I slowly pulled back the bathtub curtain, a small black figure was behind it.
“Hello? Hello ?”
I slipped in surprise and hurt my shoulder. A raven, juvenile and tiny hopped across the bathroom carpet.
“Can you talk too?” I asked the little bird.
“Nizé! Nizé! Anoir friends!” he croaked excitedly as he continued to hop about.
How could he have got in while I was showering? Despite the cold biting my body from stress, I asked the question I didn't really want the answer to.
“Did you eat my heart?
“Nizé magic! Anoir became Nécromant” The last word he'd croaked, Nécromant, he'd said in runic language, my magic theory lessons rushing back into my mind. It was my teacher, Doctor Luna, who had taught me this archaic language, but she said I couldn't speak it without practicing magic.
“Necromancer?” I asked, grabbing a towel to hide my private parts.
However, I nearly fell as I slipped a second time by surprise, my language! I'd spoken runic language to the raven! If I still had a heart, I'm sure it would leap out of my chest.
It was all happening very quickly for Anoir, his mind sharpened by regular learning, but struggling to grasp all the finer points of what was going on. He was certain, however, that he could now wield magic. Not since he was born 17 years ago had he felt such excitement, so he continued to talk to the juvenile raven. He learned that the raven's name was Nizé, and although his mind was muddled, he quickly made the correlation with the name of the large raven from the previous day in the park. Never before had he read that a human could acquire magic, but he did know that many magical creatures were able to do so by feeding on natural mana crystals in nature, enabling them to work elemental magic for hours or even days. A new type of blood ran through his veins that morning. He wasn't aware of it yet, but there was a price to pay for his recent acquisition of magic.
After a long chat in the bathroom with Nizé, I realized that I'd become a Necromancer, and from what I knew, it was a rather rare branch of magic and very little understood due to the small number of practitioners on Earth. I was going to have to fend for myself for a long time.
Dressed in my usual outfit, suspenders and ill-fitting pants, I tried to comb my hair, but to no avail, my hair living its life as it wished.
My family was at work this morning, and I looked at my watch: 10:20. Nizé had nestled on my left shoulder, and I could feel the warmth emanating from his touch, it was delectable. Curiously, I no longer felt hungry, but out of habit, I went into the kitchen. A small note was left on the refrigerator.
“Anoir, Mom was worried last night, you weren't in your room, so I left you your favorite yogurt, with raspberry coulis, for all”.
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I recognized my brother Charles Junior's spelling and his little mistakes.
Since I'd finished school and hadn't yet decided whether to go to university, I had 20 days left before I had to leave home. Distractedly, I turned on the television in the living room.
A magical cooking show was on with presenter Paul Forc, a Frenchman with a good appetite who often ate during the program. Reclining on the beige leather sofa, near the pedestal table where the teleport newspapers were received, I noticed that my father hadn't checked the day's news.
Glancing quickly at the research and discovery section, an alert appeared on a banner below the TV program:
“Monster attack alert: three 28-year-old boys were savagely attacked at Grasshopper Park this morning around 7am, in the town of Courbeton, only one survived and is currently in forced regeneration stasis.”
“Oh shit, the trouble's starting, these assholes got what they deserved! “I shouted at the TV.
Nizé was jumping up and down on the arm of the sofa.
“Revenant! Revenant! Anoir crée revenant!”
“What do you mean, Nizé?” Then a pain seized me violently in the chest, my vision blurred and I felt my strength diminish.
“Anoir creates revenant to survive?! Hurry! Hurry! Anoir die and Nizé die”.
Instinctively, I knew what I had to do.
I headed for the cellar, clinging as best I could to the walls for balance.
I was acting out of survival.
The cellar was very large, and lots of little bugs were wandering around, moving from opening to opening towards the outside.
My hand slowly stretched out in front of me, and a violet aura emanated from it. Weak and almost imperceptible. A glyph formed naturally, like a spell I'd never seen in magic theory... And spread to every corner of the room.
A sound. Several small sounds swarmed from the back of the car my father was saving for sardine fishing.
I opened the trunk, and there was his magic fridge at absolute temperature, seemingly vibrating.
Looking at the contents, I saw 4 tiny sardines, missing vital organs, trying to struggle out.
“Anoir! Anoir! Create revenant, necromancer crystals!”
Nizé croaked at full speed as he spoke, sounding excited and in a hurry.
My instincts guided me. I touched the head of each sardine one after the other with my left hand, then clenched my right fist. They stopped moving, and in the hollow of my palm, bright violet crystals materialized. I shattered them with a sharp blow, like breaking a potato chip. Violet dust of the same color formed a line floating in the air, which my body absorbed, as if where my heart was, it attracted this dust.
“Power! Yes! I can feel it!” Ecstasy, complete and absolute.
Anoir was unconscious for a few seconds, sleepwalking like a man, but he remained fixed upright. Far from Courbeton, to the south, on the great plains of the Sahara desert, a sandy chasm began to form, a sight not seen by a living soul. The chasm was 30 meters in diameter. When the sand stopped shifting, a ruin, as old as time, emerged from the ground. In this ruin, with walls of pure, deep-black onyx, some twenty meters high, tombs appeared, containing beings seen thousands of years ago by men during wars of great magnitude. The invisible veil that had concealed them disappeared. Among the 50 tombs, which stood side by side, only one slowly opened its lid. The being was tall, nearly three meters, with bulging muscles, very pale skin and eyes with violet pupils, like Anoir now.