Zereh sat against a tree with her head in her hands. Gnarled roots twisted by dark magic curled around her.
Emrys looked from her to the tower entrance, unsure if he should say anything.
“Are you okay?” he finally asked
Zereh sighed. “I could probably have handled that better. I’m sure he’s on his way to make my life hell right now.”
“What could he do to you while you’re here?”
“Not this,” Zereh gestured at herself. “My real life.”
They sat in silence for a bit, Emrys needing to ask the question but also being terrified of the answer. Zereh being completely oblivious to his inner turmoil, drained as she was from the confrontation.
“He called this a game,” Emrys finally said. “Is that why immortals treat us the way they do? They think this is a game?”
Zereh buried her face. “We can’t talk about this,” she said, her voice muffled.
“Why not? This is my life, Zereh. It’s Sven’s life.”
The woman grimaced. “Because I can’t talk about it. That’s the kind of thing that could get me banned. Exiled from this world.”
“That could happen?” Emrys said, facing her. “How?”
Zereh lifted her gaze. “Did you think the Unknown God found us by accident? Or as some kind of coincidence?”
“You mean–.”
“They’re watching. And there are rules for our conduct in this place.”
Emrys absorbed that information. He had always known the immortals to be arrogant and inconsiderate. They always acted as though their own lives were worth more than the mortals. It should come as no surprise that they took it one step further and considered their time in the world as no more than a game.
And yet. There was a grand injustice to it. The immortals would saunter from their world to his, that they would toy with the lives of his friends and family and worst of all, that they would be so much stronger that the mortals welcomed them in with open arms, grateful for their attention.
In the midst of all that was Zereh. An immortal, yes, but she was also becoming a friend. And she had her own struggles with the other immortals. A conflict he’d never imagined existed.
He put a hand on hers. “That paladin isn’t worth your time. Whatever he tries to do to you, in this world or yours, I know you can overcome it.”
Her eyes met his and he realized with a jolt how close they were to each other. He gulped and leaned back.
A scream echoed out of the tower.
Zereh grimaced. “One thing at a time, eh? Let’s finish off this necromancer of yours.”
Emrys rose unsteadily to his feet and followed her into the tower. Now that they had finally reached their goal he found himself reluctant to continue, worried what he might find. His urgency was abruptly replaced by an overabundance of caution.
But as Zereh disappeared through the pitch black doorway he forced one foot in front of the other. Not just for Sven now, but for her too. She was in this mess because of him, and if Brayden was any indication she was sacrificing more than he realized to get through this.
Dim light filtered in through hairline cracks in the walls, the cracks following the same pattern as the white roots that snaked around the outside of the tower walls.
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust, but when they did Emrys gasped. Cages lined the walls. Each one was large enough to house a person. They were lined with dried grass, and there was a small side table that could hold a food tray. Aside from that they resembled cages for animals.
Most were empty, but several held the remains of long forgotten captives. Zereh was checking each cage methodically for useful items, even going so far as to pat down the bodies.
“Sven?” Emrys croaked. “Sven, are you in here?” His voice shook.
Zereh finished her sweep of the room. “Emrys, come here.”
He rushed to her side, heart in his throat. Looking into the cage he expected nothing more than to see his best friend lying prone like the others, his corpse a testament to Emrys’s failure in their relationship. But it wasn’t Sven’s face peering up through the bars. A young girl gripped the bars, her blue eyes wide with fear and hope.
“Lilith!” Emrys crouched beside the young girl and pressed his hand against hers. “How did you get here?”
The girl swallowed heavily. “Do you have any water?”
Emrys looked to Zereh for the answer.
She searched her pack. “We have holy water but that’s it.”
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“That should be fine, right? She can barely talk.”
With a quick grumble about the cost of water, Zereh fished a bottle from her pack and passed it over.
Lilith gulped it down. “Thank you,” she sighed. Already, color was returning to her cheeks and there was a spark of defiance in her eyes .
“Zereh, did you find a key? Or can we break the bars?”
The warrior gave him a look of exasperation. “I don’t think it’ll be that easy. We’ll have to stop the necromancer, and loot the key from his body. That holy water healed her though, so she should be fine while we climb the tower.”
“It’s only two stories tall, actually,” the girl said. It just looks tall from outside because of an illusion.
Zereh rolled her eyes. “Lazy developers.”
“What?”
“Never mind. You’ve been upstairs?”
The girl nodded. “He said he didn’t mean to kidnap me, but he would use me in the ritual if he had to. Then the skeletons brought back those boys, and he put me back down here.”
The arcanist’s breath caught. “Have you seen Sven? When you went upstairs, was he there?”
Lilith’s eyes filled with tears and she backed into the far corner of the cage. She shook her head hard and clasped her hands over her ears.
Zereh and Emrys looked at each other, alarmed.
“Lilith?” Zereh asked. “What did you see?”
Lilith just shook her head. She was done answering questions.
“Onwards and upwards, then.”
Emrys searched Lilith’s face for any clue of what she had seen. Sven was definitely here, in this horrible place. And if her reaction was anything to go by, something truly terrible had happened to him.
“Right,” he said. “Stairs are this way”.
The stone staircase spiraled sharply. Even peering upwards they couldn’t get any kind of preview into the next room.
Once again Zereh took the lead. If anyone was going to be hit in the face with a trap, it would be the immortal in the party.
The screams grew louder as they ascended. Mixed in with that, Emrys was able to make out laughter. Ruthless, malicious laughter.
When he finally rounded the last corner, the arcanist nearly fell to his knees in shock.
Zereh stepped quietly to the side, as yet unnoticed. The necromancer was focused on his work. Emerys knew that was the strategic action. The longer they could maintain stealth the more effective would be their surprise. But he couldn’t help himself.
“Sven?” The name fell from his lips, thick with horror.
Five captives were bound and gagged, one at each point of a pentacle star. Judging by their wounds and the wet red of the symbol, it was painted in their blood. At the center of the room was a blonde woman lying on a stone table. She wore the white robe of the deceased, and her arms were crossed over her chest. If not for the alarming bruises across her skin, she looked asleep.
The necromancer was dragging a wicked looking dagger across a woman’s shoulder in an intricate pattern. The other captives already had their shoulders exposed. If they had the same carving, it was obscured by the blood.
But at the sound of Emrys’s voice, the necromancer looked up from his work. Annoyance twisted his handsome face. “Emrys. What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you.” The arcanist’s voice was strangled. “You were learning rune magic. For this? For necromancy?”
“Ohh, snap,” Zereh murmured.
Sven’s lip curled. “You could have helped me, you know. I wanted your help. But all you could talk about were your precious dungeons.”
“What is this all for?” Emrys pleaded, not wanting to believe the evidence before his eyes. “Are you trying to save her?” His eyes darted again to the dead woman on the table. Stephanie.
“That’s how it started. I’m a healer, after all. Thanks to you.”
The arcanist’s mind was racing. “Then you could have brought her back with a revival spell. No need for all this.” He gestured at the wounded people before him. All five looked to him with an equal mix of horror and relief in their eyes.
“Without the help of a master healer it would take years to learn that spell,” Sven snarled. “Besides, there’s a limit to how long you can wait before the spell is ineffective. The only way I could bring her back is with necromancy.” He grinned suddenly and Emrys found that he no longer recognized his friend. “The beauty of it is, not only do I get her back, I can punish those responsible for her death at the same time.” He paced around the pentagram and grabbed two of the men by the hair, lifting their faces. “The Wardlaw brothers, who dragged her away from the festival and pushed her into the field.”
One of them coughed. “That’s not–”
“Shut up.” The necromancer punctuated with a kick to the stomach. He grabbed the chin of the next man. “The farmer who lost control of his cows. The healer who is too drunk to do her God’s damn job. And last but certainly not least, the absolute buffoon who thought it would be a good idea in the first place to set off fireworks next to a herd of cows.” He kicked the last man with particular vehemence.
“You see, Emrys? This is justice. For Stephanie. Because she deserves to live. And because no one else was going to hold these bastards accountable.”
“What about the innocents who were attacked by your undead when you sent them to kidnap these five? What about Lilith downstairs?”
Sven’s eyes softened for a moment, then hardened once more to flinty gray. “The elders should have prosecuted when I first brought them the evidence that these people were responsible. It’s their own choices that led to this.”
Emrys’s heart broke a little more with every word. How much of this was a result of his own inattention and how much a product of who Sven had always been? A man willing to do whatever it took to save the people he loved, even if it meant crossing every line.
“I have to stop you,” he said. “You understand that, don’t you?”
The necromancer cocked his head. “You can try.” Yellow light danced across his fingers. “You know what’s funny? I actually wasn’t sure I’d have enough juice for this ritual, even with five sacrifices to fuel the death magic. But after your paladin friend decided to help me out, I feel good. Good enough in fact, to reanimate some reinforcements.”
Emrys whirled around. Running up the stairs was the same overgrown undead they just defeated. That Brayden defeated.
Zereh was at his side in a second. “We don’t have as much room to maneuver here, but it doesn’t either.”
Behind them, Sven began to chant. The ritual had begun.
Emrys called fire into the shape of a sword and lunged forward. The blade of fire swiped across the undead, dealing fire damage across its chest.
The beast roared, but the arcanist was able to dodge away before it could retaliate. The confined space of the winding staircase worked against the oversized creature. If they could keep it trapped on the narrow steps, they could whittle away its health.
The two adventurers quickly fell into a rhythm. One at a time they drew the creature’s ire, then darted away before they could be hit themselves. Emrys was exhausted when the undead finally fell, but he was unscathed.
Zereh handed him a stamina potion. He gulped it down. Exhaustion fled from his limbs in the fog cleared from his mind.
At that moment, Sven’s chanting ceased. Emrys faced his old friend, but the necromancer had become unrecognizable. Thick lines of purple magic rose from each of the five sacrifices, all of whom lay dead, their throats cut. The blood floated alongside the magic, swirling around Sven until he was obscured.
The mage stretched out his hand towards Stephanie, and the red-purple swirl poured into her. It covered her completely, soaking into her body, filling her with life and magic.
There was a beat of silence. Then she gasped with breath.
She was alive.