Pain! Oh, Father of the Dark, it hurts. I’m so much in pain! My whole body is aching.
Damn locusts! They’re skinning me alive. Do I have any skin left? It seems it will never end.
How many years have passed since I’ve been buried here? One, two, ten? Or a hundred?
Time itself has blurred into total dusky looming. A bloody and merciless one.
All my thoughts have been mixed up since I’ve been immured in this stone coffin. Without any possibility of escape. Without any chance for freedom.
I feel endless agony under the teeny-weeny teeth of ghostly beasts that were ripping, shredding, and tearing my immortal flesh like small daggers. Over and over again… They’re driving me crazy.
But I’ll find a way out, or I’m not Reive Eridanus Castro-Firel. And then, I swear, I’ll kill everyone who has taken part in torturing me. Ulfricus, you traitor ass. I hope your soul has never found sanctuary and is being tormented somewhere in the abyss of the Twilight, while I’m decaying here, in immortality. I hope you’re paying for every minute I’ve spent here, in this tomb. Even for every second. And if not, I promise I’ll kill all your relatives. Every person you love. Your wife, your children, your parents, your grandchildren. And your damn cat…
The man’s interior monologue was interrupted by a restrained growl.
Oh, demons, it hurts! But wait. Someone will surely wander across this damn field again. Someone whom I’ll kill without coming out of the ground. I’ll exhaust the last drop of magic. And, one day, I’ll be able to get out of this trap.
Oh, no, who am I kidding? Nobody has appeared here so far. Even animals avoid coming to my field. I don’t sense any living being whose energy I could suck dry and use to appease the burning, even a little... They all sense me. They don’t understand, but they sense that death is there under their feet.
Oh, Father of the Dark, I’ll be decomposing here forever! Damn Ulfricus, Banshee take your soul into the Twilight and love it to death.
The inner voice fell silent, and the man listened attentively to the sounds of the outer world.
Oh, that just can’t be... For the first time in ages! A woman. A very young one. I can hear her heart beating... I feel the energy concealed in her blood.
Come closer, dear. I don’t have to get out of here to play with you.
So sweet... I can feel your nice smell. A strange, unusual smell of blood. What’s wrong with you? I guess, you’re a necromancer. My soul mate. Well, this won’t save you.
Come closer, dear... Yes, this way.
Oh, Dark! You are illuminating magic! It isn’t dark magic, certainly not.
I can’t care less. Any energy will suit me...”
At this point, somewhere on the surface, somewhere nearby, a woman began singing. The accursed man, chained in the living grave, lay down, having suddenly forgotten the respiratory reflex, which still had not been exterminated through hundreds of years spent under the ground. Without air, without life.
She’s got a really beautiful voice! So lovely… I haven’t heard human voices for so long...
The man took a deep breath. Then, a sequence of dark thoughts continued, A girl with a ringing voice and strange magic... You’ve come here to the Ash Field in vain. You’re so enigmatic and courageous.
You’re alive.
But not for long.
I was walking along the deserted field, with my feet sticking in the thick grass. My thoughts were all jumbled together because of the anger and disappointment I could scarcely restrain. Why did it turn out like this? Why? I’ve been preparing this project for a year and a half! Almost two years, even without taking the research time into account. No one has ever studied the language of bone dragons so thoroughly! Now, I can not only write and read in Ashgenrian, but also speak the language a little. What’s more, I’m sure my pronunciation is even better than Professor Gardaren’s! My grandma used to say I acquired the gift of being a linguist at my mother’s knee. Well, I told this to the Professor when I asked him to help me with entering Graduate School. He dared to laugh, when he gave me my diploma (with a C grade) back, and said, “I’m proud of you! Now, you can translate every children’s fa
The smell. A subtle and heady one. Oh, it’s such a long time since I had a woman... A terribly long time... he thought. The man bent over the trembling girl and breathed in the scent of the hot air around her ear. The girl seemed to tremble even more. A sweet smell mingled with fear... Her hand is burning... I can feel her pulse throbbing beneath my fingers... Reive paused. He decided not to do what he had first intended. As he felt the fresh air, the flow of his thoughts changed direction. As if something different, along with the dust and ashes, was disappearing within him. Something old and clawed, cruel and very embittered. As soon as he inhaled the scent, felt the throbbing of her pulse, and the shivering and closeness of a woman’s body, something vehement flared up inside him. His cruelty accrued over years of torture under the heavy gravestones of the curse, began to abate. Yet it did not completely vanish. The man moved aside
He had to think a little. At the very least to bring his thoughts into order. Oh, Dark, he hasn’t been alive for seven hundred years! Reive looked down at the breathless girl and narrowed his eyes. She’d already managed to enrage him. The necromancer bent down, heaved her up by her feet and presumptuously slung her senseless body over his shoulder. But first he cast a glance over his talkative acquaintance and decided her figure was quite what it ought to be. As they say, everything was in place. Not like him. Reive looked at his own left palm. He wrinkled his nose. If he hadn’t knocked the girl out a minute ago, she’d have been screaming like a frightened peacock by now. But he had to admit there were some problems with his hand. It hadn’t fully reconstructed itself. It was a bare bone scarcely covered with flimsy flesh. The necromancer thought a little.
This just won’t do! I didn’t understand what had happened but, at some point, it was as if I’d been switched off from the outside world. I have never fainted. it's pretty safe to say that this loss of consciousness was no accident. It was the work of the stranger. “Why am I lying on a pile of branches in some lair? And why’re you smiling in such a way?” I gasped in embarrassment. The man didn’t even think about explaining himself. He only smiled more broadly. I felt so uncomfortable my throat suddenly dried up. It’s bad enough that this brazen guy brought me who knows where, without having him strip. He was only wearing something like a jacket or a long coat with shiny silver buttons over his naked body. His black hair down to the shoulders had a sheen to it and framed his fine-featured narrow dark face. His dark chestnut eyes were shining impishly under thick eyebrows, and his full lips curved ironically. To my regret, those lips were bit of all righ
At first, Reive didn’t understand what had happened. A black stain appeared on Angelina’s chest, encircling her lungs with long sticky tentacles. She was suffocating. The necromancer frowned in puzzlement. His sharp eyes were used to noticing changes in any situation, and they moved from the burdock where the meat lay, to the branches where the girl was shivering, and then all along the walls of the cave. Reive tried to grasp the reason for her seizure. He could find no reason. There wasn’t any poison in the food. The dry brushwood didn’t emit any black magic. And the shelter itself was an ordinary lair. It could mean only one thing: Angelina was ill. Regrettably, Reive wasn’t a doctor. He was a necromancer. If she kicked the bucket right now, the best thing he could do would be to make her into a nice clever undead girl. Say, a stryga. Or a lich. Though he didn’t even have enough ma
A pretty girl with long honey-brown hair. With large eyes twinkling like stars. And with a cruel smile which had overturned everything inside the necromancer. As if someone had ripped his stomach open, tearing out his bowels with a jagged knife. Her face transformed. Now there was a pale man who had grown grey before his time. He was quite young but had wrinkles under his dark green eyes. The man glared hatred and contempt at Reive, and it was this glare that moved Reive to murder. The necromancer raised his eyes, driving the delusions away and trying to return to reality. But completely unexpectedly, the nightmare became reality. The grey-headed man didn’t disappear. He was sitting on the brushwood beside Angelina with a ghastly smile. The girl didn’t notice him. “What, you didn’t expect to meet an old friend of yours?” Ulfricus said calmly, his dead green eyes burning into Reive. “I killed you,” the necromancer answered scarcely audibly, clenching h
Without raising her eyes to him, she continued, “My name’s Angelina Vallebour. I grew up in the family of a potter, Ilona Vallebour, in the province of Arc. But the woman who replaced my mother wasn’t my real mother. I knew that from childhood, but it wasn’t done to talk about it, even to this day. My real mother gave me to Ilona. And every month, she paid her large sums of money, so I would need for nothing. I shouldn’t have known who my parents were. But one day, I overheard the truth.” The girl paused. Then, she shot a nervous hunted glance at the necromancer. Reive stiffened feeling how the young graduate’s voice held his attention. It wouldn’t let him go. It forced him to keep listening to her story. “So, my real mother turned out to be a very influential woman. Duchess Myria Clarian Castro-Arcs. The owner and sovereign of the whole province of the Arc. The sister of His Majesty the King. She concealed my birth because I’m a child born out of wedlock.”
He’d began acting weird, as if his sight had suddenly unfocused. Then, his face reflected deep despair. I wanted to touch it and run my finger over the slightly down-turned corners of his eyes until his confident mocking expression returned, with the light predatory gleam in its very depth.I didn’t know what came over me but I raised my hand and touched his palm. It was so smooth and hot... For just a moment, an unjustified irrational anxiety exploded in my breast. Then, through the nerves on the tips of my fingers, little lightning bolts began to spark. The longer I didn’t pulling my hand away, the stronger this strange sparkling tension grew between us.Nevertheless, I could be satisfied with my action. The confusion and the oppressive misunderstanding disappeared from the man’s eyes. Now, his eyes were flaming. He was looking only at me. It seemed that it was about to burn me to ashes.No one had ever looked at me like that before. An