Chapter 20: Chapter 20: Bone Daddy!

Norman felt extremely exposed as he rode his bike, with the attached wagon, down the street. There were no street lights on despite the time of night, not outside the wall at least. The city probably didn’t think it was worth the expense to light the streets outside the wall. Norman was surprised they still left power on for normal folk but he figured it was probably because they earned money from it.

But this wasn’t why Norman was feeling exposed. It was because the moon was full and with the cloudless night, it bathed the street in a wan light, making him stand out. It worried Norman because it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out he was up to no good if he was spotted.

Despite the nervousness that Norman felt, he continue and the glue factory soon came into view. Norman rode past the building making sure there were no lights on inside the building or any cars present that might indicate people. Norman knew it was unlikely anyone that worked here could afford a car but it was best to be thorough. He did see the dump truck in the back of the building but it was parked and silent. Not that he expected it to be running at this time of night.

He circled the building one last time but nobody came to yell at him or chase him off. Deciding it was clear, he parked the bike and trailer off to the side where it would be out of the direct line of site from the street. Norman was going to triple-check the building before committing to breaking in, he didn’t need another scare like what he received at the butcher.

Norman slowly approached the pit where the truck had dumped the bones earlier in the day. What he had thought was a pit turned out to be more like a slide that angled sharply toward the building. Norman tsked at that as the area was empty. He had hoped to get off easy and just snatch a few armfuls of bones from the pit and be on his way. But he had misjudged how large it was due to the bad angle he had while staking the place out.

“Whatcha doing?”

“Gah!” Norman jumped and nearly fell into the pit but a hand reached out and stabilized him.

“Fuck sake, Anna!” Norman tried calming his racing heart as he admonished the girl. “What are you doing out here? Never mind that. The better question is, why are you following me?”

The girl twisted her foot on the blacktop as Norman glared at her.

“I was curious. I saw you leaving your house and wanted to see what you were up to.”

Norman pinched the bridge of his nose and took a slow calming breath. “How did you even get here?”

“I biked here,” Anna pointed to another bike that was parked near his.

Dammit! He had been so focused on his goal, he hadn’t even seen or heard the girl following him. It wasn’t like she was stealthy, she was riding a bike down the street the same as him. He looked closer at the bike.

“Hey… isn’t that my bike?”

Anna shrugged, giving him an innocent smile.

A headache was starting to form behind Norman’s eyes and his first thought was to tell the girl to go home. But he had experience with how well that worked.

“Whatever, just be quiet.”

The girl smiled and mimed locking her lips shut and throwing away a key.

“But why are you here,” she whispered a moment later.

Norman sighed. “I need some materials for my spells.”

Anna looked around in confusion, then she glanced at the pit. “Um. I don’t see anything.”

“Yeah, obviously. I need to go inside to recover the materials.”

Anna crossed her arms and frowned at Norman, “you mean stealing.”

Norman rolled his eyes. “I’m not taking anything that they will miss, just some bones.”

“Oh, ok then,” the girl's demeanor did an immediate one-eighty, which put Norman on edge.

Norman tried to ignore the girl as he slid into the pit, trying not to fall on his ass and get covered in the blood that coated parts of the floor. The pit wasn’t all that deep, maybe four feet or so. Shallow enough that he could easily climb out if he had to.

“Wee!” Anna giggled loudly – completely forgetting her promise to be quiet – as she slid down the ramp like a child going down a slide, right into the back of Norman’s legs and making him stumble forward.

“What the hell, Anna! I said we need to be quiet, and I never said to follow me.”

The girl had the audacity to scoff at Norman. “There’s nobody around for miles and you’re daft if you think I’m just going to stand around outside until you return.”

Norman quietly ground his teeth in frustration. “Whatever, just be quiet. We don’t know that there isn’t a guard here.”

Anna tried to hold his arm as she had done on their ‘date’ but he pulled his arm away, he didn’t need another misunderstanding. Free from the girl’s grip, Norman flicked his flashlight on. He remembered to charge the flashlight this time around so it wasn’t flickering. He moved the light across the building to get a general idea of what was around. There wasn’t much to see other than a large pot of tepid water – that smelled awful – and an electric heating element set in a pit below the pot of water.

On the far side of the area was the opening where they rolled the cleaned bones through. But a rolling door closed off that section. Norman cursed his luck as he approached the clearly locked door.

“Is that where we have to go?” Anna asked quietly.

Norman just nodded, trying to see if there was another way into the other room. He spotted a normal door set off in the corner. When he tried the handle, he found it wasn’t locked. Inside was a set of offices and another door on the far side of the area. Norman glanced inside the rooms as he passed, making sure there were no surprises. Although, if someone was around, they would have seen his flashlight by now.

Everything was dark and quiet though. Norman approached the final door and found it locked, but it was locked from this side. He unlocked it and pushed the door open.

It led into the closed-off section of the building. Norman smiled, finally, something was going his way tonight.

It didn’t take long for Norman to find a cart filled with cleaned bones. It was only one amongst many such carts. Clearly, the secondary processing of the bones was a more lengthy process.

There were large bones, small bones, and skulls all randomly piled in the carts. All except one cart where Norman found some odd-looking bones.

Norman blinked slowly as his light illuminated the strange bones in the cart. They looked disturbingly like human bones. Norman heard an aborted squeak from Anna.

“Are those human remains?”

“No, I don’t think so. I think those are Jorik bones.” Norman couldn’t be entirely sure but the blue tint to the bones and the slightly smaller skulls led him to believe he was correct.

Norman ran his hand over one of the bones and it felt warm to his touch. He was tempted to take these bones and experiment with them but he resisted that temptation. Someone would surely notice if those went missing. He moved to a cart filled with normal bones.

Not wanting to be here any longer than he had to, Norman whipped out a plastic bag he had in his pocket and started stuffing smaller bones into it.

“Anna, hold out your arms.”

“Like this?” Anna asked, holding her arms up.

Norman adjusted her arms before he started stacking them with larger bones almost like he was stacking firewood.

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“Ugh, these are heavy.” She complained.

“You wanted to come, the least you can do is help.”

Anna grumbled but kept her arms up.

Once Norman completely stuffed his bag with smaller bones, he slid it over his wrist and started picking up some larger bones for himself.

This process took some time as Norman was grabbing from multiple bins to make it less obvious that someone had broken in and taken anything.

“Alright, let's get going.”

The hardest part about getting out of the building was locking the one door behind him and getting out of the pit. He had to dump his load of bones on the ground. Then Anna did the same and he hauled her out of the pit.

They got the bones into Norman’s wagon and Norman covered it with the blanket and some bungee straps.

“Why do you need all these bones anyway?”

Norman had expected this question and although he didn’t really want to answer the girl, he did.

“They are for some spells I am working on. Look, Anna, I don’t need your brother finding out about you being out here. So please keep this to yourself.” Norman wanted to head off any more questions and hopefully keep Toby from learning about Anna being out here along with his extracurricular activities.

Anna was only too eager to agree. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell a soul.” The little giggle she let out didn’t give Norman confidence.

Norman decided he needed to start preparing for the worst.

***

Anna went back to her place when they got home, which surprised Norman. He was certain she was going to want to see what he was up to.

Norman wasn’t about to argue his good luck though.

He dragged all of the bones into his kitchen and dropped them onto the table. Norman sorted the bones into three piles. Having Anna there really did help him get quite a bit more bones than he was originally planning to take. Norman wasn’t going to tell her that though, he didn’t want to encourage her to stalk him any more than she already was.

Norman drummed his fingers on the table as he stared at the piles of bones. The bone armor spell was similar to the bone wall in how it was set up. Norman needed to carve a set of symbols into a bone and have another bone used to activate the spell. But that’s all he really knew.

What he needed to determine was how many bones it would take for the spell to work, or if the spell could work with different quantities of bones. The feeling in the back of his head didn’t really give him a clue either way. That was fine with Norman, it meant he could experiment.

Norman dug one of the tiny bones from the bag and set the rest of them aside. He might need some of them but he wanted to keep them as spell targets so he didn’t have to rely on larger bones if he found himself in a bind.

Once that was done, Norman pulled out a box and stuck all the rest of the bones in it and off the table. Then he grabbed two from the pile of bones and stuck them back on the table. He carved the symbols into one of the two bones, the sound of his knife scrapping against the bone making him wince.

Once that was complete and Norman sprinkled it with the magical powder, the other bone touching it was sucked into the carved bone. That answered another question he had. He wasn’t entirely sure the spell would work on disconnected bones. He was certainly glad it did, otherwise, he would be back to square one.

Unlike with his bone wall spell, there wasn’t the awful snapping sound accompanying the process. After it was complete, Norman touched the activation bone to the other bone and it was sucked into the smaller bone that would hold the primed spell.

“Huh…” He hadn’t expected that to work, he was sure he would need more bones to complete the spell.

He set the completed spell bone aside and repeated the process a few more times with, three bones, then six bones. He decided to skip doing four and five-bone samples since he didn’t have an unlimited supply of bones to play with.

Norman took the two-bone spell in hand and crushed the bone, which wasn’t all that hard considering how fragile the spell made it. A white liquid poured from his hand and crawled up his arm forming a bracer.

He couldn’t help but marvel at the smooth white armor that now covered his forearm. It looked more like cheap off-white plastic than bone. When Norman ran his hand across it, it almost felt wet due to how smooth the surface was.

As Norman inspected the piece, he realized he had a bit of an issue. The armor had no seem and no way to remove it. Slipping it off wasn’t an option either as it was tight against his skin. More like an exoskeleton, than armor. Now that Norman thought about it, that was exactly what it was.

Norman tried everything he could think of to physically remove the bone armor from around his arm. But other than creating a few scratches, in the remarkably durable material, he wasn’t able to remove it or even budge it with anything he had lying around.

It was frustrating but not the end of the world. Norman could still move around with the armor in place. He was about to give it up and head to bed when he got an idea. Norman took another small bone and carved the symbol that was used to create the activation bone. Then he touched the new bone to the armor.

He decided that the possible risk of the spell consuming his entire body was low, based on how the spell functioned. He was thankfully proven correct a moment later as the milky white bone was absorbed by the new activation bone. Norman let out a breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding. His assumption that the spell needed the companion symbols to absorb material seemed to be correct.

Norman was only glad the spell recognized the liquified bone as still having the active ‘spell matrix’ for lack of a better term. If it hadn’t then Norman would have been in a bit of a pickle. He hadn’t been about to risk carving a new set of symbols on the armor while he was wearing it.

With that worry removed, Norman continued his testing. The next prepared spell contained three bones and only made the bracer slightly thicker. Norman figured this was due to some restriction on expanding the armor unless it contained enough material, but that was only a guess.

Taking a leap, Norman touched the same bone he used to remove the first bit of armor to this new bit, and to his surprise, the new armor was sucked into the same bone containing his first test, causing it to glow slightly brighter.

Norman couldn’t help but smile. This made the spell far more versatile and reusable than he had originally thought. Not like the bone wall spell… then again, Norman hadn’t tried to reclaim the wall, had he. A trip back out to the woods might be in his future, especially if it meant he didn’t have to constantly hunt for new sources of spell material.

He repeated his test with the final bone armor spell he had prepared. This time the armor covered his entire arm and shoulder, the individual pieces sliding together without issue. Though Norman couldn’t see any mechanism that would allow this to happen.

The only concern Norman had for the armor was the large gaps where the plates came together. It left his joints exposed. It was like a part of the spell was missing. He wasn't sure but it was possible these areas were supposed to be covered by the other types of connective tissue. Tissues that were usually found within a body. And excluding them from the spell somehow made the spell ignore those parts.

Norman didn’t like the idea of being covered in the soft remains of some random dead thing, but he would have to test it at some point just to see what happened.

The issue of the armor gaps was minor, so Norman would ignore it for now.  The spell was already exceeding his expectations. It was certainly better than the alternative he had thought of, where the armor plates fused together and made it impossible to move.

Another issue Norman discovered – that might be due to the connective tissue being missing – was just how loud the armor was. While it might move smoothly, it did not do so quietly. It clattered together like, well bones.

Norman removed the armor, sucking it into the already active bone. Now the spell contained eleven bones. Norman crushed the final bone and watched as the armor slowly moved up his arm and across his upper chest. When it finally stopped, Norman went to his mirror to take a look.

He groaned, following it up with a facepalm with his uncovered arm, it looked like he was wearing a dirty white crop top and not in a good way. If there ever could be a good way to look in a crop top, as a man. No this made him look like one of those weirdos you would find in clubs that liked to suck on pacifiers and wore nipple-length crop tops over a fishnet shirt. Norman shuddered at the memory. That might look appealing on a woman, but men, have some self-respect.

He quickly created a new activation bone and removed the armor so he wouldn’t have to look at it anymore.

Despite the weird look at the end, Norman made good progress tonight. He now had a good idea of how many bones he would need to make a complete set of armor. And if he was off, so what, he could just add a few more bones to fix it. Even going over the required amount wouldn’t be that bad, it just seemed to add a bit of thickness to the armor, which couldn’t hurt.

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