|
Hallie Slidepath -> (AQW) Hallie's AQW Stories (11/6/2010 19:25:59)
|
Teenagers and Necromancers
Request by Acient J
Ennis had spent most of Mogloween harassing moglins and stealing candy from gullible heroes. Now it was getting late though, and he was heading home. As always Ennis’ attention-span didn’t last longer than about two minutes so he quickly thought of other things to do. Imitating a frog he happily jumped down the road while trying to imitate the sound of a dragon with stomach pains.
Since Ennis’ wasn’t the kind of person that pays a lot of attention to his surroundings he failed to notice that some major changes had happened around him. For once the bridge outside of Swordhaven wasn’t full of undead skeletons. Admittedly this could count as a very welcomed change, however; it wasn’t a normal change. The skeletons had always been there... for some odd reason, and they were supposed to stay.
Ennis was all too busy picking up stones from the ground to notice what was different though. Once he had filled his pockets with stones he started looking around for something to throw them at. Disappointed he didn’t see any scarecrows or sneevils around, but in the distance he could see the dark silhouette of the graveyard.
The Swordhaven Graveyard was fairly calm, but once in a while a few skeletons would randomly pop up from their graves. Usually this was blamed on that there were a lot of wanna-be necromancers out there that couldn’t control their spells properly.
Making up his mind Ennis skittered away towards the graveyard. If he couldn’t throw the rocks at something living he could at least entertain himself by throwing them at the dead, he thought. Or in the best case the living dead.
The graveyard was beautifully lit. The few citizens of Swordhaven that actually had dared to visit the graveyard this Mogloween had placed pumpkins around the cementary. The orange lanterns gave a friendly light to the otherwise so dead memorial park (no pun intended). But as Ennis approached the graveyard he actually noticed something fishy. In the world of Lore there are admittedly a lot of fishy things going on, and at least half of said fishy things involve fish somehow... but this time the fishyness had nothing to do with fish. It was just something in the air, a sound that didn’t seem to belong at a graveyard.
Ennis didn’t care much though and took a rock out of his pocket. He then aimed for the magnificent angel statue which was standing a few feet away from him. The rock hit the angel straight in the face, and the well-carved stone-nose immediately fell off.
“Boo-yah! Headshot!” Ennis cheered and pulled out another rock. This time he closed his eyes and just randomly threw the rock out into the night. As he heard the thud of it hitting something he opened his eyes, and a bit further away he could see something move.
“In the name of Overlord Sepulchure why did you do that?!” The scream was filled with both pain and rage. Ennis backed away a little, but not very far. Undeads didn’t tend to be very articulate, so whoever this was it wasn’t an undead, which meant that it wasn’t dangerous. Or so he thought until a shovel suddenly appeared out of nowhere and hit him in the back of his head.
“Owwie”, unlike other people Ennis didn’t find it unmanly to whimper, or to use the word “owwie”. Sitting on the ground holding his hand to the spot where the shovel made impact he looked up at the dark figure that was standing above him now. The stranger was wearing a brown and green-ish coloured armor with broad shoulder plates. Her eyes were empty and brownish red.
“What the hell is your problem? I’m trying to dig up graves here!” If her appearance hadn’t been frightening before the fact that she still kept the shovel in a tight grip made Ennis twitch several times in fear.
“You... you... you...” Ennis’ stammering was quite un-impressive. He discreetly tried to crawl backwards but the Necromancer slammed the shovel down next to him.
“Answer me!” The quite empty eyes still managed to look angry somehow. “Can’t a girl rob a grave in peace without some jellyfish throwing rocks at her?!”
“I, uh, sorry.”
Sorry wasn’t a word that Ennis was used with. He’d only used it twice before in his sixteen years long life, and both those times he had lied. This time it was only part lie. He was scared to death by the furious necromancer, and since a sincere sorry might save him he tried to actually mean it.
“I wasn’t looking; I was just randomly throwing rocks into the dark. I didn’t see you...”
The empty eyes seemed to soften a little, but above all the necromancer now seemed confused. “Why are you in a graveyard throwing rocks in the first place? In the middle of Mogloween on top of that. Shouldn’t you be begging strangers for candy?”
“I wanted to throw rocks at something, and since I didn’t see anything living around I decided to throw them at the dead.” Ennis' answer was quick, and he was surprised that he could construct sentences at all. Even though the terrifying necromancer finally had loosened her grip of the shovel and relaxed a little she still was pretty darn scary.
She sighed and poked his arm with the shovel. “You don’t seem too weak”, she mumbled, and then she offered him her hand. “Tell you what; if you help me dig some... material... up I’ll create a few bonedragons for you of whatever parts I don’t need. You can throw your rocks at them, and believe me, it’s fun. They shriek and everything.”
Ennis stared at her pale hand. “Seriously?”
“Yeah, seriously. But you’ll have to do all the digging. My head still hurts”, she muttered as she pulled him to his feet.
“Don’t you think mine does? You hit me in the head! With a friggin shovel!”
The necromancer raised one of her eyebrows amused. “Hey kid, you’re acting like you have a choice. Either you agree to this deal and actually get something in return for your digging, or I’ll just take the parts I need from you.”
At first he was tempted to ask if parts from a living person would work for a necromancer. Then he realized that it would be a stupid risk to take; it might sound like a challenge. And so Ennis spent the rest of Mogloween digging up graves at the Swordhaven graveyard. The necromancer on the other hand amused herself to let undead jack o’ lanterns jump out and scare anyone passing by.
When he finally was done the necromancer kept her promise. When she had finished filling her bag with the parts she needed she created three adorable undead bonedragons for Ennis to play with. As to be expected for all people that are willing to club someone down with a shovel at night she kept out a small important detail though. This came to affect Ennis' life greatly not too many days later.
You see, the tiny thing she left out to mention was that the bonedragons love to bite living beings; anything with a brain, really. Their bite also is very infectious so even if you do get the dragon off after it has locked its jaws around your left foot you’re already doomed.
As for Ennis? Well, the next time you run into a bunch of bonedragons he’s likely to be one of them.
|
|
|
|
