Dead Rainbow

Resurrections

The reign of Malum Mazlovado the Necromancer was one of the shortest imaginable. Unlike his predecessor, who created a planet of the dead and ruled for six thousand years, Redwing's time was measured in weeks. For not six weeks after the murder of his father and to his own utter and complete surprise, Nicholas Redwing Mazlovado Melock found himself in an unimaginable situation; he found himself dead. 

And if defeat and the loss of his newfound powers weren't enough, he found himself trapped in a new body, one that seemed to crawl with itchiness. He opened his eyes to total darkness, felt muscles and sensations that were his own but also weren't. His left ear seemed to have weaker hearing than his right in the utter silence. He reached forward and bumped into a surface. He pushed out his arms and came into contact with solid sides. He kicked and reached above his head. He was in a box, a coffin! 

"Help!" he screamed at the top of his lungs as fear and anxiety took hold. 

"Hellllllllp!

"I'm buried alive! 

"Aaaagghhhh!"

Thrashing, smashing, rolling in the box, he sent himself into hysterics, punching the walls until his knuckles were raw and his energy spent. He lay there hyperventilating, unable to struggle further. 

Time passed, he calmed his breathing and wiped his brow with an arm that seemed unnaturally hairy. There wasn't much air in the box and he'd been sucking most of it away. He needed to be calm and rational. He had to think. 

"Ok. I'm in a box. My god, I don't even know who I am!?

"Gotta calm down. Breath. This isn't a nightmare. It's real. Feel all the edges." 

Lying there in the dark in a wretched state of amnesia he made a thorough search and to his surprise found a latch. He pulled it with a click and the top came free.

He climbed out into a gray stone-walled cellar with almost no light. The crate he'd been locked in was one of many. He looked around the storage room and made for a stairwell going up. As he reached the top of the stairs light blinded him. His eyes adjusted to a site so bizarre he didn't know whether to trust them. 

"Is this a tomb?"

All around the ground floor, which was very much the same size as the basement, were skeletons in battle armor. They were a horrific enough sight, to begin with, but when they started to move and advance on him the situation became one of unimaginable terror. 

"Hey! Wait! Stop! Hellllllp!!!!!!"

He ran for the door and managed to grab the handle as five powerful boney hands grabbed him and threw him to the ground. Heavy boots kicked him as he looked up to ten blades being held aloft. The swords overhead shocked the memory of his death back into his mind. 

"I died on a beach. By my swords of doom!"

Waves of a lifetime's worth of memories came crashing down on him as vacant hollow eye sockets stared down with no emotion whatsoever.  

"I am your master! Stop!"

The dead glances were followed by repeated, painful, stabbing thrusts that knocked him out of his new body just as he realized it was his guards who were killing him. 

~

Redwing opened his eyes again. He took a breath and exhaled relief. His body felt like his own and he rose off a stone slab. The cave was lit by magical candles that burned for an eternity and he knew exactly where he was and who he was. 

"Those imbecile skeletons. I'll grind them to dust," he said in a voice that was his own. 

"They probably did me a favor, ridding me of that first clone."

He pushed up the sleeve of the comfortable black robe he had left for himself and looked at his pale arm. The demon's mark was not present and he no longer possessed Mazlovado's power.  

"Escaped again." 

Redwing glanced over to the altar at his side and the stack of copies he made of his spellbooks and those of his defeated foes. Across from it was Melock's trunk of necessity and on top of that lay his devil's crossbow. 

On the opposite end of the cavern looking at him with crystal eyes was Kwartz and two other fierce-looking resurrected reptiles. The gruesome undead dinosaurs clawed at the ground in anticipation of instructions.

"Your wait is over my lovelies, the time of action is nigh. There is work to be done."

He slid his feet into a brand new pair of fine leather boots. Outside the gloomy clouds parted ever so briefly and a beam of monochrome light arched through the atmosphere.