Necromancer's Curse

Chapter Three

I sat at the edge of the demonic circle Aristide had drawn on the basement floor with him him on the other end. The circle was drawn using goat blood and in the centre was a rat skeleton. The skeleton still had pieces of flesh stuck to it from when it got torn out of the creature's body. The bones were a light brown with a few patches of maroon here and there. At my sides were my box of catalyst gems and my grimoire.

"When you said I'd be conjuring a familiar I didn't think I'd be using something that I was genuinely familiar with," I stated, looking at the rat.

"It will be easier this way," Aristide said, "The more emotional ties you have to your familiar the better. Along with that, the smaller the structure of pieces you'll be holding together with nothing but sheer magic, the easier the task will be over time."

"Why are you teaching me this?" I bravely questioned. Usually it was out of line for me to question any of Aristide's teachings.

"Excuse me?" Aristide bit with anger already in his voice.

"You don't use familiars, do you?" I asked.

"You are going to be learning this art because I have assigned it," Aristide said, almost yelling, "It does not matter if I use the art or not, you do as I say and learn what I assign. I didn't expect one day on the town to make you begin questioning my teaches. You're lucky I'm not punishing you this instant."

"My apologies, master," I said, bowing my head. Just because I wasn't being punished this instant usually didn't mean that I was free from punishment entirely. All that meant is I'd get punished as soon as the punishment he had in mind wouldn't interrupt his lesson.

"Start by using a catalyst gem then go on to try to use nothing but your own will," Aristide said, "Take an azure gem and move into the centre of the circle with the skeleton."

I opened my box and looked through the various coloured stones to find the light blue rock. Over the time that I've been using catalyst stones I've noticed that each of them were a replacement for some aspect of yourself that you would lose when simply performing the magic with your own willpower. The azure stones replaced what I believed to be sympathy.

Considering that Aristide never told me what each stone did, I had to guess all on my own. Folly and azure stones were the ones most used, however there were also more than a few stones of other colours. These included amber, mauve, viridian, and grey. Overall I wasn't able to guess the purposes of the majority of the stones aside from the azure, folly, and viridian colours. From my guesses, folly replaced mental strength, azure replaced sympathy or compassion, and viridian replaced creativity. Of course these were only guesses, and it was hard to tell which stone replaced what through what the spell required of your willpower, as spells tended not to eat up too much of any one aspect at one point.

Aristide had told me than catalyst gems provide an overwhelmingly large amount of energy required for any one spell. This lead me to assume that the gems held an extreme amount of any one of these mental aspects. Beginners were to use catalyst stones since the spell would be consuming a virtually limitless pool of resources. This way the beginner had all the time they needed in order to get the spell right without withering away their limited personal resources.

Once I found the stone I needed, I crawled into the centre of the circle and placed the gem on top of the rat skeleton. Then sat on my legs and interlaced my fingers before whispering the activation phrase, "Aktivieren." With that, the stone began to glow.

Aristide sat and spectated as he waited for me to figure out how to create the familiar. The way a necromancer taught their pupils was less of a traditional sense of teaching. The necromancer would provide the apprentice with whatever supplies they would need and then teach them the absolute basics.