Alex, a young necromancer, discovers that his parents, the headmasters of his academy, are not the shining pillars of society he thought they were. He runs away from home to avoid his parents, who will keep their secrets by any means necessary. Where he meets Bobart, who assists him in escaping from his parents and seeking out his aunt. The two discover she’s missing but find a small jade that Alex’s aunt left for him, as she explains in a note.  The pair decide to leave Alex’s home island. He quickly finds that the world beyond home is not like he’s been taught, or could ever imagine, and that his parents’ influence extends further than he ever thought possible. He discovers that his parents are working to summon a god of destruction, who happens to be contained in the gem Alex received from his aunt. With the help of Bobart and other friends along the way, they attempt to either destroy or harness the power of the gem. They eventually figure out that it is possible to speak to the Jade Bound God. The god tells them he doesn’t wish to harm anyone by being summoned. And promises to aid them by allowing some of its power to seep out helping Alex. Using the power within the Jade, Alex and company take down the academy that Alex’s parents ran their web of evil from, and Alex takes over, teaching a new generation of necromancers to wield their powers for good. 

It really was a terrible day. I lost my aunt and discovered that my parents were the magical equivalent of axe murderers 

I should start at the beginning... 

My name is Alex Mor, and I am a necromancer. 

It was a dark night, moonless, but no, it wasn’t storming, because I am NOT a literary cliche. The pointed cedar trees blotted out what little starlight was left. I had just discovered that my parents, who I had thought were the esteemed heads of the academy I attended, didn’t exactly source the cadavers needed for the practice ethically. But I’ll spare you the details. 

Given the ability of my parents and most other staff at the academy to silence me, I only had a chance if I ran. 

The trees whipped by me; I had little regard for what direction I was going or how I was going to survive once I got there. I listened carefully, actively avoiding any signs of life, whether it was man or beast: it would not do well to encounter them. 

I checked behind me, looking for anyone who could be trailing behind. I felt the ground fall out from under me. I tumbled once, twice, and then hit the ground. A sharp pain shot through my skull, then everything went dark. 

My eyes drifted open, bright green, with the first few reds of fall, too bright for my still-aching skull. 

I sat up. Trees. Gods I hate the outdoors. I dusted myself off, steadying myself on the trunk of a rare oak. I pulled myself up and began to scan my surroundings, needles and leaves as far as the eye can see.  

Where to go. There were no visible landmarks on the horizon, so all I had was a vague idea of where North, East, South, and West were. 

I decided to head west, to a seaside village. My aunt, who lived there, practiced illusion, not necromancy, so she seemed safe. 

My flimsy bones were not made for walking, so when I say an hour of travel, I can make it about a mile, if I’m lucky. It was just past midday when I began to hear laughter drifting over the treeline. I dropped down, being as stealthy as possible, moving just close enough to see the source. 

In a clearing, three magicians practiced their magic, the power of the elements. They seemed not to be from around here, so they were less likely to be in league with my parents. 

Cautiously, I straightened myself up, picked a few leaves from my hair, pretending to have been walking through the woods rather than spying from the bushes. With a deep breath, I gathered my nerve and stepped out into the clearing. 

“Hello, young traveler,” said one with a robe of emerald green and her pointed hat topped with an actual emerald. She and her compatriots sat around a roaring flame fueled from the palm of one with a robe and hat of ruby. 

“Hello, friends!” I smiled in reply. 

“You seem a little young to be wandering these woods by yourself. Are you alright?” said the one I had mentally dubbed Sapphire for the color of her cloak.  

“I’m fourteen, old enough, and I was given permission to visit my aunt in the town of Crimson Port,” was only half a lie. 

“Well, small problem,” said ‘Ruby’ with a wry grin. “The town is that way,” he pointed in the opposite direction I had come from. 

“Ah-” As you have probably gleaned, my skill set mostly comprises three things, journaling (like now), necromancy, and a love of reading. Regrettably, there is no tome that I have discovered which makes it easier to navigate through the woods. 

“You’re sure you’re not lost?” ‘Emerald’ asked. 

“My friends, we should probably introduce ourselves,” said ‘Sapphire’. She straightened to her full height, startling me for a moment as I realized her cloak had hidden how hunched over she was. She offered her hand, “I am called Rain, the one in green is Pine, and the one in red is called Bobart.” 

Greetings coursed from around the fire as I shook her hand. 

“The name’s Alex-” I caught myself before saying my last name, “Well, thank you for the company, I best be on my way,” I turned to leave. 

“Wrong way!” I turned to find Bobart had shouted from behind me. 

I turned on my heel and began walking in a new direction. 

“Still the wrong way,” he called again, chuckling slightly this time. “Perhaps I’d better come with you, make sure you find your way.” 

I looked him up and down cautiously. Even though he looked the part of a mage, a glamour spell could be bought for cheap and make anyone a convincing actor. Despite my hesitancy, I realized that he would have likely attacked me by now if he were in league with my parents, and even if he were, I had better odds against him than me versus three people. 

“Alright...” I said, attempting to hide the apprehension in my voice. “Lead the way.” 

Bobart jauntily set off down the path, after a beat turning back to his companions, “Oh, right! Just complete the mission without me.” The other two waved as they departed in the opposite direction. 

I hurried after him, stumbling over my aching feet. 

After many, many miles of Bobart slowing down to let me catch up and then getting another hundred feet ahead, and so on, I was almost a hundred percent confident that my feet had worn away into stubs in my socks. Every time I tried to convince the mad mage to stop, he insisted that we travel another “few feet.”  

His endurance still seemed to be abundant even after nearly a full day of walking. Even worse, he did not seem bored with the journey and laughed and hummed to himself as we traveled. He would pause every couple of feet to look at some random bug or plant, which, looking back, is probably the only reason he did not leave me in the dust. 

Eventually, my fatigue peaked at the top of a hill, and I stumbled, tumbling and for the second time in as many days smashed my head into a patch of forest floor. Slowly, I faded to unconsciousness. 

In the morning, the sun stabbed my eyes again. As the warmth of a fire seeped into me, my nose filled with an aroma of cheese and meat. I stretched and groaned. 

“Oh, hello Alex!” Bobart was way too cheerful for just waking up, “I made breakfast!” 
I pulled whatever blanket he must’ve put over me during the night over my face to fall back asleep, but hunger won out, and I sat up to see what Bobart had made. 

Bobart had a skillet over the fire dancing in the breeze, where some strips of meat were frying: next to it was a bowl of yellow-ish goop with some cheese shredded over the top. 

 As I took in my surroundings, I could see that we had ended up at the bottom of the hill, where Bobart had set up camp. The trees were beginning to thin here and the hills in the distance became shorter.  

“What is this stuff?” I asked. 

“Eggs! This island is lucky enough to have a ton of wild chickens.” 

“You eat eggs?” 

“Yeah, it’s not local cuisine, a lot more common where I come from.” 

I poked at the yellow blob, “So... how do I eat it?” 

Bobart quickly shook a dash of salt and pepper on it and handed me a travel spork. “Try it.” 

I stabbed a small portion off the large blob and eyed it nervously before taking a bite. 

The flavor of the cheese, the egg, and the seasonings danced on my tongue, “This is delicious!” 

He chuckled, “I’m glad you like it.” 

We sat there chatting for a while, and it was nice to forget my worries for a bit. But soon we were back on the road, where it was less nice to forget about my worries, because it was fast replaced by a horrible aching in my feet. 

“Bobart, for the love of all things good, can we please take a rest?!” I called out, dragging my feet across the densely packed roots, which had finally thinned enough to no longer be a tripping hazard. 

“Keep up, Al!” Bobart laughed, still at least a hundred feet ahead, “You want to make it to your aunt’s tomorrow or next week, slowpoke?” 

I grumbled that I hated being called that, but continued walking. 

“Tell you what, let’s talk a bit while we walk. Maybe it’ll help,” he said, smiling over at me as he slowed to my pace. 

“About what?”  

“Oh, I don’t know...” He gestured widely to the beautiful scenery surrounding us, “The gorgeous day we’re having!”  

“It’s just the woods.” 

“Yeah, we don’t get this where I’m from, beautiful days where the sun drifts through leaves. What little forest we have is covered by rain.” 

“I don’t think I know how to talk about something I find so mundane.” 

“Well, I don’t know, kid,” he said. Pushing his hands through his auburn hair, “I’m putting out ideas and you’re choppin’ ‘em down, how about... necromancy?”  

“What about it?” 

“Well, first, do you have The Gift?” 

I reached out through magic, searching for a relatively fresh corpse. I found a small amount of chipmunk bones left in a vulture's nest. I rearranged the bones back into what I thought was the right configuration. I was better with human anatomy, so what I made was essentially more like a puppet I could magically control, rather than any sort of proper undead. 

“You see that chipmunk there?” I said, pointing to a shady branch where I carefully had the chipmunk scamper out. I balanced it on the edge of the branch, trying hard not to let it fall. 

“Yes?” 

“Very much dead,” I allowed my concentration to drop, the chipmunk falling from the tree. 

Bobart jumped back, “Well, that is... certainly something...” he adjusted his hat, and I watched with bemusement as he took a minute to regain his composure. “I suppose that answers whether you’re trained or not. For my studies, would you care to tell me how it feels to perform magic?”  

“Hmm...” I hadn’t ever really had to consider what doing magic felt like: “It’s sort of like... stretching out, like an extension of me, and putting a little bit of magic into something that’s broken and making it whole again.” 

“Fascinating,” the twittering of birds mixed with the scratching of Bobart’s pen in the small moleskin he carried with him. 

“Reanimation, my specialty, isn’t the only kind. There’s also healing, and forms of influence.” 

“You know an awful lot about all of this. Where did you train?” 

I clammed up. I had forgotten to stay cautious for a moment, “Oh. You know, just trained with my parents.” I silently cursed myself for being so cavalier. 

“Hmm,” I felt my companion’s eyes bore into me. 

The journey continued for another day or two, Bobart seemingly fascinated by the mundane in the woods, from the average chipmunk to an odd-looking species of mushroom, all ended up recorded in his moleskin. 

“Why do you write all this down?” I asked in passing, gesturing all around us. 

“Well, Alex...” Bobart seemed to look straight through the trees in front of him, “It was my job once upon a time.” 

“What did you do?” 

“I wrote books, I used to love drawing creatures of distant lands, and it let me travel.” 

“What happened? Why’d you stop?” 

He seemed to come back from wherever or perhaps more accurately, whenever he had gone, “A story for another time.”  

Any attempt to glean more, he quickly shut down, I realized I wasn't the only one guarding secrets. 

Finally, the morning came when the town was only a few more minutes away, and I found myself invigorated by the prospect of being able to drop my guard, being at least partially defended from the eyes I could still feel watching from the woods. I knew that my aunt's illusions would hide her place from the eyes of her sister, after all that is why we stopped visiting. Unlike my parents, my aunt had promised I’d always be welcomed here, so I was confident I could still find her. 

We started up a hill, and something became obviously... off. 

The sound of a town is distinct, each with a slight variance from the typical sounds of the region. But all towns do share one thing: noise. 

That’s what felt off; it was silent. 

People talking, hundreds of people, make at least some noise, and a fishing village should have had the sounds of a dock, bells, and ships unloading. But all of this was gone, and my dread began to rise. 

“Is your aunt's town always like this?” Bobart asked. 

“No...” I replied as we began to walk down the main street 

The shutters on the townhomes were all open, the shop signs all welcoming us in. We walked past what I remembered to be the blacksmith, where there were now cold ashes, as though they had just left the fire to burn out.  

“People can’t just disappear, can they?” Bobart’s voice had that tinge of pity from someone who’s about to give you bad news. 

Tears began to sting at the corners of my eyes, a spiral of thought and emotion consuming every motion. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t breathe. 

I began to run back, back to the place I last remembered feeling safe, at my aunt's house. It looked as I remembered, the coat of blue paint slightly more faded than all those years ago, but the same offenses surrounded the house, no noise, save for the soft sound of candles burning. 

 “Aunt Maya?!” I shouted as I ran through the door. There was no response. No matter how long I waited. The lack of sound deafened me. I couldn’t think; I held my breath with the rest of the world as though waiting for everyone to return.  

Where is she I screamed internally. 

I tore through the rooms 

She can’t be gone. 

In a blur I hastily tore open every door, screaming her name. 

“Aunt!? Aunt MAYA!?” She can’t be gone! 

She wasn’t anywhere. 

Why? 

I collapsed on the ground as Bobart came in through the doors, sweaty and panting. 

“Alex.” 

I realized I was crying. 

Bobart wrapped his arms around me, and we sat like that for a while. And for a second it was quiet. The storm of thought and fear and sadness stilled for just a moment. 

Then reality hit me: I had lost my parents, my home, everything and everyone I had ever known, and my aunt, the last haven I could think of.