Page 6 of Amethyst and Iron
I waited the brief moments it would take to drop them cold where they stood, indicating they’d been returned to the Valley of the Dead. Then I’d return their bodies via magic to their correct gravesites.
That didn’t happen.
All of them stilled instead.
Frozen to the spot.
Unmoving.
Like creepy-as-fuck mannequins.
What the—what was happening?
“Not possible,” I breathed.
I couldn’t feel a push at the proverbial door to the Valley of the Dead either, the sign that the freshly dead were there and ready to be tethered back to the living.
There was just… death?
Death unchallenged.
I shot a look through the open homes, seeing the fallen bodies still very much steeped in fresh death.
“No. This can’t…” I teleported right in front of the frozen beings.
It was technically possible for black magic to have corrupted my spell.
Were they being held in stasis by said magic and whoever the hell their death raiser was? If so, it couldn’t hold for long. My power would most definitely override it.
I reached out, bracing myself to be burned by touching a being animated by a mass amount of black magic—but I never made contact.
My hand went right through.
Not a ghost.
Nothing.
There was nothing there at all.
A blue film materialized, and then the Animated Fleshwork melted away.
Fuck.
They’d never been there.
It had all been an illusion.
But what was left as the film dematerialized had me choking and stumbling back.
Twelve piles of ashes.
“No. No. No. No.”
“Oh, it’s very much a reality,” a voice whispered with sadistic glee on the wind. “You murdered them, necromancer.”
I spun around, trying to locate the source.
I couldn’t.
