The Heart of a Necromancer

by Eddie Patin

  A little later, he had given Morgana a large towel and she took it with a smile as Jason closed the door to bathroom.

  He paused. "I'll put out a light blanket and pillow for you on the couch, okay? So you can take a nap after," he said as he closed the door, little by little.

  "What's the couch?"

  "The long seat where Riley was sitting when we got here."

  "Okay," Morgana replied, smiling at him through the slowly closing crack in the door. "Thank you, Jason."

  "Sure thing."

  Jason closed the door.

  He stood for a moment, his blood hot and heart beating fast. A minute passed before Jason snapped out of it when he heard the water turn on. He shook his head and turned away, immediately grabbing a blanket and pillow from the closet and heading to the living room.

  Riley and Gliath were there watching TV. The leopardwere had shucked his armor onto the floor in the front corner and changed shape. He was now in his primal form, curled up on an entire couch cushion like a gigantic black cat. The Krulax lazily watched Jason approach with half-closed yellowish-green eyes. Riley was patting the panther's side with one hand.

  The soldier smirked up at Jason, his eyes darting back and forth between him and the hall to the bathroom. Then he chuckled and tipped back his beer.

  "What?!" Jason asked, plopping the blanket and pillow on the couch next to them.

  "Nothing," Riley replied with a larger smirk. "You're just showing up a little warmer on thermal, Jason."

  Jason scoffed and tried to smile. He looked away.

  "Three hours, right?" he asked.

  "Yep," Riley replied, suddenly eying his empty beer bottle, holding it up to the light and tipping it from side to side.

  "Alrighty then," Jason replied, and headed to his room. There, he settled into a nap after undressing, checking his phone, and setting an alarm. He was tempted to check Facebook and his emails, but all he could think about was getting back to Primoria to finish the bounty—that and the beautiful young woman in the bathroom. He tried not to think of Morgana on the other side of the wall nude in the shower, but he did anyway.

  Jason drifted off to sleep.

  Three hours later, Jason's phone woke him up.

  It was really freaking tough to sit up. His eyes felt grimy and groggy and his body felt like it was full of sand. He had basically been up all night and went to sleep for just three hours after daybreak instead of getting a full night's sleep. He hadn't done that kind of crazy shit since pulling all-night gaming sessions with his DnD friends back in their early twenties.

  The heat of late morning had made Jason sweat a little in the sheets, even though his curtains were closed. It was a rough awakening, but he had to get up. It was the best time and opportunity to finish the job.

  Coffee. He needed coffee.

  Climbing out of bed with his entire body protesting and still half-numb, Jason put on the gym shorts and t-shirt he'd planned on wearing under his Merc armor. When he didn't feel like his face was made of mashed potatoes, he emerged from his room and headed to the bathroom to piss and clean his hands and face.

  The cold water in his eyes and over his cheeks and mouth helped.

  Jason dried off his face and looked back at the shower behind him, remembering Morgana. He drew back the curtain and saw that she had left it like it was before he showed the tub to her. He found her towel hanging on the back of the door.

  He smiled. She's respectful, he thought.

  Walking out into the quiet living room, Jason saw Morgana sleeping on the couch with the blanket drawn around her and her head on his pillow. Jason smiled again and headed into the kitchen, where he made coffee.

  Several minutes later, sipping on the bold, black brew, he started feeling better.

  Riley and Gliath surfaced, dressed in their armor and ready to go—aside from their guns, which were in the garage. Jason offered them coffee too, and Riley took some.

  As they talked about finishing the mission, Morgana eventually surfaced, stumbling into the kitchen while trying not to look like she was stumbling.

  "Try this," Jason said, giving her a mug of black coffee.

  She did, scowling at it after a careful sip, but drank it just the same.

  Twenty minutes later, they were all in the garage ready to go again.

  "Oh shit," Jason said. "Hang on a second."

  Rushing to his crafts room, he pulled out a box full of miscellaneous gun crap and found a basic rifle sling with clips at both ends. He took it back to the garage were the others were waiting and hooked it onto his AK-47, slinging the rifle onto his back.

  Riley eyed the sling and smirked at him.

  Jason smiled and shrugged, then rifted them back to his bookmark at the edge of the woods. As they passed through the blazing, roaring rift, Morgana took one last, lingering look around the garage...

  The instant Jason released the rift and they all stood in the sunny grass, Riley spoke up.

  "Okay," he said. "Ten more at least. Let's get to work."

  "Does everything still look the same in UV?" Jason asked.

  "Yes," Riley replied. "There's that same one I saw earlier," he said, pointing into the forest and up the hill.

  Jason didn't see any gargoyles, but he followed Riley's lead.

  The four of them worked together for hours. They ran into no resistance in the forested foothills of Mt. Ellis—other than a large black bear they stumbled across at one point, but it fled with several huffing grunts uphill and deeper into the woods.

  Riley was able to spot the gargoyles easily enough, at least, until they started getting into rockier areas. The soldier described that the ultraviolet light had colored a lot of plant matter and living things in that spectrum, but things like stone and the sky were mostly unchanged. Morgana beheaded the beasts—one at a time with her sword—then made careful cuts to let Riley bash through their chests more easily. After a few harvested golem hearts, Riley and Morgana were really getting a good system down.

  At times, whenever they hiked up through a clearing that allowed a view of New Bozeman from afar, Jason would find Morgana staring at the village with no expression, deep in thought.

  As they collected more and more golem hearts, Riley seemed to grow happier while Jason felt a dread coming on, wondering what would happen to Morgana when they left. He watched the young woman help them harvest hearts with her magical sword and thought of her at times as a part of the team. He really liked her. And he was extremely attracted to her—holy shit, he was! But what would some noble warrior-woman ever want with a gamer geek like him? He once again found himself daydreaming about her being part of his life after this, dressed in normal, modern clothes and a lot happier after leaving this terrible place behind.

  There were strange things that they were seeing about the gargoyles, too, which gave Jason a growing sense of unease. Whenever they hacked open the dormant beasts, there was always congealed blood and disgusting, half-rotten meat, bones, and organs. The outside of the meat parts were always fused with the stone in the strangest way: the rock like concrete reached into the meat with grey tendrils that were solid, though brittle. The phenomenon made Jason think of the fine network of roots that grass had hooked into the dirt under it.

  Then, Jason found a patch of hair in one pile of shattered gargoyle pieces. It was bloody, tawny-colored hair, held together by what must have been a scrap of scalp.

  There were other strange things, too, like bits that reminded Jason of fingernails. There were scraps of cloth, long saturated by blood.

  When they cracked open the seventh gargoyle of the day in the early afternoon, Jason was revolted to see what looked like part of a bloody jawbone with human teeth inside.

  "Look!" he said, pointing at the grisly bit where it lay revealed within shattered stone.

  All four of them stared at the jawbone for a moment.

  "They're people," Riley stated. "They're the townspeople."

  "No..." Morgana breathed,
staring at the jawbone with horror growing in her eyes.

  "Fruk..." the soldier added quietly.

  They stared in silence. A bird called out to others of its kind nearby on a branch, oblivious to the terrible origin of the gargoyles.

  "For years..." Morgana finally said. "They've been taking people in the night for years."

  "God," Jason said, contemplating the full extent of a few villagers being carried away almost every night for ... how long has it been? How many years? He couldn't recall all of the details of Morgana's dreadful tale. Five years? It was a wonder that there were still as many people living there as there were! "That's terrible."

  "There must be a lot of fruking gargoyles in these woods," Riley said. Jason wasn't sure by his tone if he was thinking about the plight of the stolen villagers, or just thinking about how many golem hearts were out there for the taking.

  The Reality Rifters and Morgana continued their grisly work with a much more solemn attitude.

  They followed Riley's direction, who searched and scanned for the statue-like beasts. Once they'd been back across the rising slope near the tree-line a few times, they had to head further up into the mountains. Finding gargoyles became more difficult when the ground became rich with boulders and shale. There was still a long way to go before reaching the summit, but it looked like the easy part was over.

  Their spirits lifted some when they harvested the tenth heart. It was still afternoon, so they decided to keep going; to gather more.

  Each golem heart was worth four ounces of gold, after all.

  "I'm gonna sleep all freaking day," Jason said as they tiredly tromped up an incline toward another hiding monster. "Man, Riley, how often do we lose sleep like this on jobs?"

  The soldier laughed and scratched his beard as they climbed. "All bounties are different, Jason. Sometimes this shet is easy—well, easy considering that you're trying to kill and take apart big fruking monsters that want to eat your face off. Other times, the situation of a job isn't all that compatible with our normal schedules."

  "Makes sense." Working weird hours looked like it might be a downside of the job.

  What a job, though.

  "Here comes the next one," Riley said. "I reckon we can harvest as many as we can before dark, then head home."

  "Agreed," Jason said. "Hell—maybe tomorrow, we come back during the day and get more."

  Riley smirked. "Now you're gettin it, dude! Four ounces a snap."

  They all hiked across a field of loose shale. Jason's boots slipped around noisily.

  Morgana stepped up again like so many times before and grimly sliced the head off of the next dormant monster. Then, she stared and cried out as if stabbed in the stomach.

  "Oh, God!"

  "What's wrong?" Jason said, instantly concerned.

  The young woman's sword suddenly disappeared and she threw her hands up to cover her mouth, staring at the severed neck of the monster with wide, shaking eyes. She pointed at the cut with a trembling hand...

  Jason looked and saw that there was a void in the stone where she had cut at the base of the creature's neck. Its head had tumbled down into the shale, forgotten, but something shiny in the meaty and black void caught his eye. Buried in there between the rotten carcass and the exterior shell of stone was a gold chain necklace, still shiny in the light of the low sun despite having been entombed in flesh and rock for who knows how long. A pendant was barely visible connected to the front of the thick, gold chain.

  It was a golden teardrop holding a single large blue sapphire.

  Chapter 24

  Owen.

  Morgana choked at the sight of her family pendant inside the grisly void of the gargoyle's chest. She stared with disbelief as the others all turned to look at her. There was a long, keening sound like a wail coming from somewhere in the forest.

  The tarnished but still gleaming gold chain and deep blue jewel in the center of the pendant shined in the golden light of the approaching sunset.

  She saw the glint of the sapphire.

  Morgana realized that the growing wail was coming from her. She was suddenly dizzy. Her eyes welled up with tears.

  She heard the others asking 'what's wrong' dimly in the background as her blood suddenly pounded in her ears and the edges of her vision began shaking and turning black as she stared at the golden necklace. Morgana barely noticed when she suddenly started sobbing. She grasped involuntarily at her mouth feeling like her spirit—a fountain of sorrow—was about to leap out of her and leave her dead on the mountainside.

  That thing used to be Owen Soloster. Deep inside the wicked, carved features and leering demonic face was her oldest brother. The chunky, coagulated meat inside the monster's stony shell was what remained of his body.

  Owen wasn't living far away in comfort and riches after making a deal with the necromancer. He was dead and stuck inside the hell of this gargoyle's core; either that, or he was the monster.

  Either way, her brother was no more.

  Morgana hardly felt the tears rolling down her face. Her features stretched in horror as she stared at the gold buried within the gargoyle's neck. She thought back to the night Owen had betrayed the family. She thought back to Lillian. That night, while Morgana was closed into her room with Edward and her mother—while her father and fiancé were killed fighting off the necromancer's assault—Lillian saw Owen come back; or so she claimed. She'd told everyone who would listen to her that Owen had stolen into their room in the middle of the attack to gather some of his things before leaving. He took some gold, some clothes, and other items. She'd said that Owen was shocked to see her and had admitted to Lillian that he'd made a deal with the necromancer to preserve his life. Lillian had claimed that she was unable to stop him.

  Lillian had told everyone about Owen coming home in the night and admitting to his betrayal.

  Was it a lie?!

  Was this Owen trapped and rotten inside this gargoyle's corpse? Did he betray her family and the people? Or was the betrayal a lie?

  Maybe someone took the necklace, Morgana thought, and that person became a gargoyle.

  "No!" she cried to herself. "He would never let it go!"

  Maybe the necromancer betrayed him during the attack and killed him even after making a deal...

  "Oh, Owen!" Morgana wailed, suddenly falling to her knees in the shale.

  "That couldn't be him," Jason said from behind her. He didn't sound so sure.

  "It is!" Morgana shrieked. "It's Owen! It's my brother!" She knew. It had to be him. No one else would wear the family pendant openly—not if it was stolen. Tears streamed down her face and she sunk lower down, holding her mouth with one hand and clutching at her hair with the other as she stared at the beheaded dormant gargoyle.

  It was all a lie. But how?!

  What if Owen had never betrayed the family? What if he was simply killed?

  Why would Lillian say something like that?

  It was most likely—betrayal or not—that Owen was killed by the necromancer, even after making a deal. But did he make a deal? The other soldiers had said that he did!

  Nothing made any sense. Morgana's mind reeled. She was dizzier than she could remember feeling in a long time. The mountainside spun around her pounding head and she heard herself crying as if from far away. Her entire family was dead, and for what?! None of it made any sense! Father and Edward were killed by the Darkness. Owen was killed by the Darkness! Mother and Damien were killed by Estren.

  Estren...

  "But," Jason replied, his truly concerned voice pulling Morgana halfway back to reality, "that could be another necklace like it. Owen's not here, remember? He left Montana after making a deal with the necromancer, right?"

  Morgana looked up at the warrior from the stars and saw adoration and pain in his face. He wanted to comfort her—she could tell—but it looked like he felt completely helpless. Her heart swelled for a moment before another crashing wave of sorrow smothered her.

  There w
as something that she was missing...

  Everyone was assuming that Owen was gone. Lillian had even seen him at the house, in good health, loading up on belongings and gold before disappearing forever.

  Did Lillian lie?

  If Owen had never made it back from the necromancer's tower—if he'd been killed and somehow transformed into a gargoyle like the other townsfolk—why would Lillian say what she did? Why would she go to such great lengths and make sure that everyone had heard her story?

  Did her sister-in-law make up the whole thing?!

  It was possible that Owen came back home, then was killed by the necromancer afterwards anyway...

  Riley suddenly walked up to the body as Morgana sobbed and gave the upper torso a mighty whack with his hammer, which made her shudder. With the area around the gargoyle's shoulders loosened up, the soldier used a knife to pry the necklace out of the recess where it had been trapped. The chain gleamed in the late afternoon light and the sapphire set in the pendant almost seemed to glow.

  "It's not another like it," Morgana said. "That's a Soloster heirloom. My father gave it to Owen because he was next in line. It's definitely him."

  Gliath spoke up suddenly with his rumbly voice, drawing looks from everyone: "It may be another human wearing the necklace."

  Morgana jumped to her feet, hardly knowing which way was up.

  This entire world seemed like a lie. Nothing had any meaning anymore. Maybe there was a spy in their midst all this time. Maybe the spy was Lillian.

  Every time a resistance meeting had been raided, Lillian was there. Morgana usually got away—except for the last time—but Lillian always did, too. And the Hubbard brothers! How did they end up hanging in the Crossroads mere hours after revealing their plan to leave New Bozeman?

  Maybe Lillian—good Lillian, always trying to convince Morgana to stop her silly, dangerous rebel business—was Estren's spy.

  It was Lillian that had convinced Estren to let Morgana stay with her on house arrest.