Page 127 of Deadly Maiden

The war had begun.

Heart thudding, I rise and gather everything. My skin feels hot. My feet are heavy. My parents were venturing into the edges of what most would call evil, using necromancy on a large scale. Rorsyd saw it in that lower room, too, and neither of us twigged it might be this. It explains the missing body parts. They stored the darkthing matter somewhere and used it in battle.

I slink into the library, sit in my chair with a thump, and cradle my head, running my hands through my hair.

“Moving on. I need to know this.” I skimmed so much last night I lost the meaning of it all.

This time, today, I’m concentrating.

He isn’t back. I could check the front, but he isn’t.

The information in the diary builds a bigger picture. The war made them dare to do what they might otherwise never have tried.

Somewhere in Slaedorth is a vat they used for the darkthing matter. Do I want to find that? I’d have to find a plan of this place. We must have missed a room. Two rooms. Because…

I tap the current page.

There is also a place where a massive amount of gheist and etharum is hooked up to use for powering the pumps and lights. And it is still here. Somewhere.

Lunchtime passes. I nibble on something. Drink something. Reading lets me forget he is late.

The most condemning diary passage concerns experiments they did on what happens to the brain after death. Why did they? I’m not sure. TOD or time of death is mentioned. It’s useful in determining whether the dead can be harvested for darkthing matter or…here it is…or to have their brain copied and stored? The final bookmark is about trialing injecting it back into the undead. The diary ends there, with a reference to a room here calledRM 31where the TOD essence is stored.

After that, they went to where the Battle of Orish was fought, and they died.

“Fuck me.” I massage my aching temples. Should I find that room?

Of course, there is more in here about happy times and places they went on holiday before the war. On meeting practitioners of magik. On me. There is so much stuff about me. This is half a family diary. Half a necromancy one.

I’m not sure I like being mixed in with brain experiments.

I cannot let Rorsyd see this. It’s of little use in war?

I should be able to find a plan of Slaedorth in that history book. Late afternoon is rolling in. He’s not here. I’m getting so anxious I cannot think in straight lines.

I shouldn’t have let him go anywhere by himself.

And…he will laugh at me when I tell him I thought this.

The volume about this place is inches away, and I side-eye it then drag the book off the small stack making a thump and a miniature dust cloud. In the front matter, after the title, I find it—the floor plan for Slaedorth.

Room 31is on the lower level. I trace the corridor and the room that branches off and goes toRM 31. That’s the same room where the mummified corpses are lying on slabs. Okay, easily checked. Why not look. It will be a good distraction that might scare the pants off me. Brain recordings after death? Some things do seem closer to essentially evil. I may be condemning my parents there.

I shrug and slip off the chair, beckoning to Kyvin to follow me. Anathema appears at my heels, stubby tail twitching. As if I need them both, as if we go to confront some dire enemy.

I frown at Anathema. “Is this necessary?” He ignores me.

Downstairs, I carry our etharum torch, unlit for now, in case the power fails. The gloom here is deeper than elsewhere, though that may be designed to conserve power. I slink into the corpse room and traipse between the slab tables, heading for the back wall, left corner, where a darker shadow conceals whatever is there.

A door coalesces into view, confirming the plan.

Once its open, etharum lights glow to life on the walls. It’s stark, with shelves only, a narrow room about twice as big as the bookcart. The shelves line the rear wall and bear rows of rust-marred, magik-shielding, iron boxes. As I run a finger along the front edge of each shelf, I check each label, crack open a fewboxes and look inside. Most contain tiny samples—variations of darkthing matter extracted after different TOD times.

But one shelf has only three boxes and these are all labelled:Brain imprint within five minutes of TOD,with a person’s name below. Inside each is a marble-sized sphere of darkthing matter. The last box bears a name that’s like an ice shard stuck through me, freezes my breath, jumbles thoughts.

“Asher Stryke! Fuck me. Mother…Father… Why?”

Raising him as an undead, that I have grown used to. In a way it preserved him, gave him something, maybe it was a good gesture? But this, storing the very essence of his being? His thoughts, his memories, the way he walks and talks and makes decisions, if I am to believe what the diary says. Is that not sacrilege? Or did they have some notion to somehow bring him back to life if they had to?

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