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We sneak deeper into the ancient tomb. Is it a tomb? Or maybe it was a temple? A bar? A pachinko parlor? Mom’s basement? I can't tell. Faint letters and pictographs have been hacked into the smooth stone walls, obscured by dust, cobwebs, and algae, in no way magical. My senses or education can't help me understand the story they tell. Bet Master Endol would love this place. Remind me again, why am I here instead of that guy?

We stride—or, in Green's case, fly—down a very long corridor, ready for anything, and suddenly step out into a wide open cavern. I pause to gawk at the scenery spreading below our feet, and my surprise escapes my lips in a spontaneous question.

“What the flying fuck-a-rally is this place?”

Deep under the pyramid-thing is a vast hollow, and in the middle of that empty void stands a building like a stadium. A blasted colosseum. A tall, elliptic rock cylinder, the walls dotted with arched window holes on multiple floors. Through the narrow windows and the open top of the stadium pour wide blades of colorless, wobbling light that has none of the warmth of day. The cavern basks in that ghastly, loudly humming, slightly pulsating shine, and nothing says “get the hell out of here” better than that view.

“Darling...” Green tugs my sleeve.

“Yeah, I know.”

That light itself is magical in essence. Made up of the ill will of the dead, their stunted echoes, which voicelessly curse the Heavens and seek release from the unfairness of being. Staring at it for too long infects you with the same despair and eats away the sanity of anyone who’s still got some to spare. Which means, we’d better hurry and do what we came here to do, before we lose sight of the point.

We pass down an unnervingly steep set of stairs to the bottom of the cavern.

Cubic stone houses surround the colosseum in orderly rows from every direction, like the eggs of a big, very strange monster, narrow streets dividing them. This place gives me the creeps, like any movie starring Sam Neill, and I don’t think it’s only because of the light show. Who'd want to live in such a cave? There had to be something off about this place and its builders from the start, when it was still in business.

The township reminds me of the cathedral on that nightmare island, the one hacked into the mountainside. The scarandi didn’t build that one either. They’re a lot older, this ruin and that. Leftovers of a culture the world wanted to forget.

We come closer and closer to the heart of the enemy’s stronghold, but still haven't come across proper guards, or additional traps. Am I just that blind, or is there even anybody home?

This is the necromancer we’re talking about.

The last shaman of the birdmen of Hallast. A villain who’s been terrorizing Wanr Aysoth and the Dominion colonists for decades. A self-taught master of obscure arts nobody else in the world knows. But what I see here isn’t a military fort prepared for war. A wizard's workshop? There are bandit camps out there with more attitude. There’s no art in it. There’s nothing. I'm stunned.

We hike between the dark boxes and their long shadows, under the vacant stare of empty windows and doorways. Safe underground, every house is still in move-ready state, the road clear of junk.

On the street side, both sides, stand stubby stone platforms. Atop each platform poses an eerie statue. Twisted shapes that vaguely resemble forest animals. Lumpy, grotesque caricatures of wildlife. The only thing clear about them is the agony captured in their bent figures and faces. The beasts cling to their stands like sinners to Mt Ararat trying to outrun the biblical deluge. But their makers ran out of the stock for pity.

I go by a platform larger than the others. There’s a creative arrangement of multiple statues on this one. The thing in the middle looks a bit like a large boar. Carnivores surround it from all sides. A manticore, mountain bear, giant eagle, and direwolf. The beasts are each about take a bite out of the poor hog. An act of mindless slaughter, an icon of savagery, preserved for future generations. As if a dude nailed on a cross wasn't grisly enough. Wouldn’t want to bring your kids to this exhibit, that’s for sure.

“What a ludicrous thing,” Zandolph grunts, glaring at the statues.

“Yeah,” I agree. Whoever made that one has issues.

“Manticores always hunt alone.”

“That was your problem?”

Then a flickering signal in the dark stops me in my tracks.

“Huh...?”

I look at the granite boar another time. A cold chill creeps into my shoulders and my breathing grows labored. The reading is faint, but I didn't imagine it. There it beats. Slow and steady. I check out the other statues too, but there’s no need to. There's no way left to deny the horrid truth. What has been seen cannot be unseen.

How the fuck...? Who could do something—something so evil…?

“What?” Zandolph asks me with a frown, noticing my face. “What is it?”

“These things…” I gasp, and do my best to hold myself together. “They’re not statues!”

A loud crack sounds out behind me.

Without warning, a figure of what looks a little like a panther springs to life across the street. The hard rock coating bursts apart at the joints, enabling the beast to move. Shrugging its paws free, it leaps off of its pedestal and lands heavily in front of us.

Green shrieks and darts off. The monster comes running straight at me. I slam it back with a Shockwave on the nose, but the rock layer works like a suit of armor and buffers the hit. Fragments come off the beast’s body in flakes, tearing off pieces of pelt and flesh stuck on them, and reveal a half-rotten corpse underneath. The monster ignores the damage without a sound, rolls back up, and comes sprinting again. One quick lunge and suddenly it's uncomfortably close to my jugular.

What do I—

Zandolph then shoves me to the street and takes my place. She pulverizes the jumping panther’s body with one vicious swing of her heavy lance. Rock, meat, and bone are torn apart with equal ease. The shattered body is flung at the house walls like a cloud of shrapnel from a landmine. The beast isn’t coming back for more.

But it’s not over yet.

No, this is only where it begins.

One by one, more rocky shapes come to life everywhere along the street.

Bears, boars, what look vaguely like dogs or wolves, elks, beavers, griffins, trolls—the whole goddamn zoo.

Now I see it.

There's the secret of Wanr Aysoth’s “necromancy.” The curse at the entrance gave me a strong clue already, but now I have the full answer spelled out in front of me in all its blunt brutality.

You can’t raise the dead. Once the soul is gone, there’s no return for it.

A corpse without a soul makes for a poor puppet, costly and impractical. So how do you make a proper zombie for your low-budget indie production? Simple: you never allow the soul to escape in the first place. You trap the flame of life in the body, in a prison of curses, and only then, when it has no way out, you kill the flesh.

After that, you’re free to abuse the corpse as you please. Cut it to pieces and stitch it back together. Re-educate its mind. Rewire the nerves. Carve more curses into its bones. Encase it in molten stone. Madness knows no limits.

This is—one goddamn lunatic’s answer to necromancy.

An esoteric frontier that should’ve been left unexplored.

“Can’t you do something about these things?” Zandolph asks me as we stand outnumbered 80 to 3.

Suppose she wouldn’t want to dull her lance on rocks. Or does she have a soft spot for animals, after all?

The beasts are long past saving, but it’s not so simple to lay them to rest either. Their bodies have more curses than blood going through them. That magic is like a virus, each string of which contains a backup. Unless you can erase the hostile eidos completely in one go, it will restore itself and force the beast to keep fighting. But they're not going to sit still and let me pump magic up their asses. I don't have that much juice to spare either.

“...There’s only one way to end them,” I'm forced to admit, knowing she won't like it. “The hard way.”

“Tch.” Zandolph clicks her tongue. “Then you’re only in the way. Go. Find the necromancer and make sure he doesn’t escape before I get there.”

An excellent idea.

I'm more scared of my buddy than the monsters, so I gladly take the suggestion and dash away towards the stadium, while the road there is still mostly clear. Behind my back, the Hell is broken loose. The sound of metal smiting stone. Shockwaves of hard impacts shake the earth. I don't dare to look back. Zan might not go down easily, but there are a lot of enemies, and they're beyond pain, or fear, or restraint. I can only hope this isn’t one of those stories where everybody the hero leaves behind fucking dies.

5 : 263 : 11 : 10 : 19

I run towards the light of madness. Green flies along close by my shoulder. The pixie may be worth less than air in a battle against evil, but I’m secretly happy it’s there. I’d hate to be alone at a time like this. It might be the last moment I have before an awful death.

I climb up wide stairs to the stadium entrance, and pass through a tall, triangular corridor. The road is clear. There are no more guardian beasts. I detect no wards either. Suppose they didn’t expect anyone to make it this far in one piece. Hope that’s it, and there's not an especially warm welcome waiting for me.

The arena interior has no bleachers. No hot dogs.

The space is open and barren, with a weirdly shaped floor. A wide field of narrow, randomly sorted channels cut into cold rock. It's not a very good obstacle; the channel walls are hardly a meter high, and there's no water at the bottom either. Really, what the hell is this place? A garden maze for hobbits?

A straightforward walkway goes over the labyrinth floor to the center of the arena, where a round platform juts up.

Directly above the stage is the source of the light. A very large disco ball, a metal emitter attached to an elaborate bronze frame. The device hangs like a ripe fruit over the stage, radiating that hair-raising light with a faint flicker and a resonant hum that makes your joints tremble.

That's one big sorcery tool.

Nothing like the talismans and good luck charms they sell at town fares. A level crazier than a mere wand.

As a rule, you need a living body to make magic happen. Since only organic cells can host a spirit and only the spirit can touch prana. But that’s based on the current mortal understanding of thaumaturgy. As the core of the Heaven’s Pillar has proved us, you can craft an apt substitute if you know what you’re doing. Take many small components and imbue them with the appropriate rituals, and they’ll form a system that can simulate the functions of an ether body.

That’s the theory.

Anyone can talk the talk, but only a god could walk the walk. That’s what I thought.

But I can’t deny what’s in front of my nose. That sphere is undeniably a faux reactor, capable of refining ambient prana into mana. It can only have been assembled by someone who has seen and studied an actual core of a Heaven's Pillar.

But it has none of the elegance or intelligence of the real deal. That thing mechanically sucks in energy wherever it can, indiscriminately, not sparing the land or living beings. The conversion rate is godawful too. It sucks out the lifeblood and sanity of the forest, but can barely power this one facility and its few wards. It's more a proof of concept, rather than anything practical. Or the architect just didn’t give a damn.

As a magician, I’m appalled. Appalled.

“Darling...” Green tugs my arm, looking nervous. “Let’s—let’s go back, okay?”

“Sorry.” I gently unhook its fingers from my sleeve. “You go back first. I’ve got to finish this.”

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My job’s clear.

I have to pop that bubble to wrap up the operation.

I go and approach the central platform. There’s only one obstacle on the way.

Up on the stage, under the low-hanging fruit, I see a figure kneeling, as if praying. A creature like a large raven, its body covered in dark feathers, with a bird head and bird feet—but long humanoid arms and hands, and no wings. Like those monsters I saw on the island. Scarandi.

Over the monster’s broad shoulders hangs a rotten, frayed cloak. Off a cloth belt around the waist hang strings of black pearls, wooden tubes, and bones, which rattle at the slightest motion.

When I’m about thirty paces away, the beast shaman stirs. On the floor next to it lies an old root staff, which it grips and then stands. The monster turns around and I meet the pierccing gaze of tiny, black eyes on both sides of a long, curved beak. The birdman opens his mouth and lets out a loud, shrill cry.

“REEEEEEEEEEEEEEE——!”

I stop there, dumbstruck once more.

What's going on? What the hell kind of game is this?

No time for questions. No room for diplomacy. The scarandi kicks off the ground. Its strong feet send it lightly high up in the air and it crosses the gap between us in a blink.

“Get back!” I tell Green and shove the pixie out of the way.

The staff is but a blur as it's swung down at my skull. The weapon and the birdman collide together against my Ice Shield with a stark, spirited ding. Unfazed, the foe hops off and strikes again, bashing and kicking and clawing at the frosty obstacle in berserk fury, sparing no pity for its own body.

I stare at the creature, dismayed and disgusted.

What mage's first choice is to engage in close quarters? The black pearl eyes have lost their luster. Tufts of decaying feathers are shed off of the beast’s dried-up skin at every move. The reek of rotten meat slams my nostrils.

This is the fabled necromancer?

Give me a break. Was I supposed to believe that?

How could I? How could anyone? What a goddamn farce this has become.

I sort of had a hunch before. There were too damn many holes in the story. Scarandi have a lifespan of only 40-50 years at most. Methods to prolong that—there aren’t any. Not in magic, not in herb tea. Not such that would let you fight on for centuries all by yourself. No way. There could be only one believable way to explain things.

The menace of the beast shaman was a fabrication.

The villain is long dead. A mindless corpse enslaved by the same mechanism as its watchdogs.

Then, while I stand dumbstruck, the foe pulls a real surprise out of its feathery butt. The ones and zeroes drawn in its rotten head do their thing. A set amount of time has passed while it's failed to silence its target, and gears are switched. It breaks off and retreats back to the central stage in one long, airy backflip. Following another deafening shriek, the thing raises its staff high and begins casting.

“Huuuh!?”

A dead corpse with a decomposed nervous system can’t generate mana. Neither can you process information structures without a working brain. That’s common sense, too obvious to even say. I was sure I was safe as long as I could weather direct attacks, but that idea turns out to be a big mistake.

The real wickedness of the trap starts to dawn on me.

The monster doesn’t need to generate energy of its own, when it's got a massive battery right above it. All it needs is a router—the staff. Neither does it need to construct rituals from scratch, if it has the whole shop stored in its very body. Not only behavior patterns and appropriate responses, even full rituals and their incovation mechanics, written directly on its dead flesh and bones. It only needs to channel energy through ready pathways to manifest the effects.

But isn't that...

Isn't that a lot like—my own magic...?

I can barely process what’s coming when it’s already out for delivery.

The undead shaman expands another boundary field. It’s similar to the trap at the entrance, but only contains the kinetic layer and the curse. A neat, two-in-one magical and physical attack solution. A faintly glowing curve washes over the arena floor towards me, looking deceptively plain and harmless for a guaranteed 1-hit KO.

My shield works well against swords and clubs, but is less reliable against sorceries. It lets light through.

I abandon the thought of trying to tank the hit.

“Get down!” I grab Green and dive off of the walkway. The pixie in my arms, I plunge between the walls of the miniature maze, right as the boundary passes over us.

The landing was not pleasant. My left shoulder and ribs hurt like crap. Hope I didn't break anything.

“You okay?” I ask the pixie.

“You’re too naughty, darling!” it giggles, squirming between my arms. “Not now…!”

“Dumb moth! Keep your head down and don’t move!”

I peek over the wall to see what’s happening. The necromancer keeps its staff raised, casting more boundaries in rapid succession. I fire a Flashpoint at it, but the incoming barrage of curses fends off the pressure bullet. It's like a beetle in truck window. The opponent may be only a corpse, but those rituals are of a higher tier than anything I know.

“Shit!” I pull back behind the cover as waves of compressed madness flash by.

This could be bad.

I crawl along the waist-deep channel, trying to get closer to the stage in the middle for a better aim. I crawl into a dead end. God fucking damn it. The channel maze I scoffed at before has turned into my worst nightmare. How many days would I have to wriggle here in the dust to find a way through to the center?

Curses fly overhead virtually nonstop now.

The necromancer doesn’t let it up. Corpses have a lot of patience and they don't tire. As long as the pseudo reactor can supply mana to it, that monster is a perpetual spellcasting machine. It can produce a new boundary every 2.5 seconds. It has no reason to play fair and it won’t stop until I’m confirmed dead.

I’d need an attack powerful enough to break through all the wards and nail either the caster or the reactor in one go. But I don’t know any bombastic super moves like that! Nobody mortal does! So what the fuck can I do?

I lie on my back, trapped in the shallow trench, frantically charting my options. If I try to go over the wall, the magic waves will lop off my head like a ventilation fan. In the event I somehow survive, touching the curse will turn me into a zombie.

“Fuuuuuuuuck…”

This could actually be really, really bad.

In fact, it's starting to look like the end of the line.

“Darling?” Green stands next to me, concern in its big eyes. The maze is high enough for it to pose upright with room to spare. Maybe being tiny has its upsides.

“Sorry, Green,” I tell it with a weak laugh. “Your hub’s not as hot as you thought, huh?”

After all those big words I said, about how I’ll take care of it, how I’ll solve everything, this is how it turns out.

Actually, it can still get even worse.

Any minute now, Zandolph will stumble through the door, and eat the mass-produced curses head-on. Sooner or later, they’ll overwhelm even her resistance, and throw her into a frenzy, and then she’ll kill us. Then she’ll go outside and make barbecue out of Dalek. She’ll raze the Fey village and butcher all those cute little animals and pixies she tried to protect, and rain death on the land until the Dominion comes out in force and puts her down. By that point, half the continent will be ash.

And it’s all on me. Because I insisted on going punching out of my league.

Because I beat up one greasy uncle a year ago and thought I was the king of the world. In the end, we all get what we fucking deserve.

Green touches my cheek in concern, blissfully oblivious to why I'm in such an agony.

“What’s wrong, darling? Where does it hurt? Is there anything I can do?”

“No, honey,” I smile at its child-like worry. “I’m just—I’m sorry. I’m honestly sorry you had to go through this. I really messed up this time.”

“Why?” the pixie asks. “I’m here because I wanted to be! Darling’s not at fault. You’ve done nothing to apologize for!”

“Maybe. But I didn't do enough either.”

Just trying won't cut it. Only doing your best isn't enough. Unless you pull through and win, it means nothing. They hand out no silver medals in life. Is such a world really worth all the hassle?

The pixie stares at me a moment, a strange look in its eyes.

Then Green closes its eyes, crosses its hands over its leafy chest, and shakes its head with a little smile.

“No. This much is enough.”

I smile at its assurances. “You're probably the only one out there who thinks that.”

“Oh, I’m not,” Green insists. A faint light begins to glow under its small palms. “Look. Even now, your heart is full of love. It's hot with the bonds that you bear. The spirits of those you care about, those that care about you. Their thoughts go with you, wherever you are. The light of everyone's feelings burns like the summer sun. How lucky am I, to have a darling so popular?”

“Green...”

The pixie looks up at me.

“My name is T’hua. Today, I give my name to you, darling. Take good care of it, okay?”

“Ha?”

“You've come this far all on your own. You've been so brave! Now let me take you the rest of the way. You want to shut that vile light, yes? That’s easy! Watch me!”

“W-what? What are you—?”

Before I can do anything to stop it, Green takes off and rises up high in the air. What is it doing? Stunned, I watch it quickly draw its small body full of prana. Pixies may not be able to transmute mana, but their affinity for elemental energy is higher than humans can have, and they intuitively know how to employ it.

Green compresses all the prana into a singular point within her, tiny as the head of a needle. The overall amount may not be much, but its intensity is incomparable. Strong enough to be rendered into visible light.

The dot of prana erupts in a bright blaze, like a distant star, a nova. It’s not green, but a ferocious red.

Cradling that tiny twinkle, the pixie—T’hua darts out at the undead shaman on the stage. Unable to get a sound out, I watch it crash head-first into the incoming boundary. Zap!

A miracle happens.

The pixie's figure isn't obliterated instantly, like I expected. The strength of its prana star offsets the effect. It punches through the field of sorcery like a nail. Better still, the insertion of an incompatible element into the eidos shortcircuits the boundary. With a crash, the ritual comes apart and fades away.

But I feel no awe or pride when I see it. Only shock.

T'hua may have broken through the kinetic layer, but it can’t avoid touching the curse. It wasn’t designed to enthrall a being so small and frail. The potency required to brainwash a large beast like a bear will disintegrate a pixie, body and soul.

“What are you doing!?” I regain my voice and yell. “Stop it! Get back here! You'll die!”

The pixie won't listen to me.

Its shape is preserved by the super-charged energy filling every fiber of it and it flies on.

Like a red hot bullet, it rams into the next wall of magic the same way. I can’t even imagine how painful it must be, but T'hua shows no hesitation, or slows down even a little. It shoots in a straight line through and into the next boundary, even as its limbs fracture and crack, and the rapidly spreading necrosis renders its vivid green body all ashen gray. And the next. And the next. And the next...

“STOOOOOOOOOP—!”

The red star dies.

The light of one brave pixie finally fades.

It shouldn’t be possible, but it made it all the way to the stage.

Unable to see or hear anything anymore, T’hua reaches out its tiny hand and touches the necromancer’s staff.

“Goal,” I hear it faintly whisper and its broken figure crumbles to dust.

Gone, burned out in a blaze of glory.

Without another word, I stand. A mysterious calmness fills me, my earlier panic spelled away. There’s only room left for one thought in my head now. Only a singular conviction. I can’t let T’Hua’s sacrifice go to waste. That’s the one thing I can’t allow, no matter the cost.

My body and mind fully united in function and purpose, I reach out with a finger and launch a Flashpoint through the tiny black eye of the scarandi shaman, before it can resume casting again. Splat. The decayed birdhead splits. The perpetual spellcasting machine is silenced, the atrocities written in its brain shredded.

A silence falls.

The swirl of magical energy fades.

Under the light of the fake moon, I climb onto the walkway and drag my feet up to the stage, where I kneel at the pile of pale gray dust that once had the shape of a pixie. I dig through the smooth powder, looking in vain for anything tangible to hold. There's nothing to remember it by, nothing to bury. The dust runs through my fingers, scattered by the faintest breeze.

That’s where Zandolph eventually finds me.

“Is it over?” she asks, glancing at the shaman’s remains.

“...Yeah,” I force an answer without lifting my gaze from the floor. “Just bust the bulb up there and we’re done.”

Zandolph walks past me to do the honors. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”

That’s just the thing. “I didn’t.”

Today, I witnessed up close what a real hero is like.

And over T’hua’s ashes, I swear to myself, I’ll learn and get stronger, smarter, better.

So that I can one day make a world where they don't need anybody to be a hero anymore.

After Zandolph destroys the mana reactor, we head back out the way we came, all the traps dispelled, all the zombies reduced to rubble. And at the entrance, we step into a splendid ambush.

A company of about fifty emiri paratroopers stands in a fan formation in front of the doorway. They’ve restrained Dalek with a magnetic net, and aim at us with their plasma spears. Later, I will learn there was a new magitechical innovation, a tracking beacon, hidden in the emblem on my uniform jacket. Emiri had never bothered with such sneaky tricks before, but they were getting seriously fed up with this jungle business. Pretty funny to miss something right under my own chin.

But none of that matters now.

I lift the necromancer’s severed head up high, and throw it at their feet.

The war is over.