Light reading

 A short while later found Garron Raeburn walking through the halls of the hospital.  Azul curled up in his arms as the older man following after the hospital's current doctor.  Shane was busily reading over something on his clipboard as they walked, so Garron found his mind had time to consider the events of the past day.  The ghost of his best friend was starting to become annoying, Garron decided. Hearing Isaiah's voice again was of course a great blessing, but considering how busy the past few days had been, Garron could have gone without a dead man bossing him around. Though of course, now that his blond friend had faded once again into the afterlife, Garron felt that familiar pang of loneliness. Though he had been amazed the communication spell had worked so well for a ghost.

“Garron!” Isaiah's voice practically screamed into the red haired man's ear as he walked the hospital halls. “Garron quit slacking off!”

He muttered a quick curse and ran for the hospital exit “You really have the most brilliant timing, you know that Isaiah?”

Garron sighed and looked down at the sleeping boy in his arms. Dark circles had formed under Azul's eyes and he had some sharp red marks on his wrist, along with a few other cuts and small wounds in various places. The past few days had been especially hard on his apprentice, so he could certainly understand Isaiah's worry. Even still, Garron was very proud of the small teenager, he had found and stood up for a group of friends despite everything the week had brought upon him.

“Are you sure this is alright?” Garron mumbled quietly as Shane nudged open the door to one of the hospitals many rooms.

The Doctor nodded and gave him a small smile “I doubt they'd mind, he seems quite close with them. Besides there's an extra cot over in the corner anyway. I'm sure Azul would like to wake up knowing they're all fine.”

The older battle mage gave Shane a smile in return along with a nod, and carefully stepped into the room. His eyes scanned over the rooms sleeping occupants, he recognized most of them from the battle, though the Centaur was certainly new. The curiosity inside him was piqued, but Garron forced himself to move to the free cot in the corner and settle Azul down onto it. Garron gently brushed the boy's hair out of his face and covered him up. Mumbling a quick “Sleep well.” Garron deposited a small blue flame from the folds of his robe to the area right next to Azul. Sleepy mumbles in Neil's voice echoed from the flame as Azul's master retreated. As an afterthought Garron doubled back and gently tucked a faded green journal under Azul's arms, one particular section bookmarked within it.

“Azul doesn't look like he sustained that many injuries,” Shane ventured “...what happened to him? It looks like severe magic drain.”

“It is.” Garron agreed “He used a very dangerous summon during the battle.”

Shane's ears twitched toward Garron, perked in curiosity “A summon? Like Ian, his wolf?”

The red haired mage nodded, leaning against the wall for a moment “Reilly is like Ian in the sense that they're both skeleton creatures compressed into charms for easy summoning, though Reilly was stored as a pair of gloves.”

Shane found a seat in a nearby chair and gestured for Garron to sit and continue. The older man sat and gave the doctor a thankful look.

“Reilly was a dragon skeleton Azul's father was working on restoring, an odd type of dragon they were calling “Magic eaters”. In order to grow they would absorb the magic of the things they killed, and do this until they reached their full size. Reilly was a young one since his skeleton was relatively small...”

Garron coughed slightly “At any rate I'm getting off topic,” He did however note the curious twinkle in Shane's eyes that reminded him so much of his apprentice. “If Azul summoned Reilly like the others, he would simply absorb all of Azul's magic and kill him.”

Shane winced “That does sound dangerous...”

“So to avoid that danger we put three magic seals on Reilly. Azul has the ability to release the seals after he summons Reilly, so with each seal Reilly is given more and more of Azul's magic, and he'll grow larger with each one broken.”

Garron coughed again and gratefully took the water Shane offered. “If he has his full magic he can release all three without killing himself, but he will pass out after. Today however he was already mostly drained from the invasion...and during the battle he released two of the three seals.”

A small frown appeared on the fox hybrid's face “Two was already over extending himself because of that, I see...between the two battles he nearly drained himself dry with Reilly.”

“Exactly,” Garron agreed, and rubbed his eyes “with some sleep though he should be fine, thankfully. Though now I should go and collect all of Reilly's bones to be re-enchanted into the gloves...” The man got up with a tired sigh, and went to clean up the battlefield.

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Azul sat snuggled into his corner of the Freemen's hospital room. He was quiet, as were all the other occupants of the room, though that was because the rest were still sleeping. Bennett had woken briefly and given Azul a tired smile and greeting before very quickly nodding off again. Once in a while the silence was broken by the big mans' random sleep mumbles, but otherwise Azul was left to his thoughts.

“You? Friends with sages? Hah!”

The blue haired necromancer frowned, the words the other necromancer had spoken still repeating within his mind. The Freemen were sages and that made them popular targets in their time, but Azul didn't think that was quite the context the other necromancer had been getting at. No, the Freemen were sages, mages of holy magic. And what was he, but the exact kind of mage they'd just all fought against. The small teen took a moment to squeeze his eyes shut and hug his knees. The world would never let him forget that necromancy was classified as a dark magic, the complete opposite of what the Freemen used. Was the other man right? Was it wrong for him to be friends with holy mages? Did he deserve their friendship? Part of Azul, the part ruled by his anxiety, was suddenly terrified they would start to hate him now after seeing what he could do. It was silly, after all they'd already done for him, and yet...the fear of what his new friends would think gripped at Azul. While shifting on the small cot something fell to the floor with a quiet thump. Reaching down, the green eyed mage managed to recover the old journal he'd woken up with. He smiled faintly as he traced his father's initials with his finger, and it was then that he finally noticed the bookmarked section.

“On the Origins of Necromancy-Excerpt from the research notes of Isaiah Reilly Andres: “

Azul blinked, inspecting the title once more to be sure. He hadn't know his father had ever written on Necromancy before. Curiously he continued to read on, finding two sets of hand writing, his father's in green, and what was apparently his master Garron's in blue. (Due to lack of color options when submitting this Isaiah is in italics, and Garron is bold).

“Well somehow Garron has convinced me to do a little research on the subject of Necromancy for our paper. We have to do most of our work in the library, since last time I borrowed a pile of books I didn't really return them...for a long time. So now the Librarian doesn't quite trust me to leave books for my fellow students. As for Garron and this topic? Don't ask me how he got me to do this, he's had this odd fascination with it though, I figured I'd humor him. Isaiah don't talk about me in an entry I'm co-writing with you! We're turning this in for a grade! ...wait a minute since when have I been the professional one? Haha sorry Garron I'm just trying to loosen up before we start, we can edit this out of the final paper when we rewrite it. We have to rewrite it? Don't we have enough work to do? Oh for heavens sake Garron we have all semester to complete this, relax. Let's get to our paper.”

Azul couldn't help a quiet giggle as he noticed the doodle of Garron sticking his tongue out at a younger version of his father. It was clearly a very rough copy of an old essay from their school years.

“Necromancy in a nutshell: Necromancy has always been one of the less practiced branches of magic. This is an interesting phenomenon to my partner and I because it seems much of the hesitation to practice is linked with the origins (what people THINK is the origin-I was getting to that Garron-Well you're getting wordy! If it bothers you then you are free to write this out and I'll read the notes.) of the magic. It's true that in history the most well known Necromancers seem to be the ones who take their magic to the darkest roots, but there have also been Necromancers who are on the complete opposite side of the spectrum. Especially because the last several people to be considered Necromancers have become corrupt, most people like to associate the practice with just one branch of Necromancy. In truth currently in our world today the practice Necromancy has been classified into two categories: Pure Necromancy, and Corrupt Necromancy. Pure Necromancy being the purer (duh) form of the magic, working to assist spirits and people alike with the Necromancer's power over the dead. Corrupt Necromancy is then the more well known and feared branch of the magic, involving the illegal summoning of dead corpses (Isaiah that dead in there is redundant -Oh geez that's embarrassing!” )

Again another doodle appeared, this time near the word “dead” which had been scratched out in green ink. The doodle showed Garron laughing as Isaiah was about to hit him with a book.

“and harmful twisting of spirits into beasts. My partner and I pose this question: If there are two branches of Necromancy, where and when did they diverge? Or did they both even spawn from the same point? (or did one evil Necromancer really ruin it all?)”

Now extremely curious about their findings Azul found himself completely engrossed in his reading. His worries forgotten for the moment.

“Findings: Isaiah has class right now so I guess I'm taking over writing this for the moment. Let's see...our search led us through various history texts (Isaiah says I used one as a pillow, as if he's never fallen asleep on a book!) mostly on the origins of magic itself. Through magical history we were able to map out different times Necromancy appeared in some form. Most of the times of Necromancy we found were when the mage was using corrupt Necromancy. But around the time of the middle ages we started noticing another type of mage had been using abilities now used by Pure Necromcaners. (Oh good you actually got something done while I was in class! Why do you have to sound so surprised?! Well...the bottom half of this page IS covered in doodles.”

Scanning the page proved to uncover blue ink doodles of dragons, along with some green ink doodled added to it. One of the green doodles added the younger Isaiah riding one of the blue dragons, with a protesting blue Garron saying “Get off my dragon!”. Azul had to cover his mouth to keep from laughing and possibly waking his room mates.

“This type of mage was labeled as a “Sage”, we use this classification rarely today, but Sage's played an important role in that time period. Some Sage's were actually known to have a great respect for the dead (more than the Necromancers back then at least) and were actually known to help local spirits they came across. Much like today's Pure Necromancer's, Sage's were able to trap and purify spirits. There is also evidence that some of them were able to communicate with spirits fairly well.

The communication abilities and the spells directed at spirits are almost an exact echo of techniques Pure Necromancers today use. The typical Necromancer of that age was considered a type of Sorcerer, but because of their magic specialty they were given the title of Necromancer. They were known for corrupting spirits, turning them into feral creatures, and animating corpses ( Something we'll later have to note, is animating human corpses is considered illegal now. Not that that's stopped the corrupt Necromancers. ). Some modern Pure Necromancer's still make use out of animating animal corpses or bones for familiars or summon. but because of how sensitive Necromany is right now (In other words: because the older mages are paranoid jerks. Really Garron? What? We're rewriting this!), many just stick to working with spirits.”

At the end of the section Azul found his fathers' hand writting marking 2am, and the rest of the page was filled with random doodles. Some Azul recognized as old classmates of his father and master, others were of various creatures, and one showed their old teacher, master Silvia...breathing fire. Comments like “She's going to kill us!” followed the picture. Azul had to take a few moments to stop laughing before he read the final section to the paper.

“Conclusion: In the end, the real question is what did we discover about Necromancy? Searching through history is a difficult task, especially because the further back we go, the fewer written records we have to go by. So in the end we may never have a clear understanding of where Necromancy, or any other magic, originated or what it's original purpose was. However based on the findings of my partner and I, we propose this: Necromancy, at least in it's current form, did not completely stem from the dark roots one would assume. While it's true that Necromancy was practiced in its darker form in the middle ages, so was its purer form, only this was done by sages. (Isaiah don't extend this a whole extra page, we're only supposed to do two. Just because my last paper was over in length does not mean this one will be! You mean last THREE? ) From our research we believe that Pure Necromancy may have actually been started by a sage, or group of sages, that chose to focus more specifically on working with the dead. And perhaps at the same time were trying to very specifically combat their darker Necromancer counterparts. So in the end this leads us to believe that, at least around the middle ages, Necromancy actually diverged from two very different paths of magic.”

The paper concluded with both of their signatures in their chosen ink color. Azul's mind was moving so quickly while processing what he had just read, that he hardly noticed the third handwriting in black ink at the bottom of the page.

“Andres, Raeburn, your research is always fascinating but please try to remember to bring it with you when you leave the library. Also if I could breath fire you would both know by now. I hope your finished paper is going to look a lot more professional.”~ Master Silvia.”

Azul sat for a few quiet minutes, processing what he'd just read. After a moment he began blinking back tears, some of his previous anxiety lifting, like a pressure suddenly gone. He smiled and hugged the little journal, it didn't guarantee the Freemen would react well, but...it still gave Azul some small sense of hope or even satisfaction that he wasn't so wrong in what he practiced. His eyes scanned the rooms occupants again, looking at all his new friends, and he started to doze back off with a renewed hope he wouldn't have to lose any of them.