Many Faces Are Watching

A Story of Segrus the Necromancer

The hand of a worried man pointed down the stone steps of a subterranean tunnel, guiding a stranger away from the city street and towards the cavernous relief between buildings. He stood at the top step with enough hesitancy and cautious for fear to frame his eyes against his face. An air leaked from below, slithered up each crack between them as a heavy miasma against the force of earth, and transformed their wild instinct away from calm. Contained no longer by obligation, the butcher backed out of the alleyway called Star Rock, and left Segrus alone among the scared crowd as they listened to the song which echoed against the stone.

Segrus the Necromancer looked back and forth at different faces, and judged their demeanor as he passed. They, as citizens of Nafren, were not rehearsed for what Segrus had been called to address. Through necessity they understood invasion from the neighboring Paltha, or the disaster which comes from flooding. The dark, squared mantle of his dress marked him for a different trouble out of all the others in the East Market not long ago. Despite this, few met his blue eyes and saw what he hoped to provide.

“Can you hear that?” a child whispered up to her parent, clinging to them and the wall of the passage. She stood as high as Segrus’ hip, but he continued without stopping to hear their response to their daughter.

Several others whispered similarly as Segrus dodged past them on his way down. An older gentleman, in the mannerly attire afforded to a partisan or scholar as his clothes, mentioned avoiding the spectacle in the cave. Segrus had been told of a chamber at the bottom on the way from the market, one deep into the hard ground which shouldered the city. This was further confirmed by the sign he saw at the top, which labeled the alley ‘The Spectacular Jewel Wonder.’

It was aptly named. Nearby walls lit the stairs with individual carved gems of gleaming blues and greens of healthy nature. Every few steps a new pair was embedded in lieu of fire, and they were eloquently encircled with simple architecture. On another day, Segrus promised himself to return and spend more time appreciating them.

He could sense more as he descended to the grotto’s termination, and that sense thinned the onlookers with its presence. A vapour of sulfur rose with the haunting song of a woman’s voice. The wall of it filled his breath until he was forced to stop and coughed harshly at the rotten smell.

It gave him moments to fully accept the hymn of despair. The words swayed in rhythmic delirium, and took on life beyond its singer as it rebounded against the rock.

“Your blood will sanguinate your eyes / pool until you’re masked with flies,” the voice performed. The crowd’s dispersion was no mystery to Segrus.

After he crossed the last step, carved long ago by stonecutters and roughed to a bow by the feet of common man, Segrus absorbed the natural splendor placed before him. The spiked ceiling stood firm even at its mammoth height above. The small crystals of illumination for the passage had parents and great grandparent forms sunk deep into every surface Segrus could see. They spread their light far back until it seemed closer to stars in the pitched night sky as the cavern continued without end.

Three men and one woman held their ground at the landing, with one more figure separated alone thirty paces away by a column of crystal. The four adults close by looked haggard in the dull light. Shadows broke up their visage along the bridges—nose, brown, cheeks—and accentuated the fright they could not hide.

One of the men, lean and youthful, wielded a basketed blade while the rest stood without arms. He carried it in hand without much discipline, holding the point straight away with a locked arm and wrist out-turned. Segrus preferred to know if fighting became unavoidable he could rely on their support, yet knew he would do what was necessary.

It was then Segrus realized the haunted singing had ceased with his arrival. The fifth occupant of the Jewel Wonder bore gleaming eyes down at him from her perch on the central feature of the room. She draped limbs to lounge on hard crystal, the light of which was greater than all others. Her dress was more plain than torn and she paid no heed to its appearance.

“Why thou interrupt our throne, degenerate?” The shrill voice sought out Segrus and shocked the others enough to confront him. Her face looked fully shadowed, besides her eyes. A mix of anger and defiance shone through to Segrus.

“Should we invite you to bow, to denigrate yourself further to us, heretic? Do you hear us speak? Wouldst you offer to tear your eyes out and eat your hands? How sharp your dagger that wreaks of soilt filth to spew that hideous stomach inside out on the world! Swallow it and yourself. Fill the grave yourself, Necromancer.”

She spat the words out pointedly, with the direct familiarity of his person in advance of his arrival. Yet Segrus retreated not from the display she played for her audience nor her open threats. He advanced on the pillar through the wall of exuded sulfur smell, and made clear he knew of what was transpired before them.

“Let it be known I have no intention of providing you leave of this place. You have deceived those here, and it is plain to me you won’t allow any infringer to escape.” Segrus paused to cough and then continued, “I recall your wyrm kin promising to visit on me the place of fire, and I have been summoned to send you there.”

The possessed form leapt from her jeweled column, and boasted a significant presence through unfurled wings than the frail figure before. They dripped with the soggy ooze of sloughed skin, the metamorphosis of cocoon to terror. Under the ooze was the pattern of feathers yet more akin to reptilian scales.

A shadow undulated off the back of the woman—another body divided new. Still the woman’s body scuttled quickly across rocks on the ground, then the wall, to flank the group. She carried the shadow on her back with its generated wings.

Segrus shouted for them all to pressure their enemy, “Do not let it reach the stairs!” He waited not for them to join in his dash back to where he came from.

His body blocked the monster’s maneuver to gain leverage, and it crashed them together. Momentum rolled them up into a tumble across the open floor until they fell off the intended cavern pathway and onto fresh cave.

On top of him a harsh, guttural roar overpowered his hearing and left him disoriented long enough for the wyrm to become disengaged. As he righted himself, he saw it bite down into the neck of a man in dark leather boots. Wings tried to flap and the commotion flicked ooze into the air.

Segrus refused to lose ground on their hope to defeat this. He scrambled to his feet and hurried to pull the monster off. With its wings immediately present he grabbed each with his hands, but foreign heat emanated into his grip until he let go. This wyrm—this awful dragon—would not be hindered so readily.

He dove again, this time with dagger drawn, and jabbed between the joints of the wings. The dagger was long, straight, and true. An easy companion which stayed at his side. It carried behind it Segrus’ natural strength and power to fight against the terrible powers of the present darkness.

It responded immediately and released its prey to shriek an obscenity. Segrus stumbled away, unbalanced by The wyrm’s flailing midsection was increasing in its tremors to separate itself from the leftovers it was born from. It wanted above all to fully form and attack unimpeded.

Its transformation shuttered violently as a broadsword struck the wyrm from a wide, downward swing by the young man newly recovered from the shock of seeing his friend chewed. The reprieve gave Segrus his breath and focus to visualize a method for victory.

Poor woman, conquered over by evil, was to be tossed aside by its conqueror in pursuit of future disaster. She would be thrown away in the end while the wyrm slithered forward on its belly in the world. Segrus thrust his bare hand to her forehead and embalmed her with his necromancy. He willed there to be some justice here.

As the corpse attached to its predator reanimated, Segrus spoke a single command, “Kill.”

It heard and responded.

Dead hands reached up.

They wrapped around the body of the wyrm above it and prevented the two from coming apart. The wyrm voiced its frustration with sickening flops as it pounded against the corpse. Yet the hands held—iron hands that ignored heat and pain. It sought to strangle while trapped underneath the devil on its back.

A broadsword sliced onto the wyrm frantically. Its edge blunted on the scales, but it cut nonetheless deeper and deeper out of desperate force. Scales cracked and the pieces sundered into the air. Segrus again took his dagger and joined him in striking the wound.

They fought the danger until its life was exhausted from each half onto the rock. Each worked to dig its black, hot blood out. The end arrived when only the corpse moved under Segrus’ power. One innocent perished. Two fled before he noticed.

Segrus knew of the fire they came from. The realm, Krinnakh, a homeland of deadly flame and melted coal. He read of them in texts, the archaic and the mystical. How the fire spread into people’s lives and ate them in misery. At times he could not believe the whispers of possession. Now more than proof spread dead at his feet.

When it came to the dead, he was now a dragon slayer.

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