View Full Version : The Near Psychosis Of Ashley Turgor
The Near Psychosis Of Ashley Turgor (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZ7WMYoZWBU&feature=related)
Set in Beinost, after the fall of Anebrilith and the rise of the benevolent dead.
2479
The lonely farm, the crowded street,
The palace and the slum,
Give welcome to my silent feet
As, bearing gifts, I come.
Last night a beggar crouched alone,
A ragged helpless thing;
I set him on a moonbeam throne --
Today he is a king.
Last night a king in orb and crown
Held court with splendid cheer;
Today he tears his purple gown
And moans and shrieks in fear.
Not iron bars, nor flashing spears,
Not land, nor sky, nor sea,
Nor love's artillery of tears
Can keep mine own from me.
Serene, unchanging, ever fair,
I smile with secret mirth
And in a net of mine own hair
I swing the captive earth.
Joyce Kilmer
Death can became rather horrible if you do not treat it with the respect it thinks it deserves. There are times when it will change its mind about this, and times when it will become so egotistical and needy, that even giving in and dying will not satisfy it.
This is precisely the reason there are thirteen thousand, seven hundred and twelve ghosts currently in residence in the city of Beinost, and precisely why Ashley Turgor, the Wizard known as Hallow, is utterly enthralled with his existence. Everyone has a hobby, or so they say, and the dead is the most fetid occupation of them all.
“I do not know how it all happened,” he said in protest, arms up innocently to show that he was unarmed. The two guards gave them little notice, focussing their intention on the black book tucked under the man’s robes as they jumped to an inevitable conclusion. “I was just minding my own business, and there I was all of a sudden, surrounded by these fine fellows.”
Under normal circumstances, Hallow might have gestured at three ordinary gentlemen clad in robes and general workmen attire, indicating they were on their way home from a mellow pint in a local tavern or returning to their wives after a long day at sea. At this particular time of day, however, this soon after the Corpse War, he was politely pointing to three skeletons.
If they had flesh, Hallow would have seen them smile, but he saw the ghostly images that surrounded the bones gleam and grin, and tried to contain a light chuckle.
The guards eyed him suspiciously, unsure of his maddening actions, and then looked at the naked bones of people that had once served as citizens, protectors and vagabonds in the city once called Anebrilith. Nothing remained on their bodies, except stale air and the promise of a few extra years. The alleyway was a dark, damp environ for the wizard, and though inexperienced, the guards knew enough from the rumours to tread carefully.
At this point, Hallow thought he had been rather too clever to be believed. The bound dead, he had said quite truthfully, had happened upon him without him having any part to play in the circumstance. Though a necromancer purely in name and he guessed by trade, he did not possess the skill and acumen required to assembled bones and imbue a full body with the spirits of the deceased. Birds were one thing, humans and elves, another altogether.
“I understand you do not trust the Order, but I assure you both, I am attempting to stay these souls and send them peacefully to the other world through non-aggressive means,” he stepped aside, to give the men the opportunity to kindly place a mace between the empty sockets of the skeleton’s eyes if they so desired. It would save him the hassle of having to talk to them; he had quite enough moaning for one day.
They seemed hesitant, and looked to one another for reassurance.
“No,” the elder of the two said slowly, looking at Hallow’s covered face and then at the skeletons, “it’s alright. We know who you are, and what your people do.” The matter of fact way in which the guard acquiesced hurt Ashley. He was by all means used to scorn, ridicule and the sudden requirement to run from angry pitchfork mobs, but lies?
They hurt a man in ways daggers never could, and the wounds they left were much harder to stitch closed.
“Thank you kindly,” he lied through his teeth all the same. He was suddenly relinquished of any responsibility, and though wizard did not start a fight, he sure made every effort he could to end it. “If you would excuse me, then, I will tend to their grievances and return them to the grave from whence they came.”
One day, I will command them all to cut your throats and tear you limb from limb, but there is time for that and I am patient, said the voices in his head in a chorus of calamity. He shook his head sporadically and stomped his foot. He covered it well by shuddering and pretending to warm himself against the chill of the night air.
The guards nodded gruffly at the black wizard, and turned their backs to him to depart along the alleyway and out into the main boulevard between the docks and the magic district. They fell away into the Spartan stream of late night vagrants and cloaked men with hurried steps and were gone. Hallow turned to the skeletons, and examined them once more through the slits in the helmet that hid his face like a permanent eclipse.
“I do believe you were telling me all about your grandmother, Charles. Do continue, won't you?” He crossed his hands politely over his chest and eased up the tension in his bones. All the while, the whispers of the many spirits that watched the dialogue unfold raked at his mind, splitting his very soul into the Hallow that screamed and ran from wraiths, and the Hallow that took an interest, a genuine interest in the story of little dead Lucy’s lost kitten.
Somebody had to, didn't they?
“Thirteen thousand, seven hundred and nine…” Ashley muttered to himself as he stepped out into the street and pulled up his hood. The black ichor of the Shadow Brand morphed beneath his fingertips and poised itself perfectly to hide his face from prying eyes, and to remain intact against the buffering advance of the wind that swept from the north to the south along the wide boulevard.
Three hours had passed in the alleyway before he had been able to appease George. He was a fishermen apparently, from Scara Brae, who had been innocently visiting Anebrilith the day it had been besieged. His ship had been shattered in the assault, and he had huddled, quite cowardly on the docks to wait for a rescue that never came. It had not taken Hallow long to piece together an argument to levy at the ghost, and he had caved quickly, accepted that he was only a coward because it was a natural thing to do when you panicked, and he had gracefully given up his occupation of someone else’s corpse.
He had watched the pile of bones form from the little bone rain, and thought pensively for a few minutes before he stopped caring. A wizard’s work was never done, and there were still many more spirits to keep sated all across the city of Beinost.
Lots of them rather angry, too.
The moon cast its pale light along the street, and Hallow examined a few of the passers-by for inspiration. There several well to do officials, carrying sealed scrolls from one construction project to another, red and violet doublets marking them as men to not be harmed, lest the full force of the Officnum Regalia be brought against trespassers. The smell of fish clung to his nostrils as he braved the flow, and he cast his mind back to when the city had been heaving every hour, every day, all year. Walking in silence, he pulled the Shadow Brand tight over his armour so that he remained a black silhouette, devoid of gold sparkles that might attract untoward attention, before quickening his pace southwards.
Any self-respecting wizard needed a tower, but the Order of Hem required a certain amount of secrecy and separation, so Hallow’s abode was not particularly well decorated, or even wholly intact. It could be seen even from this distance, however, and as he weaved in and out of the non-existent crowds, he came across as a little deranged. In his view, however, he was weaving in and out of a bustling street, occupied by the ghosts of every unfortunate soul that had been bound to the city to raise it higher than ever before.
He side-stepped three headless girls, still screaming silent sorrows and nearly crashed into a real man with a basket of bread.
“Oi!” He guffawed, only to be patted politely and left to his own devices looking rather bewildered.
Hallow wavered on his feed amidst a spiralling nausea, and took to slapping the side of his helmet with his knuckles to knock out what he perceived to be delusions. A long exposure to the realm of the dead had blurred the two worlds together, and without warning, the land of the living, virtually a ghost town, burst into the metropolis of spirits; the underworld became the real world, and reality was lost.
“Not today, thank you, bygone!” He shouted, leaning forwards and closing his eyes. He continued to tap his head and shake it furiously for several minutes, and the only passer by gave him a wide birth, muttering as he swerved something in elfish about the strangeness of the hour and the incompetency of the wizards of the crumbling college.
When he opened his eyes he was quite alone. He looked around suspiciously, his view obscured by his helmet which divided the world into a thin slice of exposure to the harsh chill of the night. There were no figures moving, alive or dead, and no voices in the spirit world or the realm of Raiera. A wizard learnt at a young age to never trust his real senses, that was an elementary and quite often fatal mistake to make, even if you thought you were well respected and liked amongst the college academia.
Which of my senses are real, and which are the thoughts of the dead? He frowned.
“Another notch on the autopsy table for the psychosis,” he grumbled, standing straight and adjusting his cloak so that it once more carried itself on his shoulders in a dignified manner befitting his supposed station. He composed himself and continued south, eyes set on the conical tip of his tower and the dim light which shone out through its uppermost window.
He had certainly fixed the tower up after he had discovered it, quite vacant and quite unclaimed. The roof had been riddled with holes, and the upper circular chambers, where his theatre, operating room and carnarium now resided had literally needed connecting back to this dimension before they could be occupied.
“Far too many sacrifices,” he mumbled, considering who might hear if he flexed his wizard voice for just a few lines. It had been a while since he had used it. The dead it seemed did not find flashy annunciation or semantic trickery at all appealing, and he had seldom opportunity to wield it like a blade of wit against the living (who tended to be screaming too loudly and running in the opposite direction to quite catch what it was he was trying to say).
“Far too many sacrifices.” A little flourish flickered into life, but it sputtered out without presence or authority.
Several spirits appeared in a circle around the wizard, but they chuckled and cackled, and dissipated again, content that the momentary beacon was nothing more than the work of a school boy drunk from the celebrations of foolish mage's.
He cleared his throat and puffed up his chest until it grew tight under the canopy of iron that kept him safe.
“Far too many sacrifices!” He boomed, arms spread wide and the very ground shaking beneath the weight on his shoulders.
Some wizards had bright words, fire dancing from their tongue as they spoke. Hallow, on the other hand, placed the burdens he carried on his shoulders into his own speech, so that others became sluggish and weak beneath the onslaught of dreariness and problems.
"Ones I do not make lightly!"
His shout echoed along the street several times before falling away into the night, and the wizard found himself once more alone, and quite glad to be just so. He turned a corner, and then another, and passed several desolate shop fronts and temples cast down to spite their abandoned gods before he came to a small circle clearing. There were three towers, the one opposite his own and to his left and right, abandoned abodes. They were connected at the base by a tall and almost unassailable wall, with only one thirty foot wide entrance into the inner circle.
“Home sweet home,” he whispered with slight glee. He said the second home with more conviction, and the magic he pushed into it bounced over the cracked cobblestones and struck the lock of the heavy reinforced door. With a satisfying click, it swung open as the lock failed and the enchantments placed on it fell away to let their master into the small, poky cloak room.
It closed once he was inside and the defences reformed, sealing the doctor into his laboratory, ensconcing him in the familiar smell of embalming fluids, rotting intestines and the distinct aroma that only came from too much interest it what once was, instead of what could be.
The tower had six floors.
The first was no more than a fancy entrance hall. There was a table at the centre covered in casually discarded robes and accessories. There was a satchel full to the brim with medical equipment, and beneath that, in two neat rows of four, there were various battered pairs of boots and sandals.
The centre of the tower had once been one tall spire until Hallow had built in wooden supports and separated the single room into many small ones. The spiral stair case started to the left of the door, and wound its steep way up through the heart of his home.
He set his Grimoire onto the table whilst he took off his boots, and set his bracers on the table after fumbling with the tattered straps. He had lost track of just how long he had been tracking the three skeletons, ever since they had emerged in the market three nights ago. They had flittered with wails around the trade district threatening to keep doing so until someone heard their cries.
“Of course,” he started to think aloud as he ascended the stairs slowly. His bones clicked and creaked, and the heavy weight of his hauberk continued to press onto his heels and throbbing feet. “It just had to be me, didn't it?”
The second floor was heavily cluttered with crates, chests and dusty cob web laden coat rails. Many of the garments hanging from the rails, if one were to look closer, and a wizard never did were smattered with blood. It had, unlike the death lords in their torture houses not come from bodies belonging to living beings. Hallow walked further up the stairs, paying the contents of the room no attention. Not because he did not have fond memories of what lay there, but because he did not want to catch the attention of the old woman sat sobbing into her handkerchief atop a chest full of dried hands and pickled eyeballs.
“Why did he die?” She said, over and over and over. Her voice grated down Hallow’s spine like nails on a chalk board in a particularly uninteresting lecture on magical thermo waves.
He made a mental note to attend to her needs when he was not quite so tired or neurotic about his episode out in the cold and ascended to the next floor. He was hit as he always was with the sudden stench of fresh death, the sort of death that most necromancers longed to be quite short, easy and well on the way to decomposing before anyone noticed.
“What time do you call this, hmm?” A familiar voice asked with hesitation and sternness. Hallow smiled and stood at the top of the stairs as if the tip of a rather sharp knife had suddenly been placed into the small of his back.
The spirit of the tower’s former occupant glared at the necromancer, comically stooped over the half rotten body that rested on the large stone slab at the centre of the autopsy chamber. He wore a ghostly magnifying apparatus, which enlarged one of his shining, transparent eyes to comic proportions and detracted from the threatening tone in his haunted voice.
“Malefor, I said that I would be a great deal of time. You saw how traumatised George was and how…difficult he was being to the grocers of the north market.” Hallow had copped several tomatoes in the face himself trying to get the ghost to listen.
One of the many downsides to being a wizard was being able to see the dead. One of the many downsides to being a necromancer was attracting those already deceased. They tended to swarm to him like flies to a rotting carcass set out to roast in the heat of a desert’s sun. There were many types of spirits Ashley Turgor could not stand, but the worst of them all was the most horrifying thing imaginable;
“A ghost in a pointy hat…”
“I’m sorry?” Malefor said, somewhat appalled to be interrupted.
“Oh, nothing. Come to the study when you are done examining Lucre and we can discuss your findings and how best to return her to her uncle.” He waved the ghost away and continued his climb up the stairwell.
Two floors passed him by as he returned to his thoughts. The autopsy room and the library were both progressively smaller than the rooms below. Each were nothing more than circular shelving units with a work space at the centre, and the shelves were eight deep and covered in every type of ornate box, jar and vial imaginable. There were trays of rusted tools and cleaning fluid scattered between them, and many objects even Hallow had no idea what they were for. He hadn't the heart to ask Malefor.
“I probably never will,” he said aloud, stopping in the library to wander casually to the large oak desk that stood in its centre. It had moved, seemingly, which was not odd, except that it was far too heavy to be shifted by the strength of mortal men. The green carpet underneath proudly showed an opposite square of almost new strands, which had not been flattened by decades of being stood on, and had obviously been quite a wondrous pattern in a former life.
Hallow stared down at it puzzled and perplexed.
"Why move it?" He wondered.
He shrugged after several minutes, and thought about the Shadow Brand. The use of being part of your hat was eternal, and he reformed it and shortened it into a thin and slender neck scarf. Of course, there was a hat; everybody had to have a hat. Malefor had spent three months screaming at him every night and through most of the day until he had been forced to attend the nearest haberdashery (which is not an easy thing to find in a city riven by war) to buy one.
It had rested on the back left corner of his desk, pride of place next to his inkwell and quill ever since. It had somehow acquired wear and tear, even though no-one living wore it, and had a permanent layer of dust on its brim. It was, quite naturally jet black, with a simple brown strap at its base and a golden buckle with a crow’s feather pin on the floppy front. The owl feather had been his addition, a little personal touch.
With tired fingers and aching limbs, Ashley fumbled at the back of his helmet for the straps and undid them. He breathed with a sigh of relief as he felt the stale air against his pale cheeks, and set the helmet onto the edge of the desk as he examined the small and neatly arranged pile of letters that sat dead in front of the ornate, carved chair that resembled a scrambling mound of imps all running after an apple core.
A wizard did many things, but he never got mail about nice things. They were only ever about other people's relatives meeting unfortunate accidents.
“Something tells me Malefor has been withholding certain pieces of information from me.” He did not sound surprised to find himself saying the same phrase he said every time he returned home.
He was not entirely sure why Malefor was still here, but that was another story altogether. He circled the desk, pulled the chair pack with a heavy tug and sat in it with a sudden release of care and a slouch. Before he could retire to his study, his pipe and his reminiscing on the putrid juices of his finest studies, he would have to listen and respond to the many cries for help that had somehow been off handed onto him from other members of the Order.
They were, after all, a business enterprise, and business in Beinost of late was far from dead.
“Addressing a letter ‘To the occupant of the dread tower’ is hardly the correct way to acquire aid…” He picked up the first letter from the pile and pried it open with shaking digits. It felt light, and smelt of poppies, which did not bode well. Poppies meant farmers, and farmer’s ghosts were the most difficult to deal with. There was something about the open air that made people bare grudges with much more conviction than hard wearing city folk.
He crossed his legs and settled into his chair as he unfolded the letter and began to read the spidery script, written in broken common and touched with sentiment, tear stains and, Hallow didn’t linger on it too long, but he was sure there was urine on it too.
Dear Father,
Mother is distraught at the news, is Uncle Elias truly dead? They are saying in the work house that he did not pay his debts, and leapt from Kyla Bridge at midday in front of everyone…
Please let it be a lie…
Please.
Hallow sighed. He set the letter down open on the desk and smoothed the crease so that it remained in view. With tired movements, he tucked his medium length hair behind his ears and started to rub his neck as he rolled his head side to side.
Malefor, in the mad wizard’s defence had warned Hallow about this sort of thing many times. He had, from what little information he had gleaned in the last year been a necromancer too. Whilst Ashley’s childhood fetish had been to reclaim life from the clutches of the after world, Malefor’s approach to learning was a little more generic, or what he had insisted was ‘traditional.’
Traditional, to a wizard, meant fanatical.
Fanatical to a necromancer meant a lot of time with your hands in someone else’s navel.
“I hate bridges…” he grumbled, flicking the letter with a little malice in his heart before picking up the second. He sighed as he fingered the edge of the paper, and noted from its wax seal that it was from the Order.
Several spirits stepped out from the bookcases that covered every inch of the library wall and stood in a semi-circle before the desk. Hallow did not look up from the address on the front of the envelope, but he sensed that he was no longer alone and that it would be quite appropriate for him to keep his mouth shut, ignore the phantoms and read the letter.
First Malefor slips into a mad scientist mentality, and now I am called to another ritual…he thought to himself, wondering when the madness would end.
He opened the letter and read it.
“You will come, now,” said the three spirits in unison. Their mouths did not move, but Hallow heard the words in his head. Or at least, he thought he did, the voices next to his voices debated the issue as he stood up and picked up his helmet.
“You will excuse me a moment, won't you?” He asked the spirits with rhetorical connotations, but they nodded together all the same. “Excellent,” he continued, clipping the helmet back over his weary face as he walked to the stairway.
“Come here a moment Malefor!” He roared.
One of the benefits of being a wizard was that you quite often did not have to use doors. Either they folded out of time and space at your command, or in the long dead necromancer’s case, you simply walked right through them. His head appeared through the floorboards a few inches away from Hallow’s naked feet.
“Yes?” He said snappily, his voice still carrying weight even though it was long without wind to drive it.
“I have been,” he pointed at the council members standing behind him, “summoned.”
The ghost turned his head slowly, convex to his body which continued to examine the contents of the body’s liver with its hands just below the floor of the library, comically suspended from the roof of the autopsy room and too dedicated to his art to truly pay any attention.
The necromancer looked back at Hallow, then back at the council and shook his head. Hallow had gotten used to being mocked by things without souls, but Malefor had perfected the art.
“You will never work out how to resurrect a simulacrum if you keep suffering these infernal interruptions-” his voice trailed off as he floated out of sight to continue with his duties. The tail ends of his words were half muffled by the dense oak structure.
“Something tells me,” or someone, he could never be sure, “that I have all the time in the world,” he said flatly, staring at the spot where the ghost had been for several seconds before turning back to the spirits.
“Ashanti,” he said softly, holding out his right hand with digits spread like a branched altar.
From shadow and mist I summon thee.
The Grimoire Graviga appeared level on his fingertips, and its weight dropped his hand down to his side as he clasped it tightly. He felt the tingles of energy from its ancient pages run up his arm and warm the cold in his heart. The other advantage of being a wizard, asides from the title quite literally opening doors, was that there was always something magical to hand to hit people with. Spells were quite often less potent than a good wallop with the tip of your staff or a back hander from your spell book.
“Lead the way,” he said calmly, extending his scarf into a full length cloak that cornered his shoulders and enshrouded him in the usual mystery and office.
The spirits floated towards the three lanterns mounted onto the walls and leant forwards with spirit lips puckered. Hallow steeled himself against the coming dark, and the moment the lights were extinguished, he felt himself fall from Beinost and into the heart of darkness itself.
The space between Beinost and its shadows was a strange place, full of surprises and things that had been left accidentally or otherwise. After the war, more souls had become imprisoned in the darkness, until it resembled a sea of throbbing, pulsating screaming entities, all clambering to escape and break out into the real world.
The Order had been quick to respond to this theological crisis, and tethered the shadows to safe havens and graveyards, so that when things did break through, they appeared in places that they would not cause havoc. Slowly but surely, they had empties the shadows of the city, and slowly but surely, the members of the Order had learnt to traverse between one world and another to aid them in their work.
Of course, just because limbo was empty, it did not make the journey any easier.
The desire to vomit was strong when you entered one shadow, and though the journey took less than seconds, when you emerged back into the real world, the desire was almost compulsory. Before he had been given his armour, which tempered the sensation and left nothing but butterflies in his stomach and a slightly spinning head, he had left little patches of his desire in drains, catacombs and abandoned towers all over Beinost, in a most undignified, but very wizardly manner.
“Greetings, Hallow, and welcome,” said a familiar voice as the wizard emerged and took stock of his surroundings.
He was standing in a small circular room, no more than forty feet across, which was lit only by a large storm grate in the room. The moon beam cast a circle at the room’s centre, leaving plenty of natural gloom at the edges for members of the Order, and more dangerous creatures to traverse the shadows. Four gutters met in the middle of the slimy floor, and the remnants of last night’s rain trickled slowly into a small grate before they disappeared deeper underground.
He wiggled his toes and regretted not putting his shoes back on.
Another wizard stepped forwards into the half-light, and Hallow heard similar footsteps emerge from the shadows behind him. They wore armour identical to his own, and wore half magical capes formed from shadow just like he did.
“Craven,” he nodded to the man in front, and looked over his shoulder briefly to the man behind “Westeros.”
The energy of his own voice bounced around the storm drain for a minute before it rattled down into the sewers, and the other wizards watched.
“The letter spoke of concerns?” Hallow said, eager to break the silence and the tension before it became a physical entity and smashes in his skull. “Will you not let me address them?”
The Order possessed like any wizardly organisation many strange and unusual customs. The most notorious was its habit of silence, its watching eye speaking a thousand words on the virtue of being judged by a man in an iron mask. Though Ashley had grown used to the way in which the Order’s ‘judges’ examined his soul like they did, he still felt distinctly exposed and unprepared for the rhetoric which followed.
He took a deep breath through the enclosed protection of his headgear, and let the mildew, smell of rain water and sluice steel his concentration.
“You have grown weary,” said the taller wizard Craven. Hallow, like any member of the Order had been taught to identity another of the Hem by his voice, his walk, any feature asides those people normally relied on. “You have become sundered almost.”
“Well that’s a little har-” He tried to protest, but Westeros stepped forwards and rested a gauntleted hand on his right shoulder.
“We know you hear voices, see things unseen and things not meant to be.”
Hallow rolled his eyes beneath his helmet.
“I am a wizard; I am supposed to see things no mortal could suffer. So what if I go occasionally deranged? It is a small price to pay.”
Hallow resigned himself to let the conversation take its course. It was clear both of his fellow wizards were not going to be impressed by his velvet tongue or his witticisms.
The two wizards stared at him some more, as if they were continuing the conversation amongst themselves. Hallow did not know how to respond without incriminating himself further. Despite the conundrum of being a ‘good’ necromancer, Ashley Turgor was also an excruciatingly honest man. Touching dead things and telling the truth went hand in hand, especially when most ghosts could smell if you were lying.
“Deranged is not the correct word, but weary is. The Council appreciates all that you have done, and all the souls you have put to peace will rest eternally or haunt the corners of Beinost honourably in your name.”
But…Hallow said in his mind, knowing fully well what the wizards would recommend next.
“We however think it is appropriate for you to…how do you say it,” Craven looked over Hallow’s shoulder, or perhaps through it, and Westeros released his grip.
“Take a leave of academic study, for a while.”
The voices in Ashley's head all responded with varying levels of white noise. He shook his head for a moment, half to reject their suggestion, and half to shake lose the din.
"I will do no such thing, though I appreciate the council's...concern."
When a wizard expressed concern, you ran. When a dead wizard did it, as the stench informed Hallow that these men were, you ran really fast.
"We know how hard the pressures of office can be on a man, we do not want you to succumb to temptation, or indeed, to the lessons of history."
Hallow crossed his arms over his chest and let the Shadow Brand take on a more grandiose length and thickness. He tapped his foot several times as he considered his next course of action, perplexed and slightly bemused that he had been called in such clandestine secrecy to be recommended for leave.
"You mean, you think I'm working myself into the, excuse the pun, rotten ground?"
The two wizards shook with barely concealed hatred at their undead lives. The Order, however, had traditions that bound even the strongest wizards, no matter how powerful their voices or pointy their hats.
"We will watch you closely, with both eyes."
If you still have any... Said the voice Hallow had affectionately called Crazy Larry.
"I do not expect anything less, I will also not give up - I joined the Order, as did you I expect, to let the souls of Beinost pass peacefully into the afterlife." He thought pensively for a moment, and took in the ambiance of the storm drain like a fat aristocrat relished the scent of an Alerar port over cracker bread and cheese. "How can I do that, when I am sat in my tower, a marvellous icon of neglect, thinking about all the things I'm not doing with my already shortened life?"
The question bounced about in the gloom for a minute, until the wizards simply nodded.
"What does that mean?"
"It means we understand."
"Oh good," he replied sarcastically.
"We will inform the Council of your response, but please consider the recommendation."
Hallow considered many things, but at that moment, he was fuming at the thought of being told to politely stop having a reason to live. Though correct on the matter of being troubled by the constant stream of misery, so much so he had manifested an aura of a poltergeist which sapped the life out of the living and left him with a constant slouch, he had not yet allowed those voices to defeat him.
He would most certainly not end up like Malefor.
"Tell them I will continue to appease the spirits of the Corpse War, because somebody must, and every moment I spend idle, many souls continue to prevent this city's rebirth. I have seven clients at the moment, and the Tower of Crows in the north of the city is still occupied by a particularly troublesome troll ghost." He waged a finger at Craven, and pulled the Shadow Brand back into a delicate scarf with a flex of his spinning mental energy.
"When I have attended to those matters, I will consider taking a brief 'study leave'."
"Tha-"
"Then, and only then."
Silence swamped the storm drain like a spring shower, and the two mages stepped back into the darkness and vanished with a flutter.
It was often said that a necromancer's life was destined to be anything but easy. As Ashley found himself alone, jealous and stoned by his fellow wizard's idiocy he made an addendum to the saying. A necromancer's life, and most likely his unlife would never be uneventful.
"Oh," he said, as if it were expected of him. The surprise in his voice was hollow and without conviction, but it clung to the hope of a quick witted follow up.
The voices in his head, nearly impressed, told him to do what most would do and leave. Ashley could not help but agree with them and turned slowly. He steeled himself against the gloom, and tightened his grip on the Grimoire Graviga before walking into the shadows and flouncing quite unconventionally across the city of the dead.
"That is the last time I go expecting tea," he complained as he found himself in a familiar setting. Though it was pitch black, the smell of embalming fluid and books told him he had arrived safely in his library, which was as dark and cold and unclean as he had left it.
He listened with strained ears as he undid his helmet and set it on the desk which he felt for to his right. There was a brief whelp as he stubbed his toe on the large engraved leg, and a clatter of paper falling from the edge as he swept his arm wide to steady himself.
"You arrive late, then you wake me up..." a familiar drawl said.
Malefor's head floated up through the floor, and his blue light cast a sickly glow over the book cases and occasional stuffed animal. Taxidermy had become a hobby within a hobby for both of them. Hallow froze with shock, then turned to meet the ghost's gaze with a furious temperament.
"You know damned well that you cannot sleep, and if you bothered to keep those damned lanterns lit, I'd, and I’d-"
"Still be unable to find a man's stomach with a carving knife," the necromancer said wryly, before continuing his ascent into the room.
Ashley rolled his eyes, and set his helmet properly upright on the desk with a heavy thud. He waltzed to the lantern and lit it with a match, before he turned with a snappy flare.
"Do you want to know what they wanted?" He slouched like a nagging gossip, but did not wait for a response. Malefor remained utterly motionless, but seemingly listening with much interest. "They wanted me to take an academic leave, me, study!"
He moved to his desk and flopped into the chair, the half cut glow of the solitary lantern offering both pairs of eyes a smattering of illumination. Hallow pressed his fingers together and set them onto his lap, gaze set furiously on an unassuming wizard's hat, which seemed to quiver beneath its master's attention. It was almost as if it were excited at the prospect of being worn.
"Why don't you? You will never learn to make a simulacrum if you are constantly being drawn to a new wailing soul or banshee in a tower."
Hallow was not sure if he had finally gone mad, or if the madman that refused to let him be had suddenly regained his sanity, because the long dead wizard started to come dangerously close to making sense. He looked at him with devilish intent, considering the suggestion with a pensive expression that suggested he wasn't all there.
"Why don't I indeed..." he looked back at the hat and for the first time the fabric perked up and shed its dust. He lifted the hat up to set it delicately onto his head.
This feels good!
"A wizard can always learn from doing what a wizard does best, can he not?"
Malefor almost cackled, but settled for an extension of a clawed and shrivelled hand that flipped over and made a gesture of majesty. He even managed a subservient bow, as if he were stood before the king of the underworld.
"Indeed, indeed, and what a wizard does best, is strive to make sure that another wizard doesn't steal his hat."
Wizards have the tendency to settle on mad ideas and pursue them for far longer than a sane man would. As Ashley and Malefor waltzed up the stairs, like two decadent doctors of the night, they settled not only on a mad idea but a good one (which in the hands of a man who can talk to the dead, and talk to people he thinks are dead, could never a good thing).
The sight of shelves laden with jars of bodily fluids, ears, severed hands and parts of orcs he still couldn't name washed away all thoughts of the Council's concerns and placed a sharp scalpel in his eager fingers without so much as a flinch. He had been surrounded by death all of his life, so standing over another corpse at four in the morning was part of his daily routine.
"Who do we have here then?" He asked enthusiastically, admiring the stitching that kept the remnants of many people in a vaguely humanoid shape.
Malefor floated around the table and stood opposite, excited to be given the opportunity it instruct his unwilling apprentice in the ways of flesh crafting. Whilst Hallow had pursued the art of sending the dead into the afterlife, the creature on the bloodied stone before them was an instrument of Malefor's talent at bringing the dead back.
"Slave girls, artisans and the heart of a horse, components that require great skill to assemble, and the only things we had lying around that could temper the ghost you wish to return to Beinost."
Hallow nodded appreciatively, far too inexperienced to truly understand the semantics of carefully selecting body parts that would ultimately fall apart after a day regardless. His client only wished to see his relative for an hour, and in that reunion, they could put one another to rest. The purpose of the Order worked wonders on the lives of the many sundered families who had lost everything to the Death Lord's fanaticism, and as long as Hallow remained only nearly psychotic, he would go to any lengths to lay down their burdens, and free the living from the memories of the past.
He set the scalpel to the simulacrum's throat and pressed the blade gently into the skin. It gave way easily, and he cut down along the vein to release the last inches of blood from its cage. Malefor nodded with appreciation, before he leant in closer to point a finger at the next incision point.
"Now here, and then the eyes, always the eyes must be drained." He licked his lips surreptitiously with glee.
Hallow remembered a time when that might have disturbed him, but he severed artery and emotion alike to rekindle life with their particularly black colour of magic.
"I fear it will be a long night," he said, half-heartedly starting a conversation.
Malefor nodded, "But it is the start of something beautiful."
Hallow chuckled, a laugh which rattled down the spiral staircase into his shoes, and up to the very top of the tower and out the balcony window into the cold night air.
"Like life itself," he added with a smile, before he drove the scalpel into the oozing pupil with a squelch.
Spoils:
The Reluctant Hat: Ashley has plucked up the courage to adorn his head with his wizard hat. It is a black piece, with a small golden wing clasp and a long, brown owl feather set in the band at the base of the cone. It does not yet have a name, but, as with all things imprinted with desire, belief and passion, it has quite possibly started to develop a mind of it's own. Maybe it will chose one for itself?
An Unwilling Apprentice: To further his ability to aid the living and the dead of Beinost, Hallow has reluctantly accepted the tutelage of his tower's former master, the Necromancer Malefor. He is receiving lectures on the art of making simulacrum, temporary corpses for souls to interact with the living through. This skill is presently considered below average, and will require much further study and strenuous applications of his anatomical and surgical knowledge before he successful in sustaining a simulacrum anything resembling a useful length of time.
The Tower Of Ravens: Ashley's tower is one of three that used to make up a healing hospital. The other two are currently beyond repair. The tower has six floors, and is modestly furnished with anatomical books, a store room of various body parts and lashing of embalming supplies, personal effects and a comfortable and suitably decorated study. It is certainly in need of some attention, and will receive additional detailing and upgrades as his fortunes change and his circumstances are altered. It has an enchanted lock, so only other wizards can enter if they over come the workings of the incantations which bind it. I will sacrifice a suitable amount of gold from each thread to flesh it out and detail it's contents and benefits for Hallow as it becomes more formed.
The Near Psychosis of Ashley Turgor
Hi again! You are extremely prolific. I’m going to do my best not to rehash thoughts I’ve given you in previous judgments. If my suggestions seem short or few in number, it’s because I don’t want to harp on you (especially because I’m pretty sure you’d written this before I’d finished the aforementioned judgments). Anyway, onto the good stuff!
You requested a full rubric with full commentary.
Plot Construction – 12/30
Story – 3/10
Someone once taught me that any good story is going to be about an interesting person doing an interesting thing – even if that person is only interesting because he’s so not interesting. The problem here is that at the end of this I don’t know Ashley well enough to say if he’s interesting. Even his psychosis seems downplayed, mild, and more like a slight annoyance than anything that’s crippling him. His frustration with his day to day life seems equally mild, and the conflict with Westeros and Craven is also mild.
I don’t want to say this story didn’t have the proper parts, it did. There was rising action, a protagonist, and a few problems. The issue is that everything is so muted that I don’t feel any pressure or anxiety at all. The ghosts were nonthreatening and, since they’re so mundane for Ashley, they become mundane for the reader as well. The council started out with a vaguely threatening atmosphere, and Hallow’s defiance suggests conflict…but in the end they sort of shrug at him, and then he ends up acquiescing to their request anyway.
Make me FEEL Ashley’s outrage at being told to take a break because he’s acting weird. If the voices are a threat he can’t fathom because of his growing madness, hint at it to the reader so we start to worry about him. And you started to do this a bit in the beginning but it sort of tapered off over time: play up the ghosts’ ordinariness for laughs! This would be especially effective if you could instill in the reader a sense of wonder, and then juxtapose that against Ashley’s ennui (despite all manner of dancing skeletons and wailing ghosts surrounding him).
Strategy – 4/10
This story would not exist without Ashley’s unique upbringing and skill set, both of which are extremely interesting things! If there’s a problem here, it’s that he doesn’t use those skills very much in the frame of the story. For the most part, the progress here came from Hollow reacting things going on around him, but we got more narrative musing than his actual thoughts. The shadow brand was mentioned, but never really used.
Setting – 5/10
You do well to remember to describe what’s going on around Ashley, but I found myself hungry for more. I want the smells to make me feel ill, I want to feel the chill in the air, or a sense of gloom. To give yourself an idea of what I mean, I strongly recommend reading The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe. If you could tap into the concentrated gothyness of Poe’s writing for that story and apply it to your settings where Ashley is concerned, you’d be well on your way to something amazing.
Characterization - 19/30
Continuity – 8/10
You did a great job of placing this story within the larger framework of Althanas, with special attention to the Corpse War, which is obviously hyper-relevant when discussing Hollow’s college. Good job.
Interaction – 5/10
Nothing struck me as especially awkward or wrong with the way Ashley interacted with his surroundings, but nothing struck me as especially notable either. Most of your protagonist’s dialogue was with himself, and much of his interaction with Malefor came in the form of short quips. Again, he seemed to be moving through the world and reacting to things going on around him, but the reactions were stifled and we never really get into his head enough for them to be meaningful.
Character – 6/10
You did well to remind me of important parts of Ashley’s appearance: he’s pale, the shadow brand is doing such and such, he’s got the armor and the mask. I’ve mentioned this previously, but you do a good job of creating a distinct narrative voice for each of your characters while still remaining yourself. If there’s anything I could ask for, it is, again, the chance to get deeper into Hallow’s head and see the world as he sees it.
Writing Style - 19/30
Creativity – 5/10
I really like the way you describe how Ashley views his surroundings through his mask – people often overlook that when their character’s wear something that should obscure their vision.
Mechanics – 8/10
I saw a few instances where I think autocorrect picked the wrong (but properly spelled) word, but otherwise flawless!
Clarity – 6/10
You’re a very good writer. I hesitate to say something like “you could improve your writing if you did this or that,” because I don’t feel I have the experience or expertise to make that kind of judgment. With that in mind, let me frame it this way: if you shoved me in a corner and said, “Dave, if you had to pick a single thing for me to focus on in my writing to improve your experience as a reader, what would it be?” I would answer, concise and careful word choice. It’s possible that just seems more important to me because it’s something I’m trying to work on myself, but I feel it’s worth pushing. Really think about the word you’re using, and why you used it – do you need it? Is it saying everything you want it to say? Would a more advanced or esoteric word say more, or complicate the issue?
I point this out under clarity because there were instances in this story where I stopped and said to myself, “That’s a strange thing to say, what is he trying to tell me?” Let me give an example: in post #7 you describe a voice as asking something “with hesitation and sternness.” That struck me as very strange: can someone be both hesitant and stern? I’m not sure. If this was absolutely intentional, I think it bears explanation.
Wildcard – 10/10
Sorry you had to wait so long for a judgment on this!
Total: 60
Hallow gains 1100 EXP
In the course of his “studies,” Hallow also discovers 320 gold pieces in the small intestine of a particularly large corpse. At least he thinks they’re gold, he’s not about to try the bite test.
All spoils approved pending RoG update!
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