#getting this posted before the server opens in 90 mins omg

[convexicalcrow]

The False Necromancer (1/?)

Look, I'd be lying if I said I was surprised it took them this long to chase me out of the city. Well, I was also surprised at the chasing out of the city part, if I'm honest. I thought they'd hand me over to the Inquisitors, but no, they just burnt my house and told me to leave. Jokes on them, I had secured my journals of research away with a close confidante, so I can rebuild all my steam-powered contraptions in a new place. I don't think I'll go to another city though. Probably safer to be on my own, tucked away in a forest somewhere, where they can't find me.

It's not like I mind being alone. I would have liked to have my confidante with me, but he had unshakable commitments at the University and could not leave with me. I may see him again some day. At least I was able to get my journals back before we said goodbye.

The gall of them to condemn me as a necromancer though! I am no such thing! The only magic I dabble in is alchemy. I have refined and perfected the techniques for making pure metals, and creating my own substances from the Sun itself. My craft was one I taught to myself, as no one would teach a woman. Alchemy was not at all suited for a woman. And yet, with it, I thrived, moreso than I did when I was studying with a cunningwoman. She was thrown to the fires eventually, though, like a lot of them were. So many good people burnt and killed because some men were afraid of witches.

I'm not sure why I was spared. Why did those same men who pointed so many fingers point a finger at me and then turn away in the dead of night? Why call me a necromancer and then not report me to the Inquisitors? Necromancy is a heresy, it should have been reported. And yet, instead, my house was burnt, and I was exiled. Me alone, I was allowed to live.

It hardly seems fair. I knew they'd come for me one day. I knew it as soon as the Inquisitors' Office was set up. I had made plans to escape. I just didn't get time to execute them. I could hae done without two nights in a dungeon though. Perhaps someone whispered in their ears to let me go. I can't imagine why though. I should have been tried as a witch like all the others. I should have died along with all the others.

It weighs heavy on my heart, and I am glad to be away from that place. They all practiced necromancy. Everyone knows it. They write these books condemning the practice, all the while saying thing like, well if I was going to summon a demon, here's how I'd do it. And then recite the necromanctic manuals word for word. Treasonous men.

I was no saint, of course. One doesn't become an alchemist and not get their hands dirty. It comes with the territory. And I must say, working with these pure metals changes you. I have seen my gods in their shimmer, felt their presence in the heat of my burning glass, watched in awe as two metals fuse into something else. It is magic, it is heresy, it is not necromancy.

But in truth, I know what they condemned me for. I discovered a way to harness the power of steam to energise and power contraptions the like of which the world has not yet ever seen. Copper, my beloved copper, has proved to be the key. Copper and lodestones. I have made lightning in my elaboratory! My experiments have shown the power of steam to create lightning! And with lightning, and the right metals, I have made things move, and fly, and heat up, and glow! All because I boiled some water and captured the steam, forcing it through a small pipe across a fan that I made, with four blades on an angle, that spins when the steam passes it, and this empowers the copper to make the lightning! It arcs across to nearby metals. It creates visible light that crackles and fizzes and excites the hair on my head. The air smells so strongly afterwards, it's intoxicating. And I was the one who created it. Me! They burnt my house down, but no matter. They will regret the fact that they did not kill me.