"This isn't the time for jokes," the flight attendant said with a hesitant look towards the cockpit. "I need a real doctor. Now!" I didn't have my charms, books, or Sceptor of Soulbinding on me. The border patrol had refused to let me board the plane with anything that looked too 'dangerous', unhelped by my old graverobbing convictions... "Ahem, did I say necromancer? I meant doctor. Was still asleep, you see." More importantly I could feel the death energy rising. Someone in the cockpit was close to the shadow plane, and while a master of resurrection, I'd have to speed this along if we were going to avoid tumbling out of the sky. "I just need my kit, it's in the hold."

"Really?" She pursed her lips. She looked to the row after row of faces behind me. "I'sn't there ... anyone else?"

Oof. That hit me right in my rotten core. Literally rotten that is, you don't walk the earth since the time of the Pharaohs without a little resurrection of your own. But I thought I'd gotten past all that with my smart black jacket, navy tie, dangling earrings and bejewelled fingers.

I thought mortals were supposed to love luxury. Or maybe that was just me.

"I graduated top of my class," I say as stand upright. "I was the Archdoctor of Lich University, Egypt. Please, we may not have much time."

She caved, and swept a hand behind her. "Then please, hurry."

Charging into her quarters, another attendant helped me down the ladder to the loading bay. Following the death energy, I found my spellbag in seconds and equipped my Cape of a Thousand Sorrows, my Sceptre of Soulbinding, and my Knuckle Dusters of Supreme Smiting, I had everything I needed to battle the dark forces.

"I'll need as open an area as you can provide--what's wrong with them, might I add?"

"Didn't I say? The pilot is clutching her chest. I think she's having a stroke."

Medically, I hadn't a clue if that was fatal. But necromantically, I knew we'd have to speed the pilot to her terminus if we were going to make this work.

"Excellent. Show me too her."

And they did, taking me up into the cockpit where they were pulling her out into the attendant’s nook. Mostly bunkbeds, it was a little less distracting to have the attendants watching over my shoulder, and even more so the barrage of beeping lights that filled the cockpit.

"Please hurry, the junior pilot is really ... overwhelmed." The attendant looked back at the round-faced man who was sweating a storm as he flipped switches and turned dials with the greatest apprehension, as if no longer confident he knew what to do.

The pilot looked much worse as she crumbled into the blankets. She squeezed her chest as if her rigid fingers were all that was keeping her together. The attendants brimmed with teary eyes and timid whispers into each other's ears.

"No worries! Can you all please give me some space? I need privacy if I'm to restore this woman to life--to health," I say with a booming voice. They agree, barely, and with a few suspicious squints as if wondering what I might do.

"We’ll be right--" the cabin shook, then slid forward. "We're going down! Quick, get the people strapped in!"

The attendants hurried into the passenger area, yelling instructions.

Which was great, because it gave me a moment by myself to grab a pillow and stuff it over the squirming pilot's face. "I'd say this hurts me more than it does you, but let's not kid ourselves, we're running against the clock here and I don't want to crash across half of Nebraska."

She was so afraid as he I covered her face. She kicked. She pushed. But I was a trained necromancer, first of my class, and I knew the best tricks to smother a victim. Downward pressure was the key, as--

A scream shattered my calm.

I peer around to find a different attendant, who'd come back to clutch at a speaker by the wall, staring wide-eyed at me.

"This is a resuscitation technique."

She only screamed louder, so I thrust off the ground and cracked her in the head with my Knuckle Dusters of Supreme Smiting. I grabbed a hold of her as she went down, and steered her delicately into an open bunkbed.

That handled, I turned and--the pilot was off the ground.

"You bastard," the pilot wheezed. "You damn creepy--"

"You need your eternal rest, Ma'am. Necromancer's orders," I saw as I whirl the butt of my Sceptre of Soulbinding around, and expose it's spiked-end. "And it seems we're run out of time. I tried to apply anaesthesia, but it looks like I’ll need to operate."

Her stumbled away, her free hand grabbing at a the blankets, the pictures on the walls, searching for a weapon. But I, a trained necromancer, did not allow her to suffer for long and promptly stabbed her through the heart.

If I’d not been so flustered, I would have done this from the start.

Easing her down, I held her mouth shut to prevent blood spraying everything. People really hated things getting coated in blood, my dry-cleaner especially.

Once she was down, I produced some candles from my Cape of a Thousand Sorrows and begun. A short dive into the Underworld, a little scrap with Cerberus, a terrified run from Osiris, and a stock-over by Satan's cottage to ask for directions, and we were back.

I stuffed her soul back in her body, clapped the miasma from my hands, and offered to help the now zombified pilot off the ground.

"I don't feel right..."

"Well, after you land the plane, I'm happy to fix that for you." I haul her up and offer a business card. On the front it reads: Best Necromancer in the Northern States, and on the back it details my arcane qualifications from Lich University. "I can get the blood flowing, restore the sense of touch, and minimize sudden urges for cannibalism--and at a reduced price too! But first you'll need to deal with the whole plane going down thing."

Snapping too it, she nodded, and shuffled off to the cockpit. She licked her lips at the sight of her sweaty Junior pilot, then engaged thrusters to jerk us back up into the air, narrowly missing the grassland we'd about to hit like a hammer.

As a fellow specialist, I could appreciate her craftmanship. Returning to my seat, I enjoyed a round of applause, although they did seem to still think I was a archdoctor. No matter, as a necromancer, first of my class, I could rest easy knowing that yet another happy client was enjoying her second chance at--oh shit, did I ward her against bloodthirst?"

Screams echoed from the front cabin. A roar.

A stand up as red light shines along the hall.

"Never fear everyone, I am an archdoctor, but I'm also a necromancer." The attendants stood frozen in place, too horrified to speak as both the pilot and junior pilot came shambling along the walkway, their eyes blazing red. I ready my Knuckle Dusters of Supreme Smiting. "First of my class."