Pepper / INK /

Keeping the ink (reprise)

The sun had been down for hours. And he just followed the moonlight to the house with the sigil on it. Both of them were sleeping peacefully, very deeply. Even the wrath of the moon wouldn’t wake them, not from the spell those herbs cast. It was the only mercy he could give them. He placed another token in the doorway, blocking the rest of the house and the neighborhood so even if someone got curious or if someone sleepwalked, the spell would deflect them as if it were a wall.

He knelt next to the bed, said his prayers and obligations and readied his blade. It took nearly ten minutes before he could raise his hand to call on the magic. He placed the blade in the man’s hand, his mind empty enough that making him a Risen was easy.

"Give her a kiss and lead her away." Javved said to the old man. He rose, kissed his wife, and then, he stabbed her.

Javved kept his eyes down. He couldn’t watch this. He couldn’t watch a man kill the love of his life, and the only thing that made any of it easier was that in a moment, the man would follow her. Covered in her blood, the man came to his senses, an arm bone clutched in his hand. "What have you done?" Javved asked.

"I don’t remember." The man said, for a few minutes, he would be lucid, hours if Javved let him stay this way, but he might be sadistic but not cruel.

"Come here."

"What are you going to do?"

"What do you think I’m going to do?"

"Kill me?" The voice was almost hopeful.

"Is that what you want?"

"Yes, I don’t want to be like this."

"Then come, bring the blade with you."

The man dropped to his knees in front of the Necromancer, still covered in his wife’s blood. The necromancer said a spell, a real one this time, a binding that would use his power for the ink, and watched as the runes appeared in the spilled blood.

He smiled and put a hand on the man’s shoulder to steady him, plunging his knife into the man’s heart, he held on to him as the last of his life, and the magic from the flesh he had consumed gathered. And as the man fell, the blood, now dripping onto the ink on Javved’s wrist, carried with it the power of the spell.

But this was the part he hated. He could see their lives in reverse from death to birth in just a few seconds. A side-effect of the ink’s judging power. But with nothing to do with the power assaulting it, and the spell keeping it from dissipating into the air, the power had no place to go but into him, and his ink, which glowed a dull red. It had long since lost the silver glow it had once had.

When it was over, he took both of the silver sigils with him, they would keep the other inks in good condition for a while.

He made sure that his hood was up and his hands were in his pockets. This spell made him susceptible to moon burns.

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Next Chapter: Bloody Murder