Chapter 32: Chapter 32. A Different Necrotize
Necrotize finally finished his meal. He glanced to either side and found that both Lyra and Elizabeth were nearly done with their own. Lyra still had her head slightly lowered, for reasons of her own. Elizabeth was eating with the distracted look of someone deep in thought.
He didn’t reach for either of their thoughts. Not because he couldn’t, but because he didn’t want to. He never kept his omniscience switched on by default, and even when he did turn it on, he kept its range deliberately small. Expanding it even slightly meant the inner thoughts of millions upon millions of sentient beings would flood in at once, an unbroken chorus of minds he had no interest in hearing. He found the sensation genuinely unpleasant.
So he only turned it on when something told him it might be worth listening to. Right now, nothing did. So he didn’t.
When he saw that all three bowls were empty, he snapped his fingers, and three fresh bowls of ice cream appeared in front of them.
Lyra brightened immediately at the sight of hers. Elizabeth, on the other hand, looked faintly startled. Catching the confusion on her face, Lyra leaned in to explain.
"Nothing to worry about, Princess. This is called ice cream, a kind of dessert Necrotize brought from another world. We don’t have anything like it here yet. But I can tell you with complete confidence, it’s extremely good."
Elizabeth looked down at the strange, otherworldly dessert in front of her with careful attention. And then something caught in her mind, and she turned to Lyra with sudden alarm.
Wait. Did she just say his name? Directly? She’s going to be killed. Right now. In front of me.
She glanced rapidly between the two of them, bracing for something.
Nothing happened.
Necrotize didn’t react at all, no anger, no correction, nothing. He simply sat there, eating his ice cream with the same calm he’d had all along.
Elizabeth’s curiosity got the better of her restraint.
"Did you just call Lord Necrotize by his name? Directly?"
Lyra, mid-spoonful, looked up, startled by the question but not by its substance. She answered simply.
"Yes. Lord Necrotize asked me to call him that."
Elizabeth stared at her for a long moment, mouth slightly open. Then she turned toward Necrotize.
"Is that true? You gave her permission to address you directly by name?"
"Yes."
One word. No elaboration.
"But why?" Elizabeth pressed, something close to genuine bewilderment in her voice now. "You’re a god. Not just a god, an Ancient Origin, a being that stands above gods entirely. Why would you grant a mortal the right to call you by name, without titles."
Necrotize set his spoon down and looked at her properly.
He saw it clearly on her face, denial, layered over frustration. The expression of someone actively refusing to accept something that had already, undeniably, happened in front of her.
He gave her the answer plainly.
"She’s my friend. There are no titles between friends."
Simple. Direct. And it rearranged everything Elizabeth thought she understood.
She had no response to it. There was nothing to say. Every image of Necrotize she had built over years of study, careful, deliberate, assembled from records and accounts and warnings, had just been quietly dismantled in the space of half an hour by the man sitting across from her, eating dessert.
The person she had studied and the person sitting in front of her were not the same person at all.
Elizabeth let out a long breath, working to recalibrate. Then she turned her attention to the cold dessert in front of her. She took the first spoonful.
Her eyes widened immediately.
The cold, the sweetness, the strange unfamiliar texture, it cut straight through the frustration she’d been carrying, dissolving it without effort.
What...What is this. It’s incredible.
Before she fully registered what was happening, her bowl was empty.
Lyra looked at her and smiled, a small, knowing smile, remembering her own morning. Elizabeth flushed slightly, embarrassed at her own lack of composure. A princess, losing herself entirely to a bowl of ice cream within seconds.
Necrotize noticed and smiled as well. He snapped his fingers, and her bowl refilled.
"You two have a lot in common, it seems," he said. "Lyra did exactly the same thing this morning."
Now it was Lyra’s turn to blush.
Elizabeth watched the easy back-and-forth between them and found herself smiling too, despite herself.
Maybe I shouldn’t believe everything written in those books.
She began eating more slowly this time. And then she heard Necrotize speak again.
"Elizabeth. If you’d like, you’re welcome to join us in the Magic Department garden this afternoon. Something interesting is going to happen there." He paused. "If you’d rather not come, that’s fine too. I won’t push you."
Elizabeth answered without hesitation.
"I’ll be there."
***
At the table where the three of them sat talking, no one in the surrounding cafeteria dared to listen in. Even those seated nearby kept their attention pointedly elsewhere, not out of disinterest, but because none of them had the nerve to.
Almost no one.
One person had heard the entire conversation, start to finish.
Arisa Varren.
A strange smile crossed her face as the last of it settled in her mind.
Interesting.
***
Once lunch ended, everyone dispersed to their respective classes. Necrotize made his way to the Magic Department again, modern magic still needed working through. The classes that followed went much as the morning had. More than half of it sailed clean over his head. Natasha sat beside him as before, her thoughts running their usual strange, looping course. Carlos sat nearby, entirely unbothered by any of it, he had no time to spare on who was sitting where. His attention belonged fully to the lesson and nothing else.
Two rows behind, Arisa spent the entire class with her eyes fixed on Necrotize.
He noticed, of course. But he said nothing about it. The right moment for that hadn’t arrived yet. Something in him, a quiet, familiar instinct, told him this would turn into something worth watching eventually. And he had no intention of cutting that short before it had the chance to become interesting. So he let it be.
***
The afternoon classes ended.
Necrotize and Lyra made their way toward the Magic Department garden. As they reached the entrance, they found someone already standing there, waiting.
Elizabeth.
Necrotize smiled when he saw her.
"So you came."
"Yes," Elizabeth replied simply.
"Alright then." He gestured loosely toward the garden. "Let’s go in."
He led the way, hands in his pockets as always, stepping through the entrance first. The two of them followed close behind him into the garden.
