Dirge for a Necromancer - By Ash Stinson Page 0,47
unless it was built up enough by that point that he didn’t need to dash out there, in which case he’s an idiot and really deserved to die…hm. This explains why he wouldn’t shut up about that damned sword of his though.”
“It’s rather sad,” said Deggho, mostly ignoring Raettonus’ comments on the story. “He’s been dead for a thousand years, and he’s still here. How does one become a ghost, Magician? Is there some other fate—a better fate—that might await me when I die? Or am I going to become a ghost, haunting this little study?”
“God knows,” said Raettonus. “I don’t know any more about death than anyone. Where I’m from, we believe ghosts are people who died violent deaths, or else people who have such a strong desire to accomplish something that they cannot depart from the plane of the living. But who knows? I had a servant who was dead—I left him in Ti Tunfa when I came here—but he was killed and revived in quick succession, so he never got a peek beyond the veil of death. No one who has seen what Heaven and Hell are like has ever come back to tell us. Not that I’ve ever heard of, at any rate—but I suppose if I haven’t heard of it in all these centuries, it’s safe to say that there simply isn’t anyone who’s truly died and then come back.”
“What do you think hell is like?” asked Deggho wistfully as he looked upward at the ceiling. “I think hell is this room, myself.”
The magician mulled the question. At length he answered, “I guess I don’t really believe there is a hell. I think, perhaps, when you die you just…” His stomach lurched at the thought of Sir Slade’s soul just blinking out of existence after his death. “I don’t know what I believe about hell,” he amended quickly. “I never really thought about it.”
Deggho set down his brush and leaned back in his chair. “You never thought about it? Aren’t you a necromancer?”
“I raise the dead; I’m not required to know or guess about anything beyond getting them to stand up and stop rotting on my rug.”
The goblin looked morosely at the floor. “I don’t even have rugs,” he said. “These stone floors make my feet cold in the morning.”
“Pity, that.” Raettonus yawned and stood up.
“You’re not going already, are you?” asked Deggho, nearly knocking over his easel as he shot to his feet. “You only just got here!”
Raettonus waved to him lazily and walked out the door, leaving the goblin frowning after him.
* * *
Raettonus was dreaming.
It was definitely a dream, because he didn’t seem to have a body, which was something he’d certainly had when he went to sleep.
He was looking down on a desolate, colorless wasteland as an elf with long, white hair crossed it toward an enormous wall made of iron and bone. He carried a bag over his shoulder, and his once beautiful robes were dirtied and torn. The elf paused and turned in Raettonus’ direction, his yellow eyes glinting through the eyeholes of his ancient wooden mask, but Raettonus didn’t think that he’d actually been seen. He didn’t have a body, after all.
After a moment, Kimohr Raulinn turned back toward the gate and resumed his trek. From the top of the iron wall a number of ghastly, gray creatures watched his progress with soulless black eyes. They had no lips, and their sharp teeth were visible, glinting metallically in the colorless twilight. The creatures were something awful, with flat, cruel faces like to those of goblins. Above the gate, clad all in black plate armor, stood Cykkus, his eyes glowing red within his helm as he half-spread his enormous, leathery black wings. He called down in Zykyna, but Raettonus found himself understanding all of it. “Kimohr Raulinn!” cried black-winged Cykkus. “You cannot pass these gates—not with that.”
“I don’t see that you could keep me here,” Kimohr Raulinn called back, readjusting the bag slung over his shoulder. “Open your gates, Cykkus.”
The death god leaned forward, gripping an iron spike that jutted up from the wall. “You can leave if you leave without that bag,” Cykkus said. “But you know that if you try to get through here with that, I have no choice but to stop you.”
“Come now, Cykkus,” said Kimohr Raulinn. “You can’t stop me. Open your gates.”
“If you insist on going down this route, I cannot guarantee that you’ll ever leave here,” Cykkus said. “I don’t want to