Broken Pieces: A Tale of Romance and Necromancy

[7]

Aris was walking down a dark street.

He couldn't quite remember how he had gotten there. And it was cold—unseasonably so. It felt more like deep fall instead of the height of summer.

Suddenly, he realized he wasn't alone. There was something else there, standing at the end of the road, silhouetted in eerie blue light. He recognized her immediately.

"Mom," he whispered, for standing at the end of the street was his mother. His beautiful mother, alive and well, wearing her favorite tunic, arms outstretched as if waiting for him.

He stepped forward, eager to see her again, to apologize for what had happened, to have her hold him and say everything would be okay... but then her facial expression changed, from one of love, to disgust, and she held out her hand in warning, forbidding him from coming any closer.

"You killed me," she said simply, the three words seeming to echo down the street, amplifying as they reached Aris' ears.

Aris' heart nearly stopped in his chest. "Mom," he said. "Mom, I didn't mean to... I didn't know—"

"You killed me!" she shouted, and now she tilted back her head and let out an unearthly howl. Aris recognized the sound: it was the same noise the creature in the graveyard had made, the soulless reanimated corpse that shared only his mother's face and nothing more. And now the corpse was glaring at him, flesh falling off her cheeks as she disintegrated in front of him, becoming a horrific tangle of tendons and bone that started to run towards him with fingers outstretched into claws...

"ARIS!"

Aris jolted awake, heart pounding in his chest. Hunched over him was a woman, and for a second, he almost reached out and struck her, because he thought it was that horrible version of his mother from his nightmare. But then he realized it wasn't his mother at all; it was the necromancer.

He took a deep breath, realizing that he wasn't on that dark street; he was still at the necromancer's place. They had practiced spells late, and rather than try to sneak back into the inner city in the middle of the night, he had decided to stay over. He was currently lying on her couch, bathed in sweat from the strength of his nightmare.

"Aris," Raizia repeated, a little more quietly this time. Her eyes were wide; clearly he had scared her. "Are you okay? You were screaming."

Aris swallowed, then nodded. "I'm fine. I-I should go." He stood up and tried to find his shirt, which he must have taken off before going to bed.

"It's 3am," Raizia said. Her face was lit from the flickering light of a candle. "They won't let you back into the inner city. Not without the guards asking you where you've been."

"I'll figure out something," Aris murmured, eyes scouring the ground. He finally found his shirt crumpled on the floor, bent over and attempted to put it on, but Raizia grabbed his hand.

"You're not going," she said simply.

Aris wanted to argue with her, but he was tired, and deep down he knew she was right—getting back into the inner city at this hour would be a nightmare. So he sat back down on the couch and buried his face in his hands.

Raizia appraised him for a moment, then stepped over to her small kitchen. She grabbed a kettle, filled it with water, and then struggled with a match to light a small fire. Once the water had boiled, she poured it into a cup, sprinkled in some herbs, and stirred it all with a small spoon.

"Here," she said, sitting next to him and passing him the ceramic cup.

Aris appraised it suspiciously. "What is this? A sleeping draught?"