Getting out of the house took a long time. I eventually convinced my grandmother to lend my minion some clothing. After she was presentable I loaded up my car with some things and got out of there as quick as I could.
Pulling away from my grandparent’s house in my small hatchback car I initiated a conversation with my minion. ‘Basically, when I awoke to the world of magic some asshole druid killed my family. Some god somewhere apparently decided to give me access to this magic codex. It lets me, and now you, see the same status screens as everyone else. But it also lets us look up magic history and knowledge. I also spent quite a bit of time filling it with some modern human knowledge to help myself in the non-magic world. Basically, this ever-increasing book of knowledge is amazing’
‘Sounds useful master’
‘It is. Everything I have been doing is with the goal of not being killed. Now, we are going to go find out more about our local magic community and see if there is any way to register or something like that. This way they don’t find me by accident and think I am an invader and decide to kill me.’
My codex was not infallible. It did not tell me who the local powers in the Houston area are or even what form of governance they might use to keep the magical community in line. The codex said various systems had been used in the past, but I had no way of knowing what was in use here and now. I assume I need to go to some center of supernatural activity in the city of Houston and present myself to be registered or something like that. But I only had one way of finding out where that was… Returning to the hospital I was healed in after my family was killed. That was the only place that I have ever run into magical creatures besides the rhino (pretty sure the rhino was a druid in their animal form). But before that, I had to get my bodyguard some clothes that were not from the 1950’s because she didn’t want to change into a more intimidating form.
‘Are you sure you want to stay looking like that?’ I mentally asked my extremely attractive and intimidating-for-all-the-wrong-reasons bodyguard.
‘Why not?’ it asked me. ‘the smaller stature of this form does not diminish from my strength and makes me a smaller target to hit.’
‘ok, whatever’ I thought back as we pulled into the parking lot of some generic chain clothing store. ‘let’s go dress you up to look intimidating I guess.’
After half of an hour of shopping I gave up and asked for some help from the staff. They were not paid enough to ask why I wanted to make this supermodel looking woman appear intimidating and I was glad I didn’t have to try to make up an explanation. Sitting on a bench outside the changing room, I was busy wondering where I had gone wrong. Women’s clothing sucked and was way too expensive. No two sizes of different brands were alike, and you paid double the price for the same amount of material. I not only had to pay for it, but also had to sit in a damn clothing store while my bodyguard tried on clothes. I tried to keep myself busy by mentally talking to my minion.
‘You need a name minion. I don’t like just calling you my minion, it is weird.’
‘Alright master, can I choose my own name?’
‘Yeah sure. And stop calling me master, it is also weird.’
‘Well I would like the name Eve Pelis. Eve because I am your first and Pelis because it means skin in Latin and that makes me giggle.’
‘Despite the poor phrasing on the first part of your reasoning, I approve. But how do you know Latin?’
‘I have been using the codex to learn human languages so that I may better assist you. In the future. Is there something else I should be studying?’
‘But you have only been alive (using that term loosely) for less than 24 hours… Fine, yes. Study fighting techniques and tactics and ways to keep me alive! Everyone wants to kill me, and it is your job to keep me from catching a little disease called death. On an entirely different topic, can you speak out loud? I have not heard you speak yet and I should probably come up with a cover story if you can’t.’
From the changing rooms behind me I hear an extremely deep and demonic sounding voice say,
“Yes, I can speak. Wait why is everyone looking at me like that? Well I was done anyway. Come John, lets go because these humans are strange.” With a sigh we paid and walked back out to the car with the new clothes.
The long drive to the hospital from the shopping center we had stopped at was spent telling Eve what she did wrong and why the store employees were looking at her strangely. Apparently, the codex had no knowledge on things like normal sounding voices or normal human interaction. It was up to me to teach the beautiful woman next to me what to act like in public. It felt like a trap, but I think I did ok with my limited knowledge of the opposite gender as most things were the same no matter what you are.
Pulling up to the hospital, I started to notice some things that seemed off with the building. The building was in an old style that I don’t know the name of, but it had the classic scary movie gargoyles that followed you with their eyes. No big deal. We got out of the car and walking (hiding) behind Eve we made our way to the front door. Inside was a receptionist engrossed in her work. The receptionist looked like a normal human. Gathering my courage to talk to a stranger, I walked up and proceeded talk as quickly as possible to the busy lady,
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“Hello, my name is John Smith and I was treated here two years ago by a… bear of a man… as my doctor. I was wondering if I could see him because I have some questions about my awakening and what I am supposed to do now.”
“John Smith from two years ago you say? That is your real name?” Seeing me nod she continued. “Go sit down over on those chairs and I will see if I can find out who your doctor was.” I nodded again and Eve and I went and sat in the corner of the open reception area. I wanted to say more but I had no idea if she was a regular human or another awakened individual. After all, if I started spouting off about magic and she was just a regular human… She would say I was crazy and I have no way to find the doctor and figure out anything about the magical community.
With a few minutes to kill, I started studying my surroundings. The interior of the hospital was nice, looking almost like an upper end hotel. Tall celling and tasteful art and white cement floors. There were about 10 empty chairs sitting around of the receptionist’s desk. It was very nice, but my quiet inspection was soon interrupted with some commotion from deeper inside the building.
“All you Damn furries are so backward!” A voice yelled from deep in the building. “I refuse to be on the same floor as these humans! Someone will pay for making me share space with the likes of them.”
“Please calm down sir, we treat everyone who needs help. We are just a hospital.” This voice sounded somewhat familiar, but I could not place it. The voices were getting louder though. Shit. I am bad enough at dealing with arguing humans, I don’t even know how to start with magical races. What if it is a dragon that is like 2000 years old… The receptionist has a worried look on her face and looks at me with wide eyes. The first voice yells again and a bear in a lab coat and scrubs smashes through the double doors that lead farther into the building and flies to the front of the room.
“Die you damn bear! I don’t care if this is a hospital! Humans are a plague on the land! They have destroyed all the wilds and will soon destroy the planet! Magic creatures are no longer the dominant force on the planet, so we need to start wiping the humans out now while they don’t know we exist!” saying that monolog, a centaur walked…or is it clopped… into the room. He saw me and the receptionist cowering in fear. Eve on the other hand was looking at the horse/man with interest.
“John, is that thing a male or a female? I cannot tell by its voice like you told me to try and I do not know what to look for on a 5-legged creature like this to determine its gender.” Eve asked quite loudly… There was a pause as everyone stared at Eve. The pause lasted a few seconds until the centaur charged Eve pulling a glowing pike out of seemingly thin air. He growled at her.
“Now the humans here insult me! Die you overgrown monkey!” Eve stood up from her chair and waited for the pike to get near her. She nonchalantly reached and grabbed the pike and stopped its movement almost entirely. Causing the centaur's arm to be ripped from it’s socket as he continued forward. Crying out in pain from his arm, his body continued and hit her. Eve was nocked backwards a pace but looked like she barely noticed the hit. The centaur crumbled in on itself and fell to the ground at Eve’s feet with a series of cries and whimpers.
“Thanks for giving this glowing stick to me, but you didn’t have to do it so quickly. You could have hurt john if I hadn’t stopped you from hitting him.” Eve said as if nothing had happened. I just stared. What the hell is going on? Is Eve that strong? Are humans really hated so much? Am I double screwed because I am a human necromancer? Was I finally going to find someone who is willing to answer all of my damn questions about the world I thought I knew?
Content to stay sitting down away from the bear and the centaur I glanced at the bear that was thrown out of the back. He (I assume he, as the bear’s anatomy is not nearly as visible) has a hole in his chest. He does not appear to be breathing. I jump up and run to his side while yelling at Eve.
“Make sure the damn horse does not cause any more trouble and don’t let anyone get in my way!” I kneel at the bear’s side and immediately check if his soul is still in his body, because as long as his soul is there I can try to use my regeneration on him. His soul was just starting to slip away and his blood was starting to pool across the floor. I was absorbing some of the blood that I was kneeling in, making me stronger and giving me a boost to my mana regeneration. I grabbed onto his soul with my soul power and stopped it from slipping away. It was sloppy. I nearly crushed his soul before realizing I was using too much force and quickly guided it back into his mostly dead body.
Using most of my soul power to keep his soul in him, I began using my mana to rebuild his body. First, I stopped his cells from dying. It was harder than I thought it would be, but I managed. Sweat on my brow, I started with the circulatory system. To heal, I changed the cells on the edge of the injuries into something like cancer cells. That is what my regeneration did, using my mana and/or soul power to make certain cells reproduce at an insane rate. They multiplied nonstop when near the edge of the wound and stopped multiplying when they were not near the edge. With me shaping where the different multiplying cells needed to go to fix the injury the wound slowly started closing. It is nowhere near perfect, but his body seems to almost want to be whole again, so I just use my limited knowledge of anatomy and try to fix everything I can see. With half his heart regrown it is back in one piece. Other veins fixed, now for the lung. I quickly realized it is getting easier as I go, like the more I provide mana to the right places of the body it almost does the work itself. The closer I get to finishing closing the wound the more the body helps correct the little mistakes I made at the beginning. As a Gatekeeper of Death, it is almost like my mana pushes through the bear’s body unsure if I want to make it decay or regenerate until I will it to do one or the other.
But there is a problem. My mana is not infinite. It is very finite. For the first time in my life I ran out of mana. The bear’s soul is no longer trying to escape his body, good, but he needs more blood than he can replenish himself. I look up in a daze as my mind slows down due to mana exhaustion. The codex said mana exhaustion happens when you try to use mana when you have none left… something I said I would never do. I mumbled out two simple words as I fell to the blood-soaked floor asleep.
“Needs blood…”