From the time she stepped onto the grounds of the cemetery, her presence was known and noted. There are a great many beings that make that cemetery their home; ghouls and the occasional spirit, animate corpses, thieves, criminals looking for a place to hide, the occasional patrol of the city watch, and, now, clothing designers.

Still, where one might have thought her entrance was the start of something terrible and wicked about to befall her, one who would have thought that would have been incorrect. From the moment her foot stepped onto those grounds, she was known by the ones who lurked. And she was protected by another. Perhaps that was the source of her preternatural sense of safety.

Talismans clicked softly against each other, attached by leather thongs to a wide belt. Black mageleather creaked with the protest of movement, and grass crunched underfoot. Disturbed dirt was no bar to this one's step, though. Indeed, many of the ones that had been disturbed were only disturbed because of he himself. One of his hands, wrapped in black fingerless gloves, draped itself lazily across the simple pommel of the shortsword that he called Catgutter sheathed at his hip.

Moonlight suffused the air, streaming in through the perpetual fog that clung to the cemetery unnaturally. It wasn't so thick that one couldn't see or make things out, but it seemed to be just the perfect type of haze to make things....eerie.

The statue was glorious. He had studied it many times himself, and even explored around it a bit. Little did the black-haired girl know that the statue was, in fact, a tomb. Unmarked, probably for the biting sense of guilt that the mother had felt at losing her child, a section of the granite would pull away into a heavy drawer, wherein contained the ashes of a child, and a few small pieces of bone that escaped only blackened by the flames that took the rest of the tiny body. Nothing worthwhile to him, of course; nothing usable in the least, save only the conversation with the dead.

"It has been some time," he said from several paces behind her, "since you have come for your lessons, Erinalle. I was beginning to think that you had a change of heart. Where have you been?"

" 'Pretty certain"' "

Nelikor weighed the words she had spoken, rolling his beady eyes up into the top of his skull and peering up into the sky. Lips, so thin as to practically be nonexistent, compressed into a nondescript gash on the lower half of his gaunt, withered face, pulling already-tight skin tighter. Blue and black veins spiderwebbed over his cheeks, as if he were a corpse some days into decay.

"Well, that's one way to word it, I suppose."

He turned to the side, and walked forward. Long, black-painted fingernail, filed into a point, tapped idly against Catgutter's pommel. He looked feeble and decrepit, shoulders hunched in with a bit of a stoop as they always were, as if he had spent long hours bent over a writing table. The sound of a snapping twig took his attention off to the left, peering out into darkness.

There was nothing out there, though. Not visible to human eyes, at least. He considered investigating, but this place was a cemetery. Sometimes, noises just happened. Especially in Rhy'Din. At least the plague of zombies seemed to have abated a good bit; he had been hard-pressed to deanimate as many as he could when they made their slow, shambling march on Rhy'Din City. Fortunately, only one knew what his precise vocation was, and she was standing a few paces to his flank. Had any more known, likely he would have been at the top of several people's minds as the suspect. After all, weren't the walking dead the bread-and-butter of any Necromancer"

His long coat of black mageleather, the back hem of it brushing his boots, drifted on a gentle breeze.

"Still," he said slowly, turning his head back to face her just as slow, "you are not so far behind as you might think. So long as you have been practicing what I've already taught you, yes" Or did your....detention circumvent even lessons in focusing one's self?"

Nelikor listened to Erinalle as she spoke. His features were blank, schooled by long hours of practice at not showing emotion. His methods required an act of pure will, focused by the mind and channeled directly from that will. Emotions had a nasty tendency of disrupting the flows of what you were trying to do, and they gave away far too much in facial expressions when speaking to someone. He didn't get to the point he was at by having anything less than the world's most perfect poker face.

"No more distractions," he echoed her after a moment of silence and nodding gravely.

Shoulders stooped, as ever they were, his thin, almost totally-not-there lips pulled into what might've been a smile, deepening creases on his face that needed no deepening. Another gust of breeze stirred the tail of his long coat, and a few wispy strands of silver hair attempted to take flight off his head. He ignored both, focused on the girl. Old enough to be her grandfather — her great-grandfather, more likely — he offered a short bow and another paternal smile.

"It is good that you ask of contributions and a purpose, Erinalle. What I teach you is not a thing to make you powerful, or to give you power over those around you. I've told you often enough that with these abilities comes responsibility. Given the....recent events ...I feel that you should know what they are. Come, come, sit down. I have much to teach you, and it will not consist of the usual lessons tonight."

And, there in the cemetery, the two of them perched on rocks facing each other, Nelikor settled in for a lengthy sermon, gesturing with his hands occasionally as he spoke.

"I will now tell you about the core of what it means to be a necromancer of my order. When I am done, you will repeat back to me what I have said. If you fail to touch all points, you will serve penance under discipline. If your memory is so poor that you cannot repeat what I say after a second hearing....Well, we will discuss that when it happens. Hear me now, and well...

"Entropy is fundamental. It is more fundamental than time and space. It is more fundamental than matter and energy. It is more fundamental than life and death. Entropy is that which drives all things, the force which turns the great wheel of existence. Entropy is the force of change. When something changes, it will increase the entropy. When entropy increases, something will change. Without entropy, the universe would be dead, unchanging and purposeless.

"Some believe that evolution is the opposite of entropy. They are wrong. Evolution works by weeding out the weak, ineffective and the unlucky, giving space and food for others. Without entropy, evolution would grind to a halt. Some believe that life is the opposite of entropy. They are wrong. Life is entropy. Life needs entropy. Life cannot exist without entropy. Nourishment, water and air is used and becomes waste. It is by this steady flow of order into disorder that life can exist. Life is the ripples on the edge of the waterfall, as the water falls down into the abyss below.

"Entropy will, in time, destroy anything, however eternal it may seem. One day a stone will be dust. One day you will be dust. One day the earth beneath your feet will be dust. 'This is evil' many say, but they do not understand why everything must disintegrate into lower forms. These forms will also disintegrate. Finally, everything will have disintegrated into its component parts, and this will be part of new forms. Plants feed on the dust of stones. Worms feed on the dust of men.

"Death is the great change which all living beings must pass. Life must lead to death, as light creates shadow. Many fear death, try to ignore it, try to hide from it, but it will always come. They fear it because they do not see what is behind it, do not see its purpose. They only see darkness where there is light. We must show those who are ready, the way into the abyss. Those who are not ready must be helped to loose their futile grips on the edge. They only waste their precious time and energy left by struggling.

"It is the greatest gift that can be bestowed upon any living being. If it dies in the right way when it is ready, the being's soul and spirit will be set free. In this way, it will perhaps remember some of its lessons from this life to the next.

"Some beings leave the wheel of life and death, sacrificing everything to exist forever. The body which rises from the grave is the same that was put therein. The spirit which rises from the grave is the same that was put therein. But the soul is not the same. The undead have unknowingly lost their souls, which will continue to incarnate as before. Instead, they have gained a shard of something else's soul. They still remember their life before death, and believe they are the same person as before. They are perfect impersonators of themselves. This is indeed a most grim joke, and a monumental insult to the teachings of the wheel of entropy. Remember well, Erinalle - when you find a being in the curse of undeath, it is your sworn duty to deliver true and final death unto them, that they might continue on in the turning of the wheel.

"As one part rises, another part must sink. There can be no life without death. There can be no light without darkness. There can be no success without failure. A wheel must have two sides to be a wheel. We are the caretakers and harbingers, the watchers and the keepers. Those that exist outside the wheel are a sickness in the body of the universe, and must be cut out to keep their rot from spreading. You will have power over death, Erinalle. You will be able to animate a corpse to do as you wish. Be very certain of your actions when you do so, and keep the corpse animated only for as long as is required to accomplish the task you need. To do else would be an abomination, and a betrayal of everything I have taught you."

Sweat beaded on his creased brow, and he smiled that fatherly smile again. "Do you understand?"

Nelikor listened intently as she recited back the lessons she learned from his lengthy speech. He looked somewhat to the side with his head slightly tilted, as if lending her his ear so that he could hear everything clearly. He was old, after all, he might've been somewhat hard of hearing.

When she finally gave that last nod of acceptance, looking just as stalwart as he had expected her to attempt to be, Nelikor rose to his feet and shook his head.

"Yes," he said, "and no. Remember, Erinalle, above all that necromancy is not simply another school of study, another pathway to power for those who wish to wield it over their world. It is an art, and requires the true and total devotion of the artist. You know the words, you understand them, you accept them — but you do not know their meaning."

Even when chastising her though, Nelikor's voice never grew hard or cold, as if he was an adoring father speaking patiently to a misunderstanding, though talented, daughter. He went on, turning away from her, "I will assign to your a lesson in devotion to a cause. To feel the need for it, to know responsibility."

Two steps forward, he seized the handle of a shovel, it's spaded tip marked with mud dried into a hard, packed clay. Turning around again, he thrust it out to her.

"Lesson the first: Take this tool and seek out the final resting place of Master Tomas Reinhardt. He was a rather disagreeable man in life, and I can't imagine he'd have grown any more fairer in death. He was buried with his signet ring, a rather garish piece of gold marked with firedrops and a large ruby engraved with the likeness of a key. The dead have no use for worldly possessions. Claim this ring, and you will have shown your determination."

He smiled again. That good-natured, thin smile he had that pulled his hollow cheeks up and drew more lines across his face than even a man of his age should have had. "I will return in a few hours. Use this time and labor to contemplate the meaning of what I have explained to you tonight, and I will guide your next steps onto the path. Be steadfast, Erinalle."