Maid with Necromancy

The first day of school.

Harmony felt unprepared. Welcome week had been more about building a community than explaining the ins and outs of what school would be like. Knowing Von Trell, he would have picked the unusual options even if she had learned more about this process. For example, there was no book for Defense Against the Forbidden Arts; the class had no book, and the supplies for it was a case labeled Dangerous! Will be unsealed by the Instructor only for the duration of the class.

The dangerous case in her hand, Harmony entered Byerly Hall early. The large square metal building was identical to all the class buildings, at least above ground. B -206 was the room number. The brief worry that this would touch upon the domain of Oorty’s tomb was abated when no eyes lingered on her, and the atmosphere of ownership didn’t squeeze some of the air from her as she descended.

Hyacinth hopped out of her pocket to scout the shadows of the building.

The classroom was small, but not cramped. There were only twelve decks, three rows of four, with a single seat behind each. Every desk had a nameplate. Harmony White : Revivalist*Eraser  was one of the ones in the front row. That dashed her hope of sitting in the back corner. Not that, with so few classmates, it would have been easy to stay unnoticed.  The nameplates presented an opportunity to learn the other students’ names, classes, and professions.

Allen Walker : Golem Master*Exorcist – David Ullman : Demonologist*Literature Professor –  Julie Gottman : Purifier*Therapist…  None of the names came up as first-years she’d met, there was one however; Becca Bloom : Inquisitor*Merchant.

Great, her resident inquisitor and dorm mother. The woman hinted at knowing one of her secrets after that first meeting, but Harmony hadn’t seen a whole lot of the associate, as they seemed to be running in opposite directions. Becca to handle dorm emergencies. The first few nights, so many people were trying to bring opposite sex people to their rooms past curfew, she’d been running herself ragged.

“Being early won’t earn you any merit points from me, Miss White. I don’t know how your old school worked, but here, only results matter. I don’t care how much of a genius your Academic Advisor says you are, I’ve flunked many Primaries and Seconduses in my years here.”

Harmony had looked up this teacher’s name, but she hadn’t known he was this kind of person, not even giving her a chance to turn around before starting in.

Harmony twisted with [Style and Grace]. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Instructor Flint. I didn’t mean to be presumptuous. I was merely curious about where I’d be learning.” [Poise and Bearing] applied a kind, innocent smile over her irritation.

The older man with gray at this temple huffed slightly. “Curiosity is to be rewarded. That doesn’t mean I’m going to unseal your kit until class begins. We will be working with dangerous materials. And there will be no experimentation outside of the classroom or in the classroom before the approved time. Take your seat and wait for the others.”

Harmony followed instructions. Being a student wasn’t too far removed from being a servant.  In both, you had to handle irritating, opinionated, and belligerent masters while keeping calm.

Greep. Hyacinth signaled through [Familiar Bond]. The tiny toad fell from a patch of shadows at the ceiling and straight into Harmony’s waiting palm while the instructor was preoccupied with papers. The basement rooms had more support beams with tiny pockets of shadows. Instead of words, he conveyed impressions that left more detailed information, distance, time, speed, a predator’s specialty blind spots, and confirmation that Adric was on board. The schedule could work, and he would be waiting. With a flick of her hand, Harmony tossed her partner back upwards to resume his work.

She wasn’t the only one early as the students filed in ahead of time, merely the first.

The tiny Becca gave an overly excited wave, jostling her frackling, Marshmallow, on her shoulder, but the tentacled bird didn’t seem to care. It was a silent wave as no one wanted to disrupt the instructor.  Ten minutes before the class was supposed to start, every student was in their seat. Their mysterious kit of supplies waited before them, everyone silent with an air of anxiousness for class to begin.

At the exact moment the class should start, Flint stood up.

“The fifteen forbidden classes: Abomination, Barmaid, Corruptor, Cupid, Demon, Despot, Game Master, Mindeflayer, Necromancer, Reaper, Soul Binder, Time Twister, Unbound, Vagabond, and Zero.  Each has pathwalkers who have done unspeakable acts and have earned the risk of death for other choosers who make those selections. Yet, because of this notoriety, they are more commonly picked and sought out than traditionally strong options.  Each of you has a class or profession dedicated to sniffing out, hunting, or eliminating such threats to the world.  Inquisitors, detectives,  exorcists, and even a humble eraser, all choices historically active in hunting and removing these forbidden threats.

But  how do we know when we find them?  We all have inspection skills. Those can be subverted, and our expectations shape the answers we receive.  When someone chooses to risk death, don’t doubt that they’ve prepared themselves to hide, fight, or run. The answer is with experience.

You’ve all had the prerequisite knowledge for this class gained through your previous work or confirmed by your academic advisor, so here in  Defense Against the Forbidden Arts, we will learn about these classes and professions by practicing their skills.   This is a year-long class. Every quarter, we will focus on three or four of them.  For the first class, as is tradition at The Academy, we will follow in the footsteps of our founder, Saren Byerly, and make you all into the bane of necromancers.

Magic pulsed in the room. Harmony could feel the magical lock on her kit dissolve. It was a familiar and nearly invisible sensation. The dissolution was only detectable because her hand rested on the magic of the box as it was stripped off, and her control and awareness of the world around her extended a tiny amount past her skin. It felt close to the same seal that she had on her skills and abilities in the Ascendant Games.

The case popped open on its own smidge, and Harmony could smell the familiar scent of home before she lifted the lid and saw what was inside. Folded ghost lace, a small pile of coal, a necrotic core, and one dead rat.  All loot from Old Bones except for the rodent.

“These rare and expensive items were transported to us from one of the few remaining necromantic dungeons. That price is one of the reasons we limit class sizes and frown upon those who use their connections to take seats. Because many who seek forbidden power practice before they evolve to earn related superlatives for their new class or profession. When hunting practitioners, it is important to spot their practice work. Here we will use these ingredients to animate a rat without any scrolls. Follow my instructions precisely.”

You could do necromancy without being a necromancer or a scroll? Chronostasis kicked in to preserve the struck dumb moment, so she wouldn’t lose the instruction or appear as shocked as she was. Did this change everything? Maybe? This kind of information wasn’t even hinted at in any of Tyler’s old and banned books. It certainly didn’t touch the accepted canon she knew was bunk. If true for the other forbidden and non-forbidden classes and professions, it opened up a whole set of possibilities for advancement that were missing from her home kingdom.

Harmony had to clamp down hard to keep her personal theories and experiences from dipping into these waters. There wasn’t time to do it all, and she must focus on gaining as much of this knowledge as possible from the classes she had at The Academy. This will be a problem for future-her.

As exciting as this was, she locked down her necromantic senses to a bare minimum to perform the instructions as directed. It took effort not to accidentally partially nudge any of this with any skill or ability she had. This needed to be as clean as possible. Those personal instructions were only true for her project. Everyone was very focused, and being up front made it hard to casually peek at what the other students were accomplishing.

Thankfully, [Stride Before the Fall] provided plenty of experience separating her attention, and all the detailed physical practice with [Style and Grace] gave her an almost surgical level of accuracy. That old astral spirit, Pappi Viner, had given her plenty of praise on that. It was also a rat, she’d dissected, practiced on them with skills, and even ate a few when absolutely necessary.  

Flint already had a low opinion of her as well, so she glanced around lazily as her hands carefully opened up the ribs, moved around the preserved insides to find the right place to insert the necrotic core. She could make it look effortless. It wasn’t, but it could have been if she accessed even a hint of her actual necromancy skills.

What she learned from the others was that the core, when properly physically slotted in, interacted on a spiritual level within the soul’s container. That spiritual container degraded after death, similar to the rotting of the corpse. They were connected, somewhat. She’d done some personal experiments on corpses of pests like gnomes, spiders, and rats in Hazeldown.  There had to be some preservation aspect within the kit because these appeared to be dead for only a couple of hours, yet she had this kit for days.

Once the core was implanted, the coal was powdered and used to brush the core and the organs of the rat.  It added necromantic energy found in active undead, and acted as tinder for the fire as the core spun to life like an engine providing power. Bea’s spiritual organs, the ones implanted by the wandering spirit, did the same thing.

Starting from the back, Instructor Flint inspected students' works before allowing them to apply the ghost lace. Not everyone was passing.

“The way your eyes are roaming, Student White, I shan't be surprised when I fail you like I have Gottman and Walker.”

Harmony had finished long ago. She only allowed herself to reach out with soul sight after her hands were off the project, still careful not to nudge anything. It wasn’t perfect, but far better than the other students.

Surprise hit Flint's face as he poked her rat, and his eyes flashed with some kind of analysis skill.  “You have some real talent at this.”

“I hope you don’t mind if I don’t take that as a compliment. I’m a healer, so fine work and anatomy are my specialty. I’m also invested in spiritual magic. I’ve done my best not to extend those skills of mine while working to get a firmer grasp of what those seeking necromantic powers can do, but I’m afraid I might not have done enough.”

“Yes, yes, notes in your updated file about [Renew Spirit] and [Skill Transplant] are on record. Class and professional traces are very quick to dissipate. They’re gone fast enough that it isn’t even part of an investigator's standard practice. Let me.” The man pulled out a metal wand from his jacket. The tip glowed as it poked her rat.

Bloody hell, she had to let her mouth go and murder the plot. What if she had let some bit of her nudge it? Would visual assessment leave a trace?

“Nothing. This is as clean as it can get. One of the reasons the exorcist failed was that he let his personal skills disrupt the process.” Flint coughed and looked up to address the class. “Let this be a lesson about following instructions. Not only does inserting yourself lead to a greater risk of forbidden corruption, but it will also cause expensive projects to fail if you don’t know what you are doing. Those of you who have passed may move on to applying the ghost lace, first you…”

The instructions were simple: a drop of your blood applied to the ghost lace and set into the corpse would create a controllable connection to the creation. While technically necromancy, it was allowed for Defense Against the Forbidden Arts. It was also very similar to many contracts and scrolls, so a little leeway was accepted: “Otherwise, all those guild contracts would get us in trouble. Not that we have to worry since it was Byerly who designed them.“ Joked Flint.

The final part of class was a brawl at the center of the class. Rat against Rat in a free-for-all. As Harmony ordered her rat to the starting spot, [Recall] kicked in to remind her that Material Manipulation was beginning soon.

[Stride Before the Fall], jumped a copy of her outside the entrance to the classroom. That Harmony stood naked, afraid someone would glance away.

Adric waited with a spare uniform and assisted in dressing. Normally, she’d dress herself, but there wasn’t a second to spare. [High Kick] rocketed her toward Hyacinth and the waiting shadow to deliver her for the next class. There was no pressure yet to pick which existence would stay. As [Stride] leveled, she could be in two places at once longer and longer, but this was pushing it. Emergency actions could be taken with [Mend] and [Renew Spirit] if needed. Could she bow out of class early?

Harmony pushed her rat to attack, trying to appear as excited as the other Defense students, even as she stressed while passing through the shadows to get to the first class of Material Manipulation.

Hyacinth pulled her out of the shadows inside the Swanson Hall, where crafting classes happened. A block of wood had been positioned in front of a light to create an artificial shadow. Even then, Harmony felt her arm dislocate, and her familiar tweak a leg as they pushed through the wards.  It’s okay, it was a skeleton, and you could pop joints back into place.

Her vital body made it more difficult to accomplish, and exemplified the amount of effort that had been needed to get through that ward. Chewing some of the physical sensation to numb herself created fate. Bile rose up a little from skill-induced [Heart] burn in the process. Old problems with new issues.

Down the stairs and to class.

Undead rats were sturdy. That was always the advantage of the undead in that they could be in pretty sorry shape and keep going when the living just died. Contributing to the death of the weakest submission of the nine rats that made it through made it clear that losing wouldn’t get you out of class early.

If she could throw the match pack up and go, it would be fine. Sadly, a long, vicious fight was brewing. Only three were close enough to a simulacrum of life that they were squeaking and hissing at the silent ones.

Harmony dug in for the win, working that thread of connection between her and the rat. Doing so without tapping into necromancy was a headache. The discomfort could also have been residual pain from the other her.

Huffing Harmony stepped into class, Material Manipulation. A quick count had thirty-seven other students. Several she recognized. This was not as advanced as her other class.

“While class doesn’t officially start for another minute, Student White, you are the last one to arrive, so get one demerit on principle. This isn’t meant to be mean, merely motivating. You’ll have to take a seat in the back. I hope your eyesight is good. Now we can begin. In front of you is a block of wood.” The Instructor continued over the crowd.

Ripping out improperly implanted necrotic cores was the easiest way to win a match. For those properly animated, however, it did nothing harmful; it even helped those who had it removed, as long as the spiritual organ was set into the undead creation. Enough so that Harmony ordered her rat with wiggles and twists to dig it out of their animated corpse.

That was probably one of the lessons Flint was trying to show. You couldn’t simply check for  necrotic cores to find an undead creation; experienced practitioners would remove them after they set. The most obvious tell was the rats still running around with half their bodies on the floor. One couldn’t do that to every rat, dog, or person one suspected was a reanimated body. There were laws, and it could be a trap.

The pressure was mounting. She made it to her next class, but unless she wanted to disappear and leave a set of clothing in her seat, she needed to get out of this one. Adric was waiting to take the case and her clothes. Five rats left. Four… Three… Two… Harmony’s rat corpse was there, one opponent between her and leaving. Winning was always good, but that fight wouldn’t take away the weight.

Harmony forced a sneeze, allowing the control to slip. With a squeak of her opponent's victory and her second-place, it was time to leave.

“One minute, Miss White.” Instructor Flint asked.

All the blood mixed with all the ashes. There could only be one… but there were two….  “Yes, Sir?”

Maintain eye contact and get your things ready.

“I wish to apologize for my demeanor this morning.  Rarely do first-years do well, and erasers, rare as they are, are the best at removing problems. You are an excellent student. I wish all of them were as skilled as you. Then we’d have no more worries.”

“I’m… just… um.” KEEP IT TOGETHER. “This was a strength for me. I do have a class to run to. But your apology is accepted.”

 Rat and parts back in the case, snapped shut, and the seal reset. Flint nodded, his head turned to talk to the students who had the most issues, and Harmony dashed out the door. She crashed straight into Adric, who wrapped a cloak around her. Choice made, her pet was left holding her case and clothes.

Back at Material Manipulation  The relief of stabilization was balanced by the pain around the fact that she was going to hate this class. “Deconstruct the block, then reform it again, everyone. Ten more times!”

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