B1C17: The Dark Realm

Nolan continued to lean there casually against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest as he listened to our conversation. The perplexity on his face was a dead giveaway to how alien all of this sounded to him. Yet, he stood there silent, without interrupting or questioning.

“Necromancy is a delicate art,” Wilna the witch said as she reeled back into her seat and poured herself a small cup of tea from her cauldron. “But like any skill, it requires practice. You need to understand the flow of energy, how the darkness is drawn from this world, and how it flows through you, shaping your spells and your summons.” Wilna paused and looked me squarely in the eyes. “You don’t control necromancy. You guide it.”

‘Guide it? How?’

“The way one might guide a river, or a horse.” Wilna said, gesturing waves rising with her fingers in the air. “Necromancy is not a force to be bent to your will, but rather an energy that must be coaxed, persuaded. One must listen to it, and respect its ebbs and flows.”

Her hands made a fluid, balletic motion in the air as she explained. “You must feel the rhythm of its movements like the beating of a heart or the pull of the tide.”

I was silent for a moment, taking it all in. Wilna’s analogy made a certain kind of sense. If necromancy was not something to be tamed but rather partnered with... that could alter my entire approach.

‘But how do I connect with it?’ I asked.

“You must be in harmony with the dark energy, let it flow through you and guide it to your will.”

‘Harmonize with the flow of energy? Is it as easy as you’re making it out to be?’

“Patience,” Wilna said soothingly. “Understanding comes with time and practice. Begin by meditating on your connection with the ethereal realm and the darkness within you. Get to know it intimately. Be comfortable in its presence. Familiarize yourself with its components. Once you’ve done that, then you will start to feel its rhythm. Unlike the very few necromancers in Etheryn, your codex gave you a bridge to master this much faster. Your domain.”

‘Where I house my thralls?’

She nodded contently. “A plane where you house the dead, where you repurpose the dead, and where you forge the dead. Normally, a necromancer would need to channel dark energy on this plane–the plane of the living. The issue is that our plane is overcrowded with death and life. You are constantly surrounded by creation and destruction. This makes it difficult to sense the subtle whispers of the void, but your domain... it is darkness in its simplest form. Better yet, it is your darkness….”

‘My darkness?’

“Everyone harbors light, and everyone harbors dark. The levels will not always be the same, but they are both there. One cannot live without the other. Your realm is an embodiment of your darkness, allowing death and the void to reside in it. This is the spatial domain that will help you achieve the connection to necromancy.

‘So I need to meditate from within it?’

“Yes. Indeed, that will be your next step. After acceptance comes mutual connection. You don’t need to physically be inside of the domain to do this. It’s a mental process. You might feel an initial resistance, like the push back of a strong current. That’s perfectly normal. It’s merely the energy testing your resolve and your worthiness.”

‘Well, it’s my domain, why would it resist?’

She laughed. “You have induced a creature into your domain, haven’t you? I see a thrall count in your codex, so this must be true. Did the creature not resist? It doesn’t matter how frail and fragile the willpower, resistance was there. Nothing worthwhile is easy to obtain, my dear.”

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‘So what’s the willpower value of my domain?’

She grinned. “What do you think?”

I squinted. ‘I don’t know. This domain isn’t sentient, I don’t see how—wait, is it mirroring my value?’

She giggled. “Like I said, smart cookie.”

Suddenly, everything clicked. The concept of my domain mirroring my own willpower felt oddly comforting, but also disquieting. It was an extension of me, yet somehow an entity of its own.

‘But how does one subdue their own willpower?’

“It’s not about subduing it, but harmonizing with it,” she replied, her gaze turning back to her cauldron as she began to feed it more ingredients. “Everything thrives from a plane of equilibrium, remember? You need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of yourself. Those are the keys to your willpower.”

‘Right. It’s not about dominating, but synchronizing.’

“Correct. Also, consider your domain as a reflection of what you give it. When you strengthen its durability, it allows more thralls to reside within it. The same concept works when you induct souls and thralls within this space. Your willpower, perception, and charisma would be reflected as well, your influence structuring the essence of the domain.”

I thought about this for a few moments, mulling over the information she had given me.

“You have to prove to it your determination and resolve. Show it that you are worthy of channeling it. But because the realm is yours, it contains your stats. It wouldn’t make sense otherwise. Because if it’s too strong, it may consume you. If it’s too weak, it would not be of any use to you. In the same vein, flowing with your dark energy is very doable.”

Necromancy was certainly an art for a reason. It sounded so complicated hearing it for the first time, but I wanted to summarize it, just to make sure I got its concepts right.

‘So, to go over everything you’ve told me thus far, in order to build my necromancy proficiency, so that I may forge souls and reanimate the dead, I first need to accept my class.’

“Mmhmm,” she hummed and nodded as she sprinkled some dust in her pot.

I smiled. ‘That part I’ve done. Next, I need to learn how to harmonize with the darkness of death. An easy way to do that is to connect with my own darkness that has been transformed into a spatial domain.’

“You’re learning…” she tittered, her eyes still preoccupied with her brew.

‘In this domain, my connection with the dead and its darkness can be channeled, where the domain’s willpower mirrors my own. Once I convince this darkness that I am worthy, I could guide it and use it to craft my undead thralls.’

“My, aren’t you a great listener?” she snickered. “And don’t you dare stop there, young dragon. You can do anything you want with such power. You’ll quickly learn that the world is yours to conquer, in any way and in any shape you please. You’ll find that you could accelerate the decline of someone’s life force, turning them into old prunes like me, just so you could collect the souls needed for your thrall.”

“You could stop with all of that,” Nolan warned Wilna, clearly not appreciating the turn in the conversation.

“You could repurpose the lives of those fallen, and build an army from the remnants of their spirits! The possibilities are endless,” Wilna went on, undeterred by Nolan’s interjection. She had begun to stir her cauldron even faster, that gleam in her eyes brightening.

“Hey, I said—”

“At your will, you could manipulate the essence of the dead into projections and illusions to misguide your foes, or bend the realm of the dead to change the world around you!” She cackled. “Once you’ve mastered necromancy, there are no limitations to what you can do!”

“All right, that’s enough,” Nolan jumped in again, and this time, his hand was over Scarlet.

“Death will be your plaything…” Wilna cooed, slowly drawing her eyes to her son. “There’s a reason why people like us are taboo, small child…. Life and death are two sides of the same coin, and you will have the utmost pleasure of flipping this coin at your own whim.”

Nolan snapped, pulling the trigger to his shotgun, but not before Wilna shot up from her seat and flicked her wrist above her cauldron. She spoke something so fast I couldn’t catch a syllable of it, and all of a sudden this great burst of black smoke screened her face. The cauldron coughed up some wickedness, its thickness growing strong and fast. It covered the entire room in no time, its spiciness getting stuck in the back of my throat.

As I hacked, Nolan did, too. He stretched his arm over his mouth when I heard a deep swooshing noise pierce my ear drums.

“Maybe next time, you rotten brat!” Wilna’s voice boomed around us, but the source of it was lost in the thick smoke. When the smoke began to clear up, my jaw dropped, and I realized that Wilna had fled the scene, along with her cat and that smiling starfish plant.