I. Construct
The construct opened his eyes. Dane looked down to his book and marked it down: project, successful.
“What…?” the construct questioned, voice soft, vague. It looked around concernedly; Dane wrote down a few more notes. Its eyes were dyed bright blue from the magic animating it, its hair turned snow white after the pigmentation ceased production. It was the same height as when the body had been alive, six foot three, but was gaunt rather than the plump health that Dane remembered.
Dane set his grimoire on the table and enlaced his fingers together nervously, rubbing the thumb of his left hand against the wrist of his right. “Hello.” His voice cracked; he cleared his throat. “I am Scholar-Mage Prospective Dane Jefferson. Do you know who you are?”
The construct looked confused, those unnatural blue eyes blinking rapidly. Dane itched to make another note—did the construct need to blink, or was it a nervous gesture from when it had been alive? “I… no?” It sat up, curling around itself and uncoiling as it stood. It was inhumanly graceful. It was also several inches taller than Dane. “Who am I?” it asked, voice shaking a bit. The body it inhabited had been twenty before time of death, and the youth showed.
Dane stepped back, uncomfortably aware of the differences in their height. “N-not who you used to be,” he said shakily. He swallowed, fighting his nerves and firming his lips through force of will. “I… brought you back.”
The construct stayed silent, watching as Dane tried to keep talking. It looked so much like… but it wasn’t. “Why?” it finally asked.
“Because I was made to promise that I would,” Dane said, which was the truth. He opened one of the work table drawers and reached in for an earthen container. Twisting off the lid, he dabbed a finger into the jar and smeared the cream within it over his eyelids. He looked at the construct again and absently sketched a sigil into the air. All he could smell now were lilies from the cream rather than the poppy, cedar, vervain, and fennel from the ritual. It was a welcome change.
“What are you doing?” the construct asked sharply.
“Checking to certify that the ritual will hold. Hush.”
The construct was still giving off wafts of dark blue energy, but the energy was rapidly being pulled underneath its skin to give it what it needed to sustain animation—good. That was what was meant to happen, what he and Valerian had theorized seven years ago, when Valerian had still been alive to complete the parts of the ritual that depended on plant lore.
Now, Dane was staring straight at Valerian’s face, into Valerian’s eyes dyed blue with magic, and it wasn’t right. It wasn’t, because Valerian was dead. But Valerian had made him promise.
“I believe that it took,” Dane said softly. “Come. We need to find you clothes.”
The construct nodded, still with a confused expression on its face. It stepped out of the spell circle and followed him. Dane was grateful that it didn’t talk; he wasn’t certain that he could handle hearing its voice again, familiar but not.
Valerian had made him promise, but even his mage license wasn’t worth this.
Dane’s quarters at the mage university in Farthing were small, but Farthing University was willing and able to give him a stipend for his studies and the space to work in. It was not required that people stop in to oversee his work very often, which was an ideal situation, given that mages were so highly private in regards to their work. This was especially ideal when Dane did things like he had done now, a ritual that was not, strictly speaking, legal.
The construct was as passive now as the doll that it truly was. It dressed quickly in the clothing that Dane gave it—midnight blue, Valerian’s, of course. For all that the construct was made from Valerian’s body, it didn’t even wear the clothing in the way that Valerian would have. The construct was too still, its back too straight and its gaze too steady. Valerian would have cursed at Dane and demanded to be allowed to dress in private. Valerian would have teased him, laughed at how serious he was.
“All right?” Dane asked, rather than tell the construct that it was behaving incorrectly. The construct watched him from overbright eyes and nodded slowly, warily. Dane studied it critically. Oddly enough, the construct looked more like it was Valerian’s brother rather than Valerian himself. It was incredibly thin, and its changed coloring was a vast difference from Valerian’s curly red hair and brown eyes.
“What are you going to do with me?” the construct asked.
Self-aware. Demons take it, the construct was self-aware. God damn.
“I….” Dane sighed, raking a hand back through his hair. “You are meant to…. Tell me, do you want a name?”
The construct cocked its head, blinking rapidly again. Its hand tucked up under its sleeve to tug nervously on the edge, just like…. “Yes, I want a name. I… need a name.”
He—and Dane had to call it a ‘he,’ if it was self-aware—sounded almost desperate. Dane could hardly imagine what it was like to come into existence with all of your faculties, for no set purpose or design, for no reason discernable, and knowing it. The construct was like a child, but unlike a child, he had not had the luxury of growing up into the process of knowing who he was.
“I…. The body you’re made of, his name was Valerian.” Stopping the flash of pain on his face was impossible, and Dane had to take a breath before he could continue to speak. “He always said that if I succeeded this project, if his mind and memories did not revive, I should name the result—you—Somner. Is that acceptable?” The construct looked grave for a moment, some emotion hiding behind his eyes—Valerian’s eyes—that Dane couldn’t name.
“All right,” he said at last. “That would be… acceptable.”
Dane sighed, shifting on his feet. “We shall have to wait and see if the spell-energy your memory is dependent upon holds.”
The construct’s brow furrowed, obviously not understanding what that Dane had said. It was obvious that he retained little or none of Valerian’s memories; Valerian would have known what Dane was talking about.
“When I performed the ritual to bring you into existence, there were certain things that had to be changed,” Dane explained. He reached out to tug Somner’s collar even, eyeing it for a moment before continuing, “The brain was destroyed, obviously, and the skin was….” He swallowed, reminding himself firmly that this was nothing more than a project. “The skin was decomposing, rotten. The hair had begun to grow sparse and fade. I re-energized the skin and forced new hair to grow. The brain was a bit trickier—I sent a magic web through the brain to mock the old pathways, but little could be done to retrieve any of the brain’s actual knowledge or memory.”
The construct’s eyes narrowed. “Did you think that you would?” he asked, tone mild.
Dane shrugged and broke away, picking up his grimoire to jot down a few more notes. “Perhaps. Perhaps not.”
There was a knock on the door, causing Dane to start. Shaking off his surprise, he left the work room with a curt order to the construct to stay where he was and opened the outer door of the sitting room.
Lord Geoffrey Viscim, Baron of Stoneford, had his arms crossed over his chest, gaze alive and crackling with anger. This look was much the norm for him, so Dane barely flinched when he snapped, “Dane, what have you been up to in here? The levels for magic in this quarter went up to fifty-thousand herrings!”
Dane smiled politely, not inviting him inside. “Sorry, Stoneford. You shall have to wait three days, like the rest of them,” he said lightly.
Stoneford frowned. “Three days? What will happen in…? Demons take it, Dane, that’s illegal if you’re without possession of the appropriate documentation!”
“Which will hardly matter when my proposal passes in three days,” Dane said, smiling still. He looked up at Stoneford with a falsely pleasant expression. “Not that I admit that what you inferred is true, of course.”
“Are you all right?” Stoneford demanded after a long moment of silence. He was scowling heavily—his face was really quite suited for scowling. Dane had always thought so.
“Yes,” was all that Dane allowed himself to say. “Thank you. Now, I do believe that we both have work to be getting to, if you please…?”
He shut the door on Stoneford’s grumbling and went back in the work room. The construct was waiting like a stopped automaton. He made quite the sight in the middle of the room, standing board-straight and wearing dark clothing, all color washed from his skin and hair and his eyes too bright a blue. When they met Dane’s, it was obvious that he was nervous.
“Who… who was that?” he asked.
Dane crossed the room to pick up his grimoire again, thumbing through the pages. The construct seemed to be processing things as a normal human would, but his mood fluctuations seemed somewhat odd, varying between painfully nervous and somewhat too incisive. Of course, it could simply be the situation. Time would tell.
“Battle-Mage Geoffrey Viscim, of Stoneford,” he answered swiftly. “Tell me, are you experiencing any headaches or nausea? Both are early signs of the memory-building spells crumbling.”
Somner looked somewhat thrown. “What would that even feel like?” he asked, sounding lost.
Dane tried to resist the twist of guilt in his gut, but found himself failing miserably. “A… pain, or tightness, in your forehead, temples, and neck areas would be indicative of a headache. Nausea would be expressed by a tightness in your stomach or throat.”
The construct rubbed his palms against his thighs anxiously, staring at the tips of his bare feet. He had never put on the shoes Dane had given him. “Both.”
“Hmm.”
The sight-cream hadn’t worn off yet, so Dane studied the energy that surrounded the construct more closely. It was now glowing blue just underneath his skin, invisible to the naked eye. The energy was spread evenly throughout the body and appeared to be working correctly thus far.
Dane smiled wryly. “I hate to say it, but as like as not that’s just nerves.” He paused. He had to remember that the construct—Somner, damn it—was self-aware, like a normal human being, and Dane was responsible for him. As much as it hurt, he took that second to see Valerian in Somner: the shape of the face, the tall body, the nervous gestures and the eyes that saw far too much.
Beginning to gather his papers on his work table into a pile, he tried not show his nerves. The construct’s eyes were watching him as he moved. He could feel the tension of it, the energy that enabled the animation causing the air to hum.
Dane ran his hand down the scarred surface of the work table, checking for dust. He moved one of the delicate silver knives so that it matched the same position of the others; he half-turned a cup so the delicate green ivy painted on one side faced outward. It took him a few moments to realize what he was doing and still himself—it was ill-becoming of a mage to fidget.
He turned around suddenly and crossed his arms over his chest. “Somner, I created you with the consent of your body’s previous inhabitant as my dissertation-magic for my mage-license,” he said abruptly. “I will take care of you for as long as you need such a thing, and help you on your way, for however long you want. Consider me your… sponsor, if you will.”
Somner looked grave and a little frightened. He bowed his head. “I… thank you, Dane,” he said quietly. Though Dane waited for something further, Somner said nothing.
Dane nodded once. “I did not ask your permission to create you, and I feel guilty for it. I wouldn’t have done it if… but that’s irrelevant. And… it seems foolish to feel that way. Who gives their permission to be born into this world?”
Somner looked surprised, but slowly, he smiled.
