The world is fire and darkness.

I embrace the tempestuous flames that fill my body and soul, forcing more æther through to the world that I no longer see.

Adeleya.

I pressed my hands into her when I could still see. She’s still here, right at my fingertips that burn only with the pains of my collapsing channels.

I try pressing necromancy into her again, just in case. Just to see if the healing is working. I can’t tell if it works or not. I can’t tell if she’s still living.

Flaming magics flicker deep inside me, fading away as the abyss wraps me in its cruel embrace. Even with the flames gone, the burns still mark me. The pain tears at my mind.

I scream.

I cry.

I curl up and weep.

Did I heal her?

Did I fail?

Did I bring her back from the dead?

If it worked, then she’ll be ash now. I can’t maintain my spells through this dark abyss. If I brought her back, then I’ll have killed her.

She’s alive.

She has to be alive.

I need to wake up faster.

What if she’s still dying?

What if she needs more healing?

What if there are more enemies out there, ready to kill us in our sleep?

I need to wake up!

I scream into the burning dark abyss, but I can feel nothing of the real world.

No matter how much I want to, I can’t wake up and time doesn’t move any faster.

I’m still burning.

Waiting.

Screaming.

It almost feels like I’m split.

One part of me is thinking about Adeleya and all the horrible things that could have happened. The other is processing all of our pains, screaming, crying, and weeping.

I’m alone in the dark, even father would forgive me for crying here.

Time stretches out.

The pain is terrible, but what makes it so much worse is that I have nothing to distract me apart from my own thoughts.

Insects crawl all through my skin, inside my skin, a terrible blessing. A new sensation to break me free from the abyss.

I clench my teeth and push myself up. I can’t see yet, and my skin feels only a terrible pain from the phantasmal needles piercing me all over. I hear nothing like my head is pressed underwater, and it hurts to breathe.

“Syr,” the whisper cuts through it all.

My name. Someone is saying my name. Holding me.

“Adeleya,” I whisper, reaching blindly for her. “You’re… are you alive?”

“I’m alive,” she says. I try pressing necromancy magic into her, but the magic is pushed out, refused.

“You’re alive,” I whisper, my lips bleeding as I push the words out. “I didn’t kill you. I didn’t kill you.”

“You saved me,” she says, sitting up and gripping my hand tight. “We made it. We beat them, and we’re all safe, but you need to rest and heal.”

“It’s gone?” I ask. “It didn’t come back?”

“I killed it,” Adeleya nods, her hair wet and tangled, her eyes red and tired. “I made sure of it. That was one of my most powerful castings, even the rain couldn’t stop me. It’s dead.”

“It would’ve killed us by now if it were still alive,” Theo says, sitting on a bed opposite us. He’s bandaged all over, but he’s bleeding through in places. “We beat them, but they’ll be back.”

“They will?” I ask, wriggling up to try and stand. I need to heal him. I need to be useful.

“Don’t,” Adeleya holds me back. “You’re still hurt. You need to recover first.”

I blink, looking down over myself. I’m wrapped up in bandages from my neck to my toes. So that’s why the burning sensation is so much worse today…

The realization only inspires more pain, it washes through like a terrible wave, and my body gives out. I don’t pass out, I refuse to pass out.

“No more darkness,” I whisper, falling still. Screaming won’t make it better. Crying won’t make it better.

Adeleya holds me from behind. It hurts where she touches me, but I don’t want her to let go.

“Amelle,” Nadia cries out, falling into a coughing fit. “Amelle!”

“I’m here,” the familiar elvish woman enters the room. “What…? She’s awake.”

“Can you manage any more healing?” Nadia asks.

“It’s best to set her back to sleep,” Amelle says, “I’ll boil some tea. Hold on until then.”

“No!” I cry, it hurts but I have to say it. “No sleep. I can’t. The darkness. I can’t.”

She pauses at the door, gripping the wooden doorframe. It takes her a few seconds before she turns back to me.

“I’m not a skilled healer,” she says. “I can’t… most healers would struggle with a task like this.”

“Syr is fine,” I wheeze. “Heal. Myself.”

Something is trickling down my throat, and I cough instinctively. The convulsion moves muscles that shouldn’t move. I can’t stop myself from crying as the pain washes through me.

It’s wrong.

I’m not a bad girl.

I’m strong.

Even though my æther veins are still burning, I trickle power through them and shape healing magic. Unlike better healers I can’t do things very well, I have to use more magic, and I can’t fix anything very fast, but it’ll be enough.

The magic floods through my throat, putting me back together again. It tickles like a feather running just over my skin.

“I’m… I’m trying,” Amelle kneels by my side, pressing a hand to my head and adding her magic to my body. It’s soft and warm, and I have to close my eyes to stop my memories from coming back.

She’s not mom.

Mother is gone.

“I’m trying my best,” Amelle lowers her head, tears dripping down to the ground of the room. “My daughter doesn’t even… am I truly so worthless that you’d rather be fighting than stay in my home?”

She looks up at me her eyes overflowing. We stay like that for a few seconds before she gasps.

She covers her face and leaps back to her feet.

“I’m sorry,” Amelle rushes out of the room before anyone can say anything.

Her healing has made me feel a little better, and she’s stronger than I am. Outside of the times when I’m pushing myself too far, and that only lasts for a few minutes.

“Why did you heal me first?” Adeleya is still gripping me from behind, whispering her thoughts. Nadia and Lothar are bandaged together just like Theo. Adeleya is the only person here still together.

“You were dead,” I say.

“I would’ve been fine.”

“Your heart wasn’t beating,” I say. “I thought… I…”

“It’s okay, I’m here,” she holds me tight. I wriggle around, ignoring the pains, and I press my face into her shoulder and cry. She doesn’t tell me to stop. She doesn’t call me weak.

“It’s okay,” she says, gripping me tight until I fall asleep.

There is no darkness in my dreams, it is a bright world. A beautiful world. A warm world.

The details are fuzzy, and they don’t matter anyway. Nothing hurts, everyone is here with me, and I’m finally home.

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Even waking up to the pain isn’t so bad, since Adeleya is right here with me. Nadia is just an arm’s length away as well, whispering some chant to herself. From the words I can make sense of, it’s probably some sort of healing chant.

I can’t leave her suffering.

Over hours I balance my healing magic, burning only enough æther that it doesn’t burn me out again. The sun travels through the skies outside, and the others go outside to help the town, all while I keep on healing.

It takes two days for my bandages to come off, and only one more day after that Amelle and I manage to heal the rest of our merc party.

“You have our thanks, Amelle,” Theo says, nodding deeply to the woman. She nods politely and leaves.

I haven’t said anything to her since she cried in front of me. I don’t know what to say. She’s Anna’s mother, and she helped to heal me, but what does that really mean?

What can I say to make her feel better?

“The town is okay?” I ask Adeleya, gripping my knees to keep my hands from trembling. I’ve been too afraid to ask until now.

“Everyone made it out fine,” Nadia says. “We were lucky that they targeted us first. They never took us seriously, and we got lucky.”

“If they come after us seriously…” Adeleya whispers.

“I can learn more fire magic,” I say, summoning a flame to hand. It’s a bit of a balancing act to get it burning through my æther channels at just the right balance.

“You keep neglecting your chants,” Adeleya chides me. “I know that the chant nearly killed me, but it’s the only thing that let me use a magic powerful enough to kill the monster, too.”

“It’ll make my veins stronger?” I ask.

“It… I don’t know,” Adeleya says. “It will make your magic stronger and the æther flow a little more smoothly. It helps to shape the magic while you channel it, but I’m not sure if it helps in training your æther channels themselves.”

I repeat the words that she taught me in training, feeling the æther flowing a little smoother through me. I summon a small flame, nothing so powerful as to prove a danger to anyone or anything, but enough to keep my æther flowing.

“Good job, just keep working on the pronunciation,” Adeleya says, gripping my other hand tight.

I don’t care about chants, and the only reason I need to get stronger is to protect what I care about. Right now, I’m more focused on Adeleya. I nearly lost her.

She nearly died, and I still haven’t told her how I feel. I want to be with her for eternity or for as long as we can manage. I want to be close to her and kiss her and all the other things.

I know that I should care more about all these things going on. If these not-quite-human monsters are going to be coming back then, I’ll need new weapons that work better against them. I’ll work on it because I have to.

I reach out and grab Adeleya’s hand. I just want to focus on her.

“I’m happy that you’re still alive,” I say, squeezing her tight. “I was scared when I thought you were going to die. I was scared in the darkness when I passed out.”

“You think I wasn’t?” Adeleya asks, “I thought we were all dead. That monster, and those three men with it… They’re more dangerous than what we’re meant to fight. We scout out and deal with bandits or monsters, we don’t guard against things like that.”

“We’ll have to in the future,” Theo says, interrupting the moment and reminding me we’re in a meeting. “From today, we’ll all be training specifically to hunt these creatures. We have to expect that they’ll be coming for us again, poking around Cildr and Snowspring as they are.

“This isn’t the end of things,” Theo says, sitting down opposite us as the rest of the group takes their own seats.

“You think that others will get revenge against us?” Lothar asks.

“Or is there something here that they’ll return for?” Nadia leans her elbows on her knees as she leans in close.

“Both,” Theo rubs at his stubble. “If word gets out about what we did here, then we’ll be silenced. All the villagers have agreed to stay silent about this matter. I’ve warned them that we’ll all be hunted down if this gets out, and they’re going to stay silent.”

“A few are already practising their fire magic,” Adeleya laughs, baring her teeth as she gazes up and away.

“Gathering plenty of firewood, too,” Theo says. “They’re a tough group.”

“They have to be,” Adeleya says. “After the attack on Cildr, everyone knows that their village could be next.”

Silence takes the room but for Nadia’s cracking knuckles. I slowly work the needles out of my skin, it’s not as bad as when I first woke up but I’ve spent most of my time here lying down and healing. I’m still a bit numb.

“What are they?” Adeleya grips my hand tighter. “It’s not a human, is it? Is it something from those new lands beyond the eastern mountains?”

“He was undead,” I say.

The room freezes as everyone turns to look at me.

“What did you say?” Theo asks in a whisper. “It’s necromancy?”

“Dunno,” I shrug. “I just know that he was dead. Right at the end, he tried to escape Adeleya’s magic and he would’ve, too. He was fast. But I was able to take his body with my magic, just a little bit, and I kept him there until Adeleya killed him.”

Theo closes his eyes, lowering his head as he rubs at the stubble on his chin. Nadia pales, and Lothar balls up his fists as he shakes his head and clenches his jaw.

There’s another necromancer out there.

A very powerful necromancer.

The undead man had a soul or something like one.

I didn’t think…

I shake the thought out of my head before it’s complete.

“We can’t talk about this,” Theo says. “We don’t know who these people are, or why they’re here, but they will kill to keep their existence secret.”

“I refuse,” Nadia says. “We can’t keep quiet about this, people need to know.”

“They’ll kill us,” Theo says.

“We barely survived, and that was only because you had some idea of what we were fighting against,” Nadia pushes. “I won’t condemn others to their deaths because we didn’t give them the same fighting chance.”

“It is death,” Theo says. “The guild’s official position on this is that this doesn’t exist. They will bury any rumour, and anyone who spreads rumours.”

Nadia grates her teeth.

“Then we don’t tell the guild,” Lothar says. “We work for our company before the guild, right?

“If we write something up and share it around to the right people, it shouldn’t be too dangerous.”

“They destroyed all of Cildr and tried to destroy this town, too,” Theo says. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they burn all of Snowspring down to the ground if we do this.”

“They might do it anyway,” Nadia stands up. “They’re killing us, they’ve made this a war, pretending otherwise isn’t going to save us.”

“This isn’t a war yet, it’s only a war if we make it one. Are you prepared to condemn tens of thousands to death, for that fighting chance?” Theo is calm and quiet, his voice chilling. “We’ll put it to a vote.”

“I vote we secretly spread the message,” Lothar calls in first.

“Secretly,” Nadia nods quickly in agreement.

“I… I feel like it would be smart to train ourselves a little before doing anything to taunt these people,” Adeleya says. “If they decide to target us while we’re in town? We’ll be dead before we can even arm ourselves.

“We should stay quiet about this.”

“I agree with Adeleya,” Theo says, nodding seriously.

The group turns to me.

“We finally have a tie-breaker,” Lothar smirks shaking his head.

“Say what you think,” Adeleya says, squeezing me close. It feels warm with her, but I don’t think she’s right about this.

“We should tell people,” I say. Lothar raises a brow and Adeleya freezes up. I grip her hands tight as I put together my thoughts.

“The rabbits will always fear the fox because they always run,” I say. “If you want to be safe from the fox, then you can’t be a rabbit. You can’t run. You have to fight hard until you’re bigger and meaner. The fox has to be scared of you.”

“We’ll need to train,” Theo says. “These aren’t foxes, if we’re going to scare them off, we’ll need to be much more terrifying than we are today.

“No free time until you’re confident in fighting off more monsters like the last,” Theo says, stretching out his arms.

“It used illusions and shadows,” Lothar says. “There’s also the thing with the mask. I felt something when looking at it, but it’s not like the paralysis that I’ve experienced before.”

“I don’t recognise it either,” Theo says, no one else steps up to explain. “Light, fire, and disillusionment magics would be good for countering illusions and shadows.”

“Speed, strength, and… my magic,” I add. “They’re fast and hard to hurt, and my magic helps against them. Not my friends, but if I can get close enough I can take control, at least a little bit.”

“Well, if the undead monsters are already crawling out of hell…,” Lothar groans. “It’s better to have a monster on our side capable of fighting them off.”

“A secret organisation of necromancers…” Nadia shakes her head, gripping her bed so hard that her knuckles turn white.

“We can’t be sure that they’re necromancers,” Theo says. “Undead can be born naturally, they might’ve found some means of achieving it without necromantic magics. I know some powerful mages have concocted ways of turning themselves into immortal undead.”

“It’s necromancers,” Nadia shakes her head firmly. “You think it’s a coincidence that a powerful secret organisation of undead burned down Cildr just when Syr was born? The first natural necromancer in centuries?

“It can’t be a coincidence.”

“What do you think then?” Theo asks, leaning back and huffing a sigh.

“I don’t know, but something is going on with Cildr.”

“Do you remember how you developed your necromancy?” Adeleya nudges me. “Was there something strange about it?”

I shrug.

“I wanted to bring a bird back to life, so I tried to use magic to save it,” I say. It’s been a long time since then, but I can still remember the feeling. “My æther worked on its own to shape the magic, then I copied it.”

“You mean to say that you knew how to do it instinctively?” Theo asks. “It came as second nature, æther doesn’t work on its own. As a natural necromancer, you should’ve known how to use it from your birth, like the wolven.”

I shake my head. Talking about it has brought the memory back that much more clearly.

“The æther worked on its own,” I say. “It felt like it was trying to guide me.”

Nadia stares at me, nodding firmly to herself.

“There’s some conspiracy behind this. I don’t think they know about Syr yet, otherwise they’d have come for her, but I’m sure that she’s involved in this somehow.”

“What do you think, Syr?” Adeleya asks.

“I don’t know. I don’t care,” I lean back onto her. The way she looks at me isn’t what I want. She’s worried, and it feels good to be worried about, but it’s not what I want.

“These people destroyed Cildr and they cursed you with necromancy,” Nadia says. “You don’t want revenge?”

I shake my head. It stings that she refers to my magic as a curse, but I don’t know if there’s anything I can do to make her see things the way I do.

What’s the point in revenge?

If they want to hurt my new family I will hunt them down and kill them until they stop, and it seems like we’ll have to do just that, but if they just didn’t bother us I’d be fine leaving them alone.

Nadia won’t. Her massive muscles are tensing in frustration as she glares at her own hands.

“Then we’ll head to Cildr and see if any clues remain,” Theo says. “If there are more of those undead waiting for us out there, then I’d rather not wait for them to make the first move.”

I nod quickly, and everyone else is satisfied with the plan.

The town outside is already cleaned up, the one house is still burnt down to nothing, and a few tall bonfires are still burning around the town. I’m not sure they can find enough wood to keep it going forever.

“It seems we have to thank you again,” Evelyn smiles as she greets us, “I don’t know if we can scrounge enough money to pay you for all of this.”

“For all our sakes, nothing happened here, and you have nothing to pay us for,” Theo says. “Nothing but two young men dying in a terrible hunting accident.”

“Will there be more coming?” She grips at the sword hanging off her hip.

“We can’t be certain,” Theo says. “It’s best for us all to prepare in case the worst should come about.”

“Was going to do that anyway,” Evelyn chuckles staring away from us and towards a great big fire. “Any chance you’d be interested in taking a quest to stick around for a year and train the locals?”

“No, but we can send the request to the guild house in Snowspring. I’ll make sure to have a few words around town and get you someone competent who knows what’s happened and can keep their lips shut tight.”

“That would be appreciated,” Evelyn says. “Some of the town will probably be leaving after this.”

“Can’t say I blame them,” Theo says.

“No, but most of us are here because we have nowhere else to go,” she says. “At least we have a home here, even if we have to fight for it.”

“Fight hard,” I grab her arm, and meet her eyes when she looks down at me. “Don’t let them take it from you.”

“We won’t,” she smiles wide enough that I can see her teeth. A good vicious smile.

We drift around town, helping the others here and there, before eventually, we reach the spot where we battled against the terrible undead man.

The three dead men are already gone, their ‘loot’ burned or destroyed. No one wanted to risk more terrible things happening.

It isn’t hard to find the spot where we fought. The street is still blackened; the muddy earth is dried, cracked and charred.

“Sandy,” I kneel and touch the ground where she fell. “Thank you, and I’m sorry.”

“Syr…” Adeleya grips my shoulder.

“It’s alright,” I say.

Everything eventually becomes ash.

She stands beside me until I’m ready to move. We have a future ahead of us, and after we’re done helping around town, it’s time to return to a place that I used to call home.

When I get there, I’m going to tell Adeleya how I feel. I don’t want to leave it unsaid. We could become ash at any time, and by then it’ll be too late.