"Many people despise the Undead, but few ever realize the suffering of those poor lost souls. Imagine being trapped in but a rotting shell of your former being, forced to do the bidding of one that quite possibly killed you in the first place... That is why I chose this profession." - Catherine, Grave keeper and Priestess of Ragon, God of True Death
“Coralia'ta Jessayielin... Awaken, child!”
“Ahg!”
I tried to scream, I tried to move, neither happened. My eyes were open but my vision unfocused and blurred. My body was despite my best efforts sluggish and unresponsive. Even my breath was shallow and weak, a sick gurgling noise accompanied my every gasp for air. For a second I feared that I may not actually be alive and instead was one of the undead, but I could feel my heart beating and my lungs pumping. Despite this, my apparent resurrection felt nothing like it was described in the stories and legends.
The religious texts spoke of bright light and a renewed body; a surge of power flowing through the Faithful brought back from the brink of death by Ishandria herself. Powerful icons that were now sworn forevermore to smite evil and bring down justice on behalf of our goddess. I noticed none of that, in fact, I felt more like a blood-drenched rag than a powerful hero. I barely managed to move an arm before the sound of quiet voices drew me from my inner musings and forced me to focus on the world around me.
“I’m telling you, I heard a noise and there is no way her eyes were open before! What if she is a zombie?”
“None sense! We would feel the presence of a creature of darkness!”
“Really? Like you did when they attack us last night!? Or were you too busy beating an innocent woman to pulp?!”
“Consider your tone, Recruit! I can still make you suffer!”
“Oh, please… do your worst, you pathetic piece of shit. Actually, you know what? Fuck you, and fuck the Templars. I would gladly give myself to the Dark Gods, just to see pigs like you suffer!”
“Sneer has much as you like! Once I get out of these shackles, I will kill you for this, traitorous whore!”
My eyes widened in panic, this had quickly taken a much darker turn than I had hoped. How could they not see that I needed help? To make matters worse, the two people – one of them must have been Uriles – were so caught up in their screaming that they didn’t even notice the dark shadow approaching from the corner of the room. I could just barely see the figure moving, their features impossible to make out I the dim shadows. Still, I twisted around, slowly I tried getting into a position to get a better look, but instead, my muscles failed me yet again. My limp body quickly tumbled down a slope and crashed against the nearby cell bars. The impact must have dislodged something or so, cause all of a sudden my vision got its focus back, giving me a good look at what I had been resting on.
Thankfully my voice was still out of commission or I would have screamed out loud at the sight before me. Recruit Joshua's face and throat had been ripped open and his body carelessly thrown onto a pile with several other corpses. But worse than seeing the body of one of my former comrades so badly mutilated was the fact that he was moving. His chest didn’t rise and his throat was a gaping hole but he still… twitched. His eyes rolled around his sockets, blind and dead, his fingers clawed at nothing and his tongue lolled around in search of… I averted my gaze, I didn’t want to defile his memories by gazing at this abomination. At least I understood now why my two surviving Templar comrades had been so concerned. There clearly were necromancers at work here…
“Why, aren’t you two lively!” A husky female voice called out, almost as if to prove my point. “You should really be more careful… or your former friend could get really hungry.”
By the Goddess, she couldn’t mean me, right? Almost morbidly so my fears were swayed when she intoned a spell at the zombie instead of me.
“Corpus inspicero!”
I could almost taste the power in those words and with bated breath watched as the body of my fallen comrade rose to its feet pushing several other bodies off the pile in the process.
“Animus infusio!”
Another current of power in the air, this time I was sure that I could actually taste the spell itself, the experience alone made my head spin. Thankfully the odd sense of vertigo held only for a second and once more I could only stare as something, intangible and vague spilled from the hooded woman’s grasp and into the moving corpse. I wouldn’t have expected that what came after would be even worse. Joshua's mutilated body spoke.
“What... are... your... wishes, Mistress...”
The remains of his face produced an uncanny sound that was far too close to the voice I remembered from this once lively Recruit but still unmistakably inhuman. The whole scene made me shudder in revulsion. Joshua and I had never been friends, by the Goddess, I hadn’t even known from which town he had come from, but at this moment I so dearly wished to end the suffering of his soul. The desire was so overwhelming that I simply had to let the emotion out in any way possible.
Against my better judgment, my body was already acting on its own, a deeply unsettling growl made its way up from my fluid-filled lungs and past my lips. The sound, almost as unnatural as the revenant’s voice, promised pain and suffering for all that stood in my way. It felt surprisingly… good, and deep in my soul, I could feel something reinforce that feeling. Yes… embrace your feelings, embrace your instincts. But do not be controlled by them. You are weak yet, be patient and wait for the right time to strike. I lurched out of my revelry in befuddlement; who had just spoken? Who or what was that voice? And how had she known of my desires? My musings were cut short when a sinister hooded woman leaned over me.
“How strange... this one should be inert. But now... it moves...” The woman held a pair of odd spectacles before her eyes. “Ha! She has a soul again! And what a peculiar soul indeed.”
I managed to turn my head, just so that I could glare at her. This woman was an affront to all I believed it, I would rip out her fucking throat! And yet the words from before echoed around my mind, “be patient”. Breathing in deeply in an attempt to calm myself, threw me almost immediately into a coughing fit. Warm, metallic fluid filled my mouth and dripped down my lips. For some reason, this seemed to excite this necromancer only more!
“Oh, what an exquisite conundrum. Resurrected only to die again! We can’t have that, can we, my sweet!? No, no, no. There is no way that I will lose such an interesting specimen!”
My glared seemed to barely faze the woman, if she had registered it in the first place that was, and so I gave her my two coppers worth. Between fits of coughing and gurgled breathing, I pressed out two very simple words.
“Go... Die.”
“Ha! She talks! What strange circumstances... though there are no excuses for foul language, young lady. You there, zombie, pick her up, will you? I need to take a closer look at her.”
“Yes, Mistress...”
Without the least bit of hesitation, the former Templar grabbed my leg and pulled me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. In this moment I was more than happy that my body was still very much numb and I couldn’t feel how he almost dislocated my hip joint. The awful cracking sound alone was enough to make me cringe. A moment later I was close to thankful when he grabbed both my ankles and I more or less safely dangled from his shoulder. While upside down, it did give a good look at the two other prisoners. One was a young woman who I rarely had spoken to, I only knew that her name was Lillian or something. The second person, on the other hand, I knew far too well. I didn’t know how he had managed it, but evidently, Uriles had survived his encounter with the group of zombies. And though he did look very much worse for wear, it didn’t stop him from glaring at me. Nor apparently, did it stop him from standing up and screaming in my face!
“You dirty traitor! I knew something was wrong with you from the start. No peasant comes this far, and no peasant ever would be allowed to become a Templar! You disgusting demon-fucking whore! Admit it you were in on the attack the whole time! You piece of…”
“Now, now, Sir!” The necromancer cut in rather unexpectedly. “If you could please refrain from screaming profanities and untruths, that would be quite helpful. You see this is a professional research venture and I do not endorse you insinuating that I had any part in some sort of conspiracy. I am only and quite solely focused on my research into the soul, and frankly, I never met this woman before today. Now if you could please sit down, I do not care for your screaming and I will gag you if I must!”
I was so baffled by this… conversation that it hadn’t even occurred to me that this was an excellent time to try and escape. Sadly when it did cross my mind the moment had already been up and gone. Not that it mattered much in the end for even a few minutes later when I was casually dropped on a stone altar I still couldn’t move much of my body. The necromancer wasn’t even particularly strong, in fact, she was an older frail woman, but she still easily managed to grasp my flailing limbs and bind them with leather straps.
“Now then, I did say I was going to make sure you survived so we definitely have to get that blood out of your lungs! Dear one,” She turned to the Templar zombie. “Would you be so kind to hand me the long needle to your side? Ah, yes, correct the one that looks like a crocheting needle!”
My eyes grew wide as I realized what she had just said. There was no way that she was getting anywhere near me with that! Doing my best I twisted and strained against the bindings, it was of no use. I was still weak as a baby. The woman didn’t even seem to have noticed my escape attempt and just continued with whatever she was doing. A moment later she was standing over me again, the massive needle discolored from the fire she had put it in. I tried to protest but only a weak gurgle escaped my lips. The insane woman had the gall to smile at me while she put the needle on my skin and in one sudden motion rammed it between my ribs.
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For the first time since my resurrection, I screamed bloody murder; then I suddenly stopped. It took me a few seconds to really get it. I could breathe again, like properly fucking breath again! And that was exactly the moment when I vomited blood all over the stone table.
“Fuck me…” My voice was weak and rough as if I hadn’t talked in months. “That was horrible.”
I looked up to see the necromancer stare at me with terrifying glee, a bunch of parchment in her one hand and an actual, fucking, pen in the other.
“Now then! You are saved from premature death and I have my notes ready! So what are you?”
“What?”
“No, no, no. I ask the questions and you answer them, you can’t just answer my question with another question! That isn’t how science works!”
“Wait, you actually think that you are doing fucking science?”
“Of course I am! How dare you question scientific advancement?”
I was already about to retort when something cold and terrifying from deep within me surged over my mind. Like skeletal fingers, the thing grasped around my very core and took a hold of my voice.
“Scientific Advancement? You ought to be jesting. The miserable puppets you created are but pathetic shadows of their former selves. You, child, haven't so much advanced as more trampled your forbearer’s achievements. You have done with souls as a farmer does with a malformed calf; cut it apart and strewn the remain on a barren field so that the crows may feast on it. Necromancy like all Animancy is an art, let me show you how it is done, you quack.”
My insides churned as the very same being that had just used my voice reached out, not for me but for the zombie next to me. I couldn't really see it so much that I could feel it, as invisible spiked tendrils reached out for the thing keeping the horror alive. I could feel them grab it against my will and then from one moment to the next the zombie collapsed. Nothing else happened, a second later it got up again as if all I had felt had just been an illusion.
“My, my… you certainly are a strange one, are you sure you came with the Templars? Cause I have never seen anyone interact with the dead in a way that you did, not that I have many colleagues mind you. To be fair all you did was somehow tug on a soul, which I am certain others could do too. Not that I ever actually met another necromancer! Anyhow, time to give you a vivisection!”
“A WHAT NOW!?”
“Ha! Don’t be such a baby! It was only a joke! I don’t have enough blood around that I could actually vivisect you without you dying on me! And sometimes the blood transfusions don’t even work! I would have to test all of my samples! And for that, I would have to take them out of my cooler! And if did that, they could quite possibly spoil! No thank you, I would rather keep them for myself. You know, just in case more of you Templar people show up!”
Finally she paused, her constant gush of words dribbling to a halt as she looked me over like a piece of raw meat.
“Though I must admit it has been a long time since a person has intrigued me as you have. So, I will give your body and soul a thorough examination of course… a very thorough one! And to start off I will cast a paralyzation spell on you! Can’t have you resisting me!”
“No! No! FUCKING HELL NO! Keep your hands and your magic away from me!”
To my, very much justified, horror the necromancer didn’t seem to care for my words, I wouldn’t have been surprised if her brain had just completely filtered them out. I couldn’t even do anything but loudly protest as her hands moved in a strange pattern and the words of the spell began overtaking me. I was certain I would have been stuck as this woman's puppet if not for my mysterious benefactor. Just as the spell was about to finish, I could hear her voice again. Loud and clear as if she was standing right next to me, unlike the strange being before her voice wasn’t cold, instead, when she spoke it was as if her voice sung with emotions, both good and bad.
“Your time to strike has come… Focus on how she casts the spell, what do you see?”
“I... there is a strange glow to her. What is it?”
“Magic, my dear. Near endless power for mortals... near-endless food for us.”
“Us? What do you mean?”
“All in good time, Coralia. Now, focus! Extend your mind, try grasping for the magic around her.”
With all my might I tried doing what she said but I simply couldn’t make sense of it, who was I supposed to grasp a thing with my mind!?
“I... I can’t do it! It’s just not working!”
“Patience child, remember your time in the limbo. Your mind and soul are part of you; control them as such.”
My recollection of that dark and terrible place had disappeared quickly after waking up. I hadn’t even noticed it happening, so soon had it turned into but the shadow of truth; a truth that was already fading away into nothingness. Though if there was one thing I would never forget, it was the cold oppressive feeling of her memories. Cold, stoic, and emotionless, this other life of mine had been disturbingly similar to the presence that had just a few minutes ago stolen my body. If she could just do that, I was in serious trouble. But perhaps I could still use her power to my advantage.
It was a lot harder than I had expected to recreate even a sliver of what my past self had done. In fact, it was sheer impossible, I had no idea what a soul looked like not to mention actually even was! Sure, while I could easily go ahead and imagine a spooky see-through ball dotted with squirming vines, but that didn’t change the fact that I had no clue of what I was doing! I didn’t even have an idea of how to feel my own soul; unless of course an ancient creepy woman from my past messed with it, that I had felt all too well. And so I was forced to watch helplessly as the necromancer went about her work. She had already removed the little scraps of clothing that had been left after last night and was just about to begin her examination.
Then from one moment to the next, everything was happening really quickly. Just as the woman’s hand touched but an inch of skin, my soul lurched forward like a hungry animal. Any spell she had been casting was instantly ripped to shreds. I barely even realized what was happening, when already a wave of power rushed over me. My muscles clenched in equal parts pleasure and agony. And against even my wildest imaginations the stone holding my shackles crumbled to dust under my hands.
The necromancer didn’t even have time to react. She managed to barely raise her eyebrows before my arms were around her neck. For a moment I just held her tightly, unsure of what to do now. That was until I noticed her reaching for the knife on her belt. Driven by sheer panic I just started to squeeze, as tightly as I possibly could. She was a frail and older woman for sure, but despite this, she bucked and twisted under my grip like a chicken or rabbit from my parent's farm. It was more out of instinct than conscious thought that my hands twisted her head. It was the sickening crunch of bone scraping on bone, that brought me back to reality.
It took me a while to realize what I had just done. The woman in my arms was dead, her neck was broken and life had left her. I… had actually killed a person!
“No. No. No. No, no, no, no, no! This can’t be good, Oh Goddess! What have I done!? I’m a murder now!” Somehow, through the haze of shock, I realized I was still holding her corpse.
“Ah!” I screamed as I tossed it away from me.
The only problem was, it didn’t land on the ground. The former necromancer did tumble off the stone altar, but as she did, her hands got a hold of the edge. I had to look twice before I realized that they were actually grabbing the Gods-damned stone! A second time I screamed as the woman's corpse, almost casually so, rose despite certain death. Her hands reached up and snapped her head back into place; then as if nothing had happened she looked around, apparently confused.
“So… strange.” Her voice was different, somehow wrong, and eerie. “Why am I so… unhappy? This isn’t like I thought… I’m not… peaceful… everything is sluggish. And I am so… very… hungry…”
She looked at me, her eyes glowering with a strange menace they didn’t use to have before.
“You… you killed me! And I am so hungry… why am I so hungry? You... owe me… you … killed me…. give me your body! Let me devour you so that I can feel whole again!”
This time I didn’t hesitate. Despite my legs still being bound, I twisted around so that she charged straight into the side of the stone table. She was already getting up again, the impact having done little to stop her. But before she could find her footing, I grabbed her head with both hands and slammed it into the hard surface. Again and again and again and again. Her arms flailed around the entire time, her nails drawing blood where ever she could reach me. Tears of fear, pain, and frustration were running from my eyes as desperately tried to end it. But no matter how much I tried she was still flailing and growling about. Even as her face was no longer recognizable and smashed to pulp, her resistance didn’t stop. It wasn’t until I pulled the knife from her belt and stabbed her several times through the eye socket, that the former necromancer went limp.
“Oh… Gods…” Exhausted and in serious pain I pushed the now fully dead corpse off the altar. Only for my gaze to fall on the other zombie that had been staring at me the entire time. “Please not again!”
“Coral…” I jerked back in surprise, not having expected a conversation. “I… am free… Tell my… family… I love.. them.”
Without another word, the former Templar ripped his sword from its scabbard, set the blade against his socket, and pushed it all the way through. Like a puppet whose strings were cut he collapsed on the ground. While I was left sitting in shock and surprise. I really hadn’t known zombies could do that!
Slowly I got up from my uncomfortable slab and undid the shackles around my ankles. I still didn’t understand how my hands had gotten free in the first place. The stone, around where my hands had been bound to, was quite literally dusted. There was no way that happened with strength alone, not when I was even too weak to crush someone's skull. So what had happened?
As I was walking around the room looking for any kind of clue my gaze fell onto a nearby passageway. From what I could see through the partially open fabric covering it seemed to be a bedroom. Yet while I did very dearly wish for some clothes, I wasn’t going to get caught unprepared again. So before exploring the room I went over to where the recently again departed Joshua was lying. Offering a quick prayer to the Goddess, I grabbed the hilt of his sword and pulled it out with a single motion; which almost resulted in me slicing open my naked foot!
“Oh boy, that was a very close call! I really want my armour back… I wonder where she stored the other Templar’s gear? Eh, stuff for later. Firstly, clothes!”
Careful, as to not miss anything, I made my way over to the bedroom. My newly acquired sword level with my shoulder, I used my free hand to push aside the flimsy fabric.
“Hello? Anyone in there? If there is a zombie in here, I am… not going to hurt you! Just come out with your hands above your head! I am totally not going to stab you!”
Suddenly a small dark shadow rushed towards me, I was already about to stab right into it when I just barely managed to stop myself. A dark grey cat ran right between my legs and out of the room. I couldn’t help but let out a relieved sigh, there really was no place in the heavens for anyone that killed a cat. After all, I had always liked the fuzzy bastards, and they loved me in return. So to kill one accidentally would have turned me into more of a crying mess than killing the necromancer.
“Fuckin’ piss. My poor heart can’t take all these scares. Now let’s see what we have in here.”
To my big surprise, the bedroom was actually furnished rather nicely. A big wardrobe, a large bed, a dresser, and even a tall mirror made from polished-sliver of all things. The latter immediately drew my attention, as even in the dim light provided by the oil lamps, I noticed some things being off about my body.
My skin was a lot paler than it had been before, in fact, I looked as if I had been quite sick for a while! My usually light brown skin had taken on an almost greyish tint. Additionally, there was something weird about my eyes. At a glance, it seemed as if there was a black ring around my iris. But that could just be a trick of the light. Both changes I could have still contributed to my strange and quite painful resurrection, but the last thing I was certain had nothing to do with it.
For apparently while unconscious either someone had placed it there, or I had actually grown a strange ornament around my neck. Dozen of black ribbons snaked around the skin, so tightly that I couldn’t even feel a gap. At the end of the neckpiece dangled a singular, thumb-sized bird skull. Well, saying it dangled was a bit misleading. I actually couldn’t lift up the damn thing at all, whenever I tried it felt as if I was about to rip off my own skin.
“The other Templars aren't going to like that… especially not Uriles. Fuck… the thing looks like something a heathen would wear… like black magic. I should cover it up… for now. It’s still cold out, so nobody is going to question it.”
A few minutes later I had plundered the necromancer’s wardrobe and covered as much of my skin as possible. Now clothed and armed with a decent short-sword, I was ready to take on the world. Or I could have been if I wasn’t so damn hungry! My stomach felt as if it was trying to do cartwheels and utterly failing at that! Apparently, my first order of business would be to find food!
“Well, the Templars did tell me to never fight on an empty stomach. Now where, by the Goddess, is the food in this place?”