Several hours later a cross-legged, sweaty, itchy, and miserable Heidie had decided that mana probes and sensory overload were pretty annoying, but doable. A dumbbell was placed on the ground before her and Heidie’s poorly constructed mana probe tendril was taking in its details. Mana probes provided artificial sensory input and the overflow of information made Heidie’s head spin like a clothes dryer; It was like every sense she had was getting bombarded with input about the chunk of metal.

Fortunately, Heidie was able to control the input, somewhat. At least she wasn’t getting information about how the filthy thing tasted anymore.

Feeling more than a little dizzy but elated anyway, Heidie stopped her mana probe and opened her eyes. Success! Oh god the teeth! Heidie recoiled. Her elation was dampened somewhat by opening her eyes to Lome’Matar’s toothy smile. Heidie really wished the demon would stop doing that. Those fucking teeth man Heidie thought. Did he file them to those sheer points or are they like that naturally?

“Yes! It will do!” Lome’Matar smiled wider, face stretching and appearing disturbingly manic. “Completely inadequate for a student of mine but good enough to act as a focus for your next spell. You will require remediation when there is opportunity, but it is good enough for a child’s first attempt.” Mildly deflated, Heidie wasn’t sure what she expected from her demonic teacher in terms of praise. Even so she figured he probably meant something like “You learned your first spell in just a couple of hours?! Heidie, you are the most talented student I’ve ever heard of! Here, have a magical spider-repelling pendant from my pocket dimension in recognition of your skill and in apology for tricking you into torturing yourself earlier. Lo, my faithful flying demon pegasus approacheth to take you away from this horrible place.”

Lome’Matar continued speaking. Ignorant of or simply ignoring Heidie’s delusions. “Mana probes are the first spell any first Circle mage or sorcerer will learn and they are the simplest. They are both a form of gathering information and a means of directing spells more efficiently.” Heidie raised her hand. “Yes?” Lome’Matar asked.

“You’ve mentioned both mages and sorcerers. What’s the difference?” Lome’Matar’s smile faded into a neutral expression of someone who had been interrupted and asked to explain something tedious.

“Mages are generally those who focus upon schools of magic which are legal to practice or which have good reputations. Sorcerers are those who learn from schools of magic which are less favorably viewed. It can change from area to area. You, my dear, will most certainly be a sorceress. Nothing I’m likely to teach you will be looked on favorably by the average civilization. The Celestials saw to that eons ago.”

“What are the Schools of magic? Also what are Celestials?” Heidie asked. Lome’Matar scowled.

“You will learn all that later. When there is some semblance of safety and time.” More runic sigils flowed out of the demon’s eyes and hung in the air. Unlike the single character that Heidie needed to memorize for a mana probe this looked more like two small paragraphs. “These two spells are my own design; improved far beyond the limitations of their common counterparts. They are the lowest simplification of a grand art: the molding of flesh and bone and the animation of undead minions. These sigils will be the foundation of your greatest weapon! Learn them! Your mana probe will make the process of committing them to memory easier.”

Heidie took a moment and centered herself. I can do this, She thought to herself. The memory of the monstrous spider outside the running through her mind. A weapon would be very nice. Napalm bombardment would be better, but at least minions sound more useful than a pointed stick. A pointed stick I don’t have, even. Heidie started up another mana probe and stuck her intangible noodly mana-tendril into the symbols to start feeling them up.

Information about their construction filled Heidie’s mind. She hadn’t realized how much detail was actually in each symbol before this. No wonder her mana probe sucked. She was trying to create it with an extremely minimalistic understanding of the sigil’s construction. Her head spun, but she managed to keep the synesthesia of the mana probe from overwhelming her too much.

Details for the lengthy spells filled Heidie’s mind. Lome’Matar had been right. This was so much easier than trying to learn the things by sight alone. Only a half hour had passed and Heidie thought she’d gotten the sigils down to around the same level as her mana probe. Going further than that looked difficult. The minute detail was much harder to imprint on her mind. She looked up at Lome’Matar and informed him of her progress. The demon outlined her next step. Well shit Heidie thought as she looked around at the dead and partially eaten students around her. This is going to be disgusting.

Heidie got up picked through the field of bodies for the materials needed to create a minion. Heidie picked a body that was relatively intact and did not require her to move a heavy machine to get to. Some smaller, though still quite heavy, debris had struck this unfortunate man’s head and the carrion birds had eaten some chunks out of him, but the cadaver was mostly intact. Lome’Matar assured her that the animated dead did not need eyes to see. Fortunate, or this corpse would have a major deficiency.

Straining and grunting in exertion, Heidie followed her instructions, stripping the clothing off and dragged the body back to where Lome’Matar and her seat waited. Dropping it to the ground Heidie sat back down on her repurposed free weight bench. She observed her soon to be minion. He seemed quite muscular, an athlete perhaps. Man.. Heidie thought, a little worried at how little she felt about the former classmate’s death or being surrounded by death but it wasn’t enough to distract her. She was more concerned about how the animated dead could contend with whatever was out there in the forest. What the fuck is this guy supposed to do against some giant tree-jumping spider, even if he felt no pain and didn’t die easily? Speaking of which... If the spiders are that large, are there other larger predators? . Lome’Matar spoke again, now that materials were immediately at hand, “The simple risen dead are not particularly useful. In very large numbers they can make amusing swarms, but individually, or even in small packs, they are rarely worth the effort to create.” Heidie waited for further exposition. She really hoped this was going somewhere practical. “The best you can hope for from a first Circle spell is an undead somewhat more durable, but only as strong and fast as a mundane human warrior. Unfortunately undead of this level are even more stupid and unadaptable than the human in that example.” Lome’Matar continued, “This is where the shaping of flesh and bone before animation is useful. With sufficient knowledge of anatomy, you may create minions which are specialized to their tasks. You lack the craftsmanship, anatomical knowledge, and certain other spells to create truly specialized undead, but your mana reserves should be enough to modify and raise every corpse here.” Lome’Matar left out that Heidie could probably just keep molding and raising bodies until lack of sleep and her pathetic stamina knocked her out before reaching a point of strain on her mana reserves. Heidie spoke out again. She wanted more information before creating a minion for her defense.

“You said you drove away predators while I was unconscious. What kind of predators? What do I need to protect myself from?” Lome’Matar smiled again.

“Oh mostly a subspecies of giant spiders. I cannot identify the precise species but they look similar to others I’ve studied which live in large colonies of at least several thousand individuals. I learned a bit from my mana sense. They are very territorial, very dangerous, very intelligent creatures. Don’t get bitten. They have a nasy venom. I think that they may be capable of crude magic as well.”

Heidie stared at her teacher in shock. Oh hell, this just kept getting worse. Lome’Matar continued, “Fortunately, those I’ve studied do tend to watch new factors in their environment to gauge their threat before trying to remove them, assuming you do not threaten their colony or start killing them before that point. I recommend not to engage with the spiders if you can help it. Even if you could kill one or two of them they will probably muster in force to annihilate you in retaliation. We should seek to leave their territory after the barrier falls.” Lome’Matar considered matters for a moment, leaving a horrified Heidie thinking about thousands of spiders jumping and charging through the forest after her. “Aside from the spiders there are some other large ambush predators; felines species and snakes for the most part. You will want countermeasures to things that pounce and things that lie in wait above. Aside from that I recommend something for defense.” Heidie’s brain started churning, thinking of ideas for minions that would help her survive.

“How far will we have to move?” Heidie asked.

“As far as is necessary to leave the spider’s territory.” Lome’Matar replied. “Prepare for the worst.”

“How strong can I make the flesh and bone?”

“Flesh is troublesome to make useful at your level. It is better later. It will be barely as strong as cured leather if you work it with mana and the spell I taught you. Bone though...solid bone can be very strong. Should you use my techniques to mold multiple bones into one and compress it you will have a formidable material indeed.”

Fine. Heidie looked back at her former classmate’s corpse.

Lome’Matar didn’t seem to be giving her very much to work with regarding specific design, so Heidie would have to come up with it herself. Her imagination was working overtime. Well. Heidie thought to the corpse, You didn’t make it, but you're going to help me get out of here. Heidie had an idea, but she would need more bones to mold together. She got up to look for another corpse. A damaged one would do. She’d show this fucking forest. No ambush predator was going to get her, oh no. She was getting out of here. Then she was going to have a goddamn bath if she had to mold a tub out of bones and create a special bath-drawing minion to get it.