The Heart of a Necromancer

by Eddie Patin

  "M!" Jason exclaimed with a grin, suddenly hushing himself when he realized how quiet it was in there. M for Morgana, he thought, then he felt like a retard and embarrassment hit him like a truck.

  Everyone turned to look at her as Morgana seemed for a moment like she wanted to hide in plain sight. Jason suddenly felt bad. God—what she'd been through! Riley smirked when he saw the plush, black robe, then he rapidly turned back to the array of what looked like cryogenic chambers of some kind in the back.

  Dressed in the black robe with the M, Morgana picked up Dawnbringer again, her green eyes glaring and back on full alert.

  Jason turned to the sleeping pods and other machinery on the far wall. There were four of them—large sci-fi-looking cylinders big enough to hold a sleeping person in each, all leaning at forty-five degrees against the back of the room and held solidly by metal frames. The chambers were bright white with a small glass window on each at around face level. From here, Jason could see the yellow color inside the windows of what must have been the interior walls, but he couldn't see anyone inside yet from his vantage. There was a quiet, low hum saturating the room; the drone of some kind of motor. Jason's eyes flashed over the bed, the shelves of books, and a small table with a fork, a book, and a plant-fiber place mat. There was a single chair pushed neatly in. The floor was made of beige carpet. The sleek, modern room was mind-blowing, being connected to the dark and macabre stone tower full of prisoners and chains and undead servants.

  A spot of dark red blood on the floor caught Jason's eye. Then he saw another and quickly followed a trail with his eyes to one of the leaning chambers. There was actually a bloody hand-print on the gleaming white surface of the chamber next to the one that the trail led to, as if the necromancer had caught his balance on the next pod over while trying to climb in.

  Jason looked at Riley and saw the soldier already focusing on the pod he'd been considering. The muzzle of Riley's Gauss rifle pointed straight at it like a laser.

  "He's in that cryo-chamber," Jason said, pointing with his AK barrel.

  "It's not cryogenic," Riley replied. "It's a hyperbaric chamber. Let's advance, but be careful."

  Jason thought of the huge golem. They'd just destroyed that golem. He thought of necromancers in DnD, then liches and phylacteries—undead sorcerers that could transfer their souls from one container or body into another. If this necromancer was so good at working with golems, then it stood to reason that he'd kept that bladed stone behemoth—his biggest gun—standing by just in case he ever needed it in an important battle.

  "No—let's hurry!" Jason exclaimed. "We just killed the golem! He just like ... transferred his consciousness into that thing or something. We've gotta get him before he goes back into his body!"

  The four of them rushed across the room. Riley pushed his way past Jason to have a clear shot. Jason lowered his AK-47 just long enough to scrutinize a control panel next to a recessed pull-lever. As he looked over the controls, he could clearly see the body of a clean-cut, slender and tall man in his forties seemingly in stasis within. The man's skin was smooth and deeply lined from his apparent lack of body-fat. His hair was dark, short, and groomed. He had a subtle goatee on his serene face and was dressed in a dark t-shirt.

  There were a lot of controls and dials—probably ways to manually control atmospheric pressure and such—but the lever with 'open' above it and 'close' below it became the obvious answer.

  Jason looked back at the others to see if they were ready. It looked like they were. Morgana was focused on the hyperbaric chamber—standing by with her glowing sword—but her eyes were wide and flitted frequently around at what must have been a lot of really crazy-looking shit around her.

  Pushing the lever into the 'open' position, Jason took a step back and shouldered his rifle again as a small computer screen lit up and ran through a series of commands, taking over. The chamber shuddered. There was a loud hiss as the pressurized air inside was freed into the room. The door opened automatically and silently to the side opposite where Riley was waiting to blow the bastard away...

  A slight mist appeared in the chamber where there wasn't any before and as it cleared, Jason looked down at the sleeping man inside. Now, Jason could also see tan cargo pants and a clean leather belt. The padding cradling the man's slumbering form was spattered red with blood around his upper arm, which was wrapped in a strange blue medical device, secured with straps.

  "That's him!" Morgana blurted.

  As soon as she did, the man's eyes popped open with a fright. The necromancer seemed disoriented for a half-second—his pale blue eyes darting around at everyone standing over and around him—then his gaze froze on Jason. He gasped.

  "What...?" the waking man exclaimed in a breathy voice. His eyes showed a glimmer of recognition. "...Jason?!"

  Then he moved quickly to pick up the silvery pistol that lay on the soft padding next to his right hand.

  Riley immediately shot him in the stomach, stitching him three times with Gauss rifle bolts that split the air with their violent cracks. There was no magical shield this time. The hypersonic rounds devastated the man's abdomen, spraying bright red gore all over the clean interior of the chamber. Jason was dimly aware of Morgana shrinking in terror away from the deafening sound of the rifle going off in the enclosed space. He, himself, stared at the necromancer in shock as blood spattered Jason's face and chest. He felt something wet hit his left eye and turned away squinting.

  "Shit!" Jason cried. "Fuck, Riley!"

  Morgana cried out and the necromancer let out a rattling sound of pain.

  The mortally wounded man stopped going for his pistol and fell back, gaping up at the ceiling in shock like a fish. A moment later, the necromancer turned to Jason—who was staring at him again, lowering the muzzle of his AK-47—and his lined face twisted into pain and confusion. The pale, blue eyes pleaded and he opened his mouth, immediately coughing up a glut of blood.

  "Please!" the necromancer sputtered. "Don't harm my wife and daughter..."

  Then, the man seemed to deflate before Jason's eyes, sagging into a twisted position of trying to bend his head down over his chest while writhing on his back. Jason looked down at Riley's handiwork and saw a large volume of blood pulsing out of the three holes in the man's shirt. There was a bulge under the fabric. Jason didn't want to look under it. It was probably the guy's guts pushing out.

  Jason turned away. "I ... uh ... think he's dead," he muttered.

  "No shet," Riley replied with a smirk.

  The instant Jason took a few steps away from the open chamber, Morgana charged up to the necromancer's side—her sword gone; probably back in the space of the smuggler's ring—then reached down with fierce determination and heaved the bloody body out of the pod and onto the floor with a wet thud. Before anyone reacted, Morgana raised her hand. Dawnbringer suddenly glowed high in her fist again. Then she swung the blade down, viciously beheading the necromancer. Her sword cut through the man's neck with the ease of slicing through soft ice cream and its silvery edge came to a stop when it hit the carpet. The head popped up and rolled a few feet from its shoulders.

  Jason stared at the scene—feeling a sick wave of horror flash over him—and let his gaze fall on the severed spine and veins showing within the now-spurting neck.

  "Oh God," he said, feeling his gorge rise and his stomach flip-flop. "Holy shit."

  "Fruk!" Riley exclaimed with a smile, lowering his rifle and watching Morgana's attack with wide, surprised eyes.

  Gliath stood nearby in front of the left-most chambers, watching the spectacle with the same emotionless feline face and impassive yellowish-green eyes as always.

  "What the hell, Morgana?!" Jason cried. He couldn't stop himself. The beige carpet was now drenched in blood from the ruined body. The necromancer's face was turned away from him, staring back toward the door to the tower. The extreme exhaustion of staying awake and slogging through this battle and hunting gargoyles for two straight days suddenly hi
t him like a freight train. Jason swooned and backed up, catching himself on Gliath's powerful shoulder. He was dizzy. His blood was swooshing through his ears.

  The young woman straightened, her glowing blade smeared with blood in a streak where it had cut through the neck. She stared at the necromancer's head. Jason saw her chest heaving. Her green eyes almost glowed with fury.

  Then she lowered her sword, took a deep breath, let out a long sigh, and said, "I just had to make sure. He's been dead before."

  Gliath looked down without expression as Jason hung on his armored shoulder for a moment. The leopardwere was solid. Jason's head eventually stopped swimming and he stood and patted the armor plating on the Krulax's chest.

  "Thanks, Gliath," he said, then he slung his rifle. Jason wiped at the blood on his face and saw red on the back of his hand. "Freaking brutal."

  Then he looked around.

  Wife and daughter, Jason thought, turning to the other hyperbaric chambers.

  Riley had already slung his Gauss rifle and was searching the bloody, messy body. Jason saw him unhook the holster from the man's belt and pull off a double mag-pouch from the other hip. He opened one of the pouches and fished out a silver magazine.

  "He has some kind of particle beam pistol," the soldier said, looking up at Jason with a smile as if he wasn't crouching over a mess of entrails. "It looked like a fruking lightning gun!" Then his excited dark eyes flashed down to the man's feet. "And he has some kind of chassis over his boots—some kind of high-tech cleats—probably having to do with that flying disc he was using."

  As Gliath took to wandering and looking around the rest of the room, Jason peered into the small windows of the three other pods. One was empty. The other two had people inside. One held a pretty blonde woman of about thirty—pretty except for the fact that she didn't have any eyeballs. She was sleeping as serenely as the necromancer had been before being disturbed, dressed in a plain green dress from Jason's era. Her eyes weren't closed; they were just gone—scooped right out of their sockets. A chill ran up Jason's spine and he realized that he still felt a little sick. With a growing sense of dread, he looked into the next pod—deep into it because its occupant was very short—and he saw what must have been the dead man's daughter. The little girl with dark, curly hair and pale skin was maybe ... ten years old? She was dressed like a normal kid from Jason's time and seemed to be in the same stasis, also was missing her eyes.

  "Holy shit," Jason said. "His wife and daughter don't have any freaking eyeballs!"

  As he stared at the necromancer's family, Riley moved about, collecting things from the dead man into a large dump bag. The soldier retrieved the 'lightning pistol' from the blood-soaked hyperbaric chamber, putting it in its holster and into the bag. Eventually, he left the body and walked up behind Jason.

  Riley craned to look through the windows.

  "Holy shet," he said. "No eyeballs."

  Jason met his gaze then looked back at the sleeping woman again. "Yeah—that's what I said."

  "These chambers are running at full power," Riley said. Jason wondered for a moment how he knew then assumed that Riley could see the electricity in the air or something; maybe via some sort of electromagnetic vision spectrum. "Let's put 'em down. Open up the pods."

  A jolt of adrenaline flew through Jason at Riley's words. He looked back through the window at the little, eyeless girl.

  "Uh ... no," Jason replied. "Let's leave them."

  Riley scoffed. "What?! Come on. The dude's dead. Don't just leave his wife and kid to rot in these hyperbaric chambers after the power dies."

  Jason opened his mouth searching for objections. Obviously, it didn't make sense to leave them alive—even without eyeballs. It'd be cruel to leave them to suffer, wasn't it? But the man begged him not to hurt them. Speaking of which—how the hell did the necromancer recognize Jason?!

  "Hey—he knew me!" Jason exclaimed. "What the hell was that?!"

  Riley smirked. "Maybe it's got something to do with that 'evil Jason' from Jason 113's notes. Remember that?"

  "Oh yeah..." Jason looked to the left of the chambers at the machine humming along with a low drone, taking up a huge part of the wall. Was it some kind of generator? It didn't look like a normal generator; it looked really high-tech with sleek, curving lines and subtle, glowing lights that were either intended for some purpose that Jason didn't understand, or, were just designed to look cool. "How much longer do you think that generator will keep the hypo ... uh ... hyperbaric chambers running?"

  Looking over the sleek power system, Riley scanned with his eyes and scratched his beard. "I don't see a normal source of fuel. I can see power running out of it into the chambers and into the walls, but nothing is running in. I think it's some kind of fusion generator. It'll last ... maybe forever?"

  "What? Forever?" Jason replied.

  "Let's take a look at the stiffs," Riley said, suddenly reaching out to the lever controlling the woman's chamber door.

  Jason opened his mouth protest but didn't make a move beyond that. He was rather curious himself. He adjusted the rifle sling on his shoulder. A cold dread creeped through him. Pull the rifle, he thought. Pull the rifle. But Jason tried to ignore the idea.

  The door hissed as air escaped just like the necromancer's, then cracked and pivoted open silently. Mist materialized from the air inside then thinned, pouring out into the room and rolling over the bloody carpet. Jason glanced back briefly to see Morgana and Gliath standing behind them. Everyone watched.

  As the air equalized, the woman's pale skin slowly darkened and her color dulled to a murky brownish-grey. Sick splotches manifested all over her neck, face, and the top of her chest that was exposed. A chill ran up Jason's back as her gouged-out eye sockets suddenly blackened until they were as dark as ink. Then, two tiny blue flames like points of lasers ignited where her pupils should have been.

  "Whoa!" Jason breathed.

  A moment after the blue-fire eyes lit in the woman's deep, black eye sockets, she stirred, let out a gurgling from deep in her throat and started to writhe around. Her fingers tightened into furious, hooked claws and she bared her rapidly-browning teeth, sliding her head back and forth on the chamber's pillow.

  Without another thought, Jason reached out to the lever—Riley was still touching it with his gloved fingertips as he stared in wonder—and flipped it to close the chamber.

  When the door immediately began closing without a sound, everyone gasped and made noises of surprise.

  "What are you doing?!" Riley asked, suddenly glaring at him.

  The door closed before the woman escaped the chamber and Jason watched as the motors within pulled it shut into a tight seal capable of withstanding several atmospheres worth of pressure. As soon as the hyperbaric chamber closed up, Jason pushed forward past Riley to look through the window. He watched with a very real feeling of relief as the woman settled back down. The blue fire in her eyes snuffed out and all of the nasty colors faded away little by little until she looked like a normal woman again.

  Jason turned to face his confused teammates. He sighed.

  "The guy asked us not to hurt his wife and daughter," he said, immediately feeling stupid. "Besides—if we kill the woman, we'll have to kill the little girl too, and I don't want to be a part of that." Jason's mind stretched for logical reasons to leave the woman and the kid alone, but his mind yawned empty and dazed. Jesus fuck, he was tired. He was at the end of his rope. It didn't have to make sense—he just felt like they should leave them alone.

  Riley and Morgana stared at him dumbfounded for a moment.

  Finally, Riley's eyes darted to the hyperbaric chambers then back to Jason, then he smirked. He shrugged. "Eh, whatever. What the fruk do I care? Let's get the good shet and get home so we can get some damned sleep."

  Jason sighed. "Okay."

  Partly confused about why Morgana didn't object to leaving the wife and daughter alive—or whatever the fuck kind of state they were in there—Jason was sim
ply grateful that she didn't complain. He figured that the Soloster girl would want to kill 'em all. She had plenty of reason to be furious as hell and be overflowing with a taste for avenging.

  Maybe Morgana was dazed herself, after what she'd just been through. Just a few minutes ago, she was naked and strung up about to be tortured or who knows what; probably transformed into a gargoyle. She was probably with Jason on whatever he wanted, just for saving her life. He wondered if she had any idea about how much Jason had argued with Riley to go after her instead of just leaving her world behind and moving on to the next job.

  As Jason wandered exhausted into the area of the bed, table, and bookshelves, Morgana touched his shoulder. Her fingertips sent a shock of warmth and longing through his body.

  Jason turned to face her with a smile. She smiled back and looked down at the 'M' on her chest.

  "Let's finish all this up," Jason said.

  Going through the rest of the room, Jason was surprised by what he found when looking through the many books. As he'd expected—par for the course with necromancers, he supposed—there were loads of nonfiction books about anatomy and medicine, as well as other subjects like geography, mathematics, construction and engineering, and other stuff that resembled college textbooks. There were also many fantasy novels—fiction—from authors that Jason recognized from his own world. Maybe—for as crazy as this world was with its monsters and magic—Primoria of u936 wasn't all that different from Jason's Earth.

  The most interesting thing that Jason found was in the bookshelf at waist-height within reach of the bed. He found the necromancer's journal; or, at least one of them. Quickly flipping through the pages as everyone searched the room for valuables, Jason paused on a section with photographs kept in protective plastic sleeves of the same man with the woman and girl in what must have been their old life. Most of the photos were of them in a house, posing together in various mundane activities. One picture showed the woman—lovely with blue eyes and her hair in a braid—smiling in front of a birthday cake with the candles blown out and the necromancer and the girl pressing in for the picture from both sides. In another photo, Jason could see the man talking while holding a bottle of soda, but he could distinctly see that the lettering on the bottle was in one of the Asian languages—either Chinese or Japanese, he supposed. In another picture, the necromancer, woman, and little girl were together at a theme park ... yeah ... definitely surrounded by Asians. Huh. Did these guys live in China or something? There were also pictures of them in the mountains—a lot like Colorado, or maybe Montana—and at a city park with mountains in the background that looked a lot like the same snowcapped mountains surrounding the valley that used to be the city of Bozeman.