#ashes-wind

The Death students had lost a lot, in the past few months. Two teachers, for Sylvia was always open to speak to her husband’s students, and Malistaire himself was…

The Death students all thought Malistaire Drake was a good man, before. But grief could cause a good man to do unforgivable things. They all remember when the Death School fell. When its very foundations were cleaved from Ravenwood, taking even their school tree with it.

Those students all swore, silently, in grim stares over funeral rites, that they would never forget it. The shrill and frightened screams of a class in session, who were inside the school where they were supposed to be safe, where instead they died or were presumed dead, with no body to bury.

At first, the students had been given distance to grieve and process what had happened, as the life students had been when Sylvia died suddenly. But then the distance was kept, the void between the Death school and the other schools growing larger as resentment festered, as fear sank its insidious claws into the weak willed.

And so the necromancers became outsiders, just as the sorcerers had a scant few years ago when Arthur Wethersfield came to Ravenwood, sand still in his fur from his studies in Krokotopia. Considering the necromancers’ dorm had fallen, as it was a part of the Death school, a lot of the Death students ended up staying in the tents of the makeshift Balance school, the rest of them finding refuge in their secondary school’s dorms, pressured to switch into that secondary school instead of staying in the now ostracized Death school.

Things changed when word spread that the Young Wizard had found Nightside, something that was nothing more than a rumor before, but now was a reality, a reality that contained the lost Death school, and tree, and the teacher that had been running class the day it fell, and surviving students.

And so most of the necromancers in Wizard City vanished, down into Nightside, only the very young remaining up top with Malorn Ashthorn, living alongside the few Balance students.

The first wave of students who entered Nightside were the adventurous, the strong, the stubborn. Those who were unafraid of a long, arduous battle, who worked hard to get where they were and then watched as everything was pulled out from under them in the same moment the Death school was. So they wanted it all back, and went to Nightside at the first opportunity.

They ducked into the cave behind the waterfall by Rainbow Bridge, shaking their heads or wringing out their hats, some of the more lively of them giggling at the drizzle of water. A few of the group trailed their hands along rough brown stone, dirt brushing against them, reminiscent of too much dust on bookshelves.

The door was in front of them, partially open, a black key in the lock, the skull of the Death school front and center for them all to see.

A few of them rushed forward, throwing open the doors, grinning, eyes wide as they took in a brand new sight that was almost too aesthetically on point for them to handle. One of the leaders of the group yelped, elated at the sight in front of them, and ran to tackle Marla Stinger in a hug, one of the missing necromancers found again, no longer to be presumed dead. The rest stood back, looking up and seeing the strange half cavern, some of them approaching Mortis, greeting the tree as a lost friend.

The group spread out, investigating, searching the school that felt like home but was now in a new place, no longer quite the same.

Some of them still stood there, at the entrance to Nightside, and looked up at the ceiling. There were roots of Bartleby breaking through the dirt, a winding sight that some would have to investigate further.