Just an hour ago I had been so, forgive the pun, dead set – against using my magic. To use it was to become addicted to it, the gift the keeps on giving whether you like it or not. It was a wonder that I’d kept it buried so long, and not attracted every skeletal rabbit and sparrow carcass in the forest to me on my first night.
But now I didn’t want to hide the magic. I needed it to make good my egress; it was all I could think of to get me out of this. I don’t know a spell to untie my hands and feet, or a spell to make the horse that dragged me across the ground disappear. But I’m sure I know something of use, if only I could think of it.
The strength in my undead, arcane-burned hand was accidental, it was a channel of power in my head that flared up with adrenaline in an ‘him-or-me’ situation. This wasn’t quite the same; I wasn’t in any immediate danger. The bruises and cuts from being dragged across the dirt road were minor, compared to what was coming. I wasn’t in immediate danger, but there was some serious danger just on the horizon.
I felt a couple of new cuts appear on my back, and grunted in pain, to more taunts from the onlooking crowd. The town must have been sizeable, more than a single street, for there to be this many people, but not big enough for there to be a real wizard among them. If there was one, assuming he wasn’t especially righteous, I might have more chance of getting out of this alive.
Hah, there it is. My thought process. Losing didn’t even come into it. My death was not scheduled for tonight, I was sure of it! And who is there better qualified than one who has already cheated death twice, no less? The fire, the sea. Maybe three times, if you include the months of exile.
A wretch of a town guard captain, his boot-licking militia and a mob of peasants too scared of me to have even brought flaming torches would not be the end of me. I’ve learned far too much…ahaha, but I can’t remember any of it. Easily solved.
I started to put up mental shields. A kind of series of walls, towers, moats and fancy crenulations around the pain I was feeling, shutting it out almost completely. Then I worked to still my breathing, the very first thing I had learned in the castle with the order. The memory overpowered me. My pain disappeared, and the world as I saw it melted away around me, like some terrible artist’s work, or a block of ice in the sun.
The sky above me, the horse pulling me across the road, and the villagers were all gone. In their place was the exorcise hall of the castle. Exorcise, yes. It was an amusing play on words that kept the spirit-callers that hung around there almost all day amused; for just about as long.
It was where a master would take their apprentice to learn about ghosts, shades, spectres and wraiths, along with a dozen other minor spirit forms if there was such a need.
Stone walls, with an earth floor, dotted with stone slabs carved with warding runes, locking spirits inside the room. Master Kale taught me how to manipulate the energy of spirits here. I would be able to ‘ingest’, for lack of a better word, an emotional imprint, a ghost, and use that energy to fuel a spell, or I would be able to throw the power back out again with interest, and create a shade. It was lesson one of necromancy. I’m hardly an expert though. Especially now.
But it was a start. I kept thinking, ‘what happens next’, and another lesson eventually unfolded. Master Kale, a short man with a long beard and bald head that glowed in the torch light, stood before me again. He raised his hands, and uttered words of power; meant to shield the brain from the magic it was channelling.
I remembered the spell. The spell that might just get me out of this alive-ish. I thanked my long dead master, and opened my eyes again, the strange hallucination ending.
My senses returned, and I found myself now being dragged uphill by the horse, upon which the captain rode. He looked over his shoulder at me, and muttered something about thinking I’d died a little early.
‘My dear captain’ I smiled, or more of a grimace since the pain had returned and redoubled, ‘I wouldn’t dream of denying myself the pleasure of making you, and all of these people, my own’
The captain looked away, shaking his head.
‘I really am a wizard, you know.’ I said to the back of his head, ‘Just left my pointy hat and robe back at the castle. Wonder if the Slayers burned it’
The horse didn’t stop, but the captain froze solid. The rope was long enough for me to see him, half a dozen feet away, clench his fists tight around the reins. A reaction. He did know about the castle, about the slaughter of my order. That might also have meant that he knew what I was.
I looked away from the captain, uphill towards my destination; a small fortress. Things were coming back to me now, bits and pieces of my old memory. This was Fort Victoria, and that town was built by the Victoria Mining Corporation. I was being dragged across the ground like a common murderer, three hours ride from the castle. And if my memory served…
‘Captain Black’ I said, to myself. Another piece of the puzzle clicked into place, and with it came a grim idea.
Fort Victoria wasn’t huge. It was strong though, and I’d been here a couple of times, so I knew the exterior layout well enough. It was just like it said on the tin; a serviceable functional fortress.
It was built on top of a hill at the western edge of town, with four solid round towers at each corner of a square. There was a large courtyard, usually full of miscellaneous mining supplies and finished products waiting for export, along with a group of troops, usually pretending to train.
The gatehouse was flanked by two smaller towers, and directly across the courtyard from it was a small rectangular keep, three stories high. More of a fortified office really, with a barracks and the mining overseer’s chambers somewhere, but I’d never been inside.
The gatehouse loomed over me now, and then loomed further over me as I was dragged through it into the courtyard. As expected, stacks of boxes and wagons full of chests were everywhere, and as Black dismounted and hauled my to my feet, careful not to touch any of my melted dead flesh, I saw troops coming down from the walls to watch the show.
Victoria Mining protected their interests with hired mercenaries, not from the Guild, but serious types nonetheless, and supplemented the vacancies with people from the towns they operated in. There would be nearly forty real soldiers here, including the militia types. Plus the town had a population of nearly two hundred, spread over three or four long streets in front of the fortress. If even half of them appeared to watch me burn, I’d have a hell of a time fighting my way out. It never rains but it pours.
Black frogmarched me into the centre of the courtyard, and kicked me in the back of the knees, putting me onto the ground. He held the back of my neck still, and began barking orders. I didn’t hear them, because I was already rebuilding those mental shields, cutting off my physical senses and reaching towards the avenues of magic in my head.
I don’t know how to explain it to someone who doesn’t just know what I mean, it’s instinctual. Imagine that you have left your book in one room of the house, and are very tired. You always read before you go to bed, but your book is all the way over there. That line of thought that says ‘habit; you read now’ does not care that you left your book somewhere else. You might think about reading half a dozen times, every time telling yourself that it’s not going to happen, and the thought still keeps coming. See? Difficult.
My senses dimmed much slower than they would otherwise, rusting through lack of use. But I meditated there, kneeling on the dirt of Fort Victoria. Once I was sure of my intent, I began to think about reading.
Tendrils of power flowed out of my body and caressed the dirt here like a lover, moving through and over individual specs of the earth, seeking power that resonated with itself. It wasn’t hard to find the emotional imprints of ghosts here.
People fought here every day, training or arguing. There was a lot of anger, and a lot of laughter too. It was a well lived place, bustling with energy of all kinds. Any user of magic can tap into this power if they know how, it’s just more of a necromancer thing to draw from your environment, rather than yourself. You don’t want to have something backfire, after all. A wizard might burn off his beard, but a necromancer might trap his soul into a cucumber.
I gathered up that power, and fed it into myself. I felt the time that a young corporal had ‘slugged’ his commanding officer in the face for making ‘a pass’ at his girlfriend. I felt the time that a training ‘accident’ had killed another young man. Most disturbingly, I picked up other, less repeatable actions that would make anyone with half a mind blush to think were done in public.
‘The hell?’ Black asked the world.
He would have felt power moving around him, like a soft breeze, if he truly did feel any magic on me.
I opened my eyes, every inch of my being brimming with cool energy. I’d summoned all the ghosts of the Fortress, and fed them to my magic. For the first time in so long, the well doth runneth over. It was like the taste of ghost energy had broken the seal on what power I had locked away.
But more time had passed than I realised. Already, someone with a posthole shovel had carved out a, well, post hole for the stake. Three men were lifting a rough stake into position now, while bales of hay were being dragged over from the stables.
‘Wont be long now’ Black muttered under his breath. ‘…finally be over’
I smiled to myself, and waited. I was full of energy, and I had a good idea on how I could use it; even to get me away from a mob of spectators. My own death, again, didn’t even come into my thinking. Ego, thy name is necromancer.