The misadventures of the necromancer

Seran approached the enormous entrance doors of the Great Harbour library. The doors were as tall as three grown men and looked as though they could allow ten people to walk through side by side. And yet they almost seemed small compared to the immense tower they led into—the second-tallest structure in the ancient city.

The fact that they were open should have meant that anyone could enter. But in truth, that was merely symbolic, since only those with permission were allowed inside, something anyone could easily understand just by looking at the five heavily armed guards at the entrance. Considering the value of what was kept within, it was only to be expected.

As he drew near, the closest guard stepped forward and extended an arm to stop him. But before he could open his mouth, another guard came up behind the first and greeted him with a, “Lord Mage Seran.”

Making the first guard freeze.

Someone else might have laughed or tried to humiliate the guard, but Seran knew better. For one thing, the enchanted armor made it impossible to distinguish the guards from one another, and a fight would not be as simple as some might believe.

But worse still, such rudeness could lead to him losing access to the library—a privilege that was costly and could be revoked at any time, even from someone with Seran’s status.

Lastly, it would simply be an act beneath him.

So he turned to the guard who had recognized him and announced, “I wish to see the Master of the Tower.”

A somewhat foolish title, since it assumed that only the tower was part of the library.

Which was not true, since the various courtyards behind the tower also belonged to it. However, the most important part was certainly the tower itself, which contained the vast majority of books on magic, magical tomes, and the various artifacts associated with them.

And he knew well that the true title of the head of the library was Chief Librarian, but everyone in the city called them the Master of the Tower. This was confirmed by the nod of agreement from the guard listening to him.

The guard summoned a third guard and instructed him to lead Seran to the chamber of the Master of the Tower.

So Seran followed the new guard into the tower. Walking through the halls that were already familiar to him, while recalling his youth. When he had spent entire days struggling to impress the various librarians, trying to gain access to restricted rooms and floors.

Many were restricted because they required exact qualifications, such as being able to cast a specific spell flawlessly or having superb control over an element. In some cases, lacking those qualifications would not prevent access to a room, but it would make leaving it nearly impossible.

He had learned that the hard way when he had been trapped in a chamber dedicated to illusions. Not only had he been unable to read any of the books, but he had fallen into an illusion where the books attacked him, preventing him from finding the exit.

His salvation had been the person who now commanded the entire tower.

And now he stood before the door to her chamber. The guard accompanying him had taken his leave and returned to his post, and a young man dressed in the robes of the librarians had emerged from the room to inform him that he could enter, as he was expected.

Which, naturally, he did—stepping into the room he knew so well.

Before him, seated at a desk piled high with stacks of papers, was the person he had come to see. Her long hair, as white as Seran’s own beard and hair, was tied into a ponytail as she studied a sheet of paper in her hand.

While she ignored him, he studied her beautiful face, which seemed to bear not a single wrinkle, despite her being older than he was. Once again, he wondered whether she used some illusion to appear younger, or simply drank potions to preserve her youth—something only someone like the Chief Librarian of Great Harbour could still have some access to.

Something confirmed by her hands, filled with rings that only fools would fail to recognize as enchanted.

She wore a long robe which even his students might mock, since it was clearly centuries out of fashion. But who would ever replace the robe that marked her position with anything else? Especially since the robe itself was magical. Thanks to it, she should be as resistant to attacks as Seran when using one of his best spells. The very reason people called him The Rock, and the origin of most of his fame.

“Stop staring at me and tell me what you want. Because you certainly want something,” she interrupted his thoughts without lifting her eyes from the page.

“I don’t want to interrupt. You seem focused on what you’re doing,” he replied honestly.

“It’s nothing important, just some accounting. Tell me what you want, Seran,” she said disinterestedly, keeping her attention on her work.

Seran approached a chair across from her and sat down.

“Oh, but I will need your attention. Because I want to tell you a story.”

That finally made her eyes turn to him, revealing her irritation. But at her silence, he took it as permission to begin.

Hearing the start of the story, she began shaking her head before commenting, “So you came here to tell me how you fought a young mage, possibly a necromancer, who, realizing he was losing, cast two fireballs at you and himself. Interesting, but—”

“Draco’s Flames,” he specified.

She stopped speaking, her expression confused, as if asking, What?

“The fireballs were the spell. Draco’s Flames,” he clarified, leaving her mouth open as she processed what she had heard.

“Are you certain?” she asked, prompting him to give her a heavy look. How could she even think he might have mistaken something like that? But considering what he had just revealed, he didn’t feel he could truly be offended.

“How old?” she asked at last.

“At least sixteen or seventeen, but never more than twenty-five,” he replied.

“Impossible! And besides, Agrav took no apprentice,” she said, confirming something he had already suspected. If Firestorm himself hadn’t said anything to her, then it had to be true.

And if Agrav had no apprentice, then learning Draco’s Flames without Agrav would be incredibly difficult.

“Besides, he used my Ortan’s Shield,” Seran revealed, making her freeze with an incredulous look. Even though Ortan’s Shield wasn’t as difficult as Draco’s Flames, using both spells competently was a feat only the best could claim.

“Impossible. Even with unbelievable talent, the potions required to create a mage that powerful at such a young age would bankrupt entire kingdoms,” she said, voicing what Seran himself had already considered.

With talent that great, the best method would be to give him mana potions every day so he could train more.

The problem was that good potions were expensive, requiring now rare ingredients—unlike something like fatigue potions, for example. So they would cost gold, not silver. Over a decade, the cost of training a young mage that way would reach thousands—if not tens of thousands—of gold coins.

And to spend that on a pyromancer… a type of mage relatively easy to create, but only useful in battle.

Unfortunately, in battle, they were one of the primary targets for the enemy. Going them directly into combat was exactly what had made Seran himself famous: his ability to withstand attacks allowed him to hunt down the most valuable targets, such as enemy pyromancers. This quickly destroyed all the investment spent on them.

After all, there was a reason there was only one Firestorm.

“How could someone like that be associated with necromancy?” Celeste asked, half to herself, shaking her head.

“Yes, I truly saw nothing that directly associated him with necromancy. Much less, that so-called undead mule. But—”

As he spoke, she suddenly turned to him with a very serious expression, causing his next words to die in his throat.

She rose slightly and began rifling through a pile of papers in the corner of her desk.

Finding what she wanted, she handed him the sheet and said, “I received this report recently. I didn’t give it much credit, assuming it was probably exaggerations from victims of a difficult situation. But… see for yourself.”

The fact that the Great Harbour Library had become something of an archive, where the great powers of the continent liked to register events from their territories, meant that sooner or later, everything ended up being recorded here.

Though, of course, not everything could be trusted. Much of what was written was propaganda.

As Seran knew well from personal experience, sometimes records claimed that both sides of a battle had won it.

This document turned out to be an account of an attack on a caravan that had been saved by the intervention of a… young necromancer. That necromancer had used powerful fireballs and what seemed to be an invisibility spell.

His appearance as a necromancer had been revealed by the undead mule that followed him into battle. Additionally, he was accompanied by two other young men.

“Not counting the invisibility spell, everything else matches Nero,” Seran said, viewing this new discovery as completely credible. This strange boy always seemed to have something else up his sleeve.

“That might be the only exaggeration. But we’ll leave it for Eran to discover…” Celeste began, revealing that Eran— another one of the Five—would investigate what happened, before stopping and asking, “Nero!?”

For a moment, Seran imagined what a fight between Nero and Eran might look like. Eran was recognized as one of the Five mainly because of a single spell. But that spell made him the plague of mages. Not that all were easy to defeat with it alone, but even Seran would be in a bad position if caught off guard.

But he quickly abandoned those thoughts and focused on the conversation.

“Yes. Of course, I was intrigued, so I investigated in Central Crossing. Leading me to discover the name and a connection with the spiders of Dantar. So I went there to try to learn more about him. On the way, I learned of the rise of a necromancer group in Dantar.”

With that, he told her about his conversation regarding the caravan that had been attacked and then saved by a young necromancer named Nero.

“Then I went to Dantar, where I investigated the cult of necromancers that had been discovered. Everything indicated there was no connection to the young man… well, not until I mentioned his name in the presence of the survivors.”

He paused, and Celeste’s intrigued expression urged him to continue.

“They reacted to the name. But they remained silent, pretending they didn’t recognize it,” he concluded.

“Fear?” Celeste suggested—a reasonable guess, given the circumstances of the cult’s victims.

But Seran shook his head.

“No. At least, I didn’t get that impression… and everything indicates he couldn’t have spent much time with them, if he was there at all. For now, it’s just my impression.”

“Which is already quite a lot,” Celeste commented, in a rare compliment, before continuing. “But why are you telling me this? What do you want from me, Seran?”

“The mule. Until now, the only indication that he is a necromancer is that mule. But that animal has apparently been accompanying him for quite some time, which, according to common knowledge about necromancy, should be impossible. Is it possible he has a spell that allows him to create a permanent undead?”

With this question, he paused, waiting for her answer.

“Seran, do you truly believe an institution like the Great Harbour Library would have knowledge of necromancy?” The almost insulted tone would have convinced most people. But Seran simply stared at her.

Until she relented and gave him a serious answer.

“What makes you think he would need such a spell? We have records of several spells that would leave bodies intact, allowing their use again,” she says, raising another possibility that he add considering, especially considering some of the reports about Nero.

“That would solve most of the problems with necromancy,” Seran exclaimed, before asking suspiciously, “Then why aren’t those spells used nowadays?”

“To do that, you would have to find such spells—a feat not at all easy today. And you would need a necromancer who had already raised about a thousand undead before.”

With that, she made it clear why such a spell practically didn’t exist today.

While also confirming some of Seran’s suspicions in relation to the young necromancer.

“The first known case of this Nero raising an undead corresponds to that example,” he said, and then told her that Nero’s first undead had been recovered without any damage related to necromancy, something that had cast much of the story into doubt until now.

Which reminded him of another experience.

On the way to Dantar, he had encountered a village that lived off its orchards—orchards that had recently been devastated by fire. But the villagers’ greatest concern at the time was building a tomb for a young girl who had recently died. When questioned, they had nothing to say.

The attitude had led Seran to secretly inspect the grave, even hiding it from his students.

In the end, the tomb contained only a young woman who had died brutally, but without showing anything beyond what would be normal to that case.

But with Celeste’s confirmation, Seran could only suspect that perhaps Nero had passed through that village.

“So you were using me to verify your suspicions,” she said with a smile. “Very well.”

“But that doesn’t rule out your hypothesis of a permanent undead. In fact, I can tell you based on other spells that such a spell would have to permanently block part of that mage’s mana reserves…” Celeste continued.

“And someone with the ability to cast such a spell?” Seran asked, already guessing the answer.

“He would have to be the most powerful necromancer of the last centuries. Most likely since the time of the Settlement,” she confirmed. “For a young boy, that would be impossible!”

Exactly what Seran thought.

Which, looking at her unnaturally young and beautiful face, made him say, “Perhaps he only appears young, but in truth is no longer even human.”

At her questioning look, he could only answer, “An incredibly powerful necromancer. You must have heard the stories of what someone with such abilities could do.”

“Beings…” she began to counter.

“Celeste, you didn’t fight him. And even if you had, you would hardly be able to notice,” Seran said. Others might have taken offense, but Seran knew Celeste’s knowledge and wisdom well. So she simply accepted her relative inexperience in combat and gestured for him to continue.

“It’s difficult to explain. But he fought in the wrong way. Experienced and inexperienced at the same time—making foolish mistakes, then compensating naturally…”

Just remembering the battle almost gave him a headache.

“The best way I can explain it is that it was as if I were fighting an old veteran who had retired many years ago, and he was fighting the way he had fought long ago, but his body no longer responded as he expected.”

“I think I understand. But do you realize what you’re proposing… the power you’re talking about,” Celeste said, raising a brow.

“Oh, yes, I understand,” Seran replied.

Something ancient and powerful, with knowledge this era could only dream of. But in the end, it was the only thing that made sense to him.

“We will have to continue finding more about this Nero,” Celeste concluded, to Seran’s complete agreement.

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