Chapter Text
It was safe to say that the last few weeks had been the worst of Tommy’s life.
It began with an incident that Tommy would rather not think about, which coincidentally also led to him discovering he apparently had a knack for necromancy. This would have be fine, save the fact that necromancy was very, very illegal, and necromancers were hunted ruthlessly in this kingdom and almost all of the surrounding ones. The reason? Necromancy involved the manipulation of life forces, and frequently the lives of people or animals would be stolen to bring others back from the dead or to manipulate the dead themselves. Lifeforce was needed to alter lifeforce. Even knowing nothing about necromancy, Tommy knew that. He'd heard the horror stories whispered plenty of times.
The next few weeks weren’t too godawful. Still, Tommy didn’t think he’d ever been so stressed and paranoid for so long—and he’d grown up on the streets. Maybe it was because his life was constantly at risk. Maybe it was because he found himself suddenly and painfully alone again, or at least, alone in the ways that mattered. Ghosts were fine, but they weren’t people. They couldn’t interact with or hug you, and were often shells of themselves, and needed a constant supply of energy that Tommy simply couldn’t keep up with when it wasn’t important.
That was an aspect of necromancy Tommy got to find out on the job, along with literally everything else he’d figured out along the way. He had no books on death magic, no mentor, and no prior encounters or experience.
Considering that, Tommy thought that he was doing pretty damn well for himself as he kept figuring things out based on his own reasoning skills and a fuckton of dumb luck.
He did try to find other ways to learn. He’d found the occasional dead necromancer ghost who might’ve been willing to teach him. Might have, except every fucking time Tommy mentioned using plant life as a fuel source, the centuries old specters lost their damn minds! Oh no, how unheard of and scandalous it was to use the lives of plants in the place of the lives of people. Oh boo hoo. Seriously. There was no fucking way that Tommy was the first person to figure this out, especially considering that a few weeks ago he didn’t even know he could do necromancy.
To make matters worse, Tommy was incapable of doing necromancy any other way. Not that he dared to turn people’s lives into fuel for his magic, but he did try using some rats and such. Didn’t work. He couldn’t manipulate or drain their souls at all. The ghosts around him refused to believe him about that, claiming there was no earthly way to use plants. You needed the lives of the living. You needed souls. Plants apparently did not have souls.
Suffice to say the ghosts of necromancers were of no help.
That left Tommy to keep bullshitting his way through the dark arts, hoping that maybe at some point he could learn from someone who was actually alive who took him seriously.
At least bullshitting worked.
Until it didn’t.
Tommy shifted again, when he felt pinpricks work their way up his legs and hands, threatening to steal away their feeling, as if the cold wasn’t doing that already. The shackles jingled at his movement, the only noise in the piercingly quiet cell. It was made of slick, wet stones that leached the heat from his body, having no windows and only a metal door as an exit.
Yeah, Tommy was imprisoned. Hence this completing the shittiest weeks of his life.
Worse, this wasn’t even a normal imprisonment! The fucks who were keeping him locked up here were goddamn cultists!
Sure, it was probably better than being dead, but Tommy was starved and thirsty and achingly lonely without his ghosts, and he had no idea how many days or weeks had passed. He just knew he didn’t spend a single second not regretting all the decisions that led him here.
He’d been found out by a town that he was trying to restock supplies at. Apparently, having a few human skulls safely secured in your bag was not socially acceptable, although to be fair that person should not have been trying to pickpocket Tommy in the first place. Arguably, they were the real criminal here.
One chase, failed escape, subsequent capture later, and Tommy thought he was dead. They’d probably execute him, maybe burn him at the stake, as seemed to be the standard punishment for necromancy. He assumed that was why he was gagged, tied up, and blindfolded for most of the trip, before being shoved in a cart. Had assumed, except sort of faltered on that assumption when it was clear they’d been travelling for days. No execution site should take that long to get to.
Maybe it just felt longer, since the enchanted metal band they put around one of his wrists cut off his magic, making the world bleakly empty and quiet around him without plant life thrumming through his periphery and the occasional dead specter knocking at his senses.
Yeah, it turned out that the fucks who caught him were more interested in making money than in delivering divine justice. The next thing Tommy knew, he was suddenly being hauled from the cart, unblindfolded with the bag yanked from his head, and shoved over to a bunch of hooded figures, who were shilling out payment to the guys who captured him. He’d been sold to an actual cult. A cult that had need of a necromancer, to raise their dead god.
Arguably, a god shouldn’t be able to die in the first place, but thankfully Tommy was still gagged and didn’t run his mouth. That didn’t mean the transaction went any smoother.
When Tommy had been captured, he’d pleaded that he was innocent to harming lives. He used plants. Only plants. He'd never killed anyone. Apparently, the hunters decided this was a high selling point, and informed the cultists that they were in possession of the only known plant-using necromancer.
To zero surprise, the cultists were less than enthused.
Apparently, blood needed to be spilled in order to raise a god of blood. They wanted lives to be bled for their patron, not fucking plants. They would never insult their lord so.
The hunters blatantly informed them that necromancers were rare, and the chance of them getting another one before their day of reckoning was slim to none.
The cultists grumbled that they’d make due with Tommy.
After that, Tommy was relocated to their base, which turned out to be some sort of creepy labyrinthine structure carved within a mountain, from what Tommy could glance at. There were no windows, and from the moment Tommy was forcefully shoved inside, he never saw sunlight again. It was just creepy architecture and deep crimson tapestries displaying gruesome scenes of slaughter, and red and black robed cultists moved freely by the dozens, if not hundreds. Between them wove slaves, either chained and laden with gold jewelry, or sometimes chained and bleeding on the walls. Most were either crying or on the brink of crying. Tommy could relate.
He was shoved into a small square cell and left there. They fed him, but not a lot. Days went by, or at least Tommy assumed they did, although the meager meals followed no real pattern. The food, if it could be called that, was usually always meat of some kind—flesh or organs—and was soaked and seasoned with blood, that Tommy overheard was supposed to help ‘purify’ him before his resurrected their god. Gross. Although sometimes they gave him other stuff to vary his diet slightly, probably so he didn’t get scurvy and die before their god to be alive again.
That was actually the bigger problem: Tommy had no idea how to resurrect a god.
He was trying to sort it out, knowing that if he didn’t do it, then the cultists very much had no reason to keep his ass alive, especially when he’d seen what they did to their other prisoners. He hoped it might sort of be like resurrecting a person, except Tommy also didn’t know how to do that either. Backup plan was to just sort of wing it, because Tommy hadn’t known how to do any of the other bits of necromancy either, but he’d managed to figure it out rather quickly. Usually something just sort of called to him or felt right, so hopefully this would be the same.
The cultists were also trying to prep him to raise their god. Except they were even less helpful. Mostly it was the same dude, who Tommy was coming to think might have been one of their leaders. His robes were more intricate, with bright red and gold patterns sewn into the sleeves and hood, and gold jewelry decorating his person. He kept trying to get Tommy to do necromancy with other prisoners or rats as a fuel source, temporarily removing the band that suppressed Tommy’s magic. Kept getting frustrated when Tommy couldn’t. They did at least test him with plants, so they knew he was a necromancer, just not one suitable for their god or whatever.
No amount of hits or kicks or bruises changed anything. Tommy was only able to use plants as fuel. At some point, even the dickhead cult leader was forced to acknowledge this.
That had been a few ‘days’ ago, and by this point Tommy thought he might have been in this cell for actual weeks, although he could never be sure. The cold was near unbearable. The constant stench of blood even more so.
He wanted things to change.
He regretted when they did.
They breached his cell with no warning. Suddenly the metal door was slamming open, and Dickhead Supreme was directing cultists to latch onto Tommy, unbinding him from the wall and hauling him to his feet. Tommy had been ungagged during his stay in the cell, and this time, as all others, he decided to make it everyone else’s problem, and quicker than normal, got a slap to his face for his efforts. After that, rattled by the anger in the leader’s eyes, Tommy went along with things more quietly. He already knew how far they were willing to go to hurt him, and for once, he hesitated to push them to do it.
He didn’t know what was going on, not until in the frenzied chatter around him, someone let it slip. Today was a true blood moon. It was the day of the world’s reckoning. The day their god rose to walk the earth again for the first time in a hundred years.
Tommy thought their god sounded pretentious, but kept that to himself.
He was dragged to some sort of bathing room, filled with tubs that either had clear water, or water that was stained disturbingly red and was way too thick to be water, but Tommy tried not to think about that. For the first time in weeks, he was cleaned (using the clear tubs thank fuck), although it was by others and entirely against his will as he thrashed, earning himself more bruises. Unknown hands scraped his skin raw, then dragged him out, forcing him to his knees as he was dried before being approached by another cultist with gold adornments.
They held a wooden bowl of probably blood and a paintbrush. Tommy didn’t fucking like that at all either, and at one point managed to bite the hand that painted him, but he was quickly subdued, held so he couldn’t even struggle, the markings painted on his skin with minimal smudging.
He was restrained as the blood dried, and Tommy had no idea what the symbols meant. Some sort of ancient language sprawled up his legs and arms and chest, up to his neck, all done in a combination of blood and ink. Tommy didn’t know if it was actual magic or complete bullshit, but they itched against his skin.
Next, they fucking dolled him up. That was the only way Tommy could describe it. He was forced into nice clothes, almost as fine as the dickhead’s had been. Gold trimmed and fitted, dyed different shades of deep reds. Then he was given jewelry, and by that, Tommy meant a fuckton of jewelry. Gold bracelets that went up his arm to his shoulders, and ones that adorned his ankles. Necklaces that weighed his head down so he could scarcely stop bowing. Piercings to his ears that were not pierced before and made Tommy hiss in pain.
Finally, the lead cultist grinned at him smugly, and presented the final piece of jewelry. A solid gold band carved with runes that glowed faintly. A fucking collar. Tommy hissed and writhed, but it was still placed around him, ice cold and tight to his throat. It latched, and Tommy felt the brief sting of foreign magic, and he went to demand what they thought they were doing to him except- Nothing. There was nothing that came out of Tommy’s mouth, and the dickhead had the audacity to laugh at his face.
“You have a mouth, Totem,” the dickhead sneared. “You are to be a gift for our god, and as such, he can have nothing less than perfection. Without your voice, you will make an ideal servant for him.”
Alright. Alright all of this had been bad from the moment that Tommy had used necromancy for the first time, but this was starting to top the bad news cake. Tommy couldn’t speak. He couldn’t fucking speak anymore, because of whatever stupid enchanted golden collar had been put on him, and now apparently he was to be handed over to their god as a possession, an item, a thing.
Tommy was not having a good time.
He continued to not have a good time, as they hauled him to his feet, strapped a boar skull mask to his face, and covered him with a deep red hooded robe.
This place was the worst. Tommy hated all of it, right down to the freaky dark hallways, the constant blood smell, and the gorey illustrations on the wall. As it turned out, there was a new room that Tommy hated more than all the others:
The Altar of the Blood God.
The room was the largest by far, massive in its length. It was rectangular, with fanciful pillars lining it, and tapestries and lengths of red fabric adorning it. Distantly, Tommy realized that there were a lot of plants added to the decor, mostly bushels of red flowers, clustered at what looked to be the front of the room, where a raised dias was. It was damn apparent that they hadn’t been able to find another necromancer in time.
Tommy could hardly spare the attention for that victory, because occupying most of the room was blood. Just… blood. It was a giant swimming pool of blood. That was the only way Tommy knew how to describe it. It ran the full length of the room, and held no indication of how deep it was. It was outlined in more pillars, except each of these pillars had a person strapped to it. Some were openly writhing and weeping, from where their arms were chained about their heads with their torsos sunk into the blood pool. Others were unnervingly still. Cultists stood beside each, hands on shining metal blades. Several dozen sacrifices. Tommy wondered where he sat in this gruesome food chain.
The smell of blood was overpowering as he was dragged onto the dias, hands free for once, but he didn’t know how to use them. Before him stretched the monolithic room and the pool of blood. Before him stretched dozens of cultists eagerly looking to their leader, who had his hand curled tightly in Tommy’s hair. Before him stretched dozens of victims, suspended in blood or simply acting as servants positioned around the room, heads bowed and quivering.
Faintly, Tommy was aware that the sky was on display for the first time. A circular hole in the ceiling allowed blood-red moonlight to pour down thickly, right over the center of the pool, where four chains dipped in, suspending some sort of hidden platform.
He almost didn’t notice when the band on his wrist that suppressed his magic was removed, allowing the thrumming life of plants to reach him. He was a little preoccupied.
That part where Tommy said he wasn’t sure how deep the blood was? Yeah, that was a fucking lie.
Tommy felt it now, as death flooded back into his senses. There were bones, maybe hundreds of them, lining what was probably the bottom of the pool, which was far too deep. Tommy could sort of feel the hum of the souls connected to them, and suffice to say he never had to recognize souls in agony before, but he kind of did now.
There was a set of bones separated from the rest, lying in formation on the submerged platform, unseen by everyone else but sensed by Tommy. They were lying in a perfect skeleton, and while the other bones were weak brushes against his senses, these ones resounded clearly, awake and alive, the soul bound to them strong.
Tommy was going to take a wild guess and say that those were the bones of the god he should be resurrecting.
Funny, then, that the god’s bones felt no different than human bones.
He didn’t mention that, even though he couldn’t in the first place. Tommy was forced to his knees, head held up by the hand in his hair, and from behind him the cult leader began some sort of grand speech. Something about their patron, about what war and ruination he’d bring upon the world, about how great he was, how he never died (despite currently being dead), how he’d lead them all to a future soaked in blood and victory.
Tommy honestly couldn’t pay attention to most of it. All he could sense was that skeleton beneath the blood, the hundred more below it, and the light, familiar energy of the plants in the room, the first plants he’d been around since he’d been taken underground. The more he listened to it all swirl around the room, the more Tommy sort of understood, sort of realized how he could nudge the plant life towards that skeleton. How all the puzzle pieces probably fit together.
Tommy had been bullshitting his way through necromancy so far, why not continue that trend?
When the leader finished up his grand speech, declared the start of the raising of their god, and gave a hissed order into Tommy’s ear to start with an added knife to the back of his neck for enthusiasm, Tommy decided, fuck it, what’s the worst that can happen?
He was intimately aware of the blade pressing in and his lack of other options, so he sucked in a breath, and pulled. It was a familiar feeling, the way the lives of the plants bent to him. Across the room the decor began to wilt and blacken, dying so that their life could become something else.
Lifeforce changes lifeforce.
Tommy pulled in that energy, and then pushed it towards the submerged skeleton.
Bones weren’t enough to sustain a soul, Tommy realized quickly, when a bone twitched not at the response of its own soul, but at the response of Tommy’s magic. He could summon a skeleton, but a skeleton was not their god. Their god, human or not, needed a vessel.
Tommy somehow jerry rigged one.
He pulled on the blood in the pool and the bones below, shivering as he found dead flesh to work with. He poured life into it, pulling it up onto the platform, plastering it to the bones, forcing it to tap into the soul that was bound there and take its shape. Decayed flesh became full and alive. Bones knitted. Blood flowed through arteries.
Tommy was trembling, ice cold, no longer able to feel the tips of his fingers and his toes, but he pulled again, on every last scrap of life in the dead plants around him, and then pulled on the soul. Bound it to its body, fed it every scrap of energy so that it would take. When the plants weren’t quite enough, Tommy gave it some of himself.
When the heart began to beat, loud in Tommy’s senses, and the brain awoke, he finally allowed himself to collapse. Fell sideways, felt his head crack slightly on the stones, although the boar skull mask protected him.
Blurrily, through eyes with swimming vision, he saw the pool of blood rupture at its heart. Something arose, blood splashing and overflowing at the edges. Hastily, blurs of cultists moved forward and cut the necks of the sacrifices that should have been Tommy’s fuel source, allowing their blood and life and bones to drain into the monstrosity of the pool. All that life, wasted, and Tommy could do nothing but feel a dozen souls ebb away, tears leaking from his eyes only to freeze to his cheeks.
His limbs had all lost feeling, his chest felt terribly cold, and when he breathed, he could see the cloud of his breath in the air. Tommy had… used way too much necromancy magic.
He almost succumbed to exhaustion right then and there, but he forced himself to keep awake out of stubbornness, to keep his eyes open for just a moment more, to see the result of what he’d done. To see this so-called Blood God.
A man had risen from the pool, standing on the suspended platform in blood that went up to his waist. He wasn’t particularly tall. He wasn’t particularly broad. Muscles and scars, however, adorned him. He had long hair, possibly pink, although it could just be stained in blood as it hung in his face and dripped down his back. His red eyes were piercing as they roved over the room, and he straightened minisculely.
As he did so, every cultist in the room fell to their knees, heads pressed into stones, gasps of awe leaving their lips.
“My Lord,” called the leader, adoration and fear in every word. “He Who Never Loses, He Who Never Dies, He Who Soaks Battlefields in Blood! Blood God! We humbly offer ourselves before you as your devoted followers, and welcome your long awaited return to our world for the Day of Reckoning.”
For a moment, there was complete silence. Tommy sort of wondered if the god might just kill Dickface, which would be sort of funny. The silence rang and rang, until finally, the Blood God spoke.
In a slow, deliberate voice, he asked, “Where… am I?”
“Ah!” said Dickhead, all too eager to comply. “You are in our sanctuary, my lord. It was built to your liking, to aid your return. Everything in here is devoted to you. It is your tomb, your altar, and your home.”
“…Okay,” the god said, and Tommy might be delusional from exhaustion, but it sounded like a very hesitant response, like the god didn’t like the taste of whatever he’d been given. “And you are?”
“Your devoted servant, my lord. All of us are.”
“Right. So I was… dead.”
“You were my lord, but you are undying. Your presence before us is proof of that.”
“Uh-huh,” said the voice, and there was an awkward shift in posture, blood rippling out as he moved. “But you brought me back to life.”
“We found you a totem, so as to make your life truly eternal,” Dickhead explained, flourishing his hand towards Tommy’s comatose body. “You will live on now, and finally deliver your wrath to a world long overdue.”
“Ah, yes, my wrath,” said the Blood God, shifting again. “I remember now. I am… very pleased, to uh, be alive and wrathful. And naked in a bunch of blood.”
“W-We have clothes for you, my lord. There is a celebration planned to honour your return! And-“
At this point, the ringing in Tommy’s ears had gotten strong enough that he couldn’t really make out what else was said. Everything was just blurs, his head felt sort of staticky, and he was pretty sure he’d never been this cold in his life.
The last real memory he had before he passed out was of being dragged off the dias and out of the altar room, and the scene of the Blood God awkwardly being helped out of the blood pool. They had to place a wooden board from the edge to the submerged platform for him to walk across because no one had the forethought to think the Blood God might not want to have to swim through a bunch of blood in front of a hundred cultists.
Tommy thought, deliriously and with blooming hope, that their Blood God might just be as human as his bones were.