The Necromancer

Prologue, Part 2

The soft sound of a bowstring's twang echoed through the tunnel, and Gerold collapsed into a heap of bones that slowly rolled and rattled down the gentle incline. I don't know why I bothered to name him or the other skeletons; Lirk was really the only one who actually responded to his own name. But it just made them seem... I don't know. Better company, I guess. Gerold's skull came to a stop against my boot as I stood from my throne. The intruder was just barely visible, crouched in the shadows and taking aim at the next of my minions. An adventurer!

"Wait!" I called to her. "Wait, don't shoot them!" They're all I have, I almost continued. Luckily, the adventurer stayed her hand. But she kept the arrow nocked and pulled back, ready to fire, as she slowly emerged from the darkness. She wore a mottled green-and-brown leather jerkin along with a few mismatched pieces or armor so tight that her breasts were popping out the top. But she moved quickly and gracefully, almost like it was all a part of her own skin. Peeking over her shoulder I could see the hilt of an Elven sword glowing with an unnatural blue aura. Her eyes darted from side to side, waiting for one of the skeletons to make a move against her. They just continued digging as I'd ordered; none of them even noticed that Gerold had been killed. Well, he was already dead. Disassembled, I guess?

"Come in, come in!" I told her. "No need for all this violence!" I gestured around at the meager chamber that the skeletons had carved out at the bottom of the tunnel. It was no grand dungeon, but at least there was room for a table, and a bookshelf, and a bed. Well, a bed made of dirt with some blankets on top, but a bed nonetheless! "Can I get you something to eat?" I looked around the room, trying to remember what foodstuffs I had. I'd put a cabbage in the chest of drawers, but that was like a month ago. Surely it had gone bad by now; I couldn't serve that... "Or maybe to drink?" That I could certainly do; I'd just had Lirk go fetch a fresh pitcher of water. And I had three or four relaxation potions left in my cabinet.

"Stop playing games with me, Necromancer!" she hissed. Her arrow was pointed directly at my chest as she spoke. "Where's the Ruby of Mertialz?"

Lirk opened his bony jaw to answer, but I quickly cut him off. "Yes, the Ruby! Of course I have it! Maybe you'd like to trade for it?" Maybe she'd sit down to barter and we'd end up talking and she'd realize that maybe a Necromancer companion would be helpful on her quest! Most members of the Guild looked down on adventurers, but they already hated me anyway. Maybe I'd get to help her bring down some of those jerks.

"How about I just kill you and take it from your corpse?" She answered. The bow creaked softly in warning as she prepared to loose the arrow.

"No, no!" I shouted, hands in the air, "I don't have it! I swear!"

She lowered the bow again. "Well, where is it?"

I pointed to the skeletons, all still holding their shovels. "We're trying to find it, too."

"For evil, no doubt!" She yelled, raising her bow again. My hands shot back up.

"No, never!" I cried. Her eyes narrowed into a suspicious glint. "OK, well, yes, but..." I couldn't exactly think of a good excuse, and telling her that I wanted to use its power to take over the world probably wouldn't make her any less likely to shoot me. "But there's nothing *specifically* evil that I wanted to do with it."

She continued to glare at me, doubtlessly debating whether to just kill me here and now.

"I don't have any gold or weapons or anything," I told her, knowing how these adventurers are about looting. And I was right: she lowered the bow and put the arrow back in her quiver. "You're welcome to come sit and wait with me for these lugs to find it," I said, gesturing over my shoulder to the skeletons chipping away at the dense dirt.

She looked around the room at my sparse improvised furnishings. Her eyes paused for just a bit longer on my ornate bone throne. "Well, how far are you from reaching the Ruby?" she asked.

"Well, I'm not sure," I told her. "I don't exactly know where it is, but I do know that it's *generally* in this area..."

"You didn't cast a spell to detect magical objects?" she asked in complete disbelief.

"A... um..." A what? "Well of course I did," I answered. "It's... it's not far now..."

She ignored me and reached into her bag for a few items, which she then crushed up and tossed into the air. Instead of falling back to the floor, the fine powder hung in the air and began to glow. It swirled together until it formed strange glyphs that I couldn't read.

"Oh, wow," she gasped as she tried to cover up her laughter. "Wow. Yeah, you know what? I'll just be back in a while to get it from you." She looked over my shoulders at the skeletons scraping away at the tunnel. "A long while." She turned and marched back up the tunnel toward the crypt door.

"No, wait!" I called after her. "I've got other magical objects! I've got..." I was so busy searching though my pockets for something to make her stay that I tripped over Gerold's bones and fell flat on my face. Before I could even lift myself out of the dirt, I heard the heavy iron door slam shut at the very end of the tunnel.

I resummoned Gerold. His bones clicked and clacked against each other as they rose up in a whirlwind and connected all the joints in the right places.

"Thank you, Master."

I gave a heavy sigh and sat back down on my throne. "Get back to work, dummy."

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