Varine’s flat and unamused gaze said the necromancer knew Viv’s thoughts as well as she did. The bony cages in the corner tightened with a creak, and Gallina gasped, hollering, “You bitch!”
“I’ll thank you to hold your tongues,” snapped Varine, and her face traversed the distance between beauty and ugliness in an instant. “It’s no fault of mine that you’ve taken what belongs to me, and it’s my infinite patience that guarantees your continued breath.”
Her brow smoothed, and she returned her attention to Viv. “You knew the answer to that before you asked. I understand you a little already, Viv. I will say that I’ve enjoyed perusing your dreams, as amusingly contradictory as they are.”
Viv startled at that, and Varine laughed, a surprisingly pleasant sound. “Oh my, yes, there’s a cost to keeping something of mine so close. Did you imagine there wasn’t? Blackblood held the door open for me, and I couldn’t resist peering inside. It’s sad, really, watching you wrestle with your concern for the tiny people you fully intend to discard when you’re done here.”
Viv’s mind raced, wondering how much the necromancer had seen. She could only pray to the Eight it hadn’t been too much.
“The struggle must be so exhausting. You’ve so few days in your short life. Even I can mourn the loss of them. Does that surprise you?”
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“Don’t be obtuse. I’m not here for a book, Viv. I’m not here for him.” She stabbed a finger at the bag over Viv’s shoulder.
“Then I hate to break it to you, but this has been a big waste of your time.”
Varine laughed again in honest delight. “And yet you’ve stumbled onto the right answer. I’m here for my time. All the days, decades, and centuries I invested into priceless treasures you’re hauling about like books or luggage.”
“You’re the one who named him,” growled Viv.
The necromancer’s black eyes flared with blue pinpricks, and she seemed to swell, growing in stature and presence. “He is my long ages distilled. His value is what I put into him. It’s always about time. It’s the only thing that matters, and I am ravenous for it.” Varine’s words were as sinuous as the coils of her hair. “I revere the moments you squander on inanities. It’s only your poor luck to have plucked what’s mine from Balthus’s corpse while you wasted your every day.”
“If time is what you care about, you sure do spend a lot of it talking,” said Viv. “Maybe you let my friends go, I hand your things over, and we put an end to this.”
“An end to this,” Varine mused aloud, quirking her blue smile. “Yes, well, I’ve never been fond of endings. I thought that would be self-evident. Your friends will stay where they are.”
Viv held up the book and shook it. “I think the only reason you haven’t taken this from me yet is because you know I can destroy it. I think that worries you, and I think you want this book more than you want them.”
“And I think you want them alive more than you dare to risk my anger,” snapped Varine, voice cracking like lake ice in the thaw. The necromancer extended one pale hand. “But you’re right, it is time to put an end to this. Either test my resolve, or give me what is mine.”
“You’ll let them live?”
“Let’s not pretend you’d trust my word. Any pact between us is a pantomime. My servant, first.”
Viv carefully unslung the leather satchel from her shoulder. Her fingers tightened on the strap, and then she extended it toward the necromancer, holding her cold gaze as she did.
“Don’t,” wheezed Gallina, but Viv ignored her.
Varine plucked it from her grasp, and then twitched it open. She sketched a cursory glance over the contents. “I’ll deal with you later, little thrall,” she purred, and Viv’s skin crawled at the curdled avarice in her voice. The necromancer tossed the satchel carelessly onto the chair behind her and stretched out her arm once more.
Slowly, Viv extended the book toward Varine with both hands.
A book containing a thousand pages like mirrors, reflecting nothing but their owner.
Viv almost pitied her in that moment.
Almost.
Varine impatiently lunged forward and snatched it.
Viv’s fingers jerked toward her saber, but she stayed her hand, glancing with concern at Fern and Gallina.
“Ah,” murmured Varine, running her fingertips over the cover. The glyphs inscribed into its surface fluttered alight behind her touch. “I’ve missed you so, my dear one,” she said, her words rich with longing, a greeting for a long-lost lover.
With a twist of her wrist, a cascade of bones slithered from beneath the hem of her robe, piling one atop the other into a grotesque lectern, upon which she placed the grimoire.
She flipped back the cover, and then suddenly frowned, her perfect brow wrinkling in dismay. “What … ?” She turned to a page in the middle.
Varine gazed in annoyance at the dogeared corner, curled over the black void of the page itself, and reached across to fold it back.
In that instant Satchel’s hands burst from the darkness and seized first her wrist and then her forearm … and pulled.
The necromancer shrieked in surprise as her arm was dragged into the shadows, her black eyes wide with fury. She braced her other hand on the open book and hauled with all her might to withdraw her arm from the night-dark page.
Her gaze snapped to Viv even as the orc unlimbered Blackblood, her fangs bared.
“You,” snarled the necromancer, muscling herself upright even as Satchel’s hands climbed higher along her arm, undeterred. She snapped her free hand toward Viv, fingers contorting and flexing. Blue traceries webbed her palm and wound around her fingers like burning thread. In that blue light, Viv saw her death gathering.
She wound up with the greatsword, putting all her weight into it and praying she’d complete the swing before Varine could bring her awful magic to bear.
But then a hooting squawk rang out, and suddenly Potroast was sailing through the air, catching Varine’s free forearm in his beak and knocking her entirely off balance.
She screamed, a terrible, ragged sound. The gryphet’s beak sank deeper into the bloodless flesh of her arm.
Viv brought her swing up short as Satchel seized the moment, and Varine’s head and neck disappeared into the page. Her cry bubbled into a muffled wail that echoed into nothingness. The skeletal hands grasped and pulled, grasped and pulled, and the gryphet clung tenaciously to her flailing arm, even as her shoulder plunged into the book.
Viv gaped in astonishment as Varine’s body vanished into her grimoire. The physicality of it made no sense, a distortion that hurt Viv’s eyes, as though the woman’s flesh compressed as she passed through the page.
And the gryphet went with her.
“Potroast!” cried Fern as her companion vanished into the darkness, followed by Varine’s hips and then the kicking train of her robe.
Viv flung aside her blade and lunged for the book, plunging her own arm in after.
Her fingers touched fur, but nothing living. The trim of Varine’s robe. Viv stretched deeper, dreading the moment when one of the necromancer’s hands would curl around her wrist like cold iron.