Haemonculus Amongus
Ninth Day of the First Month 294 AC
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"It's a failure."
Denys gazed down upon the motionless body, looking so peaceful in silent repose, glassy red eyes and white hair a strange mirror of sorts into his own locks of ashen blond and sea-green eyes. The fact that it bears his own features in a way startlingly close to the flesh-wrought spirits Lady Lya had created was not lost on the room's other occupant, yet so clearly inadequate as to be laughable in comparison, at least in his mind.
"It's not... a
failure," the aforementioned Lady Lya replied carefully, pursing her lip. "Rather, it's not as though you were attempting to mimic my craft intentionally. I'm sorry to say, but the binding matrices that went into this body are just too unstable to last longer than half a day."
A more polite way to say that he was not great enough in his understanding of magic to make it a lasting vessel for an animated intelligence, much less craft an ensouled body, Denys thought. She shook her head after staring down at the cadaver for several moments, a man that had never truly been a man thus could not be counted a corpse.
"I don't understand what I'm looking at here... how did you even
do this? Shouldn't a proper simulacrum be ash or snow? 'Fantasm and fairy dust', as the low mages might say. This has more in common with fleshcraft..." She startled, turning to look at him wide-eyed. "This is you just 'dabbling' in fleshcraft?" There wasn't quite disbelief in her voice.
"No... I, I mean, not really," Denys began evasively, before sighing. "When I heard about the spell, I knew I had to try to recreate it, but chemical balances and imbalances, minerals and mutagens, measures and doses. That's the only way I can really break down a spell before putting it back together again, however, with that said, this is one of the most complicated I've ever attempted. It held together far better than if the vessel was more... real, for lack of a better term. This body has less in common with mine for all outward appearances, mind you, but similar capabilities. I had this idea, you see, stacked cognition, my brain-based mutagen initiating networked and distributed thought processes."
"That's..." Lya stared at the man, dumbstruck, and he thought for a moment 'madness' was on the tip of her tongue, before she continued in an effusive tone, "Ingenious. But without soul tethers, it shouldn't be possible."
Denys slid off piles of research notes, half of which tumbled into a bin sticking out from underneath his workbench. A clatter of crystal decanters caused Lya to wince. She hadn't been that absentminded since she split her thought processes, somehow the man managed to look overworked even with another eight hours in the day to pour over research notes while on the island and under the Old Gods' blessings.
"Take a look at this." He sketched out a few examples speedily and with the practiced hand of a scribe, which is what he had been for near a decade in-between frequent tourneys the man he hated was given to host during his tenure as King upon the Iron Throne. Such thoughts were further and further away when given over to the company of sages and sorcerers. "Mind links can stand in for soul-deep bonds, though it will be expensive. True collective memory, seamless transfer of concepts, enhanced cognition. You could..."
"Become a one man research team," Lya finished, thoughtfully, reserving judgement for the moment. She could do something similar, of course, though limited and through a vastly more arcane and complicated process. It was great for inching out more of her capabilities, to create more works of artifice, have more time to research and probe the mysteries of the world, or just to spend time with friends. This could be scaled up massively in comparison, albeit only for those prepared to sink a fortune into the endeavor.
If she was being completely honest, Lya couldn't tell if the man was insane or brilliant, when she saw what he intended, but she was more than willing to give the benefit of the doubt--and more importantly,
funding.
"You'll certainly have my patronage."