“No.”
That single word escaped me, even as I straightened. My hand grabbed the staff at my side, yanking it free. Jaq and Gus were already in position, the bladed end of the weapon pointed at the monster in front of me. “No,” I repeated. Flashes of all the people I cared about popped into my head. I saw them, I heard them, I felt everything that the people who would be affected by this meant to me. And not just them. Even the people I didn’t particularly like, the ones who were mistaken, misled, who thought they were doing the right thing and that the Rebellion were the ones who were wrong. If this plan went on, if it worked, they would all be killed and turned into mindless slaves of this… this… abomination. Drones, just like Kendall behind me.
Beside me, my mother took a step away. Not to be apart from me or leave me on my own, I knew. She was giving both of us room to work with, her own hand coming up to point at the necromancer. When she spoke, her voice was harder than I’d ever heard it. “Too far, Fossor. You’ve become entirely too arrogant if you think we’ll just go along with your genocidal delusions.” I could hear the pain in her voice, the thoughts and memories of everything else she had put up with over the years clearly right there in her mind. Things she had put up with for me.
If he was at all bothered by what Mom and I said, or indeed had even noticed it, Fossor gave no indication. Instead, he literally turned his back to us and walked a few feet away while casually continuing as though we had never even spoke up. “Of course, the Seosten won’t like that very much. But on the other hand, they will have far more important things to worry about than payback, given a sudden potential lack of Heretic firepower on their frontlines. All of their little Heretic weapons will be under my control. And I will allow them to be used against the Fomorians, provided the Seosten accept my conditions. Leave this planet, and everything that lives on it, to me. In exchange, I will continue to provide them Heretic weapons. Otherwise, they lose one of the primary resources they’ve come to depend on so much in these few centuries.”
Staff clutched tightly in one hand, I realized something else. “You… the hangman noose, the spell, it’s not just a one-time thing, is it?” My voice was tight, the words barely escaping.
The man turned back to me, smiling proudly, as if I was a struggling student who had just answered a tough question. “Very good, my dear! Yes, the spell will affect any who are ever connected to the imprisoned Reaper, be it through the light or the fruit. Either way, anyone who is turned into a Heretic using those methods, from this point on, will immediately become one of mine.”
Permanent. This was even worse than we’d thought, even worse than I’d assumed possible. Fossor wasn’t just going to turn every living Crossroads or Eden’s Garden Heretic into his dead slaves, he was going to turn every future Heretic into one as well. Everyone. All of them. And then he was going to use that to force the Seosten to abandon Earth in exchange for being given more Heretics to continue fighting the Fomorians. And they would have to go with it. What choice would they have? They didn’t have the power to fight Fossor here on Earth with an army of the very same soldiers/weapons they were depending on just to hold the Fomorians back.
I had known this was going to be bad. I knew that for a long time. It had been obvious that Fossor was distracted by something. The work he’d been putting into this had been very clear. But even then, even with all that, I hadn’t had the slightest clue that it would be this horrific.
We couldn’t let this happen. That was all there was to it. End of story. End of world if we didn’t stop this. There was no one else here, and nothing to stop Fossor from pulling this off if we didn’t stand up to him. He was going to use this spell to kill and enslave not only Heretics, but soon after the entire world. Yes. That was one thing I was completely certain of. With an army of dead, puppeted Heretics at his side and the Seosten forced to leave, Fossor would absolutely turn Earth into something just like his own world. He would enslave everyone here. Everyone.
Unless we stopped him right here.
“Fossor.” My voice was sharp, stronger than it had been before. This had been coming for a long time. It was time. I’d spent the past year being terrified of what would happen when my birthday came, and the past few weeks actually living that terror. I’d been forced to stay quiet, forced to put up with this monster’s evil bullshit for all this time. My own mother had been forced to do his bidding far longer than me. And now, now he wanted to turn the entire world into his slaves, his puppets? He wanted to turn Earth into another version of his own planet. No. Enough. I was done putting up with it. Mom and I both. We were done accepting this.
Following that single word, the man stopped talking. He stood there, regarding me curiously for a few silent seconds. Finally, he quietly ‘suggested’, “Dearest Joselyn, I do believe that it would be for the best if you informed our girl of what the punishment for raising a weapon in my direction will be. Before this goes any further than it has to.” Despite the implicit threat in his words, the man’s voice was totally casual. He wasn’t worried about this whatsoever. And why would he be? I wasn’t really a challenge to him. Me? Some barely-capable student with a few Necromancer tricks he himself had taught? Of course he wasn’t even slightly worried. To him, I was basically a marshmallow attempting to stand up against an actual bonfire. He’d already proven that the day he captured me and casually swatted down every attempt I made to fight him.
When my mother spoke, however, it wasn’t to warn me back. Instead, she addressed Fossor in a voice that was filled with more hate, more loathing than I could even conceive of. It was anger that had had far longer than my own to build up. “She is not yours,” Mom snarled. “And you will never touch her again. I told you, this was too far.” There was clearly more she wanted to say. A lot more. The things she longed to say to this psychopath had built up for a decade. But she didn’t bother wasting the breath to do so. Instead, my mother simply added a brittle, “We’re done.”
“Done?” Fossor echoed that single word, arching an eyebrow as he glanced between us. Mom and I were both in ready positions, for all the good it would do us. I’d even brought Kendall up to stand a short distance from my side, between Mom and me. By contrast, the Necromancer himself still appeared totally casual. He didn’t quite have his hands in his pockets, but he might as well have. There wasn’t the slightest bit of worry on display. He could have been a middle-aged man standing in line at the grocery store, for all the concern he showed.
“No,” the man informed us after letting that word hang in the air for a moment. “No, we’re so very far from done. In fact, we’ve barely started. There is so much more the three of us are going to accomplish together, so much more than either of you can even conceive now. This is simply one more rung along the ladder. And I promise, by the time we reach what is truly the end, this moment right here will feel like a far distant dream, an echo of a memory you will barely recall. And when you do recall those mostly-vanished thoughts of this day, the only thing that will come to mind will be the sheer certainty that you could never possibly have been so naive as to think that you could ever truly make a fool of me in my own home.”
Belatedly, his words penetrated my own anger, as I managed a confused, “What?”
His response was a low chuckle, head shaking as if I was just an adorable child. “Dearest girl, did you truly think I would show any of this to the two of you if there was the slightest chance of you putting a stop to it?” His casual tone hardened. “And did you truly think you could spend weeks plotting against me in my own home without me finding out about it? Are you still so childish to think that I haven’t noticed everything you’ve done, that I would not know of your plans and efforts? Every bit of work you’ve done for these weeks, your oh-so-careful actions and preparations, were not careful enough. You say you are done accepting my orders?
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
“I am done entertaining your childish fantasies of escape.”
Face twisting a bit with quickly mounting worry and a sick expression of dread, I forced myself to stammer, “Wha-what are you talking about?” Even while saying it, I instinctively reached out with my Necromancy, pushing that dark power that I’d learned to use over these past weeks up toward a spot elsewhere in the palace. Our room. The room Mom and I had stayed in for so long now. The swell of energy from the prepared spell in that room, I felt it there, ready to go. Maybe not perfect yet, not as good as it could be. But good enough. Close enough, for this.
And then it was gone. I felt Fossor’s own vastly superior power wash right over mine, like a tidal wave overwhelming a garden hose. His strength and skill were unbelievable. I had no chance of standing against it, none. The spell that had been intricately set up in the room that my mother and I shared was snuffed out as easily as if he had simply put out a small candle flame. It was gone, entirely erased forever, in the span of about two seconds and with little effort on his part.
Standing there frozen for a brief moment, my hand outstretched, I stared upward as though I could see all the way to the room where the carefully crafted and painstakingly energized spell had been almost instantly dissolved. My mouth was open, face wet with tears while a sound of flat, horrible despair escaped me. I barely recognized my own voice, hollow as it was with horror, disbelief, and wretched grief. “No… no, you can’t… we didn’t… how did… how…”
Fossor took a step my way, before Mom quickly inserted herself between us. But a wave of his hand summoned Ahmose, who grabbed my mother by the arms. He was clearly using his pain power, given the way Mom jerked and spasmed, though she didn’t cry out. He was still able to yank her away from me, leaving Fossor room to come right up to where I stood frozen by obvious grief and revulsion, the horror of my spell being erased written across my face.
“Dearest… child,” Fossor spoke smoothly, his words dripping with false compassion, with insincere understanding, “you tried so very hard, didn’t you? You worked so carefully, only using your power at night, watching for any spies, hiding your spell from me with everything you had.”
He chuckled then, the sound making me shudder. In the background, I could see Mom struggling not only against Ahmose, but a dozen more ghosts who were all working to hold her back. Meanwhile, Fossor continued in that same ‘sympathetic’ tone. “It was a good effort, my girl. A transportation spell that would have taken you and your mother from here to your home in Laramie Falls, yes? And one you crafted oh-so-carefully too. I admired it just this morning. Given another two days, perhaps, it would have been perfect. You managed to tie it into my own wards, which…” His head shook with wonder, what sounded like genuine pride filling his voice. “Such a brilliant girl. I had no idea you were capable of so much. Truly, it is an honor to be your mentor.”
With that, however, his voice darkened. “But I cannot entertain such efforts forever. You and your mother will be punished for this. You will learn to be obedient, my girl. You will learn that there are consequences for your actions. Very harsh ones.”
Even as he said that, Fossor’s fingers snapped, and the room around us began to pulse with power. The very floor shook under my feet, vibrating violently. I could feel the spell that Fossor had crafted feeding into the noose. I could feel that horrible magic, the power that would kill every Bosch-Heretic and turn them into this psychopath’s eternal slaves. It was there. It was right there. It was about to erupt, while helpless tears fell down my face and my mother struggled helplessly against mounting hordes of ghosts that kept coming no matter how many she destroyed.
Eyes closing, I dropped my head, murmuring under my breath in a shaky, broken voice.
“You have something to say?” Fossor urged, his hand finding its way to my shoulder and squeezing even as his spell rose toward its conclusion. In a few brief seconds, it would be over. “Some plea to make?”
My eyes opened. I raised my head, staring at the man. In a voice that cracked from hatred but free of the despair I had been allowing him to see for these past few minutes, I retorted with seven words, followed by one more.
“Go fuck yourself, you piece of shit. Ostendeo!”
With that final word, the entire house above us violently shook, as a sudden crack, too loud to be thunder, pierced every corner of the palace and its grounds. Abruptly, the ghosts assaulting my mother (the ones who were left, anyway) vanished. At the same time, the vibrating levels of power from Fossor’s spell ceased. The bone floor throughout the room cracked in several places from the sheer force of that spell’s power being redirected elsewhere. And throughout the building and its grounds, literal hundreds of spots of power could be felt.
Fossor, for his part, backhanded me so hard I hit the floor in a daze. He spun, snapping his fingers along with a single command word. As he did so, a holographic image of the whole area around his precious home from above came into view.
Hundreds of small, yet powerful beams of light shone into the air from every corner of the palace and grounds. They shone out of windows, up through the very walls themselves, out of the gardens, the trees, the pool, they shone from every direction and in every direction. They were red, blue, purple, white, green, every color of the rainbow. The power they gave off seemed to hum through the very air itself, creating a sound almost like chimes. Hundreds of colorful, humming lights.
Hundreds of beacons.
From the floor, I snarled, “You found the spell in the room? Good for you. That’s the one you were supposed to find. You’d never believe I wasn’t trying something, so I worked on that in my off-time so you could feel special for figuring out my plan, you evil fuck.”
He felt it. He knew. He understood without me saying anything else. These past weeks, the thing I had really been working on was to find every bug or insect I could, killing them and then using my necromancy to bring them back. Just bugs. Simple insects. Hundreds of the tiny, seemingly insignificant things. I directed those dead and raised bugs into every small corner and hole of this place, inside and out. Then, once they were hidden, I made them stronger. Just strong enough to carve pieces of spells into the rock, wood, brick, anywhere they were that would be out of sight. I empowered those tiny spells using energy drawn from the one thing that Fossor wouldn’t detect: his own sister. Carefully, over these past weeks, I drained a bit of her each day and used that to gradually build up these tiny spots of magic. Too small for Fossor to pay much attention to even if they hadn’t been empowered using his one blindspot. With it, he had no chance of noticing. Not until now. Not until it was too late.
The spells I had crafted, thanks to extensive help from Shyel, did two things. First, they drained all the magical power around them that they could find. That included the wards that Fossor had set up, his alert spells, and a large portion of his prepared ghosts. They had been summoned and maintained by magic as well, so the beacon spells drained them as well. That was why the ghosts attacking my mother had vanished.
Second, the beacons used that power they had suddenly absorbed to send out a beacon directed toward everyone I had been able to think of who could help. It was a beacon similar to the one that had been used to mark the secret Crossroads prison where Sean had been held. Similar, because Chayyiel had learned to create it when she visited and included it with the Shyel upload in my head. With the mental construct’s help, I’d adjusted the spell somewhat, and now hundreds of those beacons were being sent out to Deveron, Avalon, Shiori, Dare, Kohaku, Wyatt, Brom Bones, Nevada, Lillian Patters, Roger and Seamus Dornan, Hisao, the rest of my team, Koren, Tristan, Athena, Mercury, everyone, everyone who might be able to help and who had a bone to pick with Fossor. Those beacons were directing them to this spot right here. And more than that. They also filled the targets with knowledge, knowledge of the layout of this place, of every piece of Fossor’s defenses that I or my mother had been able to put together in all the time that we had been here. They all suddenly knew exactly where we were, how the defenses worked, the exact layout of the building and grounds, all of it.
But the most important thing of all, at this very moment, was the draining part of those beacons. The fact that they absorbed magic near them. Because the spell that Fossor had been working on, the thing he had been about to trigger, was full of magical energy. Magical energy that he had built up for weeks as well. And now every bit of it, all of it, had abruptly and violently been diverted into my beacons. All of it was gone. He would have to start gathering that energy from scratch in order to cast the spell he wanted to cast. And there wasn’t time for that. Not with every fucking one of our friends on their way right now. On their way to a home that had just had every last one of its prepared defenses vanish into the ether.
I could see the realization of that, the sudden understanding, in Fossor’s open-mouthed, stunned gaze. For once in his goddamn life, the man had been taken completely by surprise.
“So, like I said,” I snapped.
“Go fuck yourself.”