Alec had watched amazed as the fight had happened, first Erebus’ electrifying battle against the Lord Protector himself, though he’d been a touch distracted getting Holly and himself out of harm’s way; after that, it had been almost like watching some kind of performance, with the necromancer as the star, if not necessarily the winner, for as the heavily armoured knight had charged forwards, broadsword raised, Alec could see no way the magician could triumph wielding no more than a pair of sticks, yet the necromancer not only defeated the knight but humiliated him with his comprehensive staff work and superior speed.
After defeating the knight, his killing of the mere soldier was almost inevitable.
The boy could not help but feel useless, he couldn’t do magic or fight, yet people were dying around him, and he was helpless to intervene. However, it certainly appeared that Erebus had the situation well in hand as he successfully bluffed Lutan twice within a single minute, once with the blast to the barrier and the second when he’d lured him within range of his staff. But Erebus and Lutan’s conflict had proven an abysmal appetiser compared to the swordfight that followed, the two moving too fast for the eye to follow. In fact, the first Alec had seen of the tattooed newcomer was when he slid the dagger up through the gap in Owen’s armour, where helm met breastplate, the stiletto cleanly traversing through the spinal nerve and into the brain.
The remaining member of Lutan’s entourage had responded almost as fast, his sword seeming to leap into his hand as he charged. Before Lutan could turn, the two had met in the middle in a lightning flash of blades.
Then, all too quickly, it was over, Lutan’s stooge disarmed and helpless.
To Erebus’ eternal credit, he didn’t gloat, electing to take a deep calming breath before tapping Lutan on the shoulder, “I am afraid you will need to hand over your sword old friend.”
“This isn’t over,” the paladin growled. “Not while I have Von Mori.”
“Yes, about that, I will be wanting that gem as well. You can expect the kidnapping of an elder dryad to be amongst the charges brought against you when this makes trial,” the necromancer warned.
Lutan ignored him, focusing on The Swordsman who had so brilliantly duelled Saiko into submission, “It’s not over,” he muttered as in one smooth movement he redrew his dagger and threw it.
The blade pinwheeled end over end, unerringly towards The Swordsman’s heart, to be smoothly batted back to whence it came, only for him to gasp as Saiko drove two knives of his own into the poor man’s chest.
Simultaneously Lutan sidestepped the oncoming projectile, the tables turning in a single moment of distraction, then turning again just as rapidly for an awed Saiko who barely saw the cross to the jaw his nemesis bestowed upon him with great generosity if not gentleness. The blade master slumping like a dropped sack of potatoes albeit with less grace and a weightier smack upon hitting the ground.
As the world seemed to settle back to peace it was torn by Alec’s shout; the boy knelt beside the fallen figure in black robes, the staves next to an outstretched hand as Lutan fled for the encroaching concealment of the trees. For a split second the tattooed fighter made to pursue the fleeing figure but instead dashed over to the fallen sorcerer, rolling him over to reveal the dagger Lutan had evaded firmly entrenched in his chest, Erebus’ mouth was already leaking blood from internal haemorrhaging but still, he managed three words.
“Go after him.”
“No child, why would I take a life when I could just as easily save one.” After pulling the dagger out, the man removed a pair of gloves to place his hands directly on the wound. There was a brief flash of green light, which for reasons he couldn’t begin to comprehend, put Alec in mind of the first shoots of Spring. “There, that will suffice for now,” the man mumbled to himself.
Erebus made no answer, having lapsed into blissful unconsciousness though whether from his wounds or the spell Alec could not discern.
With a slight shrug, the man hoisted Erebus over one shoulder, then the unfortunate Saiko over the other, apparently with no discomfort at supporting the weight of both men. “Bring the dryad, apprentice, and your master’s staves,” he snapped before heading back towards the boundary. “I will await you in the town square.”
There was little Alec could say to that, particularly as his erstwhile captor, now companion and perhaps mentor’s fate may hang in the balance. With a tired groan of exertion, the teen hoisted the catatonic dryad over his shoulder, the brash and aggressively independent tree spirit too out of it to consider complaining, though she let out a weak whimper of pain as Alec crossed over the low wall.
The dryad was surprisingly light even for so slight a figure; Alec would have been surprised by this if he’d been aware of the exhaustion of Erebus when he’d been forced to carry them both. It was a slight magic from the bond the two now shared, an act of latent intuitive magic derived from the young dryad and further enhanced by Alec himself, if unwittingly.
As he stepped into Circulus Seruatis, it seemed to Alec as if the sky had darkened, as if the world had lost its colour somewhat, vibrant green dimmed to drab hues, and somehow life was no longer worth living.
Despite this overbearing, near all-consuming depression, Alec kept going; he didn’t really know why. He just knew it concerned Erebus and some order he’d been given.
If the aura of depression had been weaker, he might have laid down there to sleep or die, but as it was, he couldn’t even summon up the will to question the orders he’d been given.
As he moved away from the barrier, the feeling began to fade, some of the boy’s old vitality returning with each careful step; the bizarre magic would have to remain a question for another time, one where Erebus was fully recovered from his injuries.
As Alec passed the buildings, he noted the people watching him go by, only mild curiosity in their eyes. These people were clearly used to dryads, though a moment of clarity pointed out to Alec that they would have to be this deep within Forest Von Mori. For a moment, he had a vision of Von Mori herself wandering down these same streets, the path he was walking having suddenly transitioned from foot-worn earth to actual cobblestones, the surprisingly urban buildings just didn’t compute with the force of pure unrestrained nature that had been the elder dryad he concluded with a bemused shake of the head.
The town square was reasonably obvious when he got to it, a large square of even cobbles, dominated in the centre by a large well, currently covered by a thin bronze cap to prevent anyone falling in. And as promised, The Swordsman was standing by it, sans Erebus.
“Apprentice,” he said calmly, the unfortunate Saiko propped up against the well wall. “You’ll be pleased to hear your master is recovering well.” The words were surprisingly formal, but there was a wealth of emotion behind them, both great relief and regret in the words.
“I’m not his apprentice,” Alec replied, though he was no longer offended by the idea; after meeting a ‘benevolent’ paladin in the flesh, he’d had to seriously reconsider a lot of his previous opinions, the incident shaking his beliefs even more than Erebus’ gentle yet pointed questioning.
And finally, he had accepted that his village was destroyed, and any hope of returning to that life had burned with it; the realisation left him feeling untethered; he had no expectations in the short term or long term.
“My apologies, clearly your place with the Grey Mage is a touch more complicated than I assumed. How did you come to travel with Erebus?”
“He… saved my life,” Alec said slowly, feeling as if he were being tested in some way.
“Erebus has saved many lives, few of them travel with him,” the man observed coolly, seemingly seeking something more in the answer.
“I wasn’t given much of a choice,” the boy said waspishly, not liking the attitude of the man.
“Sounds like a fascinating tale. But perhaps it would be received better in the warmth of a house.” Almost tenderly, he picked up Saiko, carrying him into a house in the expectation that the boy would follow, which he did.
The man’s house turned out to be a rather spartan affair, wood furnishings and cutlery, the bare minimum of drawers, the only true extravagances were a bookcase and a simple writing desk in what was probably a study, both stacked to the brim with their relative paper paraphernalia.
As the man settled into his chair, the straight-backed kind that leaves the user massaging the base of their spine and desperately trying to regain feeling in their buttocks for up to an hour later, Alec took the opportunity to read some titles from the bookcase. They had rather specific fields of interest such as ‘Overcoming the Difficulties of True Immortality’, ‘The Breath of Cold Fire’ and ‘The Posthumous Autobiography of Nex the Dread’.
“Sorry for the lack of chairs; I rarely see anyone outside of town council meetings,” the house’s apparent owner apologised. “But I can assure you that that bit of floor is the most comfortable; it’s where I do my meditation.”
The patch of stone indicated was surprisingly worn, visible knee imprints in the floor which Alec did his best to match up to after he’d led Holly down flat on the cold floor, finding the position surprisingly comfortable, though he found his legs mildly dwarfed by the imprint; clearly made by an adult. “So, is Erebus going to be okay?” he asked, terrified in a way that something might happen to the necromancer, the man the closest platonic bond in his life whether he liked it or not.
The man smiled slightly, “It is my full expectation that he will make a complete recovery over the next month.” There was a mild sigh, “Though it would be so much easier for all involved if he could just avoid mortal peril for a couple of years. But what really concerns me right now is your dryad.”
“Do you know what’s wrong with her?”
“In technical terms, no, but I understand the broader concepts behind her condition, though I’m struggling to believe there is anyone cruel enough to bind a purely magical creature with nullstone; even the paladins have banned it for being too cruel. The legal limit on null in magical restraints on anything that is intrinsically reliant on magic is five per cent; whatever Lutan used was likely in the low nineties. Any higher, and I’d imagine the metal would have been too soft to be used as a restraint of any kind.” To his conscious audience’s shock, he produced the collar in question, though at what point he’d obtained it, Alec couldn’t remember.
“But what’s wrong with her?” Alec asked timidly, looking both worried and scared, feeling a sense of responsibility for the small dryad, especially after having been overpowered by the paladin and forced to watch as they’d placed the collar on the flailing girl.
“You have to understand just how inimical null, refined or otherwise, is to magic. Were she conscious right now having it this close would result in screaming, to actually place it directly on the skin…” There was a momentary shudder, “That takes a special level of schadenfreude to consider outside of a nightmare.”
“Schade-what?” the boy enquired with his childish curiosity, a wondrous, beautiful thing after the events of the last hour.
“Schadenfreude, it’s a word from a very old language, and the best I can find for what it covers, somehow sadism just lacks the panache needed to convey the malignance behind it. Where sadism is an enjoyment of causing pain to others, schadenfreude is joy at all pain a person experiences, whether you are the cause or not; it is bitter and irredeemable, the darkest of the four empathic emotions.” There was a weariness to the words as well as the faint suggestion the mere subject may cause the speaker to burst into tears at a moment’s notice, empathy’s knife twisting deep in the man’s chest as it threatened to tear out his heart.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
For a short while Alec was stunned into a grimly thoughtful silence, trying to comprehend a mind with such malevolence; and, for the fortune of his sanity, failing. “But she’s going to be okay, right?” he finally asked.
“I don’t know, child,” the man said with forlorn finality, “her mind has withdrawn into itself. If she successfully faces down whatever inner demons are currently confronting her, then yes, she will.”
“Good,” the boy said simply, visibly searching for something else to talk about.
“You were going to explain how you met Erebus?” The Swordsman prompted as subtly as was possible in the circumstances.
“Oh yeah, sorry. Where do you want me to start?” Alec enquired back, unsure how to begin such a narrative, the experience not one he’d previously undergone. There had been regular storytelling competitions in the winter, courtesy of the old monk; the exercise in his words ‘To expand the horizons and minds of all involved, and to allow impossible dreams to be expressed freely without fear of mockery or reprisal.’ But Alec had never dared do more than listen for fear his youth would lead to the ridicule the monk insisted would not be permitted.
A sadness entered Alec’s eyes, a deep pain as he realised his mentor must also have perished by Lutan’s hand or order, for though both belonged to the Paladin Order, the Lord Protector would have been forced to put all to the sword to prevent reprisals from his few superiors. The thought of such a gentle soul, a man of peace, dying for a man’s madness bit deep at Alec’s own moral code.
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” The Swordsman assured the young teen, interpreting the boy’s obvious sadness as a response to his history with the necromancer rather than the tangential subject of the mentor whom he’d replaced; though, there was not even the possibility that the man could have figured out the true source of the boy’s mourning short of omniscience or telepathy.
Alec settled upon a morose smile, “I don’t mind,” he assured the man. “But you need to bear in mind that only Erebus, Lutan and the soldier you knocked out know any of the details of what happened to my…” He paused for half a second, about to say parents before swiftly, almost imperceptibly, changing it to “village.”
The eyes glinted for a moment, but not a word was said upon the matter. The Swordsman resorting to a tactful, “I see.” The man bestowed a look of pure empathy upon the boy, “Then just tell me what you know, I’ll receive two of the points of view in the coming weeks.”
“Well, the first I knew of any of this, I’d woken alone in a cave…” Alec began hesitantly.
Over the next few hours, The Swordsman slowly teased the information out of the teen, listening with benevolent intent and Erebuseque patience and insight, encouraging when he faltered and expanding on every detail so nothing was glossed over in youthful haste.
Finally, he led back in his chair, with fingers steepled thoughtfully and mental exhaustion in his eyes. “How unfortunate,” the man said simply as the light played across his tattoos, intricate spectra of red and blue dancing over his skin like children in a game of tag. “It would seem that war shall descend upon Contenmere once more… this continent has already seen so much bloodshed. Does it really need more?”
“Lutan might not survive to the edge of the forest,” Alec suggested without much hope.
“Lord Protector Lutan, alas, has a pernicious habit of surviving. There’s a greater chance of his succumbing to a conscience than the forest.”
“Well, surely that’s a possibility?” the young teen asked, though with even less hope than the last suggestion.
“He’s a zealot boy. There is next to nothing he can’t rationalise if it serves his purposes. Your village is proof of that,” as he said those words, he looked regretful. “Sorry. That was thoughtless of me. Sometimes I forget not everyone is numb to death.”
“It’s okay,” Alec whispered sadly, “it’s his fault… I’m going to kill him.”
“Don’t be a fool boy, Lutan would crush you and not even have to break stride, if you got to him,” the voice was firm, buoyed by authority and certainty modulated by a grim chuckle. “Worry not. By this time next year there will be a plethora of people, far more qualified, seeking his head. Even the nexomancers may get involved over a massacre of civilians.”
“Nexomancers?” Alec pondered aloud, unfamiliar terminology proving an intellectual kryptonite for his curiosity, jolting him from his fugue in capricious fashion.
“Murder mages, quite literally the practitioners of the killing magics. Naturally, they have less social kudos than even necromancers. Not even other magicians like them as a rule of thumb, which is a bit harsh; some of their collaborative work has been truly groundbreaking.” By the fond inflexion and positive accolade he afforded them, it was clear The Swordsman was quite prepared to wade against the current of popular opinion on this matter.
“Why would you want to study that sort of magic?” his young audience demanded, abject horror in his words and morbid fascination in his wide eyes.
“Well, the original idea for founding that particular school of study was as a preventative measure. At the time the Council of Mages, well a Council of Mages, nothing like the current one in structure or practise, had only just discovered there was an entire branch of magic whose sole purpose was the act of killing, and able to bypass or simply overwhelm the defensive countermeasures of the time. Obviously they only had two choices: To ban it or to embrace it in the hopes of finding ways to stop it. Naturally-”
“Surely it would have been simpler, safer and easier to just ban it?” Alec interjected, abruptly expressing his opinion in the thin guise of a question.
“In the short term certainly,” The Swordsman continued smoothly, not showing his irritation at the interruption, “but the Council knew that it was inevitable that someone would rediscover it in time, regardless of how deeply they buried the discovery, or even if they burnt all the project’s notes, materials and mages. And when the knowledge inevitably resurfaced it might not be in the hands of a small cadre of healers trying to find a permanent cure for the common cold, but a true madman, sociopathic and power-hungry… there was no way they could take that risk. And thus nexomancy was added to the growing list of schools of magical study.”
“How did they know that the people they made study it wouldn’t be power mad?” Alec asked, believing himself to have spotted a gaping hole in the decision.
“They didn’t but they took all possible precautions: No one with a lifespan over two hundred - removing the possibility of a rogue immortal. Weekly sessions with a psychologist trained in telepathy. And if they really went rogue there was always me.” The man smiled as the lecture diverted to a trip down memory lane. “It made a welcome change from exile, though how they thought they’d have enforced that without my agreement I’ll never know.”
“You were there?” the boy spluttered in shock, “the way you were describing it I’d thought this was ancient history.”
“It was, about a thousand years by my reckoning,” The Swordsman said blithely. “One doesn’t have eldritch runes placed on their body for the visual appeal.”
Comprehension dawned in the boy’s eyes, “So those tattoos..?”
“Render me effectively immortal, yes,” the man finished the thought for him with an expectant smile, easily foreseeing the next question to pass the boy’s lips.
“So how old are you?”
“Technically that’s a rude question,” he deflected, feigning reproach at the breach in etiquette.
“Sorry,” Alec apologised, looking ashamed at the immortal’s reproach.
“It’s alright lad, everyone does it. And between you and me,” he leaned in over the time-weathered oak desk, voice lowered conspiratorially, “old enough to know Von Mori lies about her age.” There was a mirth filled wink as he sat back into his chair. “Now, I’m afraid the conversation must take a turn for the serious. We need to find you a place to stay the night. Normally I’d place you in the guesthouse, but for the moment, that would be most unwise, and alas, our infirmary is going to be full with the blademaster, Erebus and the young dryad. Yes, quite the conundrum. Still, for every problem, there is a solution, except for paradoxes of course, but I digress, you’ll simply have to take my spare room.”
“Thank you,” Alec replied politely, surprised by the generous offer. “But where will Holly stay when she recovers?”
The Swordsman laughed slightly, “I’m sure we can find more appropriate accommodation when the time comes, though your answer does you credit.”
“And when Erebus recovers?”
“Then he will likely leave,” the man said flatly. “Young Erebus lives for his job, if I know him at all then it will take great persuasion just to keep him here long enough for his wounds to heal properly. His obsession with duty really can be quite tiresome at times.”
“Can’t you just heal them with magic?” the boy asked logically.
“I’m no healer Alec,” he answered with a mournful shake of his head. “If it weren’t that the knife had pierced his heart it would have been infinitely safer to leave him to bleed than have me help.”
“Why is it so risky?” a confused Alec asked, unable to see how healing a wound could pose a greater danger than the wound itself.
“I don’t know enough to differentiate tissue types. As it is it’s a miracle I didn’t accidentally grow cartilage, skin or bone over the wound, even now I don’t know if I got the right muscle type, though whatever I grew it’s clearly got the elasticity of muscle or it wouldn’t have held… I think. To take a further risk at this point would be stupid to the point of homicide,” the swordmaster explained. “He’d need a highly trained healer to properly deal with damaged heart tissue, and alas the only one in a three hundred mile radius is currently led down unconscious in the infirmary after having a dagger in his heart.”
“Is there anything Erebus can’t do?” the teenager asked incredulously. The necromancer a closed book to many a bibliophile of people, some of whom had been trying to access that particular volume for many years — so far, only a few had even been allowed entrance to the library, let alone located the shelf.
“Avoid daggers apparently,” the immortal stated with blithe panache modulated by a guilty note.
“That’s not funny.”
“It wasn’t meant to be. Now let me show you to your room, and then the rest of the day is yours to do with as you will,” he stated with calm efficiency, getting out from behind the overloaded desk. “Follow me.”
And that was that, there was no point arguing with logic and calm certainty, and no inclination on Alec’s part to do so.
By some miracle of spartan decoration, the room was somehow more sparse than the rest of the house — sans study. It was devoid of windows, despite being by an outer wall, and lacked any of the other traditional methods of illumination, the chosen light source being microscopic gaps between the planks making up the outer wall, a wooden mock-up of an experiment on the nature of light, rending the entire room in a state of gloomy twilight at best, whilst the bed was actually just a sheepskin blanket, no mattress or pillow and the configuration of planks on the floor somehow elected to prove more uncomfortable than sleeping on a rock.
To further compound the misery of a hapless sleeper, as well as letting in light, the outer wall also allowed in the wind whenever it blew from the east, not in itself an exceptional occurrence despite its irksomeness if it weren’t for the fact that this was the west wall.
With unusual insight, Alec compared the room to the rest of the house and reached an unusual and accurate conclusion, “This is your bedroom.”
“I lied about the spare room, there isn’t one,” The Swordsman confessed flatly.
“Where will you sleep?”
“I won’t. The perks of immortality, sleep is merely a luxury, not a necessity. Sorry for how grim the room is.”
“I’ve slept in worse,” Alec lied smoothly.
“I doubt it. Still, now you know where your room is, your time is once more your own. I’ll have a proper bed brought in before evening.”
The teenager frowned slightly, looking distinctly unsure of himself, “What should I do?”
“That is entirely your prerogative,” the swordmaster assured, not realising that the boy’s uncertainty came from a remarkable absence of hobbies on his part; Alec’s free time mostly used to help on the family farm, or, in the winter, talking at length with the monk about whichever philosophical miscellanea was currently on the old man’s mind.
“What can I do?” Alec rephrased, seemingly looking for some kind of catch for such a freedom.
“Whatever you want.”
There was a long pause as the boy put this statement under great consideration, tasting the implications. “I enjoy reading,” he concluded finally as if putting forwards a theory for peer review.
“We have a library,” The Swordsman informed him, leaving the room and so not noting how Alec’s eyes had lit up with childish glee as he followed behind him.
“Where?” Alec asked simply, face filled with earnest joy.
“It’s the five-storey building in the centre of the village, by the tower,” he directed, intending to add more, but the boy had already run past him, thundering down the stairs and out into the village.
“Youth,” the immortal mused dryly with an amused shake of his head, not just pondering the teen in that statement but also the necromancer who’d brought him. Something told him the fallout from this morning was only just beginning, a flap of the proverbial butterfly’s wings. He could only hope the world was prepared for the hurricane to follow.