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Chapter Five
Like most teenagers, Alexi loved a military parade. And this one he got to see from the safety of his classroom.
From around a bend on the road in front of the Academy of Lianon Pard, Nykoran soldiers appeared. Armored in steel blue plate mail, Alexi spotted axes, swords, whips, and flails. As he'd read in his books, the reptilian infantry from the evil kingdom of Nykor traveled in vast numbers. However, it was a different thing entirely to witness the spectacle unfold in front of his eyes.
A mere glance made him guess a thousand, plus or minus a dozen or so. At their front rode a giant dressed in banded ring mail; his steed: a massive Nykoran nightmare. This imposing warrior possessed onyx skin; from his shoulders flowed a ghostly shawl of mist and shadow. Alexi even spotted skulls and finger bones floating within it. A harvester? That's powerful necromancy, he thought. But Alexi's clever mind already tackled the mystery of just how such a thing could even be created. Now, as cool as the harvester was, the most impressive thing Alexi saw was a black cadel that the giant managed to hold in the grip of one hand. In the tongue of the windwalkers, the word "cadel" meant "bison cleaver," and it lived up to its description.
Alexi could not imagine wielding something so big; a scalpel was more to his liking. The sheer carnage something like a cadel could cause on flesh made his brain hurt. Its metallic head easily extended beyond a yard and probably weighed in the neighborhood of two-hundred pounds. He had to be a Nevranachtur Lord.
Why here in Zanda of all places? Alexi chewed on his lower lip as he pondered the implications. The newly crowned Dreaded Irtemara, Kahket, ruled from the palace and the Librarium Apocalypto, and she'd no doubt acquired interesting allies. Zanda, it would seem, was preparing for war and had called in all its favors, not only from the Queen of Demons but from the land of the death goddess. Alexi continued to follow the Nevrenachtur Lord with his eyes, until the rider and the nightmare he rode disappeared between the buildings. Soul reaping giants shrunk through powerful magic without compromising any of their tremendous strength...how is such an enchantment even possible? Alexi wished he knew more regarding the inner majesty of powerful sorcery. But size alteration was not a purview of necromancy, so he doubted if he'd ever learn the answer.
The contingent of Nykorans continued to pass in front of them at a glacial pace. About midway, four wagons outfitted as a rolling jail lumbered past. From within, human prisoners peeked out through the bars. Their wrists had been shackled. He counted women and children among their numbers. Each had been branded on the cheek.
"That coulda been us," Paul said to him. "If our parents didn't have means."
Alexi nodded, but said nothing in reply.
He'd heard of conscriptors from out of Nykor but they'd never appeared in the countryside of Zanda. Nevertheless, their train of foot soldiers, carts, and supply lines took an hour to sally past. Only once the last of them vanished along the highway did Alexi finally turn his gaze back to Paul who sat next to him at the window.
"I would have died," Alexi said, voice flat. "I'm no soldier, and my body's unsuited for hard labor. Once they'd seen how useless I was they'd have killed me. If I'd been as pretty as the `Fab Five' I might have served as a hole for a cock or two, but there's nothing pretty about me. You'd have been okay, though."
"But you can doctor flesh," Paul replied. "Your stitches are magnificent. You could be a surgeon, Alexi."
He shook his head. "I'd fail as a surgeon."
Paul grinned. Even though (as Paulina) he looked like a smooth-faced young girl with flattering features, Alexi knew Paul got what he meant.
"You like blood too much," Paul whispered. "You've got the darkness in you."
"You believe in that Zandan curse?" Alexi asked.
Paul shrugged. "Our people are doomed. It isn't normal for demons and undead to prowl the streets. A cry for help goes unanswered here. I've read in the forbidden tomes that it isn't so in other cities...in other countries."
"Murder and rape weed out the weak and keep the people from rising up against the Irtemara. It all works to her benefit," Alexi said. "And you're right. I do have the darkness in me. As a surgeon I'd get distracted. I like the feel of blood, the taste of it, and that would not bode well with my patients. I'd be afraid of cutting open a vein on purpose to get the blood on my hands and to lick it from my fingers."
"Do you dream about it?" Paul asked.
"I dream of a great many things," Alexi replied. "There's one where I'm cutting open beautiful unblemished white skin...white as fresh snow. It's so rare in these parts. If allowed to indulge, I'd cut and keep cutting. I'd make a masterpiece. A-at least I'd call it that."
"It's probably good you're not a surgeon then," Paul said.
"Probably," Alexi agreed.
The idle chatter in the classroom died down. Alexi and Paul made their way to their seats.
"Lunch is over," Professor Hepsibah stated, walking to the front where she started to write on an old blackboard. Just to the right stood a curio cabinet. Each shelf held a half dozen medicine jars encapsulating monstrous faces suspended in formaldehyde. They served as a grim reminder that Professor Hepsibah was Dean of Demons. "Please open your books to chapter thirteen. Do not touch the box in front of you until I say. You are all becoming powerful necromancers, and I would hate to see any of you perish on the verge of graduation."
Alexi took his seat at the lab table: a well-worn slab of polished ironwood, burned through here and there with acids and scratched from years of students using their scalpels for things other than cutting.
"When she says not to touch the box, it makes me want to touch it," Paul said to him.
Alexi looked to his left. Daphne in a pale blue petticoat and red ribbons ran one finger along the black box directly in front of her. The one in front of Alexi looked identical: about a foot long, two inches high, and four inches deep. The outside had been carved with dragon's tails and wooden knots. Steel hinges matched a clasp that dropped down over a gray loop protruding from the front.
"You should reach inside and grab it," Rowena Ridgebit said to him. Rowena, one of the fab five, sat on the far side of Alexi's table facing him. He was the prettiest girl in class, and wore a low-cut dress that held her surgically augmented breasts in their cups, cleavage full and deep for everyone to see.
Most visiting boys lusted after Rowena, and Alexi relished in that irony because he knew what could be found between "her" legs.
"It's not like you'll have a date for the ball," Rowena continued. "I could ask one of Dudley's friends, but they already call you `plain drain' because you suck all the fun out of any situation."
"Shut up, Q," Paul said. "Q" was short for "Quentin," and it made Rowena immediately frown because Paul meant it as a veiled threat: you keep this up, and we'll use your real name. Let everyone here know that you're actually a guy under all that.
Rowena frowned and said, "On second thought, maybe you should touch it, Paulina."
The rustle of pages being turned alerted Alexi to the fact that the class was going to read aloud from the Book of Chagidiel. Bound in human skin, the tome gathered all the information about various topics of anatomy, sexuality, and the four taboos into one volume of evil. In most countries of the world, the Book of Chagidiel was burned on site. Here its forbidden knowledge was canon.
"Alexi," Professor Hepsibah said, getting his attention. The black robed necromancer strode forward, heels clicking on the flagstones, and regarded him with wrinkled black eyes. The Professor's hair hung in clumps from her brown leathered skin. If she had breasts, they had sagged so much with age that they now appeared swallowed by the fabric of her clothes. A single mole with a long hair emerging from its center grew just to the right of a misshapen nose; the professor's natural body odor bordered on sickening and sweet...a cloying perfume that somehow captured old woman smell and wrapped it in putrefaction. All of this told Alexi that the professor had begun the transition to a lich: an undead creature of incredible power who would live on for centuries. "Will you please read from the chapter entitled, `Abyssal Stone.'"
Alexi nodded and looked down at the page, running his smooth delicate hands under the sentences as he began to read. "Abyssal stone comes from Hell and has many unique properties that produce terrible consequences upon the living. The mere touch of it on most living flesh is instantaneous death. It cannot be altered in any way once removed from its original quarry. Not even with a legendary vorpal sword can its surface be marred. It is a prime ingredient in raising the most powerful undead, and it is useful in torture. A skilled artiste can use abyssal stone to great effect to make limbs fall off without loss of blood." Alexi stopped and looked up at the Professor and she indicated to him with a nod that he could stop.
"As you guessed, abyssal stone is in the boxes in front of you. I will allow you to see it, but you must wear your protective gloves that have been enspelled by the academy to protect you for a little while from the effects of such a horrible substance. You may now open the containers, but safety first."
All the students in the class opened the drawers in their lab tables and pulled out thick metal gloves lined with rubber and enspelled with necromantic runes so powerful, they glowed in daylight. Most necromantic magic faded in the power of the sun, because necromancy by its nature, draws its strength from darkness. Alexi shoved his hands unceremoniously into the ones belonging to him. Almost immediately, his skin felt trapped, hot and sweaty. Across from him, Rowena put her gloves on like a dainty princess, sliding them cautiously over her manicured nails and pulling them down about her brown skin with small, intentionally weak tugs.
Alexi just shook his head and stared at the box. He reached out and opened the lid. Inside, on a white cushion that had turned almost entirely black from the presence of the rock atop it, lay the sample of abyssal stone. It gave off a vile aura, and the air around it felt as frigid as glacial water. A rime instantly formed along the inside of the container, and vaporous black smoke started to flow forth from within, swirling atop the table in chaotic patterns.
Alexi reached in with his gloves and took it in hand. Almost immediately he felt pain. It was like a subtle pinching of his fingertips followed by a slow burn, as if he held his flesh above a candle flame.
"It hurts," Daphne said, dropping the rock back into the box.
The professor nodded. "Even through that armored glove you wear, you can feel its power. This is a necromancer's greatest tool."
"Professor?" Alexi asked, still holding onto the rock. Most of the other students had put them back into their containers. "It doesn't feel like rock. It's quite heavy for its size."
"Astute observation, young lady. It's not rock but bone," the Professor said. "A very peculiar kind of bone that grows only in Hell. Sages cannot agree from what creature it sprouts, but whatever it is, must be the mother of all the demons beyond the great veil for it's truly massive. Abyssal stone is worked directly in the quarries in which it is mined, sometimes shaped into manacles to imprison very difficult clients. Some restraints are adjustable, like a sliding tourniquet, and it can be a lot of fun to watch a limb blacken and die. Because the stone cannot be tampered with, once they are in place, they can only be removed by the one with the key."
"I thought you said it causes instant death," Alexi stated.
"That's the result on most humans," the Professor said. "Demons and their ilk are another thing entirely."
Alexi stared at the rock in his hand. He reached out to it with his innate necromancy and felt something powerful there, but it lay beyond a wall of titanic strength. The more he pushed against it, the more he envisioned himself standing alone on a plane of red and before him rose a wall of impenetrable night. Alexi pounded the fist of his mind against it, but to no avail. As the class turned the pages in the book to read about demons, Alexi continued to pour his power into the stone and, quite suddenly, he felt it grow lighter. He felt his chest tighten and his heartbeat throbbed at the back of his mouth producing a copper taste on his tongue.
Something's happening, he thought.
"Alexi...your ears are bleeding," Paul said.
"What?" He angled his head, and Paul handed him a cloth.
"Your ears are bleeding. Put that fuckin' thing away."
Alexi nodded, feeling a headache start. Gingerly, he placed the rock back on the cushion but before he closed the lid, he took one more look. The flawless surface of the stone had a tiny crack in it. As he wiped blood from his ears on the handkerchief, his mind filled with questions. Wait...did I do that?
He raised his hand. "Professor!"
Professor Hepsibah looked over at him. "Yes, Alexi?"
"Can a necromancer alter abyssal stone?"
Professor Hepsibah shook her head and laughed. "It's unalterable once removed from the quarry. Pay closer attention next time. There's never been a necromancer with enough strength that she could alter abyssal stone in any way."
"Are you sure?"
"Alexi?" the Professor started to say, and then put one hand on her hip while she formulated what her next statement might be. "If you must know, it's probably possible but I highly doubt that I'll live to see it. But a necromancer's power is over bone, even if it comes from the abyss. The kind of necromancer that could put even a mark on abyssal stone is the kind that made the mighty Bone Wall that protects us from the outside world. It's the reincarnation of Lianon Pard himself."
"How would Lianon Pard know he'd been reincarnated?" Alexi asked.
The professor shrugged. "There are certain prophesies of which I'm sure you are familiar. For one he'd be a man and not a girl at an academy named after him. This fact alone makes it impossible. And secondly, he'd be able to read minds of both the living and the dead. But perhaps most importantly, he'd be able to decipher the secret of the Obelisk of Quiet that stands in the middle of the Bizarre Bazaar. Speak up if you know to what I'm referring. Don't be shy!"
The professor looked around the classroom but no one confessed to visiting Slippery Squib as it was forbidden for a girl from the academy to go there without a chaperone.
"Good to see that no one from my class breaks the rules," the professor continued. "People have been touching that obelisk for a thousand years, and no one even knows the riddle much less the answer. Now children, turn your books to the next chapter and read about Hell's servants. There's a quiz later, and it's on shadow demons and how they're birthed from an impregnated male intestine. It's quite fascinating because the egg must be fertilized anally by at least five other males in a single night. Before hatching, the larvae within the egg destroys all body fat in its host before secreting a chemical capable of dissolving the dermis itself. What's left behind is a skinless cadaver, still alive, and covered in red. It's glorious to behold. Lucky for you, there are pictures!"
The next part is available on my website at http://slckismet.blogspot.com/p/discussion-board-for.html under the label "Chapter Four" if you care to read ahead.