Simplicity has a beauty all its own. I sat hunched inside a ritual circle of mixed necrotic and Voodoo symbols carved into the magically suffused stone of the floating overlook within Sunsail Anchorage.
Around me the necromancers stood, pouring power into the circle and chanting in their Dark language. Behind them, in a triangle around us, the Trolls chanted as well.
From outside the room the Ranger Elves I had captured months ago powered magical circles connected to my own.
I had watched for five days as my minions painstakingly went over every facet of the magic we were now attempting. Overseeing a bastardization of two rituals. There was little else I could do now. I had lost control of my ability to move even with magical aid just yesterday.
Even without the rot the combination of what was already lost within my body and the magical overuse had taken its toll.
As night fell we began our work.
The necromancers where practicing a moderately difficult ritual of conversion. It was a sort of graduation project for most of them, something they had done in the past to prove themselves worthy of the next level of teachings their masters would impart.
It turned the soul of a mortal being into a Specter, or a Banshee. It was originally made to both seal a soul into the living world, and bind it to a particular wizard's will.
The first portion of such a ritual is normally to create the Specter, and trap it within the circle. This portion of my own ritual was largely the same, keeping the soul from departing to the Shadow-lands, and twisting it into a Ghost like apparition.
The only change was the addition of a number of Amani symbols to build a sort of bridge to their part in this, allowing them to take up some of the raw mana cost, and begin their own changes.
The second portion however, was were the real change began. Instead of a ritual of binding to weaken the ghosts will before sending it into a mental battle with the leading practitioner, we had set this one to increase the raw power of the subject soul and leave it's will intact,
This was done with the sacrifice of two lives, in this case Amani warriors.
The final portion was overseen by the Witch-doctors in it's entirety. They had set several totems made from the bones of zombies around the circle, covered in the fresh blood of Trolls who had cut their wrists. This was done to help suffuse the specter with the spirits of the dead sacrificed in the ritual, and to make it more powerful.
I had the rest of my warriors sacrificed at the beginning to fuel such totems, even now I could see their screaming souls, now free of my enslavement, attempting to escape. They whirled around the room in a frenzy, slowly being forced into the totems around me.
Streams of mana trailed into the symbols we had carved into the ground, heating them until they glowed against the night sky.
I felt a tug at my center as my soul began to draw away from my body. If felt as if I was molting, coming out of a shell of skin and flesh. I found myself looking at my own body, falling to its side without a consciousness controlling it.
Streams of dark energy began to trail towards my soul, reaching out and grasping at me roughly, grabbing at me with burning tendrils of shadow. I felt my soul change into an abomination, a crime against the natural order of things.
It was a violation I couldn't even begin to describe. For an instant I was simply an unbound specter, a weak ghost that could attack the physical world, and potentially steal the body of a weak willed individual.
It was like looking at the world through a window, being able to touch it only in the barest sense of the word.
Then the second portion began, and raw magic flowed into me, granting my soul a level of power over the physical world only a scourge enhanced spirit has. I immediately felt as if I had physical presence again.
I was fueled by the magic, given power enough to fight a living being physically if I had to.
I felt like a new man, capable of once again moving without difficulty or pain. I could walk twenty steps without tiring myself out.
Then the final act began. The souls of the Troll's I had enslaved grinded themselves into raw essence, feeding my spirit just as the raw mana from the rangers and necromancer's did.
I felt my own spiritual self change as well, growing with the addition of souls. I could feel magic within me, a raw authority over the physical world.
By the time the chanting stopped and the magical flow slowed to almost nothing I was a new being. A Specter of raw magical strength.
I could cast magic, I could affect the physical world. I could steal away the bodies of all but the most strong willed of beings.
On the spiritual side of things I was now an outlier. A ghost matched only by others hundreds of years my senior, who had had time to grow beyond their natural bounds.
like them I could be overcome, enslaved, and bound to necromancers of enough strength. Unlike them I was not trapped within my own mind, or easily found by those who would see me bound.
I could take the time to learn, to observe, and so long as I had a physical vessel my will could not be stolen away.
The world was my oyster.