“There’s still room in the front!” Jextor shouted, making the chairs rattle and people wince and lean away from him. “No need to be shy. Come, come!”
“I think I’m good,” I muttered, leaning on the back wall. Grit had managed to get a seat in the second-to-last row. The students were all packed to the end of the hall, as far away from the pulpit as possible.
Jextor jumped down from the small stage, landing heavily with both feet. The wooden floor groaned and flexed under him. “Who’s ready to die?” he shouted.
At least fifteen hands shot up.
He laughed, both hands on his hips as he marched across the hall. “That’s the spirit!” he said, slapping one eager volunteer on the shoulder.
The student flew forward, crashing into two students sitting before him. He crumpled to the ground, whimpering softly.
Jextor waited for a while looking down at him, but then frowned and started walking down the hall again. “Preferably a volunteer with a little more spunk!”
His eyes landed on me, and he stopped, mouth opening into a massive smile.
Dammit.
“The new student! A perfect opportunity!” Jextor shouted.
“Absolutely not,” I said.
“As I said, spunk!” he howled, lunging across the rest of the hall in a single leap. “Exactly what we need.”
Grit had rotated to look back at me, grinning and holding two thumbs up at me. Was that some Jonungaard signal for something? A warning? Should I start running?
I tried to spin away, but Jextor’s paw grasped on to my shoulder, turning me back. “You’ll get to glimpse something normal people never do! Well, everyone does eventually, but much fewer get to tell the rest of us what they saw, hah!”
My heels scraped along the floor as he dragged me toward the stage. “Why do you creeps keep piling on me!” I shouted.
“Who’s phrasing things weirdly now, hah!” he said, marching me along the aisle between the chairs and the desks.
Some students chuckled, but surprisingly many had their eyes squinted, note-taking tools before them, pens at the ready.
Wait, what was he actually planning? I kicked at the floor, but he didn’t even seem to notice, only lifted me into the air with one arm.
There was a lone chair standing in the middle of the stage. He pushed me down onto it. “Today’s subject is peering into the liminal space between life and death. As necromancers, we dance on the thread connecting the two.”
I gasped, the air pressed out of me by being shoved against the back of the chair.
He waved one hand in the air, swinging it around as he spoke, but his other hand drew glowing symbols into the air. “Most people fear the end, but as necromancers, we have to push past such trifling prejudices!” He swung his hand around, pointing a glowing finger at me. “Observe, the stillness of death!”
“Wha—!“
“—t!” I shouted, wrenching myself up.
Marcus twitched and gasped, lurching up from the chair he had been dozing on in the corner of the room.
I was in the infirmary.
Again.
The white room was lit dimly, but this time almost all the beds were taken. One held Jextor, the duvet on him looking like a napkin.
“Are you…” Marcus said. “Lina? How are you feeling?”
I didn’t answer because I had no idea myself. “How am I here? What happened?”
“Um, the chancellors demonstration got a bit out of hand,” he said, grimacing. “It happens surprisingly often. No casualties this time, though! So don’t worry about it.”
“No… casualties? What the hell happened?”
“Ah, well, there were some complications. The spell was supposed to kill you for a moment while tethering you to the world. The idea was to allow you to keep thinking here and there at the same time. Very temporary, just a peek, as the Chancellor put it.”
I remembered the collar, burning like ice and sliding through my neck as I floated away. I shivered at the memory of the cold. Places of light and color, flickering past, me being rushed to an infinite plane of deep black, so dark it turned a shade of blue beyond color. And something there, a presence like something slimy growing on a fallen tree.
“Lina, are you listening? Um, are you breathing?”
I gasped, surfacing from the memories.
“Anyway, you were supposed to come back, but got, um, stuck.”
“You mean I was dead?”
“Well, yes, but no. That’s the problem. You weren’t dead. The Null didn’t let you go. It reached back.”
I looked at my hands, moving my fingers tentatively. They were cold, but the grip around my throat felt looser than before.
“Most of the students got away with frostbites. The effect will linger, making them probably feel a bit sad for a couple of days, but you only managed to attack some people in the front row directly.”
“I attacked—“
“No, not you! Sorry,” he said, waving both hands in front of my face. “The Null. It flooded your body, effectively turning you undead. Pure undead are hostile to all life, you see. Nothing you could have done.”
“I see,” I said slowly.
Well, ok.
I wasn’t sure how angry I should be. I hesitated to ask, but I guess I had to. “And then?”
“Well, the chancellor figured out quickly what had happened. He subdued you and pulled you back. You managed to bite him quite a bit before he was done, though.”
“Good.”
“Ah, haha, yes. That’s almost universally the sentiment after being part of one of the chancellor’s demonstrations,” Marcus said, scratching at his mustache and glancing at the massive sleeping man on the bed. “He does get bitten most semesters. He’s actually fine, but he said he wanted to watch over you. He snores extremely loudly so I cast a silencing spell on him.”
“Thanks,” I said, throwing my legs off the bed. I tested them and they seemed to carry. Now, the relevant part. “Am I in trouble?” I asked.
“No! Of course not. On the contrary. I think he will give you extra credit, if you can write a short report on how it was and about what you can remember.”
“Don’t remember much. Just flying through something, then nothing.” I stopped to consider, trying to hold on to the memories. “Maybe… not nothing. Something that was less than nothing. Is that what Fendribalis was writing about? And a presence in the dark? Should there have been a presence?”
“You’re going to get so much extra credit,” Marcus said, sighing.
I glared at Marcus until he left me alone. Before going, he told me to go get breakfast, and that he would wake the rest of the students after I’ve left. I thanked him for it. The guy wasn’t completely stupid, after all. Jextor kept sleeping in the opposite bed, eerily silent. I rubbed at my neck, feeling the collar. I could feel it more clearly now, perhaps because of the training I’d done with Minnelil and Fek. It was a ghost of a band around my throat. I tried to grasp it, but my fingers felt nothing.
“Whatever,” I said out loud. I recognized some of the students from the lecture. They seemed to be sleeping peacefully. I wondered if the floating skull had come to tuck all of them in. I wrenched the door open, fleeing the infirmary before I started to wonder if someone might hold a grudge.
I was really making a mess of keeping my head down, not attracting attention, wasn’t I?
When I stepped outside, the pressure of the Academy grounds rolled over me. It didn’t feel oppressive, more like home. I drew in the tepid air, filling my lungs with it. It smelled of clarity.
I wandered the walkways, searching for the Breakfast Hall. I wasn’t hungry. Instead, I yearned for something opposite. Opposite of what? Finding the place left me disappointed, all the students packing in. My stomach growled and I squeezed it. “Shut up,” I muttered.
I stood in place, watching the door open and close. The presence in the dark haunted my thoughts. So angry. Familiar. But also content. Nothing had mattered to it. It would wait for a thousand years, always there. Unlike all these people, jostling each other, trying to get through the door and out of the howling wind.
I closed my eyes and held them shut. When I opened them, the walkway was empty and I stood alone for a moment longer, enjoying the quiet. The wind reminded me of the all-encompassing thrum I didn’t quite remember. My stomach rumbled again, and my legs wobbled. If the food was free, I guess I should go eat. What’s the worst that could happen?
“Lina!” Grit shouted the moment I stepped inside. She hopped up from where she was sitting and started making her way toward me.
“Oh, goddamn,” I muttered. I didn’t want this. None of this. I turned back toward the door, but she reached me and grabbed hold of my upper arms.
“How are you?” she said. She hesitated, red eyes flicking this way and that, biting on her lower lip.
What was her problem? “I’m fine.”
“I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have encouraged you.”
“You didn’t.” I pulled free from her grip. Her palms scratched at the robe and I shivered at the touch, the warmth of it.
“We’re sitting at the back,” she said. “Minnelil will want to hear what happened. I bet Fek too.”
“Later,” I said. It was as much as I could muster at the moment. I didn’t want to be an ass, but I didn't have it in me to be kind either. “I’m tired.”
She reached for my hand, but I flinched back. She hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “Sure, of course. It makes sense. We’ll talk later.”
I sat at the nearest table, turning my back on the three. People in robes sat around me, but I lifted my cowl to cover my face. Hopefully that would be enough to keep people from bothering me. A skeleton put a tray of food before me.
Another feast.
I ate.
The warmth of the room was stifling. Every time the door opened, I breathed in the air that blew in from outside. When a skeleton came to take away the tray from before me, I grabbed its arm.
I squeezed the bones together in my fist. I didn’t know why. It clacked its jaw at me, picking up the tray with its other hand instead. I felt the power running over the bones, the familiar emptiness, sizzling against the color and the warmth of the surrounding hall, filled with people and food and smells of both. I licked my lips, running my tongue over them slowly.
The skeleton jerked on its arm, trying to get away.
I put my index and middle fingers on the wider arm bone, drawing them along its length. The pads of my fingers dragged on the bone, pulling on the threads of power. The skeleton shivered, bones clattering against each other. The bones in my fist seemed to lose their will to stay arm-shaped. Its hand dropped off, fingers clattering and rolling somewhere under the table. The skeleton stepped back, leaving the two bones pressed into my hand.
It glared down at me for a moment, stabilizing the tray on one hand. Its stumpy arm bone swung from the shoulder as it walked away.
“They don’t like students nicking bones from the service undead,” a boy whispered, leaning toward me. “Still, pretty cool to grab such big ones without even hiding it. You’re in on the challenge? My name’s—”
“No. Shut up.” I stood, still holding the bones in my hand. I squeezed and they both snapped in two, the bone splinters cutting into my fingers.
Huh. Brittle. I let them drop.
I raised my hand to look at the blood trickling from the cuts. It moved like honey, deep crimson, almost purple. I frowned and willed the power I had pulled from to bones toward my hand.
What little pain there had been, vanished, or became irrelevant. The bleeding stopped. I rubbed my fingers together, scattering the frozen crystals of blood on the floor.