“Thank you,” Ezra said quietly, taking the phone and tapping through the app while Raum worked.
Two minutes of flipping through the app and Ezra pulled out his phone, glad it was still charged, and downloaded the app to his phone. He slid Raum’s phone back to him and tried the app out on his phone, scanning a handwritten page and waitingpatiently for the app to transcribe and translate. Thirty seconds later, he had a transcription.
Like Raum said, it wasn’t perfect, the app supplying various word choice options and highlighting sections it couldn’t read clearly enough, but the gist was there. He could muddle through on the bits the app wasn’t able to handle.
“This is amazing,” Ezra said, and he looked up from his phone and caught Raum staring at him with a soft smile. “Thank you. You’re right—it’s not perfect, but it’s far better than spending hours trying to read a letter concerning a cursed object when the app can tackle it in seconds.”
“The grad student who designed it is constantly updating and tweaking the app, so it’s only going to get better. I’m glad it’s helping you already.” Raum waved the piece of vellum Ezra had handed him. “This is a page from a journal, and what it’s describing is kind of phenomenal.”
“What?” Ezra asked eagerly.
“It’s from someone who found the original trading expedition, all of them dead, and the skull, freed from its reliquary and brewing up a blizzard.”
“What happened?”
Raum looked down at the page. “Whoever wrote this knew what to do, somehow. They buried the skull in the reliquary, and left the human bodies to the carrion eaters. It’s a short description of where they found the skull, where they buried it, and how.”
Ezra frowned. “Monica Blevins almost died when she opened the reliquary; the skull drained her life force and magic, blew a hole in her aura. Whoever handled the skull had to be either a necromancer, or they weren’t a mundane human and had abilities to keep themselves safe.”
“I don’t think this journal belonged to a human,” Raum said, setting the parchment down on the table. “They way they speakof magic and handling the skull—it’s mournful and sad, and there’s anger at the humans who had it, and they wrote about where they buried it like they were planning on returning for it.”
Raum eyed Ezra carefully and continued. “You’re a necromancer, too. Dual-affinity sorcerer.”
“Um, yeah. Yes.” He took a second. Sometimes people had negative opinions about necromancers. “Is that a problem?”
Raum shook his head. “No, not a problem at all. I’ve known since I met you. I’m just not sure if you’re okay to talk about it. I haven’t heard of a dual-affinity necromancer before.”
“As far as I know, I’m the only one. I don’t like advertising it because of people’s reaction to necromancers as a whole. I’m not after world domination or raising zombie armies.” Ezra shrugged. “My affinity kept the skull from draining me, too. I interrupted the cycle of magic long enough for Grendel to get the skull in a reliquary.”
“I bet that comes in handy, a death and fire affinity. Especially for a curse-breaker.”
“Made it feel like Fate, going into curse-breaking as a career choice.”
Raum looked at the charcoal sketch of the skull, and Ezra could practically see him thinking hard about the situation.
“Is there a name given to the journal owner?” Ezra asked. He gently flipped through more plastic sleeves containing more pages of what must have been the same journal, as the handwriting appeared to be the same. There were about half a dozen pages, dated in the same year as the original expedition.
“No, there’s no name,” Raum said after he flipped through the binder as well. “With the pages like this I think the original journal is no longer around. These pages might be the only surviving pieces.” Raum gently closed the binder. “Would knowing who the journal author is help you destroy the skull?”
Ezra bit his lip, thinking hard. “Whoever the journal author is, they didn’t destroy the skull—they merely returned it to its reliquary and buried it. They may not have known how to free the living soul and destroy the skull. You said they sounded sad about it—I think they might have destroyed it if they could have.”
“Another dead end, then?” Raum asked, regret heavy in his tone.
“Set the issue aside for another time, more like,” Ezra shrugged one shoulder. “Something to puzzle over after the skull is stopped and the soul is freed.”
Ezra stared at the vellum drawing of the skull, and he remembered the sketch he took from the table at the MERS camp out in the wild. He figured it had been drawn by Monica Blevins’ boyfriend, the mistroke happening at the time of his death. It was still tucked in the pocket of Lilith’s carrier back in his room at Sacred Threshold.
“Raum?”
“Yes?”
“I’ve got a charcoal drawing by one of the deceased graduate students, drawn just prior to his death. Should I give it to Monica Blevins, his girlfriend? I’m not the best at deciphering emotional cues of other people. Is that something she might want? I forgot I had it.”
“I’d very gently ask her if she wanted it before just handing it over.”
“Gently?” He stopped, trying to figure out how to be gentle to someone who’d just suffered a devastating emotional loss and traumatizing experience, when he hadn’t been gentle yet in his interactions with her so far. “Oh.”
“Maybe make the connection through the sergeants or Major Grendel, so you don’t need to do it?” Raum suggested.
