Sam woke up feeling incredibly weak, with a burning sensation in his forehead.

Sam was a occult librarian. His parents were rich and he had plenty of time, so it was basically his only hobby.

There were hundreds of books in his library, on dozens of different branches of magic. Warnings about the consequences of misuse took up the first half of most copies. Some of the warnings were specific to the branch of magic that the book was about, but most of them were standard duplications. After all, these books were incredibly valuable, and at the time of writing, it would have been unheard of to have two, let alone the hoard Sam had amassed.

Sam's newest book was on Necromancy, his favorite branch of magic. At this point he had dabbled enough in various topics that he could light a cigarette with his finger, hold his breath for an hour, and weed his garden slightly faster than normal. They weren't all winners. But necromancy was life itself. He couldn't wait.

His book contained the standard warnings - "Don't cast in view of your own reflection", "never pray", "your shadow is your enemy", yada yada yada. But it also had two additional warnings. The first taught him a simple spell to sense the coming of his own death. The second was instructions on creating a phylactery, and a warning to do it as soon as possible. It also said never to use necromancy on his own body without a phylactery, but the consequences were unspecified.

Unfortunately, making a phylactery was hella complicated. Sam decided to check that spell again after he finished the book or turned thirty, whichever came first. The rest of the book was similarly complicated and Sam's ambition to control life came to little. He made himself a pet zombie dog and moved on to the next big thing - magical origami. After conjuring one thousand paper cranes, he would be granted one wish.

A year later, he was eight hundred cranes in and going strong. His parents were driving him to his twenty-second birthday party. They were doing a small thing, a family get together. Sam didn't have many friends.

While driving on the highway, Sam figured he'd get one more crane in before dinner. He glanced in the rear view mirror just as it appeared, and could have sworn he saw someone sitting in the backseat next to him. But only for a second, because after that the car hit them.

The t-bone collision was instantly fatal for two passengers out of three. Sam, bleeding heavily, thought back desperately to his half-finished Necromancy studies and reanimated his parents.

"Save me."

Sam woke up feeling incredibly weak, with a burning sensation in his forehead. The first of the two emergency necromancy spells had triggered. He was minutes from death. He looked up from his hospital bed, and two skeletons grinned mouthlessly at him. One of them clacked her hands together in excitement.

Sam realized he was in his own room, with medical equipment everywhere. He looked down to see wrinkled hands, liver spots. The good news - His parents must have been incredibly industrious, to set this all up and manage it themselves, without being found out as zombies. Either he was a naturally talented necromancer and his zombies came back intelligent, or more likely, zombification after recent enough death allowed creations to keep their memories. The bad news - the burning was growing stronger.

He specifically remembered that the phylactery had to gestate in the entirety of the new moon, three days. There was no chance of making it in the minutes he had remaining. But then again. His parents came back okay. What was the worst that could happen, if he managed to save himself?

As the heat in his head peaked and he breathed his last, he flexed his magic and caught his own body. It dangled below him on puppet strings, and his sensation decreased dramatically, but it was his. He ordered his body up from the bed and did a little dance, no longer feeling so weak. His parents hugged him.

He felt a hand on his shoulder. Not his body's shoulder. The shoulder of his incorporeal self, floating above.

"I'll take that," grinned his fellow necromancer, laughing through rotten black teeth. He tore Sam's body away from him with easy contempt.

Behind him stood hundreds more. Sam walked to the back of the long line, thinking to himself. The line was full of necromancers, but Sam would bet there was only one jack of all trades. Only two hundred cranes to go...