor.
Shutting his ancient Alteration tome, he silently glided across his sewer lair to one of his bookshelves. He slid the book into its place, and sighed. Nothing in there would be of use. Alteration was a school of magic that was filled with nothing but disappointment.
Slinking into a cold, stone chair, Arkinstar rested his chin on his palm and sighed again. Was this what boredom felt like? Time moving by with nothing to show for it? For once in his life, he was not solving problems in a matter of minutes.
He gritted his teeth in frustration. Had he actually come across a bit of magic that he could not perform? It was unheard of. Surely he could manage this little experiment. He had to try again.
Leaping up from where he sat, Arkinstar strode down the pathways of the sewers, stopping briefly to exterminate a small spider with a burst of fire. The new maze of sewage had perplexed him at first, as it was so different from his lair in Wayrest, but in a matter of days he had mapped it out in his head.
In a matter of minutes, he stood before a great waterfall of waste, splashing the walls with a filthy layer of grime. Waving his hand, a flat disk of glowing green light appeared over his head. Upon walking into the waterfall, the current splashed around it, as though it were solid. Arkinstar emerged on the other side completely dry.
If Alteration magic could create a solid barrier of magicka like it just had, why then could it not fortify a soul gem? What was going wrong with his spells when, theoretically, he should have been able to cast them effectively? A thin coating of solid magic around the gem's physical form should have been enough to prevent it from exploding.
Arkinstar shook his head to get the thought out of his mind. There was no sense in worrying about how something that failed should have worked. Trying it again would not cause it to succeed; doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome was beyond foolish.
Arkinstar blinked out of his thoughts and looked up at the oak door before him. Opening it, he slipped into a dark room. With a flourish of his hand, the dungeon became illuminated with an array of Mage Lights.
Six men and three women were chained to a wall at the end of the room, wearing only the tattered remains of their armor. Their arms were suspended pathetically from the ceiling, and their mouths were gagged with dirty cloths.
One of the men, a younger Breton with short, dirty blonde hair was sniffing, tears pouring from his eyes. Arkinstar wrinkled his nose at the sight of him. What a disgusting excuse for a living creature. He suppressed a grin as he made his way towards it.
Twisting a finger around the man's wrists, a band of the same green light that shielded Arkinstar from the water appeared, binding them together. Arkinstar snapped his fingers, and the chains snapped, sending the Breton to his knees. The necromancer grabbed him by the the neck, and lifted him off his feet.
Arkinstar stared into his young, foolish, watery-blue eyes. Tears were positively flowing from them now, and his entire body was quivering. Arkinstar scowled. The human race was truly pathetic. They live for such a short time that they cling to every minute like an infant clings to its mother.
Perhaps it was this that made tormenting them all the more entertaining; the Mer live for so long that they become satisfied with the time they were given, and no longer fear death.
Arkinstar stood there for a minute, holding the Breton in place. He was whimpering now, pleading with his eyes to be set free. He would be given no such gift.
Waving his hand, Arkinstar conjured up a skeleton, who began to drag the man towards the waterfall. The necromancer followed closely behind. As he left the room, he snapped his fingers and extinguished the Mage Lights.
Shortly, they arrived in a room that was lit by a strange purple flame, with a table in the middle. Arkinstar dismissed his skeletal minion, and lifted the Breton onto the table's surface. He grabbed the man's arms, and dispelled the magic handcuffs. Arkinstar laughed out loud at the soldier's futile attempt to break free, and pinned him down with his arms spread out on either side. Green bands of light held him down.
Smiling coldly, Arkinstar conjured a dagger and cut away the man's armor, exposing his bare flesh. His victim's heart was beating so hard, he could see it pushing against its ribcage. With another strike with the blade, he cut away the Breton's gag. It was always more fun when he could hear them screaming.
"Please don't kill me!" the man wailed immediately. Arkinstar sneered. he was more of a child than a man.
"And why, in the name of Akatosh, should I not?" the necromancer said, looming inches away from the boy's face. This one was more fun than most of the others, but that did not surprize him. The more scared, the more entertaining, and he was pretty sure this one had soiled his pants.
The Breton sobbed. "I- I have a mother!" he cried. "An old mother! She needs me! She was expecting me home by-" his voice cracked, and he let out a choked sound of despair.
Arkinstar smiled. "A mother, eh?" He leaned in so their nose were practically touching, the man's wide eyes crossing to keep his face in sight. "I'll be sure to pay her a visit when I'm done with you."
He was now crying hysterically, tears and snot pouring down his face. "Please," he said weakly. "Mara, please... Not me…"
As the boy prayed feebly, Arkinstar strode across the room to a chest, and pulled out a black soul gem. Conjured dagger in one hand and the soul gem in the other, he approached his test subject.
When the Breton saw what he was doing, he began thrashing around on the table. "Stop!" he screamed. "Please!"
Arkinstar lunged forwards, plunging the dagger into the man's chest, and cutting a box around his heart. The screams were music to his ears, the splattering blood, a perfume. Reaching into the cavity he had cut, he grabbed the still beating heart, and ripped it from its owner's body.
The man was beginning to go still now, but before he faded, Arkinstar cast a soul trap on him, and plunged the black soul gem into the hole where his heart once was. Purple light erupted from the fresh corpse and was quickly absorbed by the gem.
Taking a step back, he waved his hand over the soul gem until it was coated in green light. Then the necromancer took a deep breath. This was the moment of truth. Arkinstar began rubbing his hands together, and a purple light started to glow within them. Twirling the light, he launched it at the soul gem.
On impact, the soul gem shattered, and the corpse exploded into bloody chunks which splattered across the walls. Arkinstar glowered at the bloody mess, wiping a small chunk of flesh off of his cheek. Of course it failed. It had last time.
But why was it failing? Theoretically speaking, the solid magica could be used as a sort of armor to strengthen the body of the soul gem. Of course, such a spell was never used in this way before, nor in a similar way.
He had figured that the spell was developed as some form of primitive bound armor, but then had evolved into a way of creating simple objects out of nothingness. Perhaps that was not the way it was intended to be used.
Now that he thought about it, it would be an incredibly ineffective armor, as it would require many plates of the magic to create even a simple boot. People would have to cast the spell hundreds of times to protect themselves.
So maybe it was not the spell to use for this purpose. If only he had managed to study the way Hagravens created Briarhearts, and how they brought the dead back to life using a substitute heart. That was essentially what he was trying to do; create an undead servant that had a certain degree of free will.
A trip to Skyrim was out of the question, so he would just have to figure this out on his own. Arkinstar knew that everything about his method but the shattering soul gem was flawless. Keeping the soul bound to the body in a physical form granted easy access to it, making it susceptible to all sorts of magical control, and so long as it was affixed within the body it belonged to, it would pass as a replica of life.
Suddenly it hit him. Armor. He needed a spell to armor his soul gem. The answer was so simple, he was surprised he had not thought of it before. Mage Armor. A spell designed to protect someone. If he could modify it to be cast upon a soul gem, he could make it sturdy enough to hold the resurrected soul.
He smiled as he made his way back to his library. He had been so fixated on ancient magics, he had forgotten to check his more recent spellbooks, where all his Mage Armor notes were.
After an hour or so of studying, Arkinstar lifted a second black soul gem, and casted a new spell on it. The gem flashed green, and the light died down to a slight glow. It had worked. The spell was only temporary, but it only needed to last for as long as the reanimation process took.
Arkinstar slumped back into a chair and twirled the soul gem in his fingers. Of course he had overcome this challenge. He was someone who simply could not lose. Soon, his plan would advance. Soon, he would be the commander of his own army of Undead Thralls.