Despite my worries, Milbert of Navica makes no move to suddenly assail us, nor even to proselytize the Bright Lord. I puff a sigh of relief as inconspicuously as I can manage. Still, I am quite curious what a practitioner of magic has to say about the school they specialize in. Milbert glances around for something, a tome apparently. Once he grabs it, he returns to his seat, and starts thumbing through it.
He holds up an index finger in a one moment gesture, seeking something. Milbert begins, “What were your questions again? I believe it was life playing into death, afterlife, potentials, and heights, yes? Yes yes. A perfect order. Astounding scholarly mind. You certainly live up to your name. As some fair amount know, there is of course the biological cycle of life. Life lives, dies, decomposes as it feeds fungi and whatnot, supports new life which lives and dies and so on.”
He appears to be reading our faces for our ability to follow along. No one in my party is surprised by this information, so he continues, “Right, so, another cycle believed by some is that life leads directly to life, that death doesn’t exist. An entity, a soul perhaps, what have you, simply hops from one chapter to the next should something happen to its vessel. Theologians will argue those possibilities for days on end. Dullards, the lot of them. Necromancy isn’t about death and undeath, no, it’s about capturing the true essence of life.”
I raise an eyebrow, intrigued. Milbert grins wildly, knowing he has my full attention, “Right, and just so. Life, the being, the consciousness, the soul. It is a moment of eternity itself. A perfect point plucked from the infinite. Yet even still, infinite divided by anything is still infinite, is it not?”
I nod, mathematically that’s technically correct. Though the postulate itself is a tad leaky. Milbert explains, “A soul is therefore an infinity unto itself. Endless cycles, and they’re all already written, in a way. You’d have to speak to chronomancers to really puzzle that one out. There’s much more to time than meets the untrained eye.”
Hef, snerk. I cough as I hold back a snorted laugh. Nodding with a tear in my eye, I prompt Milbert to continue, so he does, “Right, well that’s life unto death, parting with a soul for whatever cycle it partakes in. Therefore afterlife, afterlife, the hereafter, what comes next. No one knows of course, but there are, hm, some methods to prolong the current point of the journey. Necromancy studies these. Bringing me to Necromancy itself.”
This is what I was truly after. If any school of magic dealt in souls, it would be this one, right? Milbert explains, “Some of its possibilities are of course preserving the meat, the vessel, giving them some semblance of continued life. Those are amateur attempts at reaching Necromancy’s true purpose. Don’t strive to bring back what’s already gone, or conjure cheap tricks that any enchanter could accomplish with any mannequin. No. Pluck a piece of the infinite, and stretch it, preserve it, play with it, seek its possibilities. Please, please come with me, up here, follow. It will be so much easier to explain above.”
I glance at Teuila who nods. Sending my glance to Dawn, she looks hopeful for once. I attempt to breathe coolly, calmly. The three of us follow Milbert up the various floors of his tower as he chuckles excitedly. As we approach a trap door leading upwards, I’m beginning to feel apprehensive. My earlier fear about this being some sort of lighthouse dances about the front of my brain. I have to shake free the thought, so that I can continue. This is the first hope we’ve had for Dawn, possibly ever, since the beginning of her curse.
Milbert mumbles, “Yes, yes, up, up you go, there you go, all of you. Such magpie minds, snatching hungrily at the tidbits. No wonder you’re The Scholar, and have traveled so far in search of knowledge. Up up, right over here, yes. I’ll attempt to illuminate Necromancy's heights. Pardon me while I shed some light on the situation.”
My eyes flash wide. I was right. I! Glp. As Milbert lights a torch, I find myself unable to move. The three of us crumple to our knees, struggling to get any of our muscles to respond. I have the staff in my hand, can I risk casting without aiming? Would Dawn’s curse prevent their body’s destruction, or would they be trapped in a charred husk? I don’t dare take the chance. Teuila begins to glow, and I fear the worst, until I realize what she’s doing. She needs me to buy eight minutes. Milbert’s excitement is palpable.
My head virtually vibrates. I send a silent apology to Dawn with my eyes. I need the aura vision spell on, right now. Since it’s technically the same spell, I could possibly keep it running, though Dawn’s is a more complex version of it. Still, my apology is in case this breaks the spell granting her extra senses. My eyes alight to the workings of magic around me. Radiant tendrils from the torchlight lap hungrily at us, gripping us, trying to pierce our hearts in order to drag something free. Milbert’s enthusiasm quickly begins to fade however.
The necromancer curses, “What the devil? What even are you? No soul has taken so long to leave its vessel, especially not one so close to the source. How dare you defy the light. Perhaps, perhaps your soul will remain should your vessel be extinguished. It should be locked to the light by now. It would be such a shame for it to go to waste though if it isn’t captured. My lord demands them all, but yours is far too curious, far too curious indeed. He won’t know a traveler has journeyed through and fallen prey.”
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Milbert cackles gleefully as he rubs his hands together. He casts about, looking for something to slay me with. I finally get a single muscle working, my throat. I accidentally cough at its sudden mobility. This draws Milbert’s attention directly back to me. He races over and stares into my locked-open eyes. He scratches inside his ear for a moment, doubting what he’d heard. He takes another moment to cup his ear as he tries to listen for any further sounds.
I string it along as long as I can, but when he frowns and turns away, I have no choice but to draw his attention back to me, “Milbert of Navica. This won’t end well for you.”
He gasps and swiftly turns about to face me once more. His eyes alight with greed, “You, there is something about your soul so very odd indeed. Perhaps you were lying about not dabbling in Necromancy, hm? Maybe you’ve locked your soul to your vessel? Some other fascinating facet I haven’t yet studied? But what of these two. Why would they in any way be the same. The vast power it must have taken to lock your own soul in place, why, you’d have to lay waste to an entire kingdom. Have you truly done such a thing? Wait, wait, I recall hearing that Jeegoobotstan was razed. Did the Scholar take countless lives in pursuit of such curious knowledge? Hm?”
I start to laugh, mostly at the name Jeegoobotstan, but the laughter serves my purpose well enough. I respond, gleefully, “Milbert. If you extinguish that flame now, I’ll tell you all you need to know to truly see the world through my eyes. I can guarantee you won’t obtain the same information from any traces of my soul that you can acquire.”
Milbert glances back and forth between me and his flame, nervously. I almost think I’ve convinced him, when he wags his finger at me, “Ah ah ah, you wouldn’t be so desperate for me to extinguish it if it wasn’t working. Ah hah! I’ve got you. Fine, if all I need do is be patient, then be patient I shall. Though I hope my m'lord does not notice the light blazing so long with no souls to send.”
I herp, nearly vomiting. Either his lord is the Bright Lord, who we’re pretty sure is the Celestial Emperor, or there’s someone else out there stealing souls. Maybe the only person, with the Celestial Emperor taking the blame. Wait, no. Aces saw their soul being ripped from their chest. The Celestial Emperor definitely steals souls. There’s a tower, Aces mentioned a Babylonian tower filled with souls, where was it? Oh friggin’ hell it was Navica! We should have left as soon as he introduced himself. Crap! Of course a soul-stealing necromancer is from the city where the stolen souls reside. Hellspit.
Luckily, based on my aura vision, the radiant tendrils are making absolutely no progress in ensnaring my soul, or Teuila’s soul. Dawn’s soul is external, but each tendril that grasps it is sucked away as it dissipates into the curse. Well, at least Dawn can’t have her soul stolen and tormented before her curse is over. I try to calm my breathing. I know a way out of this, but I would want Dawn’s consent. Even Teuila might not fair so well in the center of a fireball explosion. Actually, would killing Milbert even accomplish anything? We would still be trapped by the light that attempts to ensnare our souls. If fire isn't the answer, what about my old standby? An FFS, a frozen frost storm. Only, it'll have to be a localized hailstorm from the staff instead.
I announce, “Milbert, I’m about to free myself from this pitiful nuisance. If you agree to a civil discussion, I won’t be forced to slay you. I do hope you’ve still enough wits about you and your senses to see the rational choice in this matter.”
Milbert puzzles about me, pacing a circle around me a moment before declaring, “No, no I don’t think you are. Somehow you’ve got your throat and tongue, perhaps a bit of your lips and jaw, but you need hands for magic my friend. Brr. Why is it suddenly so cold up here? Are, are those clouds inside my tower? What even are you!?”
My conjured hailstorm comes at the expense of leaving Dawn senseless, and leaving myself without aura vision. The sleet and snow of the storm rain heavily down upon us, striking us with sharp, hardened frost. It takes a moment as Milbert gazes around for it to dawn on him what’s about to happen. He rushes towards his flame, and tries to bodily protect it against the chill and the wet. Even with all his attention on the slowly sputtering flame, it begins to die out.
Milbert, sensing the torch about to extinguish, rushes over to me and leaps at me. He grips my throat in both of his feeble hands and squeezes. Milbert cries out, “What are you? What are you!? What are— M'lord? M'lord, what’s a prime soul? No, no M'lord I didn’t know. I, I didn’t, ah, ahhhhh. I didn’t know!”
As the torch finally fully darkens, completely extinguished, Milbert spontaneously combusts, thankfully in front of me, rather than near Teuila or Dawn. I reach out towards Milbert, hoping to extinguish him and perhaps question him later, possibly under duress, but by the time my hand makes it to him, he’s nothing more than glowing ash blowing away in the breeze.
I glance about the room and quickly work at destroying anything that might be a light-source. If Milbert can spontaneously combust, then they might spontaneously ignite, and I don’t know which items contain that horrid soul-stealing enchantment. I reapply Dawn’s extra senses to her, when I no longer need the hailstorm, and the aura vision spell to myself.
The people of Victo are finally safe from the light, for now. Far, far too late. If only we’d arrived here, rather than Noirdivinhoz. We might have been able to save Selunie. Her soul was taken, and her death occurred on the same day we arrived. I think we do have to pick up where Aces left off. I think our enemy is the Bright Lord, the Celestial Emperor. How do you defeat, nay, even challenge a soul stealing enemy? With a weapon whose soul refuses to be stolen. With me.