Chapter 18
Glint was jerked awake from his sleep by the end of a horrifying nightmare. He sat up and panted for a few seconds, allowing himself to slowly remember where he was and what he was doing in a dark forest. Slowly things started to come back, and then he noticed the campfire a few feet from him and the man crouching in front of it, preparing a stew. The necromancer was unmistakable, framed in the fire’s light as he was. They were the only ones here, and the warrior wondered where Sasha was. Glint’s shoulder and thigh were bandaged and his shirt had been removed, he lay under a fur blanket. However, he could move his hands and his armbands with the mark of the helmet on them were left untouched. He didn’t think Azrael could remove them even if he wanted to, but then again, he was not exactly sure what the man was capable of anymore. The sight of the necromancer standing with tendrils of darkness reaching away from him like hungry hands, shrouding him in something like a smoky cloud or a black glow, filled Glint with bewilderment as well as a certain sense of dread.
Neither the fire, nor the warmth of the blanket he was under could comfort Glint in front of that image. Even the strange white orb in the sky, and the light being emitted softly from leaves of a tree in the distance, were subdued in that situation. The necromancer was as different from him as he himself was from Normals: he could do what was considered impossible. After a few seconds, Azrael noticed him and sat back on the thick fallen log he had taken for a chair. “Welcome back. Sorry I knocked you unconscious, I just wanted to treat your wounds without you trying to strangle me.”
“You have a hell of a lot to explain,” the warrior began, remaining seated. He was angry but knew he couldn’t threaten Azrael with anything. “You owe it to me now. That was a friend I just stabbed,” at that, the man stirred. “He was the one who I killed those in my bandit band to save, so I don’t think I’m in the mood for trickery right now.” Calling Crab a friend was a bit of stretch, but Glint had liked the old man despite his madness, for he’d had a kindness to his bewildered expression that the sane often lacked. Besides, Glint had done a lot for him. Before killing him, a part of his mind accused harshly, but the warrior was able to wave that away for the moment. Crab had asked for and needed that release, and Glint was going to bear the burden silently, if not proudly.
Azrael allowed the silence to stretch, uninterrupted except by the crackle of the low flame. “Fine. Ask me whatever you want.” He said finally with a sigh. “I guess you’ve seen too much, and we know each other too well.” The words were said with a sense of finality, as if the man had been struggling for a while.
“Who in the hell are you, Azrael?”
The Necromancer chuckled, but there was a cynicism to his laugh that was not lost on Glint. His black cloak, the one that had sprouted darkness like it was a whip, earlier, now looked normal, splayed over the rest of his clothes like the simple cotton that it was. “To put it simply, I’m a necromancer who reached a high amount of power, and scared a bunch of people and -”
“Who?”
Azrael hesitated at that, then said, “Fine. They were guild leaders. Seven of them, here in the continent of Shönö. They got together an army to get me. But as you know, I am quite hard to kill, so they kidnapped my daughter, pumped her with enough power to destroy anyone in minutes, put an enchanted dagger in her hands, and let me get close enough to her that she would stab me out of fright. Seeing her let my defences falter. I hesitated and lost the spell that was supposed to save her. She turned to particles right in front of me. Then... I died.” That was enough to make Glint’s blood run cold, and he felt terror spread through him.
The man was not done with his tale, for he pressed on. “Death was... painful,” he said in a soft voice, poking the stew. “While dead, you are formless in a way. It breaks your mind, spirit, and body. However, my power sustained me, and my will gave me form. I created a new body for myself in desperation, out of darkness incarnated. It makes new things possible, and you can use your ability in all three spheres of existence, doing things you never thought you could. For example, we came here using what I call the shadow blink, a teleportation technique that lets you jump from shadow to shadow.”
It all made sense. No living magician could take spiritual energy and force it so much that it caused a true physical reaction, outside of energetical bleeding. It simply wasn’t possible.
The only ones who could do it were the Unchained.
“So that’s why you’re so secretive.” The warrior stated hollowly. “If word comes out about what you are, there would be panic.”
Azrael gave but a curt nod at that, perhaps hurt at the way the statement was phrased. Not who you are, but what you are. “Y-yes,” he answered, “There have only been Three so far in recorded history, and each brought chaos with him. Ten thousand years ago Odin separated the souls in the afterlife and created a heaven only for some, thereby birthing the guild system. Two millennia later, Sklaver took animals and turned them into sentient beasts, bringing myth to life. Beings people only dreamed of suddenly became vivid realities. One thousand years after that, Pyro went so far that he destroyed the sun itself, breaking our concept of days and time. It was only due to the interference of many that we have imperfect light on half of the world now. The other half, where we are now, has to make do with moonlight or luminescent plants.” He pointed at the white thing high in the sky. So that’s the moon. Glint had heard of it. Azrael paused, taking a drink of water out of a rounded clay jug next to him while Glint thought of the consequences of his words. The necromancer stoppered the jug with a satisfied sigh before continuing, “Can you imagine how frightened the world would become if they heard that after seven thousand years, there was another Unchained roaming the lands, unseen and unknown?”
“Well, to be perfectly honest,” Glint answered him in a matter of fact voice, “We’ve already destroyed a large part of a cultural treasure. The people in Krava will now know to be careful of a pale magician called Michael. Of course, you also said that you exacted revenge on the people who killed you and your family, so you’ve also taken down, what, how many guilds?”
“Seven,” the man admitted, “plus the two guilds on your borders. It was I who stole their treasury. I distributed them to people who needed the money.” This was starting to be a bit too much for Glint, and he massaged his temples.
“So you’ve been teleporting around, acting the part of a god all this time? Anyway, get on with your story please.”
“Where was I?” asked the man, scratching his chin with half his face covered in shadow, and Glint wished he could move before settling back on the glowing grass. He reminded himself not to mess with an Unchained. To think, he had made someone carry this man upside down in his nightshirt. The thought almost made him smile. Almost. “Ah yes, death was painful. It breaks your spirit, your mind, and your body. To be perfectly honest it was painful beyond what I would wish upon anybody. This is why I haven’t been killing anyone even after what happened to me. I still wanted the system to change, I still wanted revenge. You see, these guilds were afraid of me and my good deeds, and as long as guilds remain corrupt, others will continue to be exploited. My situation was but an example, repeated in many small ways all the time. I was thinking of what to do with my new life when we met.
“I thought of raising you to become a person who could change the guild system from the inside, or even as an Agent if not as a guild member. You had a look in your eye that I always lacked. You had an understanding of how bad you could become, and you were terrified of your own powers. Thus I thought you worthy of the responsibility. You proved that faith true when you dealt the killing blow to the poor madman. I wouldn’t have been able to make that decision.”
Glint laughed at that, long and hard. His chest even began to ache from where he had been struck, and he regretted laughing at all. When he looked up at the sky the winter wind struck his bare powerful chest, although it wasn’t too cold in this part of the world. Looking far to the sky
the warrior saw the night with its glittering jewels and the eye of the moon staring back at him with its big white gaze. He asked himself how many wonders there could possibly be in this world. And here he was, getting told by an Unchained he‘d counted as a friend that he had been using him. “What about what I want, Azrael?” he asked, feeling like a tool to be discarded, but the man shot right back, “We’ve already confirmed that.”
Eyeing the necromancer crossly, Glint kept his peace as Azrael explained. “You want to help people. You may be outraged with me, and rightly so, but did you really change your mind about wanting to be a force of good in this world?”
The warrior growled, hating how well Azrael knew him. “Odin curse me, no I didn’t. I need you to answer me truthfully, Azrael.”
The Fourth nodded, and Glint then changed track. “What if I hadn’t responded the way you’d hoped? If I was greedy or willing to hurt others to get what I want or something?” This particular question was thrown out rather abruptly, hoping to catch the necromancer off guard.
Azrael’s voice sounded only honest when he said, “I would have respected your wishes. You deserved that much, and you still do. You are free to choose your own path, I shan’t force you into anything. And I won’t try again with another person. This has been difficult enough as is.” He let out a short laugh, “Besides, you yourself aren’t too perfect, but I still accept you the way you are. I wouldn’t have condoned killing that poor man.”
“Would you have been able to save Crab without killing him?”
The night was the warrior’s only companion while Azrael reflected on the question. “No,” he answered at length, his eyes cast down in shame, “he and that tree were one, there was no helping him.”
The silence stretched on, and Glint decided to snuggle in deeper into his blanket, relishing the pocket of warmth that was created inside of it from his body heat. “Well, why can’t you do something like this by yourself? I mean, you are basically an all-powerful immortal now, no?”
Azrael seemed to honestly ponder the question himself for a while, but then said, “Too many reasons. I’m too strong, I’d just become an oppressor and nothing would truly change in people’s hearts. Besides, I have my own path to take as well in all this. My final goal is to make this world a good place for everyone. A happy ending. I hope to recruit you in helping me achieve this. This leads me to what I myself want to do here in this world.” With that he took a long pause, adding finally, “What I’m going to tell you now is an even bigger secret than me being an Unchained, and I hope you can keep it, Glint. You cannot tell this to anybody.”
After Glint gave his word (although he wasn’t completely satisfied with Azrael’s explanations), Azrael came closer to him, as if afraid of eavesdroppers. When the man was sure they were the only humans around, he began to speak in a low voice. “A second before I died, I glimpsed someone, in a cowl. He was a hooded figure with a hidden face that could make your blood run cold from a smile you can’t even see. He carried a simple scythe and nothing else with him. It was he who took my soul. I do not know if he was an incarnation of a force or an actual person, or something else entirely, but I believe I saw the true face of death.”
“You... you actually believe this?” the warrior was incredulous, and he worried for the man’s sanity for a moment, but then he remembered what he had seen with his own eyes, and how others would take it if he’d told them about it. There was far too much in this world that was simply beyond belief, present company included. Azrael was an Unchained, a person who came back from death. His eyes looked dead serious. He sat right next to Glint on the cold grass “I am a necromancer, Glint. My craft has everything to do with death. Above that, I am the best qualified person in the world when it comes to this topic, because I am the only undead necromancer that has ever existed.” Slowly, Glint nodded, tensing up with the motion as he realized that he had decided to believe to something completely insane.
“But what difference does it make?” he inquired, his voice choked with fear. All of the sudden he wished that it wasn’t so dark around them. He imagined monsters in every shadow. “So, you saw death. Congrats, but what’s your plan? How are you going to make the wor-“ he cut himself off with a thought. Could he really be planning what I think he’s planning? No, no matter how much Azrael resented people dying, Glint didn’t think the man would dare dream to do something so outlandish.
But as if reading his mind, Azrael nodded. “I will make it my goal to find out as much as possible about that person, who he is, what he is, how to find him and bring him down. You will be working on the side of the living, saving people wherever you can and changing the way the guilds view Normals and each other. If we both accomplish our goals, we will have achieved my ultimate goal: a good life for everybody, free of the fear of being killed or passing on to a next world ruled purely by might.”
Glint could barely believe what he was hearing. A part of him felt like if he just closed his eyes he would wake up from this dream, and find himself back in Krava, when things were still normal. Or even in his manor in Shien, or before all of this madness, heading over to Kob’s training grounds as a bandit brat. “You mean you want to...” He needed to hear it straight from the necromancer just once. He held his breath with the suspense.
Azrael nodded. “Yes, I want to kill death.”
The Final Life Page 49