Prologue.

The moist soil dirtied the man's boots as he continued to trek down the path to an abandoned graveyard. Dark was the sky and it almost looked like it was going to rain soon. that fact didn't bother him though. He'd be out in a jiffy once he finished the job enough to keep him dry.

Around him was a forest with slender trees and overgrown shrubbery. Some distant ahead, at the end of the pathway, the gate of the cemetery lay open, its hinges almost falling off the support columns and its bars, rusty and chapped. 

For a mage like him and one that had walked the earth for quite some time, he had been to different kinds of places, enjoyed his time while there and met some lively people who had no clue to what he was. 

But this one, however, was a different story.

He had never been in this cemetery before, or any cemetery for that matter. He hated such places, but he had to tolerate it for now. After all, what he was about to do would be all worth it in the future. 

Once upon a time, he came across a book meant for it... Necromancy. Instead of putting it on a shelf, he reads its contents and even practised the spells.

He was here in a cemetery almost forgotten by time to resurrect a certain woman. 

He stared at the very ancient tombstone almost swallowed up by the ground. It was particularly set apart by the other tombstones around the premises. No statue of angels or gargoyles stood sentry or near around it, just untrimmed shrubs and towering trees that looked as old as time.

Carved on the black stone was the name only he could see as it was unanimous, but for him, he knew exactly who this person was buried six feet below.

From his coat's pocket, he fished out a booklet so small with tattered edges. 

He flipped a page and with the bookmark and then chanted its contents while shutting his eyes close.

The next few minutes, everything around the cemetery changed. It was covered in thick fog, it was surrounded with a sulfur-like smell that was mixed in blood and it was deadly silent, the forests sounds muted.

The man, being his first time raising the dead, expected a gruesome event to occur next like a hand pushing up from the soil and a head popping out thereafter but none of that happened.

A concentration of fog appeared on top of the tombstone. It twisted and whirled round and round until a body materialized.

"This is a surprising... development," said the woman with a certain echoing voice. She cocked her head up and gazed at the man before her, cracking up a grin when she felt a familiar dark aura around him.

"For you to resurrect me, I'm assuming you need my help? Who are you and what do you need?" 

The man's eyes lit up. This what exactly he expected from the woman known to be a powerful witch.

"I'm a friend. That's all you need to know for now about me. As for the reason why I raised you out of your deplorable state," he paused, examined her up and down and then cringed at the side of her wearing Old World clothes and looking less motherly, "You'll know soon... First, let's get out of this hell. I don't want my clothes wet with the rain."

The woman grinned some more. "As you wish," she said

At the woman's command, a bright circle of light with weird scripts emerged on the ground where they stood. 

Seconds later they disappeared leaving the cemetery in its usual dull atmosphere.