The Black Necromancer-Book 4

Chapter 24

Here is the next chapter! :D I really hope you guys like it and please vote and comment for it! :D Once again, this chapter should clear a few more questions up... as well as adding a few more! :P Anyway, please vote and comment and an early Merry Christmas to all my loyal readers! :D Hopefully, I'll update another chapter on Christmas Day, but if I can't, Merry Christmas to all of you now! :D Enjoy! Picture of Troy and Dahlia on the side! ;D 

Chapter 24

                Both Troy and Dahlia winced at Arulan’s blunt words. Although neither of them knew the other Dahlia personally, it was still hard to hear that another magician had sacrificed her life for the life of another magician. Even though both of them knew Amos, it was difficult to imagine the female magician who was now dead.

                Kayla grimaced as Dahlia rubbed her hands across her face, pushing her hair off her forehead, wrinkles standing out in her obvious anxiety. Troy’s hands were shaking with both exhaustion and fear, terror at the real-life story that freaked him out worse than any horror tale ever had. Romulus gripped the table even harder; veins stood out on his muscular arms.

                “Do you want me to continue?” Arulan asked, his voice shaking slightly.

                “Yes,” Dahlia whispered, still gripping her head in her hands. “I need to know the truth. And Troy needs to know about Kayla.”

                Kayla felt grateful for Dahlia’s comment; it meant that she was as much family to Troy as Rachel was for Dahlia. After all, both of them had lost family to Varmer’s evil attacks; both of them had lost their parents, in addition to Troy’s sister, Helen. She bit her lip, still feeling guilty about causing, even unintentionally, the death of Dahlia’s parents.

                “The battle wasn’t over yet,” Arulan continued, struggling to keep his voice stable despite the difficult topic he was discussing. “Ellis had been wounded and we had just lost our Magician of Earth… We had to retreat. But in the heat of the battle, Ellis had lost all his weapons; he had nothing to make a portal out of. In a last attempt to save me, Amos and the girlfriend he loved so much, he made his own body the portal, the sacrifice. When we arrived on the grass back at the Elemental Academy, Ellis had vanished.”

                Arulan let out a slow, sad breath. With a shock, Kayla spotted tears glistening in Arulan’s eyes. It was obvious that the old man had shared an emotional connection with those magicians, especially Rachel, Dahlia’s mother. He was not the only one shaken up for Troy was gnawing at his nails like there was no tomorrow and Dahlia’s hair was a tangled mess from her fiddling.

                “Of all of us, Rachel blamed herself most of all,” he said. “All of us were to blame; I had known that the chances of our success were miniscule but I still allowed myself to be convinced that we might succeed. But Rachel had been the one who had talked all of us into going and she was the one suffering from survivor’s guilt for Ellis and Dahlia had been her friends. Her guilt was almost too much to live with, not to mention that both Dahlia and Ellis had family left behind who blamed her for their deaths. She left Avalon altogether, using one of her two portals that Ellis had created for her in case there was ever a time that he wouldn’t be there for her. Everyone she had loved was gone: her boyfriend and best friend were dead and her other best friend had betrayed them. I’m personally surprised that she didn’t go insane with anger or grief.”

                Kayla sighed heavily at Arulan’s story for she knew what it was like to suffer from survivor’s guilt. Unknown to Troy and Dahlia, she still felt pain over August and Verne’s capture at Varmer’s castle. Their sacrifice had been over seven months ago, yet she was still feeling random spasms of agony over her survival and their capture.