“Is there a parade going on or something?” Lilia asked herself. “I’ve never seen so many people all going in the same direction before. Uuuuu…I wanna see it…”

  Turning her gaze away from the town above, Lilia headed over to the food crates. She planned to distract herself with food. Instead she just ended up reminding herself of how dismal her food situation had gotten. At some point during the months she’d spent in Master’s basement Lilia had lost track of time, but the single loaf of bread left in the final preservation crate made it easy to guess how long it’d been.

  “Master’s still not back…and I’m about to run out of food. He did say I could leave if I run out of food, but I never thought it would actually happen,” Lilia lamented. She didn’t know what to do with herself now. A simple glance was enough to determine Master hadn’t returned to his house, so even if she went upstairs, there wouldn’t be anyone there to tell her what to do.

  As long as she’d lived, there’d always been someone there to tell her what she should do next. Whether that meant play time, chores, or going to the market, Lilia always did as told. Because that’s what good girls were supposed to do. Her parents had said that often, so it had to be true.

  But Master hadn’t ever told Lilia what to do after she left the basement. He’d only said she could leave if her food ran out. Lilia didn’t have any money to buy more food and she couldn’t just take money from Master’s home. That would be stealing. However…even if Lilia didn’t know where Master had gone, she did know where her parents were. They’d never left the village for as long as she could remember.

  “Hey, Directions? Do you remember the way home?” Lilia asked, looking around the room for her little cardinal friend. She found him roosting on the bed, right at the center of her pillow.

  “Chirp!” Directions affirmed, nodding for good measure.

  Should I just take this bread with me…? I’ll need something to eat, and I don’t know how long it will take to get there on foot.” Lilia briefly thought about the coach she’d ridden in with Master, but surely he’d taken it with him when he left. Besides, that would also be stealing. “Oh, and Master said not to let anyone know I’m a necromancer either. I don’t really get why, but I’m sure he had a good reason for it.”

  Taking the coach would mean taking the undead horses attached to it as well. It would be obvious to anyone that saw them that a necromancer had to be directing them. Maybe she could hide in the coach? After all, no one would know that she herself was the necromancer if no one saw her.

  Lilia’s train of thought broke when a clay tablet appeared in front of her face. Only a single word had been scratched into it. “Parade.”

  “You’re right!” Lilia exclaimed. “Since I’m allowed to leave now, I can go watch the parade! I’ll have to stay hidden though. People might figure out that I’m a necromancer if I walk right out of Master’s house. I should go right away, though. It might end if I take too long.”

  With that decided, Lilia sent a request to the familiar controlling the basement door. The former thrall had already started opening the way by the time Lilia reached the ladder.

  “Rrrrn?” Cyclops hummed in confusion, looking up from where he lay. Apparently he hadn’t been listening to Lilia, because he didn’t seem to know what was going on.

  “Sorry Cyclops, but you and Mr. Bearbones will have to stay down here for now,” Lilia informed the big cat.

  “Rrrrow!” spat the cat, but Lilia remained firm.

  “I know you want out, but half your face is missing! Anyone that sees you will know what you are, and that would be going against what Master told me!” Lilia argued, staring Cyclops down. After a staring match lasting several second, he finally backed down with a dissatisfied hiss, lowering his head again.

  Mr. Bearbones’s entire body seemed to droop. He’d already gone over to the ladder and now he was staring at the floor, forlorn. Lilia sighed.

  “Sorry, Mr. Bearbones, but you’d be even harder to hide. I’ll sync my sight with you and Cyclops so you can still watch, okay?” That seemed to cheer Mr. Bearbones right up. Lilia stepped up to the ladder feeling glad she’d managed to convince both of her friends. Just as Lilia put her hands on the rungs, Directions flew over and landed on Lilia’s shoulder.

  Climbing the ladder filled Lilia with a mix of emotions. She’d spent so much time in the basement that it felt like home now, but she also felt free for the first time in ages. Lilia felt relieved, terrified, liberated, anxious, hopeful, and worried. Her heart couldn’t seem to land on just one emotion to feel.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  When she reached the top, she found the pantry door closed. She had to feel around for the handle for a moment before she could open it. Then sunlight spilled in. Even though she couldn’t see the window it entered through directly, it seemed blinding after so much time using only magic lamps to see.

  “I forgot how warm sunlight is,” Lilia whispered to Directions. Judging by the reddish-orange tone, it must have been dusk, or so Lilia assumed initially. After all, she’d woken up quite some time ago, so it couldn’t be morning.

  She’d come up for a reason, though. Lilia looked around with her soul sense to find her bearings, then headed in the direction of the parade. She entered a hallway next. Oddly enough, none of the doors were closed. Then a change in texture alerted Lilia when her feet stepped on something other than floorboards.

  Apparently Lilia had forgotten to put shoes on. More importantly, though, she realized she was standing on paper. The indirect light from the kitchen hadn’t been enough to illuminate the entire hallway, and her eyes had already adjusted to it so the shadows towards the middle of the hall had hidden the floor. There were more pages than the one she had stepped on, too. A trail of them led her to one of the open doors.

  Lilia couldn’t quite make out the interior of the room, but she thought she saw shelves inside. A lot of them. All empty.

  “Weird,” Lilia remarked, moving on. Soon she exited the hallway into an empty dining room. Most of the furniture had been overturned and damaged at some point. Cushions bled feathers and clumps of cotton onto the floor. Fragments of tableware intermingled with them, along with splinters from shattered chairs, tables, and shelves. “Master must have been really mad to do this to his own furniture,” Lilia concluded after taking in the sight.

  Going back for her shoes never occurred to Lilia, so she simply picked her way across the room carefully. Fortunately the dining table had remained mostly intact, and it must have been destroyed last judging by the pristine surface of the black tablecloth. Lilia only had to take a couple of steps before she drew close enough to hop onto the fallen table, and that got her all the way to the other side of the room.

  Emerging into the foyer, Lilia found even more devastation. So thoroughly had everything been destroyed that she couldn’t even guess at what most of the objects there had been. Tapestries and rugs had been reduced to tatters, and Lilia spotted bone fragments among the rubble.

  “Huh. So that’s why I never managed to make that thrall move,” Lilia said to herself as she crossed over to the closest window. By now she’d practiced so much that cutting the unfortunate thrall’s soul conduit from its body took little effort.

  Lilia had to move slowly in order to not make too much noise. The front door had been left open and the windows shattered, so if she stepped on anything there would be no barriers stopping the people outside from hearing her. It would be like the time she’d cut her arm on a thorny bush and alerted a pack of fanged ducks nesting nearby.

  Eventually Lilia reached the closest window. Although the drapes had been shredded to ribbons, they still hung from above the window, leaving her enough cover to hide behind. She parted them slightly and peaked through. Then she recoiled in pain, clutching at her eye and gritting her teeth hard to avoid letting out a gasp of pain.

  Why couldn’t the sun be a little dimmer?

  Once the spots faded from her eyes, Lilia tried again, opening her eye slowly to acclimate to the light. She saw people filing down the street. Some walked in groups; others passed by alone. A few led animals on leads or guided beasts of burden hitched to carts. It didn’t seem like anyone was talking aside from the occasional parent comforting their child.

  “I thought parades would be more exciting than this. What about you?” Lilia whispered, looking at Directions. But he’d been sitting on her shoulder, so he hadn’t been able to see. “Oh. Sorry. Here.”

  Picking up Directions in one hand, Lilia brought him up to the curtain and shifted it slightly. He peered outside for a moment, then turned to Lilia and cocked his head to the side.

  “Guess you’ve never seen a parade before either, huh?”

  After coming up to the surface, though, Lilia wouldn’t turn back so easily. So she continued to watch the townsfolk walk by in the hopes of spotting something interesting. Like a horse-drawn float, or marching soldiers. Maybe a line of people playing trumpets. Back in the village Lilia had overheard her neighbors talking about things like that after returning from selling crops in the nearest city.

  She didn’t know what a float was supposed to look like, though, so she concluded they must have been the carts she saw now and then. After all, they were horse-drawn, and they were in a parade, so that must mean they were floats. There were no soldiers, unfortunately, unless Lilia counted the town guards mixed in, which she didn’t, because they weren’t in formation.

  Gradually the light grew brighter and lost its red-orange hue. It took Lilia some time to accept that it must be morning, even with that clue. Had her sense of time really become so vague that she woke in the middle of the night and slept at midday? She’d lost track of the days quite a while ago, but she’d been under the impression she’d at least kept day and night straight in her mind.

  By the time the parade began to peter out, Lilia felt hungry enough to eat that entire loaf of bread in one sitting. But she still stood there, staring out the window, ignoring her hunger. Because she’d noticed that after passing by, none of the souls participating in the parade ever looped back to their homes.

  That seemed odd, but Lilia just couldn’t figure out why they’d all kept walking until they exited the town altogether. Over time the town became emptier and emptier. What had once been a vibrant settlement filled with more souls than Lilia knew how to count had turned into a practical ghost town. All that remained were the souls of animals and a surprising number of undead. Not that those two categories were mutually exclusive; most of the animals seemed to be undead, in fact.

  Lilia found it all unsettling. She didn’t understand what sort of event involved everyone up and leaving their homes behind. Unfortunately, she had little hope of puzzling out that mystery from where she stood. There was a silver lining, though. An empty town meant no one to see Lilia or her familiars.

  “Maybe mom and dad can tell me what’s going on. And now there’s no one between us and the gates!”