I turned to walk down the platform, my head down, but the sounds rising above the crowd stopped me. Clapping. Cheering.
“Aldait Han,” carried above the other voices and soon the entire crowd was chanting: “Aldait Han! Aldait Han! Aldait Han!”
It took a while for my brain to understand what was happening. Tears prickled my eyes and my throat tightened.
For so long, I wanted people to call me by my Tarvissian name. But in all my life, it never felt as right as the Dahlsian one then.
I lifted my gaze above the throng to where I knew the Immigration Center and the merge with the Old Worlds was.
Tarviss, I was coming.
Epilogue
It took a few days before Myar Mal found time to visit the charnel lab. He didn’t announce his visit, and yet the house’s director was waiting for him. She looked nothing like he expected; a young, athletic woman with slicked hair and fashionable, black-rimmed glasses.
She rose from her desk and stiffened, hands clasped behind her back, eyes fixed on something beyond kar-vessár’s left shoulder.
“Myar Mal,” she greeted, nodding slightly.
“Lygia No,” he replied. He’d never met her, but there was only one female necromancer employed by Mespana. Maybe three in the entire Meon Cluster. “Kiarn At told me you are the person to ask about the progress of the investigation.”
“Yes.” Her eyes flickered to the sorcerer who decided to accompany Myar Mal, then back at the wall. She cleared her throat. “We just finished analyzing the samples. There were one-thousand-and-ninety-six rebels. Of them, around three-hundred-and-sixty spent less than a day in Meon cluster.”
Myar Mal took a moment to digest that information, making sure his face betrayed none of the emotions the discovery brought. It was hardly a surprise, merely a confirmation of what they extracted from that female rebel’s mind before sending her back to Tarviss. Still, he hoped she had been wrong.
“And the sorcerer?” he asked when he was sure his voice wouldn’t falter.
Lygia No licked her lips. Apparently, like many of her profession, she couldn’t handle authority.
“There, ah, seems to be a problem,” she said, avoiding his gaze.
Myar Mal arched his eyebrow. “A problem?”
She exhaled deeply and started explaining: “Every living thing upon death, no matter how violent, leaves a trace of its essence. Detecting those traces and matching them comprises the majority of our work. But these… bones. There’s nothing in them.”
Myar Mal tensed up. “What do you mean?”
“They’re empty. Like they were never part of a living being. I tried a dozen different methods, looking at both magical signature and vital energy. To no avail.”
“Could magic sever such connection?” asked Kiarn At, frowning slightly.
“I’ve never heard about anything like that. I did some research when our usual methods failed, spent a lot of time in the library, but… ” She waved her hand.
“You found nothing,” guessed Kiarn At.
“Did you try reanimation?” asked Myar Mal, looking over her shoulder, to the large steel table cluttered with charred bones.
“I’m a serious researcher, not a folk-tale villain.”
The fire in her voice made him tear his eyes away from the bones. Her lips were pursed and cheeks flushed.
“Sorry,” he said automatically. “I don’t know much about necromancy.”
Lygia No huffed and fixed her glasses. “Such spells, if they’re even possible, are exceedingly rare. I’ve never met anyone capable of casting them successfully.”
“What about unsuccessfully?”
“Cautionary tales.”
Myar Mal grunted in frustration. This was his main question. Anyone capable of resisting the most powerful sorcerers’ Dahls had in stock deserved special attention. Particularly if Tarvissian threats were turn out to be more than words.
“That’s not all,” added Lygia No after a moment’s hesitation. “I tried to rearrange those… bones. No magic, just good old-fashioned anthropology. At first glance, they seem human. But they’re not. In fact, they don’t match any sentient species.”
Myar Mal tensed even more, doing his best to keep the boiling frustration from spilling out.
“But these are bones, right?”
“Technically, yes. Though they have no growth rings. It’s almost like they were… fabricated.”
Myar Mal felt like the ground broke beneath his feet. Ever since the battle, he poured all of his hope into those bones. They were his answer, his foe.
They were useless.
“What are you suggesting?” he croaked, wishing she could say anything other that she was about to.
“You didn’t see the sorcerer dying.” She looked him in the eye. “You said there was a fire… and this is what we found.”
“A false trail to throw us off,” added Kiarn At, “while the real culprit went into hiding.”
Afterword
Thank you for reading my novel! I really hope you enjoyed it. I poured a lot of heart into writing it. Many of Aldait Han’s behaviors and misadventures were based on things happening in my own life, so as you can imagine, putting it out for the whole world to see was scary. But I grew to love him and love my side characters and now I can’t imagine how my life would look without them.
No matter what happens now, one thing is certain: the war has just begun.
If you enjoyed The Outworlder, don’t forget to leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads.
You can also visit my Website for more delicious content.
Also by Natalie J Holden
Other Worlds: Short Story Collection
http://mybook.to/NJHOtherWorlds
Humans or not, men women, or others, sorcerers, soldiers, or savages, we all face the same major challenge.
Living with each other.
Octopus Song: A Fantasy Novella
http://mybook.to/OctopusSong
If someone asked,
