Chapter 68. The Vilest Undead
Jextor laughed and reached over the table. The shovel-sized hand whooshed at me and I reacted reflexively, driving cold into the left side of my body. The hand cracked on my shoulder and bounced away with a boom. The legs of my chair creaked but held. I gasped at the cold radiating from one side of my body.
Jextor looked at his hand, raising both eyebrows high up his bald head. “Like slapping a boulder. I have to hand it to Falar, he knows how to pick them.”
The hall was quiet. All of the students were staring at Jextor and me.
“Still alive?” Fek called from the other side of the hall over the heads of the other students.
“I’m good,” I shouted back.
“Nice!”
Jextor picked up his fork again. “You’re going to ruin your appetite with that, you know. Let the Null drain slowly down and bleed it into the ground through your feet. It likes to go down, so work with it and don’t filter it through your brain.”
I did what he told me, closing my eyes and focusing on the cold. The noise and discussions started again in the hall around me, but I tuned them out. I shivered as the ice flowed through me, breathing out. The air was so cold it fell on my lap like a blanket and rolled off it. “Still better than a broken shoulder,” I said, shivering.
“Hmm-m. Useful reflex, but be careful about it,” Jextor said, munching as he spoke. “The more you use the Null, the more natural it will feel to reach for it. The stories you hear of the vilest undead are often about wizards like you or me, who forgot they were once people.”
“Like you and me?”
“Well, like you. I’m not glum enough for that to be a problem! Drink up, you moping gremlin!”
I picked up the goblet, mostly to hide behind it. A wizard like me. I wasn’t a wizard.
Jextor took a big gulp and banged the empty goblet down on the table. “You’re too tense for your own good. Find something to live for and live a little, that is my suggestion to all serious necromancers. Especially as serious as you, hah!”
“I’m working on it,” I said, glancing over to where Fek, Grit, and Minnelil were sitting. “I think.”
“Too much thinking. Just like Falar,” Jextor said, picking up his fork again.
I flinched at that, glancing to the side. What a spiteful thing to say, but it reminded me of something Falar had said on the mountain. “He said you could teach me.”
“I could, but I shouldn’t,” Jextor said. His voice became quieter and he talked more slowly, like he was actually thinking about what he was saying. “You have instincts and talent you can hone, but you need to temper them with knowledge. Leaning on ability will take you to an early grave. Yours or someone else’s.” He stopped and stabbed his fork into a whole turnip. “No. You are a first year student. I will teach you when you are ready. You are Falar’s responsibility for now.”
“Great,” I said. It was hard to decide if that was a relief or a disappointment. I didn’t enjoy the idea of Falar tempering me with knowledge, but being taught by Jextor was hardly more appealing. He had killed me once already. At least I had bitten him afterwards. I chuckled at the thought and tasted the wine again. The fumes rose straight up my nose and I blinked to ease the stinging behind my eyes.
“Good stuff, eh?” he said. “Thank you for the lunch, student! I have to rush to put finishing touches on more skeletons. Most of the ones can barely hold together, so it’s a bit of a chore.”
“How about the one in the third workshop from the left?” I asked, putting down the goblet.
“Immaculately, but that’s to be expected. Handiwork of another uptight stickler. Now, she I could teach.”
“Don’t you dare,” I said, imagining him shouting and waving his hands at Minnelil, having pushed her into a corner. On the other hand, Grit had wanted to use the Conspice only to learn how to do it. And Minnelil had complained about her studies progressing slowly. “I mean, could you?”
“Perhaps!” Jextor shouted. “Send her to me, if she so wishes.”
I pouted, nodding. I wondered if I was doing her a favor or sending her to be slapped to a pulp. Well, Minnelil could decide what to do for herself.
Jextor stood up and bowed to me. I waved a hand at him. He wheeled around and marched out. The hall seemed much quieter after he had stepped out.
I had nothing to do.
Grit and Minnelil had both said they wanted to take a nap and told me to stay away because they didn’t want to be distracted. Grit thought she knew so much and was being so clever, and I was annoyed that she was right about it.
Clickens hopped off my shoulder and went to pad and needle the duvet full of little holes before curling into a pile of bones on it.
Fek had gone straight back to the reanimation workshop. Ferne probably would have wanted me there to babysit him, but I had done more than my share already and Lombarte was still in the class. Staring at his copper ponytail was the last thing I wanted to do all afternoon.
All that left me sitting on the platform at the top of the Academy, hanging my legs down and watching the wind swirl the snow around. I practiced drawing the runes I knew: fire, light, air. Basic elemental building blocks of the world, Ferne had called them. What could you build with light?
She had warned us time after time about drawing anything that we didn’t understand, but said that combining runes together was relatively safe. Each rune had to be perfect and connected to the previous one, attached based on the drawing order of each rune. The fire rune was drawn from the bottom spike to the curve on the top, which meant the air rune was hard to draw, as it flowed from the top to the bottom.
Ferne had showed multiple ways to handle it: drawing both runes at a sharp angle so they pointed away from each other at ninety degrees. Bending the fire rune forward so slightly that the world didn’t notice, enough to have room to draw the air rune straight down. The explanation sounded like something Jextor would have said.
I paused, finger hovering in the air. Jextor probably would have gone even further. Ignored both ideas and drawn the runes on top of each other, laughing at the rules as something people with no imagination bothered with.
I quieted my mind. The howling of the wind was the backdrop to everything in here, always there. Like a mattress to lay against. The mana bubbled low in my chest and I touched it. Rules, runes, Jextor and his spiderweb of magic forming a circle around Grit.
I breathed out and opened my eyes, drawing the first line of the fire rune.
Worth a shot.
I drew the rest of the rune and then did it again. I had practiced, but I still hesitated going too fast. A week ago Fek had messed up the rune and it had torn, bled so much mana into the room that we had to keep the door open for hours to get rid of the stench of ozone.
On the third try, I was sure the rune was good enough. It tingled in the contained way that a good rune did, not leaking mana and sending shivers down my whole arm, but sizzling behind my eyes. The air rune was more complicated than the fire. It broke out swirls, curling back on itself without crossing over its own lines at any point. Real annoying to draw.
I drew it anyway, right on top of the fire rune. The lines bled to each other, their edges blurring together. The resulting symbol looked spiky and angry, three times as complicated as either of the original runes. What would happen if I fed it with mana?
The wind brushed my face and there was mold on it, stronger now. I flinched and gagged, my finger separating from the rune.
I wiped it from the air, brushing it apart with my hand. What the hell had I been thinking?
Maybe Jextor had been right. I should try to stay away from him so that I wouldn’t get more dumb ideas.
“Whatever,” I said to the wind. It had smelled like mold, but that shouldn’t be my problem. Jextor had said so.
It didn’t make me feel much better.
Thank you for another week at the Academy! Next week, Lina, Grit, and Minnelil will visit the library for some light reading and revelations about some artifacts. It also turns out that Falar has written a book about Jextor!
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