Chapter 3 - Skeleton Crew

  The janitor had needed to take quite a detour as a large part of the walkway had rotted away. There were no more routes left to where he was going. The academy structure was supposed to be indestructible, so there weren’t many failsafes for situations like this. He had had to climb to the actual roof of the structure, which was always a huge pain in the ass, but from there he had managed to jump and float down to inside the structure and to a walkway that was still intact and led to the principal’s office.

  The janitor knocked on the principal’s door. It was an ordinary door, not a facade one. The principal’s office was one of the few rooms that actually existed on the academy grounds. The principal had no need for sleep.

  The door swung open immediately. The office was modestly sized and filled mostly with bookshelves. One wall was taken up by an altar, to which the academy artefact was chained. The artefact looked exactly like one would expect: a leather-bound black book with a skull on the cover. Janitor had no idea what the artefact actually was for, but even he felt momentarily woozy when he stepped into the room and the power of the artefact washed over him. Otherwise, the room smelled pleasantly of old books, but the janitor was worried that the smell didn’t actually come from the books but mostly from the principal himself. Coratorus had founded the Academy back in the day. He had made it into a premier place to study and research necromancy, but nowadays, he concentrated on his research and whatever political games there might have been in the wider world to keep the Academy safe and relevant. Running the day-to-day business of the Academy he had delegated to chancellor Jextor.

  The principal looked up from his papers, and a warm glow lit up in his eye sockets.

  “Hector, to what do I owe the pleasure?” he whispered in a voice that sounded like silk slipping on silk. The principal had been writing something, but he moved the pen into the ink pot and leaned his skull down on the papers. “Huff,” he said, in an imitation of blowing on ink to make it dry faster.

  The janitor shifted his weight around from leg to leg. The principal seemed to like him, but it never made it less unnerving to speak with him. “There was an accident earlier this morning, sir,” he started.

  The principal straightened up sharply. Janitor had never figured out how the lich emoted, but now his skull looked worried.

  “Just property damage, luckily,” he continued. “But unfortunately, my broom was damaged beyond repair. Zombies got into the janitor’s closet. They broke through the salt barrier.”

  “The resonance from the artefact might have been calling them,” Coratorus said quietly. He raised an empty sleeve to his chin bone and the janitor could hear a sound like bone being scratched.

  The principal stood up, if that was the right word to use, and started to pace around the room, which definitely was not the right word to use. He was a floating skull with a bit of spine and an assortment of rib bones hanging off it. His robe was hung on his skull by its hood in an absentminded attempt to resemble a person.

  “It’s curious though, as the broom’s enchantments are not diametrically opposed to the necromantic energies of the undead...”

  “Sir,” the janitor said.

  “Ah, sorry. I’m assuming you’re going to need my signature?” the principal said and glanced at the papers the janitor had placed on his table.

  “If it would not be too much of a burden, sir. I understand that the broom is rather expensive…”

  “Do not fret, Hector. We can’t leave you without your tools. The chancellor will handle the practical side. Just take the forms to him.”

  The pen raised itself up from the ink pot and moved to scribble quick signatures on all the forms. The principal was facing his bookshelf and moving up and down between the shelves. When he lowered down to look at the lowest shelves, the robe bunched up into a pile on the floor.

  “I know I have a book about the effect of strong magical auras on simple undead here somewhere,” he muttered.

  The janitor gathered his forms and cleared his throat.

  “Um, sir, about the chancellor, actually. He had a pretty nasty fall earlier.”

  “Oh dear, nothing too serious, I hope?”

  “Well, he did bump against the wall quite a few times, but the real problem was that his guests sort of… rotted him when he was out.”

  “Ah. Their presence would do that, wouldn’t it? Well, can you ask Falar to handle it? He has experience with negative energy,” the principal said and chuckled in a way that made the janitor look up from his forms. The lich sounded ominously gleeful.

  “Yes, thank you, sir. I hope you find the book.”

  “Thank you, Hector. Do visit me sometimes, even when you don’t have any official business. You know my door is always open.”

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  The door closed itself behind the janitor. He knew that it was never open. The principal’s office was completely impregnable, especially for official business having anything to do with running the academy. Janitor was terrified that someone from the faculty would one day find out that he could casually get into the office and talk to the principal most times that he tried.

  He glanced at the forms he was still clutching in his hand. The chancellor had promised to handle everything after he had the papers, but at the moment the chancellor looked worse than the principal. Before the janitor could do anything for him, though, he would have to organise the construction crew to begin repairs of the walkways. The merchants would have to request compensation from the bursar by themselves. The Chancellor’s guests had spent an hour standing over him after he had fallen, and the aura had rotted three wagons worth of merchandise that had been nearby. The janitor had shooed the beings off when he realised what was happening, but the damage had already been done. They were now standing outside the Academy, looking a bit forlorn in the snowfall.

  Organising repairs was routine business. Even if the structure itself was very durable, there was always something breaking out from a research lab or another and damaging something. Nothing before had done this extensive damage, though. The janitor had picked up a piece of broken concrete earlier, and it had crumbled in his hand like a clump of dry sand packed together on the beach.

  One more thing the bursar was not going to be happy about, he thought and chuckled.

  It was already evening. The janitor was smoking as he watched Falar chant something over the body of the chancellor. When he arrived, Falar had first sent back the guests to their own plane with a disdainful wave of his hand. The guests had simply disappeared with a sickening crack. Snow swirled in a confused vortex where they had stood, and there was a faint smell of ozone that the freezing air carried to the janitor. He hoped that the guests really had been sent back instead of just being disintegrated or something. Falar was the second least favourite faculty member of the janitor. The man was a power-hungry powerhouse with absolutely no morals or sympathy for anyone else’s problems.

  The rumour was that Falar had botched turning into a lich once and killed himself with the flood of negative energy that was supposed to turn him immortal. Necromancers tended to get over killing themselves, but it was still a sore point for him. Once, a new teacher had made fun of Falar about the matter, and the janitor still occasionally found items imbued with the poor fellow’s shattered soul. Mostly toilet brushes.

  Now Falar was drawing runes with his fingers in the air and chanting absentmindedly. There had not been much left of the chancellor, but he seemed to be getting together slowly. The janitor tried not to watch too closely as flesh bubbled up from the dust and the rust coloured stains on the ground and flowed onto the skeleton that had already formed earlier. Halfway through the process, the chancellor woke up and started laughing.

  Falar stopped chanting and glared at the chancellor. “Stop squirming,” he said.

  “You stop squirming,” the chancellor said. “It tickles like hell.”

  “I’m reconstituting you from desiccated ash. It shouldn’t tickle.”

  “Well, I’m thankful if you hurry it up. I still have to take the guests to lunch.”

  “It’s already evening, Jextor. Your guests have left.”

  “Evening! How long was I out?” the chancellor shouted, but then squinted his eyes at Falar and continued. “The guests should not have been able to get home by themselves. How did they leave?”

  “I helped them.”

  “Falar…” the chancellor said menacingly.

  “Just stay still so I can get this done and get back to my actual work,” Falar said and kept wiggling his fingers.

  The chancellor had finally been put together again. The janitor cleared his throat.

  “Ah! Did you get the forms and all?” the chancellor asked.

  “I did, chancellor.”

  “Good news, good news. It seems like the repairs are already underway, as well.”

  The chancellor was sitting on a partly rotted crate that creaked dangerously under his weight. A merchant had managed to find him a new robe that actually fit pretty well. He was watching the construction crew floating above and milling around the area that had crumbled.

  “Unfortunate that we only have a skeleton crew to handle the repairs,” he said and chuckled.

  Falar groaned and rolled his eyes. He was still nearby, poking at the crumbled concrete and collecting samples. The skeletons were drilling holes for supports for the new walkway. Skeletons were always used for aerial construction, as they were lighter than zombies and also didn’t drip anything disgusting on anyone standing below the construction area.

  The chancellor scratched his head and kicked one clump of concrete next to him. It crumbled into dust.

  “It’s curious, though. According to my calculations, the aura should have been practically harmless. I guess I might have had some small decimal error somewhere.”

  “You didn’t account for the ambient negative energy,” Falar said flatly.

  The chancellor slapped his forehead with his huge hand. The sound made multiple merchants startle.

  “I didn’t, didn’t I?” he said and laughed.

  The janitor didn’t really understand the discussion that followed. It had been a long day. The janitor was feeling frayed. When Falar and the chancellor had finally stopped discussing details of compounding negative energy and ablative limits of concrete, the janitor cleared his throat again.

  “Chancellor, the forms,” he said.

  “Right, hand them over. I’ll handle it,” the chancellor said, reaching out his hand.

  The janitor gave the forms to the chancellor, and he scanned them quickly.

  “Still can’t believe mere zombies managed to break the Decreator Noir,” he said.

  “I think one of the zombies had it in its mouth when the sentry grabbed it. The zombie, I mean. I think that was the actual reason the broom broke.”

  “Right, I guess that would do it,” the chancellor said and glanced up towards where the janitor’s closet was. “Well, no matter. I’ll order a new one for you. You can go pick it up next week.”

  “Wait, pick it up from where?” the janitor asked.

  “Well, the artificer is in Tenorsbridge. You have to have it enchanted there by the enchanter’s guild too.”

  “Not that clown town! It’s the worst! I can’t stand those snobs of the guild either. This time of year the road is constantly snowed in, and there are always hails and ice giants too. And that’s only the first quarter of the way!” the janitor said.

  He took a long breath to collect himself. The chancellor was already reaching out for a reassuring slap.

  “Could I get it delivered?” the janitor asked.

  “Well! If you can make the bursar agree on the delivery costs. I think she has a separate form for those…”

  The janitor sighed.

  “I’ll start packing,” he said.

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