The Necromancer's Gambit: Endgame

I drop the sample off at Bishop's lab. But she's distracted. “The King wandered off.” She tells me. “He wanted me to give you a message, for you to meet him at the Centre.”

“The Centre? The building we fought our way out of earlier this evening?”

“Maybe there's another Centre we don't know about? Like how Batman kept multiple smaller batcaves hidden around the city, in the event that his main cave was compromised.”

“Yeah. Maybe. He take anyone with him?”

“No. In fact, he made me stay here, for when you got back with the semen sample.”

“And me, too, “Harry walks in with a bucket of KFC and a small chicken leg in his hand. “Despite the fact that I have virtually no expertise in this kind of tracking spell, and would be far more useful as an attack dog or sleeping under a bridge. At least he bought me chicken first,” he finishes, before tearing a hunk of flesh off the leg.

“Pawn and Rook?”

“He sent them on an errand. It was weird,” Bishop says. “I've never seen him so distant. It scared me, but... he wouldn't listen to reason. No matter what I said, whether it was begging him to just wait for you, or trying to convince him not to go to the Centre alone. It all had a very Obi Wan on the Death Star vibe to it.”

“Hopefully he's just melancholic about the loss of his precious Rhemberg. But I want you to get the tracking spell started.”

“So you harvested the semen, did you?”

“I got a little help from Vergara.”

“That only makes it grosser.” She takes the phial from me. “We're set up in the other room- the one I can hose down. Because I'm pretty sure when I open this thing up it's going to reek. And I'd prefer for my lab not to reek of week old corpse spooge.”

“I'll wait out here,” I tell her, “ because I don't want that smell trapped in my noise. Or hair. Or coat. Or really anywhere. Not if I have to go to the Centre from here instead of straight into a shower and change of clothes.”

“You coming?” she asks Harry.

“All the things he said about smell, only in my chicken; also, I’m pretty sure week old corpse spooge will even have an airborne taste, and I don’t want that in my chicken, either.”

“Okay, but don’t eat it all. I’m going to need something to get this smell/taste the hell out of me, too.” She takes a small paper mask and puts it over her mouth and nose, knowing full well it isn’t going to be good enough, and takes the sample into the smaller room.

She isn't gone two minutes before smoke pours out of the room. I can hear shouting, and the frantic casting of several spells. But she cast a safety protocol over the door, so whatever was happening couldn’t spread to the rest of her lab. “Suggestions?” I ask Harry.

“I could try and make the door explosively angry- which would be easier if it were wood and had a death to be upset about.”

“And might just kill her and both of us.”

“Well, we should decide quick, or it’s academic, anyway.”

Then the door opens, and Bishop is standing there, a little blackened, but otherwise okay. “What the hell happened?” I ask.   

“He booby-trapped his spunk,” Bishop says.

“How do you booby-trap semen?”

“With a very specific diet. Have you ever heard that diet can affect the, um, taste of semen?”

“Heard about it? Knight’s one of the premier cum-tasting researchers on the continent.” Harry slaps me on the back for emphasis.

“Well, it does. Changes in diet can have small impacts in the specific chemical makeup of semen. Apparently the necromancer was regulating his diet in such a way that his semen, when mixed with the usual locater spell, started a fire. A not so small, not so easy to extinguish fire.”

We hear a “mrrrow,” and Harry’s cat, caked in soot, scampers out from behind Bishop.

“He singed my cat. I didn't like this ass before. But now he's singed my cat. Just some of her fur, but still. She's flighty enough without being set lightly on fire.”

“So does that put us back at square one?”

“I'm not sure,” Bishop says. “It's not an exact science, using diet to mix a kimia inside your own body. So the spell was weaker than it should have been. It's possible I can counteract it. At the very least, I'd like to give it a try.”

“And how long's this try going to take?”

“Long enough for you to see what the King needs at the Centre.”

“Well that's shitty,” I say. “But wait. Where’s Queen?”

“He’s,” Bishop looks around, and realizes for the first time he’s missing. 

“Maybe he went with King?” Harry offers.

“He was here when King left.”

“After, then,” he adds.

His phone doesn’t ring through- it goes straight to voice mail. “I’ll keep an eye out.” I say. But then the smell of week old roasted semen hits my lungs, and I’m happy to have the excuse to leave.

The last thing I hear as I close the door is, “Gah, it got in my chicken!”

I can't tell if it's instinct or paranoia, but I don't want to be going to the Centre. Baldur quit his offensive, and I trust him at his word that he's going to stay out of things- because he values his own skin more than about anything else, including his crazy racist religion. But there's still something about going back to the Centre that puts me ill at ease.

I get a call, from a number I don't recognize. I pick it up, anyway. “Knight?” It's Devi, frightened, but hopeful.

“Yeah.”

She sighs, full of relief. “I was worried I wouldn't get to you in time.” There’s a long pause, and I look at my phone to be sure I haven’t gotten disconnected. “Don't go.”

“Go where?”

“Wherever you're going right now. Stop. Turn around, and go someplace else. Anywhere else. Come here, even.”

“Why? What happens where I'm going?”

“I don't know. I've been trying to figure that out since I started this divination for you. What I didn't tell you- there's a hole in your future. I can't see anything there. And it's not a matter of energy- I've expended more than I ever have and it's not a barrier that you can break through. There's literally nothing there. And you're rushing right to it.”

“And what's that mean?”

“I don't know. But I've been doing this for a while, now, and I've never seen it before.”

“And what if that hole is there because somebody is trying to prevent me from where I'm supposed to be.”

She's quiet a moment, long enough for me to think I've made a good point. “You of all people ought to know that nothing of the future is written.”

“Me of all people?”

“How many times have you come to me, or to Queen, trying to prevent something from happening?”

“A few.”

“Seven, for me. Four or five, with the Queen, depending on how you count interpersonal conflicts.”

“And if I do take you up on your request for my company, what then? Do things become easier? Do we swerve around the pothole?”

“It's a break. I can't see anything past it. No matter what you do.”

“So this is all general anxiety. Then? Not actually soothesaying- and the opposite of soothing, for that matter. You're just... scared.”

“Not just”

“I'm not discounting your feelings; I'm only saying that this isn't based on anything concrete. And for all we know, the break is being caused by this conversation we're having, that things are such a complete coin toss that how things shake out after this moment is impossible to divine.  I can handle this, okay? I appreciate your concern- really, I do. But this should be the least dangerous thing I do today. Seriously, it's been a pretty dangerous day, but this- should be a cake walk.

“Just... be careful.”

“I will. You want me to call you when I'm done? To help put your overactive imagination at ease?”

“Sure.”

“All right. This number?”

“Yeah, that's my cell.”

“All right. I'll talk to you then.”

The Centre's dark when I arrive. If it weren't for the fact that I confirmed it with Bishop three times that the King wanted to meet me here, I would think the place was deserted.

There aren't any lights on, save for a desk lamp, in the King's office.

“I’ve got Rook and Pawn running something down for me.”

“Bishop said you wanted her and Harry to do the tracking spell at her lab. And that you wanted to see me.”

“Our facilities here are serviceable, but inadequate by comparison.”

“Well? Out with it; because if you’re just feeling vulnerable again, either sit on it, or talk on the way. Because as soon as they get something to move on, I want to be there.”

“Sit. Stay a while.” I hear a familiar clack, a hammer pulling back.

“Is that a gun?” I ask, turning to face him; if it is, he’s holding it under his desk. And there’s nothing to read in his face. “Exactly what the fuck is going on here?” 

“The endgame.”

The second voice is new, but familiar. And I realize it only seems that way, because it reminds me of that dream about the necromancer. I reach for my gun, not particularly caring if it gets me shot.

But I'm not so lucky. The necromancer hits me with a spell I think I recognize- not that that does me any good, because before I even have a chance to think about what that spell means my brain is on fire.

Not literally, of course, but in pain. It takes everything I have just not to fall flat on my face- and I still fall, I just manage to force out a knee to break the fall down into two steps. I can’t move, from my place on the floor, I’m stuck just staring as my muscles twitch.

“You’re bleeding into your brain. It’s an aneurism. Not a serious one, yet, so long as we get you some medical attention. But I wanted to make sure you were pliable, like Castle was, when I do my song and dance.”  

“I admit, you've run me a merry chase. I never anticipated the gambit showing me half the resolve you have. If I'd suspected that, I'd have gone to Seattle, or Boise or some other city in the general vicinity.”

“Of course, you had help, didn't you?” He turns his attention to the King. “I'm sure you've got questions. And that's why I arranged this little sit-down. To talk. I recruited the King first. If you're going to try a takeover, why go through the extra hassle of it being hostile? I mean, it was always going to be a little hostile, because it's a takeover, which is an essentially aggressive act.”

“And he joined you?” I spit the words out between jerks of my body, equal parts angry and unbelieving.

“That is loyalty; even in the face of him calling you here, even with him pulling a gun on you, you're still unwilling to swallow it. That's pretty, in its way. But you remember his heart attack?'

I stare at the necromancer. “No...”

“Just a little something I picked up in Ghana. Strangely, it's actually not that difficult to give a man a heart attack; but it's a real bear trying to give him one he can survive. Having made my presence known, I approached your king, and told him what I'd done. Then I told him I could the same, any time I wanted, to you, your bishop, queen, pawn and castle. Except for the rest of you, since you'd be abject lessons, the attacks would be fatal.”

“He was pliant at that point- though not a complete idiot. He negotiated for your safety. Requested very specifically that we avoid casualties, at all costs. I asked if he thought there was any chance you'd all go for some kind of a merger, to which he said some fairly unrepeatable things. And having seen you all in action, now, I'd tend to agree with his assessment. After all, you wouldn't get into power in the first place if you didn't want to exercise it.”

“Now I'll spare you the details of my forty point plan, but we were all set to nudge you out of office quietly, when Castle got wind of what we were doing. I still don't know how that went down, exactly; I'd been awfully careful not to let him notice that we were in the process of infiltrating his mind. But we had this same conversation with him, the one replete with threatening language and the aura of menace. And despite being nearly paralyzed, he lashed out. Broke the vampire's arm in four places. Had he not been so ridiculously outnumbered he might have killed one or several of us. But he went down.”

“And that could have been the end of it. His death did put us on a far more adversarial trajectory, I'll admit, but really, had it not been for your King playing both sides, we still would have had you wrapped up at least a week ago.”

He turned his attention to the King. “Now, I played it through in my head, and we could have a traditional wizard duel, you know, probing the limits of one another’s defenses, you summon a dragon, I give your dragon ebola and make it shit itself to death. But this is more succinct,” he stabs the King in the back with a knife I never saw, “and besides, more poetic, stabbing you in the back as you tried to do to me.”

The King fights, tries to raise that pistol from underneath his desk. The necromancer garbs hold of his wrist, and the King barely gets it high enough that I can see it. The knife has already stolen so much of his strength that he can't aim it at the necromancer, who manages to twist the gun away from him. The King collapses back into his seat.
 
“For what it’s worth, Erik, I had no intention of murdering you. Or your Castle. But he was too clever; when he found us out, there was no other way to handle things. And I knew it from your face that night, seeing one of your people die, eventually you would turn on us. I never guaranteed Baldur your seat- but I did inform him he was your second if you just didn’t work out. And I feel badly for having lied to you. Your heart attack- that wasn’t me. Just bad genes. And opportunism.”

“I’m going to let you bleed out. It’s a great waste of talent, and it saddens me, but you chose the wrong side, so now I can’t trust you. And trust, well, it’s everything.” He grabs the knife still sticking out the King's back and twists, and the King- Erik- his body tenses one last time before he falls onto his desk.