Dirge for a Necromancer - By Ash Stinson Page 0,13
polite greeting to him, but didn’t look him in the eye. Raettonus scowled at the soldier until he turned a corner and was lost out of sight. After a moment had passed, he sighed and started toward his chambers. It was the same as ever—he didn’t know why he had expected anything to be different. He was born feared, had always lived feared. It didn’t matter where he went or what he did.
Lost in his thoughts, he wandered around the fortress for a while, fingers hooked through his belt, head down. He thought about the little obsidian gryphon lying on his desk. Someone had reached out to him through a dream, for a reason he couldn’t imagine. There was nothing particularly threatening about the man in the dream’s manner, but the things he had said and the way he had said them… Raettonus couldn’t help but feel vaguely disturbed by the whole ordeal. Something wasn’t quite right about that elf. Not to mention, Raettonus simply didn’t like the idea of someone having that much power over him—being able to just pull him, dreaming, into something like that.
He descended some stairs absentmindedly, blindly walking through the citadel. Somewhere a clock was ticking very faintly. He could hear the ocean, out beyond the thick stone walls, beating on the cliff with all its watery might. He passed by a couple of centaurs, nestled close together in a hallway, holding hands and whispering to each other. Raettonus continued on, paying them little mind.
It was a long time before he realized that he was lost. He had ended up in a stark, cold hall he was certain he had not passed through on his way to his own room or to the citadel’s shrine. With a frustrated grunt, he turned and backtracked toward the hallway where he was certain he’d seen the centaurian lovers before, but he found no trace of them. He called out, but his own voice echoed back, sounding bitter and alone. Somewhere a clock was ticking very faintly.
He started down the hallway, hoping he’d chance upon the pair of centaurs again, though he was certain they had already left to take their turn at the watch or maybe to train in the courtyard. The ticking of the clock grew fainter and fainter as he traversed the shady hall. He came to a staircase and descended it, wondering which floor of the complex he was on. He passed by some hangings of the Royal Zylekkhan coat of arms—a hoof with a sword behind it on a checkered field of red and purple—before he reached the next floor down. No torches burned at all on this floor, but Raettonus’ flesh began to take on a faint orange glow, providing him enough light to navigate the hall by. The floor was grimy and it smelt of disuse. With a sigh, Raettonus ran a hand over his head.
“Great,” he muttered to the darkness. “I’m never going to find my way out of here. I should’ve been given a map. That should’ve been part of the agreement…”
He squinted into the blackness, which his own illumination did not dispel. Certainly this floor—or at least this wing of the floor—was abandoned, and he had not passed there. However, instead of going back, he pressed on in hopes of finding another stair to take him back up, hopefully to a place he recognized. He heard a scratching from far off in the shadows and put his hand on his rapier, hoping to God there weren’t rats hiding in the darkness.
Just thinking about rats made it hard for him to breathe. In the complete darkness around him, there could’ve been thousands of rats, crawling all around each other with their beady eyes and their disgusting, bald tails. Raettonus’ chest tightened as he thought about those horrible, filthy animals watching him from the shadows, full of disease, death clinging to their fur. He shivered and reached out with his left hand, a fireball appearing in his palm. Warm, orange light filled the area, and Raettonus could see that it was free of rats—though it was full of cobwebs. Whatever the reason for the room’s abandoned state, it had obviously been that way for quite a while. Raettonus’ pulse began to slow, and he could breathe again.
By the light of his fire, Raettonus could see he was in some sort of large chamber instead of a proper hallway. He guessed it might’ve been a dining hall at one time by the