by Rosie Scott
Holding my scythe in one hand and Kenady's flail in the other, I pursued him as he shook in fear. “Of course I know how well-regarded your family is in Sera,” I spat irritably. “I'd be daft to think you earned this promotion based on your own merits.”
Kenady's face devolved into an angry mess. “Like you'll ever do anything noteworthy,” he hissed. “What the fuck are you going to do while out here alone? Your name will just be added to the list of all the other necromancers who thought they ever were anything. You are nothing. You started as nothing and you will forever be nothing. Stay out here in the forest fucking corpses and stomping your feet down like a pitiful child who refuses to give in to the law. Do you think anyone cares? No one even knows your fucking name. You will forever be just another necromancer.”
Rage took over. I put all my might into swinging Kenady's own flail at the helmet still protecting his head. The weapon crashed into the side of the armor with a thud. Kenady fell back like a dead weight, dazed. I threw his flail into the forest brush like trash and collapsed on top of him in a straddle position. As he squirmed beneath me, I grabbed his helmet and tugged. Kenady grunted with panic and adrenaline as his hands grasped at mine, fighting me as I tried to remove the headgear.
“I'll be picking your fucking brains out of my boots by nightfall,” I promised him through gritted teeth. When his struggles proved too strong, I abruptly stood, grabbing my scythe from the nearby debris on my way up. Kenady scrambled on the ground, trying to follow. I stomped on his torso with my left boot. The sharp crack of a rib bone pierced the air, and Kenady's gasps muffled with sobs. Holding him still, I ignored the pain in my knee and brought my scythe down from the skies with a vengeance, targeting the break in his armor just over his left hip.
Shink!
The recently healed wound reopened. Kenady squirmed beneath my boot, rambling off a string of terrified curses as I jerked the blade through his gut until I recognized the stench of his acid. Before the blade could end his suffering by hitting the spine, I tossed it aside and straddled him again. I grabbed his helmet. He fought me, but his immense pain and failing body made him weak. The headgear slipped off his head through slick sweat, and I threw it into the brush to join his flail in irrelevancy.
Then I stood. Remembering my earlier taunt to him, I circled my face with a finger, making sure he took a good look at it. The emotion in Kenady's eyes devolved from panic to resignation.
“It's hideous,” he wheezed, throwing one last insult at me.
“I could say the same of yours,” I replied, raising a boot. “Thank the undeserving gods I have the power to do something about it.”
With every insult Kenady had ever spat at me and Kai resounding through my head like a taunt, I stomped my boot straight into the center of his face. I felt his nose shatter beneath the pressure, but his skull put up resistance. I lifted the boot again.
…destitute Cerin...
Another stomp.
...snooty bitch...
Another.
...filthy fucking peasant with a hard-on for royalty...
My screams shattered through the forest, overriding the echoes of crushing bone.
...you'll be stuck all alone...
I lost count. Static memories raced through my head. Kenady's pretentious smirk when my necromancy was discovered at the university, when he knew he'd just resigned me to a life of solitude and death. His glare of pleasure when he pushed me into the pits of despair by ordering Kai's note to go up in flames. Kenady's last rant about me being nothing earned him the most stomps of all, for deep inside a thick blanket of denial I worried they were true.
Finally, I stumbled back from Kenady's corpse, my breaths wheezing with exertion. Everything was a bloody mess. Kenady's head was utterly crushed. A stew of bone, brain, and teeth settled into the bed of pine needles, the blood so thick it puddled outward rather than into the ground. Maybe at one time the sight would have appalled me. But not anymore. I found it beautiful. I looked over the gruesome scene of utter savagery and felt only immense relief. I'd killed hundreds over the years to survive and rise in power, but killing Kenady was the first time I felt pride when taking a life. It truly felt as if I'd scraped a bit of scum off the edge of Arrayis.
The ground trembled. I turned from the brutalized corpse. One Seran soldier ran through the forest, followed by my army of undead. As soon as he saw me standing over Kenady's mutilated body, he squeaked with fear and skidded to a stop.
“On your knees,” I demanded, grabbing my scythe from a pool of Kenady's blood and stalking toward the soldier. When he only shook with fear, I shouted, “On your fucking knees!”
“Okay!” He fell abruptly to his knees. The corpses slowed to a stop in a half-circle behind him by my order, watching the man with hollow stares. The soldier noticed and glanced back, only to yelp when he recognized undead former comrades.
“Are you the last?” I asked.
“What?” The soldier looked back at me and cowered as I neared. “Y—yes. The last of this army. Please, dear gods...I have children. I have children in Sera. Please don't kill me.”
I came to a stop just feet away, my bloody scythe in both hands. “Everyone is someone's child. You believe your ability to procreate makes you more worthy to live than anyone else?”
“No,” he blurted, shaking so badly he fell forward a bit, catching himself with his hands. “I just...have a life I want to go back to. I have a wife. A home. Three children.” He realized his repetition and rambled, “Not that this makes me more worthy, but I swear to you, if you let me go I will never serve another day in this army. I won't come after you again. I won't give Sirius information about this battle or our defeat. My family is too important. I swear on their lives, I will never fight another day.”
“You love your wife,” I prodded. I thought of Kai, and how my father used to look with adoration at my mother.
He glanced up at me, confused by how I zoned in on that fact in particular. “...Yes. Very much.”
“Are you loyal to her?”
He frowned. “Yes. It is she who could do better, but I thank Amora she is blind to my faults.”
“If I let you go, I want you to promise me three things.”
He nodded frantically. “Yes. Gods. Anything.”
“Cherish your wife. Always be honest with her even if the truth could hurt her feelings or your reputation. Cherish what you have with her because there are people who would love to have such a connection and cannot.”
“Of...of course,” he stammered.
“Secondly: make sure your children know of this love between you. That they see it and appreciate it.”
He nodded again, still perplexed by my commands. “I will.”
“Give me information, and then I will tell you the third thing I want you to do.”
“Okay.”
“What do you know of Kai Sera?”
A shaky exhale blew through his lips. “Not much. I know of her. Rumors.”
“She's still alive?”
“Yes. As far as I know. There was a huge controversy some years back. An attempted assassination on her life. It confused civilians because they made no attempt on Terran, only Kai. That's when word got out that she wields all six elements. Hammerton and Nahara sent diplomats to request her skills.”
“Where is she now?”
“Sera, last I heard.” The soldier shrugged. “Kai has unparalleled skill, so they say, but Sirius doesn't use her.”
I frowned. “Why?”
“I don't know. Because her power means her life will be short, it's rumored among the soldiers that Sirius uses her as a bargaining chip, knowing that he can only use her in battle so many times before her inevitable death.”
I believed such rumors were true; I remembered how Sirius showed no love for his daughter.
“How does Sirius regard me?” I asked next. “I have seen no new warrants since 413.”
“You're his most-wanted criminal,” he informed me
, averting his gaze as if just admitting it made him fear me. “Most necromancers stay on the move to avoid detection, and we defeat most eventually since they cannot heal. You, on the other hand...” he trailed off and swallowed so hard I heard it. “Chairel has not faced such resistance from a necromancer since Valerius the Undying. They have hosted talks about how to handle you. I don't know what the next step is after us. Kenady Urien's intel from the last battle stated that you only had dozens of corpses. Sirius thought an army of two hundred would wipe you out. We had no idea you'd grown so much so quickly. And you...” he glanced toward the crackling fire in the distance, where the fort I'd claimed awaited in smoldering ash. “You've claimed land. Again, not since Valerius has a necromancer been so driven.”
“What is my bounty?”
“Twenty grand.” That meant it had doubled since last I heard.
“If there is still a bounty on my head, why don't mercenaries flood this forest?”
“They don't want to,” he replied. “The risk isn't worth the reward. When hundreds upon hundreds of mercenaries are killed in duty, people notice. News of your prowess could get out of hand. The common populace isn't supposed to know you exist, but at a certain point, word will get out. The government decided to handle it. Like I said, I don't know what the next step is. After today,” he clarified.
“Is it possible he will send his daughter after me?”
“Kai?” he asked, before nodding. “Oh, absolutely. Rumors have it that Chairel prepares its armies for a possible war with Eteri. They don't want to waste men on a necromancer they didn't account for. Sirius might send Kai instead if he thinks she could defeat you, but then again, he seems reluctant to use her at all.”
“When you go back to Sera,” I began, standing up straighter and putting my scythe in its belt loop, “I want you to deliver a message.”
“A...message?” he questioned. “Is this your third request?”
“Yes. Deliver a message to Sirius. I don't care whether it is in person or written if you decide to abandon the army and don't want to risk punishment. I just want Sirius to get a message, and I want him to know it's from me.”
“Okay. What is your message?”
“Tell him I said to try harder.”
I turned away from the soldier and started walking back to my ruined camp. When the man stood up and ran northwest, I didn't flinch, letting him go. The forest trembled as my remaining corpses turned and followed me. I left Kenady's corpse out to rot and get torn up by wild animals. His body was the first I'd ever rejected for recruitment to my army out of principle. After a lifetime of getting everything he wanted and all that he didn't deserve, I didn't even want his body for fertilizer.
On paper, it seemed that I had just accomplished everything I'd ever set out to do. I stayed true to every vow I'd ever made. I enacted vengeance against Kenady and served to be a persistent thorn in Sirius's side. I managed to beat all the odds and survive trauma, hardships, heartbreak, betrayal, and cruelty. I'd risen to be the most powerful necromancer since Valerius the Undying. Years ago, I recognized having only one option for my future, and I conquered every step of it.
So why didn't I feel victorious?
When I reached the ruined camp, I searched through the rubble for anything I could save. I went about the motions of life I'd become so used to. Part of me wished to relocate if only to avoid killing Kai, but intuition kept me from agreeing to the plan.
Why?
Perhaps like killing Kenady offered me a great relief, killing Kai would do the same. Maybe she always haunted my thoughts because she was a loose end. Like the corpses that I called to rise time and time again, perhaps I was a victim of necromancy; by dispelling the magic Kai held over my mind, maybe I could finally rest.
Twenty-seven
20th of High Star, 417
Green. So much fucking green.
All shades of green blurred my vision as I backed through the Seran Forest to the north. The ever-present pine needles and leafy brush, the gray-green of muscular orcs, the muted green of ogres. In the seasons following the Seran Army's defeat and Kenady's beautifully gory demise, I fought nothing but the brutes. Each day I waited for this intuition to calm my soul, but each day it disappointed. In the meantime, the war with the orcs raged on.
Life force crackled off the surrounding trees, and another orc fell. A leeching high already assaulted my brain with pleasure after a long morning of battle. The orcs brought multiple ogres with them today, and now most of the corpses I'd recruited over the past moons were smushed into a fine paste near the tent the greenskins so kindly destroyed. Now, I had nothing. While Sirius took his damn time in Sera, the orcs had nearly done his job for him. I had no tent to put over my head tonight. The only belongings I had left were my scythe and the military satchel I'd looted from the Twelve years ago. Somehow, I'd managed to keep ahold of that. What few corpses I had left sparred with the orcs who chased me north, but they were quickly defeated.
My plan? Move north and recruit the corpses that had collected in the forest since I'd last covered the ground. Less than two years ago when the mercenaries and orcs clashed during their mutual search for me I'd made the plan to move northwest if I ever needed more bodies. After all, most mercenaries came from Sera, and they likely moved through that section of the forest first. If the orcs killed them there, that's where they'd be.
Dozens of orcs chased me. I reached out to leech from the nearest, rapidly backing over forest debris. The orc retaliated by slicing his sword at my shield, finally breaking it. Then he fell, depleted of his life force. I hesitated only to pry the sword from his grasp before adding it to my belt for the future use of a minion. Behind the approaching army of orcs, the last remaining ogre charged, its heavy footsteps sending quakes through the forest.
BWAAAMMM!
The orcish war horn shattered through the forest as if they were too stupid to keep their attention on me when I was mere minutes away from their grasp.
I glanced behind me when I realized the sunshine was brighter in this part of the woodland. Instead of more forest, the grasslands between it and the Servis Ocean appeared for the first time in years. I marveled at how beautiful they looked; after so long of seeing nothing but trees, even grass can be lovely.
Out of room, I told myself as my boots backed out of the foliage and into waving grasses. As the lone ogre stopped in its charge just to roar, its head quaking with the effort, a second thought added, Time to recruit.
I put my scythe back on my belt and recited a familiar spell. Magical barriers vibrated against my palms as black energy collected. I thrust the energy to the ground, and the fog blanketed over the grasses before hundreds of tendrils raced out from my boots. Most of the cirri headed into the forest's border where I assumed most corpses would be.
The earth trembled. A few orcs clumsily tripped over fallen branches in the woodland ahead, but I was used to this. I tugged the scythe from my belt just as my corpses heeded the call.
As I'd surmised, most of the dead here were little more than skeletons, having decomposed for the better part of two years. Some were more recent and leaked decomposing sludge as they shambled loyally to me. One orc skeleton that hobbled up to my left had no weapon. I reached behind me, grabbing the orcish blade I'd looted earlier and handing it to the minion. It took it gratefully before turning to face the oncoming horde.
My newfound allies hissed and gurgled as they met the orcs in battle, and I happily joined them. For a while, I didn't leech at all; I only fought with my scythe, chopping through limbs and tender flesh. When my senses started to fade with the depletion of my high due to battle fatigue, I leeched again with one hand while using my weapon in the other.
Like always, it became a pattern. I switched between magic and melee, only changing it up when I needed to pull defeated minions back to battle or shield them. The ogre finally waddled out of the woods and roared so loud the nearby trees quivered.
Didn't intimidate me the first
time, I mused internally, standing still as I prepared to call fallen undead back to the fight. Won't intimidate me now.
The ogre was similarly unfazed, using its tree-club to bash my minions. I kept them shielded and focused on harvesting its life force. After all its orc comrades fell dead around it and the ogre became our only foe, its frustration turned to fatigue. Its movements slowed, its former energy rushing through my veins as additional power.
Then came something I hadn't anticipated. The ogre abruptly stilled like it was paralyzed, and it wavered like it would fall. I frowned and scrambled back, directing my minions to do the same to avoid its trajectory. The beast fell into the hot, dry grasses, the vibration rattling the bones of my skeletons. Dirt clouded around its body, coating the undead in a thin layer of brown dust.
I stared at the ogre for a moment. I'd fought many of them, so as far as I knew this one hadn't yet been ready to die. But my corpses made no move to hit it, so it was dead.
That's when I noticed the arrow.
A single pearl-white Celdic arrow stuck out of the ogre's spine just between two vertebrae. With my face protected in the shadow of my hood, my eyes followed the direction of the arrow back to the edge of the forest until they fell upon four people.
Suddenly, I couldn't move.
Three of them stood just within the forest's shadow. A Celd holding a pearl-white bow to match the arrow watched me with a conflicted and worried expression on his youthful face. He appeared my age, but I didn't trust the ages of elves. Locks of sienna hair swept over his pale pointed ears and a forehead free from imperfection. The archer was likely my height, maybe an inch or two taller, and he wore silver and green armor with a shield emblem over the heart. The emblem said something, but I couldn't read it from here. Regardless, the armor looked expensive. Royal, even.
A human stood just to the Celd's right, watching me with an open but unreadable expression. Though he was likely five to six inches shorter than the Celd, he had muscular arms and an intimidating disposition. His rough leather armor indicated he was a mercenary not unlike the hundreds I bested over the years. Shoulder-length dark brown hair was segmented with excess grease from sweat and travels without bathing. His skin was tanned with outdoor labor or travel and creased across the forehead in the way that only time creates. I estimated his age to be forty or so, but he was lucky to have made it that far, for a long, thick scar protruded from over his right eye and continued down his cheek. He carried two identical swords, a bow and scabbard, and a satchel larger than most for supplies. Stubble shadowed his jaw, and a maroon cloak hung through a loop on his belt.
