The lights did not continue past the first few corridors immediately adjacent to their entrance hall. Silenos considered that an unpromising sign, but not a necessarily damning one. He could envision a man that might leave his entrance illuminated but neglect less-used walkways elsewhere in the place, though such a man would by necessity be unlikely to dwell within the dark areas.
“Think the lights are gone because the Necromancer beat us here?” Falls asked, proving his wits once again by considering the possibility barely seconds after Silenos.
“It’s likely enough to be wary of.” He told him. “Keep your magic ready and stick close to me, my body is sturdier than yours by no small degree.”
Falls swallowed audibly, but seemed to remain calm enough. They took only a few more steps before he spoke again.
“Silenos-”
“-Call me Master Silenos, esteemed Fleshcrafter of House Shaiagrazni, keeper of the Auburn Flame, Conductor of Arts most Ancient and Lord of Hara’lguanta.”
Falls swallowed irritably, then nodded.
“Right, apologies. I was asking, though, whether you think you can teach me Necromancy.”
Silenos glanced at him.
“How do you destroy water?” He asked.
Falls frowned, but was not stupid enough to voice any questions. Obviously Silenos would not ask him something without cause, and Silenos could see the boy struggling to think through why even as he considered an answer to the challenge.
“I don’t know.” He said at last.
Silenos eyed him.
“You didn’t think to boil it? Freeze it?”
“That doesn’t destroy it.” The magus snapped, “Just changes its form.”
“And what of having it absorbed into dirt or sand, creating muddy sludge from it.”
“The water’s still there, just trapped in something else. Is this stupid question supposed to prove something-”
Silenos struck Falls hard, and watched as he took a step back, eyes wide with alarm.
“Apprentices of House Shaiagrazni do not speak to their masters in such a way.” Silenos told him, calmly. “You will have earned that right only on the day where you are a being whose strength makes my taking a hand to you too dangerous to be considered.”
The magus stared, and an entire ecosystem of emotion flitted through his face. Rage, assassinated by calming pragmatism, giving way to spine-rending uncertainty, eaten by a confliction of panic and hope, turning all the way back into rage. But he was a clever man, and so, inevitably, the apex predator proved to be rationality and cognition.
“...So I’m your apprentice now.” He noted, proving his wits and will at once. Thus passing Silenos’ second test.
“You are.” He informed the boy. “Congratulations, and good luck. Only one has ever survived my tutoring for more than a decade before.”
His lip curled. The one in question would spend a thousand years dying for what he’d done after, but not today.
“So what was the question with the water?”
Silenos blinked, dragged back to the frigid waters of the present by Falls’ demand. He turned to him, considered striking the magus, then decided against it. He couldn’t be bothered.
“It was to see whether you have the instincts necessary for Necromantic study. An imprecise test, I will admit, but one with a considerable reliability given how quick it is. It has successfully predicted four of every five failures I’ve witnessed.”
“How?” Falls frowned.
“Life, true life, is like water. It cannot be destroyed, only changed from one form to another. Moved, altered, absorbed or boiled. But never destroyed. This is the primal truth that makes Necromancy possible. The vital spark that animates an undead is no different from that which animates a human or animal, it is merely…Less precisely placed.”
Falls took a moment to think before replying to that. His answer betrayed everything.
“Is it possible to keep from dying, forever?”
He’d been shaken, then, by coming so close to the grave. It was a common enough motivator for those seeking to master Necromancy.
“No.” Silenos explained. “But it is possible to come close. I have known Necromancers who lived for millennia, some for so long that their birth predated any coherent records of history existing at all. My own Master was a woman whose mastery began when humanity first learned the smelting of bronze.”
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
“And she never died?” Falls asked, hopefully. Silenos hesitated.
“She did.” He told the boy. “As I recall, a century prior she choked to death on another woman’s bra after removing it with her teeth, but she had long since installed precautions to keep such ends from being permanent.”
Falls frowned.
“There’s someone powerful enough to order your master to remove another woman’s bra?”
“She did it voluntarily, for…Recreational purposes.” Silenos replied, having never quite understood the appeal of sexuality himself. Falls seemed only more confused.
“Wait, so…Two women, with no man? Why would they even bother?”
Silenos decided the conversation had outlived its utility.
----------------------------------------
“It’s almost hard to believe.” The Paladin girl said, abruptly. “We have you, the Saviour, and now we’re in the castle of Sir Oltick himself. Plus the…Other advantages we’ve gotten, I…I actually think we might manage to win. To defeat the Dark Lord. We might finally be free of his rule.”
Galukar eyed her as she spoke, her gaze open, her face glistening with youth and innocence. Had he ever been that naive?
Yes, he must have been. Once. Many years and many sons ago.
They’d come to a dark section of the castle, which left little to guide their path save intuition and the noise of footsteps reverberating ahead from walls. Galukar felt a chill at his spine that he’d felt a thousand or more times before, the sensation of danger. He drank it in, searched for that familiar excitation that had threaded his arms with steel and filled his gut with fire on so many battlefields before.
It was nowhere to be found.
“Your Majesty?”
He snapped his head around at once to meet the Paladin’s gaze, and realised he’d been asked a question while his thoughts were elsewhere.
“Apologies my dear.” He replied, hastily, “I was listening for danger, could you repeat that?”
She smiled, that way women always did when they were trying not to blush, and nodded.
“Of course your Majesty, I was just noting that you can actually recall a time before the Dark Lord’s rule, can’t you? What…Was that like?”
God, had it been so long already? Long enough that grown, fighting women could risk their lives without ever even knowing the sort of world they were bleeding for? Galukar’s heart would have broken had it not been sundered beyond recognition already.
“It was not as peaceful as you might be hoping.” He told her, honestly. “People still raised armies, learned to fight, sent their forces against one another. We still fought over much the same things, for that matter. Our territories were just invaded and stolen by other monarchs rather than some insane Necromancer-King.”
Her face fell a shade, but she pressed on. Paladins were not known for abandoning a cause.
“My order speaks of how we used to patrol the world. We can’t do that anymore, not without being singled out and assassinated, but…We were peacekeepers once. Protectors of the innocent.”
That was a half-truth. Like all good things, the Paladins had mostly been enjoyed by those closest to the world’s capitals, and thus most weighed down by its wealth. But, on occasion, they would gift some off-the-path settlement with the privilege of true justice. Provided one was particularly theological in sentiments.
“My Kingdom used to be a creator of warriors and a proponent of chivalry.” Galukar smiled, knowing full well that his words were empty. “Once this is over, I hope to see it in such a state.”
In heaven, he would. He could only hope to end up there once he’d died putting the Godblade through the Dark Lord’s throat.
“Wait, what’s that?”
Galukar paused at the sudden edge to the Paladin’s voice, and turned to see her eyes glinting in the dark. Affixed on something ahead.
“There’s scrapes in the stonework.” She breathed. “Looks like…A struggle.”
The Godblade was in his hand instantly, grip tightening. The power was always with him so long as the Blade remained close by, but Galukar never felt its sheer intensity quite like when it sat in his palm. Once it had been thrilling, glorious. Now it was just a weight upon his shoulders.
“Stick close by.” He advised the girl. “There’ll be trouble here.”
What kind of fool could lose so much of his family while wielding a power like this?
“I will take the front.” Galukar continued. “Can you use healing miracles?”
What kind of coward could hesitate to wield a weapon like this when his people were at stake?
“I can.” The Paladin replied. “But not strongly, I was always a better warrior than healer.”
What kind of delusion could motivate him to hold sacred a God whose holy relic had failed him once already?
“That should be enough.” Galukar nodded, forcing a grin like the ones he’d used to make. “With you to knit me back together, I’m sure I could defeat the Dark Lord himself.”
Even at just the mention of his name, Galukar felt the strength leave his heart.
----------------------------------------
“A struggle?” Falls asked. His annoyance betrayed his ignorance, the boy clearly was still not used to being only the second most knowledgeable caster present.
“I see it in the magic of this place.” Silenos replied. “But it is…Difficult to make out details. Imagine a drop of red dye upon a shirt coloured like a rainbow already. This castle’s power is interfering with gathering any particulars.”
Falls’ wind magic was felt as a light pressure in the air, currents obeying him as if his nerves ran through them.
“But you can tell it’s not magic inherent to the castle?”
“It is not.” Silenos confirmed, readying his cannon. “And it’s recent, too. A struggle as I said.”
He turned, grabbing Falls and dragging him in his wake, heading sharply down the corridor and moving at a jog rather than a mere walk.
“We must leave.” Silenos declared. “If the Knight was the victor of whatever fight came here, we would have found the place readied in some way for more. Well lit, barricaded, not simply abandoned.” They turned a corner, then another, flying down the halls faster than a sprinting man as he talked. “Instead we find nothing but-”
Just as they came for the doors through which they’d entered, Silenos saw a great force run through them, closing them hard and letting them shiver as magic churned and writhed to hold them fast.
“You were sloppy, Necromancer.” Came a voice, sourceless and unseen, echoing through the place like wind in an aged house. “You were hasty. So desperate to snatch another Hero that you didn’t stop to consider I might think of skipping the fourth as well, that I’d beat you to this one and ready a trap.”
Silenos saw Falls stiffen, fractional trembles taking the boy’s body as primitive adrenal glands readied him for battle. He did not seem to be freezing or weakening with his trauma, which was a much needed advantage.
“I hope you enjoy my preparations.” The Necromancer continued. “It took me ever so long to ready them.”
Silenos readied his magic, stiffened his back, and squared his chin. Despite his best efforts, his grin almost escaped.
He had spent weeks finalising his own preparations too, and he was more than a little eager to finally see them unleashed on the woman they were made for.
After all, she’d already fallen right into his own trap.