Ruthers. He was clearly the one in charge of this attack. That much was obvious. He may not have been headmaster of Crossroads yet, but he had definitely been around for a while. Long enough, apparently, to throw that sort of power around. Oh well, at least I could count myself lucky that he wasn’t a member of the Committee just yet. That wouldn’t happen for another few hundred years. But still, I couldn’t dismiss him as a threat.
For his part, the man glared at me, his eyes taking me in so thoroughly that it made me even more glad I had shifted my form. I couldn’t even imagine the sort of damage that would’ve been done to the timeline if he had seen me as myself.
“You,” the man snarled with hatred that seemed to wash over me. “You are not the Necromancer we are looking for.” His fist tightened and rose a bit. “But you’ll do for now. All of your kind will be wiped off this world. There is no place here for your filth.”
My eyes glanced around slightly without really moving off of the man in front of me. I used my peripheral vision to take in the bodies of the villagers who had already been killed in this attack. My own voice was just angry, as it took everything I had not to scream at him. Instead, I kept my words as even as possible, though they shook a bit. “You think this is heroic? You think you’re helping people by slaughtering innocents? Take a really good look around you and ask yourself who the real monster in this situation is.”
If I had expected that to make Ruthers reevaluate himself, I would’ve been disappointed. His voice in a near-shout. “Don’t think for a single moment that you can drag wool across our eyes! We know the truth!” He spoke slightly quieter then, though his voice was still brittle with rage. The ground under his feet cracked a little. “You cannot hide from the eyes of magic. It has told us of the horrific work you’ve done to the people here, as well as the land itself. And we know of your ultimate goals to bring a swarm of your people here to invade our world. We’ll not let that happen!”
Wait, what the hell was he talking about? Oh. Oh, shit. They’d asked some sort of magic spell about this place and it told them about Maestro. It’d obviously gotten confused or something. No wonder they come in here guns blazing so hard. If that magic had given them any idea of how dangerous that motherfucker was, I was kind of lucky they hadn’t had any handy nukes to shoot at it.
Ruthers continued. “We know how your magic corrupted these people. You are the one who has killed who they were, who they used to be. You and the monsters you left behind to monitor your little experiment. These humans were already better off dead. Whatever you did to them cannot be allowed to spread across this new world, and we cannot allow you to summon your people. We will end you and the rest of what you were attempting to do here. But first you will tell me where your master is, and what he’s really planning.”
Yeah, that one threw me for another loop. I blinked a couple times and tilted my head. Around me, I could see a few more of Ruthers’ troops trying to surround my position. “My master?” Was he talking about Ehn? Did that guy have something to do with this? Wait, did he know about Maestro? Is that who he meant? Did that even make sense?
Ruthers didn’t exactly take my apparent confusion calmly. His voice slammed into me so forcefully he had to have been using a power to magnify it. “Your master! Fossor!” Before I could even really react to that, he snarled, “Don’t think for one second that you can hide your connection to him. We identified his magic in your work here. We can sense his tainted aura over every inch of this village! Either he was here or he has invested some of his power into you, his protege! And I will not allow that to spread. Truly, the news that he has an entire species of himself may be horrifying, but we shouldn’t be so surprised. And we will not allow you to bring them here!”
Right, great, that was why there was absolutely no chance of Ruthers actually listening to me. Not that he would have been inclined to anyway, but this was even worse. They weren’t just operating off a misunderstanding with their magic thinking I was responsible for what Maestro had done, they were also sensing Fossor’s power within my Necromancy. Of course they were, it was his power after all. But something told me the man wouldn’t listen even if I could somehow tell him the truth. Telling him I was an actual Crossroads Heretic from the future who had killed and absorbed Fossor’s power wouldn’t go well for multiple reasons. Still, I was tempted to try for just a moment. If for nothing else than to see the look on his face. But no, I couldn’t risk something like that. It was far too dangerous.
Instead, I took a deep breath and let it out before meeting his gaze. “I’m going to give you a chance to walk away, Gabriel. I promise, there’s more to this situation than you could possibly understand. I’m not hurting these people, you are. Look around, see what you and your men have done to this place. Then walk away before this goes any further. You can still help others, people who actually need you. Go find Fossor and stop him. All the more power to you. He’s no friend of mine.”
For an extended moment, the man simply stared at me, and a small, unconvincing part of my mind tried to believe that he might actually listen. But no, of course not. That wasn’t the kind of person he was. Instead, Ruthers audibly growled before taking a step toward me. His voice was low and dangerous. “You will tell us everything about your master. Your power won’t allow you to escape. Whatever manner of creature you are under that disguise, I can promise you that much. We will extract the full truth from you, raze this village to the ground so that whatever plague you have been creating here will never spread beyond its grounds, and then you will be permanently wiped from this world.” He came another step closer, while adding in an even more vicious tone as he looked me up and down with an expression of disgust, “This can be done the easy way… or the very painful way. That much is up to you, monster.”
“Manner of creature?” I echoed in disbelief at his choice of words. “Monster?”
Ruthers gave me a look of mixed outrage and satisfaction. I wasn’t sure exactly how one could mix those two expressions, but he pulled it off. It was like he was smug, but still very angry about that fact. “Yes, does that scare you, creature? You can’t hide from us. We can sense what you are quite easily. Disguise yourself any way you like, we can still sense the evil pouring off that shell. That is the way of our people. Run as much as you like, you and your filth will never be able to hide on this world again.”
“What are yo–” Then I remembered the whole Fae thing and thought about how he was staring at me, how they were all staring at me. It wasn’t just because they were detecting my Necromancy. Wait, were they seeing an Alter when they looked at me? Was I actually setting off the Heretic sense like a Stranger now? That was– oh. Oh, that was new. Great, I wasn’t just no longer a regular Boscher Heretic, I actually set off their alert sense when they looked at me. That was… uh, gonna complicate things.
Okay, well, that was something else to deal with in the future. But for the moment, I just cracked my neck and lifted my staff. Curious about that crack he’d made about not being able to escape, I tried teleporting. But it was like the man had said, they’d managed to disable that somehow. Clearly they wanted me to stay put so they could finish killing me and then wipe out the rest of the village.
Well too bad I didn’t have any intention of allowing that. On either front. Maybe I couldn’t leave, but I wasn’t planning to anyway. No, this had to be dealt with.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
My gaze slowly took in the people surrounding me. Ruthers was the major threat, of course. But there were fourteen others scattered around my position, clearly waiting for their leader to make the first move. At the very least, I’d attracted their attention and kept it on me so the civilians could escape or hole up somewhere. Now I just had to make sure these fuckers couldn’t go right back to killing them. Which was a thought that sent another rush of anger through me that I had to force down again. You ready for this, Fathom?
Fucking born ready, she confirmed. Let’s keelhaul these bilge rats. And yes, I was pretty sure she was intentionally playing up the pirate thing a bit.
Ruthers made the first move then, something his people were apparently waiting for. One second he was standing away from me, and the next, he had lunged forward. His arm turned furry and grew into that of a large bear, deadly claws extended. I tried to summon ghosts to slam into him and knock the incoming man off balance, but nothing happened. I had a moment of confusion, which would have ended in me getting my head completely knocked off. Fortunately, Fathom was there. She threw us into a sideways dive and triggered the Seosten boost to give us just enough speed to escape that swiping paw, and the claws that looked like they could have completely ripped through solid steel.
I rolled back to my feet and spun, still reaching out with my power. Nothing. I couldn’t sense my ghosts, couldn’t summon my zombies, couldn’t do anything with Necromancy whatsoever.
Wait, yes I could. I could sense something with it. Half a dozen somethings, spread over the surrounding area. They were some sort of magic crystals or something. My Necromancy was being shunted away into them whenever I tried to use it.
Well for fucks sake, if they had something like this, why didn’t they use it with Fossor?
Probably because he knew how to disable or completely evade them, mate, Fathom helpfully put in.
Ruthers had already followed up in that short moment, and came after me again. This time, he had some sort of shotgun in his left hand, the unchanged one. Even as his enormous claws swiped out toward me, he was putting that weapon into position to fire into the space where I would have to dodge.
But I didn’t play along with that. Instead, Fathom activated that power she had to let things swim through solid ground and used it on us. Immediately, I dropped, disappearing into the earth. The sound of Ruthers bellowing in rage was audible just before my ears made it underground.
Now I was in the ground, and immediately went down far enough that Ruthers and his people wouldn’t be able to immediately stab me. Already, I could feel vibrations as they tore at the dirt. They were going to rip apart the entire village grounds looking for me.
Obviously, I couldn’t see anything. The ground may have allowed me to move through it like water, but it was still opaque. I just had a sort of instinctive sense of which way was up. And of course, there was no oxygen down here, so I would normally only be able to stay as long as I could hold my breath. Which, honestly, was a pretty long time by this point. But I also had the Reaper bodysuit, which provided its own personal atmosphere. With that, I could stay underground for several days without running out of air. That wasn’t an issue. Hell, if I had a mind too, I could have simply swum through the ground until I escaped this entire situation.
But no, I couldn’t leave my people like that. If I escaped, Ruthers and his little army would kill everyone here, would destroy everything they had built. And, most likely, they’d end up changing the future. After all, if there was no Laramie Falls, I couldn’t exactly be born here. I had no idea how much that would change, but it didn’t sound good.
No, I had to deal with this. I had to stop them before this went too far.
In that second, my item sense warned me about an incoming threat. Immediately, I threw myself backwards, swimming out of the way just as a huge metal spear, at least two feet wide and a good ten feet long, came slamming through the ground. It went right back up and came down again, but slightly further away. Right, so they didn’t know exactly where I was, not yet anyway. But it was obvious that they weren’t exactly going to let me stay down here and think forever. That was okay though, I knew what I needed to do. Or rather, I knew how to find out what I needed to do.
Flipping around in that liquid-like dirt and rocks, I struck out and began swimming away from that spot. It was like moving through completely black water in the middle of the night or something. There was no light, nothing like that to guide me. But I had my item sense, which showed me where the men were and allowed me to evade several more weapons being slammed down through it. I had to swim even lower, as these people kept trying to find me. Somehow they knew I hadn’t completely left the area. Or maybe it was just wishful thinking. Either way, they kept stabbing down like they were spear fishermen or something. Which briefly made me consider unleashing my sharks. Wouldn’t that be fun to see? I could just have my sharks swim through the ground and leap up to start biting or eating these fuckers. They’d sure be surprised then.
Unfortunately, that would give away my identity. The second Ruthers of the future found out I had both Necromancy and control over sharks, he’d figure it out. I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t openly use a power so unique and tied to me.
Instead, I was going to use another power that could have probably identified me. Or at least given too much information. But I was going to do it much more secretly than throwing flying sharks at them would have been. To that end, I swam to the very edge of the area they were stabbing. Using that same item sense that had allowed me to avoid them, I positioned myself directly under and slightly behind one of the men.
I had to wait for the exact right moment. This wasn’t going to be easy, not considering I couldn’t see where any of the other men were or where they were looking. My hope was that with this being right on the edge of the area they were working with, none of them would be staring directly at this guy. They would be focused on the ground itself.
Taking a deep breath out of my suit-created personal atmosphere, I waited until the man above me had just stabbed his sword down through the dirt. Then I swam directly upward. My hand came out of the ground just behind him, as I grabbed his ankle. And just like that, I was possessing him.
Obviously, the first thing I did was shunt his consciousness off into la la land. He could sleep for awhile. Then I stabbed the ground again, just so no one would notice that he had stopped doing that.
I’ll search, I informed Fathom, you cover for us.
She took over the stabbing bit, even taking a moment to shout a threat just like the other guys were doing. I could see Ruthers out of the corner of this guy’s eyes, pacing about as he stared at the ground using some sort of spyglass. It probably let him look through solid materials. But obviously it didn’t extend that far. He was–oh, they were trying to drive me toward him so he could spot me.
Well, they could keep right on trying that. While Fathom kept up our cover, I searched through this guy’s memories. Specifically, I was looking for answers about those Necromancy-blocking crystals and how to safely disable them. After all, I really didn’t trust Ruthers not to have booby trapped the damn things.
There, I had it. The guy knew all about those crystals, how rare they were, how long it took to put the proper spells on them to bring out and properly enhance their innate ability to block Necromancy, and how to turn them off. And yes, they were trapped. Trying to break or move them would have resulted in very bad things.
Turning the man’s body to face away from the rest of the group so it would shield my actions from them, I lifted one of his hands and used my own power to create a small portal. The other end led to the nearest of those crystals. Working quickly, I touched the ground next to it and used the image-inscription power to create the proper disabling spells. Fathom was still using the man’s other hand to stab the ground and bellowing threats.
It took about thirty seconds. Thirty of the longest seconds I could imagine. But then it was done. The crystal was disabled. And the second it was, the entire anti-Necromancy field went down. That was one of the downsides of using these things. They all had to work. As soon as one was disabled, the whole thing collapsed.
Ruthers obviously knew the second it happened, because he snapped his gaze up to look around, voice rising in a warning shout.
I was already leaving the guy I’d taken over, though I made sure he stayed unconscious first. It felt right, to scare these guys by having one of their people just collapse for no apparent reason.
Then I was back in the ground, finding a safe spot within one of the half-demolished houses before coming back up. A second later, I used a concussive blast from my own staff to blow the wall open, just for effect as I stepped through, right into plain sight for all of them to see.
“Now then,” I started in a voice as low and dangerous as I could make it, “you guys wanted to find a Necromancer, right?
“Let me show you just how well you’ve succeeded.”