The sun sat low in the east, irradiating its soft orange glow over the green hills and peaceful trees where birds roosted and chirped. What a beautiful summer's morning it truly was. Except, it was nothing like that at all.

The sun did sit low in the east, irradiating its glow over the land, but that is where the similarities end. Its glow was not orange, but a bloodshot red. The land wasn’t green, but a thick layer of sickening black ash, where vents spewed fiendish flames forth. Fiendish is an acutely good word to describe this place, for there were no birds, and in their place flew demonic bats the size of albatrosses, screeching in the most ghastly ways one could never hope to imagine. There were hills, but they weren’t gentle mounds of earth and grass, they were bodies, twisted in eternal and nightmarish screams of agony, piled upon piles of other horrifyingly gruesome corpses.

Who would ever live here? A sick and twisted man, is who. A man who, bear in mind, was once a normal lad who anyone might have been friends with in another, optimistic life. But alas, for this world is not so blissful. Whoever he was once, has been torn apart and made to conform to this grievous place in which he had the misfortune to be born into, and by this realm he was stitched together into whoever he is now. The Necromancer.

Impaled skulls who wailed heinously in agony lined the chiselled surfaces of the ebony tower the Necromancer called his keep, and the closest thing he had to a home. He stood at the top of the tower, veiled in a cloak of crow feathers. What little light passed under his hood, did not meet his face, and instead dimly lit the skull he wore for a mask. He stared out at the bleak landscape that lay around for miles without end with concealed and studious eyes.

The Necromancer was planning his next move. One could always tell when he was planning. He wouldn’t twitch, he wouldn’t flinch, you wouldn’t even find a slightest sign that he was breathing, but it was impossible not to know when he was planning. It was an unnerving and dreadful aura he gave off that made one hear all the corpses that surrounded them all scream in discorded unison a warning that the Necromancer was planning.

I didn’t need their warnings to know the Necromancer was scheming. I knew that innately. Who am I? I wished I knew that too. I didn’t, though. I was what I continue to be: an undead thrall to the Necromancer. Who I was in life, I haven’t the slightest clue. I doubt I’ll ever know who I was, and that’s probably for the best. I could continue droning on about my tragic miss happenings, I would love to! I am but a slave to the one you really want to know of, however, and I’ll continue his story.

The Necromancer, like I have said, was scheming. He could go on planning even the most mundane of things for weeks upon the top of his tower. It was only natural for him to scheme, to the point of which I might say it was extremely unnatural for him not to be scheming for every moment of his existence. On this day, however, his schemes were particularly cunning.

Through a ritual which requires the sacrifice of eighteen and a half souls, the Necromancer had taken control of an imp of his quarrelsome neighbour, whose scarred and mutilated form was befitting on his name, the Sage of Pain.

This Sage collected emotions of raw negativity, and channelled them to cast an untold number of horrid magic upon the world. It is said that he alone opened the great vent to the infernal realms with his spells. It’s weird but… whenever I think about those vents I feel a surge of hurt and anger, and memories of its opening as clear as whatever daylight might be shoot through me. Maybe…? I know the Sage had fifteen sons and daughters, all of them dead now…

While the Necromancer scurried though the imp’s wolfish eyes he learned of the Sage’s plan to summon though the vent horrors unfathomable even in this gruelling world.

It would be the end of the Necromancer. He couldn’t let the Sage accomplish his ends, and so he sculpted his vile plot…



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It has been near enough two years since I posted something... I have still been writing stories, though, and I feel it's about time I started posting some of them. This is The Necromancer, which I wrote for a competition a while back. Hope you enjoyed it! After my two week holiday, I hope to post more of the stories I've written.

Thank you for reading!

~rupert