Polar Depressed (Necromancer’s been a busy boy)

Harow could recall it all distinctly. The lair the sycophants had built had become the resting ground of the Menace.

Every army in the realm had been mustered to march on it when that foul force finally came to be in full retreat, and it was they who occupied the monsters who swarmed into the field to defend their lair. Claw, spear, sword, and rifle traded blows, as did Malevolence and Spiritual energy.

Amid this sound and fury, five warriors snuck through secret and unguarded passages, and made it into the heart of the fortress.

The root of the Menace was terrifying to behold: it had no real form, just pressure, heat, and light. It was a blinding kaleidoscope of searing colors that roiled like flames, and it hated everything it could see and singe.

“This is the end for you!” Harow’s shout met no response, perhaps more for their sake than the living spectral disease.

It responded in kind, with flames and pressure that smashed and melted everything it touched, and it was all they could do to dodge and defend against each blast.

Yulien’s spiritual mastery created a pocket of safety for a little while, but his mistakes cost him first, and Harow had to watch the quiet, self-assured man widen his eyes in terror for a second before he burned to ash and flecks.

“Harow, finish–”

Sylvat fired arrow after arrow into the flames, blessed wood thricemore blessed by spirits, and despite their construction, their energies seemed to suppress the churning inferno, if only momentarily – but Sylvat exposed herself too long, and the heart of all infestation turned its gaze upon her, directing a lance of fire to engulf her before Harow’s eyes.

“It–it’s burning! I’m burning–!”

Gottfried’s great shield pushed them closer and closer to the source of the conflagration, and despite every blessing put on the armor he held and wore, his armor gradually cooked him alive, becoming white with heat till he himself was a corona of melting metal that incinerated everything within, even as he kept walking on to his death, carried forward several steps more only by interia and his fading will.

“Harow… win…”

Lissandra erected the last of the defenses she could, Spiritual energy at full blast to ward off the Menace, until, at the heart of the flames, she made one last decision – to form a tunnel, a pathway through the raging maelstrom, before grabbing Harow by the wrist to drag him through, seeing him off with only a wave and a smile as he left her behind to the flames that ate her alive.

“Harow…thanks. For everything-”

And then it was just him, at whatever spiritual center of invasive chaos, and here, he drove that wood sword, fashioned by the Great Spirits for one purpose, and one purpose alone, into the depths of the Menace, which thrashed and twisted around the blow, but the Breath of the World was too strong, and from the ground, roots and branches formed, growing until the Menace was snuffed and contained.

That was how Harow won: simply by being the last one alive.

The thought was sobering enough to make him sink to the ground, had a hand not grabbed him by the shoulder. Twisting around, Harow saw someone who didn’t fit.

Maer looked at him with concern.

“Harow, it’s just a dream. A recollection. You’re not really here.”

The shattered man blinked, jaw working slowly. “A dream…?”

“Liev blew up that restaurant, remember? The professors came in time to find you all. You’re asleep and resting. But the Spirits asked me to check on you.”

The more Maer spoke, the more Harow felt disconnected with the empty, ruined room now, with only a gnarled great tree for company. Yes, this perhaps was just all a dream. The Spirits often deigned to give Maer visions in her sleep…perhaps she always had a mastery of such things?

Maer took a moment to look around the room. She stared at the floor, voice scarcely louder than a whisper, her words drifting like ash upon the wind. “I…didn’t know how much the moment stuck with you. I’m sorry.”

“I try not to think about it, though it’s not easy,” Harow admitted, voice hollow. “I really tried putting it behind me. I kept telling myself they were gone, and they weren’t coming back.”

Carefully, Maer paced over to his side. “Bao, Jane, Trudy – do they change anything?”

“It’s like…looking into a flawed mirror. It’s wrong, and everything they do feels like a mockery. It’s not their bodies…and they’re all just walking around in them. I don’t know why it’s happened, and I hate it.”

“Do you hate them, too?”

Harow looked at his wife oddly. “It…doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t let it affect my mission. I’m better than that. You know that.”

“Yes,” Maer sighed. “But this isn’t about the mission. What happens after? Are you going to spend the rest of your life seething at the thought they’re alive?”

The Beacon found no satisfactory answer, eliciting another sigh from Maer, softer and understanding as she drew close to wrap her arms around him.

“Just…think. Clear your mind. Focus. I didn’t come here to turn this into a lesson. I just want to lead you out. This is all a dream, and the Spirits want you to understand.”

“If that is so…then I do.”

Harow guided his thoughts back to the waking world, loosening his grip on this vision. He focused on that stream of Spiritual energy that flowed through all things, even in sleep, and found himself being pulled away.

“Ah, beer, thank you for being so cool on the side.”

That comprised Harow’s first words upon his return to the waking world, which he found was on his back, rocking to and fro, and with a covered wagon ceiling above him.

Groaning, Harow rose from his position. Wrapped around his waist was Maer, snoring loudly, and at the front end of the wagon sat Bao and Trudy, the former of whom was sporting fresh bandages, while Trudy was chortling in her sleep, fast unconscious and still hugging the large bottle of beer she had apparently been helping herself to.

Bao gave a nod of acknowledgement. “How are you feeling?”

Harow looked down at himself and realized that he, too, bore injuries that seemed to have been hastily wrapped, and somewhere in the periphery of his mind, there was a dull throb of discomfort.

“Hurt,” he reported.

“Liev managed to play us a little, but we got away with only this much damage. Maer and the professors came in time to rescue us, and she managed to browbeat Headmaster Trint into letting us go on the chase, as it were. And we are. We’ve been going after the old man all night, and you’ve been out all that time.”

“Where’s Jane?”

“Apparently, she’s been chasing him on foot, tracking his scent. She’s been talking to Paul and I to keep us informed.”

Paul. The Necromancer who, going by how things have been going, must have been resurrected in Gottfried’s body.

“We’re heading north then?”

Bao nodded. “Given the way things are, it seems best to meet Paul on the way while tracking Liev down.”

Harow looked over at the last of their party. “And Trudy?”

“...Drunk. Meeting the professors was a headache when they saw us hovering over your unconscious body.”

“Sorry.”

Conversation thoroughly wrung dry, Bao took the opportunity to poke his head through the front flaps separating the party from the wagon’s driver, and Harow could see through the gap that Bao was talking to an elderly horse-earred syhee.

“Hey, Grams, how much further to Lamespring?”

“Oh, hold your horses, we’ve been riding hard for a while. Soon, y’hear?”

Slowly peeling his wife’s grabby hands off, Harow slowly clambered to the front to poke his head outside next to Bao, and took in the sudden gust of cold air, and the old sight of white mountains dotted by evergreens.

“Soon? After leaving Belzac not long after?”

“Oh, lookee here, the first time I had a passenger complain about being so fast,” the old woman snorted. “Traffic’s a lot smoother these days, ever since the ol’ Necromancer started roving through the area. He takes down monsters and bandits when they get uppity, and since then it’s been easier to get around.”

“...Will we get to meet him at Lamespring?” Harow asked.

“Oh, no doubt. He likes visiting there.”

“He suggested it, actually,” Bao added. “Jane’s there, too, apparently.”

Before long, the wagon passed a ravine cutting off Lamespring from the rest of the world and entered the courtyard proper. As Harow helped a slowly waking Maer out of the back, he looked around and saw a surprisingly busy marketplace out at the edges of the world. More than a few wagons were hitched up, with vendors eagerly unloading their wares, while men and women came selling and trading wares of all sorts.

In the distance, he saw a burly man speaking with Jane’s familiar figure, though she had changed out of her old cloak for a long coat Harow swore he had seen Liev wear only the other day.

Together, the duo walked up to the wagon, just as the old woman alighted.

“Panza, it’s good to see you again,” he said, before giving a polite nod to each of the party. “My name is Arden, village leader. I’m more than happy to help any friends of Paul, however I can.”

“You seem to regard the necromancer well,” Harow was quick to discern, something Arden could only shrug at.

“Every village fears his power to some degree. That’s unmistakable, but so far his interests have been petty and small, for all the effort he exerts to achieve them. He takes Malevolence from people who have been using it and tries to encourage trade to enter this area. Granny Panza here and other merchants are happy enough to have the undead skulking in the forest, since they’ve only been directed at other threats, and the villages can’t complain either. So in some way, I do have to thank him for what he’s managed.”

“I see,” Harow said acceptingly, before looking at Jane. “How’s your hunt been?”

Jane smirked and grabbed the collar of her new garb. “Old man got away, but not before I grabbed this off him. Try as he might, he can’t get away from his smell. Check this out, too–”

Reaching inside a pocket, she freed a small pocketbook with a little wave. “Liev’s been keeping track of his plans. He’s been shipping Malevolence all the way to the North ever since Trudy and Paul’s been hunting his supplies. He’s probably trying to hide what’s left of his stash out here.”

There was suddenly an onrush of awed noises, and Harlow saw a man approach them, clad in bony armor and a tired expression, though he gave the best polite nods and smiles he could offer at the townspeople who were busy thanking him.

There he was: Gottfried’s face, hair grown out long and cheeks sunken far too much for the Spirit Knight Harow once knew, who once took up so much space with his presence. But again, now there was just a stranger.

“Paul, you seem to have accomplished more than any of us, and look worse for it,” Bao noted with a mixture of concern and amazement.

“The reward for a job well done is another job to do well,” the necromancer blandly retorted, before reaching forward with a hand that the swordsman took to shake. “Such is office life. But it’s good to see you again, Bao.”

Slowly, the gaunt man took a look at the others. “So you’re the little party out to put an end to this nonsense Liev has been up to? I’ll be glad to take a break afterwards.”

Trudy’s head poked out of the wagon at that, a dazed but still sensate and vicious grin on her face. “Got him on the run, thanks to Jane here!”

“On the run and I suspect a little desperate,” Harow added. “We’ll need all the help we can get to put an end to this. Will you join us?”

Paul sneered. “Do we have a choice? Why else are we here? We exist purely so we can fight this stuff. Liev’s a problem to this world, so we gotta fix it. It’s our duty.”

The necromancer’s utterance was a mix of resignation and determination that piqued Harow’s attention – it wasn’t the usual cry of revenge or vindictiveness; it wasn’t even the hunger for fulfillment that Malevolence seemed to inspire.

“Duty?” Harow asked.

Paul was quiet for a moment before trading looks with the others of his ilk. Slowly, Trudy, Bao, and even Jane gave a look of understanding as the necromancer spoke up again. “You know what? All four of us are here now, plus apparently the hero of this story. I think it’s time we put all the pieces of the puzzle together about what we are, and why we are. If anyone deserves to know what’s up with us, it’s you.”