Storm Clouds loomed over the city like would-be in-laws over their daughter’s new fiancee.
It was a particularly big conglomeration of clouds, all black and thick and heavy with water, with thunder booming and lightning flashing all over the place just like would-be in-laws. The wind howled like an army of tortured spirits marching to Hades as the clouds bore down upon the city. Darkness swept up above and down below the city, consoled only by the occasional bolts of lighting and the feeble electronic lamps that stood defiant to the end of their lives.
People began taking notice of the sudden changes in the weather -it was hard not to- and promptly began filing away like scattered moths. Most refuged beneath the buildings and shelters closest to them. Others took buses or taxis or went to the underground train. This storm, they thought, would be a very big one which no sane person would dare or brave against.
It’s a very fortunate thing then, the digger thought as he picked up a shovel full of dirt and tossed it over his shoulder, that he’s only three quarter sane* in comparison to the normal human being living around him. Truly his insanity is a blessing in disguise.
He had come prepared for the storm, you see. Tucking himself in thick yellow raincoat, not unlike the ones seen in the movies, a pair of umbrellas, in case he needed to be a gentleman to a lonely woman lost in the storm, and large sheet of plastic, should he be unable to finish his work for tonight*. Though thankfully that last one won’t seem to be the case.
He arrived at the site just before dark but had not begun working until an hour later, unsure on where to actually dig until he remembered that he only had a few hours before the storm rolled in and the soil became too soggy and wet to dig anything at all. At which point he abandons all sense of guilt and shame and begins digging.
His stomach growled furiously, reminding him that he went out before dinner and had lacked the foresight to bring some snacks along.
Thunder sounded in the distance and the first drops of the rain fell on his face.
He grimaced and continued his work. He had dug too deep to be stopped now, big storms or no.
Beneath his breath he cursed the Japanese’ funeral traditions of cremating their dead. Was it so hard to just dig a hole on the ground and toss the deceased there? But nooo apparently they must have an elaborate funeral process before burning the body and keeping the ash in one place or another. It didn't help that Japan has a very small population of christians.
Tracking a burial site which was meant for actual bodies instead of cremated remains was a chore in and of itself. He searched relentlessly on the town’s library, spending many hours in them, surfed through the treacherous waters of google search, before finally finding something in the old town archive. It was a land certificate for the building of a small church on the outskirts of the city and among the allocated lands, some parts were used for burial, Christian burial with no fires involved except for small candle fires for the guest and those of more hellish disposition for the souls unfortunate enough to have less than the necessary virtue required.
The church itself was small, more of a chapel really, but the ground was properly consecrated to a fault and the waters were actually hallowed and, as a plus, it was a catholic church!
His shovel hit something hard. It was no rock or stone, he could not have mistaken that thump for something else.
Gleefully, like a child on Christmas eve, and technically he was still a child, being fourteen and all, he began shuffling the dirt around until he saw the unmistakable features of a coffin. He would have danced right there and then if he had the time.
He pried the lid open with his bare fingers. By now, his boots were dirty with mud and he had to be careful not to slip on anything or he might find himself a reluctant occupant of an already filled apartment. He did not want that. Especially since his would-be roommate did not seem to be the nicest person around to be with. He even stank.
It was true. A horrid smell ran a marathon around his nose before settling there and reproducing in all the wrong places. It was nearly intolerable. Had it been his first experience he would have passed out*. Despite this, his mind debated on whether the stench was due to his roommate’s lack of a proper bath in years or just plain biological decay. He shrugged. Not like it mattered anyway.
The corpse was not particularly tall or short nor was it particularly handsome or ugly. It was a corpse. It’s very hard to tell anything about who they were by their bones alone unless you’re an expert.
“S-so uhm,” The boy hesitated for a moment. “S-sorry about the whole d-disturbing your eternal rest schtick. But the thing is uhm…” He trailed off and looked at the bones lying before him, unsure on what to say.
Really, how the hell were you supposed to explain the act of digging someone up from their supposed eternal rest to make use of their bodies for nefarious purposes beyond human comprehension?
The corpse glared at him. It seems to have said something along the lines ‘Well then, get on with it! I don’t have all night you know.’
“I-I suppose you’re right,” The boy said, clapping his hands together, sending tiny sprinkles of water into his face. “Let’s do this.”
He took out his book.
It was not an old book nor was it a particularly big book. It was not the kind of book one would expect when thinking about a spell book, not a dusty old tome long kept in the shelf for centuries unend gathering dust, not a forbidden journal with torn and worn out pages the color of sickly yellow. It was not the inches-thick book of thousands of unending pages of magical rituals written in blood. It was definitely not a book someone would expect containing horrid and elaborate rituals only done beneath a thunderstorm or a blood moon*.
In fact, if one were to take a closer look, it was not a book at all but rather an amalgamation of printed word and pdf documents printed, stitched, and bundled together in old leather leather covering to make it look like a book from a very, very, far away distance.
The boy squinted at the letters.
The problem wasn’t the water, he had enchanted the pages to keep them dry at all time, but the darkness. It made it hard for him to read the letters.
Indeed, the storm was a bit of a mixed blessings. On the one hand the rain had kept him away from all but the boldest of would-be interlopers that might be disturbed by what they saw. On the other hand, he couldn’t make out the letters much less read them out loud.
Fortunately he had also foreseen this.
He grabbed a flashlight and held it in his armpit.
There! now he could read them.
And so, beneath the shadow of the night, beneath the hail of rain, the boomings of thunder, the flashing of lightning, and using a magic book printed out from a nearby internet cafe because his printer ran out of ink, the boy stretched his hand and began chanting.
“Vessel of the deceased long parted,” He intoned in a deep bellowing voice vaguely baritone-like. “Of Adam’s flesh and Eve’s blood taken and crafted.”
The wind roared and howled as if nature herself was distraught.
“Nine long months beneath the darkness.
A lifetime of light and then another darkness.
Hear me, O’ Cask of the Soul!”
The trees shook, either in fear or reverence. Shaking so violently they were nearly uprooted from their positions.
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“I am he who collects the bones!
I am he who calls upon the rotten!
I am he who collects the flesh!
I am he who calls upon the forgotten!”
Lightning flashed all around, thunder groaned and growled near him as the very fabric of reality was torn asunder
“I am the Necromancer! I am INSERT NAME HERE and I-” He stopped. “Hang on a second.”
As if on cue, the wind stopped howling, the trees no longer shook, and even the thunder and lightning took a confused pause to process things out between them. The fabric of reality returned to normal as if nothing had ever happened in the first place.
“Insert name here, bla,bla, bla,” he muttered beneath his breath and flapped a few pages. “bla, bla, bla, blood, bla, bla, bla, shadow.”
The hail of rain did not stop even as he continued his readings but the thunder and lightning seemed to have come to a pause as if waiting in impatient anticipation.
“Sorry about that,” He said when he was finished and then added. “I haven’t edited these pages you see. Too little time. I was a bit excited when I found it online and went on to print it and so...”
He flashed a sheepish smile at the corpse, even scratching the back of his neck and all.
The corpse stared at him.
“Uhm. Y-you wouldn’t mind if we start over will you?” He asked hesitantly.
If the corpse still had eyes and those eyes could kill with a sight, the would-be necromancer would’ve been dead ten times over.
Instead, a tiny little worm squirm out of its eye socket.
“Right! Thank you,”
He took a deep breath, outstretched his hand, and began chanting once again.
The wind picked up speed, the tree shivered, thunder rhymed, and lightning flashed over the cemetery. The fabric of reality stretched and wavered.
“-And so, by the command given unto me, I order you to rise up and become my slave!”
Purple vapors rose from his hand, bubbling from his skin as if it were a cauldron of chemicals and potions. A wine colored wisp shot out from his palm towards the corpse.
The corpse’s eyes lit up producing the same effect as a pair of flames burning with tartar cream.
“Yes,” The boy whispered with excitement. “yes, yes, yes!”
The corpse shook. It opened its mouth as if breathing air for the first time in centuries.
“Yes, yes, rise my minion, rise!” The boy’s voice grew louder and shriller. “Rise up from your grave! Rise up and become my slave! Rise up and- urk!”
The corpse did just that.
It raised itself up so quickly that it collided with something soft and squishy between the boy’s legs.
The boy finds himself going under.
“My unmentionables!” He cried in pain. “Oh God, I’m infertile now! Oh God, my mom can’t have grandbabies now! Oh God she’s going to kill me!”
He muttered a few more things under his breath.
The newly made zombie simply stood there looking at him. If it could think, it would ask ‘This is the guy who raised me up?’
He doesn't look that impressive it would have thought. He was too skinny for one. And too pale. His long black hair was tied into a ponytail that was more practical than fashionable. He was wearing an oversized yellow raincoat and was currently squirming above the coffin like a newly made eunuch who had undergone the process without proper anesthesia.
It was a good thing then that it couldn’t think anymore otherwise it would have killed itself by now.
“Augh,” The boy rose with great reluctance, still clutching the sore point. He looked around, noticing that they were still standing above the zombie’s previous coffin.
“Right, uhm… perhaps we should get out of here?”
The zombie’s only answer was a vacant stare.
“O-okay,” He said, standing straight up. “I think we should get on a bus or something. This rain’s the worst.”
They did not manage to get on a bus.
It was not for lack of trying or because a bus driver had taken a good look at the pair, particularly the skeleton, and, like any sane man would do in his position, promptly fled the scene. No. It was simply because there was no bus.
They waited for a full fifteen minutes on the station, the boy with the printed out magic book and umbrellas and shovel and flashlight and rain coat, and the zombie, newly introduced to unlife. Both of them standing there, waiting in the storm.
“Ugh,” The boy groaned after glancing at a mickey-mouse themed watch. “this is taking too long.”
He looked past the storm, towards the light of the city shining bravely amidst the sea of darkness.
He thought of his mother and his sister. How worried they must’ve been over his whereabouts.
Then he thought about how angry they would be if he so much as broke curfew the night before his first day in school and he remembered the saying about hell and women scorned.
Niccolo Machiavelli once wrote that fear is a greater motivator than love. He couldn’t be more right on this occasion.
“Come on,” He said, gesturing to his zombie. “My house is not that far off, anyway.”
Above them the hail of rain did not stop.
Lightning flashed as an unlikely pair made their way through the darkness.
Unbeknownst to both of them it was the beginning of something.
Something exciting and terrifying.
_______________
A fox eyed the pair from a distance.
It could not see clearly through the storm as it could have been in a good, sunny weather but it could see without a doubt the thin, scrawny necromancer followed loyally behind by the unmistakable figure of a servant who, missing some important parts of his body, should by all rights be resting right about now.
It growled before running back into the darkness.
A thousand miles away, a woman awoke from her sleep to the sound of distant thunders.
“Oh, fuck,” She said, aptly describing her situations.
_______________
*It was more of a mediation really. Members of his families often argued on whether he was half sane or five sixths sane and so settled for three quarters just to cut to the middle of things.
*Of course, being a proper practitioner he could have used a simple umbrella spell and continued his work. But he did not have the necessary material and he did not want to miss dinner. Plus a mysterious plot of land being magically protected from the storm was more likely than not to draw unwanted attention.
*It was true. Literally. He passed out for half an hour after his first grave robbing and was woken up by a very confused priest and a few police officers. With a pair of handcuffs and more than a few questions. His parents were not amused.
*It was, however, the kind of book that contained underlined sentences, double underlined sentences, footnotes written in neat handwriting and bright red marker, and sticker bookmarks jotting out of its pages and color coded for the reader’s own convenience.
AN: And we're done, hehe. Never thought I would began writing this down this soon.
Believe it or not this began as an Oregairu fanfic in which I thought how awesome it would be if one of the character (I won't mentioned who) is a teenage Necromancer. Soon however I realized that it was too precious to just be another fanfic and so decided to write this down as an original fiction.
Edit: Like usual, thoughts and feedbacks are deeply appreciated