Chapter 20 #2
They’d parked half a mile down the road from a long-abandoned church.
Their journey had involved three portal stations and about three hours of driving, the culmination of which landed them on the outskirts of the magical Polish city of Nowa Nieszawa at two o’clock in the morning.
Their last portal spat them out in the city’s center, which was predominately old buildings with thatched roofs and white walls crisscrossed with wooden beams. As they traveled farther out from the center, the architecture became dominated by deep redbrick buildings with even redder roofs.
The city had a medieval feel and its reds clashed with the rich green landscape the city sat among.
Like a lot of magical cities, Nowa Nieszawa had a twin in the real world; in this case it was the Polish city of Toruń.
The pair shared a river, the Vistula, and for centuries the only known way to travel between the two was sailing down the Vistula from Nowa Nieszawa.
No one knows how the reverse trip was made, but legend says it had something to do with the town’s long-standing tradition of baking gingerbread.
Yu had forgotten how they knew all these facts, but a distant memory of that gingerbread reminded them to try and grab some before they left.
The thoughts were a welcome distraction from what was to come, and from the rain that had refused to let up.
Walters had guided them here from memory.
He told the group about a trip he and Kosh had once taken to this very church.
While Kosh’s dad was Russian, his mum was Polish, and both were buried here.
Walters’s hunch was that if Kosh was running anywhere, it would be somewhere familiar.
There was, of course, the possibility that Kosh wouldn’t be there, and this possibility became more and more appealing the closer the group got.
Yu saw the redbrick church covered in vines and overgrown foliage peer out of the dark at them.
It was a simple but imposing building, with a single bell tower at one end and a dauntingly large graveyard skirting its border.
As they approached, the others stayed back and nodded for Yu to head in.
Walters had gone over several things he would say to lure Kosh out.
Details of the trip they took here and several things that only Walters would know.
Yu was taken aback by how forward Walters had been with such intimate details.
In an effort not to forget them, Yu cleared an easily accessible part of their brain and committed them to memory there.
All Yu had to do was get Kosh out into the open.
The others would take care of the rest. Yu turned back, looking for assurance; most nodded or waved, except for Des, who was sucking on a blood bag Mal had donated for the mission.
Kind fool. Yu adjusted their posture, opened the gate that led into the graveyard, and made for the church.
As Yu got closer, they saw what looked like a row of people standing side by side outside the church.
All hope that Kosh wasn’t here vanished once Yu got close enough to make out their features—or lack of features, as is the case with skeletons.
Yu froze. They were no more than ten meters away, but Yu could already smell their putrid stench through the rain.
Now or never, Yu thought. They better be in position. Yu took a strong step forward, their feet crunching and splashing on the stony, waterlogged path that cleft the graveyard in two.
“Kosh,” Yu yelled. “Kosh, I know you’re there.”
Nothing. The skeletons remained sickly still as the thrashing rain pounded against them.
The skeletons didn’t move, but it felt as if they were staring Yu down.
Yu wished they had some way of stopping Kosh’s magic, a nullification ray or something similar to the anti-jump cuff; but as Walters had explained, that’s not how his magic worked.
Nearly all magic that stopped other magics worked in an area—as opposed to a targeted spell you could fling or aim at someone.
Walters’s magic only worked on people within a certain distance of him; the issue was getting Walters close enough before Kosh took control of him and ran him in the other direction.
Don’t bring a dead guy to a necromancer fight.
Yu could see why that was good advice, but it seemed like Kosh already had enough zombies to go around.
Yu winced as they forced themselves to take another step closer to the church.
“KOSH!” Yu yelled.
“Yes …” There was a pop behind them and Yu spun around to see the sickly visage of Kosh standing in the rain.
Death and rot had not been kind to the corpse of Kosh.
His pale bald skin was now a grotesque slick white that shone in the dark.
He still wore the bloodstained clothes he’d died in, showcasing the festering wound in his chest; his hands were a smudgy purple where the blood had pooled, and it seemed that other parts of his flesh were starting to slump under gravity’s pull.
His eyes shone in the dark, three concentric white circles.
Don’t panic, Yu thought. Walters had gone over what to say; just stick to that.
“We have a lot of talk about …”
“You brought your little friend, did you?” Kosh said, his face showing no emotion.
“I can sense he’s close. Even in a graveyard, necromancers stick out like a sore thumb.
” Yu watched as Kosh’s eyes flattened, flashing like a camera.
Yu thought they heard a faint pop, but nothing appeared or disappeared.
“He’s close by in case I can’t talk some sense into you.”
“And you think he’ll be able to stop me?”
Yu heard a crunch as the row of skeletons took a step forward.
“I’m hoping it won’t come to that,” Yu said, trying not to turn around.
“I’m not going to let you kill me …” Kosh said, staring Yu down. “I will defend myself if I have to.”
Yu felt a pit of revulsion in their chest. He calls this self-defense? Yu had done some unsavory things in the name of survival—identity theft, regular theft, several other things they were even less proud of—but this?
“Is that what you think this is? Self-defense?”
“I know I hurt a lot of people …”
“You orchestrated a massacre!”
“They were going to hunt me down and kill me …”
“Then you run! You make your choice, you live with it. You don’t butcher those that would hunt you …”
Kosh stopped. Frozen. Yu had gone off script and they both knew it. Yu could feel their own emotions bleeding into their words. This was clearly not what Walters would have said. Kosh’s eyes flashed. Another faint pop, but seemingly nothing moved. Kosh’s face was a stone wall, giving nothing away.
“That’s your issue with what I did?” Kosh said, taking a step forward. “No sanctimonious speech about life or signing up for this?”
Yu didn’t know what to say. Which was unfortunate, because their mouth continued to speak anyway.