Theredoubt of the necromancer was nothing like he had imagined.
If hewas telling the truth, not a single part of his journey had been close to howhe’d imagined it, from his departure of Berith’s tower all the way to thebottom of an ancient empire.In some ways, it had been better, and these werelargely due to Zaria, but in many other ways the things he had experienced wereworse than his expectations, and they had been worse beyond even his mostdreaded reckoning, and, now, somehow, this building, without any adornment orregalia, seemed the worst of it all, because it was just so....
Disappointing.
Thebetrayal hurt.Killing his uncle had nearly torn him apart.But thedisappointment only left him empty.
Theemptiness began to gnaw.
“Itwasn’t what happened to me that hurt the worst,” Zaria said.“It was who didit, and why.Even now, wise as I am, I still wish he hadn’t come around.I wishI didn’t know better.It’s not the kind of knowledge that makes me stronger.Itjust....”She looked away.“It just hurts.It’s always gonna hurt.”
He wastired.His wounds were aching, his future was lost, and he was tired.
Hestruggled to breathe.
“Let’sgo.”She gestured with the cutlass.“There’s nothing here worth turning over.Never was.It’s best you go on thinking that way.”
Heswallowed what little saliva he had, took a deep breath, and looked up at her.“Zaria?”
She perked her ears.
“Fuckoff.”
Shewatched him for a moment, plainly surprised, before erupting into a loud,cackling snort.“Right, then.Perfectly said.‘Scuse me.”She stepped to theside, beckoning him on.“I’ll still hold your hand through it, if you’re of themind.”
“Thankyou, Z.”
“Anytime,squire.”
Isaacstepped towards the rusty door, straightening his posture as much as he could.His robes were filthy, his beard resembled something pulled from a bathtubdrain, and all his spellcasting had left him miserably gaunt, little differentthan the thralls Berith had left behind.He doubted anyone from his old lifewould recognize him now.
Zariagave him one last look.He returned it with something like appreciation.Slowly, he pushed open the rusty door.
Hisfirst impression of the room was dust.It was so thick in the air that hemight’ve chewed it after a breath, and the swinging of the door quicklydisturbed a cloud, forcing him to wince and wave his hand.After coughing, hisnext impression was fire—small torches of flame, each of them as green as thelights of the mortuary chapel, were ringing the walls, placed in perfect orderaround the circumference of the room.The green firelight was only barelyenough for someone to navigate around the furniture.Isaac imagined, for amoment, that the sorceress would have been sensitive to light.
It wasobvious, once his eyes adjusted to the gloom, that the building had beenmodified from its original purpose.What the original purpose had been, Isaaccould not say, but its new purpose was a laboratory.One of the walls was linedwith tables, which had all been pilfered from the research stations around thepelvis.There were bones scattered across the stations, each of them dissectedand placed in cross-section, as well as petri dishes full of ossein, which hadfestered similarly to the bones outside.He saw shelves of chemical reagents,skeletons on display, a bellows with old coals, pedals for a centrifuge.Asidefrom the bones, the laboratory in Berith’s tower had not looked much different.
At oneof the research benches, a human skeleton lay slumped across a chair.Judgingfrom the carbon scores on the ribs and vertebrae, it had died from aconcentrated lance of fire, launched from an elemental mage.The skull wastilted back, as if locked in a cry of pain.
Isaacstrode into the room, bending to examine the pelvis.He determined, after amoment, that the victim had been a woman.
Herealized, suddenly, almost shockingly, that this was the body of thenecromancer—the sorceress, the last survivor of an ancient empire, so old thather name and title had long succumbed to the endless tide of history.She wasso old that she had witnessed the birth of the Charnel dunes, the days when thenecromancers had scoured the region of all life and material.Instead ofbecoming an incorporeal wraith, like other necromancers, instead of ascendingbeyond the flesh, like some in the Diet were attempting for themselves, she hadremained in the body of her original form, as if stubbornly clinging to thepast.Isaac struggled to imagine her perspective.She had survived such aninhuman length of time....
Thisroom was her abode.Her final tomb.It did not look ostentatious in theslightest.Aside from the lab equipment, there was no furniture, no decoration,no teeming hordes of wealth.It was obvious that the function of this buildinghad only been practical.It had been a work station, through and through.
Butwhat work had she been doing here?
Whylive all this time?
Isaac stareddown at the half-charred skeleton, noting the white lab coat still clinging toher shoulder, drawing his gaze over the flag of stripes and stars stillstitched to her lapel.The rest of her clothes had rotted to scraps, or beenburned by his father.He could not tell, at a glance, who this woman had been.
Whatpurpose had she been trying to achieve in this room?How had she come to be thelast of her empire?What difference had it made, in the end?
He sawno signs of a breakthrough, no sign of some miracle that would save hercivilization.There was only a small, improvised laboratory, buried beneathtons of rock and sand.He could imagine her toiling away the centuries here,alone in the dark, repeating the same endless experiments.For the first timein his life, he became truly aware that, someday, he would die, and, no matterhow famous or loved he had been, there would come a time when no one rememberedhis name.
Helooked at the remains of the enemy he had prepared to face for all his life,and, despite himself, he felt some odd measure ofkinship with her.
“Isaac?”
