”Sure is a massive pile of bones you guys have here. It’s a miracle we didn’t take this place over, it’s such an easy mark. You haven’t considered it? Even for a split second? Imagine: an entire city just for you. Who doesn’t want that?!” Periwinkle asked and raised a few skeletons from the mass grave outside Valor’s walls. He had somehow recovered his robes during the night he had spent outside because no one wanted for the weird necromancer to stay in the inn.

“I already have a castle, that’s good enough for me. And I will get rid of every piece of bone under these fields once I get back.” Anastacia shrugged and pushed Periwinkle’s skeletons back underground.

“Why would you do that? What will you use as material then? For practice and stuff. I can already tell that you need more than a week of training to justify even a fraction of the power you have.” The masked inquisitor kept questioning.

“I’m not, once Amaranth is dead, that’s my height as a necromancer. I’ll focus on other stuff, like finding out how coffee is made, whether and how sloths are involved and then maybe learn juggling. I haven’t decided on the order yet though. Oh, and there’s magic to learn too!” Anastacia listed a few of the things she wanted to do besides adventuring.

Even through his mask, Periwinkle was visibly perplexed. “Why are you wasting all that potential?! You could easily become a White One the whole world would respect, adore… or fear, if that’s your thing.” He exclaimed and reached out to Anastacia but took a step back because carelessly touching the girl would very likely end in his death.

“Fuck you and your stupid rainbow religion! Red can fuck off, orange is garbage, yellow sucks, green is just as bad, blue can go find red and fuck off with it, violet is… cool, but only because you shitbags haven’t ruined it yet. White is just the combination of all this fuckery and I’ll have no part in ruling the gorge of burning bullshit you call Mournvalley.” Anastacia raised her voice and shook her fist at the inquisitor.

“But The White One isn’t the leader of Mournvalley though? Sure, it’s pretty much guaranteed that the necromancers will serve them, but there’s absolutely no obligation there. And yes, since The White One is always a necromancer, them hanging around is a massive boon to our civilization; but The White One is so much more than that! Their purpose is to unite all mortals and allow the world to take the next step forwards. Last time we had two at once and mortals could challenge gods! There hasn’t been a better time to be a human, elf, dwarf, beastfolk, mage, farmer, alchemist, hunter… anything since then. I believe that you have the power to achieve all that again, for everyone!” Periwinkle tried to explain and appeal to Anastacia’s desire to help.

“No thanks. I was told that not everything in the world is my responsibility and I’m starting to get that now. Go look for your savior elsewhere.” Anastacia declined and sat down on the grass. “Now can you please let me train?”

Periwinkle sat down nearby to observe how Anastacia trained, but seeing the girl just read a book and spin around some bones for a while confused him. Aside from the impressive scale, it was like a person with superhuman strength training by lifting a couple of tomatoes a million times, when what she needed to do was to challenge her strength. Her current training would do absolutely nothing for her in the fight against Amaranth. Annoyed by the waste of potential, he picked up a piece of bone and launched it at Anastacia with the intention to lightly bonk her head. As soon as it got anywhere near her, the other bones around her moved in to protect her, stopping the one he had thrown before Anastacia could take the control away from him. Expecting a swift retaliation Periwinkle jumped up and prepared to do what he could to not die immediately and hopefully get a chance to explain.

Five seconds passed without anything happening, after twenty Anastacia just flipped a page and kept reading like nothing had happened.

“Umm… Anastacia?” He said and waved to get her attention. “Did you not… notice?”

Anastacia looked up from the book, looking very annoyed. “Notice what? Did you do something stupid? Go kill rocks or something and let me read.” She snarled and continued reading.

“Huh…” Periwinkle had found out something very interesting.

Once he was sure that Anastacia was distracted by the book again, Periwinkle threw a few more bones at her. All of them were stopped after barely entering the area Anastacia had prepared for her training. The last few he launched actually had some power behind them, but that didn’t seem to make a difference. Periwinkle wasn’t exactly the best of the inquisition – in fact, he was far below the other nine in terms of power and excelled more in range than anything, but he was no slouch. The fact that he couldn’t even get her attention was both exciting and terrifying.

“She will be a marvelous White One…” He laughed, picked up a small rock and tossed it at Anastacia to see whether she would react to threats necromancers couldn’t detect.

The answer turned out to be no. The rock hit her head and Periwinkle started to regret his little test.

“What the fuck are you doing?! I’m starting to struggle with finding reasons to not send you back to Coquelicot in a bag!” Anastacia screamed in anger and tossed her book aside.

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“Maybe don’t do it because she’d just like that?” Periwinkle suggested to save his hide. “Look, this training of yours is ineffective at best, useless at worst. It’s like you still haven’t picked a technique to specialize in and just try to expand in every direction without any idea of what you’re doing. At your level, that would actually work, if you lived for about five hundred years. You could master everything there was to master about necromancy. But this is like page one of the beginner’s manual: specialize in something to be a million times more effective.”

Anastacia stopped her training and put the book back in her bag. “Yeah, I have that manual. I’m not really interested in all that, but like I said, I just need to get rid of Amaranth and that’s it. Unlike you insane assholes, I don’t really want to be a million times more effective at killing things.”

“Then do something else with it! Just stop wasting talent death gave you!” The masked necromancer exclaimed.

“Screw you! I won’t… Wait, did you just tell me to not kill stuff with necromancy? Just what kind of an inquisitor are you exactly?” Anastacia asked and was suddenly very confused.

“The kind that knows why we’re here. The royals are selfish idiots that serve nothing but themselves. Coquelicot is slightly better, but still just as blind to our purpose in this world. She was made what she is by a cult that doesn’t understand what The White One is for and unfit to be one because of that. All they care about are their own kind, when we are here for all mortals!” Periwinkle preached excitedly now that he finally got Anastacia to listen to him.

Anastacia sighed. “Aaand were back to the religious lunatic. Necromancy is inherently cruel and destructive, what am I supposed to do with that doesn’t involve killing?”

“I think I have just the thing for you figured out! Make yourself the peacekeeper! Restrain others, take control away from those that seek to hurt you or someone you have chosen to protect! Become untouchable and immovable! With your absurd strength it shouldn’t be difficult to stop all necromancer activity in a massive area, or even all movement! You could singlehandedly halt entire battlefields without hurting anyone!” The ecstatic inquisitor declared grandly. The goggles in his mask started to fog up from all the excitement.

“That actually doesn’t sound too bad… But all this feels kind of iffy because it’s coming from someone that works for Mournvalley. How are you still with them if you have all these grand dreams and disagreements with both sides of the rebellion? They even gave you a shit name.” Anastacia asked. Even if she was starting to warm up to Periwinkle, she had no intention of trusting him. At the very least, he had his own endgame and was probably just trying to get her to play a part in it.

Periwinkle calmed down and pointed at his blue robes. “Make no mistake, I’m Mournvalley through and through, and will kill for them when asked. I know they’re all wrong about this, but it’s where I was born, lived and am even somewhat accepted. I’m not stupid enough to get into your situation by escaping either. That’s just the hand that has been dealt to me.” He sighed and laughed quietly before offering his hand to Anastacia. “But if you decide to accept your role as The White One, I’ll be the first one by your side.”

The mask prevented Anastacia from seeing his face, but the religious nut sounded genuine and it was the first time Anastacia could remember another necromancer even suggest a non-violent solution to anything. She took Periwinkle’s hand and squeezed it as hard as she could, trying to seem like she accepted the idea begrudgingly, but her grip wasn’t really strong enough to make that impression.

“Fine then. I still won’t join your cult, but how do I train for that?” She asked and started stretching.

Periwinkle made sure his mask was on right and tightly. “Well, like with everything, you just have to do it to get better at it. I won’t be much of an opponent, but we can start with you just dispelling my control at different distances to see where you are at right now. Let’s start with fifty meters and work from there.”

He picked up a piece of bone and jogged a bit further away from Anastacia. As soon as the piece of scull floated up from his hand, it was slammed into his face by Anastacia in what was probably her payback for the stone earlier. Periwinkle picked the piece back up and repeated the test every twenty meters, until finally at about two hundred and thirty meters, where Anastacia was no longer able to overpower him. An uncontrolled piece of material or one that was controlled by a weaker necromancer wouldn’t have been a problem still, but those weren’t the situations she was training for, so the test ended there.

Anastacia rushed over to hear what the inquisitor thought about her range. “You know, Coquelicot told me my range was a lot like hers. Like I can do a ton from far away, but I can pretty much do anything within a couple of meters from me.” She explained. Despite having improved her range a lot, she still felt like a bit over two hundred meters was way too short for the strongest necromancer in the world.

“Really? There’s a noticeable difference?” Periwinkle asked and held his hand nearer to Anastacia to see if he could feel anything different.

“Yeah, I ripped apart her old set of arms, blocked swipes from one of Amaranth’s dragons and… froze Alice in place before killing her. This was all when I was going evil though, so it might just be that the bracelet increased my power or something.” Anastacia shrugged.

“Interesting… I haven’t heard about a piece of jewelry that could just straight up increase a necromancer’s power, so that makes me think it’s your motivation that’s holding you back, or it could be that you’re just scared to use your powers to their full potential.” The inquisitor theorized and paced back and forth while thinking. “What’s the most impressive thing you’ve done without the bracelet?”

“There was this one time I drank like twenty cups of coffee and fought off five guards with a bagel after stealing their weapons. I think I pretty much peaked there, it’s only been downhill after that.” Anastacia reminisced and stared into the horizon, looking extremely pleased with herself. “Necromancy-wise probably the time I froze two red inquisitors, Alice and four of my friends when I panicked while we were fighting them. I don’t really remember it since I passed out after it, but apparently that’s what I did.”

“So it is your motivation! That’s great! All we need to do is find a way to really get you going a few times and you’ll get a hang of it.” Periwinkle said excitedly and clapped his hands.