The Relic | A Prompt Fill

Deep Water Prompt #3278

Magic runs bone deep in a host, and stays there after death. Bones left to family or friends in wills can be placed in new bodies, through sorcery or surgery, and work almost just as well.

But this is something else entirely.

I handle the skull carefully, with gloves, as I usually do with relics. With enough exposure, even just through the skin, magic can be toxic. Not all magics mingle well with each other. It’s the top cause of death for surgeons in my field.

This relic is a magnificent specimen. The skull is clearly ancient but quite intact, and white as the moon, and heavy as sorrow. I finish examining the teeth—each one diamond edged and radiating insatiable hunger—and glance up at my shadowy customer (or patient, as the case may be) enrobed in a dark cloak, not one inch of him visible but his gleaming eyes.

​“This will cost you,” I tell him bluntly. “It’s not just a matter of transposing the entire skull and keeping you alive as I do, which will be no easy feat, but I’ll have to root your brain within it too. Not to mention keep your spirit harnessed throughout; a further step someone less scrupulous than I might not bother with. And I’ll also have to bypass the inevitable transplant rejection. That alone will be nothing short of a war of effort and skill on my part.”

“But can you do it?” the man asks, his tone the careful flat of barely restrained impatience and deep, desperate eagerness. I can practically smell it off him.

“I would need time,” I reply. “An entire cycle of the moon, starting with the new, of course. I would need absolute solitude, certain equipment of the highest quality, and either an overcrowded cemetery or a fresh battlefield of no less than three thousand dead.”

“Three thousand?” the man asks sharply. “Your contemporaries have quoted me at maximum one thousand.”

“Because they’re hacks who like to cut corners and do not much care if you end up a plague-ridden lich. I, however, take pride on delivering precisely what I’m asked to, or declining the job if I cannot. I am no fool.”

The man considers me in silence, clearly torn. He wants this badly enough, then, to lose himself. But he hasn’t yet walked away either.

I lower the skull carefully down upon the silk-lined encasement it was brought to me in. “This is a god’s skull. A minor god, of course, to still have bones, but a god nonetheless. To harness it’s magic, a veritable feast of loss will be needed to offset the output of what you’ll be bringing back into the world. If you can afford all that, then yes, I can do it.”

“Then the cost is no object,” the man says finally. “List me your requirements and I will supply them. The next new moon is in a fortnight. Will that do?”

“It will,” I answer. “But I have not given you my cost, only the cost of the procedure itself.”

His glower fair burns right through me, but I’m made of sterner stuff than to be frightened off by a madman with delusions of grandeur. “What is it, then?” he asks through gritted teeth.

I smile sweetly. “A boon,” I tell him. “To be granted in full, be it a year from now or a hundred or more. You will swear it on your blood, on your true name, and on this relic, or I will not proceed one step further with you.”

The man hisses, but I simply fold my hands and wait. He has come this far, agreed to this much. He knows I am the best. And surely, he will be thinking, when he has the magic of a god at his disposal, he could easily dismiss me. Or overpower me, if he must.

Surely I am no threat to him.

I project complacent innocence and serenity. I am no fool.
​
But he is, because he agrees.