As the sun rose to the point that light could viably navigate its way through the dense canopy, Alec awoke to the sound of feet sliding ever so slightly on grass, the dawn dew making the ground ever so slightly slippery. With great effort, the boy opened sleep crusted eyes and sat up. Beside him, Holly did the same. Yawning, the boy stretched and took a moment to take in his surroundings and the events unfolding before him.
Erebus stood poised, his quarterstaff held low before whipping it around, then transferring the stave to his right hand, his left thrusting forwards in an open fist. Then he ducked low, swinging the staff again before thrusting the gem capped tip forwards. For a minute or so, the man whirled, swung and stabbed before drawing to a breathless halt, sweat dripping off of his chin.
“Morning Alec, Holly.” The necromancer panted, striding over to his pack to allow himself a couple of mouthfuls of water before carefully unwrapping the remnants of a dry loaf of bread, his knife too blunt to cut the granite loaf. So instead, he hit it hard with the hilt, causing the bread to crumble, then he divided it between himself and the child as Holly walked out into the trees, soon blocked from view.
They ate in silence, dry bread needed a lot of concentration to eat properly, and as this particular loaf was beginning to grow mould as of last night, it required additional concentration to ignore the taste. Nevertheless, the two were glad of it; both had known the stabs of unyielding hunger.
When at last every sizeable crumb worth the effort to consume it had been consumed, Alec grinned, “So what was that weird dance thing you were doing?”
“I was going through my battlemage drills,” the necromancer confessed, “in case we’re caught before we reach safety. I might be a bit rustier than I’m comfortable with when it comes to hand to hand.”
“Shouldn’t you have been doing some magic then?” the boy queried the obvious question.
“I told you earlier, this monster is all but immune to magic, I’d be reduced to throwing fireballs, no if we are stopped then we’ll need to fight at close quarters, well I say we, if the worst does happen I want you to take Holly and Ente and run for the village, we can’t be far now,” Erebus ordered confidently as he shouldered his pack.
“What’s bad about fireballs?” Alec asked whilst the necromancer retrieved his staff from the sodden ground.
“Just a single burst of heat, you’ll get some nasty flash burns, tiny bit of kinetics from the air expansion but nothing lethal unless you’re prepared to be ludicrously inefficient, you want a steady flame for fire magic,” the mage began to explain, only to cut himself off as Holly reemerged from the forest, looking heartbroken.
Instinctively Alec moved to stand beside her, placing a hand comfortingly on her upper arm, “What’s happened?” he asked the young dryad, only to receive distraught sobs in return.
Gently as he could, Erebus pulled Alec aside and knelt in front of the distressed girl, taking her hand as he met her gaze. “Let’s find you somewhere to sit, and then you can tell us what’s happened, okay?”
“. . .’ kay”, Holly mumbled. The dryad allowed herself to be led to a comparatively dry patch of fallen leaves; grass was unavailable because they’d been unable to find a decent clearing to settle in for what had remained of the night. Erebus also took the time to unshoulder his pack.
“Now, it may be none of my business, and should that become apparent I promise to drop the subject at once, but please tell us what’s happened to get you in such a state,” the necromancer said soothingly, sitting down in front of her.
Alec moved to sit beside the dryad but was waved silently away by the youthful necromancer, who didn’t want to crowd the poor girl. For a fraction – of a fraction – of a second, the boy looked affronted, the emotion harsh and ugly on features more used to smiling, but then, as swiftly as it came, the look dissolved, replaced by concern for the quaking girl who had been made his responsibility.
“V-v-von Mori’s dead,” stammered the girl, staring intently at her knees whilst she hugged them to her chest, somehow appearing to shrink in even further upon herself.
Erebus froze, for the first time since Alec had met him, the venerable sage seemed unsure of himself, hesitant to respond to the news as horror, shock and disbelief flashed across his face, the three emotions vying for dominance, only to be forced back as the mage schooled his features back to calm. A thin mask of serenity.
Eventually, he found words. “Where did you hear this?” each syllable clipped with uncertainty.
“The forest, can’t you hear it? the entire forest is screaming,” Holly mumbled into her knees.
“I’m sorry Holly, we humans can’t hear the pain of plants, do you think we would have invented the axe if we could?” Erebus only half-joked, still looking more pale and drawn than his usual pallor as he rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “Sorry, that was most insensitive of me, I just can’t believe it. Have your fellow dryads provided any insights into how this happened?”
“Your paladin killed her,” Holly said flatly, not looking up. “Why did you have to drag us into your stupid war?”
“All wars are stupid, my dear; it’s just a question of which side is being the idiot,” Erebus said calmly, “and somehow, I doubt Lutan has done this thing. He may be a bastard of the highest order, but he simply lacks the power that would be required. I’m as powerful as a necromancer can get without being a lich, and it was nearly the death of me to restrain her ladyship for more than a few moments.”
“Lutan? As in Lord Protector Lutan?” Alec asked fearfully, suddenly full of his own concerns.
“Yes,” Erebus admitted quietly, unable to meet Alec’s gaze through guilt at his lie, a lie by exclusion perhaps but a lie all the same. “I’ll explain later Alec, but please, one problem at a time. Let me deal with Holly first.”
The teen glared slightly, finding the necromancer to be annoyingly reasonable. Erebus ignored it.
“Did your fellow tree spirits have anything to say about how Lutan supposedly performed such a feat?” he asked Holly, voice awash with scepticism.
“I didn’t ask,” the girl confessed, bursting into fresh tears, the viscous sap leaving thick trails on her faintly green cheeks.
“I will see if they will be willing to converse with the likes of me,” Erebus informed them, not wanting to send the dryad for whom it would clearly be asking too much of. “Look after her Alec, I will return as soon as proves possible.”
“Why do you have to go at all?” the boy demanded petulantly, not wanting to be left alone with the distraught dryad.
“Because there is a more than moderate chance, if Holly’s reaction is anything to go by, that I will be attacked by the forest when I call upon it. I’d rather you weren’t there for that, it gives me slightly more options for my defence,” the necromancer explained, looking serious, and more than a touch tired.
“But surely if you’re not here, then they’ll attack me as well,” the boy fretted, foreseeing an army of killer trees in his near future.
“No, Holly will protect you; assaulting you is the equivalent of assaulting her, and if they have any respect for the late Von Mori, then you are safer right now than you have ever been in your life,” Erebus said with a wistful smile before returning to his calm façade, the transition so quick and well-practised that it was almost like throwing a switch for the mage. “Now, please excuse me.”
The magician took a moment to retrieve his quarterstaff before disappearing into the gloom of the morning trees.
Once he was suitably far away not to be overheard, the necromancer sat down, his quarterstaff across his knees as he waited, rather than the eldritch ritual he’d suggested he would perform, Erebus merely waited for word of his presence, alone and vulnerable as he was, to pass through the forest, now it would all depend on which dryads had the courage to approach him.
As expected, it was just a couple of minutes before the first tree spirit made its presence known, the dryad rising quietly from the earth in front of Erebus.
Her skin the dark muddy brown of old tree bark, the surface of her face pitted and cracked. Her mere presence washed over the necromancer like a physical blow, a great weight on the fabric of reality, even more so than Von Mori.
“I am Yew,” the ancient dryad proclaimed. “And you, mage-child, are in grave trouble.”
Erebus swallowed nervously, the dryad near thrummed with necromantic energies, enhanced further by her age and presumably the great vitality of her tree. There were reasons yew trees were known as the tree of death. One was the poison they contained; the lethal taxin, which was also found in the dryad’s touch — one of the reasons that Erebus had promptly separated further away from the tree spirit, nearly tripping in his perhaps indecent haste.
The other reason for the ghastly stigmata upon this particular variant of dryad was that they both possessed and amplified necromantic power, which had at one point millennia ago resulted in a paladin crusade against the genus. Needless to say, upon attempting to ‘cleanse’ Forest Von Mori of the tree, the paladins suffered one of the most humiliating defeats in the history of their order. In fact, rumours abounded that upon the crusade’s defeat, the entire host, or at least those corpses still with limbs, had been resurrected as zombies by the forests of the world as an act of petty, if justified vengeance. Cursed to lay dormant but aware of their state of undeath as a guard against any further paladin incursions, though the tale was so old that few dryads, let alone flesh and blood beings, would be able to ascertain their veracity.
Struggling to ignore the sheer energy of her presence, her magic, so similar to his own, almost resonating in his blood, Erebus locked gaze with the dryad. “I am no stranger to danger,” he replies simply.
The dryad smiled darkly, “Perhaps. But right now an excess of half a million dryads wish to see you torn asunder. Do you still fancy your chances?”
Erebus met her dark smile and raised an inquisitive eyebrow, “Did I say I fancied my chances? Still if so many would see me dead, where are they?”
“Don’t play coy with me necromancer. You didn’t make your third century by means of ignorance, you know most can’t move from their trees,” Yew growled, patience wearing thin at his quietly confrontational attitude.
“Unless my eyes deceive me, and I won’t entirely dismiss the possibility, improbable as it may be, we are still surrounded by dense forest, and still my limbs remain rather firmly attached to my body,” the magician pointed out with the irritating reasonability which was either near-inhuman gift or carefully cultivated art, once more completely evading the real issue entirely. Despite the time pressure placed upon him by his pursuer, he seemed content to wait for Yew to reach her point in her own time.
“Only because I have ordered them not to,” Yew stated firmly, almost openly daring him to argue further. Fortunately, Erebus seemed to judge that her veneer of self-control was sufficiently cracked to gauge her motives.
“We can continue evading the issue, Lady Yew, but I assure you that moving directly to whatever it is you would ask of me is a far more efficient system.”
“Very well, I want the paladin, and all those foolish enough to travel with him, dead,” Yew snapped.
The necromancer merely laughed, “Your posturing was unnecessary, m’lady. Lutan’s death has been on the cards ever since he instigated this sorry little affair. Though a touch of patience may be needed on both our parts.”
Yew didn’t seem to share his mirth; the tree spirit was shockingly impatient for one so old. In Erebus’ experience, any magical being over the age of five hundred required more than a gentle nudge to bring their attention and efforts to the immediate situation. One of the drawbacks of immortality was that immortals tended to take the long view on everything.
“Why? The paladin is mere hours from you,” Yew snapped informatively.
“If he’s so close, then why haven’t you killed him yourself?” Erebus asked, the twinkle of humour still alive in his tone after all the question was technically rhetorical, he merely wished to engage the grieving dryad’s brain to see the present impossibility of this task as things stood; Lutan would die, he even hoped by his own hand, but there was no way that he could kill the man in his current situation, his magic was no match for the paladin’s armour.
“Don’t be a fool. That much nullstone in one place; its agony even from here,” Yew growled, perhaps explaining her belligerence.
“My case in point, you - a magical creature - are sending me, also a magical being, to kill something you can’t harm because you’re magical, that’s flawed at best,” Erebus stated.
“But you’re much weaker than me, you’ll just feel a great discomfort whilst the stronger dryads like me are currently undergoing what should be classed as torture.”
“Unfortunately, that gives the opposite problem. Nullstone’s proportionate weakening means those with enough power can’t get near him, while the rest can’t kill him.” Erebus smiled weakly whilst shrugging ever so slightly, “You have to admit it’s one hell of a catch.”
The dryad looked thoughtful, “There is perhaps one thing I can do to swing things in your favour. Take a walk with me, I’ll take you to my tree.”
Understanding was instant for the old mage, his voice shocked and just a touch reverent, a massive change from the calculated calm of earlier as he replied, “Lady Yew, I’m honoured you would grant me a boon, but such a weapon would be of little use, it would only channel necromancy to any great degree, and such magic is not for the waging of war directly upon a foe. Necromancy facilitates violence by proxy, I can’t attack with it.”
“I believe you will find yourself mistaken on that account. Don’t necromancers have a spell to rapidly decay the flesh from a corpse, for when you wish to expose the bones beneath?” the dryad said with surprising, or given her nature and age, unsurprising, knowledge of Erebus’ own art.
“Well yes but-”
“And is there any technical reason it couldn’t be used on living flesh?” Yew pressed further.
“Well it requires a lot of energy - I-I can’t, it would be an abomination. An abuse. One does not use necromancy to kill, I’d be as bad as the dread healers, worse even,” Erebus protested, his great veneer of calm shattering under the implications.
“You must make a choice necromancer, your morality or be responsible for the next great war. Both sides have had half of a millennium to rearm, do you really think anything will survive?” Yew proclaimed, a realist spouting the deepest darkest dreads of doomsayers throughout recorded history.
“There are other considerations to take into account.” The necromancer sighed, looking wracked with pain from the decision before him.
“None come to mind,” Yew harshly dictated, not a phlegmatic person by nature.
“That’s because they are my considerations and not yours.” His calm exterior once more, if rather shakily, in place, “I have my… apprentice to consider.”
“You told Von Mori that the boy was not your apprentice,” the old dryad pointed out coolly.
“How can you possibly know that?” Erebus replied reflexively.
“Young dryads are terrible gossips,” Yew imparted with something approximating a smile, if not an excessively cheerful one. “Now let us walk.”
Foreseeing a great need of the help on offer, the necromancer nodded his acquiescence, proffering an arm to the tree-spirit, who accepted graciously. “Lead the way then, but bear in mind that I make no promises as to what actions I take regarding Lutan; this is merely to increase the options available. “You have a lot of courage to admit that,” Yew conceded with a slightly friendlier smile, “but when the opportunity presents itself, I expect you to strike, or you won’t be leaving this forest.”
“Threats ill become a great dryad such as yourself, Lady Yew,” Erebus chastised gently; the necromancer somehow possessed of enough confidence of his own powers, or perhaps enough surety of his own morals, to rebuke a being who was currently throwing death threats.
“Don’t be a fool child, threats are a means to an end, yours or Lutan’s.”
Erebus merely shook his head, allowing her to lead him to her tree, a yew tree of truly gargantuan proportions, nearly a canopy in its own right, its bark pitted and cracked. Its presence was ominous, a feeling backed up further by the lack of other trees; not a single seed had dared take root within fifty yards of Yew’s wooden abode, the ground bare and dusty greyed mud beneath his feet.
“Shall we make this quick?” he requested, “Only Holly and Alec have been alone for fifteen minutes and I don’t want to return to yet another argument.”
“I find it most odd that such a weak-minded necromancer as yourself is viewed as a pinnacle of your order, have the dark arts truly grown so weak?” his lamentable companion enquired in sickly sweet tones, laced with more than a snakebite’s worth of venom.
Erebus, however, did not seem to take offence at first, simply smiling at her with tranquil gaze, “No my lady, we have grown strong enough to no longer need power over others; instead, we merely seek power over ourselves. All that remains of our time of weakness are the worryingly unforgiving memories of the paladins and misguided relics such as yourself.”
The dryad, and her tree, momentarily bristled with affront, “I think perhaps you don’t need my help after all,” she snapped, crossing her arms as she restrained herself from tearing the irritating human before her in twain.
“That would be unwise,” Erebus said, a twinkle in his eye. “I remain your only realistic option for killing Lutan, so there is no point withholding aid from me, it would merely serve to your own detriment.”
With a heaving sigh of annoyance, Yew unfolded her arms, visibly seeming to deflate as she released her indignation. The man was right; she could not harm him yet, but, she decided, there would be a reckoning later. For now the dryad simply extended a vine wrapped arm at her tree. Wood boiled beneath the surface for a few seconds before emerging out of the tree entirely. A quarterstaff, fully formed and measured perfectly for Erebus’ height.
As though he was frightened it might shatter at the slightest touch, the magician reached for the dark wood, fingers tenderly wrapping around it, plucking the weapon from the air before giving it a brief flourish, testing the weight and balance, and finding it just a touch bottom-heavy — Yew had apparently taken the time to ensure that whatever focus the top took wouldn’t upset the balance too much. The long cylinder of wood was perfectly smooth, better than a world-class sander could provide, and nearly thrummed with the magic of undeath, and that was ignoring the focus it provided for Erebus’ own necromantic magic. All he needed for it now was a focusing crystal to place atop it in the small cradle the branches at the top had formed, which, he guessed, would likely open and clasp on to whatever he chose for the focus, the gem acting as a magical lense. It was a noble weapon, if unfinished and unrefined, and Erebus said as much, minus the criticism.
Yew smiled, pleased despite her dislike of the man, “Now all that remains is the paladin’s death.”
“A gross oversimplification… but certainly a possibility.” He sighed, voice trailing off into nothingness as he wrestled with his ethics, “Please return me to my apprentice now.”
“As you wish,” Yew said before stalking off through the trees, forcing Erebus to jog after her.
Whilst all of this was taking place, Alec was being faced with his own crisis of confidence. Not only was he having to worry about what would happen when Lord Lutan caught up with them, but he was also having to calm and console the bereaved Holly, who was busy sobbing into her patch of leaves; the boy knelt beside her as he gently patted her on the back, wishing he had Erebus’ skill with words. The necromancer, the boy, was sure, could have stopped Holly’s pain with a mere sentence. It was a foolish thought, born of the mistaken observations of a child, the optimistic myopic view of one too young to see the flaws in others.
But while he may have lacked the aura of diplomacy that his new mentor seemed to exude, Alec still attempted to help Holly find peace with her loss.
“You should probably drink something,” he suggested, idly wondering exactly how much crying it would take to get dehydrated; a question only further complicated by the dryad weeping sap instead of the typical salty tears.
Holly didn’t reply, simply continuing to weep, her bark-hued cheeks now encrusted with hardened sap. She did, however, accept a mouthful of water from the canteen Alec offered her before breaking into a fresh bout of tears.
Finally, Alec had had enough; as gently as he could, he rolled her over, carefully manoeuvring the unresisting form into a sitting position before propping her up against a tree. “Talk to me Holly,” he instructed, trying not to snap at her.
“She was just always there, you know.” The girl sniffled, a hand wiping the sap from her cheeks, at least that which hadn’t hardened into an amber shell. “We’d never spoken before the day I was Sundered but you always knew she was there, watching… caring…”
“I’m sorry,” Alec said simply, no other words coming to mind.
“You don’t know what it’s like, having everything you’ve known just ripped away from you.” She blubbed, not noticing how Alec’s expression had just stiffened, a rictus snarl as he just managed to not shout at her, instead breathing deeply and slowly, a calming exercise courtesy of the monk.
Seconds trickled by like sand in an hourglass, punctuated only by the sniffling of Holly trying to regain control over her sobbing. Finally, and with great self-control, Alec said, “I do know what it’s like, Holly, Erebus tore me from everything I knew as well, and, if he hasn’t lied, our lord protector has butchered everyone I’ve ever met, including my parents. So I really do know how you feel.”
The speech seemed to reach the young dryad, the girl turning to look sympathetically at the teen for a few moments, taking in the fact that not only was Alec suffering as she was but also holding it together a lot better.
“H-how are you so serene about all this then?” she nearly demanded, hoping for some sort of insight, some mystical cure for grief. A desperate naivety on her part, but purely understandable to any unbiased observer.
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“I don’t really know,” Alec replied in the same slow, level and carefully emotionless tone of one masking their emotions and doing poorly at it to boot, the words gradually speeding up as his thoughts turned more personal. “I think it hasn’t really sunk in yet. At first, I thought Erebus was lying on principle, and though I have come to trust the man somewhat, I’m still unsure. And we’ve been on the run from I didn’t know what, and everything’s been so confusing and mixed up, and I feel like I’m nearing a point where something is just going to snap, and I’ll start blubbing my heart out.” The boy paused for breath, eyes moist as he almost came apart at the seams, but he did hold it together, knowing innately that they couldn’t both afford to be slaves to grief right now.
Holly smiled wryly, wiping more tears away, “Guess we’re both a mess.”
“Guess so,” Alec agreed quietly, sitting down beside her. “I hope Erebus gets back soon.”
The dryad blinked owlishly at him, though reopening her eyes was an effort as the sap almost sealed them beyond the reach of daylight permanently. “I thought you paladin types were meant to fear necromancers?”
“We are but Erebus is too… nice to be afraid of,” Alec replied. “It’s like every fibre in my body wants to hate him for taking me from home, getting my parents killed, even simply being a necromancer. Yet he’s been nothing but considerate.”
Holly shrugged, “Necromancers are like that, or so we’re told. Some of the most selfless magicians ever to live, or unlive for that matter.” She smiled weakly at her own pun. “So what’s so special about this Lutan fella anyway?”
Alec frowned, fear etched on his young face as he began to explain what he knew in hushed tones of awe and dread.
“Before he became a lord protector, Lutan was a great warrior, they called him the Magebane because of how much he hated magic. Nothing was ever proven but if you believe the stories he would hunt down any magician with a fanatical zeal, killing anyone who offered them food or shelter, and executing their families as well,” Alec finished, glancing around nervously.
Holly was far less reverent of the tale, “So what’s he been doing since he became a lord protector? Whatever that is.”
“Lord Protectors are in charge of defending vast stretches of land against any threats. It’s the second-highest rank in the paladin order, they can requisition whatever they need and their actions are held accountable only to the Protector’s Council and the High Paladin himself.”
“Surely this council thingy isn’t going to just let him get away with killing the people he’s meant to protect?” the dryad demanded.
“No. They won’t,” Erebus stated firmly, emerging from behind a tree, though they couldn’t be sure he’d been eavesdropping, and from what they knew of the man, such an action would have been out of character in the extreme. “But as we are currently the only ones who could tell them, I’m sure Lutan is feeling reasonably safe from accountability of any sort.”
“Is that why he’s after us then?” the boy enquired, “to escape justice?”
“Alas, nothing so simple and selfish. Lutan actually believes that there is nothing wrong with his actions, he genuinely sees magic as a blight upon mankind, given the chance he would destroy it all; mages, elves, dryads, vampires, the unquiet spirits and even the dragons,” came the quiet and near-mournful explanation.
“Surely no vampires is a good thing?” Alec asked, clearly quite bemused at the idea that it might not be.
“Don’t judge an entire species solely on their diet,” Erebus chided gently, “they have a right to live just like anybody else.”
“But they eat people,” the boy protested vehemently.
“You eat meat don’t you? Would you say that negates your right to live?” the necromancer asked, remaining quiet and softly spoken as he chipped away at one of the boy’s core beliefs. Never a nice thing to do but necessary when the belief is harmful to others.
“It’s not the same thing,” Alec spluttered, clearly not seeing the comparison.
“Isn’t it? Animals must die for you to live, just as for vampires to live animals must die.”
“But people are different from animals,” the boy pointed out.
“Are they really?” Erebus asked. “What’s the difference? As I’ve had a large number of biomancers tell me the only provable difference is merely a matter of species.”
“But people are different, we can think, we have feelings, we can love!” Alec insisted with emphatic romance of the soul, if not understanding of it. The necromancer merely smiled, the boy having fallen into the trap laid by him for such an unwary gesture of eloquence.
“Alec, if you place a chimpanzee, and a series of crates in a room, without reach of food it will stack the crates to reach the food. Clearly a sign of intelligent thought. Whilst on one of the southern continents there is a spider with intellect so formidable that it can learn to mimic the signals of other spiders and strategise how to catch them, sometimes taking half an hour to reach its chosen location of attack. Birds such as rooks and crows will make tools from twigs to get at food otherwise unavailable. So please don’t be of such great hubris to think that the qualifications for thinking merely involve being able to stand up on two legs,” Erebus explained patiently, setting out his argument by heavy use of example, evidence being by far the superior of rhetoric and volume. “And as for love and emotion, a cat will cry if in great pain, purr when happy or wag its tail if angry or annoyed. Dolphins and lion cubs will play amongst themselves, though not with each other - just to be clear. A swan will sometimes commit suicide if its mate dies. What more proof of love or loss can you need than that? Just because we can’t understand what they say doesn’t mean they are in any way inferior to us.”
“I-I’d never thought about it like that,” Alec admitted, looking slightly ill. “But doesn’t that mean that every time I’ve eaten meat that I’ve essentially partaken in a murder?”
“Perhaps,” the mage conceded. “But death is the facilitator of life, for any living thing to survive, other than plants, though even there there are exceptions, one must kill to survive. Be it an animal, plant or mere cell. All you can do is try not to cause unnecessary pain through your actions.”
Holly was notably smug at this, at least until she remembered that she was, by nature, or more accurately by intricate spell work, no longer a plant and thus just as murderous as her host. Her two companions tried not to be too amused, instead focusing on their debate, the conversation proving a great diversion from the troubles plaguing them.
“Now, let us return to the original point of disagreement, do you believe vampires do not have the right to live?” Erebus said with great solemnity.
“No, they do have the right,” Alec conceded with a weighty sigh. “But so does their food, so where do you draw the line?”
“Fortunately we seldom have to deal with such anymore. The vampires themselves dealt with that,” the necromancer said with a warm smile. “Now we need to get back on the move but if you’re still interested in a few minutes I’ll give you something of a vampire history lesson as we walk.”
“I’ll still be interested,” his young charge assured, getting to his feet and then offering Holly a hand up. An act of chivalry which the girl for once accepted with good grace.
It took the disparate trio two minutes to get back on the road. Though more technically, it was a forest trail upon which Holly’s advice had proved the catalyst, the grieving girl assuring them that they were mere hours away from Erebus’ mysterious destination.
Once they had successfully settled into a sustainable pace, Erebus began his history lesson.
“One of the first things you need to understand is that vampires have always had a humanist element, I use humanist because in this case humanitarian would have a new meaning entirely. Go back a few thousand years and it was considered fashionable for the more wealthy vampires to leave the families of their victims a large stipend to ensure that they could at least live their lives in relative comfort, a process now viewed as quite barbaric by vampires in general, however, this progressed to kidnapping, again leaving a fee for the families, the victims kept alive for years by careful siphoning of the blood.” Erebus paused, awaiting an input from one of his two students.
Surprisingly neither spoke for some time, choosing to think about their question rather than ask out of reflex. The master necromancer smiled to himself, stepping ahead of them to hide his happiness; the boy was learning fast, as was the dryad, no matter how unintended an addition she had been. He could only hope that she would be strong enough to protect the boy until he accepted his own power.
“This isn’t a history of vampires,” Alec said with great certainty, the question implicit in the statement, “just a history of their feeding habits.”
“I know, but I thought this the best point to start at considering your concerns, particularly as a complete history of vampirism is entirely impossible.”
“If there isn’t time until we get to this town of yours, I wouldn’t mind picking it up later,” Alec assured him, interested beyond words by his first hint of supernatural education, a syllabus that in the world he’d been brought up in was only permitted to paladins.
“Alas time constraints aren’t the issue, much of vampire history has been lost, too many purges I’m afraid, it’s notoriously difficult to maintain a library when the primary weapons against your species includes fire.”
“Surely some of the older vampires themselves-”
“Again; purges,” Erebus cut off before continuing the lesson. “The next stage after that was to siphon blood off of willing volunteers, either from a single donor if the vampire liked travelling, or from a group, though the single donors seldom lasted long unless the vampire showed great restraint. Around the same time, small groups of vampires began to subside on animal blood. The important part to remember is that these were never mainstream groups. The majority of the vampires up until around four hundred years ago considered such practises as disgusting and subversive. It was only the paladins that changed that, after a hundred years of peace with magician-kind, and no signs of a break in the truce the Paladin Order could finally turn its full attention to vampirism, and for the first time, we made no attempts to defend our undead brethren. Magic users had also decided enough was enough, though I’d like to think with a heavy heart for they had been one of the Necropolis’ most stalwart allies in our hours of need. The result was that the vampires sued for peace in less than a month and a compromise was reached: vampires who ate in a non-fatal manner would have all the same rights as any other citizen of the area they resided in whilst any vampires who kept killing would find themselves facing a dedicated task force of paladin, magician and vampire. Naturally, predatory vampirism all but vanished over a mere few years.” Erebus smiled wistfully, “It was the first time that paladin and necromancer realised what they were capable of when they worked together.”
Holly stopped, turning to face them, “Why would necromancers help fight their own allies?”
“Everyone is familiar with the concept of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ but no one questions what this means when the enemy ceases to exist. Necromancers have been desiring to be a pacifist people for millennia, vampires may have been allies of necessity for time immemorial but once we had peace we no longer were so desperate as to tolerate the wholesale slaughter of people.”
This seemed to be met with acceptance from the contrary girl who carried on guiding them, the forest finally beginning to thin, the trees reducing in size as well as number. For the first time in days, they could see through the canopy to gaze upon open sky.
Alas, the moment of joyful realisation was shattered as Erebus held up a hand for them to stop, appearing to listen intently for mere seconds before his eyes widened with realisation, grabbing both Holly and her host by their collars and shoving them roughly forwards.
“Run, and don’t stop until you’re inside the circle!” he ordered with great urgency, fear flickering deep within granite grey eyes for a scant moment, too fast for either of them to catch before it was buried behind the wall of calm that Erebus wore on his face.
His two young charges obliged him, taking off at a veritable sprint. Alec, proving faster, instinctively grabbed Holly’s hand, dragging her along despite the nails digging into his palm, reciprocating a pained gasp from both parties though it did nothing to decrease their pace. Alec’s fear echoed through the bond they shared, not bothering with a mental smokescreen like his necromantic mentor.
As the duo disappeared out of sight, Erebus removed his new stave from his pack coiling an arm around each of them, the two staves, ebony and Yew, of reasonably similar hue, but that was where the similarities ended. The ebony had had its shaft almost worn through by time and use, the runes having been carved and recarved many times over the many decades Erebus had possessed it, the obsidian skull that capped it had been custom made with a threefold purpose, the first was that it was a perfect copy of the necromancer’s own cranium; complete with lower jaw, this provided a significant enhancement for any mental magics he might employ, be it mind reading, telekinesis or the protection of his own thoughts. The second was the material itself. Obsidian was a good channeler of necromantic energies as well as certain envenomed spells along with other members of the darker healing arts - though Erebus would sooner boil himself in hydrochloric acid than use them, ironically a spell to do this would be assisted by the skull. The third and final reason was not quite as eloquent, though there was a simple beauty to it; such a large amount of obsidian weighed several kilos making it a veritable bludgeon when magic was impossible or undesirable.
Yew’s staff had no such refinement; unadorned and unenhanced, it was still many times the superior of Erebus’ beloved travel companion in terms of the raw power residing within it, not even accounting for the lensing effect it provided to necromancy. In time, if its owner survived the coming years, it would likely become an object of legend as runes and further lensing mechanisms such as crystals were added; there was a reason dryads of such strength rarely directly aided mortal affairs, such weapons could prove game-changers. In the case of this particular weapon though, it would take years at the minimum to become the purposeful tool of its counterpart; for now, it was a thing of primal energies and of great moral difficulty for Erebus.
“I know you’re there,” he stated firmly to the forest in general, retreating after the two teens. Unsurprisingly there was no response.
Anticipating the sudden appearance of a knight in dented armour at any moment — shining armour typically being a sign that the knight in question didn’t actually do any fighting or travelling — he moved slowly, constantly turning to scan his surroundings for movements of violent intent, and disconcertingly finding none.
“This a waste of both our times,” Erebus loudly declared, once more trying to draw out his foe. “Your ruse has failed, just face me. Show a shred of courage for once.”
Again there was no response.
Erebus discovered why when the trees thinned to nothingness, revealing Circulus Seruatis in its late morning glory.
It was a large village, the population too low to truly qualify as a town though architecturally it more than qualified. The buildings both large and spread apart with each a wonder of aesthetically applied wood and stone in its own right, with several towering above the trees that surrounded the defining feature of Circulus, its boundary, a circular wall of almost terminally-boring grey rock, no more than a foot high, too low to act as a defence against even an army of gnomes. Erebus took in none of this, eyes focused instead on the armoured men standing on the edge of the boundary, one of whom, clad in thick, heavily dented nullsteel plate, currently had a crushing grip on his protege’s shoulder. Alec’s expression pained and horrified. Horrified because as painful as his restraint was, it was nothing next to Holly’s, the dryad a weeping, writhing ball of pain, a nullstone collar about her neck.
The sight made the necromancer’s blood boil, for once his emotions written plainly across his face for the world to see. With great wrath, he directed both staves at the man, advancing towards the clustered knights like a dark avatar of unbridled fury.
“Lutan!” he bellowed. “Release them both and you can still come out of this alive.”
The paladin holding Alec merely smiled beneath his helmet, “Now why would I do that, old friend. You are powerless so close to the circle, let alone so close to our armour,” he sneered. “Give me a reason why I should unhand your apprentice when he provides such brilliant leverage over you.”
“-He’s not my apprentice you idiot: he’s just a child who your petty vendetta has left orphaned and alone. Have mercy Lutan, for the sake of the laughing child I once knew, show a shred of human decency and let them both go,” Erebus pleaded, an impassioned appeal to any morality still residing in the withered husk of his adversary’s poisonous heart.
For a moment, it looked like the plea would work as some of Lutan’s companions, only five in number now, appeared uncertain, unabsorbed from the cult of personality that was the lord protector. Only one betrayed no remorse as uncertainty danced behind Lutan’s helm, perhaps the tattered remnants of old friendships and memories attaining a tentative grip on the paladin, but to Saiko, it mattered not what order he gave, or decision was made, his own conscience far too stained with blood for one more death, or score of deaths to matter now. Unlike his comrades, he lacked the great shield of self-righteous piety that made murder easy; instead, he’d learned to think in terms of survival, kill or be killed, albeit clad in a cheap coat of honour. He knew the darkness of hate and revenge, had spent years around those consumed by them, yet apart from such motives by way of employment. His was not the mind behind murder, merely the sword it reached for. Whether that made him better or worse than those who purchased his services was an argument as old as war itself.
Perhaps this was why Saiko alone was entirely unsurprised when Lutan threw the boy to the ground, the paladin’s sword rising from its scabbard as an answer, and so with two-handed grip plunging it downwards towards defenceless flesh and cold soil beneath it.
Even Saiko was surprised by the speed of Erebus’ reaction. The bolt of lightning struck the armoured paladin full in the chest, a seething ribbon of white-hot energy stretching from the obsidian skull to Lutan’s breastplate as it threw the man backwards as though he were no more than a ragdoll.
Lutan bounced twice upon his journey, each leaving furrows in the earth as he came to a stop just short of the boundary. Shockingly he got to his feet, breastplate glowing a cherry red at the point of impact, the metal so thick that as the heat diffused through it, it became merely uncomfortably hot rather than the intended lethally, whilst a layer of carbonised rubber — a treasured secret in the production of mageproof armour — stopped the electrical component from killing him by stopping his heart in an instant.
The toll on Erebus was far more telling, the old man on his knees, for once using the staves for balance. “Perhaps I am not as powerless as you thought.” He gasped as Alec used the concern of Lutan’s retinue for their master to his advantage, freeing the now near-catatonic Holly and dragging her over to the necromancer, moving behind him for relative safety. The only eyes on him those of Saiko, the mercenary making no attempt to intervene, content to observe the conflict unless ordered to participate directly.
Again Lutan smiled beneath his helm, a skilled observer able to see the amusement through the thin eyeslit, “How many years did you burn on that spell alone?” he asked.
“Thirty at least,” Erebus confessed, “but I think the next shot will be the death of you.”
Lutan merely smirked, “Bareth, Ghash. Kill him.”
One of the knights was all too eager to oblige, charging forwards with a roaring, if wordless battle cry in an attempt to sever the necromancer down the middle with an overzealous overhead swing.
Erebus sidestepped, Yew’s staff swinging from low to high, just like in his drills earlier, to impact hard on the knight’s helm, the ringing in Bareth’s ears enough to stun and daze the overconfident thug.
Dropping his other staff, he swung back around, almost wrapping it around his body as he took one of Bareth’s legs out from under him.
To the knight’s credit he didn’t fall, instead stumbling backwards as he tried to regain his balance: he never got the chance. Erebus drove the middle of his staff up through his jaw, the helm unable to protect him from the sharp blow as Bareth’s head snapped back, a brutal crunch indicating the necromancer had successfully snapped his neck.
The knight slumped in an untidy sprawl.
It had all been so fast and fluid that Ghash hadn’t even closed the distance yet. Perhaps if they’d both rushed the necromancer, then they’d have overwhelmed him, but the soldier doubted it. His opponent was too calm and prepared to be rushed. He decided to respond in kind, stalking and circling slowly, sword held guardedly in front of him, waiting on his foe to make the first move as the remaining three paladins — Owen, Lutan and Saiko — watched, each drawing their own analysis of what was happening.
Erebus also circled, though the centre of his orbit was not his opponent, instead making certain that his body remained carefully interposed between the soldier and Alec.
The tension was palpable under the watchful gazes, Erebus and Ghash waiting upon a single decisive act of foolishness.
Ironically it was neither of them who made the error, “Just bloody kill him,” shouted Lord Andun Owen.
For a fraction of a fraction of a second Ghash’s attention was diverted; on pure instinct and skill, he managed to raise his sword up to stop the overhead strike only to find it a feint, Erebus reversing the quarterstaff so it swung up through the swordsman’s now open guard to strike him square between the legs. There was a collective wince from the males involved as Ghash dropped his sword to clutch at his wounded testicles, his scream silent as he sought the air to give voice to the localised agony. He didn’t have time to find it as Erebus stepped into his space to drive the shaft of his staff into the unfortunate soldier’s nose, driving the bone-deep into the brain. It was unlikely the fact his death was nearly instantaneous was a consolation to him.
Calm and cold as death, Erebus picked up his own stave. “And then there were three…”
Lutan merely smirked, though none could see it. “Did you get all that Sai?”
“Indeed,” The master swordsman assured, finally drawing his blade against the necromancer. “Shall we dance sir?”
“My fight is not with you,” Erebus said calmly before throwing the young man backwards with a wave of air, again channelled through his own staff.
Before Saiko could rejoin the fight, Erebus levelled Yew’s stave at Lutan, a necrotic green energy gathering around the tip where a focus of some kind would one day be placed, the deathly essence of decay more an impression than a sight in the later morn sunlight, translucent yet nauseating.
In a show of great willpower by both parties, neither Erebus nor Lutan looked away, and thus as Erebus unleashed his blast of pure rot, Lutan stepped aside laughing as the effort brought his nemesis back down to his knees in the dewy grass, staining his shins with chlorophyll and mud.
“I didn’t think you’d be this obliging,” the Lord Protector sneered, marching slowly towards his fallen foe, savouring victory after nearly three decades of waiting.
Erebus watched Lutan’s approach with trepidation, a mask of fear painted blatantly across his face, until the paladin got too close and, striking like a snake, he swept Lutan’s feet out from under him.
The knight fell heavily though he managed to roll away from the kicks the necromancer was attempting to rain down on him, the magician’s state of weakness partially feigned, but even at his best mere flesh would always come off worse than steel plate.
As Lutan regained his feet, he saw Erebus smiling broadly. “I told you that shot would be the death of you.”
Lutan frowned. “You missed,” he tried to sound smug, but there was uncertainty now.
“Always so egotistical, even as a young boy,” Erebus reminisced, “I wasn’t aiming for you.”
The mortal risked a look behind him to find that even so near to midday, the boundary had lit up like a beacon. An ethereal and ephemeral dome of spiderwebbing energy playing across its surface from the point of Erebus’ strike.
The necromancer sighed, “If you surrender now I promise you won’t be unduly harmed. However, I’m afraid you’ll be stuck here for the rest of your life.”
“You think to incarcerate me? The Paladin Order will have me out within a month.” Lutan actually laughed before pulling out a knife, “And he’s not here yet; I can still kill you.”
“When will you learn to accept your mistakes? Your strike force is demolished and the forest despises you. The only recourse left is for you to seek asylum in Circulus,” Erebus stated with reasoned certainty.
“The forest won’t be a problem,” the paladin assured, fingering the gem at his throat.
“I suspected killing her was beyond you,” Erebus said with a morose smile, once more interposing himself between teen and paladin, this time all three of the survivors converging upon him. He chuckled dryly, “If I had a hat I’d take it off to you. Dare I ask how long you’ve been planning this, or does the magician never reveal his secrets?”
“You’re stalling,” Lutan observed coolly, closing the gap enough that he was in striking distance, waiting on his cohorts to do the same.
Again Erebus merely chuckled, directing a knowing smile at his erstwhile friend. “Distracting actually.” From behind Lutan came the distinct sound of metal impacting metal. The necromancer’s grin was almost malicious in its vindication. “I think you’ll find that that is checkmate old friend. Now hand over the good lady and I’ll make sure you live to see trial.”
Lutan risked a glance behind him.
Owen was on the floor, and Saiko was locked in a heated exchange with another fighter, the newcomer a startling tableau of symbols, writings, runes, glyphs and simple geometrical shapes adorning his deeply tanned skin in an intricate and complex arrangement which drew the eye even more with the variety of starkly contrasting colours therein. In fact, if one were to stare at them long enough, they would seem to move of their own accord, though it was probably, but only probably, the viewer’s imagination.
They were certainly moving now as muscles bulged and flexed beneath them as their owner parried, blocked and countered in an entrancing dance of blade on blade. The newcomer’s sword whistling through the air at such speeds that Saiko was having to give ground to avoid giving his life.
Lutan turned back to his own foe. “He still has to win.”
“True. Shall we await an outcome, or do you want to fight me yourself?” Erebus advanced, weapons ready.
As predicted, Lutan backed down, having long known the necromancer was the superior in skill at arms, “We’ll await an outcome.”
“You must have great confidence in this one,” the robed mage observed quietly as the pair clashed, again and again, dripping sweat already, and in the case of Saiko, breathing raggedly as he fought not to give ground, convinced that if he could just hold it here he might get an opening. “Ah, and I see you’ve given him a spellbreaker blade. You really have been preparing for a very long time.”
“You mock me even now?” the paladin growled, sheathing his knife and drawing his sword in a single smooth movement, only to have it knocked from his hands by a firm tap of the staff by Erebus upon the flat of the blade.
“Always so quick to anger,” he chided as, behind Lutan, Saiko finally gave ground after several light cuts to his forearms which, whilst minor, would have been fatal from many an enchanted blade, his opponent just too fast for him to keep up with.
At first, the master swordsman had been exhilarated; it had been many years since he had found a fellow student of the blade capable of matching him; in fact, he was widely regarded as amongst the top ten on the continent, yet somehow, despite knowing every other member of that exclusive list by name, sight and style, he was finding himself utterly outclassed by this newcomer.
Now a hint of fear was creeping in as every feint was met by an unyielding guard, every cut deflected and the mere act of parrying sent shudders down his arm, jarring it enough that he didn’t dare try to outright block, and his foe kept coming, not slowing, weakening or making sound beyond when their blades collided, to add insult to his several injuries the tattooed man wasn’t even breathing heavily.
Saiko pulled back, reduced to just giving ground in the hope to catch his breath. It worked partially, he was no longer having to strain himself just to keep up, and as long as he made sure to avoid going straight backwards, then he wouldn’t be running out of space any time soon, buying him time to think at least.
The words of his employer, soon to be erstwhile employer, were less than white noise to him, Saiko’s world now little more than himself and his opponent.
In a flash of inspiration, he changed styles, dropping into a long fencer’s stance. The falchion was unsuited for it, but a sudden change of technique could easily throw even the most veteran of opponents; however, as he adjusted his grip on the hilt the blade was snatched away by a vicious blow, his foe having adopted a different grip himself, using two hands on the bastard sword, and swinging it as one would a club to bat the sword across the clearing.