“What is it?” Mike asked startling the mage as he stepped up to his side.

Troy snorted, not amused at being bothered. His annoyance passed almost as quickly as it arrived.

“It’s a second chance is what it is,” he answered.

The answer meant nothing to Mike, making it useless. “What do you mean? What second chance?”

Troy was already lost in his thoughts. He couldn’t be distracted by logical questions. Instead he answered Mike’s questions with a couple of his own.

“You’ve seen my new book? Felt it?”

Mike hesitated to answer. Could anyone feel a book? But he knew the answer.

As absurd as it seemed he had in fact felt the book.

It felt cold. Deathlike. Oppressive. He had not gotten a good impression from it. He also had the distinct feeling it ran counter to Troy’s own system-given fire elemental affinity.

Troy read the answer on his face, without needing him to say a word.

“I knew you noticed it. You’re the only one whose gaze lingered. The only person to think it was a strange way to spend my credits. You really can feel it can’t you? I’m not wrong?”

Mike wanted to deny it, to ignore the book entirely. His instincts screamed it was bad news. But Troy was so excited and lying didn’t gain him anything. He answered succinctly.

“It feels cold. Almost like death.”

Troy laughed, “amazing you really can feel it. Yeah that’s exactly right. There is a perfectly valid reason it feels like death though. It’s the grimoirie of an apprentice necromancer. It was the best I could afford. At least he was taught by a real master.”

Mike stared back at him neither excited nor repulsed. He’d played enough games over the years to understand the theoretical appeal of the necromancer class.

Controlling vast armies of skeletal warriors, punctuated by stronger undead and other foul death magics. It was a mage class built primarily for solo play – or, in parties, crowd control. If anything in the new world-turned-game its appeal was even greater.

Mike just failed to see how it fit with the knife and their situation in general.

“Hold up. Rewind. Finish your first thought. Why were you excited about the knife?”

Troy nodded. Still excited he cleared his throat and straightened his robes. But despite his regained calm he didn’t immediately start talking about the knife. He began to explain his choice of grimiores instead.

“I bought the grimoirie to learn about zombies – from the source so to speak.”

A true knee jerk reaction Mike couldn’t help saying, “but they could have been medical or voodoo zombies, not necromantic.” He’d played enough games and read enough fiction to know there wasn’t just one type of zombie.

Troy smiled, almost but not quite, condescendingly.

“I did consider those options. In fact there was a voodoo priestess’s grimoirie, one who worshiped a fire loah, which would have been more compatible with my existing magic. A little research into voodoo zombie creation was enough to rule it out. Medical zombies too.

Maybe you didn’t notice but these zombies are all cold. Dead.” Seeing confusion written plain on Mike’s face he held up his hand, “No you don’t have to ask. I’ll explain,” Troy cut off Mike’s questions before he could ask them.

“Just think about it. Any time you’ve touched the zombie’s they’ve felt room temperature or colder right? Well the voodoo zombies I looked at are brought back to life by igniting their soul’s fire again. That brings back a base desire to feed. A warmth also seeps into their bodies. By the same token medical zombies are constantly running a high fever.

Of course that’s all just conjecture. But it was enough to make me realize I needed to look for magic to create “cold zombies”. That’s how I found my grimoirie on necromancy. It has nothing to do with fire or fever.”

Troy paused looking at Mike like he was explaining basic math – one plus one is two. It didnt feel so basic to Mike.

But it was impressive. Unless Troy was full of it, he was claiming to have discovered how to recreate zombies like the ones they were fighting. Less than twenty four hours ago they hadn’t even known zombies were real. Now Troy could make them.

“Like I said, my original goal was to find their weaknesses. If a line of salt, or a phrase in Latin, would stop them I wanted to know.

Except it turns out these basic zombies we are fighting are too simple even for that. They take zero effort to build. There is no spell work or enchanting involved. Literally all that’s needed is a dead body and magic. More specifically the life energies used in magic – called mana.

Just inject a corpse with mana and it gets up and walks again. There are obvious side effects of course. No safe guards were used or control systems put into place. The zombie’s are literally mindless reanimated corpses. Blank slates.

It does seem the system somehow allows them to level. Consequently they slowly gain an ever increasing strength of will and autonomy. But I have to admit that side of things is beyond me right now.”

Mike stood there dumbstruck for a moment that magic could be so simple. Inject mana into dead body and it comes back as a zombie? An idiot could achieve that. Assuming he had the ability to generate mana anyway.

There were several implications to Troy’s research. Potentially the undead tide could not only be stopped, but controlled, even directed.

There was just one thing bugging him.

“What does this have to do with that damn knife?” Mike asked pointing.

Troy rolled his eyes at the ‘Orc’s impatience. He wasn’t done with his explanations. Obviously everything he was saying would lead back to the knife. But Mike was too damn impatient.

“Obviously the book talks about more than zombies…”

Mike couldn’t help snorting. What Troy was actually saying – he felt – was he forgot the question Mike had asked him in the first place.

It wasn’t true and wasn’t fair to Troy for Mike to write him off like that. Troy had simply chosen to share all of his new understandings rather than the strictly pertinent ones. It was a show of Tory’s trust not an attempt to avoid answering questions about the knife.

Glaring at Mike, Troy cleared his throat, “I would think some people would be more grateful considering what I’ve learned.”

Mike rolled his eyes. Privately he swore, ‘but i can’t know what you’ve learned until you share it!’. Publically he played along, apologizing he begged to be enlightened.

“Very well.” Troy said, somewhst appeased, “the ‘knife’, as you call it, is vampiric in nature. Specifically it contains the spirit of a lesser vampire.”

Mike was lost. He admitted as much.

“Everything else aside, what Im saying is by sacrificing this dagger – through a minor necromantic ritual – we can potentially revive a fallen companion as a vampire… Well as a lesser vampire anyway.”

Mike understood the second time. Not the how. But the how didn’t matter to him anyway. All that mattered was the fact they had a chance to revive someone.

For a moment he couldn’t breathe. Then reality came rushing back. His smile became a serious stoic mask.

“Three questions,” Mike said struggling to remain calm, “first question, what is the exact cost?”

“U-uh exact cost is…”

“Second question. How sure are you it will work? A ballpark percentage.”

Again Troy stammered out an indecisive statement as Mike continued over him.

“Third question. What could go wrong?”

Troy stared at Mike for several minutes. The silence hung awkward in the air. Both Dan and Jessica excused themselves to return to the roof and inform everyone else what had happened.

Still they sat there quietly staring.

Just as Mike’s patience reached its end, Troy cleared his throat.

“I will answer your questions, but first I will say this, a resurrection item from the system cost a minimum of ten thousand credits and a C rank reward. It also requires a complete intact body and a safe zone That’s how much the system ‘valuates’ the ability to defy death.”

Mike nodded. If Troy said it was that high it meant he had already looked it up. The numbers were intense but not unbelievable.

Seeing he wouldn’t have to argue Troy continued, “so you can see how circumventing the system to revive someone would likely have risks involved?”

Mike nodded. That much was obvious. All he wanted to know was the level of risks. So he was making an informed decision, not just a blind leap of faith.

“Very well then. To answer the first question. What is the cost? I do not know. It could be as simple as credits or as dark as years from our lives. What I do know is according to the spell, the more who participate in the ritual the less each must give up.”

Again that made sense. Mike nodded keeping his silence.

“Your second question – will it work? Is intimately connected to the third -what could go wrong? The short answer is it will work. Once the forces are invoked they will complete their task. How they complete it is where the problems come in. I have no guarantee the only soul we will pull back will be Yunah’s or that she will even want to come back. In either case we could end up with a monster in our midst.”

Understanding the risks Mike sighed. The smart answer was to walk away. But he knew he couldn’t do that. A new question occurred to him then.

“Its probably stupid to ask but we only get one revive out of that thing?”

“Yes. One spirit one revive. And everyone else is pretty mangled up. Yunah’s spine can be restored with a potion then her soul can be restored from the ritual. None of the others are as lucky. Even if she wasn’t already our choice she’d still be the only option.”

Mike set him to work. Then he purchased a couple of potions. Waking Sara first he explained the situation and she agreed to join in sharing the cost, then they restored Yunah’s ‘vessel’ for the ritual.

Soon the floor was covered in chalk lines and circles interspaces with Latin, Sanskrit, oracle bone script and even older languages. In the middle of the circle lay Yunah’s body. Hands crossed under her pert breasts she clutched the vampiric dagger point downward towards her naval. Pale white with raven dark hair she was only missing the vibrant red lips to be a ‘Cinderella awaiting her Prince’ or another ‘sleeping beauty’.

“Take your places,” Troy said looking up from where he was just finishing a section of the spell work.

Mike hesitated. He’d been expecting they would call everyone from the roof down to share the costs. But Sara and Troy were already moving and the circle had begun to glow ghostly white. The ritual was happening with or without him.

He took his place with a grim smile of resignation. He had wanted her back it was only fair he pay the cost. Troy was only involved as a chance to test his new magic and Sara had just exited a coma for the second time in twelve or so hours.

He was under no delusions about who would be paying ‘the price’.

At least he went in thinking that way. It soon became apparent something was wrong with the distribution of cost.

Troy alowly began to shake and sweat, his face a mask of pain. Mike watching his struggle however felt only the barest tingling over his skin. If Sara felt even that much it was hard to tell.

The ritual was not just a few hands waves and mumbled words in some foegotten demonic tongue. It drew on longer and longer. The more time passed the more obvious the ritual’s costs became.

First Troy’s robes began to smoke then his skin crackled and painfully burned away without so much as a pause in his chanting. The magic had its hold. The spell would be finished.

Even as he burned down to skeleton his voice continued chanting, his gestures and movements directed by magical force not tendon and muscle.

As the inevitable climax built Troy’s hands shot up toward the heavens and the dagger upon Yunah’s chest shattered in a spray of dark black smoke. The smoke rushed down her throat through her node and mouth causing her body to jerk and twitch. Slowly color returned to her skin.

At the same time the magic released them finally allowing Troy’s screaming howling pain to be heard in one compressed inhumane yowl. His bones collapsed into a heap as his robes turned to ashes around him.

To the side Sara collapsed spitting up a mouthful of congealed blood on the concrete and passing out. Her shallow breathing still visibly pumped her chest up and down. But she was clearly down for the count.

Confused and alone, only Mike stood unaffected.