Of course, I wasn't actually doomed.

As the skeleton rushed at me, I ran out of the room and slamed the door in the skeleton's face.

I was in the wizard's house and had just left his study, so I did the logical thing, I ran out of the house, down into the street, and as far away as I could. There were a few shadowy demons guarding the house (because necromancers enjoy using shadow weilding skills, of course), but since they were basically just shadows, I repelled them easily. The skeleton destroyed the door of the study and followed me, with the dark wizard in suite.

The town I lived in was pretty big, but people still knew each other and everyone noticed a boy with a flaming blue skeleton and an old man at his heels. That was what I watned, attention.

Though I was already gathering a crowd behind me, I aimed for the market place, because that was where half the town shopped, hoping that eventually somebody would help me or at least call the kingsguard. The dark wizard tried to cast some attack spells as he followed me, but most of them missed as he tripped along the cobblestone street. He wasn't a very good necromancer or a very good walker, and the skeleton, while large and powerful, wasn't very fast either. Even if I couldn't destroy them, I could annoy them.

In the a corner of the market place, there was a young woman selling cheap-looking charms and talismans, the peices of jewels, shards of amber, and fragments of crystal clinking together behind her table in gliittery rows. I crashed into her, sending her toppling back into her wares and activating a few thousand shield spells in the process. As she bounced back onto her feet, leaning against one of her shelves to steady herself, I reached into the pile and grabbed a random charm. It was a peice of lapis lazuli that seemed to be emmitting a powerful blue light.

I had a shield charm of my own actually, but it was the type for magic-users that needed an injection of power to activate. I was too preoccupied to summon the required magic though, but thought a cheap amulet might gain me some time. The skeleton was nearing me, with the wizard panting and shouting curses behind it so I have to keep running, all the while fingering the peice of lapis lazuli to find how to activate it.

"Wait -- that's not a shield charm!" the young woman called out from the ruined stand.

"I'm sorry for the mess! I'll help you clean up later!" I replied very helpfully. I'd found a groove at the top of the lapis stone and I pressed it, hoping for the best. Blue light shone and what seemed to be a screen of colors wove itself into existence in front of my eyes.

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It was not a shield charm.

The charm itself was what is commonly known as an assasin's stone, a valuable device where secrets can be pianted, absorbed, and then stored. However, this rock was very advanced even for an assasin's stone, with a whole connected recording of events, not just a picture, hidden inside it.

It also contained no important secrets, only...stuff. The dark wizard had entirely stopped in shock, not wanting to get closer to the display, and even the skeleton seemed to be disturbed, pausing in its pursuit.

I froze in my tracks as well, droping the cute turquiose stone in horror and staring at the young woman as she approached us. A crowd had gathered around me, the screen, the skeleton, the wizard, and the woman as we stood, in awkward silence. In the end, it was the young woman who spoke first.

"I told you that wasn't a shield charm..."

"Hisssss," the skeleton replied, its flames burning particularly bright.

"Ahhhhhh," a person in the screen moaned, "(child unfreindly descriptions relating to c o r n)

Yeah.

After another pause where everyone contemplated the video in silence, the young woman waved a hand and closed the screen, tendrils of light steaking towards her fingers. She was actually quite pretty, with dark hair and dark eyes and smooth pale skin, wearing a necklace of the same lapis lazuli as the charm I'd picked. I wondered whether each of the necklace stones contained their own special recording.

"Are you the Enchantress of Astell, my venerable lady?" the dark wizard asked shakily, gathering his wits after seeing the awkward recording, "for I know of no other who can command light in...such a way."

"Do you think I would tell you even if I was?" the young woman asked, “My reputation would be ruined! However, I have heard of you, BloodmoonShadowSummoner, you are a necromancer in a good way of business. Your cult has killed more than ten people according to my sources, all so that you could summon them from the dead as skeletons." She pointed a finger at the flaming, blue skeleton standing still by the dark wizard's side.

"Don't call me by that name! And I'm not BloodmoonShadowSummoner anyways, I'm just the nice local wizard, right?" the dark wizard said, turning to the crowd of townspeople gathered around him. The skeleton by his side turned with him. A little child started crying, and his mother pulled him away.

That was when the king's guards arrived, late. They weren't actually the guards of the king, but warriors appointed with the task of tracking down dark sorcerers and dealing with them or recruiting powerful magic users into the king's armies. There were usually one or two of them in every large town and more in the cities, and the two in our town had basically settled there for life.

"Wizard Luren!!!" one of the guards said, brandishing his sword, "I cannot believe that a friend I trusted so would turn to the dark side!" The other one held his shield and said nothing.

"Cato, townsfolk, this can all be explained. This isn't actually my skeleton and I didn't do any of this," the wizard said.

This was when I found my voice again, "No, he did! He was trying to force me into his cult as well but I escaped. He's a necromancer!"

The wizard turned on me, but the two guards restrained him at sword point before he could make a move. He was killed.