The Necromancer

The Necromancer II

A few years ago, I wrote this story without much of a plan. A lot of you seemed to like it, and I left the epilogue with a very open cliffhanger: Skip is missing. 

I had planned to edit this book and try to get it published. But I eventually gave up on that project, in part because it's difficult to get something published when it's already all online for free. And part of it is also that I've had some personal issues that have been weighing on me and I have fallen out of the habit of writing regularly. It's terrible and I really wish that wasn't the case, but it is what it is.

Anyway: The Necromancer II will probably never be written. Not sure if anyone still cares about this, given how long it's been since I finished the first story. But, to give you some closure, I thought I would outline what the sequel would have been about. 

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Winston receives the message from Darion that Skip is missing. He, and his entourage (Mog, Bess, Lamneras, Magdat, and undead Amcerlizar) travel to Skip's little cottage to investigate. All of her belongings are still there, no sign of a struggle, etc. Darion tells them that everything was fine and then she just up and disappeared. He thinks she was kidnapped. Skip had made a few enemies during her time before meeting Winston, and it seems the past has caught up with her. 

Bess begins to track Skip using the same tracking spell she used to find Winston. There would be some difficulty (maybe because Skip has been gone for about a few months) but eventually they'd make their way to a port city where they pick up the trail once again. This is one of the few kingdoms still hostile to Winston and his empire, so they travel in disguise thanks to some of Magdat's magic.

As this is happening, Winston and Magdat are growing closer. Sure, she's a 700-year-old blood magic sorceress, but she's in the body of a hot 18-year-old woman and she's very impressed with Winston. He's built his own empire peacefully, overthrew Amcerlizar, and had the emotional maturity to bring Skip's husband back to life even with his own feelings about Skip. And, given that she can enchant jewels to change someone's appearance at will, she's not too concerned about Winston being balding and slightly overweight. So she's definitely interested. And Winston is slowly but surely getting over his crush on Skip, so he's finally ready to put himself back out there. They take a break from the search for a night and have a date, and it goes well. Winston, now more confident than he was in the first book, can actually be pretty charming. Bess and Lamneras are both cheering them on so that they can all double date. 

The tracking spell leads Winston and the group to the docks, and shows that Skip is somewhere out on the ocean (either a boat or some of the islands off the coast). They learn that there is a pirate king plaguing the coast. He has recently taken over disparate groups of pirates and is now a serious threat to the kingdom. At some point before meeting Winston, Skip had convinced a pirate captain's crew to mutiny against him and left him stranded on an island, just so that she could get a ride from one city to another. Darion believes that the pirates are the ones who kidnapped Skip. So, after finding a boat large enough to accommodate Mog, they set sail. 

On the boat, Winston and Magdat get more serious and enter into a new relationship. I'm not good at writing romance, so this would be awkward. There's also some tension along the journey with Darion, because he and Winston aren't really fond of each other but have to work together to find Skip.

The search continues. They sail around various islands, trying to find witnesses or other information about Skip. The tracking spell leads them to a tavern, where the bartender remembers meeting Skip (and is not happy that she used the Voice to get free food and drinks). But most importantly, the group learns that Skip was traveling of her own free will, and was NOT kidnapped. Darion then confesses that he and Skip had been having relationship difficulties. Before Darion's death, she'd been a normal housewife, and Darion had expected her to go back to that. He gave no consideration to the fact that she'd been adventuring around independently for years since then, and wanted to continue doing that. They'd had a big fight, and she'd left.