Chapter 66-2: The Necromancer

Suria mumbled something incoherent even to herself as she struggled to wake up fully. She had slept like a rock and felt greatly refreshed, but that didn't mean she was prepared for such cheerfulness so early.

"You know how normally the school staff clear the weevils out of the supply tunnels by this point?" Xuhriha asked. She was clearly too excited to wait for an answer and pushed herself back. "Well, this cycle they've been too distracted by all the crime in the city!"

"How does that help us?" Suria rubbed her gritty eyes and tried to refocus.

"It doesn't directly, but I was thinking we could go exterminate them. It would give us a chance to fight together, and I could show you a few spells! Come on, Suria, I know you have lots of things you want to do before the cycle ends, but this could be fun, right?"

"We have different ideas of... well, I suppose that's obvious." Suria sighed and accepted her fate. "Alright, give me a few minutes and we can go."

Once she'd washed her face and ensured that she was properly focused, Suria headed out across campus with her new necromancer friend. It seemed much too early and not many others were awake yet, but perhaps that was good, given what they were going to do. Xuhriha chattered until they reached the mouth of the tunnel, where she became more serious.

"I understand you have a perception spell to pick up the weevils," she said. "We'd probably better rely on that. The one time I tried to do this, I managed by sensing lives around me, but it's all very imprecise."

"Sure." Suria hadn't prepared any special pouches in her robes, but with her runebook in hand she could maintain her perception spell while simultaneously casting others. This would be good practice for trying to get runebook instincts properly set in her mind, anyway. "I'll guard our flanks if you want to lead?"

"Definitely! Let me show you what I can do."

As usual, the tunnels were mostly clear closest to campus, though they ran into the first weevil sooner than Suria had expected. Random chance, or had they reproduced so much after being ignored? In any case, it wasn't paying much attention to them, just chewing on supplies, so Suria glanced over at Xuhriha.

"The most obvious is a death spell," the necromancer said, and thrust her finger toward the weevil. "Death!"

Something ghostly swept out, fast as the wind, and suddenly the weevil fell to the ground. Its body continued to twitch, curling up on itself, but Suria could tell that it had died instantly.

"Very impressive," she said.

"Not as impressive as it looks," Xuhriha said, her expression drooping. "The problem is, living things really want to live. It's kind of what defines life. So it tends to be easier to resist spells that directly cause death, which is why people use fire and swords and things. I can kill something this small, no problem, but it doesn't really work on mages."

"I assume you have more than that, though."

"Definitely! Let's find a bigger group and I'll show you."

The random distribution of weevils didn't play along, since they ran into the small monsters in ones and twos for the next several corridors. Suria used her force spells to crush them and, when Xuhriha clapped approvingly, began experimenting with force blades or spikes to do it more efficiently. It was strange how clearing these tunnels, which had been grim and painful in earlier cycles, was almost fun like this.

When Suria sensed a cluster of weevils in the next room, she raised her hand to indicate a halt. She thought she would have to explain, but Xuhriha was frowning, then abruptly nodded as if she understood.

"They're not lurking overhead or anything, are they?" she asked.

"No, but..." It was Suria's turn to frown as she realized the weevils were moving. "I think they heard us."

"Not a problem!"

Xuhriha flounced into the next room and pivoted toward the mass of weevils. There were close to a dozen of them, swarming from a side tunnel, and Suria instinctively started to cast her mana shield. She didn't get a chance before it was already over.

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First Xuhriha cast her same death spell, and one of the weevils crumpled over, but the difference was in what happened next: a spiritual ripple expanded from the corpse. It looked like a wave of ghostly claws and pincers, and as it swept over the nearest weevils, they crumpled up and released their own ripples. In seconds instead of a swarm there was just a pile of weevil corpses.

"You can draw off the death energy?" Suria guessed. She had no knowledge of necromancy, but she'd been studying so many different subjects, she thought she had a better instinctive sense for unfamiliar magic now.

"That's right!" Xuhriha hopped back and forth from leg to leg, laughing to herself. "I'm loaded with energy now! Gotta work it off on more of these things."

They purged their way through the tunnels, easily destroying all the weevils that stood in their way. Suria knew that she shouldn't be proud of killing such weak monsters, yet that didn't stop her from enjoying the chance to flex her abilities. The two of them had never actually fought together, but now discovered that it was easy to for them to collaborate.

The good times were interrupted when they happened across their first xenarth. She didn't recognize this one at first, because he had a large scar across one eye, but after a moment Suria realized the fur patterns of Bumbledun. Had the weevils taken one of his eyes?

"Are you alright?" Suria asked, rushing closer and checking him for injuries.

"We're managing," Bumbledun told her. "Are you the ones the school sent to clear the weevils?"

"You should have said something earlier!"

"Oh, we don't like to make trouble."

Even though Suria didn't want Bumbledun to be injured, she was frustrated by the fact that there was nothing she could do for him. No active injuries and she didn't even feel any pain that she could soothe. Healing as complex as regenerating an eye was still far beyond her, and even if the time reset would soon restore it, her inability frustrated her.

"Just make sure you get the western tunnels," Bumbledun asked them. "There's no nest on that side, but there are a lot of them in the old corridors."

"We will," Suria said, just a little sadly.

As they walked on, eradicating more weevils in their path, Suria realized what was truly bothering her: the lack of a relationship. She didn't think there was any bitterness on Bumbledun's part, even having lost his eye; the difference was that when she came in like this, effortlessly crushing the monsters in her path, the xenarths didn't feel any sympathy for her as they had for a struggling student trying to help.

The grim mood continued through several other xenarths, even though one had some cuts that Suria could heal. As they pushed deeper into the tunnels, Xuhriha kept trying to cheer her up with little jokes, and eventually Suria began smiling again. She was enjoying using her runebook for proper casting, instead of just storage for all her glyphs, and it felt increasingly natural to hold it in one hand as they moved through the corridors.

When they reached the nest, the corridors around it were even more filled with weevils than on previous cycles. They stayed out of range, not wanting to trigger the whole swarm, and Suria glanced over at her roommate to consider strategy.

"Can you get them in one cascade?" Suria asked.

"I probably could," Xuhriha said, tapping her lips, "but I'm afraid I'm not terribly good at controlling the shockwave. It could get out of control and potentially hurt someone on the surface... plus it would be a pulse of necromantic energy that wouldn't be ignored."

"Then I can try to lead the way with fire. I got them before, and even if there are more-"

"No, no, I have something else to show you: death lightning!"

Xuhriha stepped into the outermost corridor, raised her hand, and unleashed a storm of lightning that left Suria half-blind. It tore through most of the weevils, devastating their ranks and leaving the others stunned. Suria pushed through her own surprise to begin casting force spells to mop up those that remained.

Between her force spells and Xuhriha casting smaller death spells, they wiped out the remaining weevils and then Suria torched the remnants of the nest. They stayed there for a while, catching their breath and trying to ignore the scents in the burned air. There was still more to do in the western tunnels, but the heart of the infestation was gone.

"You know," Suria said, "I'm not sure that was really 'death' lightning."

"Unlike normal lightning, it kills you!" Xuhriha giggled and covered her mouth. "Kidding, of course - sometimes you need a more direct spell. It has nothing to do with necromancy, I just... like lightning."

"So you feel attuned to lightning? I'm still not sure how that works. I've tried so many different elements, even different branches of magic, and I enjoy many of them, but none of them feel 'right' in any special way. It feels like I don't have any specialty at all."

"Are you sure? I thought your specialty was time."

Suria stopped and stared at the other woman. "What?"

"I mean, you can feel when the time loop is ending and no one else can do that." Xuhriha tilted her head to look at her funny. "Surely you've noticed. Did you really not think about it?"

"I've thought about it, but I never considered it a specialty." Suria pulled her runebook to her stomach and wrapped her arms around it as she thought. "Could I actually be a time specialist? If that was just a natural trait... do people have alignments to elements they might never see?"

"I don't know, but I doubt it works that way, personally. You were exposed to so many loops at the start, getting hit directly with so much time magic... I don't think that revealed any previous attunement to time magic. You just built it up in response."

"Huh." Suria considered it for a while and found the idea fitted better than she expected. "Thanks, Xuhriha."

"Not a problem! Now let's finish off the rest of them!"

So Suria headed back into the shadowy monster-filled tunnels with a necromancer, smiling all the way.