I'd gone to the Mausoleum after I left the dorms that night.
Ever since I became an Irregular, ever since… ever since I stopped truly being a null, there'd been some comfort in being among the dead. I never could tell if it was just how my magic functioned or if there was a more simple and personal reason I found the silence of graves and tombs so comforting.
I wanted to go inside and wander the halls, enjoying the silence. The quiet of the Mausoleum, even if there was also a giant magical talking hound in there that was also liable to eat me. I still had enough mana in my channels to cast a spell of stealth, but I held off from doing it.
It would be so easy just to go into the mausoleum and not come back out, wouldn't it? I wouldn't need to wake up every day wondering if it would finally be the morning where they would discover my Witch's Mark while I showered. I wouldn't have those moments at meals with Sylas and the others where I couldn't help but wonder if I was becoming one of them, a mage and not a null. I wouldn't even have to worry about Lord Woodman and what he'd do to me if I failed to do exactly what he asked of me.
Lord Woodman…
He's the reason I couldn't let myself die. Not to the jaws of the black hound in the mausoleum, the spiders in the labyrinth, or even my own stupidity in spell casting. Because I knew he'd take my failures out on my family. On Mum and Da. On Matt and Alfie. He'd hurt them.
Lord Woodman had never gone into specifics about what he'd do to the people I loved if I ever betrayed or failed him, but he hadn't needed to. The manor, well, the homes of most wizards I'd been to, were filled with examples of what happened to nulls who rebelled, disobeyed, and disappointed their masters.
There were garden statues of Greek and Roman gods who were once people, turned to stone.
There were ponds of frogs and fish who occasionally sounded like children weeping.
There were servants who never stopped smiling, never spoke, and moved through their daily tasks like wind-up toys.
And there were the dead. The ghosts of nulls I'd seen who'd been burned alive, eaten by faerie beasts, and killed in a smattering of other horrible ways.
On some level, I think I'd always known ridding myself of my magic was something of a pipe dream. A delusional fantasy where if I stopped being magical, then surely Lord Woodman would let me return to my family's little stone cottage and spend the rest of my days tending sheep again. The truth was, if I lost my magic and stopped being useful to him, especially on purpose, Lord Woodman would make sure I lived the rest of my days regretting it and wishing I was dead.
There isn't a way out of it for me. It was really only a matter of waiting to see how long I could last in the charade until they found me out and we all suffered for it. The best thing, the only thing, I could do for my family was to live as long as I could and keep Lord Woodman as happy as possible because that's the only way he'll conceivably leave them in relative peace.
All I really wanted was a hug from my mum. All I needed was for her to hold me close like when I was little and just tell me that everything would be alright in the end. All I needed was to believe it would be.
"What're you doing?"
I blinked, and I realized the black hound from before stood at the threshold of the mausoleum. Its head cocked to the side in canine confusion and it stared at me with a pair of eyes currently more chestnut than glowing otherworldly red.
I took a step back, trying to force energy back into my legs if I need to run at a moment's notice. "I'm—" I try to say something, try to force the words out, but there isn't anything I really can say or even anything I wanted to say to the creature.
"Are you here to steal something?" The hound's eyes flash a bit and its muscles tense in anticipation.
"No!" I said quickly. "No, I don't need a conduit or anything, I promise!"
"A conduit?"
I curse myself inwardly for letting that slip out. "Well, I—"
"Oh, you're one of those dead people wizards!" The hound jumps to its four paws and its tail wags a bit. "Whatcha call them? Spooky bone witches? Ghosty ghoulie talkers?"
"Necromancers?" I offered hesitantly.
"Yeah! Necromancers! Oh, they're the best!" The hound's tail was practically liable to vibrate its body. "They always bring me the biggest, juiciest pieces of steak when they visit! Did you bring me any?"
That was not a reaction I was really used to seeing.
"No," I said, and the hound's tail immediately stopped wagging and its head drooped.
"Oh," it said disappointedly, and I couldn't help but feel guilty. I'd always liked dogs, and I supposed that extended to magical talking ones who tried to eat me at some point. Though I was a bit surprised it extended to magical talking dogs who I'd actually seen eat people in front of me.
I suppose I'd never had the best taste in friends.
"I can bring you some tomorrow?" I offered.
The hound's tail immediately wagged again. "Really! That'd be awesome!"
The entire interaction felt too dream-like and surreal to even be remotely real. I vaguely wondered if perhaps the entire night had been a horrible dream. I'd never accidentally outed myself as a necromancer to Sylas. And I'd never had the painfully obvious realization the people I was just thinking of as friends were mages. They were the same as Lord Woodman and every other noble I'd grown up hearing stories about.
I wasn't a real person to them. I was less than an animal, and a rabid one at that. An anomaly of nature that needed to be culled from the bloodlines of future generations.
"You look sad?" the dog said, its tail stopped, and its head cocked to the side. "Are you sad?"
"A bit," I admitted. "More angry with myself, I think."
"Oh, I understand that," the hound nodded in canine agreement. "I get mad at myself all the time. A few weeks back, there was this boy here, and he STOLE FROM ONE OF THE GRAVES!" The hound's voice hit an unnatural high at his last words, and I took a step back.
"But I got him, though!" the hound said proudly. "I almost didn't. He vanished in front of me with some sort of nasty spell, then he reappeared around a corner and I gobbled him right up."
"Really," I said, then remembered that boy I'd seen the hound eat seconds after I first cast my stealth working. Is this dog just messing with me? I wondered. It has to be right? Christ.
"Oh! I'm Sgaile, by the way," the hound said. "Well, that's what Professor Neuhaus calls me. Before that I was just Church Grim No.16, but I like Sgaile WAY better!"
Church Grim. I'd heard of those. A sort of fairy dog ghost thing that guarded burial sites or something. There had been a note about them in the thin "Fair Folk" section of my freshman demonology textbook. It had mostly talked about how they were used primarily to strongly discourage grave robbers. Which I guess I was one, like most necromancers.
It was odd that he seemed to actually like necromancers then? And that registered at the back of my mind, as I watched the Church Grim scratch its ear with a back foot.
"I should—" I started.
I stopped myself. I should what? Go back to the dorms where Sylas was surely waiting? Back to Lion Hall with all those terrible nobles and people who I'd been on the cusp of being friends with?
Or should I just enter the creature's place of power and just hope that if it ate me, it would be quick about it? Whatever happened to my family afterward be damned.
My feet moved on their own, and I walked through the threshold of the mausoleum. Into the hound's place of power. The creature watched me from behind a pair of eyes that glowed redder than the pits of hell.
The instant I entered the mausoleum, I immediately felt the same push and pull of mana I felt in the labyrinth. It was more distinct than it was the last time I was there. When I was grave robbing, I'd first learned about Sylas and Lion Hall.
The hound, Sgaile, pads up to me and stretches his head out. The same way my old dog Lolly used to when she wanted me to pet her.
Reluctantly, I reached out and scratched Sgaile behind his ears.
"Ahh," he said. "That's nice."
"I'm glad," I said, then I fell on my knees and sobbed uncontrollably.
Hot tears ran down my cheeks in rivers, and snot bubbled out of my nose. God. God what am I going to do? Sylas knew I was a necromancer. I was becoming a noble. I was losing who I was. I'd forgotten where I had come from. Fuck. I was petting a murderous, magical dog.
Da would be ashamed of me.
Mum would be afraid of me if she saw me.
What… what was I going to do?
A pink tongue touched my cheek, then Sgaile licked me again. He covered my face in dog slobber and I couldn't help but laugh through the tears. Lolly'd do the same when I was little and had been mad at Matt or when Mum wouldn't let me follow Da into the fields to help him with the sheep.
Lolly'd wander up next to me, snuggle her brown and white face next to mine, and start licking the tears off my face.
Sgaile stopped after a few more licks, and I couldn't help but chuckle even harder.
"Is that better?" he asked. "I know that when I feel sad, I always wish someone would give me a few good licks."
"What do you have to feel sad about?" I asked, still laughing a bit as I wiped the dog slobber off my face.
"Oh, well," Sgaile stomped his feet a bit. "It's usually when I think about that time they buried me alive. It's how you make a Church Grim, you know, you bury them under the stones where a graveyard will one day be built."
I stopped laughing.
"I don't think about it often!" Sgaile said quickly. "I don't really think much about it at all. Usually when I'm alone and there's not much else to think about."
I could almost hear the Narrative, sitting next to Sgaile. Feel the pull of the Working that made a dead dog into a Church Grim.
Under stone. This eternal watchdog shall lie. Under stone. A hound to chase robbers to the very gates of hell.
Another cruelty enacted by the nobles of the empire. Another creature put under the yoke of wizards. I'd been terrified of the hound moments prior, remembering how it chased me through the mausoleum and the boy I'd seen him devour in a single bite.
But the hound… Sgaile. He was me. He was what Lord Woodman wanted me to be, a tool, an asset to control and use to certain ends.
In Sgaile's case, those ends were to keep the graves of the sorcerous youth interred there safe until the end of time. For me, it was to steal knowledge and perform dastardly tasks for the man who held my leash.
I couldn't… we couldn't escape from that.
What… what was I supposed to do?
I sat there. In the dark of the mausoleum, with a Church Grim beside me, well until the first lights of dawn punched through the skies, wholly uncertain what I should do, until I realized the only thing I could do was the role I received.
I'd be Lord Woodman's agent, and I'd die doing it someday.
But I'd stay alive for as long as I bloody could and as true to myself as I could first, and that meant I had to cut out every danger I could. No more Lion Hall. No more Iroha or Mason or Rosamund or any sort of the distractions "friends" brought.
And no more Sylas Thorne.