The imposing tower left far behind her, its only light now not different from a distant star, she was going downhill. Her eyes, larger than they had any right to be, were reflecting the starlight, sparkling from beneath the strands of her roughly hewn fringe. Her pointy ears were slightly poking through her long, straight, unkempt hair. Apart from her pale-white face, the rest of her figure was black. Even when she wasn't hunching, her height didn't reach 140 cm, and it was years now since she stopped growing. Yet for her kind, she was tall and skinny, which she was vaguely aware of.
The shadows were getting deeper as the trees were getting denser and the ground more level. Even her eyes couldn't pierce the darkness which enveloped her when the foliage obscured the stars. Her bulbous nose wrinkled reflexively. The stench of death was growing stronger as she was approaching the forest.
She felt the ground changing under her soft loafers. The rough undergrowth gave way to loose sand, mixed with decaying biomatter. A few steps more and…
She stopped at the imaginary boundary between two worlds. She reached for her belt and unbuckled it. The dead wore no clothes. Almost like a switch flip, she felt the change starting immediately when she dropped her simple robe. Her senses sharpened. Her spine straightened. Her fear spiked and she shivered in anticipation. Resonance shimmered in her soul, connecting her to the whole planet for a fantastic split second and burning a chunk of her mana.
She lowered herself to the ground and lazily rolled in the dirt, until it stuck to her skin. Then she crouched and looked up, her gaze different now, her eyes trying to pierce the darkness covering the land of the dead. Almost as if she could see more than there was to see, a change of landscape in a dimension unavailable to senses, the actual boundary between life and death. As her racing thoughts were dying down, she started to mutter under her nose.
"Dead, dead, dead… someday I will be dead," she repeated her nerve-calming mantra. She put her belt inside her bag, and retrieved a wreath made from flowers, the kind of pale flowers growing in this area. Their suffocating aroma mixed with her own scent when she put it on her head and pulled her hair up. As Arri, she always kept her oversensitive eyes covered. As… Rita, she needed every drop of light. The outward transformations were feeding into the mental change as she was slowly summoning her alter-ego.
Finally, she straightened herself, putting her bag on her shoulder. She reached for her large amulet, hanging on her neck, and pushed a tiny lever, increasing the output of its life energy by an order of magnitude. Not a perfect concealment in itself, far from it, but it allowed her a wider margin of error. When facing the dead.
"I want to be buried naked," she kept muttering as she was making her first steps into the land of the dead. "So the grave robbers won't touch me. I want to lie in the soft soft soil," she continued, imagining her body slowly decomposing, becoming one with the roots of the plants, rejoining the great cycle of life. She would sink into the darkness… no, not even darkness, not even nothingness, in death there was no flow of time to give meaning to such concepts. Her mind recoiled with terror as she kept trying to imagine that. Yet the terror was soothed by excitement of the vision, and by her mantra. Yes, there was only void outside of the circle of life, but she was a part of the circle, and that won't change after her death, nothing would change except her, she would transform but remain… will she? Was the only positive side to pass on the body matter along, first her flesh, then bones, until nothing remained of her? Or was there more than that, something spiritual not just in metaphor? There had to be? But it made no sense…
Her thoughts were racing, spurred by fear, but they felt more and more distant. The focus of her being was moving towards what she normally considered only a faulty, broken vessel through which her mind could impose its will on the reality. A vessel which was born faulty, and further abused by her parents, spiteful over having given life to such a freak which they named Arri. But for Rita, everything was reversed, her body was the focus, and her mind only an afterthought. Now she was…
[One with the world]
She felt the whisper of wind on her skin, the minute movements of air on her sensitive parts, now uncovered; on her whole skin, moving the tiny, translucent hair with every shift of direction. In what was a total silence up until now, she heard the soft creaking of wood, the tiny rustling of foliage, the unidentifiable, faintest noises somewhere at the border of perception. Her nose had always been sensitive, but now she could tell apart a whole range of coinciding smells; the various plants and mushrooms, the ground, the air, the lingering scents and tastes of things which have passed and left. Her eyes, arguably the least useful in the depths of the forest, painted vague shapes of various hues of pitch black, differentiated not even as much by reflected light, but by temperature. Five senses and so many strands of information coming from every one of them, yet with her emptied mind, she was able to perceive them all simultaneously and, like a dancer, navigate their landscape with her light step.
The forest was now full of ghosts and echoes at the edge of her perception, each them a potential presence, the only way it could be described in a language where the boundaries between her senses became blurred and unimportant. She was no longer muttering, the chatterbox in her brain silenced and unplugged as well.
Then, she finally heard it. Shuffle-shuffle of feet, the movement of air, the smell of a zombie. One of them was here. She adjusted her own walk to a shuffle, predicting its movement and moving in sync. Their senses were sharp in their own way, in a way allowing them to find and butcher prey, but it was possible to fool them. She smiled since it felt like a game to her, a game she had been practicing since she was much smaller. She was still much smaller than them even now… small and hard to notice as she was able to spot them and adjust to them.
To perceive first allowed her to avoid , and the camouflage was doing the rest. Physical senses of the zombies were different, but they were there, and she learned by long observation what they seem to react to. Smell, sound, movement. There was more than that, undercurrents of magical energy she perceived - or just imagined? She didn't know, and, in this form, she didn't care. She just sidestepped them. What she knew was that zombies did communicate with each other, and that it was done through some normally imperceptible means. And to get into the way of such transfer was to be seen.
She noticed there was much more of them now. More than usual, an almost physical feel of the throng of bodies all around her. To them, she was a ghost herself, but a ghost of familiar smell and feel. They would have ripped her apart easily if they knew… And she shivered at the thought, but the fear only kept her senses sharp, and what she felt was more akin to intense excitement. Something was pushing her to approach them ever closer, to touch their dead bodies… No, too dangerous to try! But without that compulsion she would have never stepped into this place, she would have never learnt how to play this game.
Her sense of time was utterly lost and she didn't know at which point of this dance she finally caught the scent of her prey. It was close, and she spirited herself between the bodies of zombies until she found the spot. She crouched and put her hand on the ground, rubbed it in circular motions, and finally sank her sharp, broken nails into the soil. A jolt ran up her arm when her fingers touched the life root. The plant relied on ambient life energy of the environment - the energy which moved dead flesh of the zombies - for its adaptational success, and it was filtering the soil for magic-touched particles, and concentrating them in these bulbs. Arri - or Rita - pulled the root out of the ground and dropped it into her shoulder bag. The night was only starting…
She found six more roots before she encountered trouble she could not extricate herself from by her dance steps. She was throwing a flower from her wreath here and there to further confuse the zombies, but as she was moving away from another pack, she almost collided with a lumbering husk that seemed to came out of nowhere. They both stopped in front of each other, and she could see his broad shoulders far above her head. Was she about to get grabbed? Something maybe screamed to jump away, to run, but of course zombies were faster than her, and losing her dance step so close to them, so deep in the forest, she would never make it.
She completely ignored this voice. Instead, she did what she has never dared before. She extended her hands and touched zombie's gut. She knew the feel of that parchment-like skin very well, but the zombies she touched before were all young zombies, either bound or completely disabled… broken, decaying vessels, much less… nutritious in the life energy elements… She wanted to keep touching, to find that energy, to make it resonate with her touch, to take it and eat and…
But it wanted to eat her as well. She did the only thing she could in defense, burning her final trump card without a second thought. She reached out to the world around her - to the trees, to the ground, to the plants, to the zombie itself - but this time not only to perceive. She willed the world to also take from her. To make her a part of it, a thing like others, common and unworthy of attention-
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
[1 Mana Spent]
"Don't mind me Sir, I'm just a zombie!"
-She whispered. The undead hesitated. Arri knew the effect was very temporary; it started to dissipate a mere 10 seconds after being used, unless more energy was channeled into it. Although it could leave a lasting impression after the effect has ended, as she had tested on her Master's guests, that impression was very unlikely to work for long on a predator. But for now it allowed her to be one of them, or rather - her mind and body became less of her own, and more a part of the world. She really should have ran away while it worked but… She enjoyed it.
She removed her flowery wreath and put it on his head. Her arms brushed past zombie's shoulders, his chest, that rough, naked skin, a contact exciting in how it could turn deadly - but also a physical contact with someone on her terms, something she never experienced from anyone, not even her Master… When she felt zombie's muscles tense up, she sidestepped him and swiftly moved behind. Her magical energy was burning up quickly, but she didn't think of leaving yet. Instead, she grabbed the large zombie into a hug. Why wasn't he attacking yet? She felt immense spike of sensations, a breathtaking thrill, when their bodies touched, when she felt the zombie not only with her hands but her whole self…
The zombie was giving. Rita felt the energy condensing all around them, if she only knew how to catch it… But no, not now, it was getting too dangerous. She let go of the zombie, sensing the others converge, she danced away. Soon a throng of bodies was separating them and…
She wished she could see better in the dark, to see what she sensed, how they all got very close together, touching each other, pushing against each other - just like she did a moment before, no, better than she did a moment before - and the cloud of ambient energy got more dense too, and it started to swirl, and…
Are they exchanging energy now? It works by physical contact? Did I provoke this? But it cannot be their own energy, because nobody can directly share own energy, ever?! I need to investigate it more!
But… She had burnt through a third of her mana already. She was out of flowers. The cemetery dirt on her skin also turned into mud by now, caked or rinsed away by her sweat. She was starting to smell too much like a living being. Her heart was pounding hard. It was time to do the smart thing and disengage. Rita protested, her body longed for more contact. But Arri explained to her the disadvantages of being eaten alive, and the need to form a plan to avoid that before trying next time. Rita, on the other hand, easily convinced Arri to keep her curiosity in check for now. The argument finished, they were a single person and single mind again. Rita, who started to cautiously move away from the undead congregation.
Many die during disengaging. They hurry to safety, losing focus, relaxing or letting their fear or hope take over. But for Rita, it was merely the closing act of the death forest dance-game, equally exciting as the rest, the ritual of resurfacing. She performed it slowly, but not too slowly, time was, after all, not important in her state of mind, only the bodily senses were.
When she made it back to her starting spot, Rita began to recede and intense exhaustion was starting to show. But the return to herself was much slower than the previous transformation, she didn't have to hurry. Therefore she didn't bother trying to find her robe. It was dead of night, after all, and the chances of meeting Archmage Xaldaz, the master of the tower, her Master, were negligible. And even if…! She could hide or… or even use her secret skill! She also knew from experience that looking for the robe could take her hours in this darkness.
More interestingly, she felt so many things when she touched that zombie back then. Something new… something maybe allowing, allowing to understand Death better? It was impossible to tell, and it was impossible to say if it was worth the suicidal danger to pursue it further. But it felt… profound… and tantalizing… just ever so vague... She felt her connection to the circle of life slacken slightly as her rational mind was slowly waking. Then again, Rita's epiphany notwithstanding, Arri was very interested in piercing the mystery of how zombies exactly worked. She sighed and readjusted her amulet to normal output. Too weak to help with the zombie dance now, but still useful to fool… other things, things looking from far away.
A pale ghost in the starlight, she started to climb the hill. The Tower… The reason she kept looking for these life roots. Like a tree, like a forest, like Arri's medallion, like herself, the tower was an organism/machine (she felt little difference between these words, except for complexity scale and array of feedback loops). A part of the circle of life, and each part of the circle was similar to the circle itself. But this part was sick. The Tower was sick and leaking its essence. Arri didn't know what would happen if the Tower died, and sure it would allow her to entertain the lust to venture out in the search of that special someone she never met, but… She didn't want it to die, it would be simply wrong. And like all organisms, the Tower needed nutrition. But the sources of nutrition were becoming harder and harder to find. Nowadays it was almost impossible to procure them in any other way than the zombie dance. She wondered if Xaldaz was even aware of this. He was surely not aware of the fact she was going into the death forest. He was too preoccupied with… whatever he was doing, and… was he aware that hoarding his energy sources, keeping them under lock and key, was not a sustainable plan in the long run?
Her trail of thoughts was interrupted by the grumbling of her stomach. Of course, the excursion into the forest required not only timing - a moonless night, and not during the part of the month which was making her smelly - but also preparations, like fasting. Her atavism kicked in and demanded to grab one of the roots and munch on its delicious energy. Of course that would be a stupid thing to do. Not even her alter ego/imaginary friend, Rita, despite her focus on bodily sensations, was dumb enough to do it. Actually, she wasn't any dumber than Arri. Just the order of importance of their cognitive abilities was reversed. After all, they were one and the same person.
The question of hunger found an easy solution anyway when she finally slipped through the wrought iron gate into her garden. It was of course his garden… once. But during all her years here, more than a decade now, she had changed it from that poor excuse of a vegetable patch into what amounted to a wild and beautiful jungle, full of smells and big leaves overhanging the path. She found a particularly impressive tomato shrub and sank her teeth into the juicy fruit. She almost fainted from the sudden sensation of taste, delicious and painful in equal amounts.
While eating, she glanced towards the tower wall, made of giant stone blocks. She started to feel somewhat self conscious. Being here without any clothes on had the sense of something deeply forbidden. Maybe that was why sometimes she was doing it when working here. What if he's seen her like that? He never did so far, but wasn't it just a question of "when" if she kept playing with it? No… the garden provided plenty of space to hide, so…
She shook her head. She tiptoed her way inside, and took the shortest route through the dark corridors to her underground lair. In the tight, low room, she felt the shelves until her fingers found a bottle of spirits she made from the exact same life roots. A small indulgence, and an interesting experiment… She took a small swig. A familiar sequence of events followed. First, she felt her stomach churning painfully, then the fire rising up her throat, then the powerful surge of energy coming to her fingertips, ear tips and every other poking-out, sensitive part of her anatomy. In this state, she felt like she could embrace and understand the whole Universe, and move cosmic forces with ease…
[3 Mana Restored]
Instead she used this power to get rid of her loafers and stash away her bag, before throwing herself on the pile of rags of her sleeping spot. Because she knew what was coming next, her usual reaction to strong alcohol. A knockout blow leaving no sense of time or consciousness, not unlike Death itself…
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It was the world of Rhimalos. Once bustling with life and energy, now blighted with Undead and suffering. Devoid of Mana and plundered.
It all started when Mana density started dropping and the System malfunctioned, degrading its own functionality. Civilizations toppled like houses of cards. Difficult times have befallen the lands as culture, technology, and knowledge started to deteriorate. Most of the miraculous inventions were lost, no longer functional, or destroyed in wars spreading through the world like wildfire.
Fifty years later, Mana density decreased to critical values. Organisms adapted to Mana started dying in droves. Flying continents started to fall on the lands below. The resulting clouds of dust covered the sky for years while high waves destroyed everything near shorelines. The weather changed drastically, killing off yet more of the wildlife and plants, starving the population.
Then the Undead have come. Raising from the cemeteries and battlegrounds, decimating whole cities from within.
The System degraded once more, the event announcing the end of the Era. It adapted to changes but left the people powerless.
The era of the Dark Ages has begun. The abundant Mana became a rarity, merely a fuel dug up from the depth of the earth or found in the most dangerous of places. The world became a place where intelligent races didn’t even know who the real enemy was, forgetting all that had happened hundreds of years ago.
Almost all was lost, but life always finds its way. Many of the races survived and created enclaves of life all around the unforgiving world, now ruled by the law of the strongest.
A certain young Gremling girl, disfigured to the point that even the System didn’t want to call her a Gnome, managed to find her enclave, too. By the side of a Dark Mage, who allowed the pitiful kid to serve him.
The strong rule the world, and so she felt safe living in his shadow, learning from him but also bearing her own desires. Secrets, she was unable to ignore.
[Name: Arri Turi]
[Race: Gremling]
[Age: 15 years, adult]
[Titles: None]
[Talents: Tinkering]
[Active Attributes: Magnify {0}, Flow {0}, Resonate {1}]
[Passive Attributes: Sensitivity {1}, Flair {0}, Splendor {0}]
[Sub-classes {3/2}: Maid lvl 3/10, Artificer lvl 4/10, Spiritualist {locked}]