Laein’s initial reaction to my declaration wasn’t exactly surprising. First she snorted once. Then she did so again, a little more openly. Her head tilted as she stared intently at me, as though trying to decide if she should laugh a bit because I was making a joke, or laugh even more because I was being serious. In the end, she settled on the latter, giving a loud guffaw that literally made her double over, clutching her sides. Her gaze rose to squint at me once more, reading my seriousness again before cackling. “Ahahaha! Stop the Fomorians?! Necromancer school?! Stop, stop, you’re supposed to fight me with Necromancy, one on one! Killing me with these stories so I can’t fight back is cheating! It’s unfair, stop making me laugh, you pathetic stail of a human!”
“I’m a stale human?” Confident I didn’t hear that right, or at least that one of us was having a language issue, I shook my head. “I know how it sounds, believe me. Look, let’s start over. Hi. My name isn’t Jacob, but that’s what I’m going by right now because… well, there’s a few reasons, but the big one is over there.” I nodded toward Gaia in the distance. “Like I said, I’m from the future and I can’t let her know who I really am, or it’ll change that future. Even though she can’t hear what we’re saying right now–” I held a privacy coin so she could see the spell on it. “–I still don’t want to push things. Not until I’m sure you and I are on the same page.”
For a moment, Laien continued to stare at me from that doubled-over position. Then she slowly straightened up. “I see.” At first, I thought she genuinely understood and was completely changing her disposition. Then she continued, her tone almost politely curious. “When I kill you, will I also inherit the terrible mental disease that seems to have you trapped within its clutches, or will it be buried with you?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s a me thing,” I replied dryly. “And do you really want to kill me?”
Her mouth widened into an almost disturbing smile. “Let me think. I want to be the most powerful Necromancer on this planet so no one can ever use me again. You–” She stopped herself, seemingly physically incapable of saying the words that were trying to come out. Finally, she compromised with, “You are a threat to that. You’re standing in the way of my dream.”
Letting out a long, low sigh, I met her slightly maniacal gaze. “Okay first of all, even if you did kill me, you’ve got another several hundred years of having a more powerful Necromancer in your way. And he’s not going to indulge you like this, he’ll just kill you. Actually, if he even has the slightest idea you exist, he’ll probably kill you. So your best chance of surviving long enough to actually become as strong as you want to be is to listen to me. Because the last thing you want to do is catch Fossor’s attention.”
That definitely got her attention. Those emerald eyes darted left, then right as though checking for the man in question. Then she hissed, “He’s not here, don’t try to frighten me. The one they call Fossor is on a planet called Rysthael, not Earth.”
“Oh boy.” Taking a moment to marvel over how a misunderstanding like that could’ve happened (or maybe it wasn’t a misunderstanding, but actually deliberate obfuscation by Fahsteth?), I took a deep breath. “Okay, see, Earth is Rysthael. Earth is what the locals call it. Rysthael is what the Seosten and planets connected to them call it. Earth is Rysthael. Rysthael is Earth.”
“But that would mean–” Stopping short, Laein seemed to do some quick mental calculations before settling on an enraged, “I’m going to kill that Akheilosan mekkhat!”
“Have I got good news for you on that front.” Pausing, I reconsidered. “Or possibly bad news, depending on how critical it is that you do the killing. So yeah, probably bad news. He’s dead already. And good riddance. But you can’t really get back at him for lying to you, or whatever he did. You’re here on this world now, and Fossor doesn’t really take kindly to having other Necromancers butting in on his turf. Not that he really needs a reason to kill someone, but still. He’d actually go out of his way to find you if he thought you might possibly one day be an annoyance. Or even if he thought it might be funny for a second. Either way, you’re not safe here like this. And from your reaction, I’d say you know that.”
Once again, it seemed difficult or even impossible for the girl to admit she was weaker than anyone. But she did eventually manage to acquiesce, through gritted teeth, “Facing him now would be strategically unwise. Until I’ve consolidated my power and prepared an inescapable trap from which he will meet his untimely demise!”
Silence reigned between us for a solid few seconds before I coughed. “Yeah, he’s gonna meet an untimely demise, that’s for sure. But if you actually want to be strong enough to pose a threat to him, or to anyone of that level of threat, it sure seems like we should work together, huh?”
That made her frown at me. “What do you mean, work together? Is this still that ‘school of Necromancers’ you were prattling on about? Necromancers don’t work together, and certainly don’t create schools! We challenge and defeat one another to prove our ultimate superiority! And then we take the various magical accouterments from our fallen foes in order to become even stronger, to defeat ever more impressive opponents, until all have fallen like whitneys before our scythes!”
She started to cackle again, before I interrupted. “Uh, sorry, whitneys?”
“Yes, of course!” Her tone was impatient as she waved a hand. “Whitneys, the tall brown plants that are harvested and transformed into bread by the kitchen wenches!”
“Wheat,” I corrected, managing to at least mostly stifle a giggle. “You mean wheat.”
Laein, in turn, blinked at me in disbelief. “You’re making that up. You’re having fun at my expense again, and you shall know my–”
“Your wrath, yeah, but I’m not making it up. Hang on a second.” Turning, I disabled the privacy coin and shouted across the field. “Hey! What’s the name of the crop that is harvested and turned into grain for bread?! It starts with a W!”
There was a pause, during which I was pretty sure everyone, ghosts, zombies, Gaia, Percy, Cerberus, and Eurso were trying to figure out what on Earth (or Rysthael) the two of us could possibly have been talking about that led to that being a question. Finally, the answer started to be shouted back from several sources at once.
Once we’d heard enough, I activated a new privacy coin and turned back to her. “There, see? And knowing what bread is made out of is just one benefit to having a Necromancer school. There’s other, far more impressive reasons to do it.”
“Like destroying the entire Fomorian armada?” The way Laein said that made it clear she found the very idea to be hilariously if not completely suicidally inconceivable. Which, well, was fair given everything the Fomorians were. “Perhaps next you’ll say we should put out a star by gathering together enough people to blow very hard.” Yeah, she thought that one was hilarious too, snickering audibly at herself.
“If I had enough people with enough powerful lungs, maybe we’d try that,” I replied evenly. “But I don’t want to put out a star. I want to stop the Fomorians. And Necromancy is the way to do that. Since we’re not trying to kill each other right now, would you mind listening to why? At least you could use that time to catch your breath for another try at the whole zombie line-crossing challenge.”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
She continued to squint for another few seconds before visibly sighing. “Very well, you did cheat by calling for this challenge so soon after your Revenant put me to sleep. I’ve yet to have enough time to gather my strength for a true contest of our skill!” Her cape fluttered dramatically through that in the still-nonexistent breeze and her voice rose dramatically before abruptly lowering back to a conversational tone. “I shall listen to your… proposal, Not Jacob.”
Right, okay then. It had taken a little time and maneuvering, but Laein was actually willing to listen to what I wanted to say. Which meant I actually had to say something convincing. I needed to say the right thing, because even though this was kind of a spur of the moment idea, I really thought it was the right way to go. It might be the only way to go, when it all came down to it. If Necromancy was the key to beating the Fomorians, then we didn’t need one massively powerful Necromancer. It didn’t matter how strong that person was, not when the Fomorians were spread so far across the universe. There wasn’t enough time for one person to deal with all that. Not to mention the idea of having a single failure point seemed really bad. When it came to something this critical, creating a plan that would completely fall apart if a single person happened to die felt irresponsible, to say the least. Even if I was that person, and certainly didn’t want to die. It was just too risky to depend on one person like that.
No, we didn’t need one Necromancer. We needed an army of them. Or at least as close to an army as we could get. And they couldn’t be part of any single group, not if I wanted to avoid politics and all those pitfalls. The entire point of such a school had to be to get strong enough to eliminate the Fomorians as a threat. And it had to be a secret. The Seosten couldn’t know about it or they would try to take over. Neither could the Fomorians for obvious reasons. We needed Necromancers training for a long time in as close to complete secrecy as we could manage. It had to stay quiet and out of the way, a complete unknown until the right time. If the wrong people even got an inkling that a group like the one I wanted to put together existed, it would fall apart.
All that ran through my mind quickly before I started to talk to Laein again. “Okay, let’s start with something I think we can both agree on. The Fomorians are bad and we don’t want them to show up at any planet we happen to be living on, right?”
The pink girl didn’t respond at first, staring at me as though searching for the trap in my words before finally giving a slow nod. “They fail to recognize my superiority.” Another pause came, then, “And killing everyone as they do is stupid. You need servants to worship you, or what’s the point? Even if you can turn dead things into servants, they’re either physical puppets, or ghosts you constantly have to give more of your own power to before they can do anything for you. The living make much better servants.” She showed me a Cheshire smile. “And they’re self-replicating.”
Right, I could work with that. Sure, it was a bit creepy, but I still thought she was mostly putting on a show. Honestly, I didn’t think Laein was as bloodthirsty as she tried to portray herself. Maybe that was stupid of me, but it was just… something about her made it seem like she was trying too hard, compensating for something, or… whatever, as much as she talked about being a-okay with atrocities, she just didn’t seem like the type to follow through. I really wanted to know more about her.
But learning about her past would have to wait. For the moment, I just nodded to her. “So the best outcome for both of us, not to mention the rest of the universe, is if the Fomorians stop being a threat.”
“I’m not an idiot,” she snapped with a dark look. “Yes, eliminating the Fomorians would be a grand and noble goal, one certain to gain all the admiration I could ever want. But it is impo–” The girl stopped herself, looking physically pained, as though it actually hurt her to even almost admit that something could be impossible for her. With some effort, she managed, “They are too dangerous to risk provoking. Even… wait. What are the tiny insects who crawl under the ground in large colonies?”
“Ants,” I supplied.
“Don’t lie to me!” She abruptly demanded. “An aunt is the sister of a parent! I’m not a fool to be trifled with and mocked!”
“They’re homophones,” I informed her before amending, “I mean, words that sound the same but mean different things. A-U-N-T is the parent’s sister. A-N-T is the insect.”
Her head shook with disgust. “That’s idiotic, if a word-sound is already taken, use a different word sound.” She seemed to move past that quickly enough, however, finishing her original thought. “A-N-T ants, in enough numbers, pose a threat to even the strongest of beings.”
“Funny you should make that comparison,” I replied with a small smile. “Because I actually think we can be the army of ants helping to take down the Fomorians. Well, not just the two of us. But we’re the start.”
Obviously, she still seemed dubious. But she stood there and listened as I explained the whole thing with the Fomorians and how we thought a strong enough Necromancer could stop their ‘spirits’ (for lack of a better word) from returning to be reborn in new bodies every time they were killed. “Sure, it’s a pain in the ass to destroy their bodies anyway, and they’d still have their massive armies of monstrosities. But if it’s true that they only have a relatively low number of actual Fomorians, and we can start taking those numbers down, the whole war becomes much more… you know, possible. No matter how unfathomable their legions of monsters are, if they don’t have the actual generals to lead them, they’re just animals. I’m not saying it’d be easy to pull off. Hell, I’m not even saying it’d be easy to stop the rest of the Fomorian hordes if we do pull it off. All I’m saying is that what the Seosten are doing right now isn’t working. And it’s not going to work in a few hundred years either. It’s getting worse. We need to do something different.”
“And you believe you can create that ‘something different?’” Laein sounded curious, rather than the mocking I might’ve expected. “By training Necromancers to become strong enough to control Fomorian ghosts.”
“More like, we train each other.” After seeing the look on her face when I said that, I pushed on. “See, I’m sure you know things about Necromancy that I don’t. Plus there’s things Percy over there knows that neither of us do. I’ve got a ghost who knows a hell of a lot too. So we can all learn from each other. Maybe something you know, plus something I know, plus something someone else knows can be put together to turn into something that wouldn’t have been possible without every little piece each of us had. I’m not talking about making a school where one of us teaches and the others listen. I’m talking about a school where we compare notes, learn from each other, share everything we know so we all get strong enough to actually pull this off. We share, collaborate, work together to become a group that can help end the Fomorian threat before they wipe out all life everywhere.
“And then use the vacuum of power from the defeat of the Fomorians, combined with the gratitude of the whole universe and our combined might to take over all civilization ourselves!” Laein gave a loud cackle, spreading her arms wide. “Brilliant! You’re even more devious than I assumed, Not Jacob!”
My mouth opened before I caught myself. It wasn’t worth getting into a whole argument about right now. Not when we had a long time before ‘what comes after the Fomorians are defeated’ would even come close to being relevant. If it ever did. For now, all that mattered was that she seemed to be at least partially onboard. So, I just sidestepped that whole thing. “But the only way we’ll ever be able to actually get that far is by working together. Not only the two of us, but every other Necromancer we can find and recruit. And we’ll need books, artifacts, everything that has anything to do with learning and getting stronger.”
“It’s a pity you killed my employer in that case,” the small, pink-skinned girl noted. “He was going to–”
“The Tower of Lashra Vaeil,” I finished for her. “Yeah, he tried that little carrot on me too. And he sabotaged himself so we can’t summon his ghost to get answers. But that guy had so much tech shoved up inside himself, I will eat the remains of that ship over there if there isn’t something Gaia can use to trace where that place actually is. She’s really good with technology.”
“You see? Another thing living servants are good for,” Laein noted before frowning when I snickered. “What is amusing?”
“Just the idea that Gaia could ever be my servant.” With that, I gave a quick glance that way over my shoulder. The others were still watching, and I raised a hand to wave, letting them know everything was alright. Then I turned back to the other girl, meeting her intense gaze. “But if we’re gonna do this, actually work together and start this Necromancer school, I’d like to know where you come from, Laein. How you became a Necromancer, how you got hired by Fahsteth, that sort of thing.
“What’s your story?”