Upon opening the door that led to the unlit rooftop, the first thing Anastacia noticed was the unmistakable scent of flowers, something that was unheard of in Mournvalley. While constantly monitoring the surroundings for anything that might pose a threat, she pushed open the door and stepped out. The sun had already set and the only things illuminating the garden were King’s faint blue glow and a small crystal lamp on a table in the middle of the vast garden. Though only barely able to see, Anastacia was able to tell that almost the entire rooftop was filled with hundreds of flowerbeds, only separated by narrow paths between them and a small clearing in the middle. She had never thought something like it could have existed in her home country, much less in the royal castle itself.

Next to the table in the middle were two chairs, one empty and one occupied by a rather non-threatening old lady who was dressed in bright red, or at least that what she seemed like; any necromancer would have been terrified by her oppressive presence – and this did not exclude Anastacia. Despite being slightly distracted by the flowers, she could still feel her knees shaking in the inquisitor’s gaze. It made her remember the few times she had seen Amaranth before. While Coquelicot’s presence had started to feel considerably weaker as Anastacia’s own prowess had increased, Amaranth’s was exactly as terrifying as it had been the first time they met. The leader of the inquisition was staring at the cloudy, starless sky above them and seemed too engrossed with it to even glance at the pair who had arrived to kill her.

“The soil was brought here from elsewhere and bone meal does wonders to it. Rest assured, it’s far too decayed for our uses.” The Inquisitor suddenly spoke. “Do you think there’s a chance we could discuss this first, before you assault a poor old woman like me? You must have something you want to know, and there are things I wish to tell you.”

“What’s there to say? I came here to kill you so that I can finally be free.” Anastacia responded and fixed her pose for better fire magic casting.

“How about ‘why’? Why your life was so… limited and why I didn’t just leave you out of this? After all, things would have been different if I had left you alone. My inquisitors would still be here to defend me, or better yet, my backstabbing second-in-command would be nothing but a stain on my robes. So why did I try to get to you at any cost?” Amaranth asked, no doubt knowing that Anastacia would have to take her bait.

Anastacia checked her surroundings once more before fully turning her focus on the inquisitor, a quick chat would give her a chance to start taking over Amaranth’s body, all she really needed was a fingertip and she could shoot it through the inquisitor’s heart – and she was curious about what Amaranth had to say. “Fine! Why?!” She asked.

The old necromancer cackled. “Splendid! It’s about time you and I have a chat. Let us start with the ‘why’ that was your life here. The main purpose of your sheltered life was to keep you hidden, combined with your aptitude for necromancy, it made you the perfect candidate to be the next Anchor. Just a nameless nobody, chained to the throne. The problems started when it turned out that you were so quick to rebel, and we were forced to keep you in your room from a very young age.” She explained with something that seemed like regret in her voice.

“Keep me hidden, from what, everything nice and pleasant in the world?” Anastacia asked and started to slowly relax her pose.

Amaranth sighed. “There are other necromancers that… saw you as their kin. They wished to be present at your birth and possibly take you with them. Luckily, I was there to fight them off… Ah yes, I remember that day well. As soon as you let out your first cry, your power manifested and gave everyone in the castle a proper shock.” she reminisced with a serious tone.

Anastacia could feel the inquisitor’s power flare out when she mentioned the other necromancers. It was something that happened when a necromancer remembered something particularly unpleasant or got scared by something, not far off from a rush of adrenaline.

“Either way, your powers were dwarfed by your horrible attitude and temper from the second you learned to express yourself. It took a whole team of my students to keep you from killing everyone that angered you when you were only three years old.” Amaranth laughed and continued her story. “We were never able to make you a proper necromancer, but I held out hope for you, we just needed for your rebellious phase to end. I was certain we were getting closer to breaking you, but then that good-for-nothing armless wench pulls off this trick and now everything is in shambles. That brings us to the second ‘why’, why I send the other…”

While the necromancers chatted about the past, King slowly moved towards the inquisitor, trying to get close enough to throw his sword once more. The stars and moon were hidden by clouds, creating extremely suitable conditions for sneaking in the darkness, and not being a necromancer himself made him invisible to his target. Amaranth wasn’t looking directly at him either and was clearly too caught in her reminiscing to pay attention. If it wasn’t for the slight problem of the simulacrum literally glowing, he might well have gotten close enough unnoticed.

Amaranth stopped her story mid-sentence when she noticed King creeping closer slowly. “Your friend is quite interesting too. Managing to tame one of these machines is a feat on its own, no lesser than defeating my inquisitors. How you got past the little test I sent at you earlier makes a lot more sense now that I know you had a simulacrum by your side. That said, he needs to go.”

As soon as the inquisitor finished what she had to say, a thundering roar from the skies above them forced Anastacia to crouch and cover her ears. She recognized it as one of the undead dragons Amaranth had access to, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out what the inquisitor was about to do.

From somewhere in the dark sky, outside of Anastacia’s reach, an enormous skeleton swooped down. On its way, it crushed the parapets running along the edge of the rooftop with it massive claws and destroyed a part of the tower behind Anastacia with its wing, sending rubble flying at Anastacia and collapsing the entire thing.

Unable to see or dodge the falling stones, Anastacia caught one with the top of her head and fell down into one of the flowerbeds. Luckily the rest of the tiles missed her, and the tower itself tipped over away from her, tumbling off the roof and into the courtyard below.

The next few seconds were nothing but a blur in her eyes, and she was only vaguely able to make out King’s glowing armor disappearing into the dark sky after the dragon skeleton grabbed him and took off as hastily as it had landed, ruining a large portion of the flowerbeds in the process. She had tried to warn him, but after getting hit on the head, forming words turned out to be a hurdle she wasn’t able to get over in time. The next thing she heard was the simulacrum’s sword cratering less than a meter from her and embedding itself deep into the dirt.

Anastacia slowly rolled over to her side and tried to get up, but even the slightest movement made her feel extremely ill.

“Oh dear… You should calm down, concussions aren’t a laughing matter for us. At least it gives us some more time to chat before you try to kill me.” Amaranth cackled. “Now, where were we? Oh, right! Why would I risk so much to get to you after you ran off with that adventurer? Child, you are a blunt instrument without an equal and daft beyond belief, so whoever manages to convince you to do their bidding will have no one to rival them. Because of that, my goal was always to prevent you from falling into the hands of some undesirable people, and hiding you seemed like an obvious solution at the time, considering your lack of motivation to learn. I now understand that it was not the correct choice to make and can only apologize for what hardships you have gone through under our care.”

Anastacia tried her best to curse at the old inquisitor, since calling her treatment ‘care’ was nothing short of insulting, but whatever she tried to say got muddled up in her mouth and became nonsense. In the end she simply screamed in frustration to get her point across.

Amaranth stared at the sky, where her dragons were still hidden and ready to charge in within seconds in case Anastacia got back on her feet. Far in the distance, she could see a glowing light blue lump fall from the clouds, followed by the dragon that had briefly landed on the rooftop and had since lost its connection to her. “Quite something, that friend of yours.” She commented and tried to retake control of the dragon, but it had already been torn to pieces. “As I was saying, hiding you proved to be a foolish effort on our part, we should have known that you are not someone who can just be stowed away that easily. When you ran off, I finally realized what I should have done from the start: teach you to continue my life’s work! I know that you do not possess the knowledge needed to see the full picture of what is at stake here, but that could all be fixed if you would just calm down and allowed me to teach you for the few years I have left. I had previously hoped that my duties would have fallen on Coquelicot with my rank, but that obviously isn’t going to happen.” Amaranth sighed and carefully got up from her seat. Despite being extremely youthful for her age, she was getting on in years and couldn’t run around like she used to in her past. “Mournvalley is lost, there’s no denying that; and it is a grave blow to my plans of safeguarding this world from things worse than you can even imagine and returning us necromancers to our former glory in the process.”

A second dragon landed on the roof, though far more carefully this time, it folded its massive wigs and lowered one of its claws near Amaranth, who stepped on it, got carefully carried over the rubble to Anastacia and was lowered back down next to her.

Anastacia had no idea what she was talking about and was still having trouble with moving without violently throwing up. She was definitely far from being collected enough to threaten Amaranth with necromancy, so she couldn’t do anything as the dragon lowered its claw on her and pushed her into the dirt.

“The situation being what it is, killing you would be the absolute last option I’d choose here, since I’d have to start looking into alternative solutions of protecting this world and none of those are exactly great.” She sighed and stared at the lights from the rebellion’s camp. “So how about it? If freedom is what you desire, I can offer you some, but it comes with the burden of knowledge and responsibility. You are perhaps the only person in existence that has the power to carry my mantle, so I beg you, please take my offer so I don’t have to kill you here.”

As the skeletal dragon pressed harder on her, it became extremely clear to Anastacia that picking a fight with someone as experienced as Amaranth, regardless of power was possibly the most idiotic thing in the long list of stupid things she had done in her life, and increasingly likely the last one she would do. She could also feel the warm blood flowing down from where the piece of tower had hit her and it did not help the situation.

Amaranth was right about one thing though: Anastacia wanted freedom above all else, but only with her own conditions. No matter the consequences, she was not going to accept a deal from anyone in Mournvalley anymore. She would rather let the dragon kill her than accept. But out of the same frustration that boiled over whenever her life was threatened, came the thing she wanted almost as much: revenge. If this was going to be the end, it would be the end for both of them.

Anastacia started grasping the dirt around her, with what seemed to be nothing but panicky trashing to Amaranth, until her hand found what it was looking for: the hilt of King’s sword.

There was one thing no necromancer would ever plan for their opponent to do, even for the ones that were able to use living matter, it was considered far too risky and even attempting it was considered idiotic at best, and insane at worst. Anastacia used the remnants of her consciousness to focus on her own arm, just to be able to hold on to and swing the freakishly heavy slab of metal once. Almost immediately, her right shoulder popped out of its joint and elbow followed its example, the bones in her arm were not ready for such a feat either and started to give out and fracture as the sword lifted from the dirt. Screaming in both agony and anger, still awake only because of the enchanted ring on her thumb, she swung the sword once and passed out, exhausted.

Wholly unprepared for such an attack, Amaranth didn’t have the time to react before the tip of the sword tore through her throat. The inquisitor fell on her knees as the dragon next to her started to crumble and the ones hidden in the sky started to crash down into the wasteland around the castle. She quietly cursed both Anastacia and Coquelicot, before freezing in terror as she finally saw the violet cloak on the ground next to her opponent. In her mind it could only mean one thing, she was too late, the violet sect had found Anastacia. She shed a single tear over her failure before bleeding out and collapsing next to Anastacia.