July Vignette

[KaliWenn]

Traveling robes gathered around his waist, a thick veil woven with white sage, rosemary, and fennel protecting his mouth and nose, Kalista huffed and reached for a new handhold.

The blasted urban wasteland of Eluriand still bore the marks of war heavy upon its body. Under his hands, he felt the nicks and cuts in the stone. He fought for grip against sweating palms and the gritty ash smeared across it by the endless foul wind that tangled his hair. There were arrows piercing the wall he scaled. Some were sturdy holds for his hands and his feet, while others splintered and fell under the lightest touch, wood withered and grey. So much here was withered and grey. Among the remnants of mortal struggle, this leaden city was pervaded deeply by a heaviness to the air; through the calming musk of his herbs, Kalista could almost taste the weight on the tip of his tongue as he lifted himself up onto the roof of the scarred building. The taste was familiar to him.

Death.

This place absolutely reeked of it. Arid air, old blood long since spilt and dried, and bitter tangs of decay.

Kali trod across the roof. Lightly, lightly, testing the weight of each step, being wary to not trust any board that could crumble and send him falling into the house below. Curious — vicious — things gathered in the darkness of the buildings. He would stand no chance against them. Not in confined quarters. No, all he could hope to do was run. What a careful dance this was! Eventually, he met the other edge of the pilings. Breathing heavily, he looked out into the distance.

Shifting ashes met his eyes. A town square, seemingly empty except for a waterless fountain, lay directly below. Aways across were more battered houses with more sunken-in rooves — rather vaguely defined houses. The air further on grew soupy with umber and chalky with noxious fumes. Already, he felt a another cough choke in his lungs. Being even as far in as he was, was dangerous.

But he just

had to see this place for himself.

Once, in a foggy memory of his childhood, he recalled picking up a slumped sparrow off the side of the wagonpath. Its feathers were soft, though dusty. Its body was stiff and cold. He’d cradled it for a while, petting the top of its head and trying to understand how a creature could sleep so soundly. It worried him.

He hadn’t known he could do it. It just happened, the first time. Orbs of void-centered, rosy light arose from his palms. The sparrow lifted her head.

His people claimed to be accepting of magic. They greeted those who studied the spell-slosh of the ancients — runework and rituals and the sway of spellsong — with wide grins and proud ears. But when his mother had gently prodded him to repeat the waking of the bird in front of the village elders, he learned that some magic was greeted with fearful looks and angry muttering. Whispers of “Corpse War” and “blighted soul” trailed after him. And so the small wooden town that couldn’t bear to pick up and set themselves farther away from the bleak wastes to their west waited with bated breath for the day that their born necromancer would finally choose to depart.

Kali smothered another cough as he spotted something stir in the distant smog. A humanoid figure shuffled out of the pitch, lumbering on an uneven gait. The young necromancer held his breath as he watched it. It might have once been high elf, judging by its delicate frame and dirty robes. But it was difficult to tell. Its skin was leathery, and its ears had long since withered away. A thin veneer of skin clung to the skull. There was not even the illusion of breath in its hollow chest.

The creature stared up with dry, white eyes. It seemed to meet his gaze… but perhaps, it was only stunned, blinded by the sun hovering high behind him.

How curious, Kali thought with quickening heart, that a body long since dead in soul should be hale enough to continue on in its second chance at half-life! If only it had some intelligence. Or perhaps, someone of intelligence to guide it. A song of death, its subjugation to living will, wavered in the winds caressing past. A song of things he understood only so much— but wanted to know more of. A song of quietly questioning the traditional, natural cycles of the world. How much those old necromancers had known! They must have been intimately familiar with Death itself, though whether as friends or enemies, one could not say.

The ghoul blinked membranous eyelids at the sun and shuffled back into the murk.

Released from his spell, Kali cleared his raspy throat and stood up, preparing his his dance back across the broken roof, reluctantly away from the mysteries of the gathered smog. No. He wasn’t ready to intimately contend with a force such as Living Death.

Not yet.