Mort Cavendish's first assignment on campus was to be the removal, embalming and passing of the funeral rites of Ms Hemlock, recently deceased, 324 years old, emeritus Professor of Potions at Yan Bon Mor University.
The news was widespread by the next day, but Kimia, with her young woman’s perfectly attuned antennae, had already sensed it from the the remaining faculty who suddenly felt the dark cloud of death hang over their heads.
As for herself, she had gone home content in the knowledge that she would not be heading to a Potions class anytime soon.
In fact, she did not even stir herself out of bed when the great roar of the Black Wyvern echoed the walls of her dilapidated student room.
It was situated on the highest floor of the University’s housing, itself having once been a large attic, and it was all that her mothers could afford to place her in for the time being. It was dusty and moist and, at times, Wyvern’s droppings seemed to creep in at the most unexpected of places, all of which made it more difficult for Kimia to concentrate on the dreadful Potions formulae she had to rote memorise most of the time.
Kimia was not content with studying in an attic, and had banked on passing through Schols, the midterms exams which would earn her a scholarship, warm meals and a much more pleasurable place to sleep and study in. But the exams were still a month and a half away, so she had to make due with coming up and down several flights of stairs everyday until then.
That early morning, as the thick fog began to life for the first time in months, Kimia felt a sudden clearness in her mind which she’d so desperately sought when she tired through her degree of Potions. She took time to breathe, and decided she would try if she could find something fashionable to wear from what little clothes she had on her, and admire herself in the large mirror that had been left behind by the last inhabitant of the place.
She had always felt like an outsider most of the time while she lived in Yan Bon Mor. She was 5’9”, brunette and blessed with emerald eyes, but it was her olive skin that made sure she did not go amiss.
It had been inherited from her surrogate father, a Pendaline man who had once been an acquaintance to both of her farming mothers. How they’d come to convince him to give them a daughter was a mystery, but he agreed and soon the younger mother had given birth to a girl on the day of the Darkest Moon.
It was her Pendaline father who’d suggest the name Kimia when it became apparent that neither mother could settle on a name. It meant “Moon” in olde Pendaline speak, and was both fitting and more pleasurable to hear than some of the more traditional Yan Bon Mor names they’d picked out, like Guthrie or Ursula.
She tugged at her black frizzy hair, the hairpin the only thing she was wearing at the moment. It was also apparently inherited from him, and it seemed to forever remain frizzy despite her harsh attempts at brushing the untrimmed mess that it always was.
In truth, she had never met him, and eventually all letters between her mothers and him had fizzled out by the time she was three, but she’d always hoped to go to Pendaline and someday run into him in the most unusual of circumstances. It was a strange fantasy she’d concocted up to keep her nerves settled when she felt that strange disdain other children had for her, that should go to Pendaline and find comfort among other people who were olive skinned. Nor would she have to deal with the cold, something she never felt she could get used considering how much specially crafted knitwear had made for her.
It was practical knitwear, but it often covered her best assets, namely her slender frame and perky butt. A lifetime spent on the family farm had starved off the plumpness most Yan Bon Mor girls suffered from, but Kimia wondered if it was even worth having that if she was going to look like and overstuffed big girl in her sweater regardless.
She did not even attempt to rush down the staircases from her room in a hurry, nor did she find herself ruminating on the privileges others had in the floors below as she passed them by. Nor was there a halfheartedness as she moved through the snow to get to the campus gates.
Ms Hemlock’s death, as morally distasteful as it sounded, had set her free at last on the road to contentment. She could not even bring herself to get annoyed at Merrin, waiting for her at the gates like a preppy new friend, started prattling on about this or that or all the latest gossip that was centred around Mort Cavendish.
She nodded absentmindedly as they walked, until breaking out of her stupor when Merrin uttered a bizarre and brazen request.
“Want to come and watch Mort perform on Ms Hemlock?” She asked excitedly.
“Isn’t that, you know, off limits?” Kimia replied.
“Well, yes, but….” And then Merrin told her all about the secret hiding spot that was above the old Wyvern’s lair, and where Necromancy was soon to be taught once Mort had settled into his new life as a Professor of YBM university.
Soon they had settled themselves in the room where the chandeliers had been kept, and where several holes for eyes sockets had been carved out with the help of a trusted pen knife. Merrin explained to her it once been the a room where lesbian witches had their first carnal experiences, away from the troubling conservative thoughts of others, but Kimia did not want to hear in case Merrin suddenly got any wild ideas.
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The Wyvern’s Lair had once held the few white wyvern’s that were still left in Yan Bon Mor, the instrument of their survival being decreed by Wise King Wladimir who did not want his favourite pet to go without a mate sometime in the future. The students and faculty had fed them and raised them and then let them depart back into the wild once they’d come of age. The project had been a success, but once the last white wyvern had departed some 20 years ago it fell into disarray and irrelevancy.
The room was already filled with all sorts of morbid and deadly knick knacks from across the world: Coffins whose insides were filled with spikes, shrunken heads that had been excavated out of old tombs, large and brooding black magic books which were filled with all sorts of powerful hexes that would turn any normal person into a whitened sheet if they read them.
Mort was already in the room, speaking a sombre lecture to himself as he went through the motions of his craft with Ms Hemlock. Headmistress Wynne was also there, but had backer herself in the furthest corner she could as she watched Mort do his work.
“Must I bear witness to this?” Headmistress Wynne perked up nervously, her face already a sickly green.
“An acquaintance of the deceased must be in the room as I work,” Mort replied as he let his fingertips trail over the scalpel, “And since her friends and family aren’t on hand, then…”
Kimia could already sense Wynne’s stomach beginning to drop. Hers too would’ve begun to wobble, if it weren’t for the fact she’d come across many other dead animals within her youth.
“I suppose that makes sense,” Wynne said distraught, “We do try to go by the book here.”
Mort didn’t answer back, perhaps already tired by all the bludgeoning questions that were to come. She wondered why a professional would be tired at such thoughts, but perhaps he was a closed off person in general. Maybe he went through life in the hopes that one sentence answers would be enough, and perhaps it was in a field as dark and strange as this.
Ms Hemlock was still as sickly pale as she had been when she departed, dressed in little more than a loincloth and a chest garb to hide her ample sized breasts. Her stomach had swollen, but it began to fizzle out without the burst as Mort pressed two of his long grey fingers on her bellybutton. There was a sudden wheeze of air, and Merrin frowned in disgust as she turned away not to look, but Kimia pressed on to watch.
According to Ms Hemlock’s wishes, she had broken away from the long Coven tradition of being cremated alongside her broomstick (or boomstick, given they both went up in smoke), and would instead be mummified like the mystics of Witherdom, who's customs Mort had studied once as he as he specialised as an Undertaker. Necromancer took odd jobs here and there when they could, and it was up to Mort to make her look as presentable as possible before her body was wrapped up tightly altogether.
For a witch to have such a morbid fascinating with Mystics, whose approach to magic was as night and day compared to the covens, was not something most other witches would’ve taken lightly. It seemed Ms Hemlock had nursed a secret obsession with the Mystics and Witherdom culture all her life, and went there several times through her life when the academic year had finished.
Though a spinster all her life, her immediate family would take her off Mort’s hand once they came, and leave her body deep within in the Witherdom forest once they’d paid their respects, where she’d be feasted upon by the wildlife who lived there in accordance to Mystic tradition.
Once the dampest of makeup had been given to brighten Hemlock’s face, Mort set upon her body with rolls of Venadian Parchment, strong stuff would make it difficult for all but the most persistent of predators to tear through.
Kimia watched this with a bubbling new sense of enthusiasm for mummification. She was normally not one to feel comfortable in her skin, but watching Mort peel layer upon layer of white parchment on Hemlock’s body, was a strangely soothing experience. She could not even fill in the silence with the slight know it all attitude she sometimes possessed, for she was completely engrossed in watching this Necromancer perform.
As sudden as Hemlock’s own death, she had found her new interest in life.
Merrin began tugging at her shoulder, telling her that she too was as sick as a pig and was going to throw up at a moment’s notice. She was not going to let a friend fall apart, nor would she want to clear up her mess if she could help it, so Kimia took a final look at Mort’s handiwork before she departed down the slender ladder steps from whence they came.
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By sundown, the university had blinked. Unable to field a replacement of the same esteemed calibre as Ms Hemlock, the university could not continue on with their degree in foundational Potions and Elixir Brewing.
Instead, as a gesture of much needed good will, Potions student would receive compensation for their wasted years, as well as a choice of a new degree, from which all fees would be waived.
While Merrin fretted whether or not to choose Broomstick weaving or the much maligned field of Divination, Kimia had already settled on her new choice of major. As she and the more sceptical students waited patiently on Mort Cavendish in the newly refurbished Necromancy Room, she began to etch out a sketch of what he may be like before his arrival. It sounded childish, almost like a teenage girl’s fantasy, but it kept Kimia amused as she passed the time.
Was he a lord? A lowly peasant that hid big brains under his ponytail cut? Perhaps a sly rogue who'd killed the old Mort and taken his identity and had went on with the charade for the past decade?
Bethany scribbled out her thoughts about her new professor with a relative ease that was at all common for her. Usually when she tried creative writing, she would constnalty find herself getting stumped and blocked as she wrote, but she felt as ease writing about Mort as she did back in her first unofficial lecture with him.
Then came a sound of chains rattling as Mort closed in on the door. The others found themselves coming to attention, but Kimia continued on with her writing. Where could that come from? Why do the chains rattled? What could be causing that? Why was even chains at all? Her mind whizzed with so many possibilities until Mort finally spoke up to ease the nerves of the rest of the room.
"Turn to page 2564.”