144 Preparations (2/2)

Ava is your current target. Here are her traits.

Corruption: Ava is a dark-dwarf. This is an unusual and dangerous state of being for dwarves in which their hearts are corrupted and they physically take on darker and bleaker traits.

Divinely empowered: Ava was already surprisingly powerful before you began to pour some of your divine, magical, and otherworldly power into her. Now she is even stronger and possesses the ”Divinely empowered” trait which increases her potent power considerably.

Sadist: Ava is a sadist. She relishes the pain she inflicts on her victims.

What alterations would you like to make to her? Here are some possibilities:

Acidic: This powerful alteration causes Ava to gain immunity to acid and to gain a natural attack in which even her touch transfers devastatingly powerful acid to a target and begins to break it or them down.

Abomination: This alteration causes abomination to view a non-abomination as like them. Abominations who would normally be hostile towards recipients of this alteration instead leave them alone unless attacked first.

Cold: This power stems from the liquid subdomain and it functions like ”Acidic” in that it grants immunity to the cold and also bestows the altered individuals with a new natural attack. This one is a strange attack that chills or even outright freezes enemies in place.

Empowered, necromantically: This alteration makes someone into a more potent necromancer. It increases how rapidly they gain levels as a necromancer, empowers the undead creations they animate, and even increases the raw, destructive power of their powers.

Fungal: This fundamentally alters targets and turns them into potent fungal monstrosities. This power alters their appearance as much as you wish or will allow, and grants them hyphae and other useful fungal appendages. They gain the power to speak to fungi. They can also root themselves into the ground and begin to ambiently heal while rooted in soil.

Parasitic: This allows for the altered individual to drain life from their victims and use it to power themselves.

Plant-like: Similar to fungal, but with the power to exude a calming fragrance, natural regeneration while in the light of the sun, and the ability to gain control over victims if they are either persuaded or forced to ingest a seed created by the altered individual. They gain the power to speak to plants.

Poisonous: This functions similarly to acidic but with poison instead of acid.]

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I smiled and altered Ava to make her poisonous and I empowered her necromancy with the ”Empowered, necromantically” alteration. The dwarf froze at my suggestion but considered it for a moment. And then she opted to obey me and placed a single, finger on the monster's human-like head with surprising gentleness. She placed her index-finger squarely on the monster's forehead. As she did so her entire body radiated a gentle, silver-light. My alteration was taking hold.

The moment the dark-dwarf placed her finger on the humanlike face of her victim, he emanated a noise that was a mixture of pain and pleasure. The utterance was a guttural half-moan, half-agonized shout. It was loud, and with it the creature perished almost frighteningly quickly. Mere moments after Ava touched his head.

I watched as his breathing sped up for a moment, and then slowed down considerably. Moments later he stopped breathing and his heart stopped beating. Ava noticed this too, and her face contorted itself. There was a look of cruel satisfaction in her eyes and on her lips in the form of twisted lips that were half smiling, half smirking. She began to speak as she moved her hands until they were positioned just over the creature.

”Finally... With this, I can begin my revenge in full.” She said, aware of her own powers and the spell she was mentally preparing to cast. An instant after she finished speaking rays of dark green energy shot out of her fingers and into the corpse at her feet.

The still corpse began to radiate an eerie and dark greenish glow as Ava's imprecise and untrained necromantic magics filled it with an unholy and homicidal unlife. I watched as the body began to vibrate as if someone were attempting to restart its heart, and I chuckled. I felt the unlife energy that Ava had just conjured begin to settle in the strange body of the monster.

After a few seconds of waiting, Ava began to tap her feet onto the stone floor of my tower. It was a rapid tapping, one that increased in frequency the more she had to wait. Her inexperienced, imprecise spellcasting was more than enough to reanimate the corpse, but it wasn't enough to do it immediately as I could. Her mortality and her weak soul made it impossible for her to have the same innate, inborn mastery over unlife energy that I possessed. That said, I knew that she succeeded.

”Patience.” I told her, smiling as the corpse's vibrations finally began to slow down. Ava's tapping slowed as the vibrations did, the impressive creature keenly aware of the speed of the vibration of her first undead creation.

Nearly two minutes after she cast the spell she cast on the ghoulified ant-monster, the creature finally stopped vibrating. And began to move. Ava smiled at the thing and helped it up, while turning her eyes towards the rest of the myremekes ants. It wouldn't take her even fifteen minutes to finish slaughtering and reanimating them. Each time she had to reanimate a corpse it was a quicker process than the last time.

When Ava and her squadron of undead ant-monsters were fully prepared and ready to go, I rose a hand to my right and opened up a single, moderately large portal. We could see beyond it, and were peering into Oscuridad' mine, a place I created to give the residents of the small community a way to pass time and to arm themselves without too much work on my part.