NaNoWriMo is kicking my ass, you guys.

Disclaimer: This is a rough draft. I have edited nothing, and will not edit until the month is over. There will be spelling mistakes, poor grammar, inconsistent style, improper capitalization, what have you. Try not to judge me too poorly.

Current Word Count: 3,207

Expected Word Count: 28,339

The Academy was built more like a fortress than a school. The amin building was basically the living quarters. It opened to ta grand staircase, sweeping up and then dividing to the left and to the right. On the ground floor to the right was the main dining room, big enough to hold the entire Academy, both apprentices and faculty. Looking at the wing from the outside, it didn’t appear quite so large, suggesting tht the entire dining room was its own pocket dimension. The library was to the left. The upper floors were designated as dormitories, students tot eh right and faculty to the left. Lilith’s chambers were the highest rooms of the tallest tower, slightly removed from everyone else. Unlike the other faculty members, she liked to keep her office and her work near her. The other teachers kept their offices and little experiemnts in the buildings scattered around the compoudn where they taught, not that it was a requriemtn. The prevailing attitude toward necromancy, which many of her teachers upheld and taught, was that encromancy was a job like any other, to be separate from personal life. Liltih held a different philosophy.

Lilith was a devout worshiper of Darkness. Most necromancers had a healthy respect for Darkness; she was, after all, the bosom to whom all turned once claimed by death. They all worked closely with her, but few loved her the way Lilith did. Lilith’s work wasn’t just a job. It was her life’s blood, her passion, her goddess. This was seen as subversive in a world dominated by worship of Light, which was why Lilith liked to keep her little experiments and projects near her. It was easier to keep them safe from those who wished them harm.

And those who wished Lilith harm generally didn’t have the power or courage to actually go through with it.

At the beginning of each semester, Lilith liked to address her new apprentices at their first dinner ath the Academy. Though perhaps ‘liked’ was the wrong word to use. In the habit of addressing her new apprentices at dinner was a more accurate description. She hadn’t liked doing so in some time; since her Necromantic Academy had become well-known for putting out successful necromancers who didn’t look or act like horrifying lichen, people flocked to her fortress to see what it was all about. Very few of those new Level Ones made it to Level Two, and of those few had the aptitude to make it to Level Three or higher. That was part of the reason why she had begun the policy of keeping the spellbooks under lock and key. She didn’t want hapless dropouts showing off their new skills and inadvertently summoning a felsh-eating zombie horde. A cold part inside her suggested that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing; the removal of a flesh-eating zombie horde was a necromancer’s purview, and letting smome of her dropouts run amok might brng in some extra revenue. But the larger part of her which valued her humanity decided that that was a terrible, evil idea, and so she kept the advanced books away from her lower level students.

As Lilith dressed for the opening ceremony, forgoing her preferred leather in favor of a form fitting, floor-length backless black dress, she glanced out the window to survey the compound. She noted with approval a small group of higher level apprentices in a circle in the small graveyard on the grounds performing a seance. It generally wasn’t a good idea to constantly be harrassing the dead, but that graveyard was filled with volunteers; the only people those students could contact were those who had already given permission, either before or after death, to be contacted by Lilith’s apprentices.

So few people understood how important consent was, even when it came to ghost-raising.

There was a teleportation circle tucked into the corner of the entrance to Liltih’s apartments, making travel about the compound much easier for her and her faculty and students. Lilith was a fit woman, but even a womaan as fit as her would be out of breath if she had to climb up and down all the stairs to get where she needed to go. Just because her Academly specialized in one school of magic didn’t mean she couldn’t use other types of magic. As a amtter of fact, she encouraged her student snad faculty to do so. Once she as satisfied with her hair, clothes, and makeup, she stepped into the circle, visualizing the area of the compound she wanted to go. The sigils around the circle glowed green as they activiated, and suddenly she materialized at the top of the grand staircase.

Lilith liked to make an entrance for her new students at the beginning of the sememster, and this time was no different. Smiling enigmatically, Lilith descended the staircase, her hand trailing the banister gracefully, her thigh peeking out through the slit artfully cut in her dress, not just for show, but also a display of power. It was easier to fight in a slitted dress, if it became necessary, and made it easier to reach the daggers she wore strapped to her thigh. The reaction from the students was silent awe. The throng before her was perdominately male, which was somewhat disappointing. So many were of the superstitious opinion that necrmancy was men’s work, no place for a woman. And she had proven som any of them wrong. But despite her success, and despite that it was well advertised that this was her school, many of her new studetns clung to the same nonsense that women shouldn’t practice necromancy.

She would have to speak with her marketing team about appealing to more girls and women as candidates for apprenticeship.