True Love and Necromancy [Featured Story!]

Chapter I

ONCE UPON A TIME, in a squat little cottage with a blue shingled roof at the End of the World, there lived a necromancer.

Err—perhaps this is not the best place to begin. He hadn't always been a necromancer, you see; I worry that if we skip directly to the dramatic bits of this story, we'll miss rather a lot of context. 

Do you—do you mind?

I'll imagine you just said, "No, I don't mind at all," with an expression of accommodating indulgence, and wind this story back a few decades so that we might, as they say, begin at the beginning...

***

ONCE UPON A TIME, in the city of Barenn—which is about as far from the End of the World as a person can possibly be, just so you know—a child was born. His mother named him Theodosius, after his father (may he rest in peace).

Now, little Theodosius was like all other newly-born human beings: tiny, mostly disgusting, and with poor fine motor skills. Given that his unfortunate father passed away from food poisoning before he was born, the fatherly influence Theodosius should have had throughout his infancy and childhood was replaced with a gripping terror of any and all forms of meatloaf.

After Theodosius was grown enough to have control over his bodily functions, he went off to grammar school like all the other little children of Barenn did. He graduated with middling marks, but his mother had high expectations of him: she wanted him to become a Certified Publick Accountante of the Realm like Theodosius the Elder had been.

But young Theodosius mistrusted numbers almost as much as he mistrusted meatloaf. In fact, he tolerated numbers only insofar as they loosely applied to potion-making, spell-writing, and conjuring spirits from dark realms...which was pretty loosely indeed.

And so, to the complete and thorough disappointment of his long-suffering mother, Theodosius rejected a scholarship to Publicke Accountancy School in favor of attending the Sorcerer's Research Institute, the first step in what he hoped would be a long and storied career in sorcery.

Upon his graduation (cum laude), Theodosius had no desire to move back home, so he took an entrepreneurial turn: he opened a small apothecary shop down by the docks of Barenn. By day, he made potions for colicky babies and lovesick young gentlemen. By night, he furthered his own arcane studies.

And this, Dear Reader, is where our story properly begins.