The Slither in the Snake

[Pandaemus]

55th Day of Fall, 513A.V.
Synchrograph Office, Citadel, Sahova

He needed practice to boost his confidence. That was the real reason he had decided to do it. He had been made an apprentice, so he could utilize the Office if he so desired. He had taken the opportunity to order some much needed supplies as to go along with his private project’s needs. His single robe, the one he had fled Zeltiva in, was becoming ragged and he would need some new clothes.

He walked into the Office as if he was meant to be there. Confidence, he had learned, could deflect aggression at times. Bebe was a very aggressive person, towards those who mattered little that is. Pandaemus liked to think he mattered more now that he was an apprentice. Most of the inhabitants of Sahova would beg to differ.

Checking with one of Bebe’s assistant golems, Pandaemus found out his request had indeed come in. The manager of the Office was rarely available at his desk. He was almost never around for the likes of a lowly apprentice. Pandaemus was pretty sure he was one of the lowest apprentices anyway. Distain from such an ancient entity as Bebe could hardly be directed at a more fitting target. So he stayed well away from the man.

Pan was kept to rummage in his pack, which he had brought from the room in the Quarters, he found the leather coin purse he had set aside to pay for the order. He was rather excited to receive his things. Mostly it was for the supplies for his newest project. As the golem laid out the items for him, Pandaemus checked them against a list he had scrawled down.

Shirts 3
Breeches 2
Undergarments 1
Jacket 1
Boots, low 1
Belt 1
Kris, steel 1
Sikuva snake 1
Cage, small 1
Whip 1

When the golem carefully laid out the mesh cage that housed the small snake, Pandaemus smiled in satisfaction. As snakes go, this one was nothing special. It was simply the cheapest type of snake he could find. A small Sikuvan, only about eight inches in length and thin. The serpent was neither poisonous, nor particularly aggressive. But it would serve his purposes wonderfully.

As he watched, the snake coiled upon itself in one corner of the cage, the dark brown scales occasionally reflected an orange gleam from the light of the Office. The serpent flicked it’s small tongue out every few seconds, never making a sound. It was a thing of beauty. Never having spent much time with serpents, Pandaemus was once again held captivated by his curiosity of things unknown. He attempted to make the snake move by tapping on the mesh cage. It did not react in any noticeable way. Perhaps he was of no concern to the serpent.

Next he picked up a light wooded piece and examined it. The shaft was polished wood that thickened slightly, it was about three hands long. The wood then branched off at the top into two equally polished wooden protrusions that served at a sort of hilt to the sheath. The small handle that sprouted from above this hilt like extension of the sheath was of the same polished wood. He curved thin fingers around it and pulled.

The blade sang a slight hiss as it was released from it’s wooden prison. Steel had been expertly forged into a waving blade that reminded the wizard of his newly acquired serpent. It was not long, perhaps the length of his forearm and hand. But he did not really envision himself using the rather exotic knife for combat. He was too slow, too weak, too dead to really be much use in combat. He was simply glad to have a decent tool to own. The steel went back into it’s wooden prison and he tucked it into his belt.

The rest of the items were personal effects he merely accounted for before shoving in his pack. Loosening the strings of his coin purse he waited for the receipt. A job done was due it’s rewards. He counted out the twenty four gold and seven silver mizas in his pale fist. The coin has heavy in hand, but light in value for him. He would gladly part with money for the chance to further his skills. He dropped the coins into the golem’s outstretched, metallic hand. After finishing up the transaction and waiting for the golem to clear him to leave, Pan slung the pack over a shoulder and picked up the mesh cage.

He had a lot of work, and was eager to get started!

[Pandaemus]

After dropping his pack off in the tiny, cramped room he now only used for storage, the nuit hurried down to Lab 15. The snake was mildly distraught over the jerking motion of the cage as he walked through the busy lab. The low, small but menacing sound of it hissing drifted up to his ears in the lull between ambient noises. Fierce for it’s size. A fine specimen for his Source.

His desk was as he had left it only a few hours before. Now that he had work, and the coveted apprenticeship he had dreamt about for nearly half a season, he rarely found his lack of sleep disturbing. He could feel himself becoming more like the wizards of Sahova and less like the boy he had once been. The allure of power, not only the mystery of the magic, was drawing him in now.

He dropped the leather whip he had recently acquired on the desk he was using along with the cage. The wooden staff of his master, Thanadoros, was waiting silently. It leaned against the wooden boards of the desk, it’s shadow looming over the live snake below it.

“Yes, looks a bit like you. Doesn’t it?” Pandaemus smiled to himself. Talking to snakes, a sure sign of loss of sanity. No matter, he was not worried. He just needed someone to talk to. Any why not enjoy his little assistant while he could. The wizard planned to loose the snake in the Prairie after he was done with it. He did not really have the means to take care of an animal, or the time.

The nuit wizard rubbed his face to begin the long, tedious process of preparing for his animation. His first task would be to prepare the shell. Pan grabbed the staff of his former master. The quality yew was smooth to the touch and familiar. It was perhaps, the oct familiar thing left to him. Everything from his past life was gone, except for this shaft of wood. For years he had gazed with envy upon Thanadoros and his magical staff. The snakehead atop it, carved masterfully from the yew, was majestic in it’s calm scrutiny of the world. As a boy he had dreamt of carrying the staff for himself, being a master Animator, and making Thanadoros do his bidding.

But upon the wizard’s death and his own ascension to undeath, Pan had taken the staff from the cadaver. He had been thoroughly disappointed to know after so many years of mystery the staff had been a simple walking aid. The nuit ran his fingers delicately over the carved snakehead. He set the staff down carefully on his desk, not wanting to damage it.

Then he drew the new kris and began to saw methodically just under the snake head. He would make this staff magical. He would make it mean something again. The snakehead came off easily. The waves in the kris were the reason he had picked that particular weapon. The odd shape of the blade made it easier to saw through wood and other similar materials. After closer examination he was pleased to see that neither the snakehead nor the rest of the staff had sustained any damage from his careful and slow sawing. It was a good start to what would be an interesting project.

The snake in the cage had stirred at the sound of him sawing and flickered it’s tongue at him, curious. It seemed wholly unperturbed by it’s new environment, or else very composed. Pandaemus admired it’s stoic adaptability.

[Pandaemus]

The woven leather of the whip was thick and flexible. The potential of pain lay within the merciless weapon. Pan could open a wound in a man a foot long with the flick of a wrist. Well, perhaps not Pandaemus, but someone could. He toyed with the idea of keeping it. He could train and become a warrior mage, like the man Morvale he had met so many weeks ago. But Morvale was alive, and strong. Pan was a corpse, and weak physically weak with his undeath. Pan had no desire to be a warrior, having been raised by a scholar. Wizards had their own ways of ending lives before their time anyway.

The whip made a sharp crack as he snapped the woven leather across his desk. The thing lay there, dark against the lighter wood of the desktop. It held all the sweet whispering promise of lethality within it’s still pose. The kris, once again, whispered it’s song to him as he slid it from it’s sheath. He may not be a warrior, but he liked the feel of the blade in his hand. The glimmer of the steel in candlelight and the wave of the razor edge were aesthetically appealing. Somehow he felt powerful with the blade in hand. It was a simple sort of power, one that was all within his mind. He may not be able to kill someone with the knife, or he may never even be in the situation where he would need to. But it was his nonetheless. And it would be ready.

Pan carefully measured out to the end of the dark, hard handle of the whip and found where the woven leather was flexible. He began to saw off the thickest section of the whip. Powdered leather began to form along the edge of the blade as the nuit sliced through the various woven leather strips. He found more resistance as the blade sawed deeper into the weapon. Upon finishing his task the cadaver figured out what it was. The crafter of the whip had used a thick central strand of leather to weave the smaller leather strips around. It provided more potential energy and stability. Interesting. Though he had never thought about how whips were made, it didn’t hurt to learn. The wizard always appreciated a little ingenuity. The leather innards of the whip also provided a base to attach to the staff as well.

He had not known what he was going to do about that until seeing the inner section of the whip. Now an idea was forming in his head. Nails and a hammer would be needed. Pan set the destroyed whip down and turned to explore the entirety of Lab 15.

It did not take him long to find a discarded or else misplaced mallet and a few tiny nails. That was all the nuit needed for the next phase of his project. Pan bent over the desk and carefully fitted the thick leather spine of the whip to the flat, sawed end of the staff. It was only slightly smaller than the polished yew. The nuit smiled in satisfied victory. He could do this easily!

The nails went through the leather with ease, and the wood with almost as much ease. Pan hammered the thin rods of iron into the staff at an inward angle, pinning the leather to the shaft of wood securely. He then pulled the leather weavings that served as the hard impact surface of the whip back down to their rightful spot. The weaving took a moment to fiddle with before it fell naturally to the base of the new snake-like leather body. After a close examination Pan was satisfied.

The nuit glanced about, hoping no one around was missing their hammer and nails, because they probably weren’t going to be getting them back anytime today. The staff now stood at about shoulder height and a leathery spine slumped, lifeless, from it’s top. Hopefully the leather would soon be writhing and slinking.

Once again mallet met iron as the snakes head was pinned onto the thinner part of the leather. The leather had been too thin initially for the thickness of the wooden snake head. Pandaemus stopped before he fastened the leather spine to the serpent head permanently. A nasty idea seemed to be filling his head. He smiled darkly.

A moment of searching found the long, pointed nail he had been looking for. Pan spent a long and anxious moment carefully nailing the iron pin through the wooden head. He had to go slowly because he wanted the tip of the nail to just protrude from the head’s slightly opened maw. This wooden snake would have a fang. In the end it hung an extra half an inch out of the snakes mouth. The nail was sharp enough to pierce skin, but would probably need to be sharpened if used too much in the future. He did not plan on it being anything more than a last resort.

Finally Pandaemus finished up by nailing the other end of the two foot long leather spine to the wooden snake head. Connected the thing looked dead. It was a dead serpent of wood and leather. But Pan would give it life yet! He had completed his construct, now all he needed to do was animate the damn thing.

[Pandaemus]

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Pan nudged the small golem he had made during his Judgement into action with a muttered “Glig.” The small construct began to whirl around, its wooden arm lowered so that the tip of the chalk in its clamp dragged across the floor next to Pan’s desk. When the thing fell dormant once again, its task completed, Pan slid it back into its place next to his desk. The chalky form of a pair of animation circles was clear on the ground. Pan took from the golem the thin white wedge of chalk and squatted down.

Pan etched in the swirl of his Focus glyph. The thin white line chased itself in a spiral as if to constantly be expanding and simultaneously shrinking. Its purpose, in his glyphing, was to focus the djed and his concentration. If djed was a liquid, his focus spiral would be a funnel to channel it into the rest of his glyphing. Many a time he had botched the focus and the rest of his glyph had failed as well because of it. Every aspect of the glyph was important, but the focus was the keystone so to speak. It held the entire work together. After a few bells of scrutiny, the glyph passed the apprentice’s inspection.

Chalk dragged across pale, grey stone as the forms of diamonds appeared. Pandaemus’s hand was steady as he attempted to create exact clones of the first diamond, twisting through the inner circle of the Source circle. Each swirl of diamonds lead to the same area, his next portion of the glyph. But he was not finished with the glyphs he had created. Pan scuffed away a few chalky diamonds with the tip of his worn leather boot. It already bore the pale snowy remains of past glyphs that had been displeasing for him. The Nuit bent and re-applied the diamonds carefully, his patient perfectionist nature overcoming any urge to rush the task. It was all a part of the process.

Three dots made the Switch Glyph which connected the lines of Path Glyphs. Pan grinder the chalk into the stone to make three carefully spaced islands of powder, all evenly dispersed around each other. He felt satisfied with his first attempt. The glyph was not a challenging one to make, but Pan knew that being careful meant success, and ultimately success meant none of the time spent was a waste. Sluggish though the crafting of glyphs was for him, it was well worth it in the end. The flow of djed through the animation circle was made easier and his animation would pay off in the end because of it.

Pan finished the glyphing of the Source circle by drawing in another line of diamonds from the Switch Glyph to the edge of the Source circle that touched the Link. The importance of a strong link was paramount when crafting the circles for an animation ritual. It was the pathway through which everything traveled. Pan knew that to be safe he should etch in a few barrier lines around the link, just to be safe. The apprentice once again touched chalk to stone.

The cold floor was nearly as chilly as Pan’s own skin. He chose to ignore the feeling that his body was just another object in the room, no longer alive, but not yet dead. He ignored the sinking despair that he so often fought off and dove again into his work. Parallel lines with a single dot in between formed the Barrier Glyph. Pan lined both sides of the Link with them before standing and observing his handiwork.

He almost smiled in satisfaction, it was not every day that his work looked as good as it did today. His patience was paying off. But he still had the Shell Circle to glyph, and the whole animation to get on with.

 

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[Pandaemus]

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The Shell circle was always a puzzling thing to glyph for Pan. He did not really understand the best way to lead the djed into the Shell. Mostly he tried to make a straight line of Path Glyphs into a Switch Glyph in the center of the circle. He hoped that this provided a focused path for the Soulcore and Astral Body to move through, while leaving the Switch glyph to open up a sort of gate for it to enter the Construct. But this was all fuzzy theory and guesswork since Pandaemus had a much more intimate knowledge of the Source circle rather than the Shell circle. He shivered involuntarily as he thought about what it would be like to have a foreign Soulcore enter his empty corpse. Of course, he would never be able to feel it without his original Soulcore, but that was beside the point…

Pan began by etching the three points of the Switch Glyph, giving the djed an easy exit from the Link into the Shell circle. He felt the chalk thinning out in his hand. He would run out soon. In an attempt to save the powder, Pan drew the rest of his glyphs much lighter. He hoped the thinner lines would not effect the animation too much. Truth be told, the apprentice could animate his staff without the glyphs if he really needed to, but he desired the smoother approach. Pan followed the Switch with a line of diamond shaped Path Glyphs and ended the short line with another triangular Switch. Task completed.

He could finally start his animating. He stuck his black tongue through his lips in anticipation. Around him the chaotic sounds and sights of Randjaqabase attested to the diligent work being done. Pan dropped the small bit of chalk, now little more than a pebble in his hand, into a bin near his desk and slapped his hands together. He rubbed them while glancing over at the Sikuva. The snake, maybe sensing his attention, hissed angrily.

Pan crossed over the animation ritual he had just crafted upon the ground. He bent and stared into the cage. The Sikuva rose up a few inches, not caring that it was only a total of eight inches long. It boldly challenged the Nuit, claiming the small wooden cage as its own. Pan smiled now, impressed with the specimen. He was eager to transfer its likeness into his improved staff.

Pan would create the Soulcore from his own djed. The Life Principle was too important to risk failure working solely with the diminutive djed of the snake. Pan grabbed his staff, the leather-spined snake head hanging limp from the end. He placed it carefully over the center Switch Glyph in the Shell circle before stepping ceremoniously into the Source circle himself. He would make quick work of this animation!

Pan slid his knife from his belt and pricked the hard, cold flesh of his finger. He let a inky black drop of his life source spill onto the white chalk of the animation circle. Where the practiced drop descended and impacted the chalk turned a brooding grey. Circle and djed were a powerful combination in world magic. Pandaemus felt the latent djed within the circles come alive. It lazily followed the Paths he had laid out, moving without much power or direction. Pan began to pull from his own Soulcore djed that he could form into the tiny soulcore of the Snake-Staff.

The animator began by weaving the essence of the djed into a basic Life Principle. He combined the memories of happiness and satisfaction he could muster, admittedly few and far between, and merged them with the concept of loyalty. One of the simplest and more important directives. He fused into that particular djed an image of himself. Loyalty and obedience would be ingrained into the Staff, as was fitting of his personal walking aid!

Pan manipulated that Loyalty directive until it was a part of the Life Principle he was crafting. Pan blinked hard. The next bit would be more challenging…

 

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[Pandaemus]

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The djed felt weirdly pleasant pouring slowly from him. Pan was careful not to let too much out at once. Though animation was a low risk magic when it came to overgiving, the amount of djed was important as well as what one did with it. Pan thought of curiosity and observation as he loosed this particular portion of djed. The concept and it’s many aspects poured into the djed and Pan wove it more thoroughly into a directive that was relatively simple for one of his skill level. The curiosity directive would serve to make the staff observe and investigate things, to the best of its limited ability.

Though it would retain no memory of any image it experienced, besides the already ingrained image of Pan, the staff would be eternally watching. Pan hoped this specific directive would serve to create an initiative for the Snake-Staff to display its lifelike quality. In his mind’s eye, the leather of the snake coiled around the stiffed wooden shaft and slithered through the air to investigate passersby and such. He was almost certain his curiosity directive would enable the staff to do just that.

He focused again, wiping a bit of residual chalk from his fingers absent mindedly. Djed mingled intricately with his newest images. The vicious lashing attack of a snake. He tried, to the best of his ability, to protect an accurate image of a snake’s lunge. Pan hoped that this next Attack directive would enable the staff to act as a minor sort of defense. The wizard’s head flooded with images of the other apprentices and wizards crowded into the Randjaqabase. Surely some of them saw him as a threat?

He was not so certain of his threat to them, but was certain of their threat to his well being. He shook his head, clearing the images of the others from it before they could slip from him and into the Life Principle of the staff. That would be messy.

Pan connected the djed of the Attack directive with the word ‘Roza’. He liked to use Nader-canoch when animating. He felt it made each animation more majestic if they answered to the common of the ancient tongue. The pompous nature of this tendency was not lost on him. He finished the trigger directive and focused on embedding it into the growing Life Principle that swirled in front of him. The invisible djed was all too apparent to the apprentice. He loved the sensation of it, not exactly sensed by any of his mundane senses, but sensed nonetheless.

Across the Link from him, the staff waited, immobile. Soon it would be writhing with newfound life. Pan ignored the mundane bit of wood and leather, concentrating on crafting the last bits of the Life Principle before continuing onto the Astral Body. The thin, pale corpse wizard extracted yet more djed from himself, careful not to let it meld with the Life Principle just yet. Along with the djed he pulled from himself memories and images of stillness. A moment in Zeltiva, he was a young human boy, and Lowych had almost caught him sneaking away from his bed to adventure in town. The child’s heart had been racing, but his body remained completely immobile.

The memory served its purpose. He wove the bitter nostalgia into the djed and abandoned all further thought of the old Nuit. Pan crafted an image of the wooden staff, unbending and stoic in it’s solidity. He carefully expanded on the nature of the hard wood’s lack of flexion. Pandaemus painstakingly attached this image to the djed he was now working with. The mass swirled and enveloped itself continuously in response to his manipulation. It mimicked the larger mass that was the Life Principle, but separately. Pan had to do one more thing before he could let it join its predecessors in the newly fashioned Soulcore.

Pandaemus associated the stroking of the snake’s head with the new immobilization directive. He made the feeling of his hand specifically on the construct urge the thing to mimic the wooden base of the staff. With that last directive made, a simple thing that would keep the staff from moving for about an hour, Pan let it drift into the growing Life Principle.

Pan was content with the initial Soulcore of the staff. It was much smaller and simpler than some he had created, but it was adequate for the purposes of the staff. Pan began to move the djed through the circles. He felt the push he was exerting giving way slowly to the pull of the glyphed Link. The djed began to move through the Link between circles faster and faster. Pan felt the diamond shaped Path glyphs on the other side channeling the djed directly to the staff, which the Life Principle attached to greedily. The djed poured into the shaft, looking for its new host.

Pan grunted in satisfaction and stepped out of the circle, it was time to craft the Astral Body.
 

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[Pandaemus]

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The wizard stepped carefully over to the desk, not wanting to scuff up any of the carefully laid glyphs in his animation ritual. He picked up the cage housing the small brown Sikuva snake and placed it carefully over the Focus glyph in the Source circle. Pan was eager to shape the Astral Body using the snake, he had rarely done such exterior animation and the prospect was exciting.

The corpse-wizard exited the circle and slid his knife from his belt again. Reopening the same finger, Pan let another droplet of black ichor drop onto the animation circle. He held his limb close to the chalky line so as not to waste any ichor with a near miss. The stuff was so very precious.

The power of the animation circle once again burned to life. He felt the djed shifting within it, subtly restless. The Sikuva slithered across its cage, undoubtedly unnerved by the sensation of the world magic around it. The snake hissed and coiled around itself in the center of its cage.

Pan began to carefully pull small amounts of djed from the animal. He did not want to kill it, so he had to take care not to pull too much djed, or pull it too quickly. The tiny thing, less than a foot long, did not possess an overabundance of the essence. Pan shaped the djed he pulled carefully, elongating it to represent the entirety of the staff. He focused momentarily on the nail which would serve as the thing’s fang and then again on the head and eyes of the snake.

Pan wove the Astral Body tightly with new djed he was slowly extracting from the snake. It was infused with images of the snakes various movements. The lithe muscles that made it slink across the snake, sliding scale against wood subtly. The coiling of serpentine body around itself, dark brown scale against dark brown scale. The Sikuva moved around its cage restlessly, agitated by the disturbance of the djed extraction. It raised itself up and hissed at the nearby Pandaemus.

Pan quickly utilized the image of the intimidating movement. He wove a convincing representation of the motion into the Astral Body. He ingrained in the Astral Body the different movements of the snake’s body, after days of focused observation. For the next half a bell Pan painstakingly combined the movements of the snake with his memories of earlier movements to craft a solid repertoire of serpentine mimicry.

Finally Pan felt satisfied with the extent of the Astral Body and the stand of djed he focused all muscle memory into. The apprentice stopped pulling the substance from the snake, letting the beast settle down into a low coil and finally calm itself. Pan urged the djed and the Astral Body towards the Link.

Pan watched the last remnants of the animation slip through the Link and seep into the dormant staff. He blinked after a moment, realizing a bit late that he was finished. He stepped into the circle and picked up the cage. The Sikuva hissed menacingly at him before rising up upon its own coil to defend against his offending hand. It did not attempt to bite through the mesh of the cage however, and calmed after he placed it in the corner of his small desk.

Pan turned back to the staff that lay on the ground. The craftsmanship was a bit dodgy, the ends of the leather frayed from the sawing of his kris, but the thing moved! The wooden head turned it’s cocked form at him before sliding down to coil around the stuff wood of the staff. He smiled to himself, the taste of victory strong. Pan stroked the staff, and it stopped moving.

He felt the rush of satisfaction this gave him evaporate some as the staff started to move soon after it became stiff. He had failed to give the thing any memory to hold his orders! Pan watched as the thing slid about itself, venturing out to the extent of the leather cord to investigate minute objects. The project was not a complete success then. The apprentice shrugged dejectedly and leant the staff carefully against his desk. The apprentice would have to continue to pursue diligence in the details. Missed details had been the crack in his foundation. Pandaemus would need to take more care in the future, and think of every detail before acting.
 

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[Ink]

Let me see what you have done with your ink. Pandaemus Skills Animation 2 Carpentry 2 Drawing 1 Glyphing 2 Weapon (Whip) 1 Lores Syncrograph: Orders and Pick up The Braid of a Whip Snake: Sikuva Animation: A Snake as a Source Animation: Memory Matters Notes Snake-Staff: A Golem that will always listen to Pan’s directive to stiffen but by only one of every third command will it remain poised for long periods. The automaton is made with a carved wooden head and a whip braid for a body. Note: Next time you need a saw I would suggest a hand saw. Analog saws have been around for thousands of years. Between Black and White If there are any concerns or problems with my grading please feel free to toss me a PM. I am more than happy to explain my reasons or reevaluate them if you feel I've been unfair. Also please remember to edit your grade request as graded or delete it if possible. Thank you, Ink