Black Magus

Rickley Ravenbrook.

***

A brief vacation was in order after upgrading our gear. The work was arduous but fun, not to mention quick, only taking a few days to upgrade our things and a week more to upgrade the Empire's equipment. Close to three weeks got us acquainted with our new tools in the field. The rest of the next month was spent sprucing up the Steepcairn. And more, performance reviews of our time in war were given both individually and as a group. Therein we learned of the other side of our dutiful coin: our duties as the highest-ranking Legionairres of the Nox. However, it was that first part that made a lot of work for little ole me.

The work was not in planning, though. Establishing the most efficient layout and all the city planning madness was a job for Blude's Orcinus Mafia. The work was not in construction either. Filling the bone halls with flesh and petrified wood was Reina's responsibility. Nor was it my job to integrate and connect everything to the networks. That was a job for Iris and her mechanical minions. I was the Eldest Grave Keeper. A job with a dual purpose. It was I who was in charge of the Legions' civil-military operations. It was my job to ensure our lands were pleasant, welcome, and lovely to locals and foreigners alike. So too was it my job to bury the dead. It was I who was to ensure they rested well. And it was I who would hear the dead's tales.

Here, in the Darkroom, though, things were different. Twelve nations had a permanent existence here. Only three were friendly, and they dwelled in the furthest corners of this realm. Likewise, those who would enter the room would come here as neither tourists nor refugees. They would come here as explorers. Thus, it was my job to redesign the Steepcairn to give the future cadre a means to be 'friendly' with the recruits and, later, the locals. Thus, by extension, it was my job to ensure those who died within this room would awaken most efficiently, but not for free.

While everyone in the Troupe assisted with the endeavor, it was a job that required the Abyssal Regent, the Noctis Marshal, and the Praefectus Noctis' assistance.

As the Abyssal Regent, Etan was somewhat of a Chief of Staff mixed with a Defense Secretary. Among other things, he was responsible for creating, maintaining, and revising various policies, training operations, developmental programs, readiness standards, and so on. He was essentially the senior authority on discipline. And, to a certain extent, his jurisdiction included the likes of Amun.

As the Noctis Marshal, Leary was the highest-ranking non-commissioned officer in the Legions- a position reserved for the undead and those who refused the eternal pledge. Indirectly, he would lead every recruit to enter and subsequently graduate from the Darkroom. As such, Leary was all but obsessed with ensuring his future troops would exceed both his and Etan's expectations long after they graduated. More than that, he worked with the Regent to ensure those who became higher-ranked NCOs would be far more hardened and experienced than their commissioned counterparts.

As Praefectus Noctis, Iris Cole was not in a commanding position, as one would expect of a military general. She was an indirect commander, a master of stratagem and logistics combined with an administrator of communications, networks, and IT, who constantly analyzed every square meter of land beneath our umbrella via her digital 'Game.' Beneath her gaze, points of interest were prioritized, analyzed, and marked for any relevant tasks before being distributed to Legions' generals as requests in peacetime or orders in wartime.

As one, those three redesigned the schedule within the Darkroom, effective the moment we left. Many phases remained the same, though. It was their conditions that were reversed. Rather than start in a mana-starved environment, the recruits would enter a realm of arcana that would drain to mist-density mana come time for the crucible. Rather than lock their abilities during the War Phase, the recruits would be free to experiment with their new powers, then lose them when they needed to use them the most. So too was the conflict dialed down, yet the conditions were worsened. War would begin with bombardments and invasions, but no longer would the battles be forced to last for twenty hours, every day, for three months. Instead, the battles would not cease until the enemy either withdrew or was annihilated. However, the recruits would not yet have the abodes and accommodations we made for them. The structures would be buried, forcing the pages to live in the muck, drinking mud and eating the spoils of war as we did. Forcing them to build and uplift themselves as we did.

To that end, we devised a manner with which to sink both the Steepcairn and the Briarfare. The barracks, classrooms, and training fields. Delphilios Court. Air Base Cloudwalde. The bunkers, towers, and trenches. Port Curdenweld. Every structure but the comparatively tiny dome at the center was buried beneath a layer of bedrock, leaving a pillar of bone at the center of a crater some 200 kilometers in width.

Only after the War Phase would a truce be signed, and the Steepcairn would lift itself above the crater rim to form a domed plateau overlooking the land bridge. Being in peacetime, the recruits would see their schedules shift. Three days on, two days off. To make it so, required the planning of the Orcinus Matriarch. Being the Empress- or rather, the Goddess of the oceans and seas made her the queen of the mineral wealth found at their depths as well. And so it was that she was declared the Senior Logistician. Part of that duty included city planning. And while they also doubled as contractors, that was only the case while near water. So the blueprints were first passed onto Reina.

As she would do with many of our domiciles in the future, Reina turned Steepcairn into a living organism using her Life Magic. In doing so, she and, in turn, we learned the extent of her powers. Her life magic could not heal. Nor did it give Reina control over the beings it created. It could only give life- autonomy, sentience, and intelligence- to things, inanimate or not. That was to say, it animated things in ways akin to the machine intelligence born by Iris. There was no soul. Only mind, body, and sometimes, a spirit. With this power, the walls, doors, and floors were given the means to move, open, or even rearrange their structures at will. Outside of their domains, entire forests were made dynamic, with sweeping branches to permit or prevent any from accessing their depths. Yet they could not speak. Not without a bit of her flesh magic. Talking buildings and trees were not permitted in Steepcairn, however. Thus, opening the door for the rest of us to impose our combined will on the structure.

In my case, it was the exact center of the Cairn and a little something I named the Ring of Residence, encircling the Pillar of Permanence - a pillar of pure mithral, in which, a recruit's soul would be temporarily deposited upon their death in the Darkroom. Although it extended above the dome as an ordinary bone pillar, it was surrounded underneath by a wide ringed avenue lined with alcoves, huts, and smaller domes. They were the recovery rooms, therapy clinics, and physical training rooms Etan collectively named the Halls of Consequence. The place where recruits would pay the price for being healed or revived before they returned to either the Ring of Residence or the battlefield.

Battalion Training Centers, or BTCs, were scattered across the Ring of Residence like jigsaw pieces. Each had a library, an art gallery, a great hall, theaters, wilds, herb gardens, ranches, temples, monasteries, dungeons, and sanctums; all things recruits would need to venture down their paths, no matter the class. All things made chic, relaxing, and mentally stimulating by the touch of Blude and her mafia. Evenly spaced along the corners of each BTC were at least four company buildings. In truth, each was composed of two buildings standing on stilts side-by-side, linked by an overreaching archway meant to accommodate whatever cadre Amun and Etan decided upon. Each platoon was privy to a private floor. Save the open ground floor, wherein sat the classrooms, armories, training fields, combat yards, and workshops. In each of them, Leary poured in his bones, used his necromancy, and merged it with the combined magic of Iris and Reina to create combat drones and other such devices for the recruits to hone their skills.

While her energy was rarely found within the Cairn, Iris and her augmented beings poured their magic throughout every structure from the Pillar of Permanence to our forward bases beyond the wire. Of course, the end was to facilitate learning for the recruits, but the means was through surveillance. The recruits would have their privacy still. But each morsel of information was to be fed to the data processing center in the Steepcairn's bowels. Hidden twice, the fifth basement level was. Once via the inaccessibility of the level and twice from being in a pocket dimension. The level above that, however, was open to the recruits. Namely, the artificers and engineers so they could learn of the many ways to generate power, regulate or exchange temperatures, and handle fluids in large-scale structures.

The third level was where Reina's flesh began to shine amidst Iris's metal. The entire floor was dedicated to raw storage. It was, however, linked to the Grand Quartermaster, Freki's domain of greenhouses, farms, gardens, and ranches on the level above via fleshy pipes and conveyor belts. It was all about efficiency. Waste traveled down via gravity from sewage and trash on the surface and Wilson's factories and chemical plants strewn throughout the first level. Whether in the flesh pits or the recycling bays, it was repurposed into fuel or recycled materials. In either case, both went to storage before they were sent below or returned above for fertilization or refinement.

Outside of the Steepcairn, Leary and, more importantly, Geri went wild with their abilities. The Range Master, as she called herself, was the Legion's chief of intelligence and reconnaissance, being the first to scout any area we found ourselves in. That much was known. But what that duty progressed into was one where she and others designed enchanted tools to facilitate the Legions' travel; celestial roads and rails of frozen clouds and burning wood; road posts filled with Iris's warp mana and floating spheres infused with gravitational mana - Fast Travel, Amun called it. Of course, so too did she and her winter wolves spend days upgrading Delphilios Court. Garages were remodeled with underground showrooms and hidden racetracks that curved and looped into the distance. The clusters of hangars were interconnected to a network of crisscrossing runways filled with holographic projections to make courses for any would-be operators. Geri also widened and elevated every road, made paths throughout the complex, dug deeper canals, and upgraded any other means of travel one could think of. But her Warp Points and Gravity Slings were a fan favorite of everyone. Especially Leary.

The goblin paragon swung and warped himself around every square meter of the former war fields. In the Gloom Yard, he formed obstacle courses of bone populated with skeletons and golems alike. to give the recruits a real challenge. Many more skeletons he raised to operate the bone tanks and crawlers he made to war against the recruits should they wish to hone their combat skills further.

Well, that was what he said.

We all knew he was itching to go out again. Itching to test his magic and might against those far-off nations. We all were. Yet, there was one thing left to create or upgrade before we ventured to those unseen horizons. Something that would greatly assist us in our future endeavors. Our Undying Machine Animals.

"Mani is unlike the worlds woven by the Imperators," Amun told us. "While there are sentinels posted, no one lives on Mani's surface. Nor is it habitable to most. Though we will later adopt the moon I wove above Shujen as our home, it will not orbit Mani as those other worlds do. It will follow us across the Mortal Plane. But even then, it will not be our home, but the home of our civilians. The many kingdoms of our empires. Therein lies the purpose of our Umas. Eotrom is our paradise. The place in which we reincarnate. Mostly." He snickered.

"Eotrom is our vacation away from our place of work and play, not where our empires exist. Our empires exist within the Cuttleship, our mortal home. Not some fixed place on the Mortal Plane. The Cuttleship is where the homebodies of your groups and your professional organizations will dwell. The Omni-Wagon, then, is the mobile headquarters of our Zed Legion, and guest facilities for those we meet during our travels - our closest comrades and allies. In most cases, while the Cuttleship will remain parked somewhere in hiding, the wagon will travel across whatever realm we're in at an unceasing, meandering pace, allowing us to come and go as we please. Kit, on the other hand, is the place where we conduct business in private. The Troupe's roving estate. Our mobile city. Or rather," Amun devilishly smiled, "my mobile city."

"As you will do in here, there will soon come a time when we operate independently within the same realm. Times where we each find ourselves in different countries and away from the Cuttleship, with our own agendas. As such, you all need roving estates and mobile headquarters for yourselves. Or, if you have them, you need to upgrade them. Cause I'm surely gonna upgrade mine."