Disclaimer: None of Tamora Pierces thoughts/ideas which areprotectedby copyright laws are mine. This is applicable to this entire story (just in case I forget to write a Disclaimer every time).

When We Need Death to Live: Chapter 1, The End of the Beginning

She held her breath while entering the dusty tomb. It had been done before, this thing she was about to do, but not for over two hundred years. Two centuries without a crazed necromancer running free amongst Tortall's noblest families. Two centuries since Thom of Trebond had unleashed and fed the evil spirit of Duke Roger of Conte, who had tried to destroy the kingdom. And now she would be the crazed necromancer. But, oh, how she hoped this raising would be different from that time long ago.

If her parents knew what she was about to do they would kill her. Literally. Her step-mother was not known for her kindness and her father, when interested in his daughter's projects, only criticized them whole-heartedly.

And what her family feared the most was shame; they feared their lovely red-headed mage shaming her family and disgracing the family name. Her family expected a lot of her; her grandmother was, after all, the granddaughter of the once-famed Alanna of Trebond, famous knight and the killer of the evil Duke Roger.

No, she herself was not trying to raise the Duke again, which would have her banished to a section of the desert reserved for the most dangerous criminals, but in the eyes of the Tortallan nobility this would be nearly as bad. She was actually resurrecting their hero, yet in doing so she risked unleashed ancient powers beyond her control. But she was desperate and she had to try.

Finally, she heard the city's clock ring. Midday. She placed a circle of ten ancient stones, different colored opals spaced out every other stone by her own creation, purple diamonds, around the hero's grave. She stated the opals' virtues as she set them down carefully "White for innocence, that you may be one of morals. Green for youth, that you may be once again as young in spirit as in mind. Blue for sight, that you may regain lost senses. Brown for healing, that your body may be as well again as your mind and spirit. And red for blood, that it will retrace its course and cease the ceasing of your beating heart."

The mage crossed to the foot of the body and began chanting the two hundred year-old verses that could, and would, she hoped, raise the dead. As she spoke, she moved her hands in intricate patterns along the corpse, her Gift flowing out of her fingertips to cover the body in a sheet of woven dark indigo-violet threads. Finally, she closed the spell. "With myself, my body and my spirit, I will raise you up to life. My spirit I have given with my Gift and my body I give now." She quickly used a dagger to make a deep cut in her left palm. She walked over to the body's head and placed her hand on the ancient forehead.

As she felt the spell complete itself, she thought of the reason for bringing her hero back to life. She thought about how much Tortall needed this person to come back. She thought about children, starving in the streets. She thought about families, once noble, now forced to live begging for food. And, most of all, she thought of the rebellions. After being annexed to Carthak by Emperor Kaddar and Empress Kalasin's daughter, Empress Karalise, Tortall had endured long periods of revolts and rebellions by its commoners. Now, 150 years later, the rebellions had progressed enough that it seemed as though the rebels might soon turn to fighting the Tortallan nobility as well. The fighting continued day and night, and it would only get worse.

The descendent of the Lioness gasped as her magical ties to the spell were severed. The body, no longer a rotting corpse, twitched spasmodically. Mouth and eyes opened, and the girl's hero, alive again, sat up slowly, with a raspy intake of breath. She looked around and with a trembling voice quite uncharacteristic of her asked, "Who the hell are you?"

So tell me what you thought... This is my first somewhat-angsty fic. I've been writing it in school when I am bored with what the teachers are trying to learn me.

So, good or bad? And who do you think the "hero" is? I think it's a bit obvious and Ibet everyone who reviews will guess right, but maybe some people will be imaginative...