by Ryan Attard
The Necromancer himself had appeared in the room, and walked around the table.
“Which one should I start with, I wonder?” he murmured. Beyond his wiry figure I saw a bench laid out with a variety of torture tools. Since he was the one who shaped this small pocket universe within the soul catcher, he’d even bloodied the tools.
Finally he settled on a small hacksaw, caked with dried blood and gore.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said, as he hovered the saw over my face. “You’re thinking that if I hack your limbs off and submit you to indescribable pain, you’ll still be whole because you’re a ghost.” He grinned, and I felt a pit in my stomach. “Guess again. If I maim your soul with Necromancy, you’ll never be whole again, Ashendale.”
He grinned.
“Greede will kill you if you damage me too much,” I said. My voice was small and weak, full of uncontrollable fear.
The Necromancer chuckled. “Wrong again,” he said. “Whole or in pieces, it won’t really matter for the ritual. Now, please, do scream.”
And scream I did.
Two days had passed. While the passage of time is warped in Limbo, and I couldn’t think through the constant agony, the Necromancer would come in every hour to inflict his torture on me. So far I counted forty-nine.
At this point, my body was in pieces. I mean that literally. Had I been human I would have died, but I was a ghost. You can hack them to little pieces, but so long as you have a good Necromantic spell on their essence, they won’t be destroyed.
It was cruel and monstrous, and I expected nothing less from the Necromancer.
Once in a while, Greede himself would show up. Wordlessly, he would collect bits of me and melt them in a jar.
I honestly didn’t know how much longer I could last. My brain could not comprehend my new existence as a mass of scattered ectoplasm. I sensed the end was near, and I was right.
Greede and the Necromancer stepped in.
“Well, Mr. Ashendale,” Greede said, “it seems that our time together is coming to a conclusion. One last push, and you’ll be fully reduced to ectoplasm.”
“Blow me, Greede.”
The Necromancer snapped his fingers. A set of thick nails, each about a foot long, appeared and shot into my body. A fresh wave of pain distracted me from the other, different type of pain.
“That the best you got?” I shot back at the Necromancer. “Shit, even when torturing someone you can’t help but be a cliché, can you?”
I discovered somewhere between session ten and eleven that if I pissed him off, the Necromancer tended to get less creative.
And if there was one thing I was really good at, it was pissing people off.
The Necromancer snarled but Greede held him back with an extended hand and glare.
“I like you, Erik,” Greede said. “I really do. Oh, how I’m gonna miss these times once the world is broken.”
“Don’t count on it, Greede. Better, stronger, and scarier things than you have tried and failed, ” I said. “Guess I’m one tough motherfucker to kill.”
“Indeed you are,” he replied. “But not this time. This time I got you by the balls. Well, not literally—we cut those off yesterday, along with your legs.”
“I’ll kill you,” I said. “Just you wait.”
“Be quiet,” the Necromancer said. His words were accompanied by a lash of dark energy that seared through my flesh. “You’re powerless here.”
“Don’t count on it.”
He laughed and reached to his collar, pulling out an amulet. It was a single band of metal, bent into the shape of an ankh, the Egyptian symbol.
“This charm stops you from accessing any form of magic,” he sniveled. “You are in my domain now, ghost. And, here, I am the master of life and death.”
I glared at the amulet. That would explain why Sun Tzu’s power would not work, or why he could cut me up so easily. If I had any chance to get out of here, I had to destroy that thing.
Yeah, but how?
Greede seemed to read my mind. “I do hope you try something, Mr. Ashendale,” he said. “You have been the most entertainment I’ve had all year. Shame that… thing had to kill you.”
Images flashed in my mind as I remembered my last moments as a human being.
A humanoid creature made out of light and shadows. Twelve wings reaching up to the sky, rending it apart. A being so powerful it distorted the flow of space and time. A creature that switched off my magic and killed me without a second’s hesitation.
Greede shook his head.
“You remember him, huh?” he said.
“What was that?” I asked.
Greede shrugged. “It doesn’t matter,” he replied. “To you, he’s nothing. To me, he’s competition.”
“And Amaymon?” I struggled to shift my head and look Greede in the eye. “How’d you rope him in?”
Greede chuckled. “Easier than you think,” he said. Then he leaned in. “I promised him the one thing he wanted most in the world.”
“Oh, yeah? And what would that be?”
“Think about it, Mr. Ashendale,” Greede said. “He’s a demon. He belongs in Hell. And I’m giving him a one-way ticket back to the way things were.” He chuckled. “All hail the Emperor.”
My insides, what remained of them, went cold.
So that’s what all this was about. The Demon Emperor, the only demon ever to unite Hell. The strongest, most powerful demonic creature in existence.
And Greede wanted to bring him back.
“No,” I said. “Not even you would be that insane. Besides, the Demon Emperor is dead. Amaymon said the Ashendales destroyed him.”
“Oh, they destroyed him, all right,” Greede said. “But—and I think you, in your ghostly self, would agree—things which are dead can be brought back.” He gave me a sinister snicker. “And as it turns out—because the universe has a real twisted sense of humor—Ashendale blood is needed to resurrect him. Now, I could go after that sister of yours, but here I was thinking: isn’t there a body full of Life magic somewhere down there?”
I gritted my teeth. Don’t give him anything, Erik, I thought forcing myself to remain quiet.
Greede chucked again. “Oh, your poker face is terrible. But don’t worry, I’ll leave the sad, depressed kitten alone… for now. No, Mr. Ashendale, I want your flesh, and in order to do so, I’m going to extract the ectoplasm from your soul and ensure access to your magic. And once I do, the Emperor is mine.”
“And you think you can control him?” I challenged. “He’ll eat you alive. Not Mammon nor anything you throw at him will stop him. You can barely stop Amaymon—the Demon Emperor will raze everything you have.”
“True,” Greede said. “But here’s the kicker. I may have fibbed a little to our demonic friend.” He chuckled at my expression. “I’m not about to bring back something that can slip out of my control. Instead I can do to the Emperor what I did to Mammon, and give him life through my flesh.”
I shuddered involuntarily.
His grin was over my face and I felt his breath on my skin. “Just imagine, Mr. Ashendale. Hell on Earth—ain’t that a fun notion?”
Greede leaned back and laughed.
“Okay, Mr. Necromancer,” he said. “I got some business to attend, but my lieutenant is outside with you. He’ll keep watch while you finish up here.” He winked at me. “See you never, Mr. Ashendale.”
Chapter 19
The Necromancer’s magic changed the environment. I could feel it shifting before I saw the changes. Before it was controlled, held back. I sensed fear, likely brought on by Greede, and restraint.
Now, that control was gone, substituted for raw malignancy and bloodlust.
My own restraints strapping me to the table dissolved and I rolled off the table. Bit by bit, the torture room was swallowed by shadows. I looked down at my body and was surprised to find it whole again.
But not intact.
I was naked, and parts of me w
ere missing, as if I were a pencil drawing and some psychopath had taken an eraser to my body at random. I was also smaller, shorter, and much skinnier. It was as if my body was reconstituted with less material.
The Necromancer by contrast loomed taller and larger than he was in real life. Shadows whipped from his body, creating the illusion he was bigger still.
I guess some people need to overcompensate.
He took a step forwards, accompanied by a groan, or some such insidious sound meant to frighten me, but I knew this guy. He fed off fear, got off on it, and I wasn’t about to give him anything.
Ever since coming back, I’d been on the verge of dying. I was literally hanging on by a thread of magic, seen through Limbo. But none of that had anything to do with what I did next. You might not get to choose when or where you die, but you got to choose how. It gave me an endless amount of pride to find out that when the chips were down—again—and I was faced with certain death, I chose to fight.
My hands were balled into fists, ready to go down swinging.
The Necromancer laughed. I never saw the shadows whipping towards me. All I saw were my severed hands falling down. I screamed at my stumps, before more shadows pierced into me and lifted me, like a carcass ready for slaughter.
The Necromancer flitted closer and plunged his hand in my chest. I screamed in agony, each shift of my body causing the shadows to further tear into me. I felt his hands close upon something, something vital, and knew he had grasped my Core.
My essence, the very thing that made me Erik Ashendale.
And this monster had it in his hands.
The dark room shattered. The roof literally broke into a million shards of black, revealing a sickly red and yellow sky. Red sand spun lazily as the magic created a burst of wind.
The Necromancer looked at his hand holding my bloodied essence, and then at the world around him.
“Ashura,” he breathed. “This is what you call it. Your power is so vast it required a pocket dimension to house.”
I didn’t answer on account of being dropped unceremoniously on the ground as his shadows evaporated. I raised my head and watched him take a step towards a creature composed of black rock and fiery veins of red and ember.
Dark Erik, the avatar of my powers, had not retained the obsidian sheen, nor the ominous powers. This creature was a fraction of his former self, barely held together, with shards of rock-skin flaking off.
But he held his head high, his red eyes wrathful and indignant.
The Necromancer reached out.
“No!” I screamed. “Stay away from him!”
“The source of Life magic that Greede so craves,” the Necromancer said. He plucked a shard of obsidian from Dark Erik’s shoulder. It was absorbed into his skin and he shivered. “Oh, my. Such power.”
He turned to grin at me. “And look, it’s all mine for the taking.”
There is no feeling to describe the helplessness I felt at that moment. I was broken, and my power less than two feet away. But I had no way of getting it. Instead, I watched as my enemy laid his hands on it, touching the deepest part of me, my identity, who I am, and plunder it for himself.
Dark Erik’s eyes flared, and the Necromancer’s bravado vanished. He jumped back.
“You… you’re… alive?” he stammered.
Dark Erik cocked his head, slowly. Flakes of skin rained down.
“I am,” he said, using a gravelly, hoarser version of my voice. “And I am not.”
“If I take your power,” the Necromancer said, “will you stop me?”
“As you can see, I am quite weak,” Dark Erik replied.
The Necromancer licked his lips. He plucked off a second bit of obsidian right from Dark Erik’s face.
“With this power I shall become the god of life and death. I alone will stand on the boundary of true immortality,” he announced.
Dark Erik nodded. “Perhaps,” he said. “But perhaps your first lesson would be to mind your surroundings, even whilst in the presence of that which you desire the most.”
“What?”
Heat rushed through the entire Ashura universe, blazing through like an invisible comet, but very much present.
A lance of fire flew across my face. It compressed down to a laser beam, small but furious, and hit the Necromancer’s side. The latter yelled, surprised, and backpedalled. He snarled and looked fervently around him, waiting for the surprise attacker to make a second move.
“You!” he screamed at Dark Erik. “You did this!”
“I did not,” the latter replied. I sensed a level of smugness in his voice. “But I do admit to waiting for the opportunity.”
“You missed!”
“Have I?”
The Necromancer patted his side. “Hah! I’m all right-”
His expression went cold and numb. His hand felt for the protective ankh, the only thing keeping my powers at bay, and shards of rendered metal fell on the red sand.
The Necromancer looked up, pulling at his power, but Dark Erik was upon him. He grabbed the Necromancer by the neck and lifted him off his feet with one hand. The Necromancer’s feet dangled as his face became redder and redder.
“You made two vast miscalculations,” Dark Erik told his flailing captive. “One is unforgivable for a Necromancer. You forgot that whilst your mind and magic are here, your physical body is not and is thus vulnerable to outside attack.”
The Necromancer’s eyes widened in realization—but that could also be because Dark Erik was choking the life out of him.
“The second mistake is far graver,” Dark Erik said.
As he spoke, the sky darkened. I assumed a storm, but then saw a familiar and disturbing shadow emerge from Dark Erik himself.
Six massive pincer legs, attached to a bulbous tick-like body. Its head clicked and hissed, while the rest of its insectoid body attached itself on Dark Erik. He began shifting. Six spindly legs jutted out of his sides, created by the same obsidian rock that formed the rest of his body. His body hunched forwards, allowing a massive carapace to bulge out, then split into insect wings. Red and purple veins spread out through them like rope to a sail. The same dark red and purpled veins ran through Dark Erik’s main body.
“You assumed I was merely power, yours for the taking,” he said. “But I am not power.” He looked at me, red eyes brimming with power and emotion.
“I am his wrath.”
He flicked his wrist, and there was a sickening crunch. The Necromancer’s eyes rolled back into his skull, and his tongue lolled out. Dark Erik released his grip, and I saw dark purple marks on the Necromancer’s neck. He had actually burnt through the flesh, and I saw part of the neck bone jutting out.
I looked at Dark Erik.
“Who are you?” I gasped.
“I am who I’ve always been,” he replied. “And I am something new, something you will have to understand. Something that will perhaps destroy you, or something that will elevate you beyond your shackles as a human.”
His body reverted back. The tick shadow unlatched itself from Dark Erik and evaporated into the background. All the while, it looked at me, singling me out.
It knew me, that much I was sure of. It knew me—because it was me.
Could this creature be the manifestation of some new power I was developing? Or maybe it was the collective emotional energy born of my frustration and anger?
Emotions are as powerful as any spell—they are what shape our every thought and desire. They are what powers the real magic, life itself. To a magic user, emotions are as important as oxygen is to any living being.
Dark Erik, back to his usual humanoid form, knelt beside me and reached out.
“For now, Erik Ashendale, you must awaken.”
He made contact with me and exploded into a cloud of ash and smoke, which blinded and choked me. Suddenly I was falling.
Chapter 20
I woke up screaming. Reality rushed back. Suddenly, everything was real again. I reeled back
and phased through a workbench. I looked down and swore.
Still a ghost.
But hey, at least I had all my hands and limbs, and looked pretty much whole. I even felt a spark of magic within me, a small burst of power just within reach.
A chuckle.
A man leaned against a chair, one occupied by the Necromancer. The latter was drooling uncontrollably, and his eyes had rolled back. Shards of metal were at his feet. I recognized bits of the ankh amulet and the soul-catcher that I had been trapped inside.
That explained my release.
The man leaning over him had blond hair that was swept back, along with a wiry build that reminded me of pickpockets. He wore a dark brown bomber jacket and cargo pants. One hand was in his pocket, the other hanging at his side.
His index finger glowed yellow and was smoking.
“So glad you’re finally up, princess,” Luke the Pyromancer said. “I shattered that soul-catcher a half hour ago.”
I looked at him, at his hands, then at the Necromancer.
“You destroyed the protective charm,” I said. It wasn’t a question, just a statement, an attempt to make sense of this.
Luke was one of Greede’s lieutenants, one of the top-ranking guys in the Black Ring Society, and someone I fought—and beat—many a time in the past.
He grinned and nodded.
“Since you took your sweet time,” he said, “we’ll have to fight our way out. Well, I will anyway.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” I shot back.
The door burst open behind me.
“Excuse me,” Luke told me.
He thrust his hands forwards, sending two jets of fire at me. Or rather through me.
Two Black Ring Society members were blasted back and turned to ash before they hit the opposite wall.
“I don’t have time to explain everything now,” he told me.
“Make time!” I snapped.
“I’m working for your sister,” he hissed. “And I just blew my cover. Now, do you wanna sit here and discuss the ins and outs of me being a double agent, or do you wanna haul ass before Greede gets wise and turns around for us?”