Interlude: Revenant

  “We have finally and permanently killed the Revenant King! For good this time!” - Imamu the Lone Swordsmen, who should’ve taken lessons on prophecy from Zephyr the First Seer.

  Amon the Healer knew the importance of the mind’s health.

  He was learned of many ways of magic, some from his time in the Black Council, more from the time after when he was on the run for betraying them, and their desecration of corpses. It had been many years since the Black Council sent the last assassin after him. He stayed forgotten in a small village in the Western Kingdoms, and had grown comfortable healing minor sprains and back pains.

  He thought he would never have to use his necromatic talents.

  Amon knew himself a liar when Mary the baker and her husband John of the Mill brought the broken body of their daughter to him.

  Her name was Tiffania, a name he had chosen because Mary and John knew he was learned and knew letters. She had died to a stray spell from the warring armies of the petty kings and warlords of the Western Kingdoms. Those kings would say this was an undertaking of glory, that by claiming an inch of conquered land with the blood of a thousand peasants, they would be the one to manifest their destiny and carve their name eternal into the history of the world.

  Their names were the last thing on his mind as he shook his head, devastating Mary and John. They begged him to do something, anything. Yet Amon could do nothing, resurrection spells required a diamond, and those were horded in vaults by kings, dwarves, and dragons who wished to maintain their scarcity. Still, Amon knew grief, for he spoke to the ghosts of those who couldn’t pass on, and knew Mary and John would never find peace if he let them be.

  It was a simple trick, a few cosmetic spells to preserve the appearance of flesh, a spell woven in the spine that animated the skeleton.

  That was it.

  Amon told Mary and John that this was merely a puppet, the appearance of their daughter, but no soul. It was barely necromancy, more a golem than anything, they didn’t care. They spent days weeping tears of joy, and many more thanking him.

  The kings continued their wars, and soon many more brought their loved ones to him. He told each and every one of them the same as he told Mary and John.

  None cared.

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  He raised sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, wives and husbands, friends and family. Every time, he held hope that this would allow these people to grieve and heal.

  That time never came.

  He was out on his weekly herb gathering when he returned to find the village in flames. Mary the Baker and John of the Mill were the first he found crucified upon the bloodstained banners of the Inquisition.

  They had been sent by the Church of Light to kill a necromancer, and instead had executed the entire village, murdered men and women whose only crime was their desire for closure. In the village square they had raised a blinding pyre to desecrate the corpses he had raised.

  Mary the Baker twitched.

  Sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, wives and husbands, friends and family, all deaths which could’ve been recovered from, had they not horded all the diamonds in the world.

  John of the Mill tore his arms from their sockets, left them hanged on the crucifix, and the corpses of every man, woman, and child each savaged themselves and their bindings until they were free.

  Amon the Healer, traitor to the Black Council, and Necromancer Supreme, killed twenty-seven priests and paladins of Light that day. He would kill many more, for the petty kings and warlords of the Western Kingdoms left many corpses in their wake.

  For that, he decided they too had to go.

  Seven regicides he committed, seven crowns he collected and brought to the depths of the Deadlands, where the black fortress of the Revenant King still stood guarded by his undead armies.

  At the heart of that fortress, he laid the seven crowns before the black iron throne of the Revenant King, each encrusted with diamonds and jewels.

  “Six Decrees you spoke,” he chanted in mage tongue. “Six marks you left on the world.”

  “I present to you seven crowns,” he slammed his staff down, magic runes, each intricately carved by his necromatic constructs, glowed with sickly green light as they lit up the entire stone hall. “So answer me, how do I kill even Death?”

  The seven crowns crumbled to dust, and he heard a mocking laughter that echoed through the stone halls.

  “You seek to defeat Death by killing?”

  That was all the Revenant King said, all Amon had gotten after murdering countless priests and paladins, petty heroes and kings, and throwing the entire Western Kingdoms in chaos.

  Seven crowns for seven words and a laugh.

  His undead hordes stirred as he turned eastward. The Revenant King knew how to end Death, but a mere seven crowns was not enough for him to teach Amon.

  So he needed something better, a way to permanently revive the Revenant King.

  In his pocket, he had a singular card, an omen in the form of a tarot. It depicted a man with one arm stretched to the heavens, the other to the earth below, he had a sickly appearance, hairless for he had allowed death to seep deeply into his body. Before him lay five tools, of them only four were colored, a wand, a filled goblet, a crowned skull, and a noose. The last in stark contrast to the colorful artwork was a mere white outline, yet the outline was enough to show that it was a deck of cards.

  It was the Magician, and Amon, who was learned of many things, knew which deck it depicted. An Age of Wonders Revenant King deck, crafted by Wundall himself, and it held the key to resurrecting the Revenant King.

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