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“Have you ever noticed that Cavendish is a bit… weird?”
Zack asks the question at the back of a bustling tavern. The noise of talking, laughing, singing and glasses clinking fills the air, drowning out the quiet conversation at their small table. Despite the crowd, they keep their hoods up and avoid drawing attention.
“Weird how?” Milo asks, tilting his head to the side.
“In many ways, but I’m assuming you’re leading to something.” Melissa says at the same time as Milo.
“Well… he looks a bit off, his eyes are weird, and when I’ve healed him I always get a different feeling from healing a normal person. Even when I just touch him.” Zack tries to explain, his voice lowering automatically when he describes healing. “I can’t describe any of it, he’s just… it feels mean to say, but wrong? There’s something not right, I can feel it.”
Melissa and Milo exchange a look. “You are a healer-“ Milo’s voice also lowers “- so you could be seeing something that we don’t. But what?”
Melissa shrugs. “Could we ask him?”
“That’s a really weird thing to ask, Melissa.” Zack points out. “Besides, it’s probably nothing.”
“What’s probably nothing?” Dakota sits down at the table, drinks in his hands. Cavendish sits at the other spare seat and places the rest of the drinks down. Everyone is now very squashed around the table, rubbing elbows and knees.
“Nothing!” They chorus, too quickly. The men gives them funny looks, but don’t ask questions.
Zack’s arm is rubbing against Cavendish’s, his knee pressing into the older man’s leg. And he can feel it again. A cold, clammy wrongness, like the boy has never felt before. It isn’t from his skin, they are both covered by clothes, and he knows for a fact the man isn’t sick. So what is it?
A thought crosses his mind. A terrible, horrifying thought. He remembers scary stories told around a campfire, whispered from child to child in the schoolyard, shut down by his parents.
But it can’t be that. The stories are much worse. A wrongness, a coldness, sure, but there’s something more too. A missing piece. A body with no soul. Not so much a human as a monster. Cavendish, brave and heroic and so alive, can’t be that.
It must be something else.
The bustle of the tavern is enough that they don’t realise what’s happening until it’s too late. The blow of a horn silences the din. And everyone knows what that means.
So no one looks at the mage hunters, in their cloaks and helmets. They all look around at the neighbouring tables. A wave of whispers, of hushed whos, crashes across the room.
Everyone already knows what it means, the mage hunters don’t need to explain. But of course they do, because mage hunters are nothing if not dramatic. “Citizens! We interrupt your evening with news of great sorrow!” The leader calls, stepping forward with a swish of her cloak and the raising of her sword. “Four mages have invaded this peaceful inn, tainted the very air with their unnatural presence, their affront to the gods!”
The other hunters spread out across the tavern. People tense as they pass, even though they know that nothing will happen. Even though they know that they are safe. And as for the five at the back of the tavern, they tense because they know that they aren’t.
When the hunters reach the back, the closest ones sword’s begin to glow and buzz. All eyes turn to the group of five at the back. And they burst into action.
With just a flick of Melissa’s wrist, a candle flairs up so much that it catches the cloak of a mage hunter. Another hunter swings a sword at Melissa, but is met by Milo’s magical shield.
As fighting breaks out properly, people rush for the doors. And the hunters rush closer. They surround the small group with their swords at the ready.
Cavendish draws his sword and meets them close up. Metal clashes against metal, flashy and quick. Magic dances in the air. A fight begins.
———
“Cavendish! Cavendish!” Zack spins around when he hears Milo’s cry. Cavendish is on the floor, clearly injured. The blood… and Zack feels the usual tug to rush forwards, to heal him.
He allows himself to be tugged, rushing through the fray with a single minded determination. A near miss from a sword reminds him that he can’t heal anyone if he is dead. “Melissa, cover!” He yells. She runs closer and stand back to back with him, fire dancing around her hands. They fight their way through the hunters, completely in sync.
He stumbles. The rope tugging him snaps.
He looks at Cavendish, but he doesn’t need to look to know that he is gone. He gasps. Melissa looks over her shoulder, a spurt of water knocking over a hunter without her even needing to look at them. “What is it?”
“Cavendish, he… he…”
Dakota is closer, and as soon as he hears Zack he dives next to him. Milo is looking away as he focuses both on keeping the shield up and fighting off a hunter with quick bursts of magic. Zack keeps fighting with Melissa, back to back as they clear the tavern of hunters. Ignoring the shock of grief that is burning in him. It was so quick, he was there and then he wasn’t, Zack can’t understand. Can’t process. Melissa and Milo don’t even seem to have noticed yet.
The room is emptier and emptier, the four (four, four, how can it be four) of them are winning. Ropes wrap around him, tugging at him to heal his enemies, but as time goes on those ropes begin to fray and snap.
Another tug. A new one. A familiar one. And it disorients Zack so much that he freezes, Melissa moves on without him.
Cavendish is alive.
He know he is, he can feel it. He is still unconscious, still seriously injured. But alive, definitely alive, when Zack knows that he was dead.
This time he is able to sprint right over, kneel down next to Cavendish and put his hands on him. And while he heals him, he looks up at Dakota. They make eye contact.
“I know, I know.” Dakota hisses before he can say anything. “I’ll tell you later, I promise, just don’t tell the others.”
Zack nods once, too stunned to do anything else. He looks down at Cavendish, and concentrates on the feeling. It’s like how he has felt when he healed this man before, only worse- he feels oddly cold, he shivers.
Suddenly, what had seemed impossible a few minutes ago feels uncomfortably likely.
———
They are sitting around the fire as it blazes brightly, tending their wounds as they cook. Dakota makes eye contact with him and gestures at the forest. Zack stands up and makes some remark about healing as they walk together into the forest.
“You’re a necromancer.” He guesses as soon as they are out of earshot. “Cavendish did die in the inn, you revived him. And you’ve done it before. That’s what I felt, that’s what’s wrong about him-“
“There is nothing wrong with him!” Dakota snaps. His voice is so dangerous that Zack steps a step backwards.
“No, you’re right, sorry. That’s not what I meant.” He says hurriedly. “But, there’s this thing that’s different about him. Maybe you can’t feel it, because you’re not a healing mage, but I can.”
Dakota takes a deep breath. “Sorry kid. And I can feel it. Necromancy, ya know.”
“That explains a lot.” Zack mutters. He rubs his head. “How many times?”
“Several.” Dakota admits. “He has bad luck.”
Zack glances back through the trees to where his friends are. “The stories?”
“Wrong.” Dakota says immediately, then hesitates. Looks down at the floor, guilt darkening his eyes. “Well, mostly. He isn’t a mindless, soulless monster, but something has definitely changed in him. Changed a bit more every time.” He sighs, and Zack can see a deep, anxious sadness in him.
“Does Cavendish… does he know?” Zack asks.
“No. No, the first time it happened he didn’t realise, I didn’t know how to tell him. And I still don’t know how to tell him. How do you start that conversation? ‘Hi Cavendish, funny story but you should be dead several times over’?! God…” Dakota buries his face in his hands. “Sorry Zack, didn’t mean to to unload on you.”
“Nah, I’m good.” Zack says. He isn’t, really. This news has shocked him, stressed him out, confused him. And he is sure that will be ten times worse when he has had time to process it.
“It’s just that no one else knows. And it’s been a lot to… a lot to carry.” Dakota admits.
He feels terrible for passing any part of his terrible weight to Zack, a child, hates seeing the look on the boy’s face. But he also feels, so, so relieved. He has been carrying this truth for years now, it has weighed around him like the sky is on his shoulders. He has had to look his partner in the eye, knowing everything that he has done, and never telling him.
Sometimes it feels like mourning for someone who is still alive.
“Would you do the same for Milo or Melissa?” Zack asks suddenly. “If they… you know.”
“Yes.” Dakota says in a heartbeat. “And for you. And maybe it’s not a good thing to do, maybe I’m wrong, but I’ll keep doing it for him, and I’d do it for the three of you.”
Zack looks away. Dakota’s heart sinks. Zack has accepted a lot, but necromancy, revival, it’s too far. Zack must be disgusted.
“At least tell me.” Zack’s voice isn’t disgusted. It’s shocked, shaken, scared, but not disgusted. “If you have to revive me. I’d rather know.”
“I will.”
“And you should tell Cavendish. I’m sure he would rather know too.”
Dakota sighs, looking away again. “Yes. I’m sure he would. I just can’t yet. I will tell him soon, I swear… don’t tell him?” He sounds so pleading. Is he really pleading with a thirteen year old?
“I won’t, not without your permission.” Zack promises. A shadow of guilt falls over his face, dark and heavy. Dakota feels awful, that now Zack will also have to carry the burden he has been carrying for years. That he is making Zack hide and lie like he does. “And if you need help to tell him, I will.”
Zack lifts his eyes and manages a reassuring smile. Dakota smiles back, clapping him on the shoulder. “Thanks kid.”
———
He must be sick.
That’s the only explanation. For the random flashes of pain. In his chest, his legs, his head, everywhere. Pain with no visible pause, but as agonising as a stab wound or fracture or head trauma. Pain that immobilises him, leaves him curled up in the ground in agony, but that he still can’t explain. Zack looked once, but couldn’t explain it either. Couldn’t find a source, even with his magic.
Dakota always sits with him when it happens, no matter what. Always comforts him, hugs him if wanted and just sits there and talks soothingly if he doesn’t. He always has a strange look in his eyes when he does so.
It’s also the only explanation for the random shivers in even the warmest of rooms. For the strange clamminess in his skin. For the oddness in his eyes. For all of these strange symptoms that he can’t explain.
There’s something wrong with him, and he would do anything to find out what.