Over the past week Valen had been in danger more times than he cared to count.
The highlights included but were not limited to: getting mugged by drug dealers, being chased in a car by cultists with crossbows, and getting his fingers bitten off by a paladin of an insane god.
Fear was no stranger to him at this point, but fear didn’t even come to describe what he felt as the man in black glared at him from atop the stairs demanding to know why his son was beaten to a pulp on the ground. It was probably a good thing that he was blind, because Valen was sure he’d be much less open to conversation if he could see the sorry state his son was in after what he’d been put through.
Hundreds of ways to handle the situation went through his mind, none of which were any good. Fighting was out of the question. The only thing he could do was choose the right thing to say. Or rather, the thing least likely to get him killed.
In the end he decided that honesty was the best policy. The truth couldn’t hurt less than any lies he might come up with anyways.
“Your son objected to me bringing my friends here with me,” said Valen. “He attacked me and I defended myself.”
“For what reason did he attack you?” the man continued, the icy tone in his voice never wavering.
“He objected to me bringing my friends here with me,” said Valen, before quickly adding “But they’re as much a part of this as I am, so I thought it best if they came along. I apologise if that was presumptuous of me.”
A tense silence fell between them, the man in black’s nonexistent eye pits never leaving Valen’s face. Could he really see anything with those?
“...I see,” said the man in black softly, ending the silence between them. The moment he did, the magical static around them faded, but only by a little bit. “It is I who must sincerely apologise to you, Mister Vasilis. It appears I have failed to adequately educate my son on how to treat our guests.”
“Uuuugh.” Chris stirred from the ground and slowly rose to his feet. He turned to Valen gritting his teeth in an angry snarl. “You’re a dead man, leech.”
Valen instinctively raised his arms into a fighting stance, ready to defend himself again when the voice of the man in black gave him pause.
“Please, Mister Vasilis,” he said, “allow me.”
Chris looked at the direction of the voice and his one green eye that wasn’t covered by blood and bruises widened.
“Father?” All his bravado and anger faded away in an instant. His shoulders slumped and took a sheepish step backwards. “You’re out of your study.”
“I sensed a commotion from my study,” said the man in black. “You were rather noisy in greeting our honoured guest.”
“He brought his women here with him!” Chris protested. “They weren’t invited!”
“That is indeed a transgression on his part,” said the man in black calmly, “and one that he ought to explain himself. Did you let him explain? Before you decided to attack him, that is.”
“I-” Chris sounded like he wanted to defend his actions but quickly stopped himself. His gaze fell to the ground. “No, sir.”
“Then I shall do that myself,” said the man in black before turning to Valen. “Mister Vasilis, we should discuss this in my study. But first off, would you like some tea?”
The phrase ‘Would you like some tea?’ sounded like music to his ears. Valen slumped his shoulder and he felt his lingering uneasiness abate somewhat at the promise of a good cuppa.
“If it wouldn't be too much trouble, sir, I would love a cup of tea."
“It’s no trouble at all Mister Vasilis,” said the man in black with the smallest hint of a smile that faded when he went back to addressing his son. “Chris, you are currently standing, yes?”
“I am, sir,” said Chris, his voice quiet and meek in the face of his magical patriarch.
“Do you think you can walk?” the man in black continued. “Do you require any medical assistance?”
Chris kept his head and eyes pointed towards the ground as he answered. “I’ll be alright, father.”
“Splendid.” The smile returned to the man in black’s light ebony face. “Why don’t you go fetch some tea for me and Mister Vasilis here then?”
Valen took a step back in surprise at the order, and was even more surprised when Chris actually nodded in compliance.
“I’ll see to it, sir.”
“Good. Have it delivered to us soon, won’t you? I’m rather parched.” The man in black turned around and started ascending the stairs. “Come along then, Mister Vasilis. We shall discuss everything in my study.”
“Uh, very well, sir.” Valen slowly followed the man in black up the stairs, occasionally stealing glances back to see what Chris was doing.
Chris’ back was already turned and he was limping away to get tea, holding the left shoulder that he almost definitely broke. While high elves weren’t all that much tougher than humans, they had a very minor healing factor that allowed them to heal from most injuries with enough rest. Not enough to regenerate their flesh and organs in a matter of minutes like vampires, but enough to keep them alive as long as no vitals were damaged. Still, Valen couldn’t help but feel a little bad for the beating and humiliation he’d been put through.
Only a little though.
The walk back up the stairs felt a lot faster than his first time with Johan and the girls. It also helped that the man in black was walking pretty fast for a blind guy.
They reached the top of the stairs in no time. Johan, Enid, and Louise were nowhere to be seen. Against his better judgement, Valen decided to question the man in black about them.
“Excuse me, sir,” he said, “May I ask where Johan and my friends are?”
“I had Johan bring them to a waiting room where they can stay while we talk,” said the man in black. “Do not worry. I did nothing to harm them. I will say though, the one with the commonborn accent took a lot of convincing from Johan. I believe she wished to assault me when I told her to stand down.”
“My apologies,” said Valen, assuming that he was talking about Louise. “She means well but can often let her temper get the better of her.”
“I understand. My son is the same way.” The man in black took a second to orient himself upon reaching the top of the stairs before continuing to walk with his walking stick feeling the ground in front of him. “Your other friend, the mage, she didn’t speak when I arrived but I could sense powerful magic from her. She’s impressive, that one.”
“She’s brilliant,” said Valen. “One of the strongest mages I’ve ever met.”
“While I do agree that her magic is strong, that was not what impressed me.” The man in black used his cane to feel a corner and made a left turn into a wide open corridor leading to giant double doors made from pitch black wood. “It is the fact that she could sense my own magic and was still willing to fight me for your sake. You surround yourself with excellent friends, Mister Vasilis.”
“I think so too, sir,” said Valen.
Hearing him compliment them eased his mind somewhat. He wouldn’t be speaking so admirably of them if he hurt them…right?
When they neared the double doors, Valen walked ahead of the man in black then opened.
For being the workplace of a blind man, the study’s decor was surprisingly tasteful.
Two black leather armchairs were flanked either side of an unlit fireplace with a small coffee table between them while a larger velvet chair and study desk was tucked in the back of the room. A great black rug embroidered with ornate silver patterns was splayed out right in the middle of the rich wooden floor. Bookshelves filled with leather tomes neatly arranged by width and height lined the walls, obscuring most of the white floral wallpaper that covered it.
It was all a bit old-fashioned, but fit nicely with the somewhat anachronistic aesthetic of the rest of the manor.
Valen held the door open for the man in black, who noticed the gesture and smiled as he stepped past him into the study.
“Such a polite young man,” he said. “Come. Take a seat beside the fireplace. We have much to discuss.”
“Would you like me to guide you to a chair, sir?” Valen asked, looking at the two leather chairs flanking the unlit fireplace.
“That won’t be necessary, Mister Vasilis.” The man in black strided into the room, avoiding every piece of furniture with practised precision and sat down on one of the leather chairs. “I may be blind but I know the way around my own study well enough.”
“Very well, sir.” Valen sat on the other leather seat and waited for his ‘interview’ to commence.
Despite how nice it looked, now that he was sitting in it on a leather chair he couldn’t help but notice that it was a bit on the humid side.
“Are you cold, Mister Vasils?” The man in black asked. “Or a bit hot?”
“I’m quite alright, sir,” said Valen, not wanting to make himself a bother to the man who held the life of him and his friends. There wasn’t even an air conditioner in the study to do anything about the temperature anyways.
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“Well, if you don’t mind.” The man in black casually waved his hand in the direction of the fireplace, which burst into cold blue fire the instant he did. “I’m feeling a bit warm.”
Valen watched the flames flicker in the fireplace. That was no normal fire. Normal fire wasn’t the colour of glacier ice and it sure as hell didn’t suck the heat from all around it like this one did.
It was an endothermic fire turning its surroundings cold despite the laws of conventional physics by way of some forgotten magic. Valen could only imagine what getting burned by it could feel like.
While the man in black had seemingly lit the fire just to cool himself, the more subtle message behind it was clear: ‘I could destroy you with a wave of my hand, so think carefully before trying anything.’
“Shall I tell you why I’m here, sir?” Valen asked.
“You shall, but first, do forgive my rudeness,” said the man in black. “I believe I have not yet properly introduced myself yet. My name is Chisisi Colton. The people of the Silver Star Society know me as Sir Colton.”
“Sir Colton?” Valen asked.
“The title of knighthood was given to me a long, long time ago,” said Sir Colton with lingering fondness in his oddly ancient voice. “It was during a time when kings and queens still held dominion over the lands where megacities now stand. Alas, if the one who gave it to me could see me now, they would most likely revoke it.”
“...Sir Colton, I hope I am not being rude,” said Valen. “But how old are you exactly?”
“Tis hard to say.” The question seemed to genuinely perturb Sir Colton somewhat. “I stopped counting after my one thousandth birthday. But I can tell you that I was there when the gods left us, so I am very interested in what you have to say about the Primordial Church and their claims.”
What Colton said was preposterous. Some demi-human races like mages, vampires, and werewolves could live upwards of eight hundred years. Nine hundred would be stretching it and anything beyond that would be in a defiance of conventional biology.
Though then again, Valen had had his worldview shattered enough times over the past week that a thousand year old man wouldn’t be all that weird.
Still, he studied the man’s face for signs of lying. He’d gotten quite good at detecting when people were feeding him bullshit over the years yet could see no such signs on Colton’s face. What he did notice was some minor oddities in his appearance that he might’ve missed had he not been looking so intently.
Colton wasn’t just thin and those dark bags under his eyes weren’t just from being tired. His pale brown skin was sunken close to the bone, making his cheekbones clearly visible despite them not being particularly sharp and causing dark rims to form under his eyes where his skin clung to the eye sockets.
He reminded Valen of Enid in a way.
With Enid she was so beautiful that she was almost eerie. The more one looks at her, the more one notices just how abnormal it is for a person to appear so perfect. Any carnal thoughts or jealous awe faded away to be replaced by the uneasy feeling that no normal person could or even should look as perfect as she did. An intentional mistake of nature crafted with care to make the rest of the world feel ugly.
With Colton, there was no breathtaking beauty to soften the blow. Just the eeriness and uneasy feeling that this person should not exist. Were he to close his eyes right now and be displayed in a casket, those who saw him would chastise his mortician for doing a poor job preserving him.
“It’s a rather long story, sir.” Valen didn’t allow his growing uneasiness to show in his voice, masking it with the typical Dragonite stiff upper lip. “And I’m not sure you’d believe it if I told you.”
“Believe me,” said Colton, “After two thousand odd years, nothing is capable of surprising me anymore.”
Valen allowed his hypersensitive hearing to rear itself hoping to listen to his heartbeat while they talked.
A bolt of cold fear shot down his spine. He could hear his own heartbeat, the sound of the crickets outside the closed window, and every tiny crackle of the endothermic fire. But he couldn’t hear Colton’s heartbeat. Because there was nothing to hear. Colton’s heart wasn’t beating and no blood flowed through his veins to create a pulse.
He didn’t just look like a walking corpse. He was a walking corpse.
Valen gulped down whatever saliva was left in his dry mouth.
“Sir, if you don’t mind me asking,” he said, “what exactly are you?”
“I am a human,” said Colton, his tone betraying nothing but pure honesty despite the blatant lie. “Or I was at one point.”
“What happened to you?” Valen asked with both horror and pity. “Did…did the Unborn God have something to do with this?”
Colton let out a hearty laugh made raspy by his dead lungs.
“Heavens, no!” He grinned and looked at Valen with dead empty eyes that saw nothing yet still seemed to bore into him. “The gods would see me as an abomination. No, I did this to myself, and only after the gods had left.”
“What did you turn yourself into?” For a moment, Valen’s curiosity outweighed his sense of caution.
“I am a necromancer, Mister Vasilis.” Colton’s sunken face brimming with hubris masquerading as pride. “One who has achieved the pinnacle of my craft. I am what you would call a lich. One who has transcended the cycle of life and death. If I were to ever die, it would be on my own terms. The gods truly have no hold over me.”
Valen had only ever heard about necromancy in films and documentaries. The only thing he knew about it was that it was one of the forbidden arts of magic illegal the world over. It was believed that the last practitioner was executed a long time ago, but apparently that wasn’t the case since an unliving proof of it was currently sitting across the coffee table from him.
“You said you were human?” Valen asked. “Not a mage?”
“Mages cannot learn necromancy,” said Colton. “It requires a human touch. For in order to learn how to control death, one must be close to it themselves. No other race is closer to it than us short-lived humans…although, it may be presumptuous of me to consider myself one of them anymore.”
A knock at the door caught both of their attention.
Valen looked in its direction and saw Chris coming through the door, his eyes downcast and carrying a full porcelain tea set on a metal tray.
“I’m here with the tea, sir,” he said softly.
“Wonderful,” said Colton, his tone unchanging. “Set it on the table here and take the day off to recover, Chris.”
“Yes, sir.” Chris set the tea tray on the coffee table, bowed at Colton while completely ignoring Valen, and quickly excused himself from the study.
Valen waited until he heard the study door shut behind him to speak.
“Would you like me to flavour your tea, sir?" he asked. He might be talking to a practitioner of the darkest magical art ever discovered, but that was no excuse to forget his manners.
“That would be lovely, Mister Vasilis,” said Colton. “Just a little milk and four sugars, please.”
Valen did as he asked, pouring a splash of lukewarm milk into Colton’s cup.
“You said Chris was your son?” Valen asked as he carefully poured the sugar into Colton’s tea cup.
“Adopted,” Colton clarified. “His birth parents were part of the Silver Star Society before they died.”
“It was very kind of you to take him in.”
Something occurred to Valen as he was stirring Colton’s tea. While he did appreciate it, the bloke was oddly quick to trust him over his own son. He supposed it might be because he knew his son well enough to know how quick to anger he was, but it was still strange.
“You’re wondering why I trusted you over him,” said Colton. Apparently mind reading was a necromancy spell too.
“The thought did cross my mind.” Valen set down the tea spoon. “The tea is ready, sir. Would you like me to guide your hand towards it?”
“I appreciate the offer, but I can do that myself.” Colton slowly swept his hand over the tea tray until he felt the teacup. “And to answer your question, it is because I could sense that your soul was honest as you spoke.”
“You must have excellent intuition.”
Colton chuckled in amusement.
“You forget who you’re talking to, Mister Vasilis.” Colton took a long sip of his tea before setting the teacup down with his finger still hooked around the handle. “I am a necromancer. The most powerful one on the planet. When I say that I could sense your soul, I do not mean it as a figure of speech. Though I am no longer able to see the unliving objects that surround me, I can sense the spirit dwelling in every living thing around me. The spiritual essence which gives hunks of meat and bone its personhood betrays itself these fleshless eyes of mine. I see your soul distilled.”
Valen had no idea how to respond to that.
In the end he simply replied with a simple “I see.”
“Ah, but enough about me,” said Colton. “I want to know about what brought you here.”
“The Primordial Church.” Valen’s voice was grim. “They’re more than just a fringe cult.”
“I hear that they worship the Unborn God. Tell me, do they do so in vain? Do their prayers fall on deaf ears like they do on the fourteen gods that left us?”
“The Unborn God is real,” said Valen with every ounce of resolve in his body. “And their followers have real powers that twist and mould their own flesh into monstrosities. Believe it or not, I have spoken with the Unborn God and I know that they care not for their followers. Not truly, anyway. I suspect many of them were tricked into joining the Church. Good people are dying. Many of them probably already have. If we do nothing to stop the Primordial Church, many more will fall victim to their lies and be used as tools to do gods know what.”
Valen spoke in earnest. If this self-proclaimed lich could really see his soul, he wanted him to see how serious the situation at hand was.
Colton turned down his gaze and set down his teacup.
Valen was about to continue his little impromptu presentation on why the Primordial Church needed to go when an odd sound caught his ear.
“Ha..ha-ha.”
Laughter. It was coming from Colton, so soft that Valen would scarcely have heard if he hadn’t had his hypersensitive hearing turned on.
“Sir Colton?” Valen asked, concerned.
The quiet laughter continued.
“Ha-ha…ha-ha-ha.” Colton suddenly threw his head back and raspy laughter erupted from his open mouth loud and clear. “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
“Sir Colton?!” Valen stood up from his chair, wondering if the old man had finally become senile after thousands of years of life.
“Hahahahaha!” Colton forced his laughter to sputter to a halt, but a side toothy grin remained on his face. “Mister Vasilis, I can see that your soul is honest. You believe the words you say. That could also mean you’re merely mad but if so then I shall gladly share in your madness!”
“So you believe me?” Valen asked, bewildered.
“Certainly!” Colton gripped his cane, his hand trembling in excitement. “It is far more interesting for me if I do.”
“You…seem oddly happy considering the gravity of the situation, sir.”
“Do I?” Colton cleared his throat and turned his psychotic grin into a slightly less psychotic smile. “Ah, forgive me the impropriety, Mister Vasilis. I must’ve lost myself for a moment there.”
“May I ask why you seem to be enjoying yourself so much, sir?”
Valen knew the question had the chance to sound rude to the walking warhead of dark magic in front of him, but it annoyed him how lightly he seemed to be taking everything even after he warned of the lives already ruined by the Primordial Church.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve felt anything close to enjoyment, Mister Vasilis.” Colton leaned back in his leather chair. “I was one of the Silver Star Society’s founders. Back then we had a goal. To guide the world from the shadows as it transitioned away from the Age of Gods. I’d believed that goal had been accomplished after the megacities were built and the new economy stabilised. I have grown restless these past millenniums, and the new members are complacent with the way things are. To have a glorious purpose again…you have given a great gift, Mister Vasilis.”
“Is that really the only reason, sir?” Valen asked.
“Truth be told, you are also allowing me to fulfil a personal dream of mine,” Colton admitted, the smile never leaving his face.
“...May I ask what that dream is?”
“Ah, you see.” Colton leaned forward on his chair. For the first time, Valen could clearly see his face for what it truly was. Not that of a man, but of a corpse whose soul had refused to move on, grinning ear to ear as its pitch black eyes locked onto his. “I’ve always wanted to kill a god.”