“No, stop!” Isaac shouted. He rushed up to the child and dragged her from the corpse. “You don’t have to do that anymore.”
For a child to witness their guardian’s despicability, to be forced to partake in their horrendous rituals; that was not how life was meant to be. This child- her name was Mylah if he remembered correctly- had been an unwilling accomplice in her great-great-grandmother’s evil deeds. Now, the old woman had been dealt with; cruelly, but her fate was deserved. So there was no more reason for the child to engage in those disgusting practises anymore.
At least that was what he thought before he saw the huge lump the girl had come away with. Also, it was difficult not to notice that the rate at which Mylah’s wound was closing had exponentially increased afterwards. This, he could tell right away, was the work of the phantom.
“What sort of abomination did you turn her into?” he demanded.
Sage met him with a frown, but she did not refuse a response. “The ritual circle I used contained elements of ghouls, characteristics of skeleton knights and what I’ve gleaned so from my vampirism tests. It was probably not the best choice for an undead considering the current predicament.”
Isaac shot her a glare. “You think!”
What in the world was wrong with her? After the hysterics she pulled off when she discovered the finger in her soup, how could she subject a child to an eternal fate of subsisting on human flesh?
And the child, when Isaac dragged her away from the dead woman’s thigh, her eyes had been unfocused; now they had cleared up, making the girl aware of her surroundings. Her eyes flew around the destroyed basement, coming to stop at the broken body of her ancestor. He could almost hear the gears in her head grinding as her mind toiled to put together a picture of what had happened. When comprehension dawned her eyes, they shook and her mouth quivered. Her teeth he could see were back to normal; two small tusks jutting out her lower lip like before.
“It’s okay,” he whispered when her sorrowful quivers began.
He wrapped an arm around her quaking form, not knowing how much comfort it was for her considering his cold nature. His eyes returned to the phantom with an even more intense glare.
“Well,” the undead witch responded with a shrug. “I told you I’m not taking care of a kid. She’s your problem now”
Then she turned away, no longer paying attention to him. Afterwards, she called her familiar’s name and the little monster- always eager to please- popped out of her shadow immediately. Isaac watched as Sage bent down and picked Nyx up, scratched him at the back of the ears and asked him to cough up a spellbook. Then, in the presence of mutilated corpses, she found a place to sit down and began flipping through the pages.
There were so many things Isaac wished to say to her. However, he knew they would amount to naught, so he quelled his raging emotions and asked a question unrelated to what he truly wanted to say...
“What are you doing?”
For the next few seconds, the phantom was content with ignoring him. She flipped through dozens of pages before finally stopping at one of the last ones. Then she folded the book and showed him the page she had chosen. On it was a spell model with a pattern more complicated than he was used to, one that was difficult to make head or tails of. However, the label atop the page displayed the spell’s name. Reading it, he could not help recoil; for it was one of the most feared spells in existence.
[Death].
Among all the spells necromancers had access to, the 9th Order spell alone is said to embody the deceased Vatran. Although an attack spell, [Death] caused no damage to its targets; once someone was hit with it, they would simply drop to the ground, dead. A reason the spell induced terror, even among the high-ranking members of the Church, was that those struck by [Death] would stay down permanently. [Resurrection] could not bring them back; also, it was impossible to make an undead of the person.
“I just struggled to subdue a hunchback hag,” the phantom stated with pursed lips. “That, more than anything, is an indication that I need to Advance; especially if I’m determined not to experience such nonsense again.”
Listening to her, Isaac did not have a response. Had she not just Advanced recently?
Barely two months had passed since he had first encountered the undead. Back then she did not use spells higher than the 5th Order. In the short time that had followed, she had climbed an unbelievable three Orders. Now she wanted to Advance again?
She is an undead, he had to remind himself. Their kind did not incur the risks the living did.
Even so, the fact that Sage could Advance so fast was a frightening fact to consider. If she continued at her current pace, would it not mean that by next month she would enter Ultra-Order? A Transcendent Sage; there were few thoughts as unpleasant as that one.
If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
The phantom went back to her notes and he focused on consoling Mylah. The distraught girl mourned, but there were no tears; having been raised as an undead, she had been stripped of the ability as he had. She could not weep for the sight before her eyes, for the destruction of her home and the death of her forebearer. Even if she had been a terrible excuse for a human being, it was normal to weep for family. Though the girl mourned, no tears were shed for what she had become; not one rolled down her cheek to commemorate the sorrowful event that was the loss of her humanity.
What have I done?
Where had the idea to turn the Mylah into an undead come from? Never in his life had Isaac ever thought he would suggest such a thing. Undead were the bane of the living, an blight against the natural order of things. They stood against everything the Goddess stood for. The only interaction that could happen between the living and the undead was of destroyer and destroyed; no other relationships were allowed. To suggest someone be turned into an undead, even if it was to save them, was the height of blasphemy. Could it even be called saving when the person became the antithesis of all that the Goddess embodied? Isaac understood all this.
And yet, he had pled for an undead viler than most to convert a child whose only sin was being born in the wrong family. Because of him, Mylah was now condemned to the fate of being a flesh eating-abomination. What was he thinking when he asked the phantom to use her abhorrent arts on the girl? He deserved to be punished for his sin. If only the goddess could hear his prayers and smite him from the heavenly seat of Feyheim.
“Okay, I’m done,” Sage’s voice cut through his thoughts.
His gaze returned to her as she called the familiar’s name. Nyx once again popped out of her shadow and she handed him the book. After that, she stood up from her seat and turned to him.
“I’m ready,” she declared. “Make sure nothing interferes.”
Isaac watched her lie on ground, tighten her jaw and seal her eyes shut. She took a single breath and exhaled; in preparation, he assumed.
Being a former sorcerer, he was no stranger to Advancement. The first was a minor inconvenience, nothing worth worrying about. However, the feeling rose with each subsequent climb. At the 3rd Order, the pain was already greater than most experienced. The 4th Order- the first of the middle Orders- was a completely different realm of pain one had to endure. To get to the higher Orders was exponentially worse. Isaac had experienced it when he entered the 7th Order. It was one of the worst things he had experienced in his life; on par with the phantom’s poison. For those who had gone through an Advancement, particularly those who had ascended beyond the 3rd Order, it was understandable why some sorcerers did not survive the transformation of their mana.
When the phantom felt she was fully prepared, she cast her spell.
For a brief period after the complicated spell was completed, there was calm. Sage lay on the ground with her eyes shut, her posture one of leisure. Shortly after, she bit her lip to quell any sound that might escape from her mouth. She was not able to keep it going for long though, as moments after she opened her mouth and released pent-up grunts. Soon the grunts turned to groans. A minute into the Advancement all inhibitions were cast aside. Sage opened her mouth to the limit and let her screams pierce the night. Her voice was so loud that Isaac was forced to let go of Mylah to plug his ears with his fingers; an act the girl replicated.
Then, things took an unusual turn.
Without warning, for no reason at all; he was suddenly struck by an ominous feeling. At his side, he picked out the girl’s gasp from Sage’s shrieks through his smothered hearing. A quick glance at her and he saw her eyes wide open, staring at the surroundings. Following her line of sight, he was met with the mindboggling scene of shivering shadows.
The sky above was empty of clouds and the stars consistently rained their radiance on Aran, so he was certain what he was seeing was not a trick of light. Even if he believed it to be so, witnessing shadows from different directions all elongate towards the screaming undead would have killed that belief. Even his and the girl’s shadows moved of their own accord, hands reaching for Sage.
The shadows chased much of the light away as they made contact with the screaming undead. Their peculiar behaviour cast the area in disarray, sending birds and insects nearby scurrying away in panic. A yowl was heard from nearby as the distorted shadows expelled a miserable-looking Nyx. The night itself trembled in conjunction with the undead sorceress’ shrieks, while the shadows grasped at her. Isaac was certain they were doing something to her; what it was, he was unable to tell.
As someone who was once a member of the Paladins, he had witnessed some of his seniors’ Advancement to the 9th Order. Theirs had been nothing like what was happening before his eyes!
What in the world is she?
The fact that Sage as a phantom was capable of spellcraft was already beyond the norm; this spectacle exposed something else entirely. There was way more to her than he had originally thought, way more than the High Priestess had believed.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the screams ceased and the shadows returned to normal.
Sage continued to lie on the ground, her eyes tightly shut with tears- her kind it seemed were capable of them- rolling down her temples. A minute passed where everyone remained rooted to their spot. Then Sage brought up her hand and wiped her tears away. Afterwards, she sat up and looked at the sky. Then she opened her mouth and shouted at the top of her lungs.
“FUUUUCCCKKK!!!!”
She paid no heed to her curse being thrown back at her by the surroundings. Using her shaky hands to hoist herself to her feet, she stumbled twice in the process before she eventually managed it.
The first to say something after she got up was the cat.
“Master,” he cried happily, rushing to her. “You’ve Advanced once again! Congratulat-”
“Save it!” the undead sorceress cut him off, anger leaking through her voice. The cat shrank back as her glare fell upon Isaac. “Call your horse. We’re leaving this damn place.”
Without another word, she raised her hand and cast [Dimension Door]. Isaac grabbed the girl’s hand and followed Sage through the portal. They appeared topside, about ten metres from the inn.
The phantom’s face was still etched in a frown as she turned to look back at the rubble.
“Fuck this place,” she muttered.
Then she raised her hand and a spell erupted from her. Just as she finished, a pillar of fire rained down upon what was left of the inn.
The scene nearly caused his eyes to fall out of his head, particularly when he saw the colour of the flames.
Black, like the dreadful accounts of yore.