Edwin rolled onto his stomach and pushed himself up on all fours, which was a lot harder than it had any right to be. His body worked fine, just not quite how he wanted it to. His knees and feet scraped along the ground when he tried to get them under him, putting him off balance. Flopping down with all the grace but none of the alacrity of a flounder, he groaned in frustration. His body wasn’t that different from Walter’s, why was this so difficult? He carefully pushed himself up again, moving one limb after the other, and this time he managed to get on his knees. Slowly, carefully, he stood up. He was swaying like a tree in a gale, but at least he was on his feet.

Staggering towards the tunnel entrance, Edwin started to notice more differences. It wasn’t just his legs that were a strange length, everything was slightly off. His head was in a different place than he was used to, the sound of his bare feet on the stone sounded weird, and the colors of the cavern around him were…wrong. Not by a lot, but Walter had worked with Magesilver for decades, and it had never had a slightly bluish tinge to its silver color. Yet here he was, staring right at it.

Was this a failure? Did he build his body incorrectly, or had Walter’s body, that hadn’t had the advantage of being purpose-built by a master craftsman, been slightly defective? If his eyes saw something that Walter’s hadn’t been able to, could he tune the Immortalizer to change the next body’s eyes even more, to see farther, more detailed, more colors? Edwin shook his head. Those were Walter thoughts, and there was no point to them now. Edwin wouldn’t be using the Immortalizer. He needed to focus on the journey ahead.

A flash of pain raced up his leg, and Edwin yelped in surprise. His ruminations had carried him all the way across the ritual circle and into the tunnel entrance, where he had stepped on something pointy. Reflexively, he tried to balance on one leg, which even Walter hadn’t been exceedingly proficient in. Newborn Edwin was awful at it and crashed to the floor once again.

Sitting with his back against the tunnel wall, Edwin glared at the shard of bone he had pulled from his foot. If he had to guess, he would say that the piece had once been part of Walter’s leg, before the old chap had exploded mere minutes prior. Most of his body had probably gathered into a small pile at the bottom of the sphere, but apparently, some parts had made it into the tunnel. And now, his foot.

Is being unlucky at the start of something new a bad omen or a good one? I feel like I’ve heard both.

Edwin flicked the shard back into the ritual chamber, and watched it disappear below the suspended floor. When he looked back at his foot, he creased his brow. The flow of blood had already stopped.

Walter had built his body with two main problems in mind: Edwin wasn’t supposed to be found out as different, but he also wasn’t supposed to just…die. There were all kinds of dangers out in the world, especially for a man like Edwin. So, ever the provident genius that Walter had been, he had added some subtle upgrades to his creation. Edwin was more resistant to diseases, had slightly stronger bones and healed a little more quickly. Nothing that would raise any suspicion – at least, that had been the idea. As he watched the sole of his foot slowly stitch itself together in front of his eyes, Edwin started to doubt that decision. Then again, it wasn’t that fast, and really, it was only a tiny hole. Surely it wouldn’t be obvious if you didn’t know to look for it.

On the plus side, one modification had worked just as intended: It hadn’t really been all that painful. More surprising, really, especially after having been unable to feel pain for so long. But after the initial shock, what pain there had been had ebbed quickly, leaving only a slightly unpleasant memory. That was a relief. Experiencing pain fully would have been bad, especially with what Edwin had planned.

He got to his feet and carefully walked over to the cupboard, flicking a few more bone shards over the edge of the sphere. Once there, he retrieved Walter’s robe. While the Lich hadn’t felt heat or cold and only wore it out of habit, Edwin was starting to feel chilly after sitting naked on the stone floor for a few minutes. Wrapped in the simple woolen garment and wishing Walter had also kept the habit of wearing shoes, he shuffled down the tunnel into the corridors of the underground laboratory. It wasn’t a lair, because only two types of beings got to have a lair: Dragons and those bent on world domination. Walter had been neither, although he had investigated the possibility of using the Immortalizer to create non-human bodies. He hadn’t gotten far, but he had ben fairly certain, that it wasn’t impossible… maybe one day. But those were Walter thoughts.

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After a few minutes of stumbling up the corridors, Edwin arrived at his destination. Where the Immortalizer was at the very bottom of the complex, the storage cavern was among the oldest rooms Walter had excavated and was therefore located near the entrance at the top of his home. When Walter started to build his laboratory, he first dug out a cave to deposit the many things he had brought with him before the rest of the rooms were finished. To keep transport requirements and suspicion to a minimum, most of the furniture was built out of stone, embedded into the walls, or raised out of the ground when the rooms had been excavated.

Pushing the heavy stone door open, Edwin looked around the vast area. The most important thing that had had to be imported ahead of time had been the ungodly amount of Magesilver. It used to fill most of the space on its own, space that, with the Immortalizer finished, now lay bare. Then there had been the books, notes and drawings that he had needed for his research. Those had been carefully boxed up and deposited in several tall rows along one of the long walls of the rectangular room once. They now filled their own library two floors down. Then there were a lot of small things, most of which Walter had had to get later because he simply hadn’t thought of them before he moved to a secret underground base in the middle of nowhere. Once the complex had been finished, those items had, one by one, been moved to their proper places as well. Now the storage cave, a space as large as the market quarter of the capital and once even more crowded with boxes and chests, lay empty.

Edwin made his way over to the back corner of the main room, where a few stacks of boxes and chests still stood untouched for…however long Walter had been down here. Flipping lids and cracking covers, Edwin started to take stock.

The ones on top contained Walter’s old clothes from back when he had been alive, mostly mage’s robes, shirts and pants. Edwin flipped through some of the garments with a smile, remembering the occasions they had seen use in. The nice robes with the gold embroidery that Walter had barely worn. The old Apprentice robes with the Journeyman trim sewn on later.

Nothing in these chests would fit Edwin, he told himself, and slammed down the lid. Instead, he moved on to a few unremarkable wooden crates in the very back, some of the first things that had ever been deposited here. Possessing great vision, Walter had known that, once the Immortalizer was finished, those that came after would need something to wear. To that end, he had bought a wide variety of different clothes, belts, shoes, packs, and even a few pieces of armor, without any regard for sizes, fit or fashion. Safely within the stasis enchantments of the storage space, they had patiently waited for this day. Edwin rubbed his hands, partly in glee and partly because he was cold. It was time to get dressed.