Jeremy started walking the grounds of the small manor. He could do the job without moving, but giving away the range of his life ward might ruffle more than a few feathers. It didn’t help that people, even a few of his fellow wizards, referred to his ward as an “Aura of Death”. On his person, it was limited to simple organisms like insects and the invisible “jerms”. It was only recently that he discovered that his life ward could penetrate into living beings, allowing him to kill jerms and parasites inside their body — or perhaps a baby in the womb.

Dark thoughts again. The demons inside his mind persisted in influencing his being. They had their uses, but sometimes they could get a bit bothersome — especially when gory visuals were involved. Fortunately, he had a way to cope with the darkness — a butler.

Seb was on an errand. It would have been so much easier to have him around. He could attest to the guards about his whereabouts and activities, and that silly orb could tell that he was speaking the truth. It would also spare him the nasty glances of staff as he walked about the manor, as Seb usually gave a short briefing before he performed his cleansing.

The young wizard headed to the basement. It held the kitchen, pantry, wine cellar, and storage areas. If rats would be anywhere, it would be there. He advised the kitchen staff to remove any yeast that they intended to use, lest it be made useless by his cleansing.

His life ward was more of an inherent trait than a spell. If it was a spell, it would look something like:

Life Ward * Complex Ritual * Necromantic

Range: 20-foot radius centered on caster

Effect: Every creature within range must make a resistance check or take 5-50 necrotic damage.

He extended his aura to encompass the basement, careful to avoid the wine cellar. There were a few of the vermin out in the open, and a nest underneath the foundation. Jeremy raised an open hand, closing it as if crushing a human heart.

Every insect, plant, jerm, and animal smaller than a cat died within his life ward. With an effort, the necromancer wizard gathered their essence, compressing the stolen life into an opaque orb similar to a monster core. The core would end up crushed and dusted, to be used as fertilizer for his dandelion fields.

He could have easily animated the vermin instead of dissipating their corpses. Animated vermin could find, or even block, the passageways they used when they were still living. The young wizard banished the thought. Blocking the points of entry would also block his source of regular revenue. Money was tight as it is, doing too good of a job might leave him penniless.

A cursory sweep of the wine cellars proved uneventful. Aside from the few spiders on the walls and ceilings, the room was miraculously void of life. He noted a different kind of ward, probably placed by another wizard. The simple ward invoked unease and discomfort, preventing rodents from entering the room — or maybe even dissuading light fingers from taking a bottle or two.

Finished with the basement, he headed to the conservatory. No gathering was complete without a tour of the conservatory, and Lady Amaranth was renowned for her exquisite taste in ornamental flowers and rare plants.

A few maidservants skirted his path with obvious looks of fright. Manipulating his life ward had a few side effects, and a few people could feel the lingering aura of death cleansing.

“Here for another cleansing, wizard?” a voice greeted Jeremy.

“Marcus,” he noted the old gardener.

This man was no ordinary gardener. His life aura was exceedingly strong, and he could get a sense of hidden mana within the old man. Marcus was one of the few people that were unaffected by his ward, or perhaps he just didn’t allow it to show.

“The Lady asked for one so here I am.”

The gardener stops his pruning to glance at the young wizard. The boy certainly had power, and his skills tended to stray to the darker side of magic. Still, his mistress chose to trust the necromancer, and she had him as a contingency.

“Seb isn’t with you?” he asks. Jeremy often traveled with his butler on hand to smooth things out and act as a more acceptable mouthpiece.

The wizard shakes his head. “Out on an errand.”

“It’s funny how a supposedly scary necromancer like you would have a butler with a generic name like Sebas or Sebastian,” the gardener smirked.

The wizard merely shrugs his shoulders. His butler wasn’t a Sebas or a Sebastian. He was more like a Belseb or Belsebub — but he wasn’t going to correct the innocent assumptions. They were both rescued from cults when young, but Belseb, chose to keep his name.

The gardener notes his thoughtful expression — mistaking it as some sort of planning for the job. “Is there anything I need to prepare before your ritual?” he asks. He remembered how the first cleansing led to stunted growth and a few dead plants. It had infuriated the mistress to no end — and most of the blame fell on him. While the wizard’s ritual didn’t seem to harm the plants, it did something to the soil, leaving it seemingly barren.

“No preparations this time Marcus,” the wizard replied. Unlike his ward in the basement where he isolated simple organisms, working on the garden involved a more complex system. He developed a working system through months of trial and error. If he wanted to kill smaller creatures, he would need a low-intensity ward. If he wanted to leave jerms alive, he needed to shape his ward into a net or a grid. If he wanted to destroy all life in this manor, that would require… no, he was not going here. This one merely required a grid.

He managed to catch a couple of rabbits, six voles, a few dozen insects, and hundreds of worms. Dissipating their essence into the garden would prove beneficial to the plants and flowers in the conservatory. Some jerms were surely harmed from his cleansing, but he was confident he left more than half of them alive. Jerms replicated quickly, much to his chagrin. Another reason to maintain a constant life ward around his person.

“Rabbits, voles, insects, and worms,” the wizard remarked. “Do I have to point out where their bodies are, or do I just turn them into fertilizer?”

“Hmmm...” the gardener seemed thoughtful. “A few critters running about should be a great conversation piece for the party, wouldn’t it?”

“You really think so?” the wizard asks elated.

“No,” a deadpan answer.

“Nobody wants your creatures running about, necromancer. It would ruin the mistress’ reputation and have some of the guests running in fear.”

“Maybe if they were a little more open-minded,” Jeremy grumbles silently. “Will there be a lot of guests?”

“The people who matter in the city would be in attendance, yes,” the gardener answers with a hint of suspicion. “Security will be tight, and more than a few mages will be in attendance.”

“Perhaps one day I could get an invitation to one of these gatherings,” Jeremy surmised.

“Not a chance,” the gardener curtly answered. “As useful as you are, the lady doesn’t dine with the help.”

***

“The gall of that man,” Lady Amaranth fumed to the distress of her two handmaidens. “He wants to perform a cleansing on me?!? On my person?!? Like I was infested with rats!”

She visibly shook from both outrage and fear.

Did the necromancer just threaten her? Did he see her as nothing more than the vermin he exterminated? How did I even provoke him?

“Mistress,” Leni, her handmaiden, consoles her. “The Wizard Jeremy has a reputation of being unrefined — uncouth even. Perhaps he really means well?”

“But a cleansing? On my body?” Lady Amaranth pondered. “I would have to submit to his dark magics, and who knows what would happen?”

“I heard he cured the miller’s wife,” Beth, the other handmaiden, offered. “It was consumption, and she probably wouldn’t have lasted the winter.”

“Tell me more of this story,” the lady demanded.

“It was a chance encounter,” Beth continued. “The wizard was traveling with his butler, and they came upon a stopped wagon. The miller was headed for Bountiful to find a cure for his wife or perhaps implore the clerics for a blessing.”

“But instead they found the Ram?”

“Indeed they did,” Beth flinched at the awkward sobriquet. “The coughing seemingly angered the wizard, and he unleashed his wrath on the miller’s wife — or at least that was how they felt at first.”

“The wizard’s cleansing does exude a feeling of touching death. It is no wonder the commoner’s felt fear.”

“Yes mistress,” she agreed, as was her duty. “But afterward, the wife was cured. This was 3 weeks ago, and the couple seemed normal when I saw them yesterday.”

“So there were no untoward effects?” The story piqued Lady Amaranth’s curiosity. Perhaps cleansing the body was not a bad thing.

“There was one, milady,” Beth answered. “It seems the two spent the morning of the following day with a bad case of the runs. They thought their insides would come out.”

“The wizard did say something about sacrifice,” the lady surmised.

She pondered for a bit. There was a risk, but a cleansing would allow her to go through with her gathering. A change in schedule might be seen as a sign of weakness, and most of her guests already freed their calendars to attend on the previous date.

“Bring the wizard once he’s done,” the lady ordered. “I will meet him in the tea room. Have the gardener bring a few flowers for the table.”

***

The first serious problem occurred in one of the guest rooms. While the rest had their assortment of vermin and insects, this particular room had a functional portal. The mistress of the house probably had no idea, unless she was a practitioner of the diabolic arts — which he would know.

The runic engravings held a trace of infernal elements. While not to the level of hellfire, he could detect the lingering scent of hoarfrost from the lower realms. This was the work of cultists — probably ones tied to Cocytus or Naraka.

“Cultists’” Jeremy sighed.

Low-level cultists were the worst kind — lacking in power but prone to shows of force. Attacking the heart of the city at the height of a notable gathering would have created a stir, even if they all died in the process.

At most, he calculated four or five probable victims before the shenanigans were completely stamped out. The only problem was his presence before the attack.

He would be blamed — he was sure of it. When people think infernal, he was the most prominent and popular choice. While he could make the runes visible to the human eye, doing so would put a trace of his own brand of infernal magic into it. His infernal knowledge probably surpasses the knowledge of every mage and cleric combined and his spells tended to supersede any other infernal ones. Court wizards would likely rule it was his making all along, and a few nobles would be glad of any excuse to get rid of him.

It was better to stay silent and deal with the problem on his own.

Abyssal Gate * Complex Ritual *Infernal

Effect: Creates a portal to a specific plane of hell. The caster is required to be familiar with the plane either through research or a previous visit or incarceration

One of the earliest spells he learned from his constant companions was Abyssal Gate. He learned it the moment his mind was able to focus — which was when he was a few months past three years old. Fortunately, he didn’t have the mana or the spell components required to perform the ritual.

He didn’t have the necessary components on hand, but he outgrew the need for them through the teachings of his tutors. The spell lattice was sloppy. The portal probably used an icy hell as a conduit between points. You can span a continent by walking 10 minutes in specific infernal planes, but Jeremy doubted if ordinary people would enjoy the trip — much less survive it.

A few alterations later and the portal now included a third stop to Gehenna. Drar’gizun was one of the most vocal of his inner demons, one who tempted him persistently with the knowledge of gates and summonings. Sending him a few cultists would delight the bastard.

The portal — now, his portal — would dissipate in a week. The cultists were bound to have a surprise, ending in a fiery hell instead of the usual cold they expected.

He imagined humans in heavy furs burning in Gehenna, their screams echoing in…. He shook his head warily. He wasn’t going there.