I'd like to say the idea of killing disappointed me.
But it didn't.
I have heard some modern so-called gentlemen in the Imperial court loudly proclaim their dedication to peace, giving this as reason for shrinking from confrontation. They claim the dirtying of their hands with work is beneath them.
A job for the peasants.
Or a number of guards which greatly exceeds their opponent's.
This is ridiculous. It reduces the concept of gentleman to the position of a pleasantly plumed peacock.
In my belief, a gentleman shouldn't pursue the chance to murder an enemy but nor should he shirk from the obligation if it presents itself. Whether it through by duel or war, no hardship should be too great and no suffering too ignoble for a gentleman to honourably slaughter his enemies with cheerful abandon.
True peace, you see, can only be attained when evil is rightfully oppressed.
The challenge is ensuring you are not on the side of evil.
Thankfully, with necromancers, there was no challenge to be faced.
After all, if they love death so much then they should probably be delivered into it.
I call it simply enforcing the natural order of things.
And there's no more natural way of enforcing this than with a nice clean fireball to the face.
The first few hooded rats to burst into the room discovered this with some regret on their part. Their screams, however, were short-lived as I strode past them and into the hall where at least it didn't smell like a soup of offal. The stink, however, still stuck to my shoe like dog poo.
No matter how I scuffed my shoes as I walked, the disgusting ooze still cling to the sole.
"There he is!"
A wave of condensed life energy balls shot down the hall towards me. I could hear the scream of death in their wake. Someone had some power here.
Swiping my arm, I raised a wall of fire whose heat caused the stone walls on either side to melt. Thick rivers of lava formed puddles which I had to navigate carefully.
It might have been a little bit of overkill on my part, but it did its job and every ball flung my way was instantly consumed by flame.
Jarlssen would be proud to have seen it burn this hot. His description of it in Thaumaturgy for Pyromages put forward a controversial theory that magical fire could get hotter than any other flame provided the mage casting had enough mana.
This statement had, of course, ignited a very hot debate among mages for hundreds of years.
I realised I had never gone to the Mage Guild to settle it once and for all and made a mental note to do so.
Although, this put me in the somewhat difficult position of choosing what to wear for such an occasion. Trying not to scowl, I knew Grimsby would know.
"Back!" Someone panted. "Regroup upstairs!"
"No," I hissed, cancelling the Fire Wall with a snap of my fingers. "There's no point running, little rats."
It took no small amount of concentration, but the process wasn't too dissimilar to that of creating multiple balls of condensed life energy. A half dozen fireballs the size of potatoes, formed above my open palm and then shot towards the fleeing necromancers.
One for each back.
They punched scorched holes through each.
Not a very pleasant sight, but the smell of roasting flesh wasn't any worse than the fetid stink which contaminated the air already.
Wrinkling my nose in distaste, I strode past the smoking corpses with an implacable stride.
As a gentleman, I didn't linger on their bodies.
While I could take satisfaction in the execution of my methods, I couldn't find it in myself to gloat among the wreckage of my work. It felt like something a mook would do.
And I was no mook.
Emerging out of the basement, I found myself in a small tower. Much smaller than the basement had been.
A clutter of necromancers was gathered around the door leading outside. They looked to be arguing over who was going to go into the basement first. As I stepped out of the stairwell, they looked at me.
Looked at each other.
Then quickly started condensing life energy.
I thought of giving them a chance, but something didn't feel right. The thickness of necrotic energy hadn't lessened since leaving the basement.
Instead, it was getting thicker.
Their resistance was laughable, and I stepped over their bodies quickly enough.
Leaving the tower, I found exactly what I hadn't wanted to find.
Stretching out in front of me were multiple towers and buildings designed in a style which belonged in cemeteries. As I may have told you before, necromancers have such a childish admiration of such things that even their houses have to resemble mausoleums.
Sighing, I stomped down the street, throwing fireballs at every face I could see.
Where I couldn't see a face, I brought waves of fire from the skies to crash into the buildings and start consuming them. Swiftly, the necropolis of necromancers echoed with screams, shrieks, and cries for help.
Skeletons poured into the streets, their bones clicking and clacking as they followed the distressed orders of their masters. A few zombies managed to crawl out of the flames, but they weren't very resistant to fire any more than their masters were.
Slowly, I approached the very heart of the necropolis.
The dead centre of it, if you like.
This took the form of a tall ziggurat, because necromancers love nothing more than ziggurats.
The dark necrotic cords which I'd seen in the basement were streaming towards the top of the ziggurat. More cords from other sites within the necropolis were also converging there. The little city was like a spiderweb of necrotic energy.
I didn't like it at all. Nothing good ever came of this sort of thing.
The survivors were also streaming up the stairs for the perceived safety it might offer. I let them do so unhindered because it was always easier to kill rats in a barrel than chase them all over the yard.
Looking back, I could see a few buildings had been spared.
With a shake of my head, I raised my fist and uttered words of power which I'd found in Spells of the Apocalypse, a forbidden tome by Aleister Meganus. He was a genius when it came to monstrous acts of destruction.
Meteors burst down from the skies, slamming into the necropolis with explosions which sent flaming debris in all directions. Where there had been basements, there were now craters.
Smoke replaced the stink of death.
A small improvement.
"My work!" An enraged necromancer waddled out of the flames consuming his tower. His robes smouldered and his head was bright pink with fresh blisters. "My work is destroyed!"
"What a shame," I offered.
"You don't understand!" Feverishly, he snatched hold of my own robes and glared at me. I wasn't quite sure if the madness in his eyes was fresh or had been there before. It's difficult to tell with necromancers. "I was so close! The wraith was almost tamed!"
"Taming wraiths?" I looked the old man up and down. "How old are you?"
"Seventy-five," he said, a little perplexed by the question.
"Tsk. At your age, you should be well beyond that sort of thing. Why, I tamed my first wraith when I was eight."
He squinted at me. "I don't believe you. You're lying! No child could ever hope to reach such heights of mastering the necromantic arts!"
"And you're incompetent," I told him. "You have no excuse for your failure except that."
"I'll-"
"Die. Yes. I know."
With a twitch of my finger, a pillar of flame erupted from under his feet and speared twenty feet into the sky, incinerating him in an instant. Bits of his flaming body went with it, although most of his flesh was quickly reduced to ash as it started to rain down.
I hadn't brought an umbrella, so I hurried away.
I hadn't gone far when someone came limping out of the smoke, coughing hard. He was pushing a large barrow. "You there! You! Help me with this!"
"What is it?"
"Lord Varis needs it for the ritual!"
I glanced at the barrow's contents.
Hearts.
Lots of hearts.
Human, by the look of it.
And they were still beating.
Each carefully bound with iron chains. The links glowed with eerie light as the runes pulsed in time with the pumping hearts.
This was clever necromancy.
More advanced than wraiths, to be sure.
"Hmm," I said. "This does not bode well for my little librarians."
"What?" The old necromancer squinted at me, then pulled out a set of spectacles and fiddled them onto his ears. Once set, he looked at me again. His eyes taking in my battle robes which looked nothing like those a necromancer would wear. For starters, they weren't dripping with filth. "Who are you? You're not one of us!"
He raised a hand and condensed five balls of life energy faster than I'd ever seen anyone do before.
Fire Wall is still quicker to cast.
"Help!" The old man shrieked, hoping someone would come to his assistance. He kept throwing condensed balls at my flames. "He's over here! Over here! Help! Somebody!"
I watched him through the fire as he slowly bent over, gasping for breath.
As old as he was, he had little life energy to work with. Especially given what he'd been doing with the hearts in his barrow. He must have been very busy lately.
Letting the wall flicker out of existence, I stared at him solemnly.
"This Lord Varis is in charge, yes?"
The old man nodded, sweat streaming down his face. "An he's stronger than me, kid. He'll definitely turn you into a zombie."
I pointed at the hearts. "He's making a Soul Crucible, isn't he?"
The old man's face turned white in an instant. "How did you know?"
"Brattens, or Kilsyths?"
"Kilsyths, of course," he grunted. "Who'd bother with Brattens? Brattens was a fool."
"On that, we agree," I said.
"Who are you?"
I smiled coldly.
Lifted my hand.
And fire blew up through the ground to consume him and his precious hearts.
"A dead man doesn't need to know such things."