#story-section

Jori’s mother was quite satisfied with the progress Holvert made. Even though Holvert felt quite differently, the mother was just all too happy that Jori was spending his time constructively.

After handing over the sum she promised, she proceeded to tell Holvert over a cup of steaming bouillon, about the trouble she had with the boy. Bad at school, always hostile towards other kids, hanging around with the wrong type of crowd - you know what I’m talking about.

Holvert listened to the woman’s troubles, going over any method he could use to get her to talk about the father. But she wasn’t easily persuaded to talk about that topic, and whenever Holvert took a gander at addressing it, she easily moved around it.

“Maybe he needs a father figure?” Holvert then forced a bit more prominently.

“He wouldn’t accept anyone else in that position,” she spoke.

“What happened to the father then?”

“Died,” she said as if that was all to it.

Holvert considered just telling her about Jori’s request. Just to get her to come clean. But then she’d hide the skull and ruin the relation she has with her son. That would lead neither to an answer for Jori, nor to uncovering the identity of the owner of the skull.

Holvert cut the conversation short, explaining he had many other things to do. Thankfully, she didn’t notice his change in attitude was more or less cause by her being a dead-end in his new investigation.

As he left for the exit, Jori rushed over him to wish him goodbye. When his mother turned away for a moment, he took Holvert’s hand and pushed a note into it.

Once outside, Holvert unfolded his clenched claw and looked at the note. It was an address and the name ‘Ballak Tor’ written above it. The necromancer.

Ballak’s address was in Soldan, the artist island of Telleh, right between rich Pedan and the quaint Outer Rim. Soldan’s streets were nothing but large outdoor workshops, small factories, stores and galleries sharing a space never meant for large crowds. The noise of artistry and craft pervaded the vicinity until Holvert took a corner, and suddenly found himself surrounded by relative silence. Here, the galleries were small and cosy, the outdoor stores quiet and subdued and the sides of the streets occupied by painters of canvas and furniture.

Detective Hill stopped at the end of the street, in front of a fancy furniture shop by the looks of it. One you had to ring a bell before you were let in. Exclusive, unaffordable furniture.

The doorbell rang pleasantly and not long after, an old, dark-haired Kikiru opened up. He had white marks running through his facial hair and large bushy, graying eyebrows - even more than usual for someone his species. He wore a dark red tunic, accompanied by a silvery sash wrapped around his waist. From a Southern Dedati culture from the looks of it.

Without saying a word, he gestured Holvert in and led him to the main section of the store. As Holvert passed, he noticed the fresh paint on the walls and echoes of other images behind the new plaster.

“What can I help you with,” stated the man with a soft, pleasant voice as he walked over to various parts of the content of the store. “You seem like a man who can appreciate a nice, sturdy desk. This particular desk has been formed from the upper middle section of a Gimmer tree. A procedure that leads to a sturdy, comfortable desk. Just feel its warm softness.”

“I’m not here for a desk, or for any piece of furniture,” Holvert stated, “I was told I could find a certain Ballak Tor here. A mage”

The man looked bemused at Holvert’s statement and cracked a faint smile of embarrassment. The detective in return took a business card from his pocket. “I was told he can talk to skulls.”

The furniture store owner looked at the card before pocketing it. “A private detective. I had wondered when such people in the business of solving problems pertaining people would come those of my speciality. But let us seek a more proper space to discuss this.”

He gestured Holvert once more to follow him, this time leading down a sparse corridor, down a flight of metal industrial stairs until they ended in something akin to wide concrete corridors belonging to an underground depot. From there, the man led him once more through a few corridors until ending in a large, dark chamber. In the background Holvert heard the humming of heavy aircondition fans and the air smelled entirely neutral. The man turned on the lights, revealing part by part a whole chamber filled with cabinets, bookcases, white boards with incomprehensible scribbling and various ancient looking devices. Near the white boards stood a set of comfortable looking sofas, and the man gestured Holvert to sit down. As he walked over, he noticed the cabinets were filled with the bone remains of various people, each one carefully tagged and catalogued. He also noticed there was a large section of the floor covered by what seems another large white board. A crate of candles stood nearby as well as a collection of large markers.

“This is rather more than what I expected,” Holvert said to him, “Who’s financing this getup? Ought to take a lot of maintenance.”

“Me, my colleagues and the Fund for Pratical Occultism. This is one of the few remaining treatment chambers that Har-Ikei didn’t manage to find and destroy. And as you can see, we try to keep it up to date with the latest technological and arcane developments. And this is only the study, but I doubt you’re interested in seeing the ritual room.”

Holvert indeed wasn’t, “Why? Load of dead folks?”

“Those unfamiliar with the means of necromancy are easily upset by them.”

“I’ve seen autopsies performed.”

“So a proper detective then?”

“Got my experience working with the Telleh City Guard. Specialised in tracking people down.”

“Which is why you’re here, I’m assuming.”

“We share an acquittance. Jori Welkander. He told me he spoke to you about his father and that you discovered the skull did not belong to him.”

The man played with his fingers, revealing to Holvert he had various missing streaks of hair around his wrists and arms. Scars, he guessed.

“Jori did come to me,” he spoke a moment later as if he had just decided to open up, “And yes, I examined the skull he brought and it wasn’t his father’s. He left disappointed.”

And then quickly afterwards, as if he realised something, “nothing happened to the boy, did there?”

“Jori’s fine. Just getting himself into business he really shouldn’t. But he also asked me to figure out what did happen to the dad.” Holvert reached over in his coat’s inner pocket and took his notepad out.

“Can you tell me anything about the procedure?” he asked as he whisked through the pages.

“Ah!” The man veered up from his seat, as if he suddenly woke up to a little unexpected party taking place in his room.

“Each imbued skull maintains an impression of the owner. It’s like a picture: the true, living, three dimensional person is gone, but a two dimensional image remains. Through well-established means we can ‘look’ at this picture,” he continued when emphasizing ‘look’ with finger-quotes, “which then tells us something about the deceased.”

“But you can’t talk to this thing without the name?”

“Correct, though it’s not quite talking. One of the main skills us necromancers learn, is to listen to the various strands of thought from the deceased and how to differentiate these conversations.

Ah, imagine it like having been at a busy conference all day, many of us still hear echoes of these conversations once we try to get to sleep. That’s the type of speech you receive through this ritual. Though my professional attitude requires me to tell you there are more complex, more thorough ways to access this picture - but that is not what we typically engage in, due to various issues associated with it.”

For a brief moment the mage looked like he anticipated Holvert asking about these specifics, but the detective had quite enough of all this magic babble and as his eyes rested upon the remains of a half-burned Inwid skeleton, he really didn’t want to think about what these mages were up to when he wasn’t there. “So, you used the name and you didn’t hear anything?”

“The name functions as a key to the conversation,” the man replied slowly recovering from the previously experienced disappointment, “You still hear things, but without calling the name, the thoughts never crystallise into something understandable.”

“And non of the other bits of thoughts led to anything relating to the true identity of the skull?”

“Honestly, I didn’t check. These things are routine, see. We just look at it, speak the name and listen. You can do that in a few minutes. A thorough investigation into the identity itself requires different, longer preparation. Fortunately we’re just in the space we can do that sort of thing. Do you happen to have it with you?”

“By coincidence, I do,” Holvert spoke and put the duffel bag down before the necromancer. The man reached into it and took the bundled up package from its container. Then he took the fabrics off until the skull was revealed before him.

The necromancer held it before him and peered right into the holes that once contained the owner’s eyes. He then carefully carried the skull towards the giant white board on the floor. He put it down in the middle and took a black marker from the collection. Then, he wrote and drew symbols and figures around the skull as if he had done this many, many times before.

Holvert observed the man’s actions and wondered which part of this was show and which necessity. Then he realised he didn’t quite care. For a moment he subconsciously wanted to walk around the room to keep himself occupied, but faced with the choice to be bored, or entertain himself by looking at dead people, he choose boredom.

Once Ballak was done, he took the skull in his hands again, stood in the middle of the ritual drawing and raised it above his head.

He then released a blood curdling, boneshattering roar. Holvert by instinct covered his ears as he felt the vibration of the necromancer’s voice resonating everything around him.

Ballak’s eyes rolled back in his head and he lowered the skull to level with his. All while maintaining his vocal violence. Then it stopped. And then the skull answered.

It took Holvert a moment to realise it was the skull that created the sound. And as the necromancer explained, what echoed from the thing was indeed a kaleidoscope of words and phrases and even full conversations. It sounded archaic, some centuries old, but Holvert believed to recognise some words and some inflexions as Royal dialect. Ballak meanwhile had closed his eyes as if he needed every inch of focus to mentally sorting through the words.

No sooner than Holvert having given up to try, the voices started unifying themselves into a single phrase, over and over again.

Remember me. Please. Remember me.

The voices echoed away. Just when Holvert thought it was over, the necromancer fell down to his knees and crashed upon the board.

For a brief moment Holvert did nothing. But the longer the man didn’t move, the more it crept up on Holvert that this was not the intention. He carefully walked over to the body, making sure not to wipe out any of the occult symbols.

The man was fortunately still alive, but didn’t respond to any techniques Holvert knew to wake people up from fainting. The detective noticed Ballak was still having a hand over the skull, and moved it off. Still touching him. Hum.

With hesitation instilled by disgust and sense of inappropriateness, Holvert took a piece of cloth he found nearby and lifted the skull of the necromancer.

And once more the cacophony of the skull’s voices coursed through the room. Though, this time, with a different message.

Bring me my name. And I will let him go.

And so there Holvert stood. With a unconscious necromancer and a skull in his hands that demanded to be named.

“Would you trust this ‘man’ with the Union?”

Holvert Hill noticed the worn out poster on the city wall as he took a hit from his freshly lit cigarette. Seeing the poster was still there, told him enough about the neighbourhood he was in; Har-Ikei sympathisers.

Then again, he could tell it from the rest of the environment as well; neat, ordered, clean. Pedan, Telleh’s district for the rich and powerful, exactly the way he hated it.

In the distance he saw a light flicking on in the darkness. He threw his cigarette on the floor and hid himself a bit more behind the bush he was already brushing up against. A task surprisingly easy for the 1.80 meter tall Kikiru.

The light was followed by a creak of a door and then footsteps crushing into the gravel. They came closer. Then finally, the man to whom they belonged to stepped into the street light. The soft algae green tint gave colour to an older black haired, light skinned Inwid gentleman. The man wore a long cloak with underneath an older looking tweed jacket and baggy trousers. Holvert was about to come out until he noticed the emblem on the cloak of the gentleman: a triangle in a circle with three circles embedded within it. Arcane Circle. A mage.

His contact at the Grey Market had told him nothing of that. No, according to the lady trader, here lived a former Vwaskarika officer who made himself somewhat infamous as a connoisseur of occult artefacts.

Expertise he eagerly used as one of Har Ikei’s secret police. And now as Arcane Circle member, apparently.

Holvert’s case now started making a bit more sense. A mother had come to him a few days ago, worried about her sixteen year old son. He had been seen spending time in the company of an older man. She was worried that he was doing things for money he was way too young for.

In reality, the boy was still too young and in Holvert’s eyes, the relation just as abusive. But it was no longer about manipulative love.

For a brief moment Holvert considered how to approach the situation. The mages of the Arcane Circle had become well respected after their commitment to the Reformation, that cutesy name given to the rebellion against Har Ikei’s regime. Intimidating him might make a new powerful enemy.

On the other hand, intimidating him might make a new powerful enemy. Just the way Holvert liked it.

The man was about to walk off until the detective cleared his throat and stepped from underneath the shadow of the large bush.

“Can I help you with anything?” the man spoke with a clear voice, though probably already aware that this could end in trouble.

For a brief moment, Holvert only leaned over the man, towering above him just long enough to see the other man drop any pretence of comfort.

“It’s about Jori,” Holvert then spoke, “He’s a bit too young for this. You know that.”

“It’s a new free world, the man is old enough to make his own choices and certainly old enough to be my apprentice,” the mage said and was about to walk off.

“A true Arcane Circle member wouldn’t be living here,” Holvert remarked before the man could do so. He turned back to Holvert, suddenly a lot less comfortable with the situation.

“I mean, with the crowd that lives here,” Holvert clarified and nodded at the wanted poster he noticed previously. “Either you’ve been hiding something from your neighbours, in which case good luck with that. But I think it’s more likely you’re trying to hide your previous allegiances from your new colleagues.”

The mage now sighed heavily, “Look, for people like me, there are two options. Either prison or pretending our previous lives never existed. Can you blame me for picking the latter?

I just want to live. Forget about the past,” he tried once more when Holvert gave him no reaction, “I’m sure you’ve done equally regrettable things.”

Holvert could argue with the man, but he knew that wrestling with trash made you smell just as bad. So he ignored that last statement.

“If I hear so much a hint of you abusing the boy, I will expose your little ploy,” Holvert replied him, “And I know people who loathe your type enough to use you as a sacrifice next equinox.”

From the nodding of the man, Holvert understood he made his point. No need to linger here for longer. And so he too disappeared beneath the canopy of the night, making his way back to his flat. He looked forward to moving the notes of this case in from the Active Case Archive into the Finished Case Archive.

Coming into his street, he sped up the stairs leading to his apartment, went down a small corridor, until he ended at his office’s door. He swept in, tried not to trip over the stack of papers he left everywhere in the office after he attempted to clear out his archives (and subsequently forgot to put the ordered papers back into their cases).

As he reached over to turn on the projector of his personal computer, before he could type up the final notes to the case, he heard a knocking on the door. He dropped his shoulders, whom previously were flexed up in anticipation.

“It’s open,” he stated. And soon after, a young Kikiru entered his office - Looking far more determined and self-assured he had ever seen a 16-year old behave. Beneath the boy’s arm was a round object covered in cloths that he placed before Holvert on his desk.

“I’m Jori.” Jori stated, “I know my mother hired you to keep track of me but I tell you she’s the one who’s keeping secrets from me. I want to hire you.”

“To do what exactly,” Holvert said as he leaned back in his chair, with one eye on the large clothed package.

“My mom always told me that my dad died during the Winter Offensive but then I asked the Arcane Circle mages and they said they didn’t know a mage by the name of my father’s. Then they said that I could give them the skull of my dad’s and they could find out who he is. But then it turns out that this is not my father’s skull!”

Holvert barely remembered what the boy was saying, as he was just informed that the clothed object was someone’s skull. And while Holvert was a native of Telleh, and quite familiar with Telleh’s odd burial customers of keeping the skull of the deceased as a memorabilium - Holvert was also a Yeeshkarnadze and touching dead things was, putting it lightly, an issue. Fortunately, Jori was dissatisfied with Holvert’s hesitance and uncovered the object himself.

Before Holvert laid a Kikiru skull. He leaned over and inspected it as closely as he could without having to undergo a ritual purification. “Birano Welkander”, the inscription on the forehead stated.

“And the mages said that this was not him?”

“No! I mean, yes! One of those mages, I think his name was Ballak Torr, he used necromancy to talk to the skull, but the skull wouldn’t answer to that name! And then I said: maybe it’s a false name. But then they told me that a name is a name, and even an assumed fake name allows them to talk to the memories.”

“Did they say who it was?”

“Dunno. They have to know the name to talk to the skull. I don’t know. But I discovered there was something wrong when I looked in the city database, the only records with that name was from a man dead for 50 years already! And that’s why I went to the mages.”

“Right...” Holvert stated while trying to keep the details in mind. Slowly he typed away some key elements on his computer, a move that brought a little peace to the boy. “Did you talk to your mother about this?”

The boy looked up, “She hired you to know what I was doing, right? I don’t think she wants me to know. But I don’t understand why.”

“And now you want to hire me now to find your father instead?”

“Yes... and my mom will pay, when I confront her with the truth!”

Holvert let out a long growl and once more looked at the skull. “The fact that you have this skull, one that apparently did not belong to your father, means that there is a family without a skull - or worse: a switcheroo...

“I’ll do it,” Holvert said not too convincingly. He then asked the boy to give him as much detail as he could about his father - which was scarce as it was: 30-years old when he conceived him, supposedly a member of the Arcane Circle. Died during the Winter Offensive - the mini-civil war the mages tried to start against Har Ikei 15-odd years ago. The mother and father never married but the boy’s birth certificate showed he was registered as Jori’s father. And after the boy was done, Holvert politely kicked him out of the office.