Aedifex Venenatus looked about his carefully cleaned store with satisfaction.  The large stone and wood store had none of the gleaming marble and glass his father’s grand store in Medietas had once boasted, but the Venenatus family had to leave all that behind when they, like most of the skilled artisans, had fled the Hero-Cursed Kingdom’s crumbling cities.  All of the new City states they had founded just outside the kingdom’s borders were still in the rough and functional stage, and Aedifex’s Enchantments was as high-class a store as anyone had managed to build yet.  It’s just too bad that there were so few people who could afford high-quality enchanted gear these days.

Therefore, as soon as he heard a customer walk in, Aedifex hurried behind his counter, put on a professional smile, and gave his usual “Welcome to Aedifex’s Enchantments” line.  That... might have been a mistake this time.  The young man who just walked in had to be in his teens still.  Strangely, he carried a sword and was dressed in clothes that resembled a uniform, but were too thin to be any kind of armor.  At least the fabric seemed to be of high quality, and the stitching was very regular.

The young man eagerly pointed at various items, always ones with silver plating or that had a visible glow to them.  Aedifex patiently described the enchantments on each of them, but he declined to pick up any of them to show the young man more closely.  The shelves all had an enchantment that would shock anyone but Aedifex who tried to pick up an item, something the too eager young man learned no less than four times.  Finally, Aedifex felt he had to ask.

“Young man, you do realize that the items your looking at all have a price measured in gold right?”

“Eh?!  Ah, well...”

He looks around nervously, he clearly doesn’t have the money.  He suddenly brightens up.

“Ah!  But you should give me a discount!  Or maybe credit.  After all, I am a Hero!”

He looks very proud.  I try to make sense of what he just said.

“So, you're robbing me?”

“What?  No!  I just told you I’m a Hero!”

“Yes... I heard you.”

“No, I really am!  You can trust me!”

“You want me to trust you because you're a Hero?”

“You... just what do you think a Hero is?!”

“... An overpowered idiot who slaughters and wrecks everything and expects everyone to love him for it?”

“You... you... you... that’s not a hero at alllllll!!!”

“No, I’m pretty sure everyone would agree with me.  Well, unless they’ve been under a sleep spell for the last 30 years.”

“You... what happened 30 years ago?”

“...That’s the day the Hero was summoned.  Over in the Hero-Cursed Kingdom.”

He just stares blankly for about 10 seconds.  Then his face contorts through an amazing array of expressions.  Don’t tell me he really has been asleep for the last 30 years?  Or even... no.  Impossible.  There is no way the Benevolent Goddess could be so cruel as to send us a second Hero!

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The bizarre Hero wannabe finally settled on an expression.  If I had to describe it... I’d say like a spoiled 6 year old just told the Snow Fairy isn’t real.

“No! No! No!  You jeeeerk!”

He punches me.  It’s a wild blow without any technique, yet somehow it carries enormous power.  I feel something break inside my chest and I’m thrown into the back wall.  The Hero wannabe... no, the True Hero looks stunned by what he’s just done, then he flees with a wail.  You damn Hero!  At least toss me a healing potion first!

Healing potion... I remember the healing potions under my counter.  I try to move there, but I can’t even crawl.  Everything seems like it’s spinning and I feel so cold.  Wait!  I can still control my mana!  I wrack my brain desperately for a spell that would help me, but I have no aptitude for healing magic and enchantments only work on objects, not living creatures.

Damn it!  Are the decades I spent mastering enchantments worth nothing?  Is my death going to become just a minor mishap in some idiot’s Hero Saga?!  No, no, I refuse to die like this!  Refuse... to die?  I suddenly remember a certain old water damaged book I stumbled across as an apprentice.  A book on necromancy.  Half of it was illegible, but among the surviving spells was one that fascinated me because it seemed just like an enchantment.  Soul Anchor.  Even all these years later it he still remembered it vividly.  But what could he cast it on?  He had no desire to spend eternity haunting one of his own items, and his body might be dying but it wasn’t dead yet.  Unless... he focused his Sense within his body and focused on something.  His bones.  They might technically be alive, but the life force was very weak in them.  He could make the enchantment hold, he could!  

He chose a rib from his upper chest, it was large enough and relatively flat after all.  With the combination of speed and precision only possible for a Master Enchanter, Aedifex began forming runes.  Most he’d formed thousands of times... but there was one he’d never used before.  Carefully, he took the rune for Life and fused it with a modifier meaning Opposite.  Unlife.

The enchantment attached, but it didn’t solidify.  Instead, it pulsed as though alive... or pretending to be alive.  It was growing, he fed more mana in and it grew faster.  Spreading first to the spine and then to the other ribs.  Even the broken ones were included, in fact, they were actually straitening out and melding back together!  No wonder necromancers always seemed to start with skeletons.

He should have emptied his mana pool by now, but strangely he felt like he still had more.  He kept feeding the enchantment as it spread through his skull and down his legs.  Finally, after spreading across his entire skeleton it solidified.  Aedifex sighed (mentally) and opened his eyes... or tried to.