Voices woke the spirit up.
It slowly pulled its intellect together, going from having all the awareness of an earthworm, barely capable of being called sentient, to something capable of understanding language and even remembering bits of its past. Vaguely it recalled why it had buried its intellect, the long years of nothingness would have driven it insane. It was better to rest in dreamless sleep, waking occasionally to explore the region and learn if it was time to return.
How long had it slept? How often had it awakened? The spirit couldn't say, it wasn't important. Only survival and ensuring it stayed sane mattered. After all, what did time matter to the dead?
Leaving its resting place, the spirit looked at the guards who stood at attention. They held odd weapons in their arms, they appeared to be arquebus, but were smaller and less ornate. At least the swords at their waists were unchanged. All the weapons had brillian blue runes carved into them. The spirit recoiled at the sight, it could read the runes and saw that the weapons were designed to kill it, should it dare to enter the material plane.
A faint memory came to it. Guards much like these had been there when it had woken before. The weapons had been different, but the runes were the same. It remembered now, how its enemies had discovered its resting place. Rather than risk the traps that were embedded in it's resting place, they had set up guards and their own traps, ensuring the spirit could not awaken properly. How many hundreds of years had they guarded it?
“Are you sure this is a wise decision? This person was a monster.”
The spirit turned to the newcomers, the noisy ones who had awoken it.
“At least he was human who merely wanted power. We can control him, and if the records are correct he may be our only hope,” a tall man said. He was easy to see, the glowing white lines of magical power flowed through him.
A smaller man walked beside the mage. This man had almost no magic, and was blurry to the spirits sight. The small man spoke with a fearful voice. “I understand that things are bleak, and General Ajani has agreed to it, but think things through. The Council hasn't responded to our messages, what if they decide to censor you? The necromancer nearly conquered all of Erebu with his armies of the dead. Parents still use him to scare their children. How will the soldiers and citizens react when they see their loved ones rise out of the ground?”
“If given the choice between seeing their loved ones rise and protect them, or joining them in death, most will cheer for the reinforcements. We have no more time to discuss this. For all we know The Council may have fallen, the demons are amassing at Hanged Mans Pass and General Ajani can't hold out against their numbers for much longer. Now will you do your duty?”
The small man sighed, then nodded. “Always my friend.”
The mage began to flare, actively absorbing the magic that filled the air, concentrating it in himself. “Thank you. It will take no more than five hours to activate the Necromancers Heart, ensure the body is properly prepared and brought here within that time.”
“Very well. I just hope this does not end in disaster.”
“We're already facing the end of the world. If this goes wrong, it will simply come a little sooner.”
The spirit focused its attention on the mage, the little man was clearly unimportant. For the first time in who knew how long, it was thinking clearly. So its captors, the descendents of its enemies, were desperate and seeking any support they could get.
If it could laugh, it would have.
It didn't know what was going on, what these demons were, or if it truly was the end of the world, but it had always enjoyed a challenge. And in chaos there was always a chance to gain power.
The mage began drawing runes around the spirits resting place.
It allowed itself to be drawn back to its heart. But this time, rather than falling back to sleep, the spirit forced itself to stay awake. While the mage performed the necessary rituals, the spirit made itself remember, drawing forth memories and knowledge it would need when it awakened.
**
Keir, former Emperor of Erebu, Master of the Necromantic College, Grand General of the Undying Army, opened his eyes and immediately wished he hadn't.
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Even in the dim twilight of his tomb, the light was blinding.
Taking a breath for the first time in centuries, his throat and lungs burned.
The stone bed he laid on froze his naked skin, the grains of rock dug painfully into his flesh.
His body ached, and his brain struggled to deal with the multitude of sensations.
He began to laugh. The pain increased,
He didn't care. In fact the pain made him laugh even harder, it proved he was alive again. Emperor Keir had once more escaped death. What new knowledge was there to learn? What new opportunities awaited him?
“Are you done?”
Vaguely he recognized the voice of the mage.
He took a moment to collect his thoughts. He remembered listening to people off an on as he rested in his tomb. The newest voices had spoken in a language almost identical to his own, slightly different words, with a slower more sing song accent, but recognizable. That would at least make talking easier.
“I've just come back to life, the first mortal to ever succeed at truly cheating death. I think I deserve a few minutes to enjoy the moment,” he said. His voice was odd. It was raspy and very dry, which was to be expected, but it was also higher pitched than he thought it would be.
Intellectually he had known his voice would change. They had placed his 'heart' into the body of a person who had died that very day, so while his spirit was the same, his body was not. It would take some time getting used to the changes, annoying but unless they gave him a crippled body, it would just take a few days to feel normal. .
Opening his eyes again, it was a little more bearable. There were the guards he had seen earlier, watching him nervously. He ignored them, if they wanted to kill him they wouldn't have resurrected him. Instead he focused on the mage who had completed the spell. The man was younger than he'd suspected, merely in his late twenties. Keir wasn't about to hold the mans young age against him, being young didn't mean powerless. At eighteen he'd been creating ghouls, something that only necromancers with decades of experience were supposed to be capable of.
“What do I call you?” Keir asked, struggling to get some moisture into his mouth so he could speak properly.
“I'm Von Asger, a Blue Scholar of the Eldritch Council,” the mage said, handing him a cup of water. “Here, you must be thirsty.”
He took the cup, rolling slightly onto his side so he could drink and slowly draining the cup. After centuries of not drinking, the water felt strange in his mouth and going down his throat, but the moisture was a blessed relief. As he once more rolled onto his back, his body felt off balance, oddly proportioned. He put it out of his mind, it was unimportant, of course it would feel odd, he'd been bodiless for centuries. Clearly his spirit and body were still recovering from his ordeal.
Smiling in thanks, he thought about what Von had said. “What's a Blue Scholar of the Eldritch Council?”
“After your defeat in the Great War of the Dead, and the successor necromantic kingdoms were dealt with three hundred years ago, the allied nations and groups created a council of magic users. We ensure no one practices necromancy, train many new mages, and deal with situations where a mage or magic is too strong for regular forces,” Von explained. “Blue is the second highest rank in the Council, only Red is higher.
That bit of information was interesting, in the past there had been attempts to create large magical organizations. They usually lasted a handful years, maybe a few decades if a truly powerful mage led them, until they splintered from internal rivalry, tried to take control of the country and became a regular government, or were destroyed by outside forces. He'd been able to keep his Necromantic College stable for over thirty years simply through sheer force of will and power, it had still crumbled due to infighting during the last years of the war. For this Council to have lasted three centuries was a testiment to the groups strength, and their fear of him. He had to smile at that, he'd certainly achieved the fame he'd always craved.
It was also nice to know how long he'd been dead for, but one thing stuck out. “There are no more necromancers?”
“No powerful ones. All necromantic books, scrolls, and artifacts were either destroyed or placed in secure vaults, where only the Red Scholars can access them. There are a few people with minor talents in magic who practice necromancy in secret. The most powerful one we know of can supposedly raise a dozen or so skeletons.”
Snorting in disgust, Keir shook his head. “If that was the best one of my students could do after a year of training, I'd have them beaten to within an inch of their lives and force them to start from the beginning. If they couldn't improve after six months, they'd be turned into a zombie, those don't need a brain to be useful.”
He rubbed his throat. The water had helped make it less raspy, but it was still high pitched, possibly even higher and airier now that he was able to speak normally. “What's wrong with my voice?”
“Nothing. The young woman sounded much like that before she died.”
Keir took a moment to stare at the mage, then slowly looked down at his naked body. It had felt odd, but he'd assumed it was due to being new, and having spent the last three centuries dead. Now he realized that his chest had rather small breasts. Sitting up, he couldn't feel a penis against his thigh, a look and quick feel proved he didn't have one.
That was unexpected.
Looking at his body also revealed the fact that he had several runes tattooed onto his hands, chest, thighs, stomach and pelvis. Shifting his sight, the tattoos were almost a blinding red from the amount of magic they contained. A similar glow rose from behind him, clearly there were more tattoos on his back. That couldn't be good.
“How long were you going to let me lay here naked, while you enjoyed the show?” he asked, forcing himself to sound calm.
“I'm not interested in your body, and you didn't seem to care,” Von said.
Keir raised his eyebrow, not believing a word of it. “I heard you speaking before you started the ritual, you said you could control me. Is this part of your control? You believe resurrecting me as a young woman will make me more manageable?”
“No, actually we didn't, she just fit the requirements,” Von said. “That's why before the young woman died from her illness, we tattooed several magical runes onto her. Those are to keep you manageable. Now, bark.”
Keir barked once. He couldn't help himself. There hadn't even been time to think of resisting, as soon as he heard the word, he did it as unconsciously as breathing.
His eyes narrowed in rage. The room dimmed as he collected his magic. A wall of pure magic rose up protecting him from any attack. With a thought clawed, ethereal hands rose from the shadows. In a very low voice, he said, “For that, I'm going to rip your soul from your screaming body and feed it to the void, piece by shrieking piece.”