Battle Mage Visions (A Tale of Alus Book 12) (11 page)

She looked at his green eyes and thought that they looked strange. His face was different as well, though it was subtle. The wraith wondered if Nalack had looked like that in life, but she couldn't remember him that way anymore.

"Why don't you go upstairs and wash yourself?" Palose said directing his words to the newly risen man. Nalack nodded as he slipped off of the table. The former wraith didn't look wobbly as he stooped to pick up his boots and shirt. His body still had blood in places, but the wounds had disappeared. Even the original scar from the wound which had killed him could have been seen plainly as a wraith; but it also had healed leaving just a white line where it had been.

The man had been ageless in his looks before, but Oween thought that he somehow looked younger. It could just have been the return of life to the warlock, but her curiosity about it remained.

As Nalack climbed the stairs, Dorgred moved to follow.

"I think I will go check to see if Wendle has returned," the big man stated looking pale. Palose knew a cover when he heard it, but let the matter go with a simple nod.

Sylvaine was pale also, but the girl sat on an old stool left behind by a former resident. He wondered if her legs would have let her stand to leave, even if she had decided that two times would have been too much to sit through.

Looking at Palose, Oween swallowed bringing a slight smile to his face. "Well, this is what you wanted," the man said as gently as he could. "You've seen that it will be painful, but in the end you'll be alive once more."

"To go through all that, I could hope to be better than I was in life," the wraith chuckled trying to keep a sense of humor in light of what she had seen. Try as she might, her worry kept her from looking truly happy.

The dark mage considered her words and asked, "What was so wrong about your previous life?"

"I was getting old," she half laughed. "I guess I was still young, but I was prettier when I was a girl, at least that was what I thought; but I wasted a lot of my youth being an apprentice. I'd study with my hair pulled back into a bun like some old woman. Boys rarely talked to me because I was too busy with my books."

Oween glanced to Sylvaine and added, "They say youth is wasted on the young, but I feel like I missed my youth trying to become a powerful warlock. I don't even think I wound up being that strong really, so I would say that it was a bit of a waste," the woman finished with a sigh.

While Oween wasn't the strongest wizard he had ever met, Palose thought that she was being hard on herself. He also sensed that she was trying to delay what was coming. Giving her that smile he hoped was comforting, Palose said, "Time to undress. At least, you'll get a second chance at life this way."

Unlike Nalack, the woman wore a one piece dress. Her cloak covered her to keep the woman warm in life, but as a wraith the cold barely affected her. Litsarin was also quite a bit warmer than Ensolus, though they were inside. The lower level room lacked a fireplace, however, and the room next to it had a larger door that wasn't perfectly sealed against the cold. While he wasn't seeing his breath in the air, the dark mage thought that it was a little cool.

Removing her short leather boots first, the cloak and dress were pulled off leaving Oween bare save for the panties she wore beneath. The woman needed help onto the table, meaning Palose had to touch her bare skin. There was heat in her body, even if she was only half alive. She felt almost like she would in life, and the man thought that Oween had been undeservedly hard on herself in her belief that age was catching up to her. The woman couldn't have turned thirty yet and looked pretty good to him, though he compared her to Sylvaine and thought she could never be more than second best.

He could feel Sylvaine's disapproving look, but it didn't matter how she felt about it. It was necessary and Oween wasn't the first woman he seen naked. If Sylvaine let herself think about it, the girl knew that he had been with Talia and Stasia before her. He had a life before her, but the young man planned to spend the rest with Sylvaine.

Losing his thoughts to the women around him for a moment, Palose ordered, "Lay down, Oween. It'll be over soon enough."

The words weren't comforting the mage realized seeing the worry in her red eyes.

Once more the chant began and soon the screaming did as well. The woman's higher pitched screams carried to the others upstairs. It was a wonder than no one came to break down the door to find out if he was torturing a woman to death. In essence it was torture, but Oween wasn't currently alive to kill. It was a humorless joke that Palose would consider after he was done.

Sylvaine sat rooted to her stool and shivered as Oween's body released her spirit once more. He could feel the blood in the bowl holding the warlock's spirit as it had held onto Nalack before her.

"That was..." the girl started but couldn't find the words for the soul chilling screams of the other woman. Pausing, Sylvaine changed her thoughts and said thankfully, "I am glad that I didn't have to go through that kind of pain. Nalack didn't say anything about it, but I wonder how much of that pain he remembers now."

Palose took a deep breath as he turned to look at the girl. "It was another life, but I suppose pain could follow you from one to the next. Do you remember dying?"

The question made Sylvaine pause to think about it. "I remember our squad being caught off guard in our camp. Arrows were shot from the trees, but I don't remember the pain.

"I do remember looking into your eyes and felt loss. Then I was looking up at your face in here and alive again.

"Still that was different from this torture. My death was quick."

Speaking of her death made the girl shiver with the thought. It was still a foggy memory, but those moments of seeing the one she loved holding her lingered almost vividly. "Did you put a love spell into the runes you used on me?" she asked with a wry twist of her lips as she smiled at him.

Love had been the tie used on Stasia and Talia, but Palose had learned of the dangers of those runes. The strong affects of the runes had worn away enough that the two women could love others as well, but at first he could barely be away from them before they'd act like they were losing their reason for living.

"I didn't have to with you. I used only the basic resurrection spell, so if I ever do anything to make you angry I risk having you stab me still. Maybe I should have put a spell on you to make sure that you wouldn't do me harm?"

"That didn't save Atrouseon," she reminded him of part of the wards used to keep the necromancer safe from his creation.

Palose turned to Oween's lifeless body and contemplated the runes he had chosen for the woman. While he could use the same as he had for Nalack or chosen simple runes like he had for Sylvaine; the dark mage had something else in mind. Oween's words had sparked another test of what he had learned, but had yet to try.

"Atrouseon brought that on himself," Palose replied as he began to draw the new runes on the woman's body. Being nearly bare, the dark mage drew on her feet, but added a couple more along her legs to achieve the change he hoped to enact on the warlock. "I could have lived without having him killed. The stories of warning had always said that the creations had turned on their masters. None of them warned that a necromancer might become the one jealous enough to want to destroy the one he created.

"I saw him slowly growing more desperate to remove me as his competition. It was unfortunate, but I didn't want to return to death so I ensured that I had a way to survive."

Looking back at Sylvaine, he thought the color had returned to her face. She was beautiful and Palose had been glad that he could save her from her fate. "It worked out for you and the others too, of course."

"I wasn't complaining," the girl said with a smile.

Nodding to her with a small smile, Palose turned back to Oween. He started the chant and poured the blood onto the wounds. More went into her mouth as he mixed it with the blood still draining from his cuts. The ancient words were nearly the same for each resurrection. His use of different runes changed the outcome of any adjustments that he wanted to make. For Oween, he worried less about what he needed to secure in her mental state. This time it was the superficial the dark mage chose to change.

Sylvaine gasped as she watched from her chair.

"What did you do?" she asked in a quiet voice that was ignored by the necromancer working his spell.

Palose was surprised that as the woman took her first new breath, she sucked at his hand. Nalack hadn't needed extra blood. The original spell for the others had required his blood more than this conversion from wraith to full life.

Her hands covered both of his even as she sat up. Brown eyes looked at him with surprising longing. His runes had done nothing to encourage love of that kind like he had inadvertently caused in Talia and Stasia. Still the woman had changed with his spell more than the others and Palose wondered if that was the root of what was causing this reaction.

Palose felt an odd warmth in his hands and a moment later Oween released her grip, though the woman looked like she wished that he would keep touching her.

Sylvaine moved to the table with a frown on her face for the warlock and Oween turned to smile at the dark haired girl.

"Well, I feel different. I guess being a wraith for so long made me forget what it was like being alive."

She turned her legs to hop off the side of table and paused. "That's strange," the warlock said looking down at her legs. "Did I lose weight when you took the blood out of me?"

Her hair slid forward as Oween leaned and she started in surprise. Her formerly brunette hair had changed color to strawberry blonde. Looking up at Palose, the woman slid from the table and looked down at her feet. "I haven't had blonde hair since I was little. Even my feet look different and it isn't just the blood on me.

"What did you do to me?"

There was a mirror sitting on the large workbench set against one wall. Various bottles filled with powders that he could mix for spells and other items filled those shelves; but the dusty mirror drew Sylvaine to it.

The apprentice brushed most of the dust away with her sleeve before carrying it over to hold in front of Oween. She didn't know what to say and Palose had waited with a knowing smile on his lips.

Gasping at the image in the mirror, Oween exclaimed, "I look young. How did you...? I didn't know necromancy could do this."

Oween looked at the face and body in the mirror. A girl that looked roughly the age of Sylvaine looked back at her. The girl in the mirror looked both familiar and different from the warlock as a teenage girl.

Placing her hands underneath her breasts, the warlock lifted and released them saying, "They're a little smaller, like when I was her age. My skin is darker though." She looked at Palose wrenching her eyes from the sight of her new body which appeared ten years younger than before she had died.

"Why did you change me?" Oween asked but didn't appear angry so much as confused.

"You said that you wished you hadn't wasted your youth. I thought that maybe you would like a do over," he said with a grin.

She noted skin that looked perfect and stated, "I didn't look this good when I was young."

As the shock of the changes began to wear off; her skin started to ripple from the cold and Oween shivered. Looking for her dress, she hurried over to pull it back on despite the blood on her skin. She pulled at the cloth noting, "It doesn't fit me the same. Now I am sure that I have lost weight."

She sniffed at the cloth and added, "It smells like death."

"Talia can wash it. Maybe you can borrow one of the girls' dresses for now," Palose stated and started to turn towards the stairs.

His legs suddenly gave beneath him dropping the man to his knees. Sylvaine quickly put the mirror on the ground joining him on her knees, while Oween started towards the mage with concern. The warlock in her changed body stopped seeing Sylvaine beside him and recalled that he wasn't hers. She had been his only female wraith on the battle field and forgot that there were other women in his life.

"Sorry," he apologized to the dark haired girl in front of him. "I forgot to bring some food to replenish my reserves. Pulling the spirits out first added to the magic I used. Blood magic also wears out the user, even it is more powerful."

Sylvaine took his hands and turned them over. Gasping in surprise, she said, "Your hands are healed already."

Palose looked to Oween and asked, "You're a healer?"

Shaking her head, the woman replied, "I wasn't before, but I did feel a strange need to hold onto your hands. It was like I could feel your pain or maybe the broken skin?"

"We'll have to see if your new life comes with a new gift as well," he mused.

"Later," Sylvaine cautioned helping him back to his feet. "We need to get you upstairs to feed you to get your strength back.

Oween hurried to help with one arm as Sylvaine helped from the other. The stairs were too narrow for all three of them to move upward at once, but Oween dropped behind them placing her hands on the small of his back. Energy flowed into him strengthening him without her even realizing it and Palose knew that he had found something special.