”I swear I’ve spent more time unconscious than asleep ever since I arrived to Valor, that can’t be good for me in the long-term.” Anastacia said and stretched her shoulders. She had just woken up from a patch of moss by the edge of the forest, just close enough to Valor that she could see the city wall in the horizon.

The sun was still up so she couldn’t have been out for more than a couple of hours while King had carried her back – or an entire day. Other than the horrible, horrible deaths of an entire town she thought she had caused, it was quite a nice day to be out and about. Anastacia just hadn’t been able to pay attention to it while walking with Periwinkle.

“Did you kill him? I wouldn’t blame you, someone needs to put him down sooner or later.” She asked from the simulacrum sitting next to her.

King looked like he hesitated for an uncomfortably long time for someone who was only supposed to be doing what he was programmed to do before shaking his head. He then took out his sword and tapped its flat side before swinging it sideways.

“You know that can still totally kill people? Oh well, someone will end him at some point – he’s extremely punchable. I still can’t believe he got the drop on me like that.” Anastacia sighed and threw a rock to burn off some of her annoyance. “What happened today is a prime example of why necromancers are probably the worst thing that has happened to this world. No one should be able to just kill a bunch of random people for stupid shit like this… It makes me think that they need someone to keep them in check, someone besides Coquelicot. Tell me, is it like insanely selfish of me to not do the whole ‘White One’ thing? Periwinkle said that I could save a ton of people, but Emilia said that they’re not my responsibility. Guess the real question is how many lives is my happiness worth? Or can I even be happy knowing it costs lives. This whole situation is unfair!” She yelled and threw another rock.

King didn’t seem to have any answers for her either and simply imitated the necromancer by throwing a rock as well, just considerably further away.

“Maybe I should just flip a coin for it, I bet there’s some asshole god who has engineered this whole situation just to fuck with me. That’d at least make it easy for them to meddle. Or maybe the universe just hates me and wants me to suffer, that seems like something that would happen to me. Nothing in the world can be right unless I’m miserable.” She laughed half-jokingly and then sighed when she realized that it could actually be true. “Oh, and if you thought for a second that you’re off the hook about coming along despite me telling you not to, you’re so very wrong! There’s a whole lot of carrying and dishes in your future, mister!”

Anastacia slowly got up and took a couple of steps to see whether her strength had returned; and to her surprise, she actually felt just fine and hopped around for a bit to wake herself up properly. All the walking and being poisoned had made her hungry though, so they headed back to Valor in the hopes that Rosie had something to offer besides the boring goop from earlier. On the way they warned the gate guard about Periwinkle and asked them to come tell Anastacia immediately if someone even remotely similar looking was seen in the distance. She also advised them to maybe position some archers on the walls, hoping they’d work at least as a deterrent.

As soon as the pair stepped in the inn, Gilbert waved for them to come and sit down with him, Emilia, Dammar and Xamiliere. On the table was a pile of coins and four pieces of paper with something written on them.

“Okay, Anna, what we need for you to do is tell us exactly what happened.” Gilbert explained while everyone else grabbed their pieces of paper.

“Are you serious? You bet on this? Also, no ‘glad you’re okay’ or even ‘welcome back’?” Anastacia asked and started taking coins from the pile. “I’m taking my share because screw all of you.”

“We didn’t have you dying as an option, if that helps? Anyway, here are the possible bets, the pool gets divided between us based on how many right guesses everyone had. So you can just tell us what happened and we’ll handle the rest.” Gilbert said and took back some of the coins from her.

Anastacia looked at the paper and frowned. “Why is ‘She got tricked’ literally the first one on the list? I mean yeah, I did get tricked and shot with a poison dart, but come on!” She sighed and recounted the events of the day. At first, she was annoyed by everyone guessing that she would somehow get tricked, but eventually she warmed up to the game when she could see what everyone had guessed based on their reactions.

“I got nine out of ten right.” Emilia counted. “Are you sure King didn’t kill him?”

“Seven, had her killing the lad, more casualties and her not getting knocked out at any point wrong.” The dwarf laughed.

Both Gilbert and Xamiliere looked at their papers worryingly, both of them only had two right guesses and would end up in the red on the whole bet. The amount of money they lost wasn’t all that much, but both had considered the bet to be a somewhat easy way to get Dammar’s money since they knew Anastacia better than him.

“Did you at least learn something?” Gilbert sighed and crumbled his paper.

“Kind of… I was awake the entire time and did manage to do it in the end. I think I can at least work towards it better since I know what was needed to trigger the whole thing. So I hate to admit it, but it was actually helpful.” Anastacia said suddenly becoming serious again and twiddled her thumbs. “He also reminded me how much I want those assholes dead. I had lulled myself into thinking that it was fine if they just let me be and that I’m only helping Coquelicot because I owe her that much, but I was wrong, those people need to go. Now I’m not even sure if the other side can be left alive either, they might be even more capable of ruining everyone’s lives in the end.”

Gilbert didn’t really know what to say about the sudden serious turn in the conversation. “The world will handle itself in the end, it always has and always will. You are an adventurer now, and adventurers get to do what they want or what other people want, if they pay enough.” He said, relying on some generic advice and gave the necromancer a pat on the head.

“Uh… Thanks, I think I’ll eat something and finish up on my book before making any big decisions.” Anastacia smiled and waved for Rosie to bring her whatever she had ready, which turned out to be some kind of paella with chicken in it. The rice-based menu made Anastacia think that Rosie had bought way too much of it by mistake or because a merchant just wanted to get rid of all of it at once and was willing to go down with the price. It had happened with potatoes a couple of times during Anastacia’s stay in the inn, and it was safe to assume that the boring rice mud would make a return on the next breakfast.

Nevertheless, the meal was exactly what she needed. With her hunger sated, Anastacia fetched Ivory’s notes and sent King into the kitchen with her dishes. She was almost at the end of the book already and only had one chapter and some extra notes left.

As soon as Anastacia opened the book, she noticed that the handwriting was different from the usual smooth flowing one. The new one was jagged and somehow seemed like it was written with a shaky hand. On top of that the paper felt slightly different.

“Hmm.. ‘To the Reader’? Aren’t these usually at the beginning of the book?” She mumbled, took a sip of her dessert coffee and started reading.

“To the Reader

Let me start by thanking you for taking interest in the peculiar methods of Ivory. I have read through these pages a hundred times and still learn something new every time, but the sad truth is that they will forever remain unfinished… I, High Necromancer Alabaster the White, have the regrettable responsibility of telling you that my dear, dear friend, companion and the one person in this rotten world that I consider to be my equal, Ivory the White – or Mad as the others call him, is dead.

Circumstances of his death are still unclear to me, but there are no earthly and only very few higher powers that would be up to the task, which makes me think that he allowed it to happen. After reding his notes, that wouldn’t surprise me. His kindness was something uncommon for our kind and it ended up being what broke him. You see, Ivory was with me when we first launched what ended up becoming my legacy to this world, but his soul was not forged for battle like mine and he couldn’t handle some of the things we had to do. He never admitted it, but I could see it, so I took steps to hide him in a place where he could devote his time to his research and feel useful for keeping the machines at bay in this area, until me and the others would get around solving the issue more permanently.

I can not help but to blame myself for not keeping in touch with him more. I abandoned a broken man into the middle of nowhere and it’s something I will always regret; but it still takes every last bit of my self-control to not bury this pitiful town in the corpses of their burning children for how they treated my dear Ivory, who was doing nothing but keeping them alive! But even then, I am not going to waste all that work by killing them myself, I shall just take comfort in the few people who died before we got here.

After we are done here I will build a monument for him from the carcasses of those damned simulacra and force the people here to take care of it until the ground under us crumbles to dust and the sky burns to ash. That much they deserve.

I will compile the notes from his research and this letter into a volume to preserve what he believed in. I know there will be countless necromancers to continue my path of war, hatred and cruelty, as they are in our nature. Even if everything I build falls and our kind fades into obscurity, there will be a time when necromancers will carve a fleshy path to the top and rule the world again, that is what comes to us naturally. What I hope is that this letter finds itself in the hands of someone who can overcome that nature and become someone Ivory would be proud to call his follower. If by chance, you are someone worthy, do not let my kind drag you down with us, become what Ivory could have been if it weren’t for me – please.

I have the world in the palm of my hand, kings and queens answer to me, the archmagi serve my purposes, the nature itself came to me to form a pact, ancient enemies of men lay conquered and gods have been made to rethink their position in the world; all this I have achieved, yet none of it can bring back Ivory, and the only thing I can do is pass on his manic, shattered thoughts from the last few months of his life, and hope someone understands them.

From a world that lost its light

High Necromancer, Alabaster the White”

Anastacia stared at the letter in silence. “It ended… just like that? There has to be something else here, anything!” She exclaimed and started flipping through the remaining pages, finding nothing but extra notes on some of the chapters and explanations to a few references Ivory had used in his research.

The young necromancer wiped her eyes with her sleeve, asked for a refill for her drink and started over from page one. “Maybe I missed something.”