Page 67 of The Necromancer's Prisoner

The monstrous aberration spun to face this new threat with another stone-shuddering roar, Iggie’s final pair of skeletal defenders forgotten in the face of this more satisfying opponent. Awe gripped Iggie, his breath catching as the paladin—hispaladin—clashed with the eldritch horror. He’d only seen Alistair fight once, and that had been at night in the middle of a raging blizzard atop loosely packed snow. Here, in the light of day and on firmer footing, Alistair seemed unstoppable.

Dawnflame blazed across his armor, leaking from his body and eyes in golden wisps. A still-brighter concentration of it enveloped his sword, and each blow he struck to the golem’s crystalline hide conjured an eruption of azure sparks amid a burst of radiant flames.

If Iggie had thought his skeletons nimble before, Alistair made dodging the monster’s lumbering blows look downright easy. The paladin met each lashing tentacle with a counterstrike that sent them sizzling to the snow, where they melted away in bursts of violet voidflame.

Yet for all Alistair’s glorious might, Iggie could tell that the battle was far from won. The golem’s impenetrable skin appeared unblemished despite Alistair’s blows, and while the paladin’s strength remained unyielding, Iggie knew his dawnflame would only last so long.

Iggie clenched his hands at his sides, desperate helplessness clawing up his throat. He spun toward Liliana, who still stood beside him watching Alistair fight with an expression of utter awe. “We need to help him!”

Liliana blinked dazedly. Giving her head a quick shake as if to clear it, she glanced at him, furrowing her brow. “Like I said in the council meeting, worked harmonite is nigh impervious unless you hit it just the right way to shatter the entire crystal. That intrinsic durability is part of what makes harmonite so desirable. Once you stabilize its latticework of natural energies, its internal structure grows rigid, allowing it to maintain its…”

She trailed off, pursing her lips, and Iggie felt a stab of hope. “What? What is it?”

“Well…since the creature’s outer shell is constructed of harmonite, I’ve been thinking of it only in those terms. But that’s not quite right, is it? There’s at least one other source of magic imbued within it as well, intermixed with that of the crystal.”

Iggie’s eyes widened. “Matrim’s spell,” he breathed.

Liliana gave a curt nod as the cave trembled around them with another of the beast’s roars. “His ritual is also in there somewhere, the runeflame and voidflame he used intertwined with the harmonite.That’sthe real driving force behind the golem’s will. Perhaps what we need isn’t a physical solution at all but amagicalone.”

Her logic made sense. Still, Iggie’s stomach fell. “Erys already dismissed that as a possibility. He doesn’t have time to perform a counter-ritual, and Alistair is already utilizing his dawnflame to little avail. There’s nothing more they can do.”

“Perhaps not,” Liliana said. “But maybeyoucan.”

Astonishment curled through him. “Me?”

His necromancy extended only to reanimating undead. What use could it possibly be against an eldritch abomination? Liliana, however, appeared unfazed by his reaction. Her gaze swept him from head to toe as if to size him up.

“Yes, you. Based on what we know of the ritual, Matrim and the others with him were sacrificed as part of the summoning, yes?”

Iggie gave a shaky nod. “All of them except for Julian.”

“Then, that means there are at least four souls imbued into the magic controlling that thing.” She gave him a pointed look. “Fourdeadsouls.”

His immediate instinct was to call her insane. This sort of complex magic lay far beyond his expertise. Reaching out to souls trapped within a conjured golem? The mere notion was absurd.

And yet…

Hadn’t he found the premise of accessing his undeads’ memories equally ridiculous until he’d tried? Alistair had been right about him never exploring the full extent of his abilities. Affecting the golem might well prove beyond his capacity—after all, communing with a sacrificed soul was a far cry from peering into the thoughts of a recently raised undead.

But this was his chance to at leasttryto make a difference. To atone for the people he’d slain in his panic to escape as a boy and the countless minor crimes he’d committed since. To become the hero Alistair believed him to be, rather than the monster he feared he was. To make his parents sacrifice worth it.

Ahead of him, the battle continued to rage. Alistair had circled around to stand on the flatter, stabler stone at the cave’s entrance, his gilded sword barely holding the abomination at bay as he directed his strikes again and again to the same point. Violet tentacles lashed the air. Fire crackled. Metal clattered off crystal.

Iggie forced himself to tune it all out and focus instead on that spark of magic he’d always felt at his core. Instantly, he sensed his spirit links with his remaining undead, but he didn’t follow those threads. Instead, he quested outward with his power, striving to expand his senses in a way he never had before.

At first, there was nothing. Then, gradually, he became aware of slight ripples in the air, almost like psychic scents. It took him a moment to realize what they were—fading echoes left behind by his destroyed skeletons as the duskflame fueling them dissipated.

The sensation felt vaguely familiar even though he was certain he’d never attempted anything like this before. Surprise flickered through him when he realized it reminded him of what he experienced while studying a corpse before attempting to raise it. He’d developed a knack for identifying the best candidates based on his impressions. He’d never given the skill much thought, assuming it a quirk of his abilities. Yet, what if it was something more—a sign of his inherent attunement to death and the deceased?

The stone beneath his feet rumbled, and the clang of steel reverberated through the air. Iggie ignored it, focusing on the task at hand. Alistair had his duty, but this was Iggie’s.

With a better idea now of what he was looking for, he focused on the golem he knew lurked nearby. Its malevolent power crawled along his skin, the tainted magic making him gag. Mixed in with the alien voidflame, he detected something far stabler—the harmonite’s own inherent magic if he had to guess. Though he could still sense its natural beauty, the ritual had perverted it into a mockery of its former self.

And there, buried within that chaotic clash of competing magics, he sensed the steady pulse of four faint presences.The souls of Matrim and his accomplices—it has to be!Their lifeforces had become bound up in the golem as well, and though Iggie could barely make heads or tails of anything else involved in the ritual, those souls resonated with him.

Channeling every drop of mental energy he could muster, he reached out to those souls with his duskflame, attempting to convey what had happened to them, along with what was about to happen to the remaining people of Singer’s Rest now.

Please, if you can hear me Matrim, I know you didn’t mean for this to happen. This is the chance you wanted to prove yourself and earn the town’s trust—your chance at redemption.