Dirge for a Necromancer by Ash Stinson

question must be tortured enough to hang around after death, or else you have to grab hold of them immediately after they’ve died.”
    “Grab hold?” asked Maeleht. “Grab hold of their ghost?”
    “Yes, that’s right,” Raettonus said. “You reach out with your energy and grab hold of their ghost before it departs. It’s difficult then, because they fight. Souls don’t want to stay on this plane of existence. They’ll fight you until they’re bound to the body. Sometimes even then. Inexperienced necromancers get killed by ghosts and corpses all the time. It’s a dangerous art.”
    “Have you ever been attacked by ghosts and corpses?” Maeleht asked him.
    Raettonus nodded slowly. “When I was young and just learning, yes.”
    “What was it like?” Dohrleht asked. “Is it hard to fight a corpse?”
    “A corpse? No, not really. It’s easier than fighting a man, in fact,” Raettonus said. “It’s far more dangerous to fight ghosts. For the time that you’re holding them with your energy, you’re connected to them. For a moment, all their memories and their experiences become an extension of your own. You can feel the death they experienced if they want you to—and I’ve yet to meet one that didn’t want you to. All the while, they’re gnawing on your life force, wearing you down. Killing you. They don’t want to go to hell alone, and they don’t want to stay here.”
    “How do you keep them from killing you?”
    Raettonus shrugged and yawned again. “You just do what you’re doing quickly,” he said. “Or else you let go of them and hope they’ll let go of you, as well.”
    “Raettonus?” asked Maeleht after a lengthy silence had passed over them. “When are you going to teach us to do magic? I’m tired of hearing about it. I want to do it.”
    Raising an eyebrow, Raettonus crossed his hands over his lap. “You’re quite eager. You might not be able to do any magic, you realize,” he said.
    “But I won’t know if you don’t ever teach me to try.”
    For a moment, Raettonus gave him an appraising stare. Finally, he relented. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll teach you a little bit of pyromancy. Both of you—come over here, get in close. All right. Hold out your hands. No, just one hand, each of you.”
    He began to instruct him, as his own master had instructed him so long ago. Of course, when Sir Slade had begun to teach him magic he had tried to teach him hydromancy, not pyromancy. Raettonus hadn’t been able to do it, but he had enjoyed the lesson immensely. He and Slade had sat in the grass on a hill beside a river at the edge of Slade’s land, on an overcast yet rainless morning.
    “Look here,” Slade had said, pulling him close and opening one large, empty hand. “Watch this.”
    And just like that, the air above Slade’s hand began to swirl gently, and a great sphere of clear, clean water appeared there even as young Raettonus watched with wide eyes. He reached out and touched the orb with tiny, trembling fingers and found that it was just like sticking them into a glass of water. Slade smiled at him kindly. He twitched his fingers, and the water began to swirl and reshape itself into a rearing gryphon. “Just like your coat of arms,” Raettonus had said in breathless amazement.
    Slade nodded. “Would you like to learn how to do this?” he had asked.
    “Yes, master,” Raettonus had answered eagerly. “You can teach me?”
    “Of course,” Slade said. But he hadn’t been able to teach him. Not hydromancy. Later along, he switched his lessons to pyromancy, and it went better. All the same, Raettonus had fond memories of that first hydromancy lesson. It was the moment he began to put away his fear and had started to love Sir Slade.
    Raettonus’ pyromancy lesson to the young centaurs went much better. After a few hours, Dohrleht was able to make a very small flame for a second or two. Maeleht had more trouble and only managed to make a tiny spark before a coughing