“The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?”
Edgar Allan Poe
Kayn felt secure in the tasks ahead. While the rest of the coven scrambled to manage the horrors in the carnival, she had the peace of mind knowing she had committed herself to the one thing she could do to reverse the calamity. This is what her profession was about. What she obsessed over.
Necromancy is the righting of wrongs. The ultimate wrong. That disease which plagues us all. It produces noise where there is silence. Music from rusted instruments.
She allowed herself two duffel bags full of books, tools, and valuable research before exiting the Cloak Room. Liquor clung to her clothes from where droplets had splashed. No matter how precise or efficient she tried to be, the business was messy. She and Ivory had set about with the same frenzied panic that soaked the atmosphere.
“All of it, yes, all of it,” she told her apprentices, handing them various bottles of flammable substances.
This bit to her marrow, but she knew she had them fooled. Ivory, most of all, but a also her apprentices. Even if the act felt as foul as it smelled. Of gasoline and absinthe and bottom shelf rum. Of months of cutting edge discoveries drowned, sentenced to burn up in ash. But it was also liberation. Of secrets being buried in cinders. The deeds she’d done to secure the materials for the altars, the murders that haunted her. But no matter how much alcohol they poured or how tall the flames rose, nothing could erase the rivers of blood she’d damned her memory to drown in.
There was always a trade-off for Kayn. This was no different.
For Ivory, this was more absolute. Each altar housed the intricate bones that decided the safety of the servants he invited into their home. Without housing in the material world, they were fated to fall or rise with whatever allegiance called them.
And now, their spirits moaned for Gehenna. Overpowered by the gate that entranced them.
But no amount of rumination could stray them from the certainty of their actions.
The necromancers walked away from the tent brimming with cadavers and bones. Supplies, experiments, and ambitions. Kayn touched her apprentices gently while they watched it all burn, surprised to find herself crying.
She could think of a dozen things she’d have taken if there was more time.
“Sweet god, what a catastrophe,” Ivory said. He dropped to his backside with a shaking sigh. “Years of work destroyed in a single evening. Decades.”
“The world is full of the dead, my friend,” the necromancer said. “Tonight, we protect the living.” She bent down and smoothed out the ghost courter’s hair. A flicker of their past, failed romance kindled in the sombreness, adrenaline, and shared grief of their joint self-destruction. “We did the right thing.” Taking off her mask, she placed a wet kiss on his cheek before turning to observe the carnival.
For a moment, she thought lights were returning to the lanterns. But these flitting wisps weren’t enchantments. They were the souls of the ghosts who lived in the grounds. Rising up in violent strokes towards the sky. Popping, shrieking, fizzling out in blazes that mirrored the flames devouring their altars. They watched, transfixed, by the bright display of their spectral massacre. It was a show of its own. Hundreds of ghastly looking embers guttering out with vengeful shrieks. It was over in minutes.
A disturbed silence replaced the chorus of phantasmic cries. Though the night was far from over, already, several lanterns began to illuminate once more.
A myriad of burnt materials clouded the air with smoke from behind Ivory and Kayn. They stepped forward because the flames had grown hot against their backs. Kayn had interest enough only to glance back at her tent catching fire, once. There were small explosions where hiding gases and substances suddenly caught flame, but there was little to no wind to spread the fire about the grassy brush. For t he most part, it was controlled. A steady pyre.
Kayn watched Ivory’s eyes reflect the conflagration. Then their fingers found each other’s. A hesitant tangling. It felt natural.
Their affection was often kindled by tragedies.
Only this time, it was one they shared.
