“This was their gift to us.”
“Why just one?”
“The other was inexperienced. This belonged to a necromancer who believed he possessed the potential to become the next Sylas Morgrave.”
A great deal of intrigue shone in his eyes. “Did he? Did he have that potential?”
I shook my head. “His arrogance certainly rivaled his, though.”
“My dad isn’t arrogant.”
“Is that so?”
“It’s not arrogance if you can back it up.”
Hmm.That was a dangerous line of thinking. “He taught you from a place of fierce protectiveness, I see. Survival-mode strategy.”
“What does that mean?”
Now wasn’t the time. He was already on edge. “Nothing. Please continue your examination. Those are pages from the grimoire that I deemed most relevant to your current situation. However, if you believe you need to review the entire thing, I can see to it. It was just more… convenient and less time-consuming for me to retrieve only these select pages for now.”
He eyed me worriedly. “You stole these? From your own kingdom?”
“I replicated them. The original grimoire remains there untouched.”
“I don’t… why didn’t you just ask?”
“I couldn’t allow my presence to be known. Especially not the fact that I was there to obtain closely-guarded necromantic spellwork.”
“Jeez, you took a risk doing that for me—a big risk.”
“I told you I’d help you. When I offered that, theriskwas already well known to me. Focus on the information, not the cost. That isn’t yours to bear.”
He stared at me for a few moments, before managing to focus.
Then I watched patiently as he flipped through the pages, reading and absorbing carefully, even flipping back a page or two every now and then, being impressively thorough about it. I certainly enjoyed that about him.
“This is a re-engineered version of Death Sense spellwork,” he murmured to himself. “Death Sense itself is using the magical signature of death-touched beings—death essence—to track said beings and their every movement over hours or even days. This, though, it’s suggesting there’s a way to do this with whatever external interference is messing with my magic—using the point of contact with my necromantic power to establish an anchoring point to then trace it back.”
“We believed your father had first developed this, and the necromancer who recorded this spell had observed him performing it, then cited it as his own creation. There is a lot of spellwork that Sylas Morgrave doesn’t record, doesn’t allow to be known, because of the dangers pertaining to advances in Necromancy being known by the wider world.”
He winced. “In my current state, I couldn’t even complete Soul Track on a small area—part of the Loxley Academy campus. To pull this off, I’d have to sustain powerandextreme mental focus. When it comes to Death Sense itself, it can easily overwhelm the mind, and be near-impossible to complete the spell.”
“You are not only Necromancer.”
“What does that have to do with it? That’s the part of my hybridized nature I’d have to draw on.”
“And therein lies a significant issue for you.”
He cocked an eyebrow.
I explained, “You are not just NecromancerandWraith. You are both in unified form, not separate parts. Yet, you don’tcombine those when you perform magic. You engage them as different elements and aspects.” I stepped forward. “Consider using your Wraith aspects to stabilize the necromantic.”
He looked away. “I can’t.”
“You are highly trained. Especially on your Wraith side by your mother. The Necromancy is where you are lacking, because you wouldn’t permit Sylas to continue training you, yes?”
“For a reason.”
