Chapter 55: 55. Molten Passion

Excerpt from Master Khahul’s ‘Neophyte’s Necromancy: Dealing with the Departed.’

“Chapter 17: Bargaining For Your Life.

So, you have upset those on the other side of death. Do not despair! Some undead and deathly spirits feed on such emotions, so despairing will make you a tastier target. Remember that the undead do not feel emotions like you or I—they do not feel pity or mercy when you grovel, they do not feel anger when you call them horrible names, and they definitely don’t share our excitement for the graveyard setting. In this chapter, we will…”

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The fragile peace of their travel was broken on the second night. A cloudy sky and waning moon left little in the way of light, especially in the lightly wooded clearing the group had chosen to camp in that night. Sitting to one side of the road, with visibility reduced to a scant few metres into the trees, it was the perfect place to get attacked.

Tirk was the first to notice, though his warning was little more than a whimper. When the boy scurried into Eone’s arms shivering like a leaf, it was Narasanha’s turn to jump to action. As the bodyguard drew in breath to alert the camp to an attack, Suee stepped out of the carriage and raised the alarm herself. The priestess wasn’t specific—a ‘darkness’ had been sent—though the sergeant bustling past her was rather more eager to deal with ‘cultist bastards’.

Chime was already curled around part of the camp, an impassable crescent of solid terracotta—it would take something serious to even remotely injure the silupker, meaning the crew could use them as a defensive wall. As the camp roused themselves to action, Narasanha leapt atop Chime’s back and carefully looked into the darkness.

Through the clutter of the camp coming to life, Yenna could hear… nothing. There were no shouts of bandits or thugs, no howls and cries of beasts, just dead silence beyond the fragile scrap of fire light at the edge of the camp. Her unnaturally enhanced hearing didn’t so much as catch the sound of footfalls approaching, but she could feel an unpleasant change in the magic in the area—a horrid stagnancy, choking the life out of the usual ebb and tide of magical flow.

“Where are they?” Eone had shoved Tirk into the carriage and drawn her sword, tension flooding the camp as everyone braced for an attack that still hadn’t arrived.

“Everyone, silence!” Narasanha barked, and the camp went quiet. “I see shapes in the dark, all around us, but I can barely hear them—clicking and clacking.”

Over the susurrus of people’s breathing, weapons being drawn, quiet footfalls from the crew, Yenna could just narrowly make out the noise Narasanha had described. Slowly approaching from every direction, the sound resembled… “Bones! Undead!”

Yenna hadn’t meant to shout—a few gasps went up, and the already tense crew looked even more nervous. Undead were known as some of the most dangerous creatures to fight—they couldn’t be threatened or reasoned with, didn’t stop unless completely destroyed, and moved in unpredictable, unsettling ways. The raising of the dead was frowned upon in Aulpre, allowed only in limited, controlled manners—something told Yenna that whoever had sent a wave of undead towards them didn’t much care for the letter of the law.

Eone began barking orders. 

“Yenna, use that sight spell you used back with the elemental—scout around, see what we’re dealing with. Muut, get us some light—everyone else, arm yourself with something blunt!” 

While everyone else hopped to it, Yenna hurried to complete her circle. The arcane eye was easily the best choice, though it required a bit of set-up—Yenna placed herself up by the carriage, the safest place in the camp, and drew her circle into the ground with a spell. The mage’s vision broke away from her physical eyes, ascending on unseen wings to soar through the trees.

It was dark, far too dark to see normally, but it was a simple matter to alter the spell to include a rudimentary night-vision—greatly increasing the eye’s sensitivity to light. Looking back at the camp and its torches would be extraordinarily painful, but it improved the overcast, moonless night to be nearly as bright as a clear full moon. Yenna gasped involuntarily as she laid eyes on what she had suspected was there—skeletal forms shambling slowly towards them.

Yenna narrated what she saw to whoever was nearby—with her vision elsewhere, she couldn’t exactly tell who was listening—and made sure to include whatever detail she could.

“They are skeletons, unarmoured, though most bear crude or rusted weapons.” The mage gulped, her back legs quivering. “As far as I can see, they look freshly raised—there’s still dirt on them. I can’t see any visible spell circles or bindings on them, so I doubt they’re entirely bound, or the caster is quite close.”

“How many are there?” Eone’s voice was relatively close, slightly above Yenna.

“A-About… thirty. Most of them are coming from the trees away from the road, though none are emerging from over the road itself. I can’t see any caster– w-wait, one of them is… different.”

Though whipping her detached vision around was quite disorienting, Yenna managed to pick out one skeleton from among them with clear enhancements. Its skull was etched with tangled knots of symbols that Yenna didn’t recognise, cracked pieces of bone repaired with sheets of bronze. Where the other skeletons held scavenged clubs or ill-kept swords, this one held a long iron staff. There was something on top of it—a glass orb, though Yenna couldn’t identify the tiny black object encased within. As she tried to get closer, the skeleton’s hollow eye-sockets looked up towards her. It raised its staff, and before Yenna could react, cast a spell.

Yenna screamed. Her eyes burned, and she felt herself fall to the ground. The mage’s hands instinctively reached for her eyes, but her arcane eye was being held in the grips of a hostile spell that didn’t let up. After a moment, her vision went black and the pain ceased—Yenna thought she had passed out, but four steady hands lifted her up, one of them carefully prying open an eyelid.

It took another few moments for Yenna’s natural sight to return to her—aborting the spell back when the water elemental had noticed her had been unpleasant, but having it forcefully hijacked had carried harsh backlash. Narasanha was holding her close, inspecting her—if Yenna didn’t currently feel like she had taken a sledgehammer to the eye-socket, she might have blushed at the proximity. Flicking her eye to the side, she saw that her magic circle had been kicked—evidently, the bodyguard remembered how it worked.

“Are you well? What was that?” Narasanha refused to let go until Yenna could stand properly, and the mage quickly explained what she saw.

“I think it’s controlling them. An undead sorcerer—falling stars, letting a skeleton do magic feels like cheating.” Yenna’s eyes were still watering, and her head was pounding, but she couldn’t leave such a threat to the largely non-magical crew. “It knows that I’m here now, surely. It didn’t see through me—I think it just, w-well, tried to kill me through the connection.”

“Which direction?” Narasanha was gruff, pulling various weapons from her belt.

“I-It’s behind them all, well guarded, that way.” Yenna pointed, and the bodyguard immediately began running. “W-Wait! You won’t be able to kill it!”

“I’ll bring you what’s left.” Without another word, Narasanha disappeared into the dark.

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At the same time, the first of the skeletons began to emerge from the darkness. Eone and Muut stepped up to coordinate everyone, with Sergeant Myuu co-opting a handful of crew members to help Suee with a ritual. Yenna couldn’t think of much to do, so she headed to the defense of the priestess.

Calling upon the power of Certainty, Yenna caused the earth around the camp to buckle and open—narrow ditches and crevices appeared like empty moats, causing several of the shambling undead to trip and fall. It was enough to narrow the odds, clubs and flats of swords swinging down to crush skulls and weapon-holding hands. Still, the skeletons rose—headless, they grabbed and swung with remaining hands, kicked, tackled, bent unnaturally to attack past guards that would have saved from any mortal attack.

Fortunately, once relieved of their weapons, the skeletons themselves weren’t much of a threat. They weren’t any stronger than a normal person, with considerably less connective tissue to keep them together. The problem was their tenacity—after a few seconds, a skeleton that seemed destroyed would reassemble itself, locate its weapon and rise again. Yenna flung several globs of Certain Fetters at nearby skeletons, the foul undead unable to free themselves from the expanding clay.

Suee’s ritual involved casting several small divinomantic spells around the perimeter of the camp, leaving behind glowing constellations in mid-air. In doing so, the priestess and her guardians performed a round trip of the camp, helping to tip the balance in favour of the group. Sergeant Myuu was no slouch, and Yenna suspected her blade was enchanted in some way—even when she used the sharp edge of the sword, it slashed through bone like shears through paper.

When they finally arrived back at the first of the constellations, Suee held her arms open wide and whispered silent un-words—words so quiet that they were audibly subtracting noise from the surrounding area. The clouds above parted as though forced aside by giant hands, oppressive darkness giving way to soft moonlight. Yenna instinctively looked up towards the moon itself, and watched as it waxed full—just for them, the cracked surface of the moon shone with its full intensity and bathed the area in its pale light. The skeletons slowed, staggered backwards as though physically repelled, either retreating into the darkness beyond the edge of the spell or crumbling to dust.

As the battle to protect the camp ended and cheers of victory went up from the members of the crew, Yenna’s eartips burned with a clashing sound on the edge of hearing. Deep in the woods, Narasanha was still out there—facing off with the skeletal sorcerer, who was now surely bolstered by its remaining minions.

“We have to help Narasanha!” Yenna sprang over the glowing perimeter and off towards the bodyguard. The mage wasn’t entirely sure why she didn’t wait for anyone to back her up, but she couldn’t leave Narasanha alone. She may be an excellent fighter, but no living thing can match the stamina of the undead!

Up ahead, Yenna heard the sound of metal clashing with metal, a constant ringing of combat. It was intense, and it surprised the mage just how far Narasanha had ended up—evidently, the skeleton sorcerer had been keeping its distance. When she finally laid eyes on the fight, the pale moonlight granting some measure of visibility even with her natural sense of sight, Yenna leapt into action.

Five skeletons in various states of disrepair were harassing Narasanha, providing little more than distractions—the bodyguard held them off with an axe in either of her lower hands, knocking them apart only for them to stand back up again by the time she was done with the rest. Her upper set of arms were busy tangling with the skeleton sorcerer, who remained surprisingly adept at melee combat. Narasanha fought it with a mace and a flail—the former she used to parry and deflect its savage, high-speed swings with its staff, the latter blocked by a field of repulsive energy emanating from the skeleton’s bronze-plated hand.

The skeletal nuisances were easy enough for Yenna to deal with—none of them could afford to stop attacking Narasanha to observe their surroundings, and the mage easily picked a pair of them off with a single Certain Fetters before the rest noticed. With a rattling hiss, the sorcerer commanded the remaining skeletons to attack Yenna—Narasanha realised the mage was there, and the fragile kesh realised her mistake.

For Narasanha to protect Yenna, she would need to disengage from the sorcerer, freeing it up to cast spells or simply attack her from behind. The skeletons weren’t fast, but they were fairly coordinated—spread out now to avoid being taken out by a single cast of the Fetters, Yenna couldn’t hope to take out all three with that same spell before they reached her, and her still-bound wrist was impeding any greater acts of casting. The mage focused, slowing her world to a crawl as she thought.

Yenna wasn’t particularly certain how Narasanha would react—not sure if she had done the same mental calculus on the fight. The bodyguard had shown a tendency to try and protect those around her, but in this case the best thing to do was to keep the sorcerer busy. To prevent Narasanha from disengaging, Yenna would have to prove she could take care of herself here.

Thinking back to her ‘duel’ with Lumale, Yenna thought about the witch’s one-handed casting technique. The mage couldn’t hope to match the ancient witch’s breadth of expertise, but she could be inspired by it. The sheer efficiency of witchcraft’s spellcasting methods meant that the spell did not need to be as complex—did not require as much in the way of hand movements. What Yenna needed was something powerful that would keep the skeletons down—what better way to achieve that than to disrupt whatever spell animated them?

Extending her magical sense to pick out fine details, Yenna found the spell tether linking the sorcerer and its minions—cleverly hidden, it extended through its feet and through the ground to each of the minions, obscuring it from ordinary magical sensors by blending it with the natural energy of the earth below. Any attack on it would also have to fight through physical barriers, either that of the dirt or the skeletons’ own bodies. Either worked just fine for Yenna.

The spell she had in mind was something of a fusion of two different spells. The first was a simple conjuring of flame, intended to heat up whatever it touched. Yenna wasn’t excited to try and grab at the skeleton’s ankles, so the second half of the spell would do it for her—taking control of the earth through her own hooves, she could effectively extend her reach by using the dirt as an extension of her spell. Just like the sorcerer had connected his tethers of control through the ground, Yenna pushed her own spell through the earth to detonate the connection and give the undead spellcaster a taste of his own backlash-flavoured medicine.

Yenna’s hooves glowed a molten orange as she reared, holding herself on her hind legs for a moment. Narasanha turned her head just enough to look back at the mage, her amber eyes widening as the mage slammed herself back down. A wave of disturbed earth in front of Yenna rolled towards the skeletons, a slight glow concentrating as it locked on to another source of magic—the tethers. The skeletons’ feet began to glow orange-hot, grass igniting as the three minions crumbled down.

The skeletal sorcerer looked almost surprised, reeling in shock as incandescent orange magic slammed into its own feet. It staggered, and was instantly caught by the ferocious warrior before it—Narasanha dropped her weapons, using empty hands to grab the skeleton. Two hands ripped the staff out of its grasp and threw it to one side, another tore its arm from its socket, and the last gripped the undead fiend by the skull. With a foot up on its chest to steady herself, Narasanha tore its head from its shoulders.

The bodyguard lifted the skull, ready to crush it in hand.

“W-Wait! Don’t break it—we can use that!”

Narasanha looked back at Yenna, nodded, and punched the still-standing skeleton body square in the chest. Its rib-cage exploded, bones flying in every direction. Still, they attempted to rise again.

“Stop it then, mage.” Narasanha shoved the skull into Yenna’s hand.

The mage looked down at the swirling script covering every available surface, then nearly dropped the thing as she realised what she was holding. This had been some living person’s skull at some point, their body desecrated and their soul held against their will to animate it. It was a yolm’s skull, though its teeth were twisted into sharp fangs and its horn shattered and worn down. Yenna really did not want to hold onto it—dark-tinged magic oozed from it, and even as a skull the thing felt alive enough to do harm.

“Th-the moonlight! Narasanha, back to camp!”

With that, Yenna turned and sprang through the dark forest, heading for the purifying beam of lunar radiance. Her heart pounded in her chest, but it beat with an excitement—a passion for magic that she had never considered before. Was this adrenaline-rich lifestyle turning her into a thrill-seeker? All she knew was that she had just performed some new feat of witchcraft, defeated a sorcerer and helped save the day¹.

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¹ - Yenna spends several more paragraphs explaining how she in fact did not help at all, how the situation would have been resolved without her, and all sorts of what-ifs made worse by her presence. Kesh culturally value this kind of humility—claiming that one’s impact was not needed, that everyone else did all the work—but Yenna takes it to a somewhat ridiculous extreme.