After dashing up the stairs I stand panting in front of where the woman lay. After checking her breathing, I confirmed that she was still alive. Taking a small hourglass from the floor near the table I set it beside her. While looking through my mother's study earlier I found a set of three hourglasses. After reading the labels I realized that they were how she measured the time her experiments took. The largest one lasts a day, the middle one lasts an hour and the one I am using right now measures a minute. Using it I have been logging the woman's heart rate. After writing the latest beats per minute down I could see that she is quickly reaching the end of her rope. She would not last the night tonight and considering that it is starting to turn to night I maybe have two to three hours to do this.
Bracing myself for what I was about to do I prepared the area. A few minutes later the living room was cleared of furniture besides a single chair and the small tables that the woman is laying on. After confirming that everything is in place I start the process of slotting the card. First, I need to find the card slot. Using the slot sight spell from earlier I swept my essence through her body looking for where it snagged. Just like the book described, six places snagged. In three of the places, mainly both legs and her head, the essence threads slid off a few moments after they got snagged. According to the book this means they have cards slotted in them. Another surprising fact is that I could feel a third core card inside her core before getting rebuffed by her essence.
Now that I know that the chest slot is open, I start the process of forcing the card into it. Now according to the book there are a few ways to do this but the one that will work for me is to stitch it into the slot. The process is similar to sewing a patch onto clothes. That is if the clothes held water that kept pouring out of the hole forcing the patch away. Sighing I knew this would not be easy. and I only have one shot at this. With that I focused on splitting my will into for parts. three of the parts pulled their own essence thread out of my core before weaving it into a string. This is a precaution that I worked out to increase the chance of success for this. The string would be much stronger than that of an individual thread. Taking the fourth part of my will, I carefully take the end of the string and start patching the card into the slot.
Doing it this way takes much more essence and concentration than what I would originally have needed, but it was well worth it. As I worked, I noticed my strings getting worn away by the pressure. There could be many reasons for this, one of which is the fact that she is a tier above me, but the most likely one is essence incompatibility. Her essence seemed to give the force the ability to erode my strings. The only reason that they are still holding is because I decided to use strings instead of threads. If I had used threads like I originally was going to the card would have been destroyed when they snapped. If that would have happened that would be the end of her. The backlash would kill her and damage my core cards. With each stich I make the card gets closer and closer to the slot. When the card finally settles in the slot it starts to merge with her by sending strands of undeath essence throughout her. This should have been my first warning, because once they reached her core it was past stopping.
When the undeath essence touched the core, the core shivered. Then the core started to pulse with golden essence. With every pulse the undeath essence got pushed back. With every pulse the undeath essence was losing ground. The problem started to occur when the undeath essence started to send tendrils into her flesh. Like most crusades that I have heard about the golden essence decided to burn everting the 'bad' essence had touched. That meant that small parts of her flesh started to be purified by it. In other words, utterly destroyed. On the bright side due to the undeath essence's influence it was not easy for the golden essence to take back its territory. Slowly but surely the undeath essence was being destroyed.
Panicking I did the only thing I could think of I coated my will with undeath essence and 'scooped' some of the golden essence out. This worked wonders. Because the undeath essence was originally mine it was able to flood through the spaces I had made. With that I started to make a channel for the essence straight to the core. This was my second mistake. The undeath essence flooded towards the core intent on destroying the offending essence. With a sound like a popped ballon the core shattered. I had no time to think I just did what I thought would help. First, I grabbed the pieces of the core and its cards before they disintegrated. Then I grabbed the remaining golden essence with my will. As soon as I touched the essence it felt like I had poured molten metal in my skull. Surprisingly I managed to keep hold of most of the essence, but I lost a piece of her core.
Pushing through I grab all the essence I can form my core and force it to merge with the golden essence. The entire time I felt like my very body was revolting against me. After the last drops mixed, I delicately pieced her core back together along with its cards. I only hesitated for a moment before I ripped a small hole in my own core and used it to seal her core. Then I painstakingly turned the mixed essence into threads and did what I know. Many stressful hours later I put the last stich in her core. Taking the remaining merged essence, I bound the three core cards to the inside of the makeshift core. If one were to compare her new core to her old one, the size difference would be like comparing an egg to a person's head. Because of how weak some parts of her core were I had to use others to reinforce it. Now is the hard part. Taking a deep breath I let go.
As the core slowly settled back into place I held my breath. With each agonizing second that passed it moved closer and closer to its original perch. As it settled in, the body card sent out a tendril. When the tendril brushed the outside of the damaged core, a weak pulse like a heartbeat started. I watched stunned as her body started to shrink. No, that is not the right word. It started to contract. I watched as she seemed to dry up and her skin pulled tight over what remains of her muscles. With each pulse of her core her body her clothes slowly got looser and looser. Eventually the process stopped. Looking at her I despaired. After all I had done to save her, it failed. I sat there waiting for the core to disperse. Kneeling beside her, all that I had done caught up to me. With that I passed out.
Waking up because you fell is never alright. There is just something about it that is disturbing. Pushing myself up off the floor, I cradled my head. Carefully rubbing my forehead did nothing to dispel the headache that was rocking my world. Then before my mushed-up brain could figure out what happened a shriek louder than any I have ever heard sliced through my bruised thoughts. Glancing up at the woman she is now sitting up. As if sensing the motion, she turned to me. "YOU MONSTER, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME!" Before I could understand what was going on, she pounced. Stars filled my vision as she slammed me back down. With my arms pinned under her legs and her hands locked around my throat death loomed close. Struggling to reach the only thing that could save me, I barely managed to grab the corners of my last two cards.
Practically throwing my will at them I merged the only one that I could into my chest's body slot. As stars were dancing in the corners of my vision, I crashed all of my will into her's. While she is stunned, I free my arms and pry her fingers from my throat. Taking a deep breath I wrap my will around her and constrict her will into her core. With that done I use what little essence I regained and bound her will to me. Throughout the whole process I could feel her struggling. But because of her new form and the power provided by Undead Domination she could not break free. Finally in control I push her off of me. Laying there panting, I cover my eyes and rest.
A bit later I wake up from my cat nap. Glancing over I could see her sitting there. Slowly I shift to a sitting position and go over what just happened. First her I slotted the card in her and that caused her condition to worsen. Second, I tried to help the undeath essence, but that ended with her core shattered. Third, I by some miracle managed to fix her core. Lastly, she woke up and tried to kill me and I subdued her. I made many mistakes, and my biggest one was not noticing that only undead have that ability as a trait. That by itself should have clued me in. It is a stupid uncommon card, and I forgot the rarity rule. A card with powerful effects in a lower rarity then it should be always comes with consequences. That is a fact that has killed many.
Sighing I look over at her new form. While she does look like a corpse there is none of the smells associated with a corpse. In fact, she smells more like decayed books with an earthly undertone than anything else. The next thing is her robes. Before they fit her lithe form tightly, now they hand loosely as if she has gone down a size. Her once blond hair has turned a bleached white as if the life was sucked out of them. I mean, it probably was. Two other things that stand out is stand out is her face and body. Unlike earlier her dried body has smoothed out and the cracks turned into scars. Her face has also changed. Just like her body her face looks like it was dried and rehydrated, the difference is that her eyes have turned to the color of bloody gold. As she stared at me with hate filled eyes from where she is frozen beside me, I gave her my first command.