From Serenity To Servitude

[CosmicWhaleShark 2488]

I was a warrior, but I was a fool. To think that I would finally find peace after a dagger stuck me through was a... Naive notion. I was too good of a killer to be allowed to die. My life's work. Not a good husband, not a good father. A good killer. It was the only thing I was good at... My enemies took notice of this...

 

A crack of thunder echoed beneath the docks, followed by a metallic explosion. After the flash of light had dispersed, one could see Avery on his back in the sand, and his killer standing over him. Within a few moments, his killer drew his dagger, and slid it between Avery's ribs. The man fell on top of Avery soon after and with a sickening slosh and thud, the dagger drove inward until the hilt pressed against his chest.

 

A dagger... Avery thought, of all things, a dagger...

 

He drove a kick up to the man's groin, he'd be damned if he died beneath the docks quietly. His killer lurched forward with the dagger still in his grip, and tore Avery open even further. Avery released his final pained gasp, and rolled his head to the side for a more peaceful view in his final moments. He saw something else entirely. The horrified face of his wife as she saw him killed before her very eyes in the sand. He had forgotten about her, how selfish of him. 

 

Avery's final moments were not of peace and serenity.

 

They were only of regret.

 

 

In the darkness he had fallen...

 

 

Avery could hear the unmistakable crackle of magics, along with the protests of groans, in physical strain.

 

Avery could hear...

 

Avery could see the faint light amidst the vast darkness, a golden pillar to his right, coursing with black magics as they spiraled... To him.

 

Avery could see...

 

He flexed his hands, feeling nothing as he heard his joints and bones groan and pop in protest.

 

Avery could not feel...

 

Finally, Avery let out a long sigh. He watched as dust floated upward from his agape maw, and stayed absolutely still as he heard a horrifying rasp that echoed throughout the cavern. Avery then realized, that sound was coming from him.

 

"How does it feel, Avern'len? How does it feel to be alive, after so long?" The voice was familiar, he could not quite place it, though.

 

Avery finally went to sit himself up, slowly. He took in the room, touching the golden floor he sat upon with his fingers. He could see how rotten they had become, some already skeletal. Gradually he touched his forefinger and thumb together, feeling nothing still. He came to the realization that he felt unmistakably hollow in turn. He felt like a corpse... No, he was a corpse.

 

He took his time to collect himself. He came to the understanding that there was no longer a need for him to breathe. He was alive through magic, trapped in a corpse through magic. There would no longer be any need for air, for food, for drink.

 

For him to stay alive, he only had a corpse's requirements. Nothing.

 

Avery opened his mouth, and gradually formed the words in an eerie rasp, "Where... Am... I...?"

 

"A sanctuary -- your new home, your second birthplace." The voice returned from the bleak.

 

"Why..." Avery asked in another slow rasp as he moved to stand on its strange, skeletal legs.

 

"A repayment, for snuffling the flame of life from your soul. I have taken, and now I give back... To serve a better purpose."

 

Avery leaned against the gold and black altar that he was laid upon, tilting his head from side to side as his jaw hung agape while he released a long and low rasp. After some time he softly repeated the words, "Repay... Me..."

 

His killer... No, not killer any longer. His master reached within his own robes and threw a locket of red hair at the feet of the lich, of Avery. As Avery shakily reached down to grab at the token, the man spoke, "She wanted you back, I obliged her wishes."

 

Avery wrapped his skeletal fingers around the few strands of red hair that stayed in his grip, holding them closely as he stared down at each one. All he could do was cast a hollow gaze, no longer able to smile, cry, show any anguish or joy at the notion that his lover wished so greatly for his return, that she made a deal with darkness itself if it could be a person. Instead, he released another low rasp, almost a wail. Then he asked, "What... Cost...?"

 

"You serve me now, and you will serve me... Until the end of time..." His master answered back.

 

"I've... Killed... You... I've fought... You... Why... Me...?" Avery returns again in slow, hesitant words. His mind was sharpening, but it was not quite all there just yet.

 

"Through this coil of brittle bone and dried flesh, you can obtain power unmatched by the mortal ilk. You will use this power in service to me, and my brethren."

"And why... Should... I fight... For... You...?"

 

"Because that is all you may do." His master quickly replied, a hint of annoyance seeming to creep into its tone in speaking with its new servant. "You cannot go back to them, you will be cast out by mortals. You are no longer of their world, we are your only home. They scorn you -- us -- for what we practice. You fight for the Gravelords without resistance because you can provide none. You conflict against the living because they will scorn you." 

 

Avery's rasps began to become broken up, and his shoulders jutted up and down while his maw hung agape. He was laughing. He pointed his finger to his skull slowly and tapped his own head three times before replying, "Petty reason... Stay... Dead..."

 

His master did not react to this display of further resistance, he simply replied in a cool tone, "Death is not a paradise that you may reach just yet. Serve me and you will reach it... In due time."

 

"I have... Nothing to give..." Avery rasped out, pocketing the strands of red hair within his putrid robes that he was buried in.

 

"You will..." His master insisted.

 

"I will... Not... Fight... For... You..." Avery growled out now, taking a staggered step forward.

 

"I'm afraid that isn't your choice. You are my servant now... Before I leave... Kneel..." His master ordered darkly, and to Avery's shock, his body complied.

 

In a jitter of bones, Avery went down onto his knees, before the man that had killed him. With a slow laugh, his master left the room, to leave Avery there alone with the flurry of facts now whizzing through his, literally, empty skull. Avery lurched forward, resting his head against the cool obsidian that he could not feel, and wailed in agony.

 

From the darkness he would rise...
 

[Swgrclan 2682]

Pacing away from the chamber that drew life back into Avern'len's frigid carcass, the Gravelord Nimdravur hissed and chittered quietly in malicious amusement, whispering something to itself as it drifted into the shadows of the Borough.

"To spread the harrow, comes the man of marrow."

[Birdwhisperer 1174]

His appearance did not shock her. Many a night she sat in her little burrow, staring at the wall where he was buried. Many times she told herself that he wasn’t really there. He wasn’t dead, simply wandering the paths of Anthos like he often did. He had always been a wanderer, and she had learned how to cope with his absences. But he always came back to her.

 

So she would pull away the soil that concealed his body, because he couldn’t possibly be there. Each time, no matter how convinced she was that she would find nothing, she was greeted with his face. His cold, unmoving, decaying, beautiful face that she so longed to see alive again. The man she longed to hold, and be held by, was dead. But he would be coming back, as the shadow promised

 

As he was, the shadow said when it demanded her loyalty and set its cursed mark upon her. He will return as he was.

 

As he was, she told herself when the druids suggested that being brought back would be worse

than death.

 

As he was, she thought again as she huddled beside the empty hole that housed his body for so long. She tried to stop it, when the time actually came. Tried to ward away the shadows, keep him in the grave to rest. Yet, the attempt had been in vain. He was gone from her grasp, and was coming back.

 

Though she feared for his own fate, she still longed to see him again. Perhaps the shadow had not lied. Perhaps he would be as he was in life. He would return to her, and know exactly how to fix everything. All the pain, the struggle, the lies, the torment would be over...

 

...and worth it.

 

What she met with instead was the same thing she found in the grave. A corpse. His appearance did not shock her, no. But she knew that it was her fault that her lover was locked inside a rotting body. Her fault that he was bound to the will of the shadow that tormented them both. Yet, to be able to speak to him again, and to hear him speak her name... all the fear, the stress, the pain, that she had kept wound tight within her washed away. The fight was finally over. The aftermath was terrible, but it was over.

 

So despite his body’s state, she held his hand.

 

She smiled.

[Birdwhisperer 1174]

Moved to the Great Library. It shall be sorted into appropriate category shortly.