I heard noises - shuffling, stamping, mumbling from the dark chapel above us - more necromancers coming to surround us? Given our luck so far, it seemed likely. All we'd managed to do was sneak in and kill one solitary mage. Cult Gal stepped forward, cruel glee in her eyes…

Now… before I get too far along, I want to acknowledge that, yes, I killed my first person at eight years old (well… co-killed with Mailyn) and, yes, she was a necromancer. This is absolutely true and not at all typical of a Collegium Scamp's experience - we're expected to face some level of hardship and adversity, but not to kill anybody, and certainly not to go toe-to-toe against evil mages. It's audacious that we weren't killed on the spot. The only reasons that Mailyn and I succeeded against Cult Gal Two were that:

1) We had the numerical advantage.

2) We had the element of surprise.

3) Cult Gal Two's shadow magic spell, meant to drag me down into the abyss, was a lot less effective than anticipated.

4) In the heat of the moment, Mailyn's gift for destructive magic made its greatest showing to date. She burned the woman's eyes out and, quite possibly, boiled her brain.

If you take out any of those elements, one or both of us might have died right there, and at the very least we'd have been captured and died shortly afterwards as sacrificial victims. I say all this to temper your expectations - outnumbered and facing three adult necromancers with every possible motivation to keep their activities secret, we weren't in a great situation, or even a remotely okay one.

I scrambled away from the necromancer. "The… the collegium knows we're here! Powerful Shadows are approaching right now! They already know all about you! If… if you know what's good for you, you'll let our friends go and get out of here!"

"Uh…" Cult Guy Two glanced toward Cult Gal who, if she didn't outrank him, was definitely the least cagey and most decisive of the group.

"If they knew you were here, we wouldn't be having this conversation. You can make this easy, girl, and give up now… or you can give my afternoon a little more excitement. What will it be?"

As I considered what I could say to buy us some scintilla of advantage, Mailyn didn't hesitate. She threw her blade at Cult Gal. It was a good throw, too. Most people think you throw a knife end-over-end, and you can throw a knife this way, but with a well-balanced knife, I've found that no-spin throws are a lot easier to aim and time. Mailyn clearly thought likewise, her knife whipping out in a sidearm throw and hurling toward Cult Gal. Without even lifting her hand, the cultist's eyes flashed indigo and she sent a blast of raw thaum out, unbalancing the thrown knife and sending it careening harmlessly down the passageway. Her grin turned predatory.

"My turn, child," she said. She raised her hands, shaping mana palpably enough that I could feel it. A pulse of iridescent purple washed forth from her body and slapped into us like a big towel of stultifying thaum. I felt something within me surging forth to oppose the spell, but it wasn't enough. My knees wobbled as my strength gave out, and I slumped downward, sliding bonelessly down the three or four steps to the bottom of the cramped stairwell. A moment later, Mailyn tumbled on top of me, her head colliding painfully with my own. I cried out, but it only came out as a soft yelp.

For a split second, I thought I'd just been killed, that I was now a ghostly consciousness trapped within a dead body. But then I noted that I was still breathing, even if I couldn't move. And then the arcs of energy sparkling off of Mailyn's limp form made my muscles spasm and incrementally reduced the scope of the numbness.

"Hmm… talented, but not fully awakened. Good," she giggled cruelly. "I'll get the red-head and you get the dark-haired one."

"Hmm… we'll have to tell Lord Schvarziveld about this," Cult Guy Two mumbled. After Cult Gal lifted Mailyn off of me, he hoisted my own body over his shoulder like a sack of ring peppers. However, getting zapped by Mailyn's sparks had somehow counteracted the paralyzing spell, at least in part. I'd dropped my own blade when I fell, but Cult Guy Two had a ceremonial dagger in a little sheaf clipped to his black leather belt. When my fingers brushed against it, I found the strength to grip and pull, unsheathing the blade. I then jammed it into his side as hard as I could… which, unfortunately, wasn't very hard. But the blade did manage to puncture his robes and draw blood. "Ah! You little bitch!" He growled in anger, tossing me to the floor of the green stone corridor.

Pain and numbness both sparkled through my arm as I felt something snap, a feeling of wrongness spreading across my arm. I let out a pathetic little cry but couldn't do anything but twitch. Cult Guy Two retrieved the ceremonial dagger, rage roiling across his face. He brought it up and stepped forward to stab my helpless form. I guess they didn't really need six whole child sacrifices, because Cult Gal made no move to stop him. She watched on with malevolent curiosity.

This was how I died: beneath the Green Stones before my ninth birthday, the victim of a twisted necromantic cult, the victim of an impulsive desire to help my fellow children. My life flashed before my eyes - quite short, but probably more exciting than most. I readied myself for the cold pain of the blade…

Only I didn't meet my end then and there - but Cult Guy Two certainly did. Surprise crossed his face, followed by a wince of pain, followed by a gurgling cough, followed by an entirely unhealthy amount of blood. He slumped down like a puppet with its strings cut. Darkness surrounded us, seeming to entrench on the feeble, pale light of Cult Gal's glowglobe lantern, swirling like a roiling mist of pure, malignant blackness. And something stalked out of the darkness. Someone stalked out of the darkness.

"These children are under my protection," the Shadow growled - a woman. "You dare to harm my charges? Your life is forfeit, necromancer… but I encourage you to make me earn my keep. Yes, your pitiful struggling can give my afternoon a little excitement."

"A… a Shadow…" Cult Gal muttered. Her face blanched with terror - but, to her credit, she didn't surrender. Instead, she drew her own ceremonial dagger, an ornate kris with runes that glowed as she imbued them with terrible power. With only an fraction of a second to prepare, she switched into a ready stance and lunged at the Shadow. Only, neither the dagger nor the lower half of her arm ever made it. A roil of miasmic dark engulfed them, and they were gone as if they'd never existed. "Ah-" she started to scream. Her throat erupted in a geyser of blood from some magical technique so fast and subtle I'd have missed it altogether if I blinked. Cult Gal gurgled and clutched at her throat, trying to keep her life's blood in.

The Shadow… Rose lowered the woman to the floor as she spasmed, her pale blue eyes staring straight into the woman's with a terrible intensity. "When you go to meet your maker, tell them that Rose Argent sent you," she said softly. "You will find yourself in copious company." A moment later, she closed the woman's eyes with her thumbs - it was a surprisingly gentle gesture - and turned to Mailyn and me. "Are you alright, Vix?"

"N… no…" I sniffled, struggling to my feet and nursing my fractured arm. Mailyn did likewise, favoring her right foot.

"How many more are there?"

"J-just one more, I think," Mailyn mumbled. "Ran away…"

Rose nodded gravely. "The upstairs is safe. Go up and wait for me there. I'll go get the rest."

Rose ascended the stairs a moment later, carrying Nate. Blood dripped from his ear and his head lolled lazily as he tried to move - he was pretty-clearly concussed. The other three child sacrifices followed shakily behind. Rose sighed and set Nate onto one of the bedrolls before sitting in one of the workbench chairs, rubbing at the bridge of her nose. "You two need to see a medic, and this one really needs to see a medic," she said, gesturing toward Nate. "What in the holy hills of hell did you think you were doing, Vix?"

"I…" I started - but what was there to say? If I hadn't tried to save Nate and the others, then it's quite likely that nobody would have. How were we to know that Rose was out there, waiting in the wings to strike? "You came," I whispered, tears welling in my eyes. "You remembered my name…"

"Of course I did," she said. "You signed that letter yourself, girl - your friend, Vix, it said. What kind of friend would I be if I didn't help a mate in a pinch? But…" she cast me a meaningful look… "it's your job to stay out of pinches like this until you're old enough."

"Old enough for what?" Mailyn asked.

"I'm still trying to figure that bit out," Rose admitted. She carefully wrapped a cloth around Nate's head before lifting him into a princess carry. He was a hefty boy, but she bore his weight without complaint, significantly stronger than her slim frame would suggest. "We'll hitch one of those big destriers out front and head straight for the surgeon's. Think you can do that for me?"

"I can," Mailyn volunteered.

We made our way out to the stables, passing several other dead cultists on our way - I suppose there had been more in the building than I'd originally guessed, and Rose had drawn them out and done them in before making her way down to us. With how quickly things had happened down below, she must have done a pretty brisk trade in killing cultists.

"I can help," I insisted.

"Don't use that arm. I can tell it ain't… isn't right." Mailyn shot me a worried glance.

"I won't."

Between my fractured arm and Mailyn's sprained ankle, we were about three quarters of a competent stable-hand. It wasn't a particularly great job, but we managed to hitch the destrier to the little wagon that Rose brought out from the back. She handled the reins and made to take us out of the cultist compound and out of the Canal Canton…

And just then, the big double doors to the stables swung inward with a bang and half a dozen men and women clad in fine robes and decked out in frankly absurd quantities of enchanted artifacts surged into the place, pointing glowing daggers and crossbows back and forth as they tried to discern a target. A tall woman with silvery, rune-glowing robes and flowing, shock-white hair swept in right after, setting her steely gaze upon Rose.

"Foul necromancer! In the name of the Artificer's Guild, hand those children over or prepare to meet the consequences!"

"Madam Guildmaster… I don't think that's a necromancer," one of the artificers whispered.

And Rose Argent laughed and laughed.