The Necromancer's Daughter

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As Lucille's eyes closed to a slumber, the Necromancer opened his, waking up from some sort of meditation.

"Damnation!" The Necromancer bellowed, his voice bouncing off the smooth stony walls of his underground cavern. Rats scurried back to their hiding places as static energies flowed about in the Necromancer's frustration. "Damn you, Lucille! Damn you to hell!" He swung his arm and the divination crystal he'd been clutching on was sent flying towards the wall. It shattered into a million pieces and as sparks of dark magic fizzled out of it, shrieks and screams of lost souls trapped within the crystal escaped, breaking free from their astral prison. For the time being at least.

"I had her at my fingertips! I was so close!" He spoke to no one and everyone at the same time. That's the thing with beings who dealt with the deceased, they were never alone. Spirits were always around him, whispering their wishes to be brought back to life; endlessly calling out to him, crying for help, for resurrection, for a second chance to right the wrong things they've done in their lives. Things that were never the Necromancer's business but whose burden he must always carry. Sometimes he tricked them into offering everything that's left of them, their souls, for his entertainment; but lately he didn't have any use with the dead. His powers have grown weaker by the day and it was on it's weakest now, having been used up to resurrect his magnum opus, his daughter, Lilian.

It was unnecessary for the Necromancer to sit on the ground but he needed all his focus and concentration to conjure his all-seeing Evil Eye. He'd been trying to track down the witches but Lucille's cloaking spells were exemplary, as it always has been. He tried to concentrate again, honing in on the woman he once loved. The woman who, just moments ago, slipped under his nose and stole the daughter he raised from the dead. But nothing. It was as if they became as untraceable as thin air itself.

Arranged around him in a circle, equidistant to each other, were smaller crystals similar to the one he just shattered. He gritted his teeth and started grabbing them, hurling them everywhere as he screamed and growled at the surrounding darkness. He looked around the cavern he made for himself. It was cold and hard and unrelenting, like he always wanted. A couple of St. Elmo's fires brought irrelevant light, burning blue and casting eerie shadows along the cavern's walls. It didn't bother the Necromancer. What bothered him was the echoing image of Lucille in his mind.

He could still see the anger in her eyes right before they escaped. She looked better, he allowed himself to think, remembering the last time he saw her. It was the day they laid Lilian to her grave, a day he knew Lucille would never want to go through again. A bunch of people went to the funeral, and although the Necromancer itched to get his hands on the body, protection charms surrounded the place, inhibiting him from coming closer.

It had been raining, he vividly recalled, as if the skies were mirroring Lucille's anguish. He stood undetected on a far corner of the cemetery, wet and waiting. He maintained a great distance from all that was happening but he could hear her wailing and weeping for the only thing she cherished in the entire world. If he hadn't been too greedy, if he hadn't been totally consumed by his thirst for power, he would've been standing there beside her, providing strength and stability fathers and husbands are expected to give when burying a child.

Heck, sometimes when he goes even madder than he already is, he wonders if he would've been able to save Lilian. And then he leaves that question hanging, afraid of the answers and the guilt that would surely come with it. He already has a lifetime of guilt to begin with, he didn't want to get his hands into things that required a heart.

Despite the heavy downpour, he forced himself to raise his gaze into what seemed to be an empty sky. Only those with abilities associated with the afterlife would notice a double rainbow streaking quickly in the sky right above the cemetery. The Necromancer spit to the ground in disgust. Heaven, that's what rainbows meant. The pearly gates the mortals aspired were opening, welcoming a child, fulfilling a promise of eternal peace.

But a double rainbow meant there was something more than a dead person's remains lying underneath a mound of earth. There was also power. A great power lying dormant, waiting to be reawakened. At the thought, the Necromancer licked his lips in anticipation, the way hungry lions do in sight of tasty prey.

Retrieving the body proved to be extremely difficult though, because Lucille was always around in the first few months and her charms protected Lilian even beyond the grave; fending him off or alerting Lucille that something evil was trying to get to her daughter. It wasn't until Lucille left town to build her life back in another city did he get his chance to dig Lilian up. By that time, and some more months to allow the buried charms around the cemetery to wear their magic off, the body have been almost gone except for her hair neatly tied in a braid and her bones clad in her funeral dress.

Resurrecting the dead is no big deal for him, that is why he's called the Necromancer after all; but regenerating a whole girl from hair and bones was beyond his capacity. He had to kill two witches with healing powers, coerced a druid (before killing him, too) for a regeneration potion and dealt with white magic he wouldn't normally run into. It had been with these measures that he was able to reconstitute Lilian's body back to how it was. Even better perhaps, because this Lilian wasn't sick. She won't wilt away and die like before.

"I had been working on her for two years! Two years! And then she just jumps out of nowhere and steals her!" He ranted and paced in erratic figure eights around his earthen chamber. He had his hands on his skull, fingers digging down his messy locks and his face grimaced in utter desperation. He caught a glimpse of his shadow from the cavern walls and stopped his pacing. "This is your fault! This is all your fault!"

He conjured an energy ball and aimed towards the dark silhouette of himself. Before he could throw however, the shadow spoke in a voice almost similar to the Necromancer's, only coarser and a little less frustrated. "Don't be foolish. I did everything that needed to be done. It's you who didn't detect the witch in the woods. Don't blame that on me."

This angered the Necromancer more, so he launched the energy ball to the wall and made a huge crater in the place where the shadow was. "Oh, please." The shadow spoke again, mocking the Necromancer and appearing on another rock formation. The Necromancer sent another energy ball in that direction, too, and this went on for about five more times before the Necromancer stopped to catch his breath.

"Great. Drain yourself of whatever little power you have by trying to vaporize a shadow. That'll accomplish something." The shadow said.

"Shut up."

"Well, if you're done with this pathetic display of your usual incompetence, you might want to check the candles on the pewter bowl."

"Candles?Why would there still be candles in that? I resurrected Lilian, didn't you see her walk?" miffed The Necromancer.

"Now you're asking me?" The shadow then disappeared, leaving The Necromancer searching for his pewter bowl.

Because pulling Lilian's soul from heaven was more complicated than resurrecting the recently deceased, or the weaker lost souls floating about all over the place, the Resurrection Ritual required specific druid candles to be lit on a bowl made of Celtic pewter. The candles, if fed enough dark magic, were supposed to reverse the process of souls passing onto the gates of heaven, pulling out a soul so desired and restoring it to its body. In this case, a reconstituted body.

When the Necromancer finally found the bowl, he was perplexed to see a sliver of a candle sticking out on it. "These were supposed to vanish completely when the ritual was complete..." he said under his breath. He scraped the small, melted wax with a nib of it's wick and held it between his fingers.

"Something must've gone wrong." He said, this time speaking directly to his shadow. "I might not have resurrected Lilian after all."

A/N: This is late, I know, I'm sorry. But I managed to pull myself out of a spiral and finally finish editing this, so I hope you enjoy it! Also, I've discovered free stock photos and updated the media here. The previous photos were haphazardly taken from the internets and I do not want to be infringing copyright. So there. :)

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XOXO

-bentham