The Necromancer

Chapter 6, Part 4

"Professor Magdat!" I said, much louder than I intended. "I... err... do you remember me? Winston?" My voice cracked halfway through the word "remember" like the very sight of her had caused me to regress back into shameful puberty.

Her eyes narrowed as she looked at me. Her beautiful, beautiful eyes. I could get lost in them all day. "Winston..." she repeated slowly, licking her soft, plump lips. "Were you the one that I caught looking down my shirt that one time?"

My cheeks burned hotter than any fire in existence. Skip tried to stifle a giggle and failed miserably, making it into a loud snort. "Well..." I sputtered. "I mean..." There had been that one time where my attention perhaps drifted a bit during class, and my eyes may have happened to wander down for a good half hour or so. And as soon as I looked up, our eyes locked. But then she'd just gone back to teaching. She'd never punished me, or said anything... "Maybe, like... I might have accidentally looked or something..."

She tsked knowingly and nodded. "Well, there it is. That narrows it down to every male student I've ever had in my entire teaching career." I didn't think it was possible to blush more than I already was. Somehow I found a way. I was surprised that Skip and Professor Magdat weren't sweating from the heat radiating out from my face. "Now, what can I do for you, Winston and....?"

"Skip," my companion introduced herself with a smile and handshake. "I'm a good friend of Winston's. He's just been showing me around the Academy here."

"Pleasure," Professor Magdat said, putting on her best radiant smile. The sapphire hanging between her breasts swayed gently as the two ladies shook hands, and it took every ounce of willpower for me not to look down. "What do you need, Winston and Skip?"

"We... well..." I really hadn't thought this part out yet. As the head of the Blood Magic department, she was probably the worst person to come to with this request. She knew the power that blood holds, and the innumerable things that we'd be able to do with even a drop of hers. "We need some of your blood, Professor." I produced an empty vial from within my robes and thrust it toward her.

She took the vial in her hands and looked back at me with a look that practically screamed 'no fucking way.' The glass tube danced beneath her nimble fingers as she twirled it absentmindedly on her knuckles. "And what for? Asking for blood is quite the personal request."

I took a deep breath, ready to tell her about Amcerlizar and our quest to defeat him. I was willing to play the 'Skip's dead husband' card for sympathy. "You remember Amcerlizar, right?" She scowled briefly and rolled her eyes. I took that to mean yes. "Well, we're go..."

"There's a plague," Skip interrupted. "A horrible, devastating wasting sickness running rampant through Milotia." She was using the Voice, conjuring images of streets littered with corpses in my mind. Sickly, pockmarked bodies with trails of blood running from every orifice. Hacking coughs and violent sneezes assaulted our eardrums, and even the air seemed to be tainted a dark, hazy brown. Perhaps from the pyres where victims burned en masse. Truly a horrible plague that Skip was making up here. "It's killed so many already, Professor Magdat." Skip's voice was laden with emotion, and I even thought I saw a tear glistening in the corner of her eye. Damn she's good, I thought. 

Professor Magdat gasped and placed a smooth, dainty hand over her heart. "Gods, that's awful!" 

Skip nodded solemnly. "It's really, really terrible. But thankfully, Amcerlizar is there trying to help. He says that he'll be able to brew up a cure. BUT, he told us that he needs your blood." I could practically picture the conversation in my mind: me, Skip, and Amcerlizar in the midst of a packed medical ward with Amcerlizar doing his very best to save those poor, plague-ridden souls. "Only your blood will work because..." She trailed off and searched the ceiling for the reason. "be...cause... oh, because of how long you've lived!"