The Necromancer's Gambit: Skewer

The necromancer turns his attention to me, and impossibly I can see his teeth against his otherwise featureless silhouette. Then I hear someone else, behind him, in the doorway. “Hello, Anthony.”

“Queen,” the necromancer says, turning his attention away from me as the other man saunters into the room. “If I’d known you were coming I’d have done something to make the place more fancy.”

“If you’d known I was coming you’d be a diviner, and not a bastard.”

“That’s not pleasant.”

“And this is?” Queen gestures to the King’s body over his shoulder. “Is there really some dark part of your twisted little mind that believes he deserved this?”

“He was going to tell your Knight everything. Though I’m surprised you haven’t already.”

“You’re a tough man to pin down- and that goes doubly for divining you out.”

“What do you want?”

“I had hoped to watch Knight wring the life from you. But as it stands, I suppose I’ll have to improvise.”

Queen pulls something out of his coat, and I don’t have time to look away. It’s bright, whatever it is, and loud, an explosion of some kind. By the time I can focus my eyes again I can see the Queen doubled over a chair, unconscious. The necromancer’s still on his feet, and he looks back to me.

“Not a hundred percent on what he threw at me, but I have the overwhelming urge to take down his pants and ravish him. That doesn’t sound right at all, does it? But that brings us back to you… I know, you’re going to have trouble taking me seriously, after this, but I lied about your aneurism, too. More terrifying, telling someone their brain is about to drown in blood, than letting them know that they’re just having a grand mal seizure. It’s a nifty little spell of my own design that lowers the seizure threshold to the point where normal brain activity will trigger seizure. You at all familiar with Baron Samedi? The Vodun psychopomp, not the Bond villain. He escorts the dead away from their body; this spell just has him take you for a stroll about town. Makes an excellent aphrodisiac.”

He snaps his fingers, I think for effect, and to cover up the incantation he uses to cancel it, but my muscles stop spasming, slowly. “You’ll be able to stand, but move carefully. Any one of your muscles could give out unexpectedly, and the last thing I want is for you to accidentally bash your brains out.”

“It seems I underestimated you- or perhaps that I overestimated my mercenary. I never intended to keep him, a man like that, too much wanderlust; bloodlust, too. But I never thought you’d catch him so quickly. So I’m willing to offer you the same bargain I gave the King. You can serve in my Gambit, or I can kill you, and likely the rest of your Gambit, too. I have a preference for less resistance, and you could be of value to my efforts.”

I want to tear out his heart with my teeth. But I barely have the strength to mumble “Elise;” I think I taste blood in my mouth.

“You knew her?” He seems to understand me and be genuinely surprised, and I can’t think of a reason he’d fake that. “That is an interesting coincidence. To me she was just a girl, one with wide eyes for magic- but no real talent of her own. But she'd seen magic, and knew it, and she chased it as surely as any other junkie after their fix. I'd presume, given your upstanding nature, you knew her when, not now.”

“Not that it would have changed anything. She was useful- eager- in a way some other woman, one perhaps unacquainted with you, would not have likely been. I’m sorry, for what that counts, if her death pained you- it wasn’t even in my calculations. But I needed her strength. Killing Castle took a lot of juice.”

“I thought you didn’t plan that,” I say, and I’m proud when I don’t stumble on any of it.

“That’s true. But I did plan for a contingency. He just happened to be that contingency.”

“And the mana bomb?”

“Trying to plan for the next contingency. And assuming I don’t kill you, one day you’ll have to explain to me how you accomplished disarming it.”

“I didn’t,” I tell him, as I work my hand into my pocket, around the reservoir.

“What?”

My muscles don’t want to obey, and it feels like I’m moving my entire body through mud, but I take a step towards him, and throw a punch with the reservoir in my palm into his stomach. The impact damages the reservoir, and its energy goes everywhere- though it’s mostly muffled by the necromancer’s body.

A moment later I’m on the floor again. I can’t feel my arm below the bicep, but I can smell cooked flesh. I’m pretty sure not being able to feel the arm is a blessing.

I manage to roll onto my side, and push myself up with my good hand. And then I see movement out of the corner of my eye. The reservoir hurt him- badly- but he’s moving, and, frankly, the room wasn’t destroyed.

It takes another moment for the implication of that to sink in: the son of a bitch absorbed most of energy. If he has long enough to turn that energy back around on me, I know no spell is going to be strong enough to counteract him.

I need my gun. But I pat my pockets, and it’s not where it should be. My mind reels. I pulled it, or tried to, on the King. Then I got blasted, and I must have dropped it. I scan over the floor, cursing the fact I didn’t go for the chrome that would glint in the light. But it’s there, under a chair. I make it half of a crawled step before I fall over, landing on my arm. I feel the grind of broken bones together, and the pain is so much I nearly vomit, and then almost pass out.

And then I hear the necromancer behind me, casting a spell.

But it hits behind me, and bathes the room in colorful light. I roll over to see what’s going on. Bishop and Harry are standing in the doorway. She countered his spell with one that transforms the energy of his spell into light and wind instrumental music.  

“You’re quite an impressive girl,” the necromancer says, still teetering on his feet. “And with that necromancer at your side, I’d dare say formidable. But I will kill the both of you. Or, as I’m a man who enjoys competition, if one of you kills the other, I’ll let the winner live.”  

I know Bishop. I trust her. She could kill Harry with little more than a thought. But she wouldn’t. She doesn’t even consider it, and spends all of her energy glaring at the necromancer, watching for any telltale sign of a new cast.

But I worry about Harry. People panic, sometimes, and I could hardly blame him for it. And I’m not certain the necromancer couldn’t kill them both- especially with the energy I just hit him with.

I get my good hand around my pistol, and manage to get up quietly enough the necromancer doesn’t turn around. Bishop sees me, and her eyes get wide, and I worry she’ll give away the game, until she casts a nasty spell, hurricane winds that peel wood off the walls and force them into dense little burning pellets.

“There we are!” the necromancer yells, as most of the spell cascades off him like water. “Finally, someone with a little fight!” He starts to swirl his arms rhythmically, beginning an electrocution spell. I wrap my burnt arm around his throat and yank him back, off balance, and discharge the pistol into his back.

He gasps, and drops to the floor. I nearly fall on top of him, and probably would, even after catching myself the first time, had Bishop not rushed to support me. Harry takes over for her, as I try to keep a wary eye on the necromancer bleeding out at my feet.

“How’d you know?” I ask, trying to control my nausea.

“The King told me,” Harry says, and we both instinctively glance over at the old man’s corpse at his desk.

“Oh.” I say. Then I notice Bishop, kneeling over the body, taking the necromancer’s pulse. “Can you stabilize him?” I ask her.

“Why the hell would I want to?” she asks.

“Because he doesn’t get to die yet- not nearly that quickly.”