"Yes."


    "All four of you or just you?"


    "Just me," Quaraun said.


    "How very strange. Did you hear sister? The water compelled him."


    "How did he get in our house?"


    "How did you get in our house?"


    "We just..." Quaraun started to answer. "Uhm.... I think I wished us here. I''m not sure how we got inside. I don''t remember coming in, actually."


    "How did you even see our house?"


    "I''m sorry?" Quaraun did not understand what they meant.


    "No one ever sees our house."


    "No one..." Quaraun was confused.


    "No mortal ever sees our house."


    "No man can see our house."


    "No Human has ever seen our house."


    "You are no mortal man."


    "You are not Human."


    "None of them is Human."


    "Is it a goblin?"


    "No it''s an Elf."


    "Are they all Elves?"


    "No. Just this pink one."


    "What are the others."


    "A Faerie and a Demon and another Demon."


    "What type of Fae are you," one woman asked Unicorn.


    "I is a Phooka," Unicorn answered.


    "A Phooka."


    "Then not a true Fae. A Water Demon."


    "How interesting."


    "An Elf with three Demons."


    "And an Orc with two."


    "And an Ogre with three."


    "Do you think we will live forever?"


    "Probably not," Quaraun interrupted. "It seems we have arrived too early."


    The room turned to stare at Quaraun.


    "Too early for what?"


    "This must be your home," Quaraun gestured around himself. "It has a lake with a fountain. I saw a garden on my way in. It looks lovely."


    "Why would we need a place like that?"


    "We don''t need a place like that."


    "You are right," Quaraun said. "We don''t need a place like that. This is where you live. I am sorry for intruding but it looks as if we were going the wrong direction."


    There was silence in the room.


    Quaraun looked around at the people in the room; they were all staring at him. He was used to being stared at by mortals. There had been many times when he had wished someone else in his place. But this was not one of those times. His heart sank into his stomach.


    "Excuse me, may I ask who might you be?" the old woman asked at last.


    "My name is Quaraun,"


    "And you say the pond compelled you?"


    "Yes," Quaraun answered, looking at GhoulSpawn and not the old women. "There are two Elves here, one Faerie and one Demon."


    "No. There is only one Elf and three Demons. I am Bean-Nighe and this is my sister Ben-Neeyah."


    "Banshees," Unicorn whispered to Quaraun.


    "We wash the blood stained garments of those about to die."


    "We died the childbirth."


    The two old women grabbed Quaraun and dragged him out of the house to Witch Pond. The others followed.


    "We stay here are the mouth of the stream."


    "Where the water empties into the pond."


    "And wash clean countless dead."


    "Look out over the water."


    "What do you see?"Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    Quaraun looked and saw the same pond they had seen before. Clear blue to it''s center, somewhat swampy to it''s edges. Lily pads on the road side, reeds and cattails in the low parts. A beaver dam blocking the flow of the stream. There was nothing unusual or remarkable about Witch Pond. It was like the thousands of other ponds that dotted the coast of Canada.


    "I see a pond, no different from any other pond," Quaraun said.


    "You are Faerie sighted, Necromancer. Close your eyes and look again."


    "I never told you I was a Necromancer."


    "But you are, aren''t you?"


    "Yes. I am."


    "The water would not have compelled you otherwise. There is a darkness in your soul. A darkness that comes only from Necromancy."


    "I am not evil."


    "No one can take the life of the innocent and use their souls to raise the dead, without blotting out a piece of their own soul. You have the blood of innocents on your hands. You have murdered children. Their souls scream for redemption. Close your eyes and look again. See the water as we see it. Know the truth."


    Quaraun closed his eyes, and when he opened them, he gasped and took several quick steps back. The pond was gone, replaced by black brackish waters of a stagnant bog. A dense fog hung low over the surface. Dead trees, the bark long ago fallen away, their wood bleached white as bones, sunk into the mire. It was a creepy, gloomy, dreary scene, but the thing which made Quaraun gasped was the ghostly spirits pacing to and fro across the surface of the water. Their arms and legs in chains. As they reached the water''s edge, each ghost reached out trying to grab hold of Quaraun and pull him into the bog.


    "What are they?"


    "The souls of the dead. Trapped between the realm of the living and the Swamp of Death. Look at how they reach for you. Listen to their words. Their screams. Their cries."


    "Why are we back at the Swamp of Death? We escaped it."


    "Have you walked through the Swamp of Death, Necromancer? Did you take your own life?"


    Quaraun clamped his hand over his wrist. The memory of The Mournful Lamb Inn burned in his brain. He had tried to kill himself. He had sliced his wrists and almost died. Unicorn had saved him. Nursed him back to health. But he''d spent weeks lost in the Swamp of Death, wandering among the lost souls of suicide victims.


    "One of you will die soon."


    "What?"


    "In a few days, one of the four of you will be dead."


    "Who?" Quaraun asked.


    "Many will die."


    "Hundreds will die."


    "Thousands will die."


    "But one of you four, will be dead before the year is over."


    On those final words the two Banshees, their house, and the soul filled bog all vanished and Witch Pond was back as they had found it.


    "Quaraun?" Unicorn said, while shaking the Elf, trying to bring him out of his trance. "Quaraun!"


    The Elf looked down at Unicorn.


    "What just happened?" Unicorn asked.


    "What?"


    "Ya went all spaced out there for a minute."


    "Where did the women go?"


    "What women?"


    "Bean-Nighe and Ben-Neeyah."


    "The Banshee sisters?"


    "Yes."


    "Is ya feeling alright, Quaraun?"


    "What?"


    "Ya was spaced out for quite a bit there."


    "Where did the Banshees go?"


    "What Banshees?"


    "Bean-Nighe and Ben-Neeyah."


    Unicorn gave Quaraun a puzzled and worried look of concern.


    "Has ya been seeing t''ings again?"


    "You didn''t see them?"


    Unicorn shook his head and tossed his mane.


    Quaraun turned to ZooLock.


    "Did you see them?"


    "No, my lord. But I doubt nothing your ladyship sees."


    "Did you?" Quaraun asked GhoulSpawn.


    GhoulSpawn said nothing.


    Quaraun looked around.


    "Where are we?"


    "At the church," Unicorn answered. "Big ass turtle chased us here, remembers?"


    "We never left?"


    "No. Did ya t''inks we had?"


    "I don''t know what I think any more."


    Quaraun sat down and tried to make sense of what had just happened. He didn''t think it was a dream, as he had not been asleep. Nor did he think it was the drugs, which admittingly did make him hallucinate, but usually he could tell afterwards what was real and what was the opium, plus he hadn''t taken anything since yesterday and that had worn off hours ago.


    "I don''t know what''s real and what isn''t any more."


    "Was a dream. They be very real some times."


    "I wasn''t asleep. Was I?"


    "Not dat I saw."


    "What happened to me?"


    "Just now?"


    "Yeah."


    "Ya kind of spaced out. Like no one was in ya head."


    "Outer body experience?"


    "What dat?"


    "Like when I was lost in the Swamp of Death. Not dead, but... not in my body either."


    "What ya see while ya was there?"


    "We left the church and followed the path around the pond, until we came to a house. I stopped to look at the pond and something tried to pull me in, but there was nothing there. And it started raining so we went inside the house. No one was home, but we waited for them. Two old women, Bean-Nighe and Ben-Neeyah arrived. You said they were Banshees and they agreed with you. They addressed me as an Elf and the rest of you as Demons. they said they died and were cursed to spend eternity washing the blood stained clothes of people about to die. And then every thing disappeared - the forest, the pond, the house... and a vast swamp, a peat bog, that spanned for miles, was all I could see. The Swamp of Death. And that''s when I could see what was pulling me in the water..."


    Quaraun stopped talking. A look of horror spread across his face.


    "What was it?" Unicorn asked, seeing that the Elf would not finished what he was saying.


    "Children. Murdered children. Hundreds of them. Thousands of them. Wrapped in chains. Being sucked down into the mud. Drowning. They weren''t trying to pull me in. They were trying to get me to pull them out. It was like the Swamp of Death... only worse... much worse. What have I done?"


    "Did ya do somet''ing?"


    "I cast a horrible spell. A long time ago. I forgot. Why did I forget?"


    "Ya has a habit of blocking out the memories ya does no wants to see. Would nae be the first time ya forgot doing a horrible t''ing."


    "So many souls."


    "What did ya do?"


    "I changed your spell. The Lich spell. I altered it. It''s why you''re different from other Liches. It takes a hundred years for a Lich to regenerate after they''ve been killed. They come back, but not quickly. But not you. You die. And you resurrect again in hours. Some times sooner."


    "I had noticed. Ya never tells me how ya did that to me."


    "I made a Golem out of ice, and I killed innocents to capture their souls inside the golem. As many souls as was put in you, that''s how many times you can die and come back again."


    "How many souls did ya put in me?"


    "I don''t know. Hundreds. Thousands. All the Moon Elves. All the Pixies. All the Katopas. All those children in Witch Pond, guarded by Bean-Nighe and Ben-Neeyah."


    "Ya murdered children?"


    Quaraun did not answer.


    "Why children? Ya love children."


    "I murdered my own children. Why did I do that? I loved my children."


    "Where ya children there? In the swamp?"


    "They were the ones pulling me in."


    "Quaraun, ya never left t''is building. Ya been right here with us. Ya seeing t''ings that is no t''ere again."


    Quaraun fell silent for several minutes.


    "Some one''s casting a spell," he said at last.


    "What kind of spell?" Unicorn asked.


    "A big one. Big enough to get inside my head." Quaraun looked up at GhoulSpawn. "Are you a Psion?"


    "A what?" GhoulSpawn was unfamiliar with that word, until earlier this evening when ZooLock had mentioned it. He still wasn''t entirely certain what a Psion was.


    "You''re not a Psion. I can tell. And even if you were, I don''t think you''re a powerful enough wizard to pull off a spell of this scale."


    Quaraun turned to ZooLock.


    "Where were you going?" He asked the Thullid. "When we found you. You said you were travelling with others and they left you behind because you were old and weak and had gotten hurt. Where were you going and why?"


    "We were to meet with a wizard who is summoning the Darkness."


    "What does that mean? Summoning the Darkness?"


    "An ancient Demon. We are going to call it forth to this world, then sacrifice it to our lord and savior. We will then drink his blood and eat his flesh, and he will rise again from his tomb."