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Chapter Ten
My eyes are heavy and struggle to stay open despite the foggy glow of morning light.
The night was long, my dreams filled with terrors beyond anything I’ve ever seen. I normally sleep peacefully when I am able, my resting mind filling with places and people from home, reliving a time when life was serene. What I experienced last night was entirely different. The places my mind took me were filled with darkness, landscapes without sun roamed by disfigured beasts. Sinister beings also lurked there, their faces masked and their bodies silhouetted in mists of blue. It was like my dreams were being dictated by another. Perhaps by our cryptic host in this gloomy palace.
He summoned me shortly after Astor fell asleep. I was surprised that Astor drifted away so quickly. One moment he was full of anxiety and worry, mostly about whether or not we were fools in seeking out the Necromancer, and the next he was sound asleep on his bed, one of two in this comfortable room the Necromancer brought us to the moment we arrived.
Shortly after that, a strange whisper echoed from the hallway, so faintly that I barely noticed it the first time. But after two more utterances from the soft voice, I sensed that it must have been the Necromancer calling out to me, so I wandered out to find him, leaving Astor behind to continue dozing away.
As I went through corridors and rooms, I considered how strange it was to not hear him speaking directly to my mind, though I took comfort in the notion that he was choosing to stay out of my head as he had promised earlier in the day. Candles and torches lit my way, eventually taking me down a grand staircase that led deeper into the palace. As I descended, I began feeling as though I was being followed, not by anything living, but the spirits of those occupying this necropolis, this monument of a dead age. I imagined them, prisoners of the Necromancer’s power, watching me like an inmate being taken before the executioner.
“You didn’t bring your companion,” the Necromancer asked as I emerged from the stair bottom into a round chamber.
He stood at its far end, leaning over a tall alchemist’s table. Though his presence remained large and imposing, his stature seemed somehow diminished, and far less intimidating than when we first met, or even during our reunion just hours before. I wondered if it wasn’t simply the smallness of the room, but as I considered my own height compared to his, I could tell that he was something lesser than he was before. He had gone from seeming like a giant to the appearance of a large man, though still taller than any other I’d seen.
A glow rose up from the table in front of him, along with a whiff of smoke, the light from both making his frame appear narrower as well. His skin was pinker, too, infusing his body with a sense of liveliness I never before could have associated with him, though it remained transparent enough to reveal the ghoulish semblances of his bones beneath.
“You’ve changed,” I replied suspiciously.
“Yes,” he mumbled, not looking up from what he was doing. “I thought I’d try something a little less fearsome. Maybe it will help you trust me more. I can tell you remain unsure.”
“What makes you think such an obvious charade is going to influence me?”
“Don’t pretend a couple months in this plain have made you excessively wise,” he scoffed. “I’ll admit that you seem years older, but you still have much to learn, princess.”
He then set down a paper he was holding in his hands and walked around the table, a flashed haze concealing him for a brief second. Then someone else emerged from the haze, the last person I would ever have expected to see. My father.
“Would you not trust me now, my child?” he implored, his voice pure like he was speaking to me from my childhood.
I stepped back in shock, holding my hand against my gasping mouth while tears began wetting my eyes.
“How… how are you here?” I cried out through a sob, reaching out to try and touch his cheek.
But as I did, his eyes and smile, the whole image of his face, immediately faded, replaced by the Necromancer’s comparatively cold guise, though he maintained my father’s stature. I stuttered back in disgust and disappointment.
“I could deceive you if I wanted,” he continued while retreating back behind the table toward an altar up against the wall, his height increasing gradually with each step until he returned to the form he had upon my arrival. “My kind are shapeshifters. The haze surrounding me is a result of that ability. While my form alters as well, it is more the light around me that changes as I manipulate it to produce the illusion of transformation that I want others to see.”
“And the voice?” I asked.
“That is another power, one derived from a memory I drew out of your past when I saw your thoughts. Such knowledge is often the key to unlocking greater talents. That is what I want to teach you, and why I brought you to this place.”
