Nazrik slowly rose from the bottom of the pit. His bony fingers brushed the dirt from his robes, blackened with soot and blood. The ominous crimson glow in his eye sockets was the only sign of life in this skeleton. Around his neck, over his robes, hung a symbol — the same circle crossed with a bar as on his forehead, but made of dull metal.
Valos, catching his breath, mentally scoured the fragments of knowledge he had read in the original work. «Nazrik. Once a brilliant mechanic and high priest of the Faith of Two Principles. He believed he could perfect society by merging flesh and will into an ideal mechanism. But his projects for creating "animated machines" were condemned as heresy. He learned of an ancient civilization whose technology surpassed all known. He gathered a group, ventured into a legendary dungeon… and was abandoned there by his companions as a burden when the path became too dangerous. Hundreds of years of solitude and darkness in that tomb, until the demons of Apoca unearthed his remains and offered a deal. They gave him power. He gave them purpose.»
— You… all of you… are inconstant, — Nazrik's voice was the creak of grinding gears, devoid of tone but full of a soul-chilling conviction. — Flesh is weak. Will is fickle. You betray, abandon, forget. I will create a world of perfect order. A world where every gear knows its place. A world that cannot betray me.
He raised his right hand. The dead soldiers frozen around them suddenly collapsed with a crash into a shapeless heap of bone and flesh. Bones flowed toward his hand like iron filings to a magnet, wrapping around it, layering upon it, transforming it into a gigantic, clumsy mace of compressed remains.
Nazrik swung this improvised club and slammed it into the ground. The impact was monstrous; the earth heaved, sending clods of dirt and stones flying into the air. Before the dust settled, thin, white ribbons — spinal columns linked by magic — shot from the wrist of his left, still normal, hand. They pierced the ground twenty paces away, and Nazrik, like a puppet, yanked himself toward them, instantly teleporting aside to evade Corvus's lunge.
Corvus, accustomed to anticipating the movements of living beings, froze for a moment. There was no logic to these movements, only pure, inanimate mechanics.
Nazrik, now at a safe distance, extended his bony right arm. From the built-up mace, as if from a catapult, launched… skeletons on bone bicycles.
It was so absurd that an awkward silence hung in the air for a moment. Two skeletons, deftly steering primitive contraptions made of bone, charged at them with the screech of non-existent tires.
— BACK! — Eldrid shouted.
Corvus, driven by instinct, rushed forward to intercept Nazrik. But the first "cyclist," without slowing, crashed into the ground before him and exploded with a deafening blast, showering the bodyguard with bone shards and dark energy. The second took aim at Valos and Eldrid.
Valos saw Corvus retreating, shielding himself with his cloak from the hail of debris. Pursuit was impossible. «He thinks like an engineer. Not spells, but devices. Ribbon-manipulators. Remote-controlled bone mines.»
The battle was dragging on. Strength was waning. And Nazrik, this "sacred genius," continued his mad experiments on the battlefield.
— Hold him! — Valos shouted to his father, pointing at the second cyclist. Eldrid, summoning his strength, hurled his battle axe at it, sending the bone rider into an uncontrolled crash where it promptly exploded.
Valos dismounted. His head was spinning with exhaustion. He removed his helmet; his face was drenched in cold sweat. With a trembling hand, he pulled a cylindrical vessel from his saddlebag. A mana potion. A crimson, thick mixture that smelled of copper, ozone, and the death of magical beasts. He drained the flask in one gulp.
A taste of copper and rotting meat spread down his throat. Fire coursed through his veins. Nausea rose in his throat, forcing him to swallow against the spasm. The world swam for a second, then cleared, filled with a painful, unnatural clarity. Mana burned him from within, demanding release.
— CORVUS! DISTRACT HIM! — he rasped, grabbing the staff.
He leaped back into the saddle, channeling the fresh mana into the artifact.
— FIRE AND LIGHT, BECOME A SPEAR! WIND, FILL IT WITH SPEED!
He did not aim. He could not aim. He simply poured all his fury, all his despair, all the foul energy of the potion into the throw. The artifact in his hands flared with a blinding white-gold radiance and launched with a roar, leaving a shimmering trail behind it.
He did not hit Nazrik. He pierced the giant, built-up arm at the elbow. The bone mace crashed to the ground and shattered. The lich himself recoiled; the crimson light in his eyes dimmed with shock.
— NO-O! — his grating voice broke into a scream for the first time. — I WILL NOT ALLOW IT!
He grabbed the smoldering stump of his right arm with his left hand and furiously cast it aside. Then his bony fingers clutched the symbol of faith around his neck.
— You wanted order? I WILL GIVE YOU ORDER!
He wrenched the chain apart and threw the symbol to the ground. The metal did not simply crack it vaporized in a flash of black flame. Energy erupted from beneath the earth, and bones began to emerge from the soil. Not random skeletons, but components. Vertebrae, ribs, pelvic bones all of it clattered and ground together, forming a colossal framework. This was not a dragon. This was a skeletal mech, assembled from bones stolen from multiple dragon graves. A humanoid figure with two enormous, skeletal wings and dragon heads. Nazrik was drawn inside, into the machine's ribcage.
— The sword… there were not enough bones — he screeched, his voice now amplified by resonators made of ribs. — BUT THERE IS OTHER MATERIAL!
The bones and flesh of the undead from the surrounding area rushed toward his leg, fusing into a giant, grotesque blade. They coalesced into a single, shapeless mass that stretched into a long, crude sword.
— SLOT ONE — ALCHEMICAL TRANSMUTATION: FLESH AND BONE INTO IRON!
A silver streak of lightning shot from the necromancer's finger and struck the "workpiece." A hissing sound echoed, and the undead flesh blackened, hardening under the alchemical reaction into a hideous but deadly metal blade.
— I knew this would not be enough! — his voice boomed from within the mechanical dragon's chest. — I came here to replenish my stock! In the mountains to the north lies an ancient dragon graveyard! Their bones will form the foundation of my next great creation! And YOU… YOU ARE MERELY CONSUMABLE MATERIAL!
The battle had transformed from a confrontation with a necromancer into a fight against his personal, self-made titan. The scale of the catastrophe had doubled.