The Necromancer Trilogy - Eachanstone

Chapter Eighteen - Antiauthoritarian

“Wake up, Sophie. Wake up.”

Sophie groaned softly, curling her hands over her pounding head.

“You have to wake up, Sophie. Wake up now.”

Sophie opened her eyes. She stared for a moment at the cracks in the mosaic floor millimetres from her face.

“Look at me.”

The voice was too commanding. Sophie turned automatically.

“That’s better,” the owner of the voice smiled. “I am Lord Legion. It’s so nice that we could have this little chat.”

Lord Legion was nothing like Sophie had been expecting. Her imagination had alternated between a horror-film zombie with rotting flesh and gaping half-healed wounds, and a fairy-tale prince. He was neither.

  He was dark-haired and pale-skinned, with the stubble of a beard on his jaw and hard eyes. He was tall and narrow, his mouth set in an uncompromising line. He wasn’t, to Sophie’s honest surprise, good-looking. But he radiated power, and that made up for it.

“Oh,” Sophie said.

“I’ve waited a long time for this conversation, Sophie. Dear Miss Bone interrupted us last time.”

Sophie frowned. “Miss Bone? From you? You were in love with her!”

Legion laughed. “In love with her? I think you must be mistaken. But we shall let it go.”

Sophie wisely kept quiet.

“Sophie, my dear girl, I believe there has been a misunderstanding between us.”

“Oh, yeah? Would that have something to do with you trying to get me and my friends killed? That little misunderstanding?”

Lord Legion sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Sophie, I am attempting to be good to you and forgive you for what you have done…”

“Forgive me?” Sophie shrieked. “You will forgive me?”

Lord Legion’s eyes flashed with rage and Sophie, just for a moment, could see in his face the man who wanted her dead. Out of everything she’d ever seen, that scared her the most.

 “Yes,” he spoke calmly, “I will forgive you. I am prepared to be merciful, Sophie. I am prepared to honour your greatness.”

“By killing me?”

Legion laughed. “You are the one who will open those Doors. After that, there shall be no more need for killing. After that, you will know. You will understand everything that this foolish Society education has blinded you from.”

“Like how wonderful it is to be dead?”

“Yes,” Legion said, curtly. “Like that.”

Sophie shook her head. “You’re mad. You’re all absolutely barking mad.”

Legion laughed. “Is that what you think?”

“Yes,” Sophie said, simply. “It is.”

Legion shook his head, mournfully. “Oh, how the mighty have fallen. My poor Necromancers, cowering in the dark, afraid of the stern morals and weak beliefs of the Society. They don’t even know the glory they face.”

“Standards are dropping everywhere,” Sophie said, automatically.

Legion looked surprised. “Yes. Yes, they are.”

He and Sophie stared at one another for a long time, him lost in thought and her not daring to do anything.

“It’s tragic,” Legion sighed, softly. “Look at you, my dear girl. You are the Night Princess. You are our saviour. If I had not died when I did, it would not have turned out this way for you.”