Eliax walked back towards Alsen’s place, contemplating the merits of trying to actually make friends with these people. She had Illila…apparently. Even if she was kind of annoyed at her still for spilling her secrets, it was clearly not the end of the world yet.
It had only been a couple of days though, she couldn’t accurately say if any of these connections would last. She didn’t really know any of them yet.
What would her future look like? What would she be doing in a year? In ten? If she could get past the paint, could she ever be a normal person? She…might one day look back on all this and regret it.
Eliax shook her head and pulled out her notebook, flipping through the pages and pages of memories, it was still mostly blank, there was still so much that she didn’t know. She couldn’t simply leave it alone. She hadn’t been able to do that for ten years. Ten years of picking at the broken pieces and wishing she could see the whole picture.
She flipped to the first page, remembering when Estin had given her the journal, when she’d actually used it as a journal.
1st of Teivet, 766
I remembered my mothers face today, she was beautiful. Somehow I know that she’s dead. I think my father is dead too, whoever he was. At least I have Estin. We’re leaving Aubinere today, I think that there’s someone after him, but I’ve never seen them.
He goes to taverns a lot, I think he’s trying to forget something. Why would he want that? I can barely remember what kind of food I like, I would hate to forget.
Eliax breathed out slowly, pondering her future. She could make money with dimensionalism, if she could ever focus on it enough, if she could find the memories she knew she had that contained the secrets of the craft.
She breathed in again and paused at the scent of rot.
Her mind sharpened in less than a moment, she felt her hand stray to her knife and instinctively draw it, she peered past the street lamps into the darkness of the night, trying to get her eyes to focus on what she knew was there. It shuffled in the darkness and the scent of rot increased.
A creature.
Something dead.
Eliax decided right then that no matter how this ended, she would look for some light spells. No matter how bad she was at them. She ended up in the darkness far too much without suitable lighting for this to be something she could keep ignoring.
Eliax stepped backward, prompting the creature to step forward.
It looked like a Saelden, the tree folk that were closer to being golems than intelligent beings. This one was shaped more like a canine though, standing on four legs, the twisting branches that made up its body were in that unmistakable shape, but it was also somehow wrong. Most of its leaves were completely gone and the ones that remained were brown and dead, barely sticking onto the cracked wood.
Pieces of the wood were missing, revealing an inky black abyss beneath it, like a shell that was hiding something terrible. An entire front leg was missing, leaving nothing but leaking darkness in the shape of an arm, instead of paws it had claws that grasped at the air with jerking motions.
Eliax almost screamed.
Almost.
She refused to stoop to that level though, the level of someone who didn’t have enough self control to push past her terror. She should be better than that. She should always be better. That didn’t mean she wasn’t scared though, she couldn’t control that part. That just proved how badly she was failing.
She backed up even more, holding her knife up and warily staring at the monster. The creature jerked its head sharply as if tilting it. It didn’t seem aggressive, but that didn’t really mean much. It was clearly undead, which meant it had to have a…master.
The scent of rot was all she could really think about, and as most beings with terrible noses tend to be, it sparked connections that otherwise might have been overlooked.
The necromancer in the dungeons.
When she’d met him there had been an underlying scent of rot all over the place. Plus there was Illila’s cousin, who claimed to have heard strange noises down in the dungeon. She’d written that off but what if this was the creature that had been making the noises?
It didn’t completely line up, she was more than halfway across the city from the palace presently and there was little reason for the necromancer to set something like this loose if he had a good place to keep it.
Unless he was trying to get ‘revenge’ on Jiuhen right now, which struck Eliax as monumentally stupid, even if it was something that felt likely.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“Can you understand me?” She managed to ask the creature, her voice was wavering, but in general it was a lot more firm than she’d expected it to be. Good job.
The creature tilted its head to the other side sharply, it made a groaning noise.
Right, most undead probably couldn’t really talk even if they were smarter than a rock. She would have to read up on them apparently…She would have to read up on a lot of things.“Uh, could you take me to your master? I’d like to have a chat with him.”
The creature straightened its spine suddenly and a puff of black smoke erupted from the cracks in its wooden shell. Eliax almost fled right then, curiosity notwithstanding. After a moment it began to amble away in a supremely disturbing fashion, limbs jerking without anything that resembled a smooth gait.
Hesitantly, Eliax followed it.
She regretted the decision when the creature entered one of the lesser lit areas of the city, plowing straight through a fence that looked like a particularly strong breeze could knock the entire thing over. Eliax sent an anxious look at the dark house it belonged to, but continued behind the tree zombie even as a scenario of law enforcement stumbling upon them and assuming she was the necromancer tumbled into her mind. A scenario that seemed…almost familiar. Sparks, what kinds of crap had her past self done for that to be something familiar?!
Eliax shoved the slightly impressed and concerned feeling to the back of her mind as she realized that the undead Saelden had stopped. It peered at a small house for a while before going up to a window and sitting back so it could peer through. The thing made noises that resembled begging and scratched at the glass, which was strange since it was definitely capable of simply breaking through it. It was nearly twice Eliax’s height for goodness sake.
She simply watched it however, really hoping that its master was in there and not just some random civilians. She wasn’t sure what she should do if the thing was simply confused.
After a while a light turned on in the room and a candle was held up to the glass for a long, tense moment. The angle was wrong so Eliax couldn’t see the figure very well, but after a moment the light went out again and the back door was opening, revealing a concerned looking necromancer in his pajamas.
“What are you doing here?” He hissed under his breath, “I told you to go back to the underrealm, come on! Nasei, you remember that place, right?!”
The creature jerked its head to the side suddenly and a puff of black smoke came out of its cracks again. It glanced back at Eliax, looking oddly pleased with itself for a demonic beast. Kind of like a dog in more than just appearance it seemed... It stood up straight on its four legs, dwarfing both of the Tuvei, and finally the necromancer -Niun she thought his name was- seemed to see her.
“...Eliax?”
She grinned hesitantly, “...yeah?”
He groaned. “Jeref. You are the least cooperative undead I’ve ever summoned, I hope you know.”
The creature happily fell over onto the grass in a clatter of creaking branches and crunching leaves.
“Didn’t you get reported to the academy for necromancy? Don’t they take that kind of thing badly?”
Niun grunted, “I was suspended and they did a full examination of my workshop in the dungeon. Thankfully this idiot was long gone at that point so they didn’t really have any evidence besides the report and my Soul mage affinity.”
Jeref didn’t seem to mind being called an idiot, if indeed it actually understood what that meant. “Ah, well sorry to hear about that?”
“Are you going to report me again? At this point I don’t even care, my entire future is ruined. They probably won’t let me back into the Academy anyways and nowhere else will even teach the basics of my skill. Never mind that Empaths and Shifters are a million times more sinister. Plus the royal enforcers will probably know about me now and discriminate the heck out of everything I do…”
Eliax cleared her throat awkwardly. “It was actually Illila who reported you. If it makes you feel better, she spilled everything she knew about me too.”
“The only thing worse than being a soul mage is being a dragon. I doubt your life is ruined.”
The creature peered up at them curiously and made a strange growling-groaning noise.
“Okay, well they hate undead too.” Niun amended.
Eliax grunted in a way that could be interpreted as agreement. “Well It’s not like I don’t have my own crap to deal with. I’m not going to report you as long as you aren’t killing children or summoning demons.”
He snorted, “If I wanted to summon a demon I’d have to get past the blockage in the void. It would take a lot more than a couple children to knock a hole through.” Huh, strange.
“That clarification isn’t helping you much, mister sinister vibes.”
Niun sighed, glancing at the undead creature who was now digging at the dirt for…some reason. “Jeref. Go home. I released you from the contract.”
The zombie glanced up at him and moaned sadly. Niun grimaced.
Eliax watched the exchange, not really seeing anything she could do about it. “So…you aren’t going to go all vengeful on that empath with this guy? That’s kind of what I assumed.”
Niun laughed awkwardly, “That was ah…that was the original plan. I realized how stupid it was though, that’s why I tried to get rid of Jeref.”
They both watched the creature for several minutes. “Well.” Eliax eventually said, shifting her stance, sparks her legs were getting tired. “I think you should just take him outside the city and let him terrorize some cave while you think about what to do. In fact, I think I know just the place.” At least…the resonance thought it knew just the place. Eliax wasn’t about to trust that this particular spot was still devoid of civilization.
Niun brightened somewhat, “Oh! Really? Where’s it at?”
She paused uncomfortably as the resonance finished feeding her information about the spot. That was…not ideal for her, but it certainly increased the chances of no one looking there.. “I’ll…draw you a map. You don’t happen to be deathly allergic to any mushrooms, do you? Particularly…Sandfrost.”
They parted ways soon after, it really wasn’t Eliax’s problem what Niun ended up doing with his zombie, but she left feeling rather good about the entire experience. She was getting better in leaps and bounds lately. Sure, she was losing more and more sleep every night thanks to the nightmares. Sure, she couldn’t think too hard about some…stuff without her vision going red, but all in all, she could probably be mistaken for a regular person at this rate!