Vale arrives at Sanctus Cael's office just after midnight. The older man is waiting, still dressed in ornate robes despite the hour, white hair pulled back, wrinkled hands holding a scroll that glimmers under the lamp. He's nearly five hundred years old and has never served as a Templar. He started as a priest and climbed to Sanctus through politics and persistence, but he's never seen a battlefield and he's never had to chase a necromancer through a graveyard at midnight. Vale tries not to hold that against him. Someone has to deal with the politics, and better Cael than him.
"I assume you don't have a necromancer in custody," Cael says without looking up.
"I found one, if that makes a difference." Vale stays standing, arms crossed, too restless to sit. The chair across from Cael's desk is ornate and deeply uncomfortable, which Vale has alwayssuspected is intentional. "Male, mid-twenties in appearance. Extensive death magic corruption, so he's been practicing for a long time. I found him in Greyhaven Cemetery helping a spirit pass on."
That makes Cael look up. "Helping a spirit pass? How?"
"He told it to rest and it disappeared." Vale keeps his voice neutral, which takes more effort than he'd like. "He wasn't raising the dead or binding spirits. He was talking to it. The spirit seemed to want him there."
Cael raises an eyebrow. "Templar Vale, I hope you're not suggesting that illegal death magic is acceptable if the spirit appears willing."
"I'm suggesting it doesn't match the profile of our rift-maker." Vale meets his commander's gaze and holds it. "The rift attacks have been aggressive, violent, massive amounts of raw, uncontrolled power. The level of corruption I saw on this necromancer would make opening that many rifts in that short a time physically impossible. He'd be dead already."
"Unless he spent the last two months burning through his strength and is now suffering the consequences."
Vale wants to argue, but he can't. Not yet. Not without more information. The doubt is there, lodged in his chest in a way that is highly obnoxious, but doubt without evidence is just a feeling, and feelings don't hold up well in front of the Sanctus. "I'll find him again. He's injured and weakened. He can't have gone far."
"See that you do." Cael's voice drops, the way it always does when he's about to say something he considers pragmatic and Vale considers a chore. "And Vale, when you find him, I don't need him alive. The city needs a resolution, not a trial."
Vale nods and turns on his heel before he says something that lands him in hot water. He knows what Cael is really saying: bring back a body, close the case, let everyone sleep easier knowing the monster is dead. It's the kind of math that makessense from behind a desk, where the numbers are abstract and the bodies don't have faces.
The problem is that Vale isn't sure the man he found is the monster they're looking for.
He is dangerous, yes. He is illegal, absolutely. But he is not a monster.
Monsters don't comfort ghosts before sending them to rest. Monsters don't look at you with resignation instead of rage. Monsters don't apologize before they run.
He should go home and sleep, but he doesn't.
The Order's archives are deep beneath the Cathedral, protected by holy wards powerful enough to incinerate the damned before they even realize it's happening. There have been many attempts to infiltrate the archives over the centuries, and none have succeeded. The wards grow stronger every year, though that doesn't stop people from trying. Stubbornness, in Vale's experience, is one of the few constants in the magical world.
Vale descends the spiral stairs, lit by glowing sconces set into ancient stone, and emerges at the bottom where a deep red rug leads him to an oak desk that looks older than he is. Behind it sits the archivist, a woman who has been tending these records for two hundred years and knows the location of every document in the vault the way a mother knows the faces of her children. She has curly blonde hair and freckles scattered across a round face, and her name is Sister Fiora.
He puts an arm across his chest and gives her a half-bow. She scurries to mark her place in the book she's reading and stands to greet him with the eager brightness of someone who doesn't get nearly enough company down here and is delighted by the interruption.
"Sister Fiora." He straightens. "I hope you don't mind me visiting so late."
"You know you're welcome here anytime." She waves a hand between them. "Business or pleasure?"
"Business." He gives her a regretful look. As much as he'd enjoy time to peruse the archives for the joy of it, those days are hard to come by with rifts tearing through the city. "I need everything you have on necromancers operating in the Old City. Particularly the Greyhaven area. Going back ten years."
Fiora's eyebrows rise. "That's specific. Does this necromancer have a name?"
Probably. But they hadn't exactly had time for introductions before Vale drew his sword and sent the man running. The encounter had gone from zero to chase scene in under a minute, which is efficient by Templar standards but not particularly conducive to exchanging pleasantries. He'd expected to get a name on the walk back to the Cathedral, but that required actually catching him, and that particular failure is something of a first.
"We're not exactly friends," he says dryly. "Look for unusual activity. Helping spirits pass on instead of raising them. Someone who works with ghosts but doesn't bind them."
"You're looking for a psychopomp." Fiora stands and moves toward the stacks with the certainty of someone who has the entire archive mapped in her mind. "Those are quite rare nowadays, but it used to be the original purpose of necromancy. Mages would guide the dead to the afterlife under the watchful eye of the Lord of the Dead. After the War of Binding, the practice was outlawed along with all other death magic."
"So he's an old soul," Vale mutters, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Can you find him?"
She gives him a look that suggests he's insulting her competence, and if he didn't know her he might apologize for it. She vanishes into the stacks.
Vale waits and tries not to pace. The archives are cold and silent except for the distant scuff of Fiora's shoes and the occasional creak of shelves that have been holding the weight of centuries for longer than most people have been alive. The whole place smells of old paper and dust and faintly of forgotten magic. It's not somewhere he'd choose to spend the day, but Fiora seems content. The Order has been keeping records for over a millennium, documenting every dark mage, every demon incursion, every threat to the balance. A thousand years of careful notation, and someone, somewhere, thought to write down what they saw.
There has to be something on his necromancer. If the man has been practicing long enough to have that level of corruption, he must have appeared on someone's radar.
Fiora returns with a disappointingly thin folder.
