Gewilena froze. She was in her mid-thirties, though she had looked far older. Pisces would always remember her as being—furtive. Looking over her shoulder. She rarely relaxed, unless she was around him. Young and old. As innocent as could be, laughing, delighted, or older from what she had lived through. She had tried to block him, to destroy it—but he had seen.
Gewilena was a [Necromancer], but she created undead slower than even natural magic. She created…Pisces had fled the staring face, the alien structure. He had fled in a panic as she cried out for him not to tell anyone, that she wasn’t hurting anyone!
No being, not even Crelers or the most foreign monsters had ever looked like that to Pisces. It was what Erin or Ryoka would have called alien. He had run, accepted his punishment, and never breathed a word about Gewilena, although he had known what she was.
That was how Pisces had first met Gewilena. It would not be the last, and in time, they would become friends. That was how he had started down the road to [Necromancy].
Yet Gewilena’s art had never been made of people. It had been made of corpses long abandoned, animal bone. It hurt no one, he had screamed. All she had wanted was to make her art, beauty as she saw it. She had never taken a life, never harmed anyone.
When Pisces ran away the second time to join Gewilena, it was after months of learning from her in secret. It started with questions about why, how, and more. Learning the law wasn’t the law, that [Necromancy] wasn’t evil, all of it was a slow process.
Pisces didn’t care for many of them. Gewilena was whom he admired. She was among the best of them, but she didn’t create zombies or seek vengeance. She had taught him well, and he joined their cabal.
Level 30, although he’d barely gotten there and Pisces had privately believed Gewilena had been better, just refused to use her full powers. Nevertheless, Feren had been good. He’d heard Pisces was good with a rapier, but refused to get a class, and they’d become friends, or a kind of mentor and student.
Feren swished the practice sword he’d made out of bone impatiently. He had begun to dye his hair, in emulation of Az’kerash, his hero, despite being older than Gewilena, even.
Pisces had, back then, still believed in Padurn’s teachings about how to fight, for all he refused to take the class. He’d protested, but Feren had overruled him as Gewilena worked on her next masterpiece. They rarely had any function, for all they were undead; they could barely defend themselves. They were just for beauty.
Did Feren live? Ama? Pisces had seen Gewilena die, and he thought he would never hear a worse sound than that. Her sobbing as her creations died. He had run from Terandria, to learn magic where Az’kerash once had.
