Chapter III.XI - The Necromancer

  Kizu grabbed Anata’s collar and dived to the side. At the same time, Basil flipped the table up to protect himself and Aoi.

  Kizu felt the blast of negative energy streak past his left. It slammed into the upturned table, which blackened with decay. Kizu dragged Anata away, vaulting over the counter and hiding behind it with the ghostly innkeeper.

  “You dare!” the necromancer shouted at the table. “You-you hypocritical brat! I’ll tear you to pieces!”

  “Do I know you?” Aoi called back.

  The necromancer burst out in uneven laughter, as if splicing the cackling with silent hiccups.

  Their enemy’s attention was completely focused on Aoi, he had barely even glanced at Kizu and Anata as they ran earlier. He could use that.

  Kizu’s first priority was to keep Anata out of danger. With her over here and out of the way, he could work a solution to help Basil and Aoi. With the amount of patterns he’d seen etched into the necromancer’s skin, Kizu severely doubted he could end the fight with a single jump. Thankfully, he’d been training other uses for his spatial specialty.

  At a mental command, Mort scampered up a wooden support beam and into the rafters above. The monkey maneuvered himself to be directly above the raving necromancer. Then Kizu channeled through the monkey, creating a force barrier and pressing it directly down beneath his familiar.

  If the necromancer had seen the attack coming, he could have easily side stepped it or even dispelled it. But, while not completely transparent, the barrier was clear enough to easily overlook if hyper-fixated on something else. It smashed down on the necromancer’s head, causing him to crumple to the floor where he remained, unmoving.

  Mort sprang down from above and reclaimed his perch on Kizu’s shoulder. Kizu wanted to question the undead patrons in the inn about the now unconscious necromancer, but there was no time. Kizu had no intention of killing him and as it was he could reawaken at any time.

  “Let’s go!” Kizu called to the others. He grabbed Anata’s hand and ran for the exit. Basil and Aoi were right on his heels.

  As he stepped through the inn’s doorway, he looked over his shoulder at the wreckage. Two ghosts floated frozen in place, flickering from the damage dealt to their souls and the mummy he had spoken to the previous night was passed out on the floor next to a knocked over chair. The mummy wasn’t moving.

  Kizu hesitated. Then he shoved Anata’s hand over to Basil and pushed them along with Aoi out the door. Mort hopped over to Aoi’s head, understanding his intention.

  “Get back to the palace, I’ll catch up with jumps. Run fast. Keep Anata safe.” Without waiting for a response, he slammed the door in his friends’ faces.

  As he skidded to a stop next to the mummy, he reached into his dimensional holding ring, feeling around for a specific vial’s textured pattern.

  Ripping through the mummy’s face bandages, he opened the undead man’s mouth and tilted his head back. Then he poured the glowing blue liquid down blackened throat.

  The mummy coughed and moaned. Good. He was alive. Or…back to being undead at least.

  “What is that?” the innkeeper asked, floating up to him.

  “I created it to help fuse pieces of the soul back together. It’s all I have on hand for soul damage.”

  It was designed with Professor Knoff’s broken soul in mind, not for undead. Aoi called herself ‘soul mage’ so Kizu assumed an enemy necromancer would attack a person’s soul. And the mummy seemed better off now than before, so the gamble paid itself off. Probably not exactly what the mummy needed, but good enough.

  “Where’d she go?” the necromancer growled through gritted teeth. He stood on shaky feet as one of his pale hands gripped at his black hair.

  At first, Kizu thought he was addressing him, but the necromancer looked straight through him as he glared about the room.

  “I’ve covered you in an illusion,” the innkeeper said quietly. “He won’t be able to see you. I’ve layered in several divination spells, even stronger than the one protecting my inn. Not even your soul will appear to him.”

  “Do you want me to take him out?” Kizu reached back into his ring and felt for a sleep potion. He should have led with that earlier, but his mind had still been focused on spatial spells.

  “No. Can you help the others?”

  The ghost’s semi-transparent eyes were focused on her fellow spirits, not even giving the necromancer a second glance.

  “Wouldn’t you rather your friends alive than your enemies dead?” she asked, noticing his confusion. “Those other spirits are my dear friends. Can you help them?”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “I’ll try. But I don’t know how to apply a potion to an incorporeal creature.”

  “Show me the potions,” the innkeeper said.

  He took out two more vials and she swiped a hand over them. A chilly tingle traveled up his forearm at the touch. He felt something inside him stir at the touch. Kizu recognized the parasitic fragment from the aurora. But it simply acknowledged the ghostly prod and returned to its dormancy.

  “You’ll be able to touch souls with your arm and those vials for the next five minutes,” the innkeeper explained. “Any longer than that, and I’d risk permanently damaging your soul.”

  Kizu nodded and skirted around the edges of the inn’s dining area. He didn’t dare jump, for risk of losing the innkeeper’s illusion on him.

  The necromancer was throwing a tantrum, kicking seating cushions and tossing tables across the room, as if thinking Aoi might be hiding under one of them. Kizu ducked as a clay jug of water went soaring over his head. It smashed into the wall, shattered into wet pieces.

  It took him a minute to successfully pry open the first ghost’s mouth. The spirit was only moderately tangible, even with his spirit-attuned arm. If he didn’t move deliberately with a willfully clear purpose, he still passed through the undead.

  After Kizu finally drained the vial into it, the ghost began to violently gurgle.

  The necromancer heard the noise and looked in their direction. Kizu bit his lip and pressed his back against the wall, hoping the illusion over him held.

  “Oh. I’m sorry, Ryuga. Didn’t mean to get you caught up in this. You feeling okay?” the necromancer asked. His entire demeanor had shifted again, back to the placid, almost bored tone from back when he met Kizu in the bath. When Ryuga, the ghost Kizu stood beside, didn’t answer, the necromancer sighed and walked towards the door. “I’ll fix up any damages when I return. I need to head back to the cemetery for a little while. Need to keep at my experiment.”

  The inn’s door closed and Kizu let out a long held breath. Then he immediately communicated to Mort what had just happened and pushed the sensation of urgency at him. They needed to get back to the palace as quickly as possible.

  But before Kizu could join them, he approached the second ghost. It was the one covered in silvery blood from a head wound. After restoring it the same way as he had with Ryuga, Kizu tentatively stepped back from the undead.

  “Thank you,” the innkeeper said.

  “What was that all about? He snapped and lashed out at Aoi!”

  “He’s usually quite mellow. It’s rare he has episodes like this. If you look closely, there’s unusual scarring on his soul. I believe a sliver of his master’s soul pierced him on her death.”

  “Let me guess, your daughter was his master?” Kizu guessed dryly.

  “Yes. And mother. The process of her execution shattered her soul. A technique used to keep necromancers from resurrection. But a while broken, it still sought out familiarity. Blood relations draw one another. With myself and her father long dead, her son was the only true target. Unfortunately, it was a more…bitter…piece of her. But Ken really isn’t usually like this. A new spell project has made him a little more moody. Normally he’s really quite a sweet boy.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “You and your friends are welcome back here anytime,” the innkeeper said.

  “I appreciate the offer, but Anata and I will pass. We already have one unstable necromancer in our lives. I think that’s more than enough.”

  Kizu decided to wait and put some more space between himself and the necromancer before heading out. The last thing he wanted was to stumble into him in the night.

  The mummy was the first to recover from his soul damage. He bowed and thanked Kizu profusely for his assistance.

  “Your heroism and kindness will be rewarded. Seek out my descendants in the far west for a boon. The Ali Clan is in your debt.”

  The ghosts were less grateful, barely even recognizing that they had been in danger. They simply drifted off back to their rooms with little more than a nod to Kizu.

  With his familiar bond showing that the others were nearing the palace, Kizu decided to take his leave of the inn and start his journey back.

  As he exited the abandoned town, he looked up toward the graveyard on the hill. He noticed wisps of putrid green light breaking through the darkness. He frowned up at it. The color reminded him of the aurora. At least the sight of it likely meant the necromancer had returned to the cemetery, rather than pursue his friends. That would save Kizu some time. Originally, he had planned to take a longer route through the city before circling back to the palace. Now he just jogged directly there, periodically executing a short range jump to speed himself along.

  It felt amazing to be able to properly run again. After months being confined by a cane and a bum leg, he fully appreciated the freedom his new limb offered him. The leg was far more powerful than the one he lost, even before it broke. Solely balancing himself on it, he could clear ten meters in a single bound. And, using it as a guideline, Kizu was slowly figuring out how to use enhancement spells on his other leg to keep up with it. It was still far from perfect and he constantly ended up clumsily stumbling from the lopsided power, but he was able to run faster than any normal person could possibly manage.

  Mort met up with him on his way back. The monkey had seen Anata off to bed before turning around and heading back to meet with Kizu. It took some coaxing on the monkey’s part, but Mort convinced him to take a detour and go explore the bamboo forest at night with him. Normally, he likely would have resisted more, but he still felt adrenaline pumping through him, his earlier weariness completely absent. And there wasn’t too much of a risk in visiting the forest, the necromancer was back at the cemetery and the bamboo forest was in a completely different direction.

  The forest was perfect for Mort. The monkey bounded from tree to tree, quickly disappearing into the darkness. Kizu removed his boot and practiced gripping onto the bamboo trees with the claws. He managed to hold up his entire weight with just the one foot. Of course, he practiced climbing with his other limbs too. Climbing bamboo was tricky though, the edges could cut through skin if he gripped it in the wrong place and he had to distribute his weight between more than one tree if he wanted to get any height. But it was a fun challenge. Before leaving, he stashed some bamboo sprouts in his storage ring, hoping to someday get some planted as part of his future garden project. All this was a nice distraction from the fact a necromancer tried to kill him earlier. Without that, the night would have been great. A wonderful bath in a hot spring, chatting with Basil, and now some exercise with Mort. He wondered if maybe he was getting desensitized to people trying to kill him.

  He jumped up into his bedroom window and found Anata in her futon, sleeping soundly. Flopping back in his own bed, he closed his eyes and dozed off.

  Ten chapters (5 weeks) ahead of Royal Road.