The witch showed Isaac many thing that day, things he hadn’t ever thought existed, and thanks to his memory, he retained them all. Once the day grew dim, and Isaac’s brain was filled to the brim with all kinds of new things, she sent him up, but not before giving him his own set of keys. One for the cellar door, one for the archive door, and the last for the room where she kept her herbs and medicines.

When the next day arrived, Isaac went straight to the cellar door. After all he learned the day before, he found a new place to explore other than the spacious woods beyond the village. Placing the key into the hole and trying a number of times to unlock it, the key finally clicked, and the door swung inwards. He carefully traversed the stairs, going deeper and deeper into the abyss, the torch fires behind him snuffing out as the ones before him breathed to life. He assumed it was magic, and feeling the resonation of the earth course through him, young Isaac continued on to the second door.

Despite the many chests and trinkets that’d been rummaged and looted by him the previous day, the great room looked almost exactly the same as it did when Isaac first saw it; like someone had come back late in the night and put everything back in its place.

In the center of the room stood the witch, and Isaac was sure she’d fooled him about the impossibility of seeing the future. Either that, or she just knew her son all too well. His curious nature would only grow more and more each time he looked at those keys.

“Aha. I knew that you’d be down, bright and early at that. Curiosity is what killed the cat, you know.”

“Well, good thing I’m no cat.” He responded cleverly. “So what are you going to teach me today, Mum?”

She paced about the room for a brief moment. “Well, I thought I’d tell you a bit about what it means to be a witch; and set your mind straight so that you don’t go believing all those silly wives tales!” She raised a finger in the air and stared hard at the boy. “For one, witches do not worship the Devil. As far as I know, there is no Devil. Don’t let the churches fill your head with lies and fallacies. They’ll be so quick to claim that their God despises my kind just as quick as yours. And you’d be surprised how easy it is for people to just eat it up. Blind idiots, the lot of them.” Noticing her negativity, she apologized. “I shouldn’t blame the people. Most spells a witch can cook up are nothing compared to the fear of God the church instills in them.” Isaac paid attention to the way she used the word church, or specifically, the church, as if she were speaking of one, singular establishment. Isaac had no ill will against religion and others beliefs; he just never gave it much thought as his mother never spoke about or exposed him to the subject.

“What do witches believe then?” He asked curiously.

“Hmm, well, most witches believe in the Sun, the Moon, and the gods of nature and Earth.”

“Gods of nature? Oh, is that why you know so much about herbs and plants?!”

She shook her head. “I don’t believe in gods at all. Nature doesn’t need to be sentient to be respected. I believe we’re the masters of our own will, and how we use what we’re given is up to us. That leads to another key rule in their belief that I agree with known as The Rede: if it harms no one, then do what ye’ will.”

Isaac thought about this rule carefully. What exactly did it limit, and what would be considered “harming”?

“While a lot of nasty witches out there throw this idea to the wind and do whatever they please without abandon, I like to live by those words. That’s why I choose to heal rather than to destroy. It’s been worthwhile thus far. . .considering.” She glanced wistfully at the burns wrapping around her hands. While she did this, Isaac’s mind grasped onto a single word over the others:

Destroy.

“Ah, mum,” he said innocently, “what did you mean by destroy?” She looked up, staring hard at the boy for a drawn out moment, as if searching for something deep within his eyes.

“It is just as you heard it; the use of magic to harm and destroy.” She paused, inhaling deeply and closing her eyes. “Do you feel that? The resonation in the air.” He nodded furiously. He’d felt it ever since stepping through the cellar door. “You won’t feel it outside thanks to the containment barrier I set. What you’re feeling through your body right now is the energy leaking over from the Necropolis to our world, this room being the closest point between the two plains.” He knew what he was feeling wasn’t normal. No, it came from a separate world altogether.

She continued. “The Necropolis is the fuel for all magical spells and rites; without it, magic would cease to exist altogether. Actually, using  the word magic to describe it isn’t correct. The art of bending and manipulating the energy from the Necropolis is known as necromancy.”

“But what does this have to do with magic - err- necromancy being destructive?”

“That leads right to my second point. The way this energy is drawn from the Necropolis to our world is through what’s known as a spell. Now, listen carefully. I don’t want you trying any of these. There’s another rule all witches abide by, one that is more of a law than a rule. It’s the simple saying: Anything you take will be repaid three fold. Most will simply assume this refers to karma, instead saying: Anything you do will return three fold. But for us witches, who practice necromancy know this all too well. For whatever energy you take from the Necropolis, three-fold of that energy will be taken from you.

“When a spell is cast, it requires an incantation spoken aloud, and it needs to be to the exact letter. If a single word is mispronounced, or an irregular pause occurs, or even if the reader stops chanting; it will result in an entirely unexpected spell, one that the caster may not have prepared for, and thus does not have the capacity to repay the Necropolis. What happens then is the utter obliteration of the caster. This is known as the Rule of Three.”

Even for Isaac, what his mother had told him was a lot to take in. Could saying simple words really end in the speaker’s untimely demise? It didn’t seem real, or at least, not something that could happen very easily. And because of that, he didn’t fear her words as much as he should have.

Once the day’s lesson ended, and he was sent up for the night, he couldn’t get his mind off what his mother had shown him. Along with her speech on the dangers of spell casting, she’d chosen to show him her special tomes. These weren’t like the others, however. While the massive collection she had were comprised of histories, occult accounts, and diary entries, the special books she had were archived separately, placed far from the others in a corner all to themselves. And these had much different contents than the others. She’d urged him that these books were forbidden, and that he mustn’t under any circumstances read from the books.

But as he lay in bed, the hum of that cellar still resonating through his bones, he just couldn’t contain his immense curiosity. Never had he snuck out past his curfew, and never had he ever deliberately gone against his mother's wishes. But never had he been so drawn  to something to the point he couldn’t stop thinking about it. So with light steps, he took his three keys in hand and made for his bedroom door. Hearing nothing on the other side, he assumed his mother had gone to bed, so with the utmost stealth, he stepped out into the hall and moved with the shadows towards the cellar door.

entire house itself was vibrating. He struggled to fit the key into the lock, but when he finally got it to click in place, he didn’t hesitate to burst through and into the room.

All the candles that’d been lit earlier in the day were now snuffed out, and the archive was covered in a blanket of darkness. Isaac had better than average sight in the dark, so it didn’t take his eyes too long to adjust before he was able to feel his way around. The room was seemingly the same as it’d been before, except for one striking difference. In the center of the circular room, where a cauldron used to be, sat an oval table. Tomes and volumes sat stacked and opened, and a chair stood pulled out, as if beckoning the boy to take a seat. Although his mother taught him to read at a young age, he never really utilized the craft; opting instead to explore the outdoors whenever he could. Now, he silently thanked her for teaching him, as he wasted no time diving into the pages, sucking up knowledge in droves.

He started with a book titled: Occurrences and Accounts of Summonings. The title itself sounded odd enough for Isaac to want to dive straight in. The book began with a brief series of dates; the earliest being 1600 and the latest being 1675. Isaac flipped to the first entry, a short little journal writing.

20 February, 1600

A group of Peruvian mages attempted to summon  a Selzarian demon yesterday. Resulted in a massive  combustion, most likely spewed from a gate in the Necropolis. All dead from what I can gather, but I’ll make sure to investigate more on the morrow.

Isaac flipped a couple of pages in, stopping at a random page and reading over it.

27 September, 1650

A coven of Greek witches along with a few vampires attempted to summon Her Bloody Majesty, but failed, resulting in their deaths and an eruption on an island off the coast of the mainland. I’ve been doing a lot of research on Her Bloody Majesty, not to mention my companion Felix has told me that his people worship this being as a goddess of sorts. The Proxy of The Maxim is also another name. From what he says, she isn’t a being that resides within the Necropolis. And the mere fact that vampires - who aren’t usually to privy with necromancy - attempted such a summoning. This could be something big. Could there be another Plain of Power other than the Necropolis?

“Vampires?” Isaac said aloud, without really meaning to. He’d remembered how his mother told him what he was two days before, and after that, giving him the bloodroot concoction. He thought hard about what she’d said then.

You need it, Isaac. Unless you want to start craving blood tomorrow.

Craving blood. What exactly did the witch mean when she said this? With that memory, Isaac tied it with the title of the being his mother had wrote about. Her Bloody Majesty. What connection did vampires have to blood? It all spun in the boy's head like a whirlpool, but he pushed it back as he flipped to more pages.

Unfortunately, the rest of the journal entries were in another language that he recognized as his mother's native tongue. A language she didn’t use too often in these lands. Sighing with disappointment, he closed the book and randomly picked out a new one titled: Diary of Lucena. A smile came to his lips. His mother's journal; bound in leather and stitched with thin red thread. He’d never really asked about his mother's childhood, and she hadn’t gone out of her way to share much, so you can bet he was eager to learn at his leisure, as snoopy as it may have seemed.

He read late into the night, and throwing sleep to the wind, he read the entire diary all the way through, stopping only when he reached a portion where the pages were charred black and torn. He went from book to book, skimming and glancing at some while thoroughly absorbing others.

It wasn’t until he heard footsteps above his head that he realized just how long he’d been down there, and panicking, he stumbled out of his chair and rushed to vacate the area. But from all that he read in that night, he knew that his mother was a lot more than she let on, and she’d most definitely already sensed him the moment she awoke. As he reached for the door knob at the top of the steps, it swung open like he’d used the force. He stared into the face of the witch - Lucena, who seemed more confused than angry with him. He swallowed, his eyes bulging and arm still outstretched.

“Mum, I’m sorry I disobeyed you! But I just wanted to read some of your books!” He broke down before she had time to react. She blinked for a few seconds, looking past him then behind her.

“Isaac I--”

“I know you must think me a bad son,” He began again, “but I just wanted a little peak. I didn’t mean to--”

She knelt down and cupped the boys face in her hands, her expression as soft as her touch. “Isaac, I’d never think you a bad son. As a matter of fact, I’m proud of you!” His expression glowed like a lightbulb at that. “And another thing; you never disobeyed me at all.”

“B-but I snuck out past curfew.”

“And so did I when I was your age, snuck right down to my mums archives, I did! Once she brought me down for my first time, I couldn’t help but go on my own.” She laughed heartedly, “And I never told you that you weren’t allowed to leave your room during the night! Where'd you ever get such a silly idea?”

“You told me that the boogeyman would drag me off if I wandered around at night!”

“That was to keep you from wandering around outside.” She laughed harder, all the while Isaac went slack-jawed and pale faced.

“So. . .I didn’t do anything wrong?”

“Of course not! I’m happy you're showing an interest in the craft; and not to mention your honesty. For most, the influence of necromancy and knowledge can turn us into liars.” A smile came to Isaac’s face as he realized all along he’d actually done the right thing, as if it were a secret test he’d past. “As long as you didn’t read the books I pointed out, it’s alright.” And immediately, his thoughts went to the books. He’d heeded his mother's words and didn’t so much as glance at the forbidden shelf, but now that he’d grown an avidity for reading, he couldn’t help but wonder what they might contain.

He wanted to spend another day down there with those books, but his mother had other plans. “Hey, how old are you going to be this year?” She said jokingly.

“Eleven! Come October!”

“You're getting to be a young man, and soon I’m afraid, you’ll succumb to your natural desires. The bloodroot is only a temporary solution, and even that will only nullify your body's hunger for blood.”

“Hunger for blood?” He squeaked out.

“Yes, my son. As abhorrent as the idea sounds; your kind must feast on blood and blood alone - but only after coming of age.”

“I-I don’t understand. . .I couldn’t find much on vampires in the archives.”

“That’s fine.” she said, stroking his curly red hair, “Naturally, being a witch, I’m not the best source of knowledge on your kind. No, what we need aren’t books - but a vampire itself - or should I say - themselves.” Isaac’s ears perked up now and Lucena grinned. “I’ve planned it in advanced. I have a friend, lives down in Plymouth - a day's trek from here. What’s say the both of us pay them a little visit? Explore a bit?” The little boys heart was fixing to burst with excitement. Even though he’d recently grown a fondness for reading, he liked nothing more than exploring the country, seeing what was out there. Now, he’d get to go out farther than he’d ever had