“The Slayers of Death are probably the greatest duellists on Contenmere.” Karatas said conversationally as they walked. “In the entire history of their order only five have ever fallen in battle.”

  For some reason the paladin had taken the role of tour guide as they headed towards what the Slayers of Death rather pretentiously referred to as their ‘sanctum’.

  With such effusive praise Alec would have expected Arrabelle to have at least smiled but the senior Slayers’ expression had only grown more sour, the crow’s feet around her eyes deepening as she glared.

  “One of the younger orders, believe it or not,” The ambassador continued, “though young is perhaps a relative term. Their growth was prodigious, especially amongst second-generation necromancers.”

  That only made Arrabelle even more dour, her clipped steps echoing through the stone halls as she sped up enough that Alec almost had to jog to keep up.

  A hand on his arm slowed him, Karatas not increasing his pace in the slightest despite some mild jostling from Arrabelle’s entourage as they tried to hurry him along, the paladin at best managing a brisk stroll.

  “Of course their policy of allowing paladin knights amongst their ranks is a more recent invention. Only a few hundred years, but it’s certainly been instrumental in maintaining the peace. One of their cleverer diplomatic moves in my opinion. It’s one thing to get your soldiers to stab an enemy, another entirely to stab a friend.”

  “We didn’t do it for peace.” Arrabelle said coldly. “Or at least not your peace. Our goals are of a higher order.”

  “In either case, it’s been a useful boon to the likes of myself.” Karatas declared, ignoring Arrabelle’s commentary completely. “You’re in for a treat Alec, if the rumours are accurate. The Slayers have pushed what the human, or inhuman, body can do to its very limit, even pioneered their own brand of necromancer. Your master, Erebus, despite not being a member, was a master at it.”

  “And I would dearly like to know who taught it to him.” Arrabelle growled, “The First Servant is supposed to be a complete secret, and that damnable wretch spread it to half the Necropolis. Now that blasted ghoul wants to add it to the basic curriculum.”

  “What’s the harm?” Karatas chuckled, the sound more than a little forced, “Knowledge deserves to be free, within reason. Your methods could save thousands of lives, if anything you should be clamouring to take credit.”

  “We developed The First Servant to allow us to fight the Great Enemy.” She hissed, the capital letters audible to even the untrained ear. “It… proliferating represents a dangerous risk of her finding out.”

  “I’m all but certain, given the number of Slayers that have died so far, that Death knows all about it by now.” Karatas pointed out mildly.

  “Dont say her name!” Arrabelle hissed, all of the Slayers whirling on the spot to try and form a perimeter, watchful eyes glaring out of their hoods as if expecting an instant assault.

  The ambassador rolled his eyes. “If such an entity exists I’m all but certain they’ve got larger concerns than us.”

  “Irrelevant.” The Slayer snapped, not relaxing yet. “If our sources are right she is aware every single time her name is invoked.”

  “Then she must be direly overworked.” Karatas laughed, shaking his head almost pityingly. “I’m not entirely unaware of creatures that work on such a scale. The Imperators. The Sidhe Royals. None check every invocation of their name due to the sheer frequency it’s said and De- she must receive orders of magnitude more.”

  “But she could check.” Arrabelle countered. “The risk is unacceptable.”

  The ambassador considered making an argument of it but as much as he enjoyed needling the Slayers he was here for a reason and testing their patience probably ran counter to that. Instead he elected for the silence Arrabelle so clearly desired, the rest of the journey passing without further incident.

  Their arrival in what sections of the Necropolis the Slayers of Death controlled was not clearly demarcated. There was no change in the stone work, no guards, gateway nor portcullis, just a slow increase in the number of people.

  It was damned creepy really, and Alec was pretty sure he was on the far end of the bell curve when it came to being creeped out, but there was something direly unnerving about the way conversations, not quite loud enough to make out words, would just stop the moment they rounded a corner. Even that wouldn’t have been so bad if it weren’t for the staring.

  Noone even tried to hide it, wide eyed, silent staring as they walked by, followed by the sound of hushed conversation the moment they were past.

  Karatas was also unnerved. The paladin had a pretty good poker face, but it didn’t get as far as his eyes. His gaze would linger when he recognised someone, not for long, and the corners of his smile would tighten a little.

  It felt odd looking to a paladin for reassurance, especially one that looked like he was one step shy of being declared a bonemeal class zombie, but the ambassador was supposedly friends with some of these people, he knew them. But it seemed they did not know him, not even sparing him, Arrabelle or the rest of their escort so much as a glance.

  Alec checked again, trying and failing to stop a shiver from running down his spine then back up again for good measure as it confirmed his suspicions. The Slayers of Death were indeed all staring at him specifically, and he liked what was in their eyes not at all.

  Hate would have been worrying. Disdain perhaps expected. Bafflement likely. Kindness a relief.

  It took him a while as they walked to figure out what he was seeing, and as the realisation set in Alec could feel a dull weight forming in his stomach, and it certainly wasn’t from indigestion.

  What he was seeing was hope. Sincere, naked and unashamed hope. Which was a problem when he hadn’t the faintest idea what they wanted from him, or what the consequences would be if their expectations were not met.

  “What do you want from me?” Alec asked when he could bear it no more.

  “The truth, as best as you can tell it.” Arrabelle replied without hesitation.

  “You realise there’s a lot I can’t tell you right? That I’d be killed if I even thought about it too hard?” The teenager explained hurriedly. A full explanation of his adventures was just another word for assassination.

  “This should not put you in any danger.” The Slayer told him seriously. “I honestly doubt a single soul outside our order has even the slightest inkling of what you stumbled upon. I’ll say no more until we’re safely behind the privacy wards.”

  “Have you noticed yet?” The question came from Karatas as Arrabelle lapsed back into silence, the paladin leaning in to ask quietly, though it would take a miracle for their hosts not to overhear them regardless.

  Alec shot the ambassador an annoyed glance, able to smell the hint of last night’s wine on his breath. “Let’s assume I haven’t.” He said wearily. Three days at the Necropolis, just three days, and he was already so sick and tired of everyone speaking in riddles, treating everything like some kind of test or teachable moment to point he had to wonder if there was some sort of damage to the resident’s collective psyche.

  It at least explained why the paladin was being treated more as a nuisance and possibly unwell rather than a dire threat, he’d been absorbed into the culture he was meant to negotiate with, in many ways Alec was the bigger outsider.

  “Look at the tools.” Karatas said simply as they passed yet another creepily staring gaggle of Slayers.

  Dutifully Alec did so. It didn’t take long for him to figure out now he’d been given a hint. In his defence he’s been rather distracted by the worshipful gaze they’d been giving him, far, far too preoccupied with their eyes to pay attention to what was in their hands.

  While there was the usual motley collection of magical staves, wands and weapons, there were also a surprising number of people holding brooms, polishing cloths and in one instance a feather duster.

  More important was what there was a lack of, the army of skeletal servants that would normally be holding them. That more than anything was the clear demarcation between the Slayers of Death’s section of the Necropolis and the rest of it. Absolutely no undead – a strange stance indeed for necromancers.

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  Karatas smiled, watching Alec’s face as he connected the dots. “Exactly. Not a ghoul, zombie, lich or chitinoth in sight.”

  Arrabelle gave the ambassador another scowl, Alec was beginning to think the knight was keeping some sort of bizarre score on that front. “All will be explained in time.”

  Finally they seemed to enter something other than the maze of corridors, passing an archway that had, going from faded marks in the stone, once held a door. It was night and day to the disorienting emptiness of the rest of the Necropolis. The sanctum of the Slayers of Death downright bustled.

  There was the same moment of awed and desperate silence as Alec stepped in, but Arrabelle chose to dispel it with a simple “Be about your business.” this time.

  “You know...” Karatas mused dryly, “for an organisation without any leaders you certainly seem to wield a lot of authority.”

  Alec ignored the byplay between the two, taking in the hundreds of necromancers going about their work. There was what appeared to be a reception area where several harried looking men and women were doing their best to keep up with in trays that Alec was watching grow in real time.

  Behind that was a courtyard that Arrabelle took them past where dozens of mages and paladins were sparring, and what sparring it was, more of a free for all really. There weren’t any violent spells going on but that didn’t mean the combatants had bounded themselves to paltry reality.

  There were several swordfights going on where the fighters were duelling while stood sideways, their feet adhering to the walls. At least two people were having a fistfight hovering in the air, and the general athleticism on display was beyond belief.

  Alec had been in quite a few fights by this point, magical ones even, and this was still the first time he’d seen someone do a backflip, let alone over one of their opponents, parrying in the process, before pushing them into the other person they’d been fighting. It was all a bit… much.

  “They really aren’t subtle.” Karatas echoed his thoughts, “Nonetheless it is an impressive display.”

  “The First Servant is a versatile tool.” Arrabelle declared, not hiding her smugness. “And we would be delighted to share it with you Alec, if you choose to join our order.”

  The teenager gave her his best unimpressed look. Not that what he’d just seen wasn’t incredibly impressive, but, “I’d have been more agreeable to it if you hadn’t kidnapped me in all but name.”

  “Yes yes, and I apologise for the necessity. You’ll understand in just a moment.” That said she beckoned him into a sideroom.

  It was a simple enough affair, almost identical to the debriefing rooms he’d found himself shuffled between after the battle against Tza’rahlitzek. They weren’t fond memory.

  Still at least this one had nicely upholstered chairs that he could sink into rather than metal frame affairs that seemed to have a vendetta against his arse. There were enough chairs for everyone. Karatas, Arrabelle, himself, and a Slayer who was by the looks of things going to act as stenographer for this meeting.

  The only other feature of note were the walls, covered in inches of paper, each with some sort of protective glyph on. Karatas eyed them dubiously before shaking his head, “I’d have preferred something in stone or steel.”

  “Paper is more easily replaced.” Arrabelle told him coldly. “With certain foes it’s not about about if they can break through the wards, it’s about knowing when.”

  “That is some impressive paranoia. I may have to pass it along to my superiors.” Karatas laughed humourlessly, though he stopped laughing when one of the glyphs caught fire, the paper peeling off the wall to fall to the floor where Arrabelle hurriedly stamped it out.

  “To business then.” The aged but spry Slayer said as she settled into her own chair.

  “To business.” The paladin echoed, settling into a chair beside Alec, arms folded as he waited on Arrabelle.

  “What do you want to know?” Alec asked, resignation aplenty in the teenager’s voice. “’cause you have to know there’s going to be a lot of things I just can’t answer without getting killed.”

  “Fortunately that shouldn’t be an issue. What I will I ask I doubt will be of interest to anyone outside my order. After Erebus had broken the death zone at Forsaken Valda, in your debriefing you mentioned three people who you at first mistook for surviving townsfolk. Could you please describe them for me?”

  The teenager frowned deeply at that, mostly to hide his confusion. Of all the questions he’d been expecting that was not one of them. “Uh… well there were three of them. A young woman in a necromancer’s robe, an old man with a ridiculously long beard and uh… a third one with green eyes.”

  Arrabelle nodded, apparently expecting that answer, the scribe not even bothering to write it down. “Did they at any point identify themselves?”

  “No. Not once. And it never occurred to me to ask.”

  Arrabelle nodded again, another expected answer. “The third one, were they a man or a woman?”

  “They were a woman.” Alec said confidently. Then he paused, running the memory back through his head. “No wait a man… uh… crap. I want to say both, but I know that doesn’t make sense.”

  “It doesn’t technically prove anything.” The scribe noted, his gaze flicking to Arrabelle, who was grinning from ear to ear, her smile wouldn’t have been out of place on a shark. “They could merely be a shapeshifter.”

  “That just happens to match the description of one of the three?” The Slayer retorted derisively before turning her attention back to Alec, a real hunger in her voice as she asked. “Can you tell me anything else about the green eyed one?”

  “Uh… no. I’m trying but I can’t even remember what colour hair they had.” Alec admitted. “Did they mess with my mind?”

  “Nothing so banal. They didn’t mess with your perception. They messed with reality’s. As we understand it The Three don’t really have bodies, but lacking a body makes it rather hard to interact with people so they convince Reath that they do, they just tend to be a little bit sparse on the details. Now… what did the man look like?”

  “Old.” Alec said simply. “He had a long beard, blue eyes and… that’s all I can recall. Oh and he had an hourglass he kept fiddling with. He reminded me a lot of my grandfather… I never met my grandfather.”

  “Two for two.” Arrabelle smiled, voice lowering with that terrible hunger as she finally got on to the one she was interested in. “Now… tell me about the woman.”

  “She was young… which feels weird to say now I think about it given…” Alec gestured at himself, “and she smiled a lot. She had black hair, a very old looking black robe, gaunt cheeks…” The teen paused in contemplation. “Why does she have more detail than the other two? There’s still things missing in my head, the eyes for example but when I try and picture her face it’s mostly there.”

  “Because Death is more of a person than them.” Arrabelle answered. “And her role requires a lot more interaction with people. Any other details?”

  “She had a small hand scythe that she kept on the table we sat at. Is any of this important?”

  “It could be.” The Slayer shrugged. “If nothing else it helps establish patterns. What did you talk about?”

  “Well the first time I spoke to them was when I asked them to evacuate the inn they were staying at. They just fobbed me off, said they’d be fine and then went back to playing.” Alec reported. “There really wasn’t anything interesting said.”

  “The game. What was it?”

  “Something they called poker. It was quite fun once they taught me the rules.”

  “They let you play with them?” Arrabelle actually gasped.

  “Not then. Then they just said they’d stay in the inn…” Alec trailed off, seriously wondering if he should say the next part if Arrabelle had been shocked at him merely being allowed to sit with them. “And Death lent me her cloak.”

  It was a good thing Arrabelle hadn’t been drinking anything or Alec would have been wearing it. As it was the Slayer’s jaw hung loose for a moment before she closed her mouth, and opened it again, silently trying to remember how words worked.

  Even Karatas, only half entertaining the idea that the teenager had met capital D Death, was taken aback. While he was a little reticent to believe in gods, he knew there were powerful things out there, and just from the memory editing alone it was clear Alec had met one of them. And such beings did not share lightly.

  “Did the robe have any unnatural effects you were aware of? Invisibility? Intangibility? People seeming disinclined to notice you? An inability to be wounded?” Arrabelle asked hurriedly once she’d overcome her disbelief.

  “None that I noticed. Amara spotted me instantly and I was taken hostage about a minute later. I just needed a cloak that would let me pass as an apprentice mage.” Alec replied as he played the events back through his head. Had his killing of the paladin Arkos, still the only person Alec had killed, been in any way unnatural? Well beyond using forbidden alchemicals to literally melt the man.

  No. Alec concluded slowly. The paladin had never taken him seriously as a threat, just a boy out of his depth, which he had been. Afterall what teenager was carrying around potions that could turn people into a puddle on the floor?

  “Do you still have the cloak?” The Slayer inquired, demanded really. Whatever hopes Arrabelle had had for the interview, and they’d already clearly been sizeable, Alec had already exceeded them by every metric.

  “No. I returned it as soon as I was able.”

  “Do you believe there was a compulsion to return it?”

  Another long pause for thought. “No. I just thought it polite.”

  “Okay. What other interactions did you have with her?” Arrabelle asked, leaning forwards in her chair as the scribe wrote down everything verbatim and he was pressing down hard enough the quill was going through the paper in places.

  “Mostly they just let me sit in on the games they played while talking about how rare it was for all three of them to have a chance to meet these days and how they would eventually have to ‘do the work’ whatever that was.”

  “Did they elaborate at any point?”

  “No. Most of the talk was about the game. A lot of complaining about how the lady always seemed to win, some complaints about how at least it wasn’t chess.” Alec gave a shrug. “She certainly did win a lot. If they hadn’t covered my debts for me I’ve no idea what I would owe, as it is I only won the one hand.”

  “And what did you win?” The Slayer asked with an intensity bordering upon lust.

  “Nothing really. Just a handful of the tokens we were playing with. There weren’t any real stakes.” Alec explained, fishing into one of his pockets in anticipation of the next question.

  “These tokens… could I see one?”

  Wordlessly Alec handed one of the ones in his pocket, a rich green disc made of a smooth material. The teenager giving Arrabelle time to examine it, and reach the same conclusions as the last person to put them under scrutiny.

  “They’re just… tokens.” The Slayer concluded, tone mystified and expression baffled. “No mana or chaos. Just… stuff. The material is odd but…”

  “Erebus said it was some sort of alchemical product called plastic.” Alec explained, extending a hand to receive the poker chip back.

  For a moment it looked like Arrabelle wouldn’t relinquish it, but whatever battle she was having with herself pragmatism, or perhaps conscience, won as she dropped it into the rookie mage’s outstretched palm.

  “Are there any other questions?” Karatas asked evenly, pushing his chair back somewhat optimistically as he prepared to stand.

  “Of course. We will want to go over things a few more times, just in case.” Arrabelle assured him. “Food will be brought to us.”