Chapter Ninety: The Skeleton Carpenter

"Let's give it a try."

Wade crouched down and spread the skeleton out flat.

The bones were already badly worn. With the leakage of its soul flame, the force that had once bound bone to bone was gone; the joints slackened at once, and the finger bones began to fall away.

It came apart like a true skeleton eroded by time.

A pile of broken bones could not be used. Before summoning a soul, Wade first needed to mend this body.

He put the fallen little bones back where they belonged, then used his own soul flame to fuse the broken parts together.

The process was like assembling a block puzzle. Mia imitated him, gathering the fallen bones and fitting them into place.

She busied herself with the small fragments, treating it almost like a game.

She had not yet learned how to bond bones with soul flame. She was a spirit and needed no skeleton to exist.

She did not know how to use the power of the soul to glue the bones together, but fortunately she had another way. She held out her small hand and cast a freezing spell.

The little ghost used frost to hold the bones fast, and with her help Wade's burden was greatly reduced.

The pitted surfaces were smoothed over by frost, and even the gap Wade had smashed into the skull was sealed by her ice.

Before long, Wade and Mia had pieced the skeleton back together.

Most of the sand had been brushed off the bones, and with the fine frost clinging to it, the skeleton looked faintly glittering. The blood moon cast a dark red sheen over it, giving it an oddly refined air.

It looked rather striking, like some high-grade skeleton capable of wielding frost or blood power.

Pity it only looked the part. It was still an empty shell, unable to move on its own.

Wade first propped the frame upright, setting it on its two legs.

Then he tested the flexibility of each joint, bending the knees into a forward-running pose, then working the elbows and shoulders to see how far the arms could swing.

Last came the neck and waist. He twisted the skull and rotated the frame at the hips.

He posed the skeleton as a man running forward, then as the Thinker.

Wade arranged its arms so they were level with the shoulders, fists clenched, head turned to the right, striking the classic strongman pose.

Mia clapped beside him and laughed with delight. The little thing seemed to find it great fun; in her eyes, the skeleton had become a giant toy.

She also wanted to pose it herself, but she was a little too weak. Though she could use freezing magic, the force that let her fly was really no more than a breath of wind.

Mia used all her strength to push the skeleton's arm, and could barely make it rise a little before it stuck and would not budge.

She squinted and strained as she tried to fly upward, but no matter how hard she pushed, she could not move that arm. Wade could not bear to watch any longer and reached out to help.

The moment the arm was pushed away, Mia broke into radiant laughter and flew to Wade's head, where she lay down.

Wade scratched her under the chin, and she settled on his head without moving.

She seemed to have had her fill of play and grown tired.

So Wade let her lie there. Once the skeleton's quality check had passed, he began to summon the souls that existed within his spiritual space.

It was a vague, abstract exchange of consciousness. Those souls had lost the ability to think in the normal way of the living. They no longer thought as humans did; instead, they were made of other instincts and obsessions.

They were all very pure beings. When Wade called to them, each soul answered.

No words were needed between them, yet they understood one another's intentions better than words ever could.

Wade presented the skeleton before him to those souls, and they responded with a rustling chorus of indistinct sounds.

The souls demanded a concrete feeling, so Wade placed his palm on the skeleton. Dozens of soul-lights, like points of radiance, lined up one by one and entered the body to test its fit.

The process was extremely quick, as quick as a thought. In only a few seconds, the souls had given their verdict.

Some felt the body was too narrow; some thought it too heavy.

About thirty souls disliked the body.

A dozen or so felt neither good nor bad about it, and only three found it rather comfortable.

Wade asked those three who wanted to go first.

After a brief exchange, the three chose one among themselves.

Most had long forgotten their names, but certain things remained carved into their obsessions.

Those were the skills repeated day after day, year after year, until they had become almost instinct.

Wade saw the world through that soul's eyes: rough, callused hands gripping a tenon saw, a hand plane smoothing pine cut from the forest, tenon saws and bow saws slicing the wood.

Amid the clangor of hammering, those strong hands cut mortises and tenons into the prepared timber. With a small knife he carved and refined the shape and edges of the wood, making furniture such as chairs, stools, cabinets, and handcarts.

It was the soul of a carpenter, a nimble old master of the trade.

The souls judged the carpenter's skill to be useful, and so recommended that the carpenter be the first to use this body, which suited him well.

"Then I'll trouble you."

Wade pressed his palm against the skull of the body, and the chosen soul slipped out of his spiritual space and entered the new vessel.

At the same time, Wade shared part of his own flame as the force that would drive this body.

His flame was now abundant. Each time Mia devoured a soul, she would share power with him. Since the incident with Swain, his flame had been richly filled, reaching the limit of his capacity at the time. Not to mention that Mia had later devoured the souls of the stitched beast and the mage as well.

After breaking through his own barrier, he only needed to spare a little flame to set the souls in motion.

By the measure of necromancers, a fifth-circle necromancer could control roughly a thousand undead, while a fourth-circle mage could command over a hundred.

The amount of flame Wade could divide off without affecting himself was about equal to that number of one hundred. He could make over a hundred skeletons move, and the souls following him now were only half that number.

Even if all fifty souls were set in motion at once, there would be no problem.

The greatest difficulty was not the flame, but finding suitable bodies for the souls.

Even after repair, the skeleton before him was too ruined to withstand much wear.

If only he could find a stronger, sturdier frame. As Wade was wondering whether he should try his luck in the Skeleton Sand Flats, the skeleton in front of him had already begun to move slowly.

There was no soul flame visible within its skull. It was fundamentally different from the roaming skeletons of the wasteland.

The soul merely clung to this body and acted through it. Even if the skull were pierced, the soul inside would not be affected. Yet by the same token, if the body itself were damaged, the soul could not mend it as a skeleton would.

If the body lost an arm, it would truly be like a human losing a hand.

To the souls, this kind of skeleton was almost a disposable item; once it wore out, they had no choice but to withdraw.

Fortunately, the body had not yet deteriorated to that extent.

The carpenter's soul could control the skeleton normally. Facing Wade, it slowly bent at the waist and bowed.

After more than a hundred days, Wade finally had another skeleton companion on the wasteland.

And it was a rare skeleton carpenter besides. Wade could not help but marvel at how wondrous this world was.