The Final Life

  ***

  For the next few hours, Glint led Azrael around, killing wolverines. When he saw Glint display his sword in action, he raised an eyebrow, and Glint said, “To blend in.”

  “Very good,” the man remarked.

  Glint had become adept at fighting the fiends, spotting their weaknesses, and finishing them off rather fast, with a single stab through the heart from either above or below them. After a few, Azrael complemented his efficiency and said the warrior didn’t need his help, but he still acted as a distraction, getting the monsters’ attention while Glint snuck behind them for a stealthy killing blow. At one point he showed Azrael how he could create a thin blade directly connected to his armour, shooting out like a spike. That interested the man profoundly, and he spent a while obsessing over it, how it worked, and what Glint could do with it. “You can’t shoot it out like a projectile?” he asked over Glint’s back as he poked a spike protruding from the warrior’s shoulder plate.

  “Not yet,” he answered honestly, “and it’s still a bit slow. It’s much faster to use the armour as armour than to try a sneak attack like... this!” he accentuated the word with a grunt as a long slender blade slid out of his side, puncturing a hole into a tree next to him. The action had taken about two to three seconds, all in all. He pulled the spike back with a swish. “To top it off, I don’t have unlimited metal. Anything that goes out replaces something that was protecting me somewhere, so my armour gets thinner while I do things like this.”

  Azrael kept pace with the warrior, looking quite interested with the new information. “It should get faster with time. There are things that bring all abilities together... is this a suitable place to give you a lesson, young Glint?”

  Glint checked their position. “No, but there is a stream nearby we can relax next to. It’s too cold to use the water for anything, though.” He led Azrael northwest for but a minute until they came to their destination: a stream cut by a large toppled over fir, creating a nice shelter from cold wind. The stream was, in fact, frozen solid by the cold. Glint sat down, leaning against the tree and pulling out a blanket from their pack to cover himself for extra comfort, then asked, “So, teacher, what brings all abilities together?”

  Azrael chuckled, taking a seat across from Glint after clearing the spot of snow and rubbing his fingers together whilst shivering, “Teacher indeed. You’re my first student.”

  Glint perked up. The man seemed off guard and in an even better mood than usual, so he asked, “Then what were you before we met? I can’t imagine you convincing ghosts to tell you about long buried treasure for a living.” It was meant to be a light hearted joke, but the warrior noticed Azrael’s eyes soften, going back to a different time. He looked off to the side, seeing a place far away.

  “I was what you would call an Agent. Guilds or even townsfolk paid me to do exactly what we are doing now: solve people’s problems. You could have called me a hero for hire, actually.”

  That didn’t seem quite right. If it was a guild that was paying you, then... “Like mercenaries with Abilities?”

  “That is true, but it isn’t a normal occupation,” the necromancer stated, starting to gain momentum like anyone describing an occupation they loved, and he began to wave his arms excitedly. “To be an Agent, you need to be free of affiliation, which is dangerous. You lack resources, support, protection, or a roof over your head. We are a rare commodity,” The way he said “we.” was accentuated by pride, and he sprang to his feet, his black shod feet crunching snow. “Work is unlimited, and so you get to pick and choose what you want to do, who you want to do it for, and how you do it. Some Agents do anything for gold,” he raised an invisible sword in the air extravagantly, “while others are true heroes, helping the weak everywhere!”

  Glint laughed. “You must have made a lot of people happy.” That actually explained why Azrael was resourceful and good at a great deal many things, for he’d probably needed to pick up varied skills. Also, it highlighted what Glint had already known. Not all guilds were inherently evil or greedy. Some actually wanted good.

  The man’s hand then opened, and he looked so grief stricken Glint could practically hear his imaginary blade fall point first into the snow. “Only when you succeed.” His expression was unbearably cold. The warrior wondered if Azrael was even really alive at that moment, for Glint could hardly bear the look on the man’s face. He had seen sad people before. But not like that, never like that. He instinctively knew that this was not the kind of pain you let off your chest. The necromancer’s secret was something which could slit a man’s throat like a razorblade as it came out. Some crosses were meant to be carried, after all. That, Glint could understand rather well.

  So instead of asking him about it, Glint changed the subject.

  “Umm, things all abilities have in common?”

  The necromancer still looked out of it for a second, but then said, “Yes, um, as I was saying, all actions have a link to your mind. This also applies to natural acts such as walking or, say,” he poked the tree Glint was leaning on with a pale slender finger, just above his head, “touching something. You need to make a decision to do it, and then your mind utilizes whatever tools it has to accomplish the task. The better you can use an Ability, whether due to better energy control or mental ability, the shorter the delay between you wanting to use the skill and actually accomplishing a task. This is usually one of the ultimate deciding factors in a battle between Ability users, besides matching Abilities, reserves of energy, and power output in the form of ‘my fireball is bigger than yours’.”

  Glint remembered his fight with Alfjötr, how he kept being battered around before being able to react. Of course, some of it was due to Alfjoetr’s higher physical speed, as Azrael had alluded to, but what the necromancer said helped explain the overwhelming difference of that day.

  The two chatted about other things for a bit, and then decided to go hunting further into the forest. They had passed the fifty mark by about twelve wolverines, but there was one spot the warrior and necromancer duo hadn’t checked yet. As they headed off, Azrael said, “Oh, and Glint?”

  “Yes, Azrael?” he glanced at his companion, who had his hand against a tree branch, holding it out of the way for Glint to pass.

  “Don’t ask me about my past job and I won’t ask about how you got your hands on a mansion.” His words hit Glint like a brick. The young man gulped, but hid his shock. “…Alright,” he answered amiably, curiosity seething hotter than ever.