Natasha stepped into Coal’s tiny entranceway early morning and a day later than she’d intended. Relative to the rest of the house, the front hallway was quite narrow, almost as if the builder had designed the house not for company but to keep the rest of the world out. In contrast to the unwelcoming foyer Coal’s door was often unlocked. His reputation kept enough people away and he had his own ways of detecting when guests had arrived. Most people still rung the doorbell anyway but Natasha had been here often enough to know she was welcome.
She went through to the bar. He wasn’t anywhere to be seen but that didn’t bother her. She knew he’d be along shortly.
The vase sat in the middle of a clean table. That was what she was here for. She’d been lusting after it for years, ever since she’d first learnt of it through an acquaintance of Mrs Milton's. It was a necromancer’s dream but when she’d offered Mrs Milton money to buy it, the old woman had played ignorant. Now that she was dead though, the vase could finally be hers, for a little fee of course, but she had plenty of money and she didn’t mind spending some of it on something like this.
She reached out to touch it, then froze, her fingertips only inches from the edge of the vase. Now that she was this close she could see the layer of moisture on the outside of the vase. That wasn’t right. If the vase was pulling heat from the air then that could only mean one thing.
Natasha withdrew her hand and took a wary step back. The room temperature dropped several degrees. Surely Coal wouldn’t have been stupid enough to leave it without a bounding circle? Even if he didn’t know what it was, especially when he didn’t know what it was.
“Coal?” she called out in a trembling voice.
There was no answer.
Natasha turned to leave but at some time in the last minute or two a cloud of mist had been forming behind her and so when she turned she came face to face with a thick white wall.
She gasped, and along with that quick sharp intake of air, she swallowed the cloud whole. It filled her up until she found she breathe in no more, nor could she breathe out. Her hands flew to her throat. She tried to shout, to cry, to call for help. But she was voiceless. Then her mind started to burn and boil, like there were two souls fighting for control. The pressure was too much to bare. Her vision blurred and darkened. The last thing she heard was Coal’s voice as he entered the room.
“Natasha?”
Coal had known something was wrong from the moment the temperature had dropped. He had noticed that Natasha had arrived but he’d been in the middle of just finishing off composing an important letter so had decided to let her wait a little while first. But then things had gotten cold very very quickly. It was like he’d just been plunged into an icy pool of water, or worse, for it had been far colder than the icy water he liked to throw on his face every morning to help him start the day. That was a pleasant chill. This, in contrast was a malicious, stabbing, heart-stopping cold, that left one struggling to breathe. Despite the impending feeling of doom, Coal had left his letter and raced toward the source of it.
He entered the room in time to see Natasha drop to the ground on the other side of the table as a thick white mist emerged from her body. It rose up in the air and hovered for a moment. Coal got the distinctive impression that it was eyeing him up, despite there being no obvious eyes that he could see.
The room was different from how he’d left it. The cleaner had obviously been in and had moved the tree and cleaned up the dirt. All of the dirt. Even the circle he’d specifically requested to be left alone. The vase was still there, and it looked, he noted, to be covered in a slowly thickening layer of frost. He glanced between the vase and cloud.
The cloud bunched up and then it flew directly toward him.
Somewhere far away on a completely different continent where no roads led, among the forest in a nicely built house by a river but far from anything civilised, a bulky red-headed aristocrat, awoke to the ringing of a cellphone and a weight on his chest. It took him a moment to figure out where he was and that the weight he felt on top of him was the body of a naked sleeping woman, a worldjumper called Iyx. She was bony and fox-faced, and her hair was long and straight, and as red as his own. She stirred. Her big brown eyes blinked once or twice as she looked up and recognised him as Grim, a man famous among the aristocrats because of his father’s magical talents. When he’d been born people had expected great things of him. Grim, had thus far done everything he could to fail to live up to all of their expectations. It wasn’t because he wasn’t talented. He was just exceptionally lazy and very contrarian.
“Aren’t you going to get that?” Iyx asked. She hated phones herself, or anything much to do with people really. People made her anxious. Only very special exceptional people knew of her house by the river and were allowed to visit her here. Grim was one such lucky soul, and the one who had introduced him and Iyx just happened to be on the other end of the line.
“Stella,” Grim remarked as he recognised the voice. He did not bother to get out of bed, but beside him he watched as Iyx slipped out from under the sheets and padded across the floor. The bed they were on was only inches from the ground and Grim had a damn fine view of every inch of her. She bent down and picked up a pink silken robe from off the floor, and with a shy glance back, that made Grim want to pull her back into bed, she slipped the robe on and loosely tied it shut.
“Grim! Grim! Are you listening?” Stella asked from down the other end of the line.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
“Huh? Yeah, yeah I’m listening.” Grim half-listened as he watched Iyx curl strands of her long hair up with a couple of short sticks and coil them all together into an intricately crafted bun. She held it together with two of the sticks and he marvelled at how well it stayed put. Then she padded off in the direction of the bathroom.
Stella’s voice filtered into his brain. “Grim, Coal’s in trouble. It may even be too late now. You have to get over there.”
That got Grim’s attention. Grim had known Coal since kindergarten. They had been friends, good friends, him Coal, and another guy called Lucifer, Luci to his friends. Technically they still were but life had a way of eating up time and before you knew it a few months had gone by. Now they mostly only saw one another if it was at a social gathering or if it involved business. Which meant Lucifer saw each of them the most on account of he was a lawyer and Grim had no business other than spending his family’s money and seducing woman. Okay, that wasn’t quite true, sometimes he dreamwalked deliveries for Iyx and Stella. Iyx brought in goods from the old world but Iyx hated interacting with people so Stella did distribution, but moving the items from Iyx’s place was tricky for Stella and so for a cut of the profits, Grim moved things from Iyx’s to more convenient locations around the globe, via the dreamworld. Not every item travelled this way, just the ones that got a rush put on them or weren’t worth the cost of a teleport spell to where ever they were going.
“Grim! Please!” Grim frowned. Things must be serious. Stella never begged, not in that voice anyway.
“Yeah, alright.” He finally made a move to get out of bed, then took a moment to try to remember where he’d thrown his pants. “How exactly do you expect me to get there? Dreamwalking takes a little while you know.”
“Use one of the teleports, in the lock box by the plant. Key code is 8021.”
Grim started to move faster. If Stella was using teleports on this...
He frowned. Iyx had a lot of plants.
“The droopy purple one next to the tall green one,” Stella told him, figuring out the situation before he could tell her.
“Got it,” Grim replied and then hung up. No time to waste.
Iyx returned as he was closing the lock box back up. “Is Stella coming to visit?” Her eyes lit up at the prospect.
Grim shook his head. “I gotta go, Stella needs me to save Coal or something.”
Iyx looked disappointed. “But you’ll come back?” she asked hopefully.
Grim nodded and kissed her head. “Always.” Then he vanished.
He reappeared again in Coal’s house just in time to see Coal shoot a blast of ice at a red vase. The item was quickly encased in a very solid, very nicely square looking block. Across the other side of the large table a cloud of mist suddenly dissipated.
“Oohh, you’ve got yourself some elemental ice powers, that’s new,” Grim remarked in an impressed voice, mostly at how tidy looking Coal’s block of ice was. “Can you get me some of those?”
Coal turned to Grim and blinked. He was surprised to see him. “Grim?”
“That’s me.” Grim surveyed the room. “Stella said you needed me but it looks like you’ve got everything under control...”
He trailed off as the block of ice suddenly cracked and a white mist started filtering out through the crack.
“Or not. Is that a spirit trap?” Grim asked as he peered at the vase through the thick wall of ice.
“I don’t know what it is,” Coal replied with a serious look. “Natasha wanted it.”
“Natasha? The necro?” Grim checked.
Coal nodded but his gaze was fixed on the quickly gathering mist before them.
“Oh, well probably is then.”
“And that?” Coal nodded at the white mist. He stood tensely, one hand in his pocket holding the ice elemental infusement he’d relieved Katrina of.
“That’ll be the spirit,” Grim replied with a grin, looking far more relaxed than Coal was.
Coal narrowed his eyes at him.
The last of the spirit appeared to be emerging from the crack in the ice now.
Grim continued, blase as ever. “You know? It’s a jar for preserving someone’s spirit, or soul, whatever you want to call it, really it’s just pattern of space or I don’t know. Point is you prep it before death then when you die your ghost gets preserved inside. It makes necromancy easier. Or you can capture someone’s essence immediately after death and it keeps longer while you set up a proper revival. Doesn’t work quite as well without the prep but it does the trick. Great for really intense interrogations.” He winked.
Coal was still frowning at him between looking with concern at the white cloud. “How do we kill it?”
“Oh, err...” Grim clicked his fingers a few times as if he couldn’t quite remember. “I think...”
“Grim!”
“Um...” A few more clicks of the fingers.
The cloud was bunching up again, just as it had before the last attack.
“That’s right!” Grim cried as clicked his fingers once more and reached forth and somehow managed to grab the ghost by the tail.
From Coal’s perspective each of them appeared frozen in time, Grim, leaning over but not quite falling, just poised in mid air.
Time seemed to go slowly and quickly all at the same time. Coal remembered it as if it had lasted a life time and yet he also felt he had little time to react before the ghost disappeared and Grim continued falling.
Coal grabbed him, but being smaller than Grim, they both stumbled a bit before finding their feet again.
“Thank you.” Grim nodded at Coal.
“Where’d it go?”
“Dreamworld.”
“Does that kill it?”
“Technically it’s already dead, but also no, and kinda. It’ll fade over time, I think. I don’t really know.” Grim was sure his father would have known though. He’d known everything there was to know about anything. The man had been Gwendolyn the Great back before he’d gone mad. Now the only thing left of him was a breathing but empty body and his useless son. Grim looked toward the vase. “There’s also the possibility it slips back out. Might wanna beef up some of your protections and see if you can sever it’s connection to the vase. Simple reversal spell oughta do the trick.” Grim took a seat at Coal’s bar. “You got any beer? I might help me remember the steps.” Even Grim’s preference for beer was snub to traditional aristocratic practices.
Coal ignored him but not because of the request for beer. He walked right past him focused on what lay on the other side of the table.
Grim frowned and followed him around. “What no thanks? I just saved your butt. You owe m...” Grim trailed off as he saw who lay on the floor.
Coal knelt on the ground and cradled Natasha’s limp corpse.
“Oh...” was all Grim said. What else could be said at a time like that? If Luci had been there he would known what to say, he’d always been the more sensitive of the three, but all Grim was good for was wisecracks.
Coal glanced up and nodded toward the vase. “How do we make it work?”
Grim looked at him with a sad expression and shook his head. “You have to sever the other soul first. It’s not a quick process.”
Coal looked down at Natasha’s face. It almost looked like she was just sleeping. What was a person supposed to do when their necromancer was the one who needed reviving?