Chapter 72 - Necromancy, part 2

Viktor spread his hands over his body, palms down, trembling. It wasn't Herwin Reiss, he told himself, it wasn't anymore.

As the vital spark disappeared from him, the corpse was nothing more than an empty vessel, an empty man. Inside his mind he saw the words he had to speak form into letters of fire, and he began to speak the words required for the spell. Erich's wavering voice joined hers and his accomplice began to recite the words whose pronunciation Viktor had spent long hours teaching her.

The two students did not know what the words meant, but the power of the words could not be denied. The darkness of the warehouse took on a body. The air they breathed thickened, like the suffocating river mists that drowned the streets of the half-dead city, and it entered their lungs like mud.

The alchemical stench of the preserved body was increased by the intense odor of plant decay, the ferrous aroma of spilled blood, and th