The Necromancer's win

The next day the school has another surprise visitor in the morning when Ralfael's dead girlfriend comes through the school's entrance.

"Dr. Saltzman." Hope says, going to the cells where the headmaster was still trying to get answers.

"Oh hey, you how is the boy you brought yesterday to sneak a peek at me?" The necromancer asks, chuckling knowingly.

"Getting a visit from his dead girlfriend." Hope replies, nodding for the teacher to come with her.

The two leave the cells and head over to where Rafael is talking to his resurrected girlfriend.

"Dr. Saltzman this isn't going anywhere. If this continues more and more people will get a dead visitor showing up. Let me help." Hope says.

"Hope let me handle this. We can't make mistakes with this. You saw what happened to Josie." Alaric tells her and joins Rafael.

Hope then heads to Dorian, trying to get him to help her with the necromancer but he only hands her a few books, telling her to take them to Alaric while he he has a day off to remember his dead family.

Hope is on her way to deliver the books when she sees that the headmaster has his hands full with Rafael and his dead girlfriend.

So having an idea she brings the books down to the Necromancer and tells him what they know, The pompous creature throwing a fit that his legacy was erased from history and reduced to nothing.

She then asks him how he died, but he doesn't remember the detail and says it's probably somewhere in his subconscious, because the conscious mind would protect itself from something like that in most cases.

Together with the Necromancer they then come up with the plan to get a Vampire to do a head dive and bring Hope into the Necromancer's subconscious.

Everything seems to be going well at first until Hope's body shows first signs of being scared and having a breakdown.

This is the scene Sosuke comes across when he went looking for Hope, wanting to show off the move with his lightning power he learned.

"Hope, Hope. Come out. Let her out. Headdive over." MG says panicking, switching between looking into Hope's eyes and the Necromancers.

"MG?" Sosuke asks worried about Hope and opens the cell, closing it behind him again.

Sosuke grabs Hope's hand and strokes over her back.

"You can't pull away her hand." MG says warningly.

"She asked me to bring her into his head." MG confesses. It worked but something must be going wrong." MG says fearfully.

"Alright, calm down. And put me in with her." Sosuke tells the teen, who stares at him and shakes his head no.

"MG. If this were Lizzie, what would you do?" Sosuke asks him.

"That's so not fair man." MG complains, placing his hands above Hopes with him standing behind the shorter girl.

"Ready?" MG asks rubbing his hands together.

"Do it." Sosuke says and then finds himself standing in a void, nothing around him, except for Hope's scared voice coming from somewhere.

He closes his eyes and tries to pinpoint her location, only to open them, standing directly in front of her.

"Whoa. Weird." Sosuke says, Hope, grabbing his hands, fearing he will disappear.

"Sosuke is this really you. Or are you playing tricks on me Necromancer?" She asks loudly into the void.

"It's me." Sosuke says.

"Prove it." She demands still crying and clinging to his hands.

"295 to 182. You won today." He says, rubbing over her hands although he wonders if that does anything while inside someone's subconscious.

"Why are you here?" She asks confused but hugs him strongly.

"Your body looks like it's having a meltdown, kinda like you are having so I came to help." Sosuke tells her.

"Help how?" She asks.

"I don't know? Get your mind off of this. No pun intended." Sosuke says, being clueless himself.

"Fine then. Talk to me." She says, taking a deep breath.

"About what?" He asks.

"Anything. I don't want to be here. He's just wants me to admit I did all this because I want to know about my dad. And that is..." She says angrily.

"That's true isn't it? Come on, I know you. And I mean if you hadn't been screwed over by him this would have been a 2 birds one stone situation. But right now it only looks like 0 birds 2 lost stones." He says jokingly.

"Fine I wanted to know about my dad and what's this Malivore. I got greedy." She admits dejectedly.

"Alright... So talking, yeah. I can do this." Sosuke says, trying to come up with a topic that would help calm Hope.

"Oh there you are and you brought a guest, how nice." The Necromancer then shows up behind Hope.

"Get us out of here!" She demands.

"With pleasure." He says and snips his fingers.

"Whew I was worried I was gonna end up in the wrong body there." Sosuke says relieved, seeing his larger arms and Hope's brunette hair which scent is invading his nose.

"Oops daddy's home." The Necromancer says and Alaric is standing outside the cell with a death glare.

Alaric then takes the two teens to his office to reprimand them.

"How could you be so reckless?" Alaric yells entering his office with the two following him.

"You weren't getting anywhere." Hope says frustrated.

"And so you took it upon yourself? And how did that go? You dragged MG and Sosuke into this too." Alaric tells her disappointed.

"It didn't go well." She admits, beating herself up as it is.

"Yeah well I had it under control Hope." Alaric says.

"Oh really? Is this the control you're talking about? Or anything else that explains your utter lack of progress?" Hope says accusingly, slamming his empty alcohol bottle and another half empty one from his desk on top of it.

"I am grieving Hope. Maybe you should try that sometime instead of pushing everyone away?" Alaric shouts.

"I am trying to protect you and everyone here. That thing is a master manipulator. It resurrected my dead fiancee and raised a cemetery full of Zombies and just brought back Rafael's dead girlfriend, so let's talk about the ways in which it could torment you. Starting with your dead mother, ending with your dead father and all of the ghosts of the people you killed in between." Alaric tells her, nearly making her cry.

"Don't do that. You don't like that I broke your rules as head master, fine punish me. But don't you dare play disappointed dad, because you're not my father!" She tells him pissed off.

"Oh and where do you think you're going?" Alaric asks when she storms outside his office.

"To finish what I started." She says angrily.

"Like hell you are." Alaric protests, both he and Sosuke moving towards the door but she uses a spell to lock them in.

"And you, what were you thinking? You can't even control your powers let alone have a grasp on your emotions." Alaric then turns to Sosuke since they are locked in anyways.

"Hope was is trouble. You know to what length people go for the people they love." Sosuke says sternly.

"I mean you let Rafel's girlfriend run around freely? You do recall that it was your fiancee who tried to kill Josie." Sosuke tells him.

"Don't you dare." Alaric says angrily and grabs Sosuke by his collar.

"Now I am going to blast that door to pieces and you will go check on the knife while I will try to stop Hope from doing something reckless before it happens this time." Sosuke tells the headmaster sharply and he nods, cooling down slightly.

Sosuke turns to the door and closes his eyes in concentration, rearing one hand back and punching forwards while thrusting out his palm, a bolt of lightning causing the door to explode into multiple pieces.

The two hurry out of the office and split up like Sosuke said to.

Meanwhile at the cells Hope confronts the Necromancer again. "Tell me where my father is." She demands to know.

"I will tell you everything you want to know but wouldn't you like to hear what I've just learned about Malivore first?" He tells her.

"When I was in my subconscious. I went to the scene of my death and I was standing there and felt a sharp pain. As I looked down I saw a knife in my heart and suddenly there was emptiness all around me." He tells her.

"A knife?" Hope asks.

"The knife." He says ecstatically.

"Interestingly enough, that which I seek is what did me in." He tells her, Sosuke arriving behind her.

"Oh and there he is the only person here with more death in his past than even you cutie." The Necromancer greets Sosuke who only rolls his eyes, saying "Don't let me interrupt."

"Yes. As I was saying. For a great man like me to be killed by such trifle of an object I was curious to its powers. So I jumped out of my subconsciousness to summon the spirit of the man who forged it in the first place." The Necromancer explains.

"You left me in there on purpose?" She yells angrily.

"Oh I had work to do and you had lessons to learn. Anyways, from this man I heard of the remarkable story of Malivore. Created to wipe the scourge of the supernatural from the face of this earth. Malivore consumes us, erases us. It was permanent death and it was in Malivorr that we were left to perish. Until recently, when the knife started beckoning us to bring it home." He tells them.

"But why a knife?" Hope asks.

"Decades ago Malivore was contained, 3 locks created to seal Malivore shut. And the knife is one of those locks. And when all three locks return home Malivore is free to open its maws of death again." The Necromancer says.

"What does that even mean?" Hope asks.

"Oh my dear. Let's just hope you're not still alive to find out." He says.

"Great, now let me get this straight, you left me alone in your freaky mindscape so you could do what? Stall me?" Hope asks angrily.

"My apologies for the melodrama but you got your company. And I needed to buy myself some time." He replies.

"To talk to some dead knife maker." Hope says upset.

"That... and to retrieve the knife your friend Dorian had hidden behind the stacks in the library." He answers.

"What?" Hope asks shocked.

"Because while you were trapped in just a taste of the blackness I suffered. Experiencing just an ounce of my agony, I was doing my thing. Controlling the dead. Did you know that there are a lot of Bennett witches buried here that excel in the art of mystical transportation?" The Necromancer tells her.

"Oh my god." Hope gasps.

"Come on, look on the bright side, you can get back to the daily grind of your young life. And in moments when the knife reaches Malivore, I will be free to find peace." He tells Hope.

"Great. So you got everything you wanted. Now tell Hope what she wants to know." Sosuke says.

"Ah yes the father. He watches over you every day. He did die with love in his heart and he doesn't regret his choice. But he won't find peace, not until you do. Well good luck with that." The Necromancer tells Hope who is crying both in happiness and sadness.

"Ah, the knife is destroyed. One lock is released and with it, so am I." He tells them before disappearing into nothingness after the cell he's in shakes for a moment.

With the necromancer gone, Hope wraps her arms around Sosuke and cries into his chest with him holding her carefully.

"I'm sorry." She squeaks while crying.

"You don't need to apologize to me. I think Dr. Saltzman could get one though." Sosuke tells her, squeezing her gently and she nods, wiping away her tears after releasing him from her hug.

"It's fine. We'll stop Malivore. You got a superpowered lightning guy in your ranks now so what could happen." Sosuke tells her jokingly, wiping away the rest of her tears.

"We need to find you another name." She says with a miniscule grin.

"Yeah, we do. Now, go to Dr. Saltzman." He tells her, with Hope nodding and seeking out her father figure.

When Hope gets to the office however he only looks at her sternly and continues collecting the pieces of his door that Sosuke blasted to bits.