I was numb when I made the long walk to my dorm room.
What have I been doing? I thought. What the fuck have I been doing?
I'd been cavorting around with mages for the better part of two years, and it made me all but forget myself and where I'd come from. It was almost easier when I was still with Lord Woodman. He knew exactly what I was, and had made sure I never forgot it.
I'd been born on the estate's grounds, and even from the fancy room he'd shoved me into, I had still woken every morning and seen the fields I had spent countless hours working in. I'd still known that, at my core, I was a null. That I wasn't a high and mighty noble like Lord Fucking Woodman.
Coming to the school… being around people my own age who didn't know me. Wearing the mask of being a respectable aristocrat born with all the privilege and power I could ever dream of… I think I had started to become that person.
Classes sitting next to Mason.
Receiving study tips from Iroha and Rosamund.
Living with Sylas.
Somewhere it felt like my actual life. Like what I had been born into, and what I deserved.
But it wasn't. And it never would be.
I went over to my desk and pulled Le Journal De La Voisin out of my desk. I opened it and flipped to the latest page I had translated.
"What moves the dead," the book read. "This tome was bound with parchment made from the hides of sorcerous children, bound with their hair and written in their blood. It shall be my conduit to raze all life. It shall be my offering to the Lord Azreal, and then they shall notice me at last."
A spell of vengeance. Of death and pain.
I wondered if I could cast it. If I could kill every mage in the school. Every last fucking magician in the world.
My channels burned, and mana gathered, drawing on the grimoire as a conduit. I forged a circuit with it, drawing mana in and pushing mana back out into the Narrative of the book. It was made from human skin. No wonder it sang whenever I touched it. It yearned for a necromancer to draw on its power, to enact whatever Narrative its creator had originally envisioned for it.
Dimly, it occurred to me that even if I wanted to use the book that way, I wouldn't be ready for it. I wasn't experienced enough as a mage to start, and even if I were, whatever sort of nightmarishly powerful Working I could unleash would use so much mana I'd probably not survive.
Vaguely, I remembered Professor Ogg talking about spontaneous combustion when a mage cast a spell far outside their experience and power. I couldn't find it in me to care.
The spirits of Angitia stirred all around campus, heads lifting from the stories of their deaths. Sightless eyes turned to stare in my direction.
Le Journal De La Voisin rattled under my hands. Pages flapped, turning on their own.
What moves the dead. We shall dance and dance and—
"Theo?" Sylas said.
I turned, still holding the grimoire, and the power crackled around me. Sylas was standing next to the open door to our room and looking at me with concerned brown eyes. I hadn't heard him come in.
"Theo, are you feeling alright?"
I stared at him, and I felt my book's Narrative start.
Noble Ankou, Lord Azrael, hear my voice—
There was a building pressure in the room, mana twisting into a Working, and I could tell by the look of surprise on Sylas's face he could feel it. There was a push and pull in my channels as mana pumped through me like blood, and I realized what I was doing. If I outed myself as a necromancer, it would open a door to a heap of questions I'd rather not answer, and even if by some miracle I killed everyone at Angitia, Lord Woodman would most certainly retaliate.
He'd kill my family. Mum. Da. Matt. Alfie. They had always been the price of my failure. The reason I did everything I could to make Lord Woodman happy with me and my service to him. The minute I stop being useful, everyone I loved died.
That realization did nothing to stop the Narrative from cascading, and there was a sudden cracking before a spirit manifested. The cracking continued when the manifesting spirit briefly clashed with the Working I cast earlier to keep spirits away from me. The chicken bone fueling that working turned to ash in my pocket when the ghost fully manifested.
It was a boy, likely our age, and his face was little more than a skull. Tiny figures crawl in between the crevices of bone on his face and I realized that they're bees.
The ghost watched us, with eyes filled with bees, crawling and buzzing out from empty orbital sockets. He cocked a head to the side and made a rasping noise when the ghost opened his mouth to reveal a tongue that squirmed with a thousand wormy grubs.
"What the hell is that?" Sylas said faintly.
Shit.
I probed out slightly and felt the barest threads of a Working in the air still. Nothing concrete or definite, a sort of discordant jumble of words.
Dead…Dance…Sweet…
The ghost had become more real than it should have. My spell, it must have made it visible to Sylas, and probably visible to anyone else who might pop their head into our room.
I tried to think about what I could possibly and believably tell Sylas, but before I could, the ghost opened its mouth wider and uttered an ethereal buzzing noise that filled the room.
"Theo, get down!" Sylas barked, evidently forgetting whatever uncertainty he had, and shoved me to the ground as a phantasmal horde of bees rushed from the ghost's mouth. I raised my head in protest because I didn't think anything intangible could actually hurt us, then I see the bees have collided with the far side of our room and left behind some an ectoplasmic sludge on the wall that appears to be bubbling and burning a large hole in the wall.
Shit.
The spirit wailed and filled the room with a discordant nonsense that must be the shreds of my spell all around me. The ghost flickered before more bees surged from its eyes, mouth, and nose.
Sylas moved faster than I'd seen him move. He bit down hard on the palm of his hand, then lashed out with a sword—that sword, the one he had in the labyrinth—at the ghost. Mana crackled as his blade passes through the spirit and I feel…something else. There was a sort of Narrative inside of Sylas's mana, influencing how it flowed and shaped around the sword he'd seemingly pulled out of thin air.
Seven arrows. Seven tears wept by the Eye of Ra.
Sylas's sword passed through the ghost harmlessly, and it reached out for him with a pair of shriveled hands. Sylas danced away from the spirit, but not before its touch grazed part of his coat. He hissed in pain at the contact, and smoke billowed from where the spirit grazed him.
The realization that the ghost I'd accidentally summoned could probably kill Sylas hit me and I drew mana from my channels and stepped forward before I know what I'm doing.
Go away. I commanded.
The ghost flinched, bees stopping in mid-flight toward Sylas.
Go away. I commanded again, pushing in more emphasis.
The spirit turned its full attention on me and watched me with its hollow eyes. I gritted my teeth. I could still feel the discordant threads of the Narrative that accidentally summoned it. If I could just get a hold of them, I might be able to do something.
Sylas had taken a ready stance with his sword out to strike again, but stopped when I held a hand out to him in warning.
"Wait," said.
I reached out with my mana and formed a Narrative.
Now is not the time. I tell the spirit. It is not the time to dance yet.
The Working fizzled a bit. I wasn't used to weaving my own spells or writing my own Narratives. But something Professor Ogg had said in spell theory stuck out to me. Existing Narratives can be modified slightly, pushed and pulled in different directions if you knew how to tell it something that fit into the spell's "story." In my case, the dead wanted to be summoned for vengeance, so maybe I could convince it that it simply wasn't the best time to strike. Maybe I could tell the ghost to wait until I was ready to call on it.
The spirit was decidedly not happy with this idea, and it shoved back at my spell violently. Mana crackles in the air and the Narrative shudders as it tries to reestablish itself. A song of vengeance.
The dead shall dance. And dance—
I gritted my teeth and I could taste blood as I shoved my will back into the ghost.
The time is not yet upon us. I tell the ghost with bees for eyes. The dance has yet to begin.
The Narrative fully snapped, and the ghost vanished with a blink, leaving behind only the faintest streaks of pale green ectoplasm, my ears rang with the sound of spectral bees, and Sylas Thorne stared at me like I'd just torn the skin off my face and started singing bloody Christmas carols.
"You," Sylas said stupidly, and I noted his sword was still in his hand. "You're a necromancer."
He didn't even do anything threatening, but my heart hammered when I abruptly realized that Sylas knew one of the biggest secrets I'd been trying to keep. Not the biggest, thankfully, but still one that could land me in a heap of trouble if anyone ever found out.
It was a secret Sylas Thorne could easily use as an excuse to ask me to do things for him, and when I looked at Sylas standing there in our room, I didn't actually see him.
I saw Lord Woodman standing in front of me on the day I'd brought a dog back to life. On the day when he'd forced into my wretched existence where he took what small modicum of freedom I'd had away from me and took the lives of the people I loved as collateral to make sure I performed every task set before me to my master's exacting standards.
"Theo?" Sylas said, and he took a step toward me.
And I turned, and I ran out of our dorm room.