The pain was great, more so than anything the skeleton had dealt with thus far. It felt as though his skull was about to explode and along his body, he could feel the markings growing hotter and hotter as the moments passed. He wasn't even sure what was happening at that moment, the moment he jumped into the river being the last thing he remembered.
Unbeknownst to him though, and something he would probably never learn about, is that there was a reason for this. When he jumped into the river, he had scarcely noticed the many, many smooth rocks that sat at its bottom. Granted, he probably wouldn't have known about them anyway since they are something only local villagers know about. Well, due to this unforeseen fact, the moment he was in the water, the current dragged him down immediately and within a moment, smashed his skull against one of the rocks.
He was genuinely lucky his skull didn't break, but such luck came at a price. When his skull crunched against the rocks, many of his markings activated, negating much of the damage but at the same time, also draining them and making them fade away. Even now, there are patches across his bones where markings used to be but have since been used. This is also the reason why he is now in great pain.
Whenever a mage or anyone who practices magic is learning for the first time how to use their gifts, they are always told one rule. Be it by an academy, a lone master, or even a book, all will say the same thing: Beware of using more than what you have. For each person, their level of magical energy differs, even more so depending on the race of the individual, and as such, what level of magic they can use differs greatly. Whenever this pool of magical energy is used up, the person in question, if they are still casting magic at this point, begins to draw on a much more powerful but also lethal energy: their soul.
In the case of the skeleton, his markings used up all of his available magical energy and used a section of his soul in the process. Due to this, he was in great pain, and with pain came great anger. That is why it came as no surprise, at least initially, that when he saw a chisel and hammer lined up against his skull, he did what he thought was best at that moment: he punched the old man.
His closed fist connected with the old man’s face in an instant, cracking slightly as he assumed he had just broken this man’s nose. The old man flew backward before smashing his head against the corner of a counter and falling to the floor. Pulling himself off the table, the skeleton heaved heavily, although it was very much unneeded and sounded a little creepy if was being honest.
The pain was still there and although he was still feeling mad about it, it lessened considerably for a moment as he looked down at the old man who was now bleeding on the floor. For a moment, he felt very smug, he just punched a man who tried to kill, and now look, he was on the floor. But as he looked and the anger that was clouding his vision away by the second, the smugness turned to outright horror as he realized what he had just done.
He had just killed a man.
The realization hit him like a tidal wave, washing away any remnants of satisfaction. He found himself pacing around now as he wondered what he was doing since he just killed a man. He was panicking greatly and while he was panicking and not paying attention, he barely noticed the sound of a door opening…
***
Garricks' room was a mess, then again, when was it not? Elera thought as she rummaged through the piles of jars, books, and whatever else her uncle collected in there. She wasn't even sure why he had most of this stuff in here anyway since they had a decently organized cellar where much of this could go. Moving a large jar of ember-lily, the plant inside still glowing red, she thought about why she was here in the first place.
It wasn't an uncommon thought, usually, she thought about it specifically once every of days whenever her uncle had her do something. Elara had come into her uncle's care a few years ago, after her parents' passing during the Great Summer Panic. She was one of the lucky few not exposed to the plague at the time but she wondered if she was really lucky. She still remembered not being allowed near their family home as pyromancers torched it along with the bodies of her mother, father, and four brothers. After the home was burned and she was turned into a homeless child, Garrick picked her up after hearing the news of his son.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
For the next five years after she was adopted, her uncle drilled into her that everyone an apothecary and alchemist should know. Now at the age of 17, she could be widely viewed as a decently experienced apothecary. She was grateful for what he had done for her, even when she was a little stubborn at times and she hoped that when he retires, she can take care of him like he did for her.
Moving away from another jar on the shelf, this one holding hemlock, she finally found his dusty prayer book. In the many years she had been with him, she had never once seen him read it. She wasn't sure why, after all, he was a very devout man who visited the local parish weekly. Shaking her slightly, she cleared her mind as she opened the book and began to turn the pages.
Much of the book was stuff she already knew. Ranging from the birth of Sun’s Saint to his miracles around the continents and his eventual ascendance to the small stories interwoven between them. These were stories she had listened to and read over the years and knew them like the back of her hand yet at the very end of the book, in the wise words of Saint Revortica, she found what she was looking for.
Saint Revortica, a mage turned priest, detailed his experience fighting in the great holy war some 500 years ago. It was interesting to read of a man who became devout after witnessing the miracles that happened during that war and while reading, she found numerous drawings he had made of what he had seen.
As a wizard, he had great knowledge when it came to the arcane and such, and drew the symbols in his small biography with great detail. So much detail in fact, that she found the markings almost immediately. They were, without a shadow of a doubt, runes of protection created by the great heretics. It was surprising to find out about that, she had assumed they were religious but thought they were also magical. She closed the book and made her way to the workshop. She needed to tell him what she just found. Walking down the stairs and approaching the workshop door, she heard something fall and fall hard it did as she heard the wood creak. Worried, she quickened her pace and opened the door.
For a moment, she expected to see her uncle there, having dropped a tool or something and smiling like he usually did. Instead, she found the skeleton they had pulled from the bag now pacing back and forth, its hands held to its head while her uncle lay on the floor, blood pooling from a wound on his head. Elara stared for a moment at what was happening in front of her before she screamed.
***
The skeleton was in the middle of thinking about what he was now going to do since he just killed a man when he heard the scream. It was loud and shrill, motivated by pure horror if he was correct, and looking up, he saw a woman standing there. Her face was pure white and she recoiled in terror as he looked at her. He didn't what to do since everything was going to shit around him when she rushed forward.
"Oncle!?!" she cried out as she kneeled in front of the old man on the floor. For a moment, he stared at the two as he clearly understood that word, not needing to be a genius to know what it meant. When that fully sunk in though, he decided what to do. Picking up the hammer off the floor, the skeleton proceeded to run like all hell, grabbing the book the girl had dropped on the ground as well. He heard another, this one much louder and filled with anguish as he burst through the door and onto the street.
Even though it was late and many people had gone to sleep, the girl's scream appeared to have woken up the whole neighborhood when busted through the door, he was met with a small mob of people. He ignored them as he ran, pushing them out of the way as they screamed as he ran down the street. He did not where he was even going, much less where he was even at, but that didn't stop him as he sprinted with his hammer and his book. What did end up stopping him was the 15 or so men running the street wielding spears.
Both sides stared at each other, not understanding what either was looking at when the guards acted first, yelling in some foreign language as they charged after him. He turned in the opposite direction and ran only to be met with a massive mob wielding tools also running at him screaming. With not much else to do, he peeled off into an alleyway that was between them.
The narrow passageway was dark and cluttered with debris and the occasional homeless person who looked very startled at the sudden noises and the body running past them, but he forced himself to keep moving, his bony feet slipping on the cobblestones. The shouts and cries of the townspeople echoed behind him, growing louder as they gave chase. He glanced around, desperate for an escape route. He found himself trapped at a dead end. The wall in front of him was large and he tried desperately to climb it but to no avail. With the shouting getting louder, and also him being a little desperate at this point, he decided to go out with a bang. He readied his hammer, hellbent on going out swinging if he was going to die when he felt something grab his leg. He looked down and saw two arms phasing through the ground and now holding his legs.
“What in the fu-” he began thinking before he was dragged down, phasing through the ground just as the angry mob turned into the now empty alley. The only thing remaining was a ballpoint hammer sitting in the middle where the skeleton once was.