Tell a skeleton to jump and it'll jump. Tell it to kill and it'll kill. But tell it to work in an iron mine for the rest of its miserable existence, and there might be a problem.
Tommy looked behind him. One hundred dunderheaded bone boys disguised as regular, everyday humans, marching like toy soldiers in a war they couldn't even fathom. He could only hope that their innocent, dumb-dumb minds didn't conjure the thought of forming a labor union. He'd have to fireball them all if that ever happened.
"We're here, my lord," Isaac announced.
Sure as shrapnel, they were indeed at the iron mine. The place looked even more understaffed than it did the last time they visited. The dozen men loading ore into wagons appeared sickly and slow, moving at the pace of a limbless sloth. Elijah skipped around them, barking orders into their ears as though a sentient megaphone.
Tommy brought the bone knights to a halt in the yard. "It seems you're a bit understaffed, Elijah. I hope my men here can help with that."
Elijah greeted him with a smile. "I can scarcely believe my own eyes. You actually brought me a hundred men."
"They're quite eager to get to work. Just one thing before I hand them over to you, though," Tommy said, raising a finger. "I'd like my priest Isaac to stay here for the day. My novices are rather simple, you see, and he's quite skilled at dealing with them."
"Sounds good to me," Elijah agreed.
Tommy turned to face his knights. "Alright, my novices—this man"—he pointed to Elijah—"is one of your new masters. Obey every command he gives you. You will return to the campsite at dusk and come back to work here at dawn. Every day. Forever. Until time meets its end."
The undead horde remained quiet.
"Do they—"
"Don't worry, they understand," Tommy assured him. "Please, allow Isaac to help you sort them out. I recommend assigning each of them very specific tasks so their tiny brains don't get overwhelmed."
Elijah waved him off. "I've worked with dullards before. Worry not, Mister Bones."
"I'll bid you farewell then. Don't be afraid to work them to the bone."
Isaac failed to restrain a chuckle.
Tommy made his way back to the campsite, mind taken by a million different plans, all of which required the ring in Edonia. Isaac suggested that, rather than traveling to the faraway nation on foot or by boat, he use one of the five Tear Gates. Apparently, an old magic caster by the name of Pickles—
Wait, was his name Pickles, or was it Salmon?
No, it was Pilamon—that was it. A magic caster by the name of Pilamon created five giant gates before the War of the Damned to streamline diplomacy through teleportation. They were still standing, but nobody had the mana to activate them. With any luck, they would serve as Tommy's ticket to Edonia.
After half an hour of walking, his eyes were greeted by the sight of flimsy tents surrounding a dead fire—their trashy, two-bit campsite. If everything went well at the mine, they'd have the money to build houses in a matter of weeks.
Quicker than a whip's lash, a portal to the underworld appeared before him, intercepting his thoughts.
Impy flew from the fiery circle with gusto. "I'm back, boss."
"And?" Tommy prompted.
"You're gonna love this," he declared, donning a devilish smirk. "Turns out, there's a magic caster by the name of—" His smirk shifted into a frown. "Alright, well, I didn't ask his name, but that doesn't matter, does it? What matters is that he knew the name of a teleportation spell."
"Tell me."
"It's called blink. The guy said it lets you teleport to anywhere in your field of view. Well, he gave me more details than that, but I can't remember them."
The spell seemed familiar, but where had he seen it before? A video game, maybe?
He locked eyes with a patch of flowers. "Blink!"
Whoosh! Like a nine-to-five worker's sanity, he was there one second and gone the next.
"Very nice," he said.
"A 'thank you' would be even nicer," Impy snarked. "Wasn't easy getting that info. Had to drag the guy out of a lake of lava just so he'd stop screaming."
Tommy narrowed his eyes. "Oh, pipe down, you supersized tomato. You owe me."
Impy shrugged. "No clue what you're talking about."
Tommy ignored the little troublemaker. "My disciples," he began, "I'm going to Edonia to reclaim an artifact. I'll only be gone for a few hours."
They gave him the strangest of looks.
"My lord, if you're going to Edonia, the trip will take months," Jacob said.
Tommy forced a smile onto his false image. "Time me. Blink!"
Whoosh! Gone like money in a savings account.
"Blink, blink, blink," he yelled, throwing himself hundreds of yards in mere seconds. He'd admit—it was quite sickening, being launched from place to place like a human pinball. Luckily, his undead body couldn't curse him with a—
Never mind. He had a headache.
He carried on for another ten minutes, blinking through nearly two hundred miles worth of meadows, pastures, and woodlands, past a hundred villages and campsites, all the way to the Poised Pasture of Alyria. By the time he arrived, he was on his knees, clutching his skull as though it were aflame.
Impy appeared from a portal beside him, confused as a rat in a cheeseless maze. "Where in the unholy hotness are we?" he asked, flapping his wings above the colorful flowers and tall grass.
Tommy barely managed a reply: "Feels like my head"—he smacked the top of his skull a few times—"is about to explode!"
"Yeah, well, consider it justice for teleporting a gazillion miles away before saying thank you."
"Shut up, won't you? Your voice is like nails on a chalkboard."
Impy, surprisingly, quieted down.
After a few minutes, Tommy's head stopped pounding like a caged gorilla. He rose to his feet and looked around the pasture.
Impy pointed to the mountain ranges. "Over there."
Sure enough, just a hundred yards away were dozens of massive stones arranged into a circle, just as Isaac described. It was similar to Stonehenge, though not a disgusting semicircle that cost twenty bucks to visit.
As he drew closer to the circle, the noise of laughter met his ears—soft, playful giggles. Tiny orbs of light hovered around him and Impy, bright in every color like shards of a rainbow dropped from the heavens.
Impy bit at them, hoping to catch a few in his mouth, but they dodged his sharp teeth. "What in the heck"—he chomped—"are these things?"
"Fairies, probably. They're supposed to be friendly."
The fairies dispersed as they walked inside the circle.
"Something feels off," Impy commented.
Tommy frowned. "Hopefully it's just your imagination," he spoke, approaching the stone pedestal in the center of the circle.
"Monster," came a squeaky yell.
He turned to find a girl half the size of Impy, pale of skin with wavy blonde hair and striking green eyes. She floated in the air with a pair of pink, glowing butterfly wings, wearing tattered green apparel that barely covered her, proportionately speaking, exceptionally large bosom.
"Buy some better clothes, girly. You trying to give us a show?" asked Impy.
"How crass," the girl yelled, her face redder than the imp's skin.
Tommy heaved a sigh. "I apologize for my friend's—" He stopped himself. "Wait, no I don't. You called me a monster!"
She crossed her arms. "Weak illusion spells don't work on greater fairies like myself. I can see you're a naked skeleton, you creep!"
Impy shooed her away. "Get out of here, pipsqueak! We've got important business to attend to."
"Pipsqueak? Why, I'll have you know that—"
The thought of roasting her with a fireball ran across Tommy's mind, but he quickly extinguished it. He might have killed someone last night, but that guy totally deserved it. This little fairy probably hadn't done a bad thing in all her life. She was definitely annoying, though.
"—of the great and wise clan of fairies known as Butterworth!"
Raucous laughter spewed from Impy's twisted mouth. "Your clan's name is Butterworth? That's so dumb!"
She stamped her foot in the air and huffed. "Well, what's your clan's name, you jerk?"
"Don't have one, don't need one, and certainly don't want one," Impy replied with a fanged grin.
Tommy separated himself from their bickering and moved to the pedestal. He slapped his hand atop the tiny handprint at its center, hoping the portal would activate.
The little fairy twirled her hair and laughed. "Sorry, big guy, but you don't have enough mana to fuel the portal. Nobody does! Not even me, and I'm the guardian of this place."
"Say that I did have enough mana—how would I activate it?"
She looked at him as though he were an earthworm performing a midnight jig. "You just push your magic into the handprint."
"I don't know how to do that. I usually just point my hand and say the name of a spell to cast it."
Miss Butterworth flew around him, inspecting him with a keen eye. "Oh, I totally see it now—you're, like, super enchanted, aren't you?"
"Enchanted?"
"Yes. In fact, I've never seen such intricate enchantments or so many of them before. How'd you manage to etch them without exploding?"
"Just tell me how to activate this dumb portal, please."
She sneered at him. "Imagine your magic is a pile of sand. Then, imagine scooping it with your hands and dropping it onto the pedestal."
The pleasant ringing of wind chimes touched his ears, then suddenly, the world around him shifted.
He was in a heath. Heathers doused the entirety of the landscape, coming in white, purple, pink, and yellow, making a boundless stretch of color. A hundred miles to the east and west were hulking mountain ranges, looming over the land like white-capped birds of prey. It seemed every sight in this world was worth recording to memory.
"It worked," he muttered.
Impy came flying through a portal, panting like a whipped mutt. "That crazy fairy tried to kill me!"
"I doubt she could have succeeded. You are a gimp, after all."
Impy puffed his chest out with pride. "Good to know my summoner remembers my worth. And you're right—I could've knocked her up no problem!"
"Knocked her up? Impy, do you know what that—" Tommy shook his head. "Never mind. Let's just go."
"Go? Where even are we?"
Tommy unfurled his crumpled map. "We're in Edmund's Heath, I'd wager," he said. "Journey's end is just seventy miles up ahead."
"Are you going to—"
"Blink!"
It was less than five minutes before he arrived at Journey's End, standing amongst the many hamlets and farming plots that made up its outskirts. The city itself was a grander sight than the sky-piercing mountains, stretching several hundred square miles across the never-ending heath. Hulking ramparts of mossy stone marked its perimeter, acting as a shield for the city's innards—its many houses and shops and towers and the mighty palace at the western side.
Impy came through a portal with a frown. "It's not easy to open these portals, you know? Take a walk and enjoy the scenery; give your pal Impy some time to recover his mana."
"No time to dawdle. If I want to conquer the world, I can't afford to waste time. Where's the ring?"
"Fine then. The old lich said the ring is buried under a wishmore tree east of the city."
"East of the city is a lot of ground to cover. Besides, I don't even know what a wishmore tree is. What else did he say?"
Impy scratched the back of his head. "He said to use a spell called 'find creation'. Apparently, your body is linked to the ring, so you should be able to see where it is."
"Find creation!" Tommy yelled.
Sure enough, a beam of red light fell from the heavens, landing atop the canopy of a faraway forest.
"I see it. Let's go."
"Okay, but I'd really prefer if we walked this—"
"Blink!"
He arrived at the forest's perimeter in under a minute, his throbbing headache growing worse by the second.
"Alright, listen," Impy began, floating out of a portal, "I can't help but feel that you're still angry about the whole 'duel to the death' thing."
Tommy plunged into the woods, ignoring the snarky imp. The find creation spell shone brilliantly overhead, guiding him toward the forest's center.
And there it rested, amongst the oaks and maples and beeches—a tree that towered above the rest. Silver bark served as its armor and golden leaves as its crown. It struck a truly dignified pose, standing fully erect, unbent by time or deed, casting its shimmering roots through the loamy soil like a hundred pale serpents. The tree of trees, worthy of—
"Godless flames."
Purple fire wrapped around the lustrous tree, catching its bark and leaves and insides in a horrible inferno, demoting them to simmering ash. The tree died in mere seconds, leaving behind naught but the echo of a scream, like the faint wail of a soul being dragged into the fiery depths.
Impy looked on, mouth agape and eyes wide.
"Mold earth!"
Four feet of soft, rootless ground was ripped apart, unsheathing a featureless box of black wood.
"Seems the old lich wasn't lying," Tommy commented. "Telekinesis!"
He popped open the box, revealing a ring of sterling silver. Detailed hands served as its shank, connecting to a fox-head bridge that clenched amber in its mouth. It was a stunning piece of jewelry, one befitting the power it boasted.
"You just murdered an ancient tree spirit," Impy said, stuck staring at the ash.
"What did you want me to do? Ask it to move so we could dig?"
"I don't know," he confessed, throwing his arms up. "Anything but burn it alive."
"I didn't know it was alive. You should've told me," Tommy said with a shrug.
"Well, I didn't know you were going to burn it!"
"Alright, well, I think we've both learned a valuable lesson from this experience. Now, let me try on this sweet new ring." Tommy dispelled his false image and slipped the ring on his finger. "Well? Did it do anything?"
Impy shook his head. "You're still a ten-foot-tall skeleton."
He clicked his tongue, then raised a finger. "What if I try that sand thing Miss Butter Biscuit taught me?"
"It was Butterworth. Not Butter Biscuit."
Tommy shut his eyes and focused. He wanted to be tall, but not too tall; muscular, but not too muscular; handsome, but—
No, he wanted to be incredibly handsome. The kind of handsome that made someone stop and think, "Wow—that's one good-looking guy. I wonder if he wants to grab a coffee with me."
With a flash of orange light and the sound of a laughing fox, the magic went to work, sculpting his body like a clay figure. Where once stood a gangly skeleton now stood a man of impossible charm, naked as a windblown scarecrow. Pale skin, red eyes, twirly black mustache—he had it all.
"Now this is what I'm talking about," he said. His voice no longer boomed like a car bomb. Rather, it was smooth and sultry, provoking indecent thoughts through mere whispers.
"Looking good, big guy. Not big on the mustache, though."
"Let's go back to the campsite," Tommy said, flashing him a nefarious grin. "It's time to put my plans into action."