Of course, I couldn’t exactly just say a few words and magically make Motzer’s ghost appear in front of us. Well, maybe a more experienced necromancer could have, but I wasn’t quite to that level, even with the boost from having the powers from two different absurdly powerful practitioners. I had gotten better at sensing and controlling ghosts and the like, and at being much less uncomfortable doing so. But I didn’t have as much experience pulling a specific person back. I had all the power I needed, but it took more than pure oomph. You needed to direct the power correctly. Basically, if I could lock onto his ghost, I could easily pull him back. But I needed to know where and how to direct it. It didn’t matter how huge the gun you were holding was if you had no idea where to point it.
Thankfully, we did have a few advantages on that front. First, we knew exactly where the man had died. Not to mention the fact that it had been so recent. For lack of a better term, his death energy was still very prevalent. And on top of that, we had both the instrument that had essentially killed him, and the person responsible. Theia and her knife, that was. I wasn’t exactly sure how her using the injury reflection power with the knife affected the need for the murder weapon, but it certainly couldn’t hurt to have it.
We had all those advantages. It hasn’t even been a day since he was killed, we knew the exact location, the exact method, we had his killer and the weapon used to do it, all of that. And yet, I still felt nervous about my ability to do this properly. Maybe because Doug was really depending on me to answer these questions for him. After everything the boy had helped me with and been through, I felt like I owed him this at the very least. He deserved real answers. I knew just how much the whole Whispers thing meant to him, after what happened to his family and the rest of the colony. So, I wanted to do this right.
We also had one more advantage in our corner. Specifically, the fact that Persephone was basically one of the biggest experts on Necromancy in existence. She knew exactly how to do what we wanted to do, and how to help me.
So, playing dual roles of both teacher and cheerleader, the Revenant talked me through what needed to be done. First, however, we let the adults know what was going on and then made our way back to the bridge, where I carefully inscribed all of the runes exactly the way Persephone explained, with more than a little help from the others.
Andromeda was helpful too, providing her own advice. As I was putting minute feather details on one of the spell pieces, she explained through the nearby console, “Think of these runes as a sort of… I believe your people would call them training wheels. A more experienced necromancer with your level of power would not need them. They help guide and direct the aim of your power. With enough practice, you will learn to do that yourself, and to differentiate different peoples’ life energy correctly.”
Persephone bobbed her head excitedly. “Exactly, all you need is practice. You’re really strong, but you can’t neglect your training.” She said that sternly, giving a firm look my way.
Sounding slightly amused, Avalon mused, “You know, I think I’m going to like her being around.”
Snorting unthinkingly, I retorted. “You would, someone else to help you crack the whip.”
Persephone, of course, brightened. “You play with whips? I didn’t expect—”
Red-faced as I pointedly ignored Doug in the corner covering his mouth trying to contain his snickers, I blurted, “Nope! Nope, nope, no. We are not talking about that. Something completely different. Never mind, just erase it, it never happened. No one said anything and I swear to god if you guys don’t completely erase it from your memories, I’ll hurt you.”
“Ah,” Theia noted, “so she’s the one with the whip.”
Covering my face while everyone snickered, I let out a long, heavy sigh before pushing on. “Anyway, practice. Yeah, that’s what Brom Bones always says.”
To my surprise, Persephone audibly gasped and faced me. “You know Brom Bones? The head-adjacent one?”
“I, uhh, I think he goes by headless one,” I pointed out. “But yeah, he’s sort of my Necromancy teacher back at the Fusion school. Why, do you know him?”
Huffing a bit, the white-haired woman objected, “Well headless hardly makes sense. He has his head, it’s just not on his shoulders. If I put a knife in my pocket, I wouldn’t be a knifeless one.” Shaking her head at the strangeness of that, she added, “And of course I know him. My Mannikuns sent me to talk to him to find out what he knew about the woman who did that to him. It wasn’t very much. But he was fun, and we had some adventures while I was learning from him. We even went on a boat together.” She announced that last part proudly. “A boat on the water. It was fun. Especially when the sailors got really excited after they saw him hold his head in his hands. They played gangplank with us. It’s sort of like airlock, only you end up in the water instead of in space. Then we got to swim and find another ship. That was fun too, except they shot things at us, so we had to make them stop. They took us back to land after we asked them, though. We just had to promise to give their guns back. But, I guess that was fair. The guns did belong to them, after all.”
Yeah, I was definitely going to have to ask Brom himself for his version of all that. Shaking my head, I managed, “Well, it sounds like you had an interesting time. Maybe he’ll want to see you again once we go back to the station.”
Persephone was smiling brightly at that suggestion. “Oh, I hope so. He was so much fun. We played a game with his head where you had to make it go in a fruit basket. We showed it to that Naismith man, and he really liked it. Except for the head part. He said they’d have to use something else. I guess it’s hard to find durable heads that can bounce like that.”
From where she was standing, Shiori blurted, “Naismith, the guy who invented… oh. Ohhhh. Boy am I gonna kill at sports trivia night.”
There was so much to unpack with that whole thing, I didn’t even know where to start. So, I didn’t. Instead, I focused on getting the rest of the spell set up. It took another ten minutes, with everyone working together. At one point, Dare checked in through a communication spell to ask if we were doing okay, and I let her know we were close to getting some answers. She said not to push it too much, and to be careful. I promised we would, before turning my attention back to the others. “Well, how does it look?” While saying that, I turned in a circle to take in the full appearance of the part of the bridge where the man had died. There were intricate runes in an expanding circular design spreading out from that spot and taking up about a quarter of the actual bridge itself. The spells essentially amounted to a combination of channeling/directing death energy to a specific spot, and funneling out anything that wasn’t the actual life we needed. I needed to focus pretty intently on exactly which energy to pull, and which to discard. Which meant standing in the middle of that spell and sensing the most recent death. And that was bound to be a fun time.
“I’m pretty sure it’s ready,” Doug noted, brushing off his hands as he stepped away from the rune on one of the consoles he had just finished drawing under the scrutiny of Andromeda, who had been watching through the bridge cameras and offering advice.
“Indeed,” the AI herself agreed. “The physical components of the spell are as good as they are ever going to get without far more time and effort than is either necessary or advised.”
Avalon put her hand on my shoulder. “I think what she’s saying is that it’s up to you now.”
Coughing, I shrugged both shoulders. “Thanks, I guess.” With that, I took a deep breath before moving to the center of the runes. I was standing on the exact spot where the man had died only a short time earlier. Which wasn’t at all creepy, no sir. I was doing just fine.
“You can do it, Flick!” Persephone had turned back into cheerleader mode, clapping as she bounced up and down excitedly. “Everyone watch, this is going to be really fun. Do we have any peanuts? I quite like the Earth peanuts.”
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
My mouth opened to say that she was out of luck, but to my surprise, Shiori reached into a small bag at her waist. It was obviously bigger on the inside, because half her arm disappeared into it while the girl rooted around for a moment before she came back out with a bag of roasted peanuts. She didn’t say anything at all, simply opening the bag and offering the end to Persephone, who took a handful and began to shell and eat them enthusiastically.
Shaking that off, I closed my eyes and tried to focus on what I was actually supposed to be doing. Namely, summoning the spirit of the dead pirate captain, who could hopefully tell us something about why there were magic anti-Whisper/Seosten runes all over this random ship.
Keeping that thought in mind, I closed my eyes and put both hands out. My fingers found two specific runes that had been drawn for this purpose, as I focused on feeling my own power, my own magical energy. It was a lot like channeling energy into any other spell, it was just that mine could be used for Necromantic spells without needing to be converted into Necromantic energy first, like most other people had to before they could use it that way.
Slowly, I began to push my own power into the spell to power it. I could feel the runes beginning to warm up, giving off a… it was hard to describe in any way other than ‘cold heat’, but that’s what it was. It was cold, yet hot at the same time in a way that only magic could manage. Which may have been a bit confusing, but then, so was the entire situation. In any case, the runes began to warm up/cool down as I pushed more and more power into them. I had to be careful, filling the right runes at the right moment, without getting ahead of myself or rushing things. Every part of the spell had to have the right amount of energy at the right time, in order for the whole thing to help me get Motzer back here while avoiding any other spirit. And, given this was a pirate ship that had been stolen, I was pretty sure there were a lot of potential angry spirits waiting to be pulled back here. And quite frankly, playing the game of ‘grab the wrong one, shove it back and grab another’ didn’t sound very fun.
So, I focused on doing what Persephone (and Brom Bones whenever he’d mentioned this sort of thing) had explained. I put the image of Motzer in my head. I focused on what his voice had sounded like, what he smelled like, what sort of words he used, everything I could remember that had anything to do with the man. I put everything about him right at the front of my mind and focused on that to the point of obsession. With my hands still touching those two runes, I channeled power through the spell while actively putting Captain Motzer in my mind. I was even repeatedly thinking his name, calling out to him mentally. I focused everything I had on what I could remember about this one man I had only met for a few minutes.
Gradually, it started to work. I could feel the power that I was putting out start to take a distinct shape. It was, as far as it has been explained to me, essentially manipulating my own Necromantic magical energy to be a fairly close approximation of Motzer’s own life energy. Doing so correctly would essentially pull the actual remnants of his energy back and allow it to form a ghost. Again, a ghost was not actually the person’s spirit. It was the impression their magical signature, personality, and mind left within the universe after their death. Sort of like a permanent mold of who they were or whatever. When a person died, they left an impression that could be filled in using the right magical energy. Basically, when you got right down to it, I was very carefully finding the exact edges of where that personality impression was, strengthening it a bit, and giving it the energy it needed to allow his ‘ghost’ to manifest. Yeah, it was pretty complicated.
Eventually, I was supposed to be able to do all of this without all the prep work or help. An experienced Necromancer could just point and find these signatures before filling them up with a thought. They knew exactly how much energy to fill the spirit ‘balloons’ with and could make them appear just like that. Fossor, of course, had been capable of doing entire swarms of ghosts at once, simply snapping his fingers to conjure and pull together thousands upon thousands of spirits to do his bidding. Obviously, I wasn’t anywhere near that good yet. I had the raw power and plenty of other head starts, but it took more skill.
In this case, even with the help I had, it took me about ten minutes before I got real results. Granted, part of that was because I was being very cautious to make sure I was shaping the correct ghost. Not to mention trying not to break the ‘shell’ of energy I was creating for it. It was basically the necromancy equivalent of trying to walk very carefully with a full bucket of water to avoid spilling it.
Finally, I felt the ghost start to form on its own. I had guided it as much as needed, and the thing began to take shape without my help. Just like that, within thirty seconds, there was a soft popping sound and the ghostly figure of the old captain suddenly appeared right in front of me. He was between where I stood and where the others were. He was somewhat translucent, so I could see everyone jump a bit as my eyes opened to look that way. Whoops. He’d appeared before I could warn anyone that it was about to happen. I wasn’t prepared for just how fast it had happened once I got over the metaphorical hump. Like pushing a heavy wagon up a hill and then losing control of it as it careened down the other side. Suddenly, he was just right there.
“What–where–huh?” Motzer’s ghost jerked, twisting around in a circle before cursing, “Why in the seven darkfells did you people drag me in here? Now you suddenly need something? How long has it even been since you killed me, a month?”
Speaking cheerfully, Theia replied, “Maybe three hours? Has it been three hours? I don’t have a watch. I have a hat!” She pointed to it with both hands. “But it doesn’t tell time.”
“Her–you bring her back?!” Motzer was not happy. He gestured that way, his voice a snarl. “You couldn’t even tell the bitch that killed me to stay out of the room while you came begging for help? What kind of pleglin shit is this? And what exactly did she mean it’s only been three hours? Are you seriously telling me that you killed me and then came back to ask for help with something in less time than it takes my kids to put together a daensneal puzzle? I don’t know whether to taunt you all about being incompetent, or weep that you were the ones who killed me. And I swear to everything that dwells in the web of empty faith, If you really did just bring me back here to toy with, I will find a way to poltergeist every last one of you, so help me.”
Aside from that one bit from Theia, everyone else was being quiet and letting me handle the situation. Even Persephone simply stood there eating peanuts while looking back and forth between Motzer and me. She clearly wanted to see what I would do. And, presumably, how it differed from Manakel. Avalon gave me a simple nod, but remained as silent as the others.
So, taking a breath, I spoke while reaching out with the power I could still feel connecting me to the ghost. “Hey, how about you take a… okay, not a breath. But cool it for a minute and we’ll tell you why we brought you here. And maybe you’ll even get something out of it.”
His large figure pivoted to face me. Alive, he had been intimidating. He should have been even more so as a ghost, but considering I was the one keeping him present, his size lost a lot of its oomph. He was absolutely no threat to me in any way. It was like a man trying to intimidate you while hanging off the edge of a cliff with you as the only thing stopping him from falling. If I didn’t want him to be here, a single thought would make him disappear.
“Get something out of it?” the man echoed in a rumbling, dangerous voice. I could feel him stretching just a little bit against my power. It didn’t really feel like he was trying to break it or hurt anyone. I had the feeling he knew as well as I did that there was no point of that. Without the tether I was holding onto, he would essentially turn into a balloon with a hole in it and go spraying out all over the room before popping out of existence. No, he definitely wasn’t trying to break my hold. He was simply testing it a bit, probably reflexively. I could feel the anger rolling off of him, anger and something like regret. But the latter was buried deep.
“Don’t you dare try to sell me with some claim that you can bring me back,” he snarled at me. “I’ve been around the universe a lot longer than you and all your friends here put together have been alive, little girl. Believe it or not, I know how this shit goes. You don’t have anything that could stick me back in a living body. You can’t toy with me like that. It doesn’t work that way. Never has, never will.”
My head shook. “You’re right, it doesn’t work that way. And that’s not what I was going to say. I can’t undo what happened. I can’t bring you back to life. But I think I can at least take your spirit and release it wherever you like. If you have a home planet, or even just a favorite place. And… and you said you have children. I can take you to your family and let you say whatever you need to say to them before you disappear. I can give you and them closure. All you have to do is answer some questions.”
For a long few seconds, the man just stared at me. It felt as though he was trying to look through me, trying to gauge just how serious and real I was being about all that, or if I was messing with him somehow. Through it all, I continued to meet his gaze.
Finally, he heaved a sigh. “Yeah, I’ve got what your people would call a family plot on a new moon, near an old cabin where my brood grew up. They’ve all moved on now, got their own broods and most of them are grown, or damn near it. But it’s still the best… closest thing to something linked to good times. You swear you’ll take my spirit there and release it, and tell my people what I want them to hear, then I’ll answer whatever questions you got.”
I gave him my word, and I felt him once again stretching his own energy out toward me. He seemed to be deciding just how much he could trust what I was saying. In the end, he agreed. “Okay,” the man half-growled in a way that made it clear he still wasn’t exactly happy with any of us, “tell me what you wanna know.”