Konall climbed the foothills of Mount Herobrine. The spirits had called him there, on a spiritual retreat, to get in touch with them, his calling, and his own abilities.

Konall took step after step, traveling for leagues along a mountain stream. And every step he took next to the flowing waters reminded him of his thirst. This was not a thirst for normal water. Nor was it a thirst for spiritual refreshment. No, this thirst ran to the very core of Konall’s soul. It was a thirst for alcohol.

“Can’t I have one Odin-be-damned drink on this quest?” Konall called out to the mountains.

“No,” said Spaz. “You’re an idiot. Not stupid ‘cause you can’t think, stupid ‘cause you go out of your way not to. Not bad. Kadlin thinks too much and look where it got her. But for this climb, you’re gonna need all your wits.”

Konall swore and kept walking. He took off his boots and rested his already aching and hot feet in the cool flowing waters.

“Konall,” Spaz asked suddenly. “You getting anything from this stream?”

Konall shrugged, “My feet feel better.”

Spaz shook his tiny head. “No, spiritually.”

Konall thought. “I guess I see this stream as being representative of the power that flows from the spirits. And their wisdom. And the force of life. And everything really. It travels from on high and changes everything, slowly at first, but surely. Yeah, and as a shaman I tap into that flow, make sure it goes where it’s needed. But like a water mill I don’t use up what I access, only borrow it.”

“Oh,” said Spaz. “I was gonna talk about the spirits making your feet stink less. But that sounds a little better.”

* * *

Kadlin focused on the sickly black sheen of the sword on her glaive. Already its energy was seeping out, twisting the pole on which it was mounted and wrapping it in shadows. Already its energies were being released to her. She’d be able remake the world in her image. It’d be a better place where… well she had time to work the details out later.

The tower lay ahead of her, Xanadon the Defiler over her right shoulder, four guards following silently behind her.

“This isn’t what it used to be,” Xanadon said. “Look at the bricks falling everywhere, the ruin, the decay.”

“Pity,” Kadlin sighed.

Xanadon shook his head, which being a skull was equivalent to shaking his entire self. “Everyone dies. The weak accept this, the strong push on. I did not let the laws of life and death govern my affairs. Why should you accept that for this tower?”

Kadlin cocked her head. “You’re talking about necromancy on a tower? But it’s never been alive. This would be more of bending time than an issue of voiding death.”

“You need to work more on your golem projects. Life is yours to command. If you want someone dead, they die. If you want something to be alive, or undead, why should you be concerned with whether it was ever alive before? I think this tower needs some work. What do you think?”

Kadlin nodded. “I agree.” She looked up at the tower and began to get to work, transforming from the outside.

* * *

Konall continued on the steep hike, following the stream to its source. He stopped to catch his breath, resting against a pine tree, massaging his aching head. He saw a deer walk over and begin drinking from the stream. Slowly and quietly, he drew his bow and knocked an arrow.

“What are you doing?” said a voice in Konall‘s head, one he immediately recognized as a spirit.

“I’m going to hunt that deer,” Konall stated inside his mind.

“Why?”

“Because it’ll make a nice meal, coat, and some glue.”

“But what can it be while it is still alive? There is value in everything, even in death. But in life, there is far more potential. That deer can give birth to many more of her kind, can make this world a more beautiful place, and maybe at some point provide a meal to someone who needs it more than you do.”

“Well I’m hungry right now.” Konall said this out loud, without thinking, and the deer took notice of him. And then she went back to drinking. Konall relaxed his bow.

“What am I supposed to do for lunch?” he asked, his stomach echoing the complaint.

The spirit seized control of Konall’s visual faculties, and he felt himself flying through the forest, coming to rest in full view of a patch of ripe blackberries.

Konall suddenly felt back in his own body. “That sounds good,” he said, walking toward the snack. He needed the energy.

* * *

Kadlin looked out at the remade tower. She’d used her levitation magic along with the dark energies of the glaive to move stones and fallen bricks from their resting places to serve as materials. Whatever substance the glaive was made of seemed to fill in cracks and cover parts of the tower, giving a certain dark beauty to the whole thing. Kadlin knew the renovations wouldn’t hold up, but it would make her visit to Fernswarthy’s tower more pleasant.

She looked around. The sun was setting now. Hadn’t it been midday when she’d started? She could have sworn she’d been doing this for half an hour. An hour at most. Yet she felt exhilarated, not exhausted. This was addicting - no, rewarding.

She ordered her guards to follow as she entered the tower.

 
* * *

Konall came to a small valley, between two folds of the mountain. As he sat on a log, he saw a brief movement, out of the corner of his eye.

“Spaz,” he bellowed. “Check that out for me.”

“I can smell ‘em,” said Spaz. “Ghosts.”

“What are they doing here?” asked Konall.

“Why don’t you ask them?” said Spaz.

Konall strolled downhill, calling out “Ghosts. Hey dead guys. Why are you dead?”

They surrounded him. Spaz whispered in Konall’s ear, “You can’t just tell the dead they’re dead. You think people are crazy before they’re dead, check out how crazy they get when they only think they have a brain, but don’t. If they were sane, they’d go on to the next life. Also, they’d look cooler. If I was a ghost, I’d try to…” Konall ignored the rest. The ghosts had been confronted by their own deaths, and decided to ignore what they’d heard and attack whatever that thing was that had done something they didn't like.

Konall said a quick blessing over his weapons and attacked, sword twirling as it cut through air and spirit, rending in this world and the next. From all sides the ghosts came at him, wailing with frustration they didn’t understand.

A voice whispered in Konall’s ear: “Call on the sun.” Konall offered a brief command to a sun elemental, and it came down, striking through the shadowed undead, driving them back.

“Why won’t they die?” said Konall.

“They’re dead,” said Spaz, getting off his seat to send one to the underworld.

“Wait, you can damn these things. Why don’t you finish them off.”

“Can’t,” said Spaz. “Us demons only have power over the wicked and people who download music without paying royalties to contributing artists. You’ll need an archon of light for the good ones.”

“Hel,” said Konall. “Yes,” said a voice behind him.

Konall turned, and froze. Part of this was fear, part of this was the chilling power of elemental ice that began creeping through his veins. The goddess Hel stood before him, her long grey hair splayed out in all directions, a dark glare on her face. Around her snow fell through the summer air and she walked along a frozen pathway toward him, aged fingers reaching for him.

“I don’t like it when you use my name as a curse word,” she said.

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I was, I mean… there were these ghosts and I wasn’t thinking straight. I meant to-”

Hel brought up a hand. “Stop. I might have failed to notice at all, had I not decided to take a special interest in what you do today,” she said.

“Oh,” said Konall. “Is that good?”

“When the gods take an interest in mortal affairs, it often ends badly for the mortal. In your case, however, I’d take all the allies you can get.” She snapped her fingers and all the ghosts were banished. “Better,” she said. “Do you know why you are called to kill the undead at all times?” asked Hel.

“Um, well. They’re bad.”

“They are an abomination. They refuse to do their duty and choose insanity and corruption instead of progress in the next life. To move on when your time has come is a sign of maturity. But some not only refuse to advance, they hold others back with them.”

“Necromancers,” Konall spat.

“Yes, they bind others in an accursed state in this life, to experience the agony of death without end and a torment of the mind that is unbearable. If you ever find a necromancer, kill its body and send its soul to me. I will finish the rest.”

“My sister’s a necromancer,” Konall said.

“What I said remains. The gods watch your affairs with interest. You may call on them, if you dare, but the price will be high. And next time you want me to arrive, try using the proper rituals, instead of swearing.”

And with that, the goddess was gone.

* * *

“Stop,” said Xanadon.

“What!” said Kadlin.

“It’s time to teach you a new technique, one I was never able to pull off in life or in death, but one I think you now have the power to master.”

“I’m interested,” said Kadlin.

“I thought you might be. You’ll notice the abilities you gained from the glaive are not magical. Magic is the ability to bend the rules of this world to serve you. The sword’s abilities allow you to break the rules or outright ignore them.”

Kadlin nodded. “I had figured as much.”

“Theory and practice are two different things. I want you to practice forming an energy field around your blade, an invisible edge that divides spirit from flesh. I shouldn’t have to explain more than that.”

Indeed. Kadlin understood the basic concepts, and the sword supplied the information she lacked. She projected a dark energy field from her blade, an opaque sheet of night.

“Good,” said Xanadon. “Now kill your bodyguards.”

The bodyguards were stunned by this command, but Kadlin complied without thinking, instantly turning and cutting three of them down with one swipe. The fourth ran, but she threw her glaive and skewered him through the heart.

Four dead bodies lay on the ground, and four angered spirits hovered in the air.

“I just slaughtered my guards,” said Kadlin. “They were loyal, and skilled. I hope there was a point to this?” she said, the expression on her face saying she expected there was, but promising consequences if there wasn’t.

“Of course,” said Xanadon. “You’ll notice that their spirits are trapped in this world. You just turned four mortal bodyguards into the potential for four bound ghosts who will be your invisible assassins, and four zombies who will obey your every command and are stronger and harder to kill than mortal flesh. Just use your necromancy to finalize the transformation. You’ll find that such a surgical technique of killing someone leaves you many more options that you would have had before.”

Kadlin considered this. “And if I did things even more carefully in the future, I could turn one minion into two, with each part being more than the original, but adding my power to both halves. I see your point.”

Kadlin cast her magic on the ghosts that were still there, binding them under her control. Black magic surrounded their disembodied consciousnesses, compelling them to serve. The bits of thought she congealed into magical constructs replaced the brain, providing the spirits with memories and directives that they must obey. They now served her. They really had no choice.

She then turned to the bodies, animating them with unlife. These bodies wouldn’t give out under light wounds, poisons, disease, or any of those other things that might disrupt a fragile living thing. Only a total dismemberment of the body would disrupt the enchantments she wove into them. She focused her thoughts and conjured up artificial souls, thoughts given weight by magic that would give a bit of her personality to these undead, enough that they could move and think on their own, but not enough that they could betray her. She looked over her bound and reanimated servants. An improvement.

“So what is it like to be undead anyway,” Kadlin asked Xanadon.

“It’s an existence free from need to eat, to breathe, to do anything you were forced to do in life. You should kill yourself and try it.”

“Maybe some other time,” said Kadlin. “There’s some things I like about living I’m not willing to give up.”

“Ignore your appetites,” said Xanadon. “Except the appetite for power. That one pushes you forward; all others hold you back.”

* * *

Konall held his aching head. Before him a purple-striped liger swam through the air, chasing bowling balls. Meanwhile a thousand angels sang one of Konall's favorite drinking songs with voices that sounded like gravel. The penguin tasted like angry spaghetti, but that was okay.

"What's going on?" said Konall. Spaz, his guide to the spirit world appeared before him, hazy.

"Is this an experience of the true nature of the spirit world?" asked Konall.

"Nope," said Spaz. "Your hangover got turned up to 11. Oh, wait, that moose stalking a pineapple is a metaphor for the ultimate connectedness of all things. But everything else you're seeing is just ordinary hallucinations."

Konall swore, making sure not to offend any deities or supernatural entities as he did so.

"Why am I suffering like this?" said Konall.

"Because you drink too much," replied Spaz.

"Oh, what do you know about suffering?"

"I'm a demon," replied Spaz.

* * *

Kadlin rounded the bend on the stone staircase, taking a brief second to fry a raven with a burst of black lightning.

“Petty,” said Xanadon.

“I am new to my powers,” said Kadlin. “I wanted to familiarize myself with them.”

“And you enjoy using them,” said Xanadon.

Kadlin thought. “I suppose you’re right.”

“Don’t get too happy with that,” said Xanadon. “Power shouldn’t lead to temporary glee. That’s a weakness you’ll want to avoid. If you’re so set on playing with your powers, try them on that rat over there. Turn it into one of your brutes.”

Kadlin giggled. She hadn’t giggled in, what, a decade. Xanadon was right, she was enjoying this power too much. It was a distraction she would have to get under control.

Concentrating, Kadlin cast a small levitation spell, and lifted the rat out of its hole onto a fallen rock, then pulled her hair pins out of her head and jabbed them through the rat’s front left and back right legs, pinning it in place. A half hour’s work changed it into a ferocious fanged monstrosity bristling with spines.

“Adequate,” said Xanadon.

“I was rather proud of my efforts, given lack of available resources,” said Kadlin. What had once been a rat moved over and began eating the raven.

“Maybe for the person you were a few days ago,” said Xanadon. “You’re better than that now. Try tearing a rift between this world and the shadow realm from which the glaive draws its power. Energy from this world will pass into that one, and you can use that flow of power as it passes to maintain energy constructs and spells. Let your creativity fly free.”

Again, with the concept explained to her, Kadlin’s sword filled in the missing details. She began punching small holes through the reality around the rat’s body as it continued to feast on the bird, growing in size. Shadows formed around it as light and heat were stripped from the nearby environment. Kadlin easily used that to fuel some of the glaive's power, providing claws of black energy that could rend flesh, an anti-fire breath, and increased speed.

"Be careful," said Xanadon. "That construct of yours absorbs light very efficiently form the environment, but the way it is set up, it can be overloaded by direct sunlight. Also, it's blind."

"Why would it..." Kadlin asked before realizing the answer to her own question. The enchantments stole light. So how would light get to the creature's eyes? Quick modification on a few enchantments and a red glow surrounded the eyes. It was perhaps a cliche addition, but it would help the being to strike fear into an enemy's heart.

"Good," said Xanadon. "Let's continue on."

* * *

Konall reached the top of the mountain. The air was thin and freezing cold. Everything around him was covered in ice and snow, and no animals dared moved in the deadly chill. Konall had needed to put on a sweater.

At the crest of the peak, he stood, catching what little breath he could at this elevation. "All right!" he shouted, "I'm here. What do you want me for?" His words reverberated off rocky slopes. "It took me all day to get up here."

He sat, and waited, and waited. Eventually a tiny oriole landed next to him, perched on a rock. The oriole stared at Konall. Konall stared at the oriole.

Konall looked down the mountain slope. "Well, this is a waste of time." He started walking downhill.

The oriole said "Where are you going, adventurer?"

Konall turned back. "It's hard to breathe up here, but I'm not hallucinating am I?"

"No," said the bird.

"Who are you?"

"I am the Toot Oriole. I am here to instruct you."

Konall shook his head. "I came all this way to talk to a bird?"

"You came all this way because you don't value something that doesn't cost you anything. The last lesson you learned cost you your life."

"The spirits cheated!" said Konall. "Doesn't count."

They stood there for a few moments.

Konall sighed. "So what do you have for me today?"

The oriole chirped. "Everything is sacred."

"What, you mean this rock I'm sitting on is a holy and precious rock?"

"Exactly."

Konall spat on the ground. "You're talking out of your cloaca."

"That rock was made by Heimdall. The gods put a bit of themselves into everything they create, just as you put a bit of yourself into every piece of armor you make, every weapon you forge, and every outfit you create. Have you made one thing you didn't care about? So how can the gods not care about their own creation?"

"I see your point."

"It goes further," tweeted the Toot Oriole. "Every being on this planet is precious to someone, and yet you spill blood without thinking."

"You never want me to kill again?"

"No. Partly. Sometimes it's a necessity. But you should count the cost before swinging your blade. Every life you takes destroys a bit of good in this world. Have you ever seen a shaman thank a beast for giving up its life so you could eat?"

"Yeah, but its stupid. I kill beasts. They try to avoid letting me do that."

"Yes, but you only live through their loss, and you should be thankful that you are the one alive. How much more so should you mourn the life of someone with a soul, whose life you took for the greater good."

Konall dropped his head. "I understand. I don't like it, but I understand."  

 
* * *

Kadlin sighed. "Ahh, the library." Shelf after shelf contained books, tomes, grimoires, scrolls, codices, novels, nomicons, atlases, treatises, and even, were those the Zhankdar folios? Kadlin immediately picked up the pages and began to read them, rediscovering knowledge that had been lost for ages.

She moved among the shelves, stopping to look at books here and there, taking what she wanted, leaving what she didn't have time for.

"Remember why you're here," said Xanadon.

Kadlin shot him a glare. "I haven't forgotten." The Codex Arcanum, the treasure of Fernswarthy's. Her magical senses didn't take long to locate the nearby book of power. A sealed chest behind a hidden panel in the wall surrounded by wards held the book. Kadlin slammed the barriers with raw entropy, crumbling physical and magical protection alike. A touch from her glaive, along with channeled power, obliterated the lock.

There it was: the Codex Arcanum. Kadlin gingerly picked it up and opened it. This book would tell her a great deal more about the sword she had incorporated into her glaive, and the being it held prisoner. And it would tell her the nature of the power she'd acquired, and how to use it most effectively. Everything she'd done before would be inconsequential compared to what she was about to accomplish with this new knowledge.

I thought a little of the humor fell apart, and the familiars were, in their new roles as serious advisors, lacking the charm of their original, more humor driven earlier appearances. (Although it's more forgivable for the skull than Spaz.) Even so, this is an exceptional piece. If you liked it, good news, Bearsmasher fan! We’re sticking with the two for the next two parts in the story! Then we’ll visit with some other AiL stars before heading into the Finale of each half of the mission.