Necromancer Awakening (9 page)

“I don’t know about this.”

“Your first Hall should be simple, but there is always a chance of failure.”

“What do I do?”

“As in everything, begin by clearing your mind. When your mind is at rest, remember the room with the white door and the black door. The black door leads to your Halls of Power.”

He imagined the room, and the entrance appeared in his mind’s eye—the ornate door with strange symbols.

“If something harms you in the Halls of Power, it harms you out here. So protect yourself.”

“Why does the white door feel wrong?”

“It leads to a perversion of our magic. Its arcane pathways run orthogonal to ours.”

“Say what?”

“Stay away from it.”

“So I should enter the other one?” Nicolas looked toward the black door. The skull floated in midair beyond the threshold.

“The black door is the path of the necromancer. But not yet. Tell me what you see.”

“That skull. It’s just inside the door.”

“In, out, up, down…these are concepts that have no meaning in the Halls, and you must embrace this. For a necromancer, a thing can be both friend and foe at the same time. This is an important function of our work.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“The skull is your foe. It will attack you the moment you approach it. But it is also your greatest ally.”

“So do I go in or not?”

“Calm yourself. Lack of focus will cause the Halls to collapse, and you’ll have to start over.”

“So I’ll start over.”

“You haven’t yet entered a true Hall yet, Nicolas. You merely stand on the threshold. If the Halls collapse while you’re inside them, your mind will collapse with them. Do you understand me?”

“Um…sure?”

“Oh for Arin’s sake, boy. The skull will attack you
psionically
. Certainly you know what that means?”

“I don’t think we have that in Texas.”

“It means that the skull will attack your mind,” Mujahid said. “But your mind and body are intertwined, so an attack against your mind is an attack against your body. You must never forget this. You’ll have to defend yourself.”

“But how?”

“Stay calm.”

“But how do I defend myself?” A bead of sweat formed on his forehead as he realized he would be alone with that thing.

“You must answer that question for yourself.”

“What? How?”

“Each of us brings something different into the Halls, and the opponents we face use our own minds against us.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.” What if he failed? What if he was killed because of some stupid mistake?

He shot backwards through the ornate door as if a catapult had launched him. He opened his eyes and stared at Mujahid.

Mujahid swore. “You can try the patience of a rock, boy.”

“I’m sorry,” Nicolas said. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here.”

“An ever present fact.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Enough with your sorry. Calm your mind.” Mujahid took a deep breath. “Focus on the energy around you. I know you feel it.”

Nicolas adjusted his position on the bed.

“No more than thirty feet below you is my ancestral crypt and—” Mujahid stopped as if he had almost let a secret slip. “Power permeates this place.”

“It’s all around me.”

“Draw it into you.”

“How?”

“Always with the questions,” Mujahid said, and Nicolas’s eyes snapped open.

Mujahid sighed. He placed his hands over his eyes and squeezed, but after a few moments, he patted Nicolas’s shoulder.

“I’m an old man, and it’s late at night. And…it’s been a long time since I’ve had to do this. A very long time, indeed.”

“You don’t look too old.”

“Boy, you have no idea.”

Nicolas squinted.

“The energy around you is what we call
necropotency
,” Mujahid said. “Some refer to it as
death energy
. Think of necropotency like a footprint in the snow. A person walks through the snow and leaves footprints behind, yes?”

“Some deeper than others, yeah.”

“More insightful than you realize.” Mujahid made a sweeping gesture across the floor with his arm. “The world of the living is the snow. As a person passes from life to death, they leave a footprint behind. Necropotency, death energy, is that footprint.”

“Let’s say I understand. What exactly does that mean?”

“Necropotency has life of its own, but it has no direction or purpose. The necromancer must imbue that energy with purpose and direct it toward an end…small tasks like moving an object, healing a wound.” Mujahid pointed at Nicolas’s head. “Taking away a headache.”

“Summoning the dead?”

“Oh, Nicolas, that is no small task. That is our very purpose for existing. The undead are the reason Zubuxo has given us this gift. But…we must conquer your first Hall of Power or it will all be moot.”

“Can I use this necropotency to calm myself down?”

Mujahid smiled. “The mind finally grasps what has been right before it. Direct the flow of energy to your mind, and let us begin again.”

Nicolas wasn’t sure how to do this, but he started by seeing if he could command the power to enter his body.

Power! In!

He didn’t feel any different. He felt the energy around him, but it wasn’t entering him like before.

Necropotency, inside me is where you wanna be!

Nothing. So rhyming wasn’t the answer.

Abracadabra?

Still nothing.

So much for magic words.

Mujahid stood and paced. “The energy is like a child. You don’t command a child to fish…you show it how to bait a hook. You are the magus. Direct it. Show the power what you want it to do.”

The energy was all around him, as before. It brushed against him, making the hair on his arm stand on end like some sort of liquid electricity.

He imagined himself to be the drain at the bottom of a large tub, and visualized the necropotency swirling around the drain and entering him.

Every hair on his body stood on end.

The necropotency turned into a vortex that surrounded him and whipped the linens around on his bed. The food that remained on the banquet table flew up and around him, tracing the outline of the invisible tornado of energy. The vortex, and the objects it carried, compacted at a point in front of him and the room grew silent.

The energy slammed into the center of his chest, along with the food and linens, and threw him back against the wall.

“I see.” Mujahid raised an eyebrow. “Might I suggest that next time you leave some power in the crypt for the rest of us?”

Nicolas groaned and sat back up.

He did his best to get comfortable with his back against the wall. He formed an image, but instead of water pouring into a drain, it was a small creek entering his mind.

“Good,” Mujahid said. “Now call to mind the entrance to the Halls.”

The skull hung beyond the black door, as it had before.

“I’m there,” Nicolas said. He felt different this time. Serene.

“The skull will attack in a way I cannot know or predict. Trust your instincts.”

Nicolas forced himself closer to the door.

“Doubt is your enemy,” Mujahid said. “Doubt will lead you to failure. It is you who are the master of your mind. Keep your purpose ever before you.”

Nicolas stepped through the black door.

A feeling of
wrongness
permeated Nicolas’s being. He shouldn’t be here.

Lord Mujahid told me to do this. So why do I feel like I did something wrong?

A light source above bathed everything in electric blue.

He expected an attack when he stepped through the door, but nothing happened. The skull was gone.

I’m not ready for this.

The light grew brighter.

How can I fight something I can’t see?

As the light intensified his panic faded.

There’s nothing to fight.

It comforted him to know he had been afraid of nothing all along.

I just need to sleep. Lord Mujahid will send for me in the morning.

The light radiated warmth that made Nicolas want to curl up and sleep. But his bed was missing.

That’s odd.

The light was good. It would help him.

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed his bed against the wall.

But it was gone a minute ago. No, I just missed it, is all.

He remembered sitting on his squeaky bed at home. Something was wrong that day, but he couldn’t remember what it was. Mujahid had driven him to a funeral, then they went back home for a huge meal.

That’s…not right, is it?

Every time he tried to focus his thoughts, it was like trudging through mud.

The sense of wrongness returned, but the light grew stronger. It called to him, and he wanted nothing more than to bask in its radiant warmth. Everything would be ok in the light.

But, how can light be coming through my ceiling?

The warmth grew stronger, but it was relaxing. He sat on his bed and unbuttoned his shirt. This was going to be the most restful sleep of his life.

The light was his life’s purpose now. It was all he needed.

He reached into his pants for the picture of Kaitlyn. He always looked at her picture before going to sleep. He could smell her rose-scented lotion as if she were standing right next to him.

Clarity hit him like a bucket of cold water.

The light was his enemy.

He imagined a bubble of energy around his body, and the power left him, forming a barrier that closed around him. The necropotency shielded him from the radiance and cleared the cobwebs in his mind.

Idiot. I was under attack all along.

The light sputtered out with a loud crackle.

Something moved and caught his attention.

The skull had returned.

The rotting flesh burned away, and the clumps of hair disappeared, leaving pristine bone behind. It emitted a bright blue light, the same light that had tried to kill him. This time, however, it turned inward on the skull.

The skull vibrated, shaking in all directions as if trying to expel the light pouring into it. The shaking stopped and the skull floated backwards toward the far wall.

Nicolas didn’t know how he knew, but he was certain something terrible would happen if the skull touched that wall.

He extended his arms and released power into both the wall and the skull. He could feel the wall as if the strand of energy was an extension of his hand. The wall was malleable.

He willed the energy to carve an opening in the wall in the shape of the skull, and it lashed out like an invisible whip, biting into the wall and changing it.

When it was finished he realized it wouldn’t matter. The skull would still touch the wall.

The skull was less than a foot away from the wall.

Don’t tell the power what to do. Show it!

He imagined necropotency running down his arm like oil and into the skull-shaped alcove. When the image was complete, the barrier around him changed shape and elongated. With a twist of his hand, he detached a smaller bubble and moved it into the opening. The energy coated the alcove like syrup. When the melding of energy and alcove was complete, the alcove emitted a bright, electric-blue light.

The skull slid into place like a brick in a wall. The alcove and skull collapsed together, and the wall’s surface became flat.

Blue light sparked along the skull’s outline like a blowtorch through metal, then went dim, leaving the image of the skull etched into the wall. It glowed with inner power.

He had won.

He exhaled and willed himself out of the Halls.

When Nicolas opened his eyes, something felt different in his head, but he couldn’t place it.

Mujahid was sitting in front of him.

“Well done.” A broad smile appeared on Mujahid’s face. “You’re an awakened necromancer now.”

“So I don’t have to run around doing your laundry?”

Mujahid placed a hand on Nicolas’s shoulder. “You’ve learned an important lesson, but many more remain. Get some sleep. There’ll be no more nightmares for you tonight.”