28 - How to Subjugate Necromancers and Influence World Events
The All-Seeing Tower, Moment’s Later
... grinned from ear to ear. It was all going according to plan. Even though Jenny couldn't care less about Duke's personal journey of self-discovery, she needed him if she was going to get out of this world and back to her own. She had considered inciting a revolt with the servants. Fweb had made it abundantly clear whose side it was on if blows were ever traded between the two sorcerers.
It would probably do Duke good to be tucked away in a dungeon, reminded of what it felt like to be powerless. However, an insurrection was too risky. She needed him alive. Any number of the goblins and the enfeebled orc left in the tower could use his incarceration as an excuse to kill him. One goblin with an axe to grind would mean she'd be stuck in this land the rest of her natural life, and they all had axes to grind.
Now that Duke would most likely be sobbing in his room all night, the mother was away, and the servants were in the lower levels, she had the rest of the tower to herself. She made her way quickly to the stairwell. She checked her cloak to make sure she was wearing the broach that protected her from seeing stones. The cloudy-eye pin was there.
She descended several flights of stairs till she was between the throne room and the floor below. Just as Fweb had explained, there was a stone with a chip in it at about waist level. She pressed her thumb in the rock, and the chip glowed with power.
The seams of the stonework lit up in sequential order and snaked through the curve of the wall to the nearest window. The line of light went over the edge. She rushed over and peered outside. The wind buffeting the tower blasted her, and there was a fleeting moment of vertigo as she realized how far above the ground she was.
The seam of light stopped halfway down the tower, and one signal stone glowed on its edge. She considered the fact that a fall from this height would mean the end of her existence and shrugged. She was not a wind mage and couldn't fly. She had a craptacular singing voice and avoided karaoke like a pit of live vipers. From what she knew of magic in the area, people either had the talent, or they didn't. Even if they did have the ability, most people never discovered it because it took the ability to sing and the element they needed to cast. If a natural-born necromancer never tried to manipulate blood, they would go their whole life unaware of their talent.
It was pure luck that Mr. Jackson happened to inhabit the body of a woman who possessed the gift of necromancy. Jenny had taught him spellcasting, believing he would be the one in Lady Ameria's body. He figured out his ability quickly. The woman was cutting vegetables in the next room over from the Silent Legion when he had first arrived, and he had cut himself by accident while he was disoriented from the travel.
He had cast an incantation that should have healed the wound but instead had made it worse. After wrapping his arm, he had realized the body he possessed had the blood magic affinity. It was easy enough from there to get Duke to teach her a few spells and surreptitiously record him. Later, Jenny took some photos of the spell books in Duke's library and texted them to Mr. Jackson. His practice for becoming a water wizard helped, and he quickly picked up necromancy.
Jenny, however, was a non-magical human. She could still use enchanted objects, like the stone she had just used to light the way. Magic only worked her when she had an item that could perform the function she needed. Wizards of this world could infuse their songs into objects. It was called harmonizing. Jenny had become a collector of harmonized objects over the years.
After the cabin disappeared, she had assumed the identity of a traveling merchant in a quest to find Danelthor's medallion and eventually had one of the largest, rare artifact collections in the world. If an object was imbued with magical properties, she sought it out. However, to discourage thieves, Jenny mostly hoarded her treasures in a vault she had converted from an ancient crypt in an ice cave.
When she first struck out on her own, Jenny had sold potions after she realized that a little bit of science goes a long way in a country of halfwits. She got by for quite some time via the placebo effect. Finally, once she had enough items to fake wizardry, she became a moon mage . She used the phone's flashlight feature to "harness the moon's energies" when a demonstration was needed. She dazzled peasants and kings alike with screen savers and ringtones.
Jenny eventually figured out how to connect to a WiFi network in her world. She wasn't quite sure how the signal could bleed through other realms of reality. Still, she had found an ancient elven artifact that was a little chainmail pouch about the size of her phone that amplified her signal for about twenty-four hours after storing her phone in it for the night. She called it her Mithril OtterBox. She had another one stashed away in Traldalor for Mr. Jackson’s phone.
The stories of the OtterBox artifacts claimed that whatever was stored inside would imbue the object with the ability to commune with the gods. Shortly after using the bag (mainly to prevent her phone from getting smashed), she noticed that it had detected signal. She saw the network One Wifi to Rule Them All appear as available. She was lucky the internet connection owner wasn't very creative and used RING as the password, or she would have been stuck in this forsaken place with a connection to her world tantalizingly close.
Now, not only was she the first person to steal WiFi from a neighboring dimension, but also the first person on this plane of existence to have Instagram influencer status because she decided to post a selfie with an Orc. At first, her pictures were considered to be faked or that she was friends with Hollywood makeup artists. Still, a tiny, yet fanatical cult had formed around her social media success, who seemed to be the only ones who believed that she was trapped in a fantasy realm.
Most folks thought that the crazy people who practically worshipped her were just part of the gag. After all, many blog posts were about people who spotted her on a street corner or had a blurry photograph of a woman with the same build. There was even one person who claimed to know where she lived. Either way, virtually no one believed her.
Even her mother was mad at her for disappearing and even more upset because her act prevented her from visiting. If her dad had been alive, perhaps he would have talked some sense into her mom. He would have listened to her. As it was, the people from her old life dismissed her as taking an online gimmick either too far or too crazy. The only remaining connection to her world was a kooky cult of people like Mr. Jackson, who'd eat a puppy if told to.
While her weirdo followers cheered her on, she traveled to the four corners of Carnt looking for Danelthor's medallion because the cabin would shift between her reality and this one regularly. She had been back to the place on many occasions with tricks like a wand of fire to blast the door off, a horn so loud it would shatter glass, and even a staff of the trembling earth that was said to crumble walls and blow up doors. However, nothing worked. The cabin would just shift between worlds like clockwork and leave her behind.
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One of the more frustrating aspects of encountering the cabin was that she had left her car keys inside. It wasn't that she needed them in this world. It was more that if Danelthor had just turned out to be a creepy rando and not an interdimensional merchant, she would have lost her car keys again. The people at the dealership knew her by name.
However, she could see the car keys in the same place every time she peered through the window, which meant that no one had gotten in the cabin in her world either. This meant that Danelthor's business could be hers for the taking. However, rather than selling cheap American crap to the Helfrans, she would sell their crap on eBay.
She had a dagger that would erupt into flames with a command word, among other things that would keep her wealthy for years to come. She could retire on a beach somewhere in the Caribbean. However, as the years passed and it seemed Danelthor's medallion would be lost for good, she discovered that the only way to leave this place was through a ritual found in a forgotten tome she had liberated from a lich.
The ancient magic required the beating hearts of five heroes whose deeds were known throughout the land and the energy of a powerful necromancer. The spell would tear open the fabric of reality long enough for a person to step through to the other side. The only downside was that the necromancer would be "swallowed by madness itself". Jenny interpreted the text to mean that he would be left with a smoothie for a brain, but since Duke already had a smoothie for a brain, there really was no downside. She wasn't sure what would happen to the heroes, only that they would fuel the traveler with their essence, whatever that meant.
There was a good chance that the heroes would die, too, considering that ancient texts weren't known to have footnotes or have happy endings. But they weren't supposed to be heroes, or even high schoolers, for that matter. The original plan had been to sacrifice her own followers, who said they would die for her. Unfortunately, there were never any more than three followers in any given metro area except the Beaverton Moon Mages of the All-Powerful Jenny Guild (the name wasn't her idea), which had six members. It was the perfect number to switch minds with the Silent Legion. However, Mr. Jackson had gotten himself banished from the guild for making out with the guild master's wife.
Even though the impromptu make-out happened during a LARPing session, and the pair insisted they were under the influence of a mind flayer, the guild master permanently severed ties with Mr. Jackson by banning him from the Facebook group and unfriending him on all social media. The social media shunning happened a week before the realms would be aligned for the once-in-a-lifetime mind switch spell that Mr. Jackson had built in the basement of his work.
A tiny part of her was a little revolted by the fact that she would sacrifice the high schoolers' minds. Still, she had to keep reminding herself that they were all kids going to detention, and she was probably saving them from a life in and out of prison. In the end, she had way more to offer the world than they did. Jenny had flaming daggers. She had also survived all this time by choosing herself over anyone else.
Unfortunately, in all her wanderings, she did not have a single magic item that would help her fly, which surprised her. She figured an entire world full of magic would mean that people would be flying all the time. Instead, all she had witnessed were wind mages who levitated themselves on a whirlwind as a parlor trick.
What she lacked in flight, she made up for in what she called her Spider-Man ring. She placed it on her finger and climbed out of the window. She scaled down the sheer edge of the tower until she reached the point on the wall with the glowing brick. She pressed it, and a door opened. She climbed inside.
Instead of the spiral staircase, she was in a dark room. She pulled out her phone and turned on the flashlight. It was a vault, a dragon's horde worth of treasure stacked around the place. All manner of jewels, scepters, or crowns could be acquired by an enterprising thief seeking to exploit the riches of a man who probably wouldn't notice it missing.
However, she wasn't here for any of that. Duke could horde all the gold and platinum coins he pilfered from the kingdoms he had crushed during the height of his power. Jenny had no wish to be wealthy in a land that hadn't invented day spas. She never understood people's fascination about a time before personal hygiene.
She crossed the room toward a door. It was the main entryway to the vault from the inside of the tower. Had she come in through the front, traps would have paralyzed her and alerted Duke. However, the back entrance was created for an imp that would fly treasure deliveries to his coffers. Since the magic that safeguarded this tower would deliver bolts of lightning to unfriendly flying creatures and the wall was unclimbable to all but those with a special ring, Duke hadn't bothered to trap the backdoor.
She gleaned the knowledge thanks to informative talks with Fweb about the place. Now all she needed was to find a staff that she was convinced was in his collection. There were many tales of Duke slaying the great wizard Greglorak. The artifact previously possessed by the postmortem mage had disappeared after that. It wasn't much of a leap for her to assume it had made its way into the vault.
Either way, she needed to get possession of it if she were to find her way home again. It was the last piece of the puzzle that she had been working on for years. She dug through the various items until she came across a rack of staves. She cursed. She hadn't anticipated there being more than one powerful arcane staff in his collection.
She knew Greglorak's had a jewel on top that was famous for disintegration. However, there were three among the selection that fit that description. The three choices were opal, diamond, and emerald. The wood was slightly different, but the text she had read said, "Greglorak unleashed holy light from a jewel atop a mighty staff that burnt enemies asunder."
Perhaps the word 'mighty' was a clue to the wood. The emerald looked like pine; between that and the green stone, she doubted that was the one. The opal was made from what looked like a walnut tree, and the diamond was made of oak. She strained to remember all the hours she had watched HGTV. There was an episode of Fixer Upper where they were debating walnut versus oak flooring to pick the more durable floor.
She laughed out loud. It had been a long time since she had giggled like that. She couldn't help herself. There was something comical about the fact that Chip and Joanna might help her escape this world. She would have to write them a thank you letter when she finally got back, which made her laugh even more. Now, if she could only remember if it was oak or walnut floors they had used.
She was so immersed in her flights of fancy that she didn't see the imp coming. The fierce creature raked its claws across her back. She turned around and thrust a short sword she kept hidden on her person into its stomach, and the beast fluttered backward halfway across the room before turning around.
She got a good look at the creature, and it was about two feet tall, yellowish grey in color, with bat-like wings. It snarled and charged her, despite the yellowish puss dripping from the wound. Claws on all four limbs were pointed towards her. She had very little time to think. Was it oak or walnut?
She appreciated the sheer number of thoughts that managed to flit through her mind as this creature was about to rend her face into a bloody mess. While she could hide the injury on her back and stab the thing to death with her weapon, it would be really hard to explain to Duke why her visage was scratched up by his treasure vault imp in the first place.
The next thought to cross her mind was Chip and Joanna. Chip had made a dumb joke, and Joanna had rolled her eyes. The team was laying a floor in a brand-new living room. Soon the giant matte picture of the old house would be wheeled away to reveal... walnut floors! They had installed walnut floors!
She snagged the staff with the opal and had only one chance to get it right. She brandished Greglorak's iconic weapon.
The opal shimmered as if lit by the most brilliant sunbeam. Three points of wood held the stone in place. They surged with magical energy that converged in front of the jewel, which glowed more and more intensely. She aimed it at the imp that was almost upon her. A dazzling beam blazed forth from the staff, and the fell creature wailed as it was incinerated.
She kicked the dust under an armoire and made haste toward the spot on the wall where she had entered. She fastened the staff to her back and put on her Spider-Man ring. Luckily, the nearest window was a lot closer than the one she had used to identify the spot. She would be inside in no time. She only hoped that she hadn't set off any alarm bells.