We’d gone back in time.
Eric was still imprisoned and I had no way to free him from the cave bees. Conan had never visited Elysium with me, that friendship never was. Oscar, Oisín, Rian; they were still alive. Gunhild and her sisters would be trapped by the poison of the altar in a few week’s time. The responsibility and opportunity were overwhelming.
There were other possibilities.
Perhaps only Oswic and I had travelled through time and everything was as it had been. Or perhaps the mural had been rebuilt.
The light on my leg flitted and spun, like a shadow at sunset. The colours shifted from egg yolk yellow to a rich lavender. A single portion of the rune changed.
Return: Return to the time of your previous death.
The other possibilities were seeming less likely.
I’d never seen a rune change like that. Like the promise of the sun. Life after death. The rune would return, much as the name itself said. The magic was far beyond my ken, yet the spell was simple, nothing like the Flames of Revenge. I’d recorded an act of nature, one I’d supposedly had dominion over. Perhaps I’d somehow recorded the twisting of true magic when my spell protection had gone awry.
It was not a spell I’d be casting lightly. The erasure of my achievements and friendships was a high cost to pay for receiving a second chance, even if I could avoid more pitfalls and failures.
That said...
Oswic stood and tested his leg. It had healed straight and true, better than it had been in years.
I felt a lump in my throat. The person I wanted to be had returned. There I was, not a monster, nor an elf, but a man.
It was, in some ways, the best of both world. The past had still happened, the impressions still remained on my heart and soul, but the price of experience no longer needed to be paid.
I was suspicious of lessons learned without scars.
I looked Oswic up and down.
He was taller than me.
Not by much. If I removed my boots he’d only be an inch or so taller, but there should have been no discrepancy whatsoever.
I studied the mirrorish scorch mark on the ground. The Mushroom-King. The dark altar. The druid stone. Even the corpse of the dryad. Each had changed me in their own way. Was it any wonder my height had changed along with my nails, skin, hair, and eyes? My right leg was still a different colour from the rest of my body where the Mushroom-King had merged my splint with my body.
“I cannot raise the skeleton nor bind my spirit to it,” Attart said. Her words came out all at once in a rush. She must have been waiting for a sign that I was finished writing. I’d have said impatiently waiting, but that wouldn’t have been becoming of an etiquette instructor.
“Have you tried any other targets? The skeleton may have been conjured by dark magic. It might not be a real corpse.”
“It is worse than that. I cannot sense the dead whatsoever. The stones of Bleak Fort overflow with memories of pain and sorrow, and of death. This room is not the exception. I went beyond the grill to examine what lay there. I found nothing.”
“What about the room Oswic came from?” I indicated the solid earth wall the Mushroom-King had sealed. If I recalled correctly, that had been the room I’d first encountered a ruby beetle.
“If you would wait one moment,” Attart said primly.
I waited one and a half moments before I called out into the room, “Success Attart?”
Her voice came from beside and above me, “I could not travel beyond the wall no matter how I tried.”
I nearly jumped out of my skin. It was like being in the room of whispers all over again.
A second shiver ran through me at the thought that the whispers had been more than strange noises. Images of a horde of ghosts stalking me flashed in my mind.
Ghosts.
Spirits.
Did that mean?
I focused on my ring. What did necromancers see? They could sense the dead, and not just ghosts. Anyone could see a ghost, that is what made them a ghost. Necromancers could see spirits and impressions, death and life itself. Similar than to my life sight.
Attart appeared in a shimmering green light. She was sitting on my shoulder with her upper body twisted and draped over my head. One of her arms dangled down either side of my head.
She was completely naked except for her cape.
Not that clothes would have helped, given the nature of the ring.
I leapt sideways, more in shock than out of any sense of propriety. There was something corpselike about having a body draped over you like a hat and scarf.
Attart’s spirit drifted along with me.
“What is it?” Attart asked, “You keep jumping around, but the other Oswic has not reacted to whatever it is in the slightest. Are we in danger?”
“I wasn’t expecting to see a ghost sitting on my head.”
Attart blushed and leapt down to the floor. She wrapped her cape about herself, “You can see me?”
“I can see whatever I choose.”
Her blush deepened and she backed away, “I was not aware. Even I cannot see myself. Please grant me some decency.”
I turned off my necromancer-sight, “If I cannot see you entire I cannot see you at all,” (her speech patterns were getting to me), “You might become lost or in danger without me realizing if I don’t keep an eye on you.”
“I am not wearing any clothes, am I? I can only feel my cape. It is the way with spirits to only take with them their most precious of items.”
“Just your cape,” I confirmed. Then I added with a raised eyebrow, “Nearly every spirit you’ve ever seen has been naked and yet you want me to make an except for you?”
I could hear the blush even if I couldn’t see it. It was easy enough to imagine Attart with her hand over her mouth. Her words were even somewhat muffled, “Even so. I will take the danger along with my dignity.”
“Consider it done. More importantly, the wall. You can’t go through it, but you can go through the grill?”
“I can go partway through the wall but I can walk freely through the grill and into the room beyond.”
I pointed to the room’s fourth exit. The one I’d fled through when the Mushroom-King had first let me go.
“What about that door there?”
“Let me see.”
A moment later her voice called from beyond the door, so faint I could barely hear her, “I can pass through the door but not explore much beyond.”
“Is the room safe?” I asked. Oswic was already crouched in the far corner of our room, ready for me to tear down the door.
“The room is empty save for a dim chandelier and a terrible smell.”
Light. The warlocks’ own sources of light hadn’t yet gone out. I suspected the only reason I couldn’t see the light under the doorway was my own light coming off my skin. It had dimmed somewhat over the last hour, and yet I could still only barely make out my will-o’-wisps.
It would be useful if I could control it.
Hang on.
It was like rotating my elbow or wiggling my ears. Easier than wiggling my ears, I never could get the hang of that. But it was simple an unusual and unused muscle, or at least that was what it felt like.
The light around me dimmed. Sure enough, the light from under the door and also the candles beyond the grill—I was pretty sure it was candles. I remembered the room, more or less—began to seep into the Mushroom-King’s chamber.
Oswic would have troubles seeing, but I could guide him. Whoever used less light in the halls had the advantage of surprise, after all.
I joined Oswic in the corner and crouched over him to shield him. My enchanted bones had been my only possession which had been left behind. I’d have traded nearly all the others for them.
“Ships on the horizon!”
Attart’s voice came from on top of me once more, “Pardon my language. I have been startled. I was standing in the adjoining room a second ago. It was like my spirit had been ripped away from my body all over again.”
And now she was here. Whatever the mechanism for her return, it appeared the necromancer had been bound to me.
“Ready yourself for more ships,” I said.
Magic Swords II
The door was plain wood. They’d be more than enough.
The door exploded.
Whoops.
More than more than enough then.
I led the way into the large chamber. Oswic (and presumably Attart) followed.
The room was as she said, empty except for a pile of refuse in the left-hand corner which rivalled the ogres’ in smell, and for the chandelier providing light to the room. It was dim, but enough that even Oswic could see.
Across the room and to my left was a familiar statue. A dead Magus bearing a staff. It was identical to the one Gunhild and I had encountered several floors below. If it also concealed an exit, that would mean the room contained five others beyond the one we’d just entered through. I’d not test my luck where possible. I didn’t want to set off another gas trap.
Besides, the stairs would be north of the room of statues, and the room of statues was to our right. I sent my swords to the right most door.
“Oswic! Behind you!”
Oswic (the other Oswic) had already been turning to cover our flank before Attart had sent out her warning. I glimpsed the swarm of glittering eyes through his eyes a split second before I saw them with my own.
The rats had returned.
I no longer had access to the roiling cascade of lightning, but for a dozen or so rats I didn’t need it. Even if the rats in question were larger than most cats.
This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.
Fireball. Fireball III.
The Fireball was only as hot as burning coals. It had been enough for the strange biology of the spiders, but it wasn’t enough to kill the rat it engulfed instantly. Fireball III wasn’t hot enough either, but at least it quickly incapacitated its own rat rather than just scorching its fur.
But it wasn’t the damage I was truly after. Fear would suffice.
And fear was what I got.
The rats skittered to a stop before the flames, then turned naked tails and fled. The rat I caught with my first fireball squealed with pain as it ran, the rat within my second fireball collapsed, whimpered, and was still. Hooting howls echoed in mockery of the rats’ pain and fear as they fled, marking their passage until they were long gone from sight and hearing. The denizens of the dungeon didn’t like the rats either.
If anything, the smell of burnt fur and scorched flesh was an improvement to the atmosphere of the place.
I didn’t delay sending my swords against the right-hand door.
“Let’s get out of here,” I muttered. It was easy to feel alone when one of your companions was yourself, and the other was invisible and nearly entirely silent except for her voice.
*Crash*
The shattered doorway led down a long narrow hallway heading...
☼North Star☼
North.
Was this the hall which had nearly crushed me from above?
I kept my ring senses on the ceiling as my swords scraped forward ahead of me. The hundred foot corridor took me nearly half an hour to cross, but I wasn’t crushed by a stone slab, so I called that a win.
I also didn’t find the stone slab trap, but I didn’t care much on account of not being crushed.
The corridor ended in a plain wooden wall. The back of a carving, if I recalled correctly. Which meant I was near the screaming corner.
“Don’t be alarmed if I start screaming,” I said to the empty air where Attart might be lurking, “Something about the next room controls forces people to wail like one of the chained.”
“I... how dreadful. I never made it far from my cell, but perhaps that was for the best.”
I rocked my head indecisively, “There are worse things by far than the cursed book down here, but better to have a chance to face them then be captured forever.”
My swords shattered the door in front of us. I didn’t want to see if the demonic face I remembered on the other side was actually my own. I was good at recognizing the warped visage now.
Sure enough I started to scream as I entered the room. Oswic joined in a few seconds later as he walked in behind me.
The band of mercenaries I’d met last time I’d been here were no where in sight. They’d been dying last time I’d seen them, the few remnants less from the creek outside my cell. I wonder if they’d fare better or worse without my intervention. Maybe getting to keep their clothes would help them recover.
I’d never gotten a proper look at the room as it had been too dark or I’d been otherwise preoccupied by all the screaming. There was, unbelievably, a stack of candles against the south wall. How many times had I been through here desperate for light? I’d not have been able to light them, but if I’d still had one of the dying torches I’d be set.
What was more, the candles were for show. Don’t get me wrong, they were real candles, but they were concealing a small iron chest they’d be wrapped around. The chest in turn held a compass, a couple gemstones, and several mouths worth of teeth, both animal and otherwise.
Amazing. If I ever needed another compass I knew where to look. Right in the pile of candles.
I couldn’t help but feel the fort was mocking me.
I’d already just had my fill of screaming, so I smashed the northern exit for catharsis instead.
How about that? There was a mosaic on the far wall of the next room. I’d never had light in here before. The barrels full of rotting fruit to my right I’d only ever felt and smelled before, but I’d not been sure what they’d contained. My ring told me in excessive detail. This was why the warlocks had rats.
“Did you see that?” Attart said. Her voice came from over by the mosaic, “The whole thing shimmered.”
The mural wasn’t shimmering from what I could see, and I could see quite a lot of it. The thing was huge. It took up nearly half of the northern wall which meant it was at least thirty feet wide and over ten feet tall.
It depicted...
That was strange.
It didn’t depict anything. The whole thing was a random assortment of tiles and coloured stones. Maybe if I I squinted, and tilted my head, and stood on one leg, I could nearly make out something. Yeah, if the stones in that column there were swapped with the column to their left and every tile was rotated ninety degrees then—
The whole thing shifted and moved. Not like I’d imagined, but like the rippling of a snake’s scales. The colours changed subtly as well, as though the source of light had moved. It wasn’t that the mosaic had changed exactly, instead it was like I’d solved an optical illusion and could now see the picture hidden within.
The mosaic depicted a grave in garish colours. A simple mound of dirt with a mandala of sticks resting atop it. Surrounding the grave were the familiar stone walls of the dungeon, here depicted in blues and greens and whites. Multi-coloured manacles decorated the walls. The colours had no pattern rhyme or reason. It was almost as if I was peering through a stained glass window at the scene.
Attart gasped, “Hucel!”
I wasn’t familiar with the curses and spells of the Bronze Coast, but ‘Hucel’ was also a name from the Painted Lands. You didn’t hear about many women with the name these days, even in place as large as Ravenhold I’d never met one.
“Is that a name?”
“I shared my cell with her for a while. She... she died. The warlocks left her body in my cell. I pried up the stones to bury her. I am surprised the warlocks did not dig up the grave the moment I disappeared. I put a number of ghosts on watch, but even if they stopped the warlocks why would they make a mural of such a thing?”
I caught the hesitation at “She died”. I’d deal with it shortly, but before I had an angry and frightened spirit on my hand I wanted to solve the mosaic.
The wall had shimmered at least twice. Once when Attart had seen it, and once when I’d noticed it shift. I suspected there was more than an illusion at play here. The room of levers and teleportation runes came to mind.
The sun rose.
Perfect timing. I might need all my spells in a moment.
“Maybe they didn’t. Step back from the mosaic a moment. Try to stand close behind me if you can, I have an idea.”
I reactivated my necromancer sense. I did want her behind me, but I also wanted to be able to keep an eye on her expressions for my upcoming confrontation.
She still covered herself occasionally with her hands and cloak even though I’d said I couldn’t see her. It might simply be that she was shy enough she felt embarrassed to be naked even when no one was around, or it could be she didn’t fully trust me.
Fair enough.
I let Oswic step forward and focus on the mural for me so I could keep my full attention on Attart.
Oswic focused on the mural. Could he make out the room of levers and gears behind the image of the grave? No, maybe not a room but a grave? Where had Oscar been buried?
The stones and tiles themselves still shifted so subtly it would be impossible to say if they moved for sure, but the image itself came to life as though it were a window rather than a painting.
Oscar was alive, next to him was Conan. They were walking a hallway lit by rows of torches on the wall, talking freely.
Oscar was alive!
Was Brace as well? Erin?
As soon as Oswic had the thought the image shifted once more. The two women were wrapped around one another kissing. It hardly seemed the time or place. Something was wrong with their faces, an expression I didn’t recognize. It looked sad and happy at the same time. Maybe a Delta thing. The embrace ended shortly after.
Oswic and I watched them regather their packs and head through a nearby door. They hadn’t dropped their weapons or gear for the kiss.
“That was rather inappropriate,” Attart tutted, “Who are they? Friends of yours?”
I approached the mosaic as a pretext to widen the gap between myself and Attart until she was at the edge of my vision.
“Friends who will no longer remember me, if my theory is correct.”
“What do you mean?”
I didn’t want to continue explaining myself with the mystery of Hucel hanging over us, but it felt wrong to leave the question hanging. I’d probably feel rude turning down a known murderer for tea.
I suppose that was sort of what I was doing.
“I think we’ve travelled back in time, to the point where I first met the Mushroom-King,” I gestured at Oswic, “The other Oswic makes it fairly obvious, but he doesn’t eliminate other possibilities.”
The mosaic shifted back to displaying Oscar, and then Rian and Oisín. Both were well. Rian still had both his legs.
“All three of these men were dead when I met you. The mosaic might show the past, but that doesn’t explain the grave of your friend,” here it was. I braced myself, “What happened to Hucel?”
Attart’s face twisted and her ghostly hands began to tremble, “I’d rather not talk about it.”
“I need you to. How did she die?”
Her face fell, “I killed her.”
Well. That was simple.
“Why?”
Attart shuddered as she took in a slow shaky breath, “Hucel was never my friend. I learned her name from the ledger after I escaped.
“When I met her in the prison cell she had already been unmade. They had taken her limbs and her sight. All they left her with was her tongue to tell her stories. She had a beautiful voice. I suppose even the warlocks could not rob her of that.”
I felt bile rise in my throat. The warlocks were cruel and twisted, but even for one as dangerous as me they’d left me with all my faculties.
“Why? The warlocks I met were not senselessly cruel.”
“It was one of their endless experiments. They thought a necromancer could fix her. The pain and fear was meant to be temporary, merely a means of subdual. They thought I could fix her once they bent her to their will.”
A chill ran up my spine. This had been at least eight years ago. It was hard to believe they’d been doing the experiment for any reason other than planning for my capture, or those like me.
“Could you fix her?”
“I was unable to heal her, of course, but there were a number of ways I might have been able to bind her spirit in a way which could interact with the world. However, her mind was long gone by the time I was there. She hardly acknowledge my presence. All she would talk about were gentle glens and cool green meadows. When I tried to talk to her she would simply say “Yes, you can come to, and we can dance in the meadow together and we-’” Attart cleared her throat, “‘and we will be married under the great big ribbon tree.’ ‘The great big ribbon tree.’ I remember it exactly. She would say it over and over again.
“I asked her if she wanted to die. We had a lot of time to ourselves to talk. The warlocks left us alone together, I was never sure why. She would never answer, except to say we would dance in the meadow together and will be married under the great big ribbon tree.”
“How did you kill her?”
“It was when I first escaped. I wished her no further harm. I could not bear to strangle her and I had no tools save my needles to slit her throat. The corpses they left around the cell bore no weapons. I tore her soul from her body. The working is simple, yet rarely used by necromancers, for the slightest resistance ends the spell.
“She slipped away easier than one falling asleep.”
I turned off my ring sight.
“I’m sorry. And sorry I asked you for your story.”
“Truth be told, it is somewhat of a relief to share. I slipped in and out of despair for many of my first months in the book. It is probably part of why its lessons had such a strong hold on me.
“But the truth does remain that I am a murderer and a necromancer. I understand if you now wish to part ways.”
I had to laugh. Oswic laughed as well at nearly the exact same time. It must have appeared creepy to Attart.
“That was not murder. That was mercy. I doubt there are any others in this entire dungeon with motives as pure as yours, with paths as untwisted and morals as uncompromised. I’ve killed far more for far worse reasons. If anyone is fleeing anyone, it should be you from me.”
“Have you murdered in cold blood? Truly murdered?” Her tone was cautious, but unafraid.
I had to think about it. The Trogodytes and the dark elves had both been cold blooded or close to it. I’d killed the mercenaries who’d trapped me even after they’d started to flee. I’d struck against the giant spiders and the rats first.
But murder?
There was a difference between a soldier and a murderer. A difference even from an executioner. A murderer was a coward.
Were they?
What of a serial killer?
What was the difference between a serial killer and a blood thirsty warrior?
The warrior loved combat.
The serial killer loved killing.
But then what of the robber who killed not out of love of death, but convenience? Malice wasn’t sufficient. Not all criminals were deliberate. Some simply didn’t care.
Perhaps that was difference between a malicious mind and a malicious heart, for who could say the man who drowned children without shedding a tear was anything other than depraved?
So, had I murdered, either with depraved mind or depraved heart?
I’d come close with the mercenaries, but never followed through. The mushroom-king, dark altar, and warlocks had all depraved my heart in some way. Even Tom Oldshoe might have done so with whatever memory it was that he took.
“I don’t know.”
Attart was silent.
I continued, “I can’t tell the difference between caution and insanity some times down here. I killed a group of dark elves who might have caused me harm had I given them a chance, but they might have been friendly had I said the right words. I killed sentient spiders who might have been waiting in ambush, or they might have merely been resting.
“If I didn’t strike first against some of my foes, I’d probably be dead by now. But when everyone thinks that way, good men end up killing each other. And only bad men survive.”
I spread my arms wide, “So I don’t know.”
“I can help.”
My head jerked involuntarily to stare at the empty space where Attart’s voice came from.
“I can be your conscience. As long as I am trapped in spirit form I can guide you.”
I smiled in what I hoped was her direction, “Thank you.”
“You can look at me.”
I activated my ring sight.
She smiled back.