And Such Are Stones

2. Wannabe Necros

"I don't think it's going to work," Crooner said, having to yell a little bit to be heard over the sound of the wind. "There isn't any reason to pull all of them in, anyway."

"I thought you wanted to hold them," Kamar said, yelling back but exasperated over all the changes to their little plan.

"I don't want to hold them," Crooner yelled back. "I want them all to follow the path back." He looked at the doorway, "Crap ... either close it or feed it ... they're coming now ... They're all coming!"

The doorway was one that they had made themselves. They already had all of their worldly possessions tied up in this. Each of the houses that they lived in ... everything. Well, Crooner's house, anyway. Kamar had already been evicted after all the recent activity. Who wants somebody living in their building when they can't control their magic?

It was just a simple experiment with an energy field to contain a fire. He probably shouldn't have been trying to cook on it at the same time, though. He had to open the field a little bit to get his goat leg back out, and he lost his concentration when it was like liquid hot molten magma in his hand. Things didn't go the way he wanted them to at all.

The goat leg fell on the dirty floor, and if you had ever seen his floor, you would realize that you just didn't eat things that ended up there. Immediately following that, the whole building had to be evacuated when the smoke filled several of the apartments. It took a few days to get the smell out of everything. Even after all that, it still wasn't even a big deal to the other residents. Fires happen all the time. They all changed their minds after he told them how it all happened.

The other tenants had a meeting to decide what they all wanted to do about him. He wasn't invited, of course, because it was about him. In the end, they decided to let him go on down the road. Some of them even became a little violent about the deal. He could have killed them all with his stupidity. They had children ... when someone brings up the children, the argument has already reached the tipping point.

They were willing to give him back his stake in the building, but he still had to go. And by saying that he had to go, that kind of meant that he needed to be leaving right now. Since Crooner had already passed the hearthstone to the next owner of his little cottage, they were both on the hoof now.

With everything else going on, they hoped that this new little exercise in exorcism was a way to gain a little notoriety. This could put their new business in a positive light in the necromantic circles ... if that's even possible. They couldn't even get an audience with the guild until they made a name for themselves. Right now, the front door of the guild wouldn't even open for them.

This was the first real challenge for them as a team. The other shades they had dealt with were just people who had died and didn't know how to take the next step. Some of them were a little angry and confused at first. It really helped when they found out Crooner could talk directly to them as if they were still real, living people.

Maybe they were just too trusting. Perhaps they were too naïve to think that someone in the form of a shade might not be entirely truthful with them. They were told it was just a rowdy shade that didn't want to go home. Nothing to worry about. It was just a few things moving around the house and just some sounds in the night. Boy, those had to be the biggest understatements of the year.

Word of mouth spread throughout Cornash about the upcoming attempt at an exorcism. This house had been haunted for at least a hundred years, and the shade was well-known throughout the city. He wasn't a quiet and passive shade either. He was more like a poltergeist. No one wanted to live anywhere around there.

The local property owners got together to discuss what they could do about it. They concocted the scheme of hiring the two up-and-coming necromancers. Everybody would benefit if it worked, and they got rid of the shade. They could be shed of the shade, they would have made a good business selling trinkets and foodstuff to the crowd in the street, and they would have a place to rent as a "This is where it all happened" kind of place.