Ritual of Ashes

Written by Peter Williams

Her name was Phee, and she was the bravest warrior I had ever met. I had seen her face down ogres, trolls, and even giants without hesitation. She could swing a sword with such grace that it was like watching a vicious dance. Even when she was relaxed, her hazel eyes smoldered orange with the heat of battle.

I loved her with every fiber of my being.

We made for an amazing team, she and I. My unmatched knowledge of the arcane, coupled with her indomitable strength, meant that there was no challenge we could overcome, no foe too dangerous.

Or so we thought, until we met the Lich King Loranther. He had been secretly lurking in the depths of the mountain, consolidating followers and preparing to claim his slice of the world. Phee and I had journeyed to his underground castle in hopes of defeating the undead mage before he could rise to the surface and rain destruction on the innocents above.

I won’t lie and say it was a stroll in the countryside to reach the top of his wizard’s tower, but to say his minions gave us a true challenge would be just as much of a falsehood. By the time we’d reached Loranther, we were winded, but primed for a proper fight. As we barged into his darkened study, he was waiting for us, sitting in his tall, skeletal chair, a human skull affixed to the top smiling at us eagerly.

We had battled powerful mages before and believed ourselves prepared for whatever conjurations the undead king would throw at us. But the necromantic powers that the lich king commanded were even greater than we’d anticipated, and competing with him drove us to the very limits of our abilities.

As we reached the climax of our battle, I could feel my strength lagging, but my brave Phee appeared unphased by her exertions. The lich, we could see, was just as tired as we were. While his skeletal form gave no indication of the wear of battle, the spells that connected with us felt less powerful than they had, and his movements seemed more sluggish. The arcane magic that kept his body together seemed to be near its breaking point.

Phee and I exchanged looks across the tower, and I recognized the spark in her eyes. I knew what she was asking me to do. Before I could call out, she had launched herself into another flurry of slashes, driving the lich back as he fought hard to avoid Phee’s great-sword. Taking a deep breath, trying not to think about how this could backfire, I began to draw my energy into my hands, conjuring a bead of fire, focusing to keep its explosive force in check. I knew this would be my last one, I didn’t have the strength to summon another fireball without burning up my own life force. Hell, I wasn’t even sure I’d have enough strength to light a match after this.

When I looked up from the growing sphere in my hand, I almost lost my concentration seeing Phee twitching on the ground, her side smoking, and Loranther’s grinning, skeletal face looming over her, his undead eyes focused on me. He had somehow managed to gather enough magic to stop Phee’s onslaught before I was ready, and I could see the black, necromantic swirls of magic wreathing his own hand as he prepared another spell to send at me. But I couldn’t release my own sphere, not without catching Phee up in the blast.

As I stood there, locked in my indecision, hating myself for not knowing if I could kill the woman I loved to save millions of innocent lives, she moved. It caught both Loranther and myself off guard, seeing her rolling away from him, but it gave me enough hope to snap me out of my uncertainty and release the fireball. It shot directly at the lich, who was already aiming his own vortex of darkness at the escaping Phee.

I watched in horror as the magic released from his hand, flying towards Phee. My fireball impacted on Loranther’s exposed rib cage, releasing its explosive payload. As she prepared to leap out of the detonation’s radius, the lich’s spell hit her square in the back, causing her muscles to spasm, her sword to fall from her hands, and pain to wrack her face. We locked eyes, and I saw her force a smile through it all as the expanding sphere of fire caught up to her.

After that, it was silent. There were no more sounds of spells being flung, no more ringing of steel against bone.

It was unearthly.

I dropped to my knees, refusing to take in the two piles of ashes on the floor of the tower. I was numb, barely able to piece together my thoughts. We had accomplished our mission, but at what cost?

Did we even accomplish our mission? My brain welcomed the distraction, thinking through everything I knew about liches, reminding me that there was a phylactery, a vial of Loranther’s blood from when he was alive. As long as that vial was intact he could return, and Phee’s sacrifice would have been in vain.

I forced myself to my feet. I doubted it was here, but some mages were proud, believing themselves to be invincible, and would think it safest to be kept with them. If I were lucky, Loranther was one such mage. If I wasn’t…I’d cross that bridge when I got there.

I searched the tower, no easy task in the bleak, shadowy chamber, even after I lit a torch to light the room. But I sifted through every paper and book I could find, looking for anything that might give me a hint as to where he’d hidden his lifeline. As I searched, I had to tear myself away from some of the tomes that I found. There were centuries of knowledge hidden away down here, believed to have been lost throughout the ages by most scholars I had trained under. I saw histories of giant clans that had been eradicated a century ago, complex formulas for spells with effects that would have cost me a lifetime to have theorized the concept of, and even a firsthand account of the first adventurer to have returned from the Ethereal Plane.

But what grabbed me the most was the worn, faded tome sitting on a pedestal by the lich’s fallen chair. It clearly held some importance to him, as it was in a position of prominence, but it had been so used that the title had faded. And yet, despite the ancient cover, it emanated a dark power that almost called to me. As I opened the first page, I realized what it was. The runes and glyphs that were inscribed within spoke of dangerous rituals, warned of lost souls, and told me everything I needed to know.

This was a Necronomicon, a grimoire of necromantic spells intended for the re-creation of life.

I had never seen one and had been warned of the dangers of following the necromantic path. Great mages had allowed their pride to win out, and, believing they could control such powers, been lost to the dark sway of powerful, evil magic.

I fought hard not to let my gaze drift to the pile of ashes where I had last seen my beloved Phee.

With a deep breath, I closed the book. As tempting as it was, I couldn’t waste the time she had bought me. I had no way of knowing how long it would take for Loranther to reform his body, so I had to destroy the phylactery as soon as I could. Searching through the pages of a banned tome, seeking answers to a question I knew I shouldn’t ask, would just drive me mad.

Turning, I surveyed the rest of the room. I had found no hints within his notes, no maps detailing a hidden dungeon within a forest, nothing. It had to be somewhere in here, it just had to be. And yet, I couldn’t find it. All my knowledge, all my intellect, and I was dumbfounded. The sideways skeletal face of Loranther seemed to mock me from the crest of his high-backed chair.

I couldn’t handle it anymore. I didn’t know what to do. In a fit of rage, I grabbed Phee’s fallen sword, hefted it in my hands, and charged the lich’s chair. I hacked and screamed in frustration, smashing the chair, sending bone shards flying as I swung away with no intent or target other than simply destroying something of his.

As my rage-infused limbs grew weary from the unexpected burst of strength, the sword fell from my hand, splashing in the blood pooling beneath the chair. It wasn’t the first time I’d bathed a sword in blood, but I was still dumbfounded that I had been able to lift Phee’s great-sword in the first place. It was quite a cumbersome blade, and my strengths lay outside the realm of physical competitions.

As I stared at Phee’s sword, the blood on it registered. Was I bleeding? I examined myself for wounds, and while I had numerous cuts, scrapes, and bruises that were going to hurt badly the next day, none of my injuries could have provided as much blood as I saw on the ground.

Kneeling down, uncaring as my robes soaked up blood, I lifted the fragments of the skull that had sat atop Loranther’s chair. Sure enough, affixed to the pieces of skull was a broken vial, bloodstained and ancient. With a giddy, breathless laugh, I lifted Phee’s sword and touched the pommel to my head, muttering “Thank you, Phee. I couldn’t have done this without you.”

I sat back, mind reeling with relief. Her sacrifice hadn’t been in vain. We had succeeded. Loranther would no longer threaten the people above.

But now…I didn’t know how I could continue on without her. She had been my strength, my encouragement. When things looked darkest, she’d been the optimistic one, the one to find the bright side. Without her, there was only darkness.

Darkness. It still permeated every inch of the lich’s study. I had hoped that with the destruction of the phylactery, it would dissipate, and yet the aura of darkness continued. With a start, I realized it was originating from the Necronomicon.

Before I had realized what I was doing, I was up and opening the tome once more. I flipped past the pages of warning, feeling the runes attempting to force their way into my mind and convince me to turn back, but I shook it off. Nothing could dissuade me from my course, I had to at least try.

The book was incredible. I hated myself for thinking it, but it was the truth. There was so much knowledge and power in the pages that it was hard to focus on my plan. I understood now the allure that the book possessed, why it had corrupted so many mages. If I so chose, I could have the power to conjure and control demons, rebuild castles from their foundations, erase armies with a wave of my hand. I had to push myself to keep turning numerous pages, so enticing were the spells listed there.

Somewhere in this book had to be the type of spell I was looking for.

After what felt like hours, I found the rituals for immortality and raising the dead. I glanced at the broken pieces of Loranther’s phylactery, and knew that wasn’t what I wanted. As I read through each of the rituals, I realized two things about this type of spell. First, that true life was intended for the caster of the spell, anything regarding another person targeted only their lifeless body, it wasn’t true resurrection. Second, that the casting of such a spell required human sacrifices.

My shoulders sagged, unsure as to how I could continue. These spells wouldn’t bring Phee back, not as she was, and she would never forgive me if I killed others to bring her back. I stared at the image on the open page before me, a skeletal creature climbing out of a coffin with bodies fallen in a circle around it. There had to be a different way.

I grabbed some paper and began jotting down my own notes, copying down pieces of the rituals in the Necronomicon, but pulling from my own knowledge of the arcane as well. The basis of these rituals seemed to require human life in trade for the caster’s life being prolonged, but if I could change the bindings of the ritual, rearrange some of the glyphs, I believed that I could accomplish my goal.

This was it, the moment of truth. If I had succeeded, I would see Phee again. If not...well, I suppose I’d see her again nonetheless. I began to focus my life force into my hands once more, feeling my very soul feeding the flame that burst forth in my palm.

I knew I had to give it everything I had for this to work.

I thrust forth my palm towards her ashes, feeding my life’s fire into her. Instantly, they caught fire, and it appeared as if the ashes themselves were moving. I cried out, “From the ashes, Phee Nexia, I call you to return!”

With a thunderous clap, I felt the rest of my heat leave my body. I sank to the floor, struggling to hold onto life for a moment longer, hoping to catch a glimpse of my warrior love. As my eyes grew dark, I saw what looked to be a baby bird’s head poking out from the flames and ashes, a familiar smolder in her hazel eyes.