Necromancer

All the tools were ready, from the bone saw to the pliers. He lit frankincense in the corners of the hall to diffuse the pungent aroma of death that gripped the dark hall. Rats wove in and out of the ruined benches in search of his spoiled supper and found poisoned morsels in tattered rags. The robbed man sneered at the pitiful creatures and set a candle on his work bench for the client.

Four loud raps interrupted the man. He cackled as he scuttled to the bolted wooden door and peeked through the musty keyhole. On the other side stood a man in muddy robes with a wooden leg and long hands that better resembled talons than human appendages. The robbed man released the latches and bolts and yielded the passage to the ville creature at his door.

"Welcome, Sebastian," said the robed man.

"Mordecai," the bird man greeted. His voice was raspy with age and chronic sickness. "Have you prepared everything as I have asked?"

"But of course," was Mordecai's reply.

The creature, Sebastian, hovered to the bench and let loose a hoarse laugh to himself. Then he wandered top the collection of corpses deeper in the room laid beneath fresh candles by the robed man. Most were soldiers from the battle at the nearby river, but there were some boys and maidens among the fallen.

"What will you be creating tonight my lord?" asked Mordecai. "May I offer any suggestions?"

"A battle mage," replied Sebastian.

Mordecai let out a croaking "ah" and knotted his hands together. "Let us work right away, then."

Sebastian walked past the first few bodies and paused at a white pair of feet. Without touching any other part, he plucked at the toes and rubbed them. Slowly, his hands moved up the ankles. The body was a drummer boy who'd fallen by an archer's arrow. "This one has good feet," he said aloud. Then he examined the legs beside him. "No, never mind. I want a woman's feet. They've more muscle to them."

"Yes, you are right," Mordecai agreed. "Always right, sir."

He stopped at an older captain's corpse. His steel armor was at his side, and his sword on the table beside him. "I like his arms," he said. "Truly strong - not massive, but dense like diamonds. But his hands are awkward. Cut them just below the elbow."

"Yes, sir!" Mordecai said and started with his bone saw on the soldier's body. As Sebastian looked over the other bodies, the sound of flesh and bone slicing apart echoed in a quick rhythm.

The ugly creature stopped at an older boy's side. Blood still colored his cheeks; his lips looked as though he were smiling in the midst of a dream. Without a word, the creature opened the boy's shirt and chest, plucking his heart from the hole. "A perfect heart for my creation," he muttered. "And good lungs. This one was a bard."

Mordecai paused to look. "Yes, my lord. I will set it aside for you!"

The creature stopped at a young woman's side. "Perfect hands, this one. Tired but not destroyed. Was she a musician or a tailor?"

"An adulterous housewife, murdered by her husband in her sleep," Mordecai said.

The creature snarled. "I've no need for a traitor." He paused, snarled again, and moved to the next soldier. From him, he took the ribs and stomach. "Such a waste of good material, these wretches!"

The next body had only one arm and a pegleg. Sebastian was furious. "Where is his other hand!" he demanded.

"Lost many years ago in battle, sir," Mordecai replied from the altar table.

"Foolish boy!" Sebastian removed his hand with his knife and set it on the table. "I need another hand. One that can withstand fire."

"May I suggest the soldier at the end, sir? He has worked with the hot tars and catapults for many battles."

Sebastian looked over the soldier at the end. The face of this body was very tired. Though it was shaved, the deep greys suggested that even eternal sleep was not deep enough for this exhausted soldier. His hand was dexterous and calloused. Yes, it matched the boy's hand well! The would work well together! He removed the soldier's hand and took his ears as well.

"What face will you choose, sir?" Mordecai asked.

Sebastian ignored him and found a young woman with strong, tanned legs. He severed them gently, careful not to ruin them in a geiser of blood, and set them on the table. The feet were of average size though the toes were painted. The creature did not understand why women painted their toes when no one ever saw them.

Three witches were among the dead. Sebastian took the curling brown locks from one and the blue eyes of another. He contemplated the third witch's lips. "What was their death?" he asked.

"They stood trial, sir, and admitted their guilt when accused of cursing Lord Grey's father," said Mordecai.

Sebastian snarled. "I've no need for foolish truth-speakers," he hissed and moved on.

The creature seemed troubled. Though there were so many bodies, he could not choose from them a set of lips or a face. Mordecai suggested a handsome man's strong-set face, but Sebastian growled. "I want a woman," he said alas.

"A woman, sir?" Mordecai said. At the creature's waving arms, he shuddered. "Of course, sir. A woman, sir."

"The soldiers will hesitate before they kill a woman," he said.

"Yes, sir. You are brilliant, sir." Mordecai quickly moved over the bodies. "The priestess here, she is a virgin and a beauty. The soldiers loved her."

"Good. Give me all of her beauty."

Sebastian walked slowly among the bodies groaning. He paced over and over among them. "An old man knows many things," he grumbled, "but his mind is made up." His decrepit fingers fell over a boy with soft hands and delicate skin. "The scholar is a fool too. He thinks he knows everything. Which would you choose?"

Mordecai paused in his preparations. "I don't rightly know, sir," he said.

Sebastian grumbled and worked to extract the young man's brain from his skull. He was careful removing it, for he did not want to damage the delicate mass.

Next the creature took a long glass tube and poked it into the bellies of several men. When his tube produced dark red fluid, he moved to the next corpse. At the bard's heart-less corpse, he stopped and removed his liver from the same emptiness. Pausing, Sebastian removed all of the bard's guts.

"Sir, his guts are weak," Mordecai warned.

"Nay, they are so strong that they appear weak," Sebastian rasped. "I need a battlemage that can stomach his own atrocities and a liver that will not make him blind with anger."

Mordecai let out a low moan and set the guts with the other organs. "Sir, shall I add this man's blood net to your things? He watched his son die in his arms."

"Yes, do that. No man's blood courses so true as a man watching his kin die," Sebastian said merrily. "Give me his tongue as well. My battle mage will want to taste death."

"Is there anything else I can give you, sir?" Mordecai asked.

The two robed men stood beside the table and looked over the forming body. Sebastian set the bones, the flesh, the many organs in place carefully, pausing to clean the cuts. Mordecai offered him more tools and rags to clean the blood, and the creature took them. Within the hour the body was a messy pile. All the organs were in place and ready.

Sebastian spoke a profane chant and set the pieces together, starting with the priestess's face to the witch's eyes, the scholar's brain to the head, the soldier's ears to the beautiful face, the sister's lock's to the lovely head, and the priestess's delicate neck and shoulders to the bard's lungs and heart. The heartbroken father's blood net set in the organs all the while and prepared to pump the bard heart's blood, and the guts fell into a complicated line down past the virgin priestess's womb and nether areas. The strong legs fastened to the wide woman's hips and to the delicate waist. Sebastian let out an otherworldly moan and took Mordecai's chalk to his hand, and with it he painted the flesh the color of hazelnuts to give it one solid form. With a word, the body breathed, lowering and raising its breasts and belly as it did so. The body let out a harrowing scream as it opened its eyes.

"It is successful!" Mordecai said.  "Congratulations, sir!"

Sebastian said nothing to the other robed man. He shook a jeweled bottle at his side and poured it into the screaming body's lips, hissing, "You will know my arcane magic, underling, and do as I say. Speak, and tell me you know what I expect from you!"

In that moment, the body opened its eyes and ceased its screaming. It parted its lips to form words. Sebastian let out a frustrated moan, and then he fell to the ground. Mordecai shrieked and turned to the body and then the abomination, speaking: "You've killed him! You've killed your master!"

The body spoke more words, slowly and tiredly, and the second man joined him. At the sight of their deaths, it curled its knees to its shoulders. It stayed on the table for hours, shivering, trembling, breathing the stench of death from the chamber. When alas its body ached too much to sit, it stepped onto the stone floor and walked.

"Who am I?" it asked the corpses. Seeing the desecrated bodies around it, the body froze. "What am I?"

The scholar's brain ticked inside and brought the creature logic. It was a woman, born from pieces of many people. The father's tongue hungered for revenge against the dead men that had done this to all of the dead. The bard's heart ached to make it all right. The priestess felt the filth of desecration and death. The creatures magic surged through the father's veins, but she did not know what to do with it. The soldiers were tired of war and death, and all ached for eternal sleep that now eluded them.

"I will right our deaths," she said. "I promise."

The woman took a grey robe from beside the doorway and stepped into the gold-splattered temple. A new day was just beginning, and there was much to be done.