Chapter 39: Black Dragon

Sulad, returning from the Aenotel plane, gave Sakavi a letter from the Obsidian Dragon; after reading it, Sakavi was utterly baffled, for it contained only two words: “So stupid.”

Sakavi asked Sulad what he had said to the gem dragon, and received the reply that he hadn’t had time to say anything—the Obsidian Dragon had dropped the letter and left, warning, “If you lose this letter, I’ll twist off your and Verna’s heads,” before they could react, he had already flown far away.

The Obsidian Dragon liked fighting, not teasing; Sakavi believed that if it called him stupid, it must have meant something specific. He examined every component of the letter but found nothing amiss; helplessly, he summoned Sulad to ask him.

This question actually yielded an answer: Sulad said he now possessed a memory that didn’t belong to him—more precisely, he had never been to a certain wilderness in Aenotel, yet he inexplicably knew its entire terrain.

Combining the Obsidian Dragon’s ability to extract memories, Sakavi concluded that the dragon had deliberately implanted someone else’s memory into Sulad’s mind. But what was it trying to tell him?

Listing the Obsidian Dragon’s traits—soul, memory, psychic power, arrogance—and repeatedly analyzing them, Sakavi finally understood what it meant to convey.

By reading his subordinates’ memories, the Obsidian Dragon had learned of Sakavi’s every action in the Crimson Moon plane, and mocked the obstacle he encountered while studying soul strength. But what guidance was it offering?

Unable to fathom it, Sakavi summoned Sulad again and conducted a thorough examination of his soul, discovering that no foreign memory had been grafted onto it—instead, a fragmented soul had been transplanted into him.

Sakavi suddenly understood: the message was that fragmented souls could be transplanted and stored within living bodies to evade dimensional disturbances. How to transplant or store them? That he must discover himself.

But this contradicted itself: soulless transcendent or sentient beings were rejected by gods and dimensions; fragmented souls couldn’t withstand dimensional turbulence. If he couldn’t even create a complete soul, wasn’t this entirely blocked? The Obsidian Dragon gave no solution.

Yet if it had spoken, there must be a solution—one within Sakavi’s own domain of necromancy. Though arrogant and volatile, the Obsidian Dragon was certainly not foolish. Sakavi had met this being once; it had been entirely black-scaled, and its laughter had crushed his spirit, forcing him to bow his head.

The only necromantic method to firmly anchor a soul within a container was sealing magic—a rare art, known to few, since it was useless in combat unless employed by major factions specifically breeding specialists to seal demons too hard to kill.

Without delay, Sakavi acted. Though rare, sealing magic wasn’t beyond his reach—the Veil’s Eye had already infiltrated twenty nearby planes. Acquiring sealing texts was feasible. Since Verna hadn’t returned, he ordered Deputy Viceroy Ulno the Mire, a swamp toad-man and second-generation descendant of the thirty swamp toads who had followed Grap to the Crimson Moon plane.

Ulno delivered, a month later, several bloodstained books on sealing magic, from basic to advanced. His efficiency was unquestionable—though his methods were brutal. Sakavi cared only for results; how his subordinates achieved them was their concern. Over-controlling them would crush their initiative.

Sealing a soul into a container wasn’t difficult; the challenge was making a sentient being into a vessel, and ensuring the sealed soul could still influence it undisturbed. Sakavi always approached experiments by first establishing theoretical coherence, then refining details, testing, and refining further.

Theoretically, souls could be extracted, modified, and merged into new bodies—this was detailed in necromantic texts, and Sakavi had crafted and altered fragmented souls before. But in sealing magic, he found no method to directly influence living organisms.

If direct influence on living beings was impossible, could influence be exerted on the container instead? For example, a golem? Since sealing magic recorded nothing on this, it didn’t prove theoretical impossibility—it required practical testing.

Sakavi recreated five hundred death knights, divided into ten groups, each sealed with souls of varying completeness. Combat trials showed that the more complete the soul, the stronger the combat power. Yet none could match warriors of equal rank—proving the theory fundamentally unworkable.

After three years of repeated trial and error, Sakavi observed something intriguing: sealing a fragmented soul into a bat-beast’s body caused the dimension to no longer reject it. If this loophole could be exploited, then creating a flesh golem would achieve theoretical soul control over a vessel.

Flesh golems weren’t rare; some merchant guilds had repeatedly attempted to create them to satisfy “special tastes”—mindless creatures indistinguishable from beasts, so repulsive even the gods refused to look at them.

But these were useless to Sakavi: their physical strength was insufficient for combat. He’d have to develop his own version. A flesh golem without thought or instinct, directly controlled by a soul—no existing theory proved this possible.

Helpless, Sakavi ordered three hundred Kuo-toa captured to test whether fragmented souls could control sentient beings. Kuo-toa were a peculiar race—their madness was so extreme even gods avoided prolonged contact.

Normally, no race dared create gods; the Pantheon would immediately erase them physically, leaving no trace of soul. The Kuo-toa, perhaps too mad, were neither enslaved nor controlled by any power—gods, subterranean factions, or even the Mind Flayers—except the Mind Flayers themselves.

Beneath their madness lay extraordinary intelligence: they possessed rigid social structures, formidable armies, bizarre architecture of organic beauty, and potent psychic illusions. They occasionally traded with gray dwarves but never allied with any faction.

Sakavi had always treated such untamable races as expendable—but their souls were too chaotic, inferior to his own crafted fragmented souls. This experiment failed too; perhaps his souls were too rational, causing the Kuo-toa to die instantly upon contact.

Realizing direct control wouldn’t work, Sakavi tried sealing the soul into the Kuo-toa’s body. In this experiment, he discovered something curious: an accident severed a Kuo-toa’s leg. If sealing magic could rip off a limb, could he deliberately design such a seal?

Sakavi saw this as a promising direction: perhaps design small, instant seals to immobilize specific body parts. But his immediate goal remained creating a complete flesh golem. He tried sealing the entire Kuo-toa brain, using the soul to coordinate internal bodily functions—but the soul’s computational capacity was too weak, and the Kuo-toa died immediately.

After a year of experimentation, Sakavi finally created a soul capable of replacing the brain in bodily regulation. Then he realized—he didn’t need such complexity. Sentient bodies were too intricate. Why not make simple flesh golems? Why mimic sentience? Even the best would still be expendable.

Inspired, Sakavi crafted a batch of flesh golems with magical affinity. Sealing in fragmented souls seemed viable; if the soul carried innate spellcasting memories, with minor training, they could function as wizards. Were gods so eager to claim their followers’ souls for heaven merely to use them this way?

Some necromancers plundered souls to create death knights and similar constructs as combat assets. Sakavi had cleaned his reputation—he dared not risk such unpopular acts again. Transcendent souls weren’t common as cabbage; he could only let his golems slowly level up.

His golems must have a unique identity. Sakavi had an idea: he shaped them into black dragon-men—not emaciated skeletons, but muscular, resembling red dragon-men.

To avoid being countered, Sakavi spent further study to create three hundred dragon-men covering all seven classes. He didn’t make more—his crafted souls had a hard ceiling at high rank; beyond that, they were just wasted resources.

These golems had to train daily to master their class abilities, for Sakavi had no access to large quantities of souls with pre-existing knowledge—he had to make them learn through experience.

Sakavi named them Black Dragon’s Wings—meaning expendable tools of the Black Dragon, sacrificing themselves so he might fly higher and farther. Of course, he couldn’t say that publicly—no one wanted a leader who treated his subordinates as disposable.