Grave Bites #2
The taste is something else, but it has one. Not that I care for it. It’s fresh, made for me. By Mistress Vincenza. That’s what I care for, what allows me to slowly have any of it.
Was eating always so taxing though? It’s so much labor… Is this just a lot of pasta? My mother would probably scoff at it and make me take a second plate, but she fed me for a life of labor, not sitting by a circulation desk.
I shudder and force another bite.
“You don’t need to finish. Trying is enough.” Mistress Vincenza pushes forward her empty bowl. “The excitement of a spell will probably make you hungry enough to finish, regardless.”
“Can—can I start it now?”
She sighs. “The spell I’m offering you is a terrible one. It does nothing, but it can draw you to tears. It can kill your heart.”
Invoking a specter.
“Do you have on you, or in your possession, a personal belonging of someone dead?”
“I do—Wait. It’s in my original clothing.” I quickly run out to my room, grab it, and come back. My eyes blur over the moment, and it feels like a blink before I’m with her again.
“A ring? That’s perfect. Could I ask who it belonged to?” Her thumb briefly rubs over the ring on her right hand.
Both her hands have a ring. Just one each, and I suspect that it’s not silver beneath the grime—as typical for a holy ring worn in praise to our one Great Ring—but something romantically golden.
“My friend—Lucia’s sister,” I whisper.
She stands us up, wrapping her hands around my grip on the ring.
“You’ll feel, a lot. If you want to go through with this, we’ll summon the specter of your friend, but it won’t be her.
It’ll look like her, and it’ll pain you just how close it is to being her, but it’ll just be an empty specter. Do you want to cast this spell?”
“I do.”
“I’m a Ringborn. Focus on the feeling of my touch, then say ‘av lakdev–lakdet ve. Tirit lavdexi.’”
It feels like something electric bouncing between our skin. A numbness I didn’t know was there recedes beneath the touch of her skeletal, and so soft, hands. “Av lakdev–lakdet ve. Tirit lavdexi.”
My monologue feels musical. Each word passing through my head is hummed in harmony with specters I can’t see, yet surround us.
Can’t see except for one.
My sight is vivid. My feelings are lucid. This is real.
“Kate.” Mistress Vincenza pulls on my hand, before turning her head to see Lucia’s sister, Oliva.
Smiling so smugly, like she didn’t die overseas in Myaet.
I gaze to the rifle on her back, Roversallan-Lawrinian flag on her uniform. “She looks like she did when she left.”
A meaningless trip to a peaceful nation on a diplomatic endeavor.
Safe enough that she laughed off Lucia’s warnings.
And, I guess malaria is significantly less common there than it is here.
She picked the safest dice she could reach for; she couldn’t have know they were the ones that’d roll her so terribly.
Great Ring, why? She didn’t fail any test. She made reasonable choices. And she died an unreasonable death.
“Specters are just memories. This is how she was remembered.”
“Why isn’t it doing anything? It—Oliva. It’s me. Move. Do anything.”
Mistress Vincenza squeezes my hand. “It’s your specter. You can control it.”
I run my thumb along Oliva’s ring, imagining her just… No. No. I hate that. I hate seeing her hand wave. I hate seeing her step. She shouldn’t—
“I shouldn’t have done this.” I throw the ring to the floor and lean back against the door, hoping for the spell to end whilst I close my eyes.
“I know. I know.” Mistress Vincenza tentatively reaches out to my shoulder.
“ I just thought it—I thought I would feel normal now. I don’t. Every last piece of my skin wants to peel off from my bone.” I clutch at my arms and slide down.
She grabs me, picks me up, and pulls me into a hug. “I know. And I know this may sound hard to promise, but I think I can: this is the worst it gets.”
I douse my eyes into her chest and sob.
No nuance. No ambiguity. Absolutely every tear in this body.
She breathes onto my ear, running fingers through my hair.
“Thank you,” I whimper.
“Don’t. I knew this would torment you, and persuaded you towards it. I don’t regret it, but I am no saint.” Her strokes drop further down my back while her head leans onto mine. “You won’t have to face this again, but you will have to face death every day. You’ll be a great necromancer.”
“I will… I promise.” I clutch at her dress. “I don’t know why the Ring chose for her to die.”
“I know. The Ring lets us choose our odds, but it plays them cruelly fair.”
“It never feels fair.”
“...I know.”
She knows.
She did this exact spell too.
I guess there’s no one else I’d hope to comfort me then. She understands better than all of them. She suffered worse than the death of a friend who spent so little time in my life.
“I believe you, Mistress.”
“I know that was awful, but”—she lifts up my chin—“that was a real necromancy spell. You’ve started the long journey to becoming a necromancer. Treasure your discomfort before you find death…”
My eyes widen. My mouth gapes. My jaw twitches.
Her eyes, they’re glowing. Vibrant pink, swirling in circles. She’s patronized someone, and… I’m the person she’s touching.
“Kate? Is something—“ Her voice shuts as she leans closer.
I didn’t know her face could hold so much horror, as she puts me down from her grip and backs away.
Nothing.
Nothing is said between us.
What the fuck do I ask? Is it real?
“Mistress?” Please give me the answer to a question I can’t phrase.
Without taking her eyes off me, she opens the door, and runs.
Leaving me alone with questions I don’t know how to ask.