Free Undead Chaos by Joshua Roots Page A

the laughs while I could—things were going to get a lot worse.

Chapter Five
    A Not-So-Brief Debrief
    As it turned out, “worse” was an understatement.
    “...and then Banks vanished into the woods,” I finished wearily.
    I was seated in Dad’s study with him, Mom and Healer Jenkins. All of them insisted on being with me for moral support. Two members of the Delwinn Council joined us—sent to investigate the matter.
    The first, Wizard Bennet, was a tall, bony man with round spectacles and a gaunt face. He had thinning gray hair and a wispy, bookish air about him. I’d seen him around the Homestead once or twice, but didn’t know him very well. Dad, however, had a lot of good things to say about the man, which made me more willing to open up to him.
    The second council member was a stranger named Witch Cerrus. She was short and round with buggy eyes and a tiny nose. Her thick brown hair was pulled into a tight bun, and her sausage-like fingers were covered with ornate rings. She wore a smug, self-assured sneer on her wide face and waddled around like she owned the place.
    “You just let him go?” Cerrus asked as I swirled the scotch in my glass, then downed it. Unlike her counterpart, she hadn’t taken any notes. “You didn’t think to trap him with a spell or chase after him?”
    I bristled, but kept my voice calm. “I tried to trap him, but he was out of range.”
    “And you’d drained your Skill,” the Witch added with a sneer. It wasn’t a question.
    I clenched my jaw. “That too. I would have pursued him, but felt it my duty to wait for the authorities.”
    “Your duty ,” Cerrus hissed, “was to stop the monster. Or at the very least, prevent Simeon Fawkes from escaping.”
    “Easy now, Candace,” Dad replied with a slight edge to his voice. “Marcus is not to blame here.”
    Cerrus leaned forward and ticked off on her plump fingers.
    “First, he engaged an undead in an affluent, residential neighborhood and used a Normal weapon before a Council-approved banishing procedure.” She said the word “Normal” as if it was coated in salt and chalk. “Then he took a known criminal into the heart of temptation and even encouraged him to practice his evil.”
    “He didn’t do anything,” I said, but Cerrus ignored me.
    “Finally, your son here performed magic in front of Normals—”
    “Which has been allowed for over two decades,” Mom growled.
    “—and battled the undead in public, which led to the injury of at least four innocent bystanders. Were that not enough, he allowed both the abomination and the Necromancer to escape. Then he topped it all off by assaulting a uniformed guard.” She leaned back. “You ask me, this is every bit his fault.”
    “However,” Bennet interjected, catching the murderous fire in my mother’s eye, “we are not here to pass judgment. We’re here to collect data and report back to the Council. Nothing more.”
    “Fine,” Cerrus retorted, “but I have every confidence the inquiry board will agree with me.”
    I glared at the woman and wondered how someone so smug was able to stay on the Council. Apparently our standards were slipping.
    “What I don’t understand, Marcus,” Bennett said, changing topics quickly, “is why you took Simeon to the morgue in the first place. It seems that allowing a man with his past to practice any magic in that environment is asking for disaster.”
    It wasn’t an accusation, per se, but of all the charges Cerrus threw at me, it was the only one that appeared to bother the Wizard.
    “At the time it seemed logical.” Sitting in the study hours later, it still did. “Simeon was a Master Summoner in his day and a leading authority in Necromancy. Despite his past, he’s still considered an expert in the field. Who better to dig into the decayed mind of a reanimated corpse? I doubt many could. Besides, he said himself that his parole barred him from practicing Necromancy, not researching it.”
    “That’s an