A wide smile stretched my lips, as I put the finishing touches on the latest addition of my arsenal. Making an item that wasn’t recognised as one by the definitions of the system had been a bit of a challenge, but careful control of my Astral Power and a piece-by-piece approach had made it possible.

My struggle had started soon after Olivia had cleared me for light activity, after the Skeleton Lord had tried to make me a half-elf by cutting off my lower half with its cursed weapon. At that point, Lenore had recovered to the point that she could try to move the skull we had created together and in her capable talons, it very much looked like a ferocious weapon, though there was that small problem with aiming. She could carry the skull, despite it being about half her size, but that didn’t mean she was agile with it, or that she could actually aim it while carrying. Bird-Talons were great for many things, but aiming ranged attacks didn’t appear to be one of them. Or maybe she just needed more training with a point-and-shoot weapon. Either way, she wanted a better solution, especially as it turned out to be impossible to take the skull into her Hallow. Why that was, I had no idea, I could take my items with me, but for reasons unknown, it didn’t work for her. Maybe it was relative size, or relative mass or maybe some other obscure reason. It could be anything and we didn’t have the means to change it.

Carrying the skull in my magical bag came with its own problems, namely that there seemed to be a link between the bag and its owner, a link that carried the curse. Carrying it that way, I was constantly losing a small amount of HP, not enough to kill me but a constant annoyance.

And that was where the idea of a staff came from, a tool that I could carry but the first iteration I made was similar to my other items, a staff that mirrored the effects of the skull but also carried its curse. Carrying it that way didn’t work, obviously, so I had to try again, magically separating the staff and the skull. Or rather, make the staff in such a way that I could set the skull into it, safely secured, without making it part of the weapon.

The answer to the conundrum was, in hindsight, quite obvious: Make it non-magical, without any of my Astral Power feeding into it. That was accomplished by creating a staff-head out of regular Ice, carefully molding it to tightly grip the skull, without interfering with Lenore’s seat on top and her channeling of Astral Power. That head was then encapsulated in Hard Ice and placed above a fire, with me carefully keeping the Hard Ice from melting while the normal Ice within was less sturdy and got turned into water, dripping out of the mold. That task had been head-ache inducing, violating the laws of physics, even in such a gentle manner, was not something done casually.

Filling that Hard-Ice mold with normal, ordinary water from one of our waterskins, procured from a nearby stream and letting the water freeze was trivial and once that was accomplished, I only had to carefully shatter the Hard Ice, turning it into gently falling Diamond Dust and I had my staff-head. Creating a sturdy staff of Ice, with a setting for the head, was easy as well and once the ordinary Ice of the head was shedding a little water, it quickly froze against the perpetually cold Hard Ice of my new staff and the bonding was complete. Lenore would have to use her Ice-Magic to keep the head from melting, but she was well capable of that trivial task.

“Do you like it?” I asked, as Lenore hopped onto the staff, cackling in delight.

“I love it.” she replied, and suddenly, an intertwined twin-beam of purple and bone-grey energy shot out, harmlessly striking the nearby rocks. “Let’s find some undead to blast!” she urged me, her wings flapping wildly. I had to laugh despite myself, the image of Lenore flapping about, like an excited crow with a new shiny was just too adorable, so completely different from her normally composed persona.

“The Curse doesn’t bother you?” I queried, filing that curious fact away, as the Skull and its curse were something I wanted to study in the future. The Curse on the destroyed weapon was something I thought usable and was reasonably confident I would be able to place it on an enemy, if an appropriate enemy came along. The only problem was that I had yet to figure out a good way to apply it from range, striking someone to apply it didn’t seem to be the best method.

Finding Undead in the general vicinity of our path wasn’t too hard, there seemed to be the odd skeleton under every tree or brush, often completely inert unless a living being came too close, at which point they shambled to life, their long, bony fingers trying to tear into flesh.

For the first skeleton we came across, that shambling didn’t last long, Lenore let it get to its feet before a ray of energy struck it, Dark- and Death-energy washing over it and once the energy faded, the skeleton was gone. Not just the magic animating it, as I had done before, but even the bones were gone, leaving just a little bit of dust swirling away on the wind that constantly swept the mountains.

“Wow…” I muttered, slightly amazed at the effect. “How much Astral Power did that take?” I asked the important question. Destroying trivial skeletons was one thing, and while turning them to dust had some major style-points, if that needed massive amounts of Power, it wasn’t worthwhile.

“I already regenerated the power used.” Lenore replied and I let out a low whistle. That made the effect efficient, to the point that using it as a primary mode of attack would be worthwhile. That way, I could engage in a supportive fashion, most likely using Walls of Ice, maybe conjuring some sleet to coat the ground in a slick sheet of Ice, while Lenore did the blasting.

“Let’s find a few more, I think I can do more with it.” Lenore told me, and I kept sniffing the air as we all continued on our path. Sadly, the entire mountainside smelled of Undead, making my own perception of magical effects relatively pointless.

Nonetheless, we soon came across a few more, this time a group of three that rose from their positions around a smooth rock, as if they had used it as a table. Again, Lenore let them get up and, to add a little extra to the test, I instantly conjured up a sheet of Ice, using enough Astral Power to spread it from the tip of my shoes to the shambling undead some ten meters away from me. It took a boat-load of Astral Power, making it completely inefficient, but I wanted to see the performance.

Lenore must have noticed the Ice and patiently waited for the first undead to try moving across it, its feet finding little purchase and I learned that the skeletons were quite flexible, this one could, in fact, do the splits without issue.

“This somewhat works.” I mumbled, when the Skull in my Staff flashed, only this time, there were no concentrated beams of Power, twining around each other until they struck a target. No, there was just a flash, Darkness and Death spreading away from the crystal eyes almost like the beam of a flashlight. But the flash did just as much as the earlier beam had done, the Undead simply gone, as was quite a bit of my conjured Ice. What really opened my eyes however, was that a tree some thirty meters away, had lost all its remaining leaves and had visibly withered to the point that I would have thought it dead for years.

“And this works, too.” Lenore crowed, audibly amused.

“It does indeed. How’s the consumption?” I agreed, already trying to puzzle out the exact effect.

“Rather large, that short flash took almost fifty percent of my Power. It’s seriously powerful though.” she boasted and I had to agree. Sure, destroying trees was trivial, plants had been the first test-subjects of my Death-Magic, but still, if the effect didn’t lessen, that was a massive number of Undead. Not enough to start clearing valleys whole-sale, but enough to go and hunt down a few smaller groups, in the dozens or something like that. If my understanding of the effect wasn’t wrong, we should be able to crush those without major foes appearing, especially if we used the Skull to do the crushing, the effect seemingly tailored to destroy undead, with a combination of Withering-Death and Dispelling-Darkness.

There was a bit of a spring in my step, as we continued on our long journey west.