Childhood Inverted

Wilson Koorb.

***

"My name is Wilson Koorb. I know not the day nor the hour of my entry. Nor how I am even entering it when time has become so meaningless.

"I- we are not like the others. Though most of us have met him personally, me, Reina, and Leary are ignorant. Ignorant of Amun. Ignorant of his ways. Ignorant of his power. Ignorant of his realm.

"That, and we are cursed. Blessedly so.

"So it is that I find myself struggling to come to terms with the nature of Eotrom. The nature of worlds. Planets. And so it is that I've come to learn we cursed four will not be weaving worlds in the expanse. At least not initially.

"The first thing I did when I arrived in the depths of Amun's world was walk. I knew the huts and structures found throughout were laboratories and factories. I knew the others spread across the ceiling were sealed agricultural centers or places of power. But my curiosity got the best of me.

I walked and the land seemed never-ending. I walked. And then I came upon the place I started, wherein I realized this cavern curved in on itself like a sphere. Everything sat on top of this curved land neatly like buildings standing atop the surface of a colossal ball. A ball with a similarly curved ceiling.

"That was maddening enough. But then the undead came out to attack. I thought they turned on me, at first. But then I realized. That is my training. I am Amun's traveling companion. And Amun is lazy. He will not fight for me. Not that I want him to. So, the only choice was to dip my nose and dive into it headfirst- into developing this young body into a vessel that could excel at my job without aid.

"And what a job that is."

——

My job as the Eldritch Engineer was simple. I was the necrotic and fiendish edition of the Legio Noctis' Master Chief Engineer, Sir Edward Pascal. The uplifter of Bakewia. He was to build machinations for the living. I was humbled by the responsibility of crafting machinations for the undying, dying, and the fiend. But that was beside the point. My job was simple. But claiming the title of Eldritch Engineer was anything but.

To that end, my first task was to make the most out of my youth by spending four unceasing years practicing the arts of engineering and science while I mastered crafts- nearly every craft imaginable- all so that I could place myself on the path to becoming a Grandmaster Artificer; though it was not my true aim. Moreover, that was only the beginning of my charge.

I did not hunger. I did not tire. I did not fear. And so it was that my initial days began with the hunt. Big game or small rodents, it did not matter. I hunted, trapped, or caught a creature. Butchered it down and processed the flesh and hide into bait and leathers. I then proceeded to make jewelry or weapons from the bone and alchemical ingredients from the organs.

The remaining hours of those days were spent cutting stone, making pots, carving wood, smelting ore, or distilling liquids. And once I filled a small warehouse with each of said products, I turned to blowing glass, masonry, painting, engraving, carpentry, metallurgy; as well as painting, carving, drawing, and gem cutting.

Throughout that time I never stopped fighting. Not against the undead. Not against Etan. Every resource I used had to be fought for to be found. I had to fight to extract them, fight to bring them to my lab and fight after I consumed them. To this day I know not if they organized the attacks or simply played off of one another's actions. But my hypothesis remained the latter throughout the years.

Within a few months, the lessons matured once more. Within this curved realm- my occupational domain, I was made to connect my warehouses to factories with undead-manned production lines to automate the manufacturing process of my brews and toys.

Several months more and those factories were towering cities of dynamic steel that spanned my domain like vast belts. Hundreds of armaments, armor, and equipment imbued with the foul energies of the dark planes were pumped out to the Legion's ever-increasing undead by the day; and those numbers only increased by the tenday, all approved, stamped, and signed by the Eldritch Engineer, Wilson Koorb.

My God, my Patron, my Devil, and more were with me at each step of the way to grant blessings and boons that mimicked the ones given by the class. The Artificer's Cookbook. Audit. Appraisal. Locate Possession. Identify, Prospect, Extract, and more; up to the Alchemist's Cookbook and the Alchemical Eye.

While there was a similar function for each of them within VoidNet, that was a 'read-only' function born from the shared knowledge of the Legion's artificers. If one of our artificers audited, appraised, or handled something, the rest of the Legions would know about it immediately. But only these boons or those perks would allow them to use those materials freely; so it was granted to me to bring my factories to a new level.

Yet, that wasn't the breadth of my tenure. Whenever I wasn't tinkering or fighting I was enthralled in lessons on anatomy and biology, in turn dropping me deep into the medicinal witchcraft. To that end, I was granted several skeletons and zombies to aid me in my work. Plus several more to tinker with as I pleased.

Following Amun's guidance, I had them oversee my factories and labs and sent more to manage the distribution of my goods to the Legions' undead and the dead city of Shujen. Weapons, armor, clothes, and jewelry of the basic and non-magical varieties to distinguish themselves as individuals. And to remain clean.

Much was accomplished in those first few years. Yet it would pale in comparison to what came after.

While Etan's lessons continued in complexity and intensity, Amun's lessons grew… darker. When at first his lessons revolved around the art of enchanting and how it pertained to engineering, they later turned into the same necrotic lessons the great Necro King imparted to him. Yet he still taught me the other things. Witchcraft, and how medicine could kill mortals in ways that made better undead. Artificing, and of the many types of technology he created for his Legions.

Additionally, the Book of Madness saw fit to bring me deeper into the Shadow Realm to teach me more about the many undead phenotypes each night. I then made entries in the tome every day, creating designs for dying mortals and the souls in wait for a new vessel.

That, in turn, led me to spend years combining my existing knowledge of alchemy with my newfound knowledge of biology and engineering and then imbuing that knowledge with the arcane text carved into the Book of Madness to fashion arcane machinations into dead and fiendish flesh alike.

When this body was nine, I was visited by the likes of Leary, Reina, Rickley, and Iris. Not only to share knowledge but to allow me to study their physiologies. And how amazing those were. We were all blessed in body and mind but to highly varying degrees.

The wonder child, Amun's adopted daughter, was an augmented being from head to toe. Contrary to her appearance, not a single biological cell remained in her body. Her procedure saw her cells divide as they normally would, only with different instructions to make her organs out of the divine materials born on Ilium, turning the entirety of her body into a perfect machine.

Her brain was a massive computing crystal of wrinkly blue diamond- A data diamond. She could eat organics and inorganics alike, turning the former into super-fuel- Vehsipane- and the latter into augmentations. And yet, Iris was not cursed. At least, not in the same way as we were.

Leary was cursed. But so too was he blessed in body and mind plus spirit to become a Goblin Paragon. Even without his augmentations, he stood around 1.5 meters tall. His hands, head, and feet were more proportioned, making him more… man-like, complete with a widow's peak of straight black hair. But his ears were still big.

That aside, he too was perfect in all regards. His augmented ArcaTech skeleton was infused with the affinities of the Legions' founders, and even the bone magic held by Amun's father. Thus he received no work from my hand. He and Iris were only studied. Or, as Amun called it, 'reverse engineered.'

It was much the same in Rickley's case. Her throat and chest had been augmented before we had ever met her. Divine NecroTech implants and augmentations. Her lungs were remade to contain Vac-Gas, which fed the pressure-less gas to compressors and nozzles within her throat. Thus enabling her to contain a nigh-infinite volume of gas within her lungs and eject them with great force.

When coupled with her Volterum heart and the speakers implanted in her voice box, it made for a walking loudspeaker paired with a voice modulator. To top everything off, her scalp was grafted with Noxweave hair follicles that naturally grew into Dimensionite and Biogold-tipped locks. Allowing her to use her hair as wires and cables for her various devices.

That, however, was simply a foundation for me to work on. Moreover, it served as my first practical use of DivineTech; and what I made was special. Teeth. Teeth, made of 4-dimensional adamantine and further infused with different magical affinities to let her reform her teeth into whistles, hoses, and nozzles that spewed toxic gasses, fire, acid, oil, or any other fluid onto her victims.

In Reina's case, Amun repaired her broken skeleton using Cursed ArborTech made from the wood of a divine tree. In turn, she could make her skeletal structure rigid like wood or fluid like vines at will. That alone gave her more potential than even Leary, I was sure. However, she still received several augmentations to her body.

Namely, to her skin. She looked absolutely horrid when she appeared before us. Her brain was exposed and bits of her skin appeared petrified. The first she claimed to have dealt with on her own while much of the latter was cleaned up by Blude. But I made her complete. From stronger skin and stony bones to magic-infused glands in her fingertips that could deposit different energies into her cysts to make them flammable, poisonous, caustic, or whatever other things she infused in them afterward.

And then there was me. A boy with a non-ferrous adamantine skeleton infused with the essence of the Divine Engineer to grant me control over technology. Blessed in the sense that I not only had a few potions in perpetual effect. But in the sense that I'd been granted the power to make more.

Yet, I was cursed. With this skeleton so magnificent, I could not consume potions that changed my skeletal structure. Or, if I did, they would have no effect. Still, however, potions that affected my flesh remained on the table. Not to mention I could still create permanent potions for others. Permanent in the sense that the effect would remain until the universal 'antidote' was consumed.

With that, I took to making designs for my body. A repeating crossbow in my inner forearm, capable of retracting into what appeared to be a normal prosthetic arm. The same as the foldout shield on the outer edge of the same forearm. Other than elemental enchantments in each knuckle and retractable blades in the fingers of my skeletal hand, the only other change to my body came in the form of scars.

Stretching from my hips to my armpits were scars. Semi-sealed scars that could be peeled open to unseal my two pocket dimensions. One led to my Plane of Madness, wherein Bom and my growing army of undead sat in wait with other tools of war. The other led to my Plane of Darkness, wherein my alchemical equipment and toys remained in storage.

And yet still, the work continued, for tinkering with the Undying Fiends was but a test. And with that test complete, the following task was to enter Amun's underworld.

Within the Shade Palace, I formalized the undead's education. Elsewhere, I established facilities to create the Umbra Emperors for the Legions' founding members. Dozens upon dozens of them. Plus dozens more skeletons and zombies to Gloom Sovereigns, Doom Monarchs, Dread Nobles, and Horror Knights.

Of them all, eleven had the privilege of having a template to become something more. Sages, the lot of them. Of the tempest and divine beasts. The machine. Barbaric paladins and Valkyries. A sage of philosophy and sages of faith. Dark sages of similar realms and sages who dwelled in fluids.

By the time this body was thirteen, that task was complete for both them and me. I had skeletons wreathed in crackling violet flames, commanded by zombies with crystalline bones and mutated flesh accompanying me as I practiced and researched. Not within the hidden layers of Amun's domain but within the caverns of my smog-filled world. I studied in both my job and the jobs of the others; in turn, I created jobs for myself and my undying companions.

With my immense inventory of nefarious and wicked equipment, it was only natural for me to put it up for sale in Eotrom and the Legions. To that end, I created the Rogues Gallery for those who claimed such a title. Poisons. Acids. Traps. Any nefarious thing for any nefarious deed could be found there en masse. Just as it was for warlocks with magical, cursed, or tainted items at the Eldritch Bazaar.

 But those ends were only pursued for half of my sleepless days.

The other half was pure hell, for I was fighting empowered, magical, and highly intelligent undead of my creation. And they knew I could not die so easily. More so, they used the technology and machines of the others to push this body far beyond its limits. I was broken every day and healed immediately to resume the fight. Developing the skills needed to become a slayer of mages.

Yet, claiming that title would come later.