The Necromancer Trilogy - Black Magic

Chapter Three - The Debut of the Irritating Intellectual Boy

“I believe you.”

It was the first thing either boy had said for quite a long time, and it surprised the magicians considerably.

“You do?”

Gus nodded. “Yes.”

“Oh,” Celia gave Chrysanthemum an unnerved look. “That’s…great.”

“But you’ve got a few facts wrong,” he added.

The pause went on forever.

“Which facts?” Kurt asked, eventually.

“The Doors,” Gus tapped his fingertips together repeatedly, completely oblivious of how nervously everyone in the room was watching his hands. “They are a little more real than you think…but less real in other ways.”

“Oh god,” Blue clasped his hands together in mock joy. “It’s another example of a magician’s wonderful ability to explain!”

The room at large ignored him.

“You see…” Gus gestured vaguely, “The Doors are a figment of your imagination. That fact is undeniable. But they are also real, at the same time. They’re everywhere, anyway. Everywhere someone is dying.”

“So we just need to kill someone and all our problems will be solved,” Sophie reasoned. “That shouldn’t be too hard.”

Gus shook his head. “It’s not as simple as that. They don’t work like that. You have to do it properly if you want to pass through.”

“Pass through?” Adele looked worried.

“How do you know all this?” Diana demanded, furiously.

Gus shrugged. “I know it because it’s true. I know it because I need to know it. How do you know anything?”

“Pass through?” Celia echoed Adele. “Who said anything about passing through?”

Gus sighed and gave David a look that called for help.

“Gus knows stuff,” David said, simply. “Listen to him.”

Impatiently, warily, distrustfully, they listened.

“The Doors of Death…”

…were a product of human imagination, at one and the same time both real and not real. They existed everywhere at once, opened and aware before you while you died and needed an exit from a world that could no longer support you.

 But to pass through still living, you had to find the soul and centre of the Doors. Sometimes they would rest for days, weeks, maybe even months in one place. Other times, they popped there for brief seconds.