The severing disc was a powerful cutting spell that was surprisingly mana efficient and allowed the caster to ‘pilot’ the disc, changing its flight path at will. Taiven had not thought much of it, as it was not a fire-and-forget sort of combat spell, requiring constant concentration from the mage to keep existing. And it moved pretty slowly for a magical projectile, too. According to Taiven, competent mages would dispel the disc before it could reach them or otherwise evade it, and the caster is something of a sitting duck while directing the disc.
But the boars couldn’t dispel it, and had no ranged attacks to take advantage of his lack of shields. At Zorian’s direction, the disc shot forward, flying close to the ground — at the height that Zorian judged to be around knee-height for the boars.
Zorian’s fears that he had overestimated the power of the disc and that it would not be able to cut through the bones of tough animals like the boars proved completely unfounded — the disc encountered the legs of the first boar and simply passed through with no visible resistance. In its wake, the boar fell apart, its legs separated from its torso. Directed by Zorian the disc continued towards the rest of them.
In the end, it was a close thing. On one hand, the boars didn’t even try to dodge, charging in straight lines that made them easy to intercept with the disc. On the other hand, Zorian had not practiced the spell in question particularly heavily, so he missed two boars on his first pass. Thankfully, the alchemist had recovered by this point and helpfully dealt with the two stragglers by causing an arc of spear-like spikes to erupt from the ground in front of him with some kind of alteration spell. The boars were so insistent on getting to him as fast as possible that they impaled themselves on the makeshift rampart and got stuck.
Zorian let the disc dissipate with a sigh. That was a win, yes, but he wasn’t satisfied with his performance. He’d frozen at the start, and his mastery of the severing disc spell left much to be desired. But what was done was done, and at least he achieved what he came here to do. Time to face the music. He set off towards the alchemist, who was kneeling on the ground and alternating between staring at approaching Zorian and at the still twitching, legless boars not far from him.
He frowned at them as he approached. They had no minds, he realized. That was why he didn’t detect them until they attacked — as far as his mind sense was concerned, they didn’t exist. Coupled with the fact they were still alive with their limbs cut off and that their wounds didn’t bleed at all, the conclusion was obvious.
His hunch had been right: they were definitely undead. As far as he knew, the only beings that counted as ‘mindless’ for the purposes of mind magic were oozes, golems, creatures under the Mind Blank spell, and the so-called ‘mindless undead’. The boars were clearly neither golems or oozes, and he doubted Mind Blank was involved. It would also explain why they seemed to have no blood and felt no pain or hesitation.
“Are you alright there? You kind of took the worst of that blast,” said Zorian, shifting his attention towards the man he came here to save. Now that he was close to the man, he could see that Lukav Teklo was a fairly handsome middle-aged man, sporting long black hair, a carefully sculpted beard and rather muscular physique. Zorian was a little surprised by this, as he had expected someone… wilder. After all, his fellow villagers had told him that the man disdained human contact and preferred to spend his time in the wilderness.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m alright,” the man said, rising to his feet before swaying dangerously. Zorian quickly caught him and helped him regain his balance. “Dammit. Hoisted on my own petard, literally. Didn’t even accomplish anything with it. Totally ignored my patented animal repellent. That’s some compulsion they were under…”
“I’m pretty sure they’re undead,” Zorian said.
“What, really?” Lukav said, squinting at the closest boar. “My vision is a little blurry right now. Is it… is it really trying to wriggle towards me still?”
“I think so, yeah,” Zorian confirmed.
Lukav barked out a stream of words in some Khusky language that Zorian didn’t recognize. He was pretty sure they were swear words, though, so maybe it was better that way.
“I’m sorry,” the man said after a few calming breaths. “I don’t mean to be rude. I want to thank you, young man. I was lucky you happened upon me when you did. I surely would have died otherwise.”
“Well, it wasn’t entirely luck,” Zorian said, causing the man to give him a hard look. “You are Lukav Teklo, yes?” The man nodded. “I have been looking for you based on the recommendation you received from one of my friends, one Kael Tverinov.”
“Ah, Kael!” Lukav immediately brightened. “Great kid, shame he stopped coming when he got engaged to that witch girl. I was hoping to recruit him as an apprentice, but I’m afraid Fria got to him first and unlike her, I didn’t have a cute daughter of my own to tempt him away with. Talented alchemist, that boy. I’d ask you how he’s doing, but we can do that in my house, when I calm down a little.”
“That would be fine,” Zorian said. “Though I want to take a look at these undead boars that attacked you, first. I’m pretty sure someone just tried to murder you. I don’t think undead boars arise on their own.”
“Oh no, definitely not,” Lukav agreed. “Minor undead like that are basically flesh golems, only with an enslaved soul or spirit placed inside instead of an automation core. The only ‘naturally’ arising undead are ghosts and other soul entities. Alanic was always very clear on that. Not sure who would try to kill me, of all people, but apparently I pissed off a necromancer somewhere. Just my luck. I’ll report this to the guild and have them deal with this, but feel free to examine these things as much as you want in the meantime. I’m kind of curious myself, but divinations were never my thing so…”
Zorian nodded and got to work, using an alteration spell to bind the legless torso of the nearest boar so it wouldn’t thrash and move around before moving to analyze it.
As he feared, he didn’t find out anything particularly useful and was forced to leave the scene to the guild investigators. At Lukav’s advice he re-summoned the severing disk and chopped all of the downed boars except one into smaller pieces that no longer moved. Lukav claimed that one undead boar was enough for the guild investigators and he didn’t want to risk the attacker picking them up, sewing the legs back on and sending them after him again.
The last intact boar was buried deep into the soil via another alteration spell from Lukav, there to wait for guild investigators to arrive.
“Zombies, skeletons and other undead are not nearly as easy to make as stories make them out to be,” Lukav explained as they made way towards his house. “Easier and cheaper to make than golems, sure, but still a significant expenditure of alchemical ingredients and time. Losing a dozen zombies like that has got to be a major loss for whoever is targeting me. No sense in letting them recuperate losses by leaving the zombie boars in fixable condition. Alanic told me to always destroy any disabled undead after the battle, just in case their maker is around to fix them back up. I didn’t think I’d ever be in a position where that advice would be useful but there you go.”
“Forgive me, but is the Alanic you’re talking about Alanic Zosk?” Zorian asked.
“Why yes,” Lukav confirmed. “I suppose Kael recommended him too?”
“Yes. He actually gave me a pretty long list of soul mages — you were just the first name on the list.” He wasn’t really, but it hardly mattered. The man motioned him to continue. “I need your help with a piece of soul magic I got hit with. I don’t feel comfortable talking about it here in the open. I hope you’ll hear me out when we get to your home.”