by Rosie Scott
“We have the wrong kid,” one protested.
Another called, “What was the crime? We thought you said necromancy!”
“It is necromancy, you idiot! Stop him!”
“He's a healer!” came the retort.
“He's also a necromancer!” another screamed, enraged.
It was hard for them to believe. Life was the rarest element, and death was rare due to its illegality. Thus, such a dual caster had never knowingly existed before in Chairel. Necromancers had to learn their magic through illicit means, so rarely did they visit the city which would execute them without trial, let alone attend its university to learn a second element. And life mages required heaps of gold to go through training here; with potential to be among the elite, why dally with the forbidden?
With the arrow wound healed, I stood back up. The life shield still glowed around me as I took off toward the lower city once more, taking advantage of the bafflement of my pursuers. Shouts and orders rattled through the air behind me, but other than two more arrows that bounced off my shield, the soldiers couldn't catch up.
I didn't stop until I passed the eastern gate of Sera and collapsed in the long grasses between the intimidating city wall and the nearest farm pasture. Each breath ran tiny knives along my lungs until it felt too painful to breathe, but my needy body forced me through the trauma. I couldn't afford to stop, but every muscle in my body ached and thousands of thoughts barraged my mind.
From this point forward, I would forever be a criminal. Everything I'd ever worked toward—a life magic license and the subsequent surgeon's license, getting my parents out of poverty, a possible relationship with Kai—was ruined. I felt nauseated as I imagined how my parents would react when they found out I'd wrecked any chance of giving them a better life. After all their worries, encouragements, and gold, I couldn't even give them that.
And what now? My parents wouldn't disown me for learning necromancy, but the secret was out. What would we do when we couldn't afford to move far away from Chairel's laws? Where would we go?
“By the order of Sirius Sera, lift up your hands.” The booming voice echoed off the nearby wall and back to my ears. I laughed dryly with exasperation. I couldn't even stop to breathe without them catching me. Maybe fate was as thirsty for my death as it was for Kai's.
“By the order of Sirius Sera, lift up your hands,” came the command again, more demanding.
“For what?” I asked, standing up and turning around. Sixteen soldiers approached me carefully along the exterior of the near pasture fence, all tentatively holding weapons or summoned spells. I would have gawked at the idea of facing sixteen at once if I felt there could be any positive outcome to this at all.
“You are under arrest,” the middle-aged human at the front stated, his eyes watching my hands for spells as he took small cautious steps toward me. A steel shield protected his upper torso while his right hand gripped a short sword. “Your charge is necromancy.”
“What incentive do you give necromancers to come with you for arrest?” I retorted. Despite my argument, it was an honest question. “Either way, Sirius will execute me.”
It must have been a good argument because as the soldiers came forward, they gave no answer. One had hair as red as Kai's and held fire in one hand. Because I'd only given myself a magical guard to withstand physical attacks, I prepared a ward to reject offensive magic.
Sheel a mana.
Zwip.
Giving myself a second protection convinced them that I wouldn't come peacefully. Under the pale moonlight of a briskly cold night, sixteen soldiers charged me.
I scrambled back over long waving grasses, refreshing my physical shield when another barrage of arrows clashed into it. My mind frantically searched through options, unused to having to think so quickly in a fight.
Absort la mana del life. Death magic pulled the energy straight out of the surrounding breeze and collected in my palm as a dark swirling ball. I thrust my hand out toward the first soldier's chest, and the foggy magic stretched between us in a funnel. As soon as it hit him, a deep crackling sizzled and popped in the air between us like bubbling oils on a skillet. The black magic became murkier and darker as it siphoned his life force from his chest and sucked it back to me. His energy didn't collect in my hand; instead, it sunk into my palm and its collection of veins, traveling through my bloodstream to my heart. My veins protruded under my pale fresh, becoming more pronounced as they carried their harvest.
“Leave me be!” I screamed at them, my rough voice hoarser with desperation over the sizzling of my magic. I continued backing away defensively, and even though the man just before me slowly fatigued with my leeching, he pursued. “I am no threat to you! I don't want to kill you! Leave me be!”
The soldiers said nothing. They only attacked. As life force collected through the death magic and settled into my core, I realized that while it fatigued the man, it strengthened me. My body's earlier heaving protests from my flight were little more than vaguely quickened breaths. Instead of shredding my ribs like earlier, my heart now arrogantly goaded me to give it a challenge.
Fff! Fff!
Two fireballs hissed as they rampaged toward me, trailing wisps of smoke that left hazes over patches of the starry night sky. The first hit my ward and dissipated as it was rejected. The second missed me entirely, and the orange flash lighting up the nearby pasture fence proved the flames hit the long grasses and spread to my left. One soldier screamed obscenities and built water magic in her palms, rushing over to put the fire out before it could risk the land.
As the others focused on the fire, the man before me slowed. His eyes dropped to the funnel still crackling between us. While he'd hacked away at my life shield, I'd only regenerated it with the life force I collected from him. Now, he stopped trying. He dropped his sword, and then the magic between us stopped crackling. I frowned with confusion until I realized the noise ceased because the spell had no life left to harvest.
I backed up a step as he fell toward me and collapsed in a lump over his sword. I stared at his body in a state of shock. It was the first time I'd ever taken a life, and it jolted me as I took so many things into perspective. A series of random panicked thoughts flew through my head in a ramble.
I just killed someone. One season after turning fifteen, I killed someone. He lived over forty years just to die like this. All because I raised a rat from the dead. All because of curiosity. I asked them to leave me be. If they'd left me be, this wouldn't have happened. Will I be able to tell my parents? What would Kai think? I just killed someone. And it was so...
I stared at my hand. I still felt the other man's life force empowering it.
...easy.
“Murderer!” The water mage hesitated from putting out the fire and pointed at me as I stood over the corpse, still holding up my hand and studying its power.
Corpa te risa. Using the life force of their comrade, I built a new spell. Once the black magic formed in my hand, I sent it into the fallen corpse.
The pursuing soldiers slowed as the man flinched. The corpse lifted on its forearms, groaning incoherently as if I'd woken it from a long comfortable nap. It pulled itself to a stand. Like it had its own consciousness, it eyed the sword it dropped only moments ago and leaned down to grab it.
“Oh, gods!” one soldier wailed, her body shaking with shuddering sobs as an undead former friend rushed toward her with a sword and hollowed gaze.
“Abigail!” another soldier shouted toward the sobbing woman. “Keep it together!”
The corpse paid no mind to their bickering. With my focus on Abigail because she sobbed and caused a scene, it headed to her first. It hobbled with a purpose, swinging its sword through the air when it was close enough. Silver glimmered in an arc toward Abigail's throat before her sobs cut short. Blood spurted up like a fountain from the severed arteries surrounding her spinal cord, splattering over the previously unmarred corpse and another soldier who rushed forward to Abigail's defens
e a moment too late. The zombie soon fell to the ground from a quick decapitation by the defender, and its head rolled until the open eyes stared directly into Abigail's, blood spewing out of the throat into a weighty puddle over the grasses. Body heat rose like smoke from the blood into the frigid cold air.
Dear gods. My eyes stuck to the blood puddle that only grew as the mutilated parts of two separate bodies audibly gushed. A single spell had caused this. It was one thing to take a life by simply weakening the body with leeching. It was another thing entirely to see such gore while I was still in a state of shock.
Crrk!
A water mage's ice shard crashed into my ward and broke apart into glowing whitish-blue pieces, leaving the magical protection flickering with weakness. I regenerated the guard and managed, “No one else has to die. Please stay back and leave me be.” My voice trembled with the echoes of trauma from what I'd witnessed. It felt like I'd fallen into a dream-state and would wake up at any moment. For now, I didn't want to fight anymore. I wanted to be still and think about all of this for a long time. Possibly forever.
“Fuck you, murderer!” the fire mage screeched. She unsheathed a sword with a metallic shing, and as she held it still, her other hand swept over the blade, imbuing the steel with flames.
A shaky breath of resignation shuddered through my lips and spewed into the night as wisps of smoke. I summoned another spell.
Corpa te risa a multipla.
Just as the necromantic book specified, I thrust this spell toward my boots. Black magic clouded out around them in a circle like thick mist with a slight hiss. In seconds, clouds of energy pulled together into dozens of dark tendrils. As if the magic itself lived, the cirri slithered off in multiple directions. One headed for Abigail's body and disappeared. Another absorbed into the decapitated body that fought for me earlier. The others sunk into the ground as if they'd found nothing.
I reached out with both hands, leeching from two pursuers at once with separate funnels. In my peripheral vision, the two decapitated heads rolled over the grasses toward their respective bodies seemingly on their own. As soon as broken bloodied flesh met, the corpses rose to fight. Blood still leaked from the location of their decapitations, their mutilated parts only kept together via black magic.
The earth trembled. The two soldiers before me swung weapons and threw magic at my shields until they fatigued and dropped dead, their life force depleted from my leeching. Their cooling bodies shook as the land beneath them rumbled protests.
Pop!
As the grasses exploded amidst a spray of cold dirt nearby, it wasn't just the soldiers who hesitated to see the ruckus. I heaved with adrenaline as I realized the tendrils that sunk into the ground hadn't fizzled out. From a patch of land near the pasture I'd tried to leave far behind me by continually retreating, multiple skeletal cattle launched themselves out of a shallow grave. Grimy hooves gripped the ground and churned dirt like butter as they pulled the rest of the bodies from the earth's greedy grasp to heed my call. These cattle had been dead for a while, for even the most recent corpse only had slivers of old leather hanging from non-existent joints. I assumed someone slaughtered them at the nearby farm and put them in a mass grave. Now, they stampeded toward our fight, thirsty instead to be the slaughterers.
Foggy black magic linked the bovine skeletons together in place of ligaments. As they galloped toward the panicking soldiers who looked to dodge the stampede, Sera's city wall flashed in pieces between moving bone.
Instead of me versus sixteen soldiers, it was now me, six skeletal cattle, and four recent human corpses against twelve remaining foes. Necromancy had always intrigued me, but seeing its power in action was mesmerizing. Unlike most magics or weapons that fatigued wielders over time, my power only grew.
With a sound reminiscent of smashing a large fruit mercilessly against stone, the first skeletal cow bashed its cranium into the fire mage's chest. The woman flew back in a spin from the charge's momentum and crashed to the ground with the crunch of bone. Her flaming sword escaped her grasp and spread its fire to the long grasses nearby. The leather armor covering the mage's chest bloated and creaked with internal hemorrhaging, and after a few wheezy breaths, she went still.
I continued backing away from the scene and shouted again, “Leave me be and I will dispel them!”
Clunk!
The breath forcefully escaped my lungs from the rapid emergence of stone beneath my boots. I fell off the rock pillar to the ground, and my shield flickered out from the force. The earth mage who'd summoned the obstruction stalked up to me, building a metal blade in his palm.
I didn't regenerate my shield right away. I only sat there, overwhelmed and pondering over whether it would be best just to let them kill me. A harmless interest in necromancy had rapidly devolved into multiple casualties, and all because they wouldn't reason with me. Why even try?
The earth mage eyed the growing metal until he was satisfied with its size. Since I sat back on the grass with no protections from a physical hit, my pale throat was vulnerable and beckoned to him in the moonlight. I only stared at my killer with a confused mixture of resignation and defiance, waiting for death and hoping for it to be quick.
Then, it was raining. In the frigid night air of Dark Star, heavy hot droplets rained over me and the surrounding grasses as the skeleton of a bull impaled the earth mage with one horn through the temple. With a hollowed beastly cry, the bull threw its victim into the air, releasing the body from the horn until it spun surrounded by an ever-widening arc of blood, shattered bone, and brain matter. My traumatized breaths were all I could hear as I realized I was covered in the aftermath. A sliver of the man's gray brain sat on my pale arm in a steaming lump, and one dislodged green eye stared at me from beside my boot.
I swallowed down nausea and scrambled back over the grasses, desperate to separate myself from a fight that only grew bloodier. Ahead, cattle rampaged through the soldiers as weapons and the elements were thrown back at them, and though one skeleton collapsed into a heap of bones, the dead had the upper hand. Unlike me and my foes, morale didn't affect my corpses. They didn't care about the gore and destruction. When a corpse ally fell, they didn't panic or lose their focus. They simply fought, protecting me and destroying those who would wish me harm until they were either defeated or dispelled.
I regenerated my shield and stood, so shaky on my feet that I nearly fell back to the ground. I didn't want to fight anymore. Watching the battle ahead with a distant gaze, I realized I didn't have to. One by one, the soldiers were either gored by cattle or defeated by former friends. In the chaos of the stampede, they hadn't been able to focus on fighting me.
As heavy breaths echoed in my ears, the remaining bovine and human corpses walked back to me like loyal pets and loitered around like we met for a demented family gathering. We were all covered in blood. I noticed the blood streaming down the bull's horns and remembered how this skeleton had been the one to save my life even though I'd given up.
“Thank you,” I murmured, my shaking voice making it incoherent.
Internally, I understood talking to corpses was pathetic. But right now, I had no one else.
Screams echoed out from Sera's gate, where soldiers and civilians rushed to look outside the city at the ruckus. The fire from the mage's earlier spell still raged over the grasses, lighting up the gory battlefield as if helping the city find the culprit.
I waved my hand quickly in the air, and the corpses collapsed. Bones fell without rhyme or reason, and the decapitated heads separated once more from severed spinal cords. I backed away from the scene a few more steps before spinning to rush toward the asylum of the Seran Forest, my thoughts the only things racing faster than my heart.
Seven
The first few days in the Seran Forest were a mish-mash of crazed traumatic rambles, frenzied shivering, and blank stares at falling snow and hanging icicles. The Icilic blood running through my veins made the frigid cold bearable, but I was not immune to the ine
xorable consequences of severe weather. I didn't sleep or stop moving for a few days, desperate to keep my heart rate up and body warm.
The Seran Forest was a coniferous mix of burly pines, evergreens, and thick mosses that gave off bursts of color through the glimmering icy dew of cold mornings. I ate little other than twilby and gotton berries, for they were the only plants I recognized. Gotton berries were a popular snack at the Seran University for the raw energy boosts they gave to studying mages. As I ate them now, I marveled at my new circumstances.
The face of the first man I'd killed haunted me. The look of confusion he'd had when staring down at the last of his life force stuck with me like a taunt.
Why wouldn't he retreat? My mind kept going back to that. Then the other side of my brain played devil's advocate and ask, why wouldn't you?
I didn't want to die. I have things to live for. I thought back to how I'd pleaded with Kai to look forward to something. Yet, I'd nearly given up during the fight because continuing it only meant more death. Why would Kai follow my advice when I didn't follow it myself?
Kai deserves to live. You don't. I frowned against the subjective musings as a painful ache of self-loathing sliced through me. I heard her words to me, over and over, about how I was her only friend and she didn't want to lose me. By now, surely Kai knew what happened. She would know of my secrets and my crimes. Not only had I ruined any chance of forming an everlasting bond with the one person I'd ever connected with, she would die lonely while viewing me with the same disdain I felt for myself.
Depression overtook me. On the eve of the new year, I read Kai's note repeatedly under a sliver of moonlight that shone through the needled canopy and sparkled off fallen snow. As my eyes stuck to Kai's bubbly handwriting, it reminded me that this hopefulness was no longer my reality. Eleven days ago, I'd longed for friendship and a decent future. Even in the best-case scenario where Kai didn't know of my crimes, at the very least she'd spend tonight thinking I rejected her. Guilt devastated me; not only did I think about Kai dying young and friendless, I felt like a murderer. Seeing my parents again and hearing their advice was the only solace I looked forward to.
