Requiem for a King [MxM]

Of Sin and Symphony

Quintus turned the page in his book and adjusted his posture to better catch the candle light. This was the second night at the waypoint and the rain had yet to let up. It battered the trees and the building while the wind howled. He'd gone outside the previous day to take down the wind chimes and hum his necromancy into them.

He made a note to contact Celesta as soon as he could. They needed a stronger presence on this side of the region, both to upkeep the waypoints and to monitor the netherborne here. It seemed the situation here was changing, the netherborne growing bolder. In the past, they'd stay away from the sound of wind chimes whether they were laced with necromancy or not, because it denoted the presence of a necromancer.

Even the ones in the forest didn't seem afraid of him at all. Worrying, to say the least. He should've been resting, a rested mind bred sound decisions. Stormy weather always chased sleep away. The wind, the thunder. It reminded him too much of that night. The night this mess with the netherborne began.

He remembered the booms and cracks that sounded as though the earth was being ripped apart, the screams, the necromancy that made the air tremble. A symphony from the grave, Celesta had called it.

Quintus turned another page, submerged himself in the words until they drowned out his memories. Dragons and fae and wizards, how boring.

The rustle of fabric reached Quintus' ears as Gavrael stirred. "Can't sleep?"

Gavrael grumbled something unintelligible even to Quintus' sensitive ears and sat up in his hamaca.

"Gav?" Quintus could only make out his silhouette in the dim candlelight.

"The baby," he said. "The baby's up. I'll go." He started toward the northern side of the room and walked right into the wall.

Quintus sighed and set his book aside. This memory nonsense was going to get Gav killed. He picked up the candle and crossed to where Gavrael was feeling the wall as though it wasn't supposed to be there. "Gav, wake up."

Gavrael continued to search the wall, his eyes frantic and distant. "She's crying."

"Gav." Quintus took him by the shoulder and shook him. "There's no baby here."

He froze, looked this way and that before his eyes settled on Quintus. "There's no baby here," he repeated. "She's not here." He leaned against the wall and rubbed his face. "We're still at the waypoint?"

"We are," Quintus confirmed. He crossed to the little table by Gavrael's hamaca and lit the candle there. "Did you remember something?"

Gavrael sat on the ground against the wall with his hands laced atop his head. "I have a baby. I'm..." He swallowed. "I'm a father. She was crying and I couldn't get into the nursery. The door is..." He touched the wall behind him. "The door to the nursery is in my room."

"Did you remember anything else? How your room looks perhaps?" Quintus asked.

He shook his head. "All I saw was the door."

"Hm..."Quintus sat on his own hamaca. "What's her name? The baby, I mean."

"I don't remember. But she looks... she looks like me. She has my eyes and my hair, and she has this little dimple on her cheek." He smiled, as though the memory brought him comfort, but after a moment, it melted into a wide-eyed look of horror. "Do you think she was on the boat with me?"

Quintus shrugged a shoulder. "I don't think it's wise to speculate on such things. You should write down what you've remembered." He settled back into his hamaca and picked up his book. Gavrael was regaining his memory a little too slow for Quintus' liking. They couldn't wander around the gulf forever, but the thought of leaving Gav behind didn't sit right with him.

Damn. Was he getting attached? No, he just felt sorry for the poor guy. Octavia had rubbed off on him.

Quintus had gotten through ten more pages of his book when Gavrael returned to his hamaca. The fluttering of journal pages reached his ears, followed by the scratching of charcoal on paper. He turned another page.

"Quintus," Gavrael said, his voice barely above a whisper. "May I ask you something... rather personal?"

Quintus frowned, and debated steering the conversation elsewhere. His personal life wasn't a topic he discussed lightly. He'd much rather talk about the weather. "You may, but there's no guarantee I'll answer."

"What is it like being a necromancer?" When Quintus didn't answer, he continued. "I don't mean to be nosey, I just... I'm curious, and I'd like some distraction from my thoughts.

He looked over and caught Gavrael staring at him, firelight reflected in his grey-blue eyes. Part of him wanted to turn over and tell Gav to go back to sleep. "I hate it." The words slipped out before he could think better of them. Now Gav was looking at him as though he'd sprouted a second head.

"I see. Does it take a toll on you? Physically or emotionally?"

Quintus ground his teeth. What was this? An intervention? He set his book face down on his chest. "In a way. Necromancy is a curse, and necromancers aren't exactly welcomed everywhere, especially in this region. We're blamed for bringing the Calamity upon this world. The humans who don't fear us hate us, some going as far to kill us. It's not fun, Gav."

"But is it true? I know history can sometimes be misconstrued or outright rewritten depending on whose story is the most popular or believable. I'm sure there's more than one account of how the netherborne got here considering the length of time that's passed."

His eyebrows shot up. He'd pegged Gav as a lot of things, but the wise, yet understanding type wasn't one of them. He tucked a hand behind his head. "It was some two hundred years ago in Relgarah, a city at the northern edge of the desert. I was..." He bit his tongue before the rest of that sentence came out.

"You what?" Gavrael asked.

"My family lived in a town not far from there. It's not important," he added before Gavrael could press further. "It was a rogue necromancer that slipped into the city that night. She'd stolen a petalsong from the Necromancy archives."

"What is a petalsong?"

"Petalsongs are the most powerful form of necromancy. I could raise all the dead on this continent with a petalsong."

"Or bring a scourge upon the world," Gavrael added softly.

"But there's a catch. I know only one person who's survived a petalsong. The person who brought the netherborne into this world didn't survive it. All that was left of her was a pile of ashes and bone." Quintus closed his eyes. He remembered stomping those ashes, cursing the remains of the rogue necromancer. The damn coward. "Relgarah is now a swirling rift, a gateway for the netherborn to cross into our world. And that, Gav, is how the Calamity began. With a song."

"Is it the correct account or just the one you've decided to put your faith in?" Gavrael asked. "Because the one I've heard is very different."

Quintus bit back the scathing retort on his tongue. "It's the correct one. You can bet money on it."

"How can you be so sure?"

Because I was there. He kept that thought to himself. He'd already bared more of his soul than he was comfortable with. "Because I know how necromancy works. It's music and magic. Sin and symphony, and it can be quite powerful in the right or the wrong hands."

"Sin and symphony," Gavrael repeated. "I like that. It's quite poetic."

"There's an old adage amongst my kind. Sin and symphony is all a necromancer needs. There was a time when I swore by that but... I've come to realise, sometimes sin and symphony isn't enough."

"And what do you do when it's not?"

"You do what you can."