Charity led the way with a thin torch in her hand as the small group of invitees followed her through the woods. It was a motley crew of different people, as she was starting to think was normal of her flock. Some were old, some were young, some were healthy while others seemed pale and sickly. The only thing that seemed to unite them was a strange sense of melancholy from the group. It seemed that this batch of newcomers didn't quite believe in the stories about her. Not yet at least.
She looked back over the group, eyes meeting with Tai first as he walked just behind her. His face resembled a marble carving of a nobleman, complete with glazed over carved eyes that hid his green eyes, and a mane of immovable white hair that always seemed to stay in its perfect place. He did a good job, she had to admit, making the facial structure look like it was an abnormally detailed mask laid over his own face that disappeared into the seams at its edge. Thankfully, no one seemed to mind his strange white hair when he tucked it into his hood.
Behind him, her people walked solemnly. Some carried small bags, tied closed and covered with dirt, while others carried a thick coffin by the handles, switching out at the ropes every so often within the rather large family of eight. She had seen it all before. Once, Tai had even had to help carry the offering for an elderly couple that hadn't been able to make the journey by themselves. The look on his face when they had left later that night and he took off his mask, well, she wasn't sure she had ever seen his eyes crease so tighly together as he watched the couple continue on their journey without him. Still, a man in the back held up a matching torch to Charity's and nodded in her direction as she scanned over the small crowd.
Fifteen people had joined her tonight, spread between three different families they had recruited earlier that day. Fifteen different people who wanted closure to their lives, or a reason to continue on depending how you looked at it. Regardless, they followed her. That alone was enough to make them worthy of the mother's grace.
She alternated between her normal sight and the form that allowed her to see the bones of the world. It was still strange to her, even after a few weeks of practice, but she allowed the lense to take over her vision as they approached the end of the trail. As she expected, a hundred bodies or more lay submerged in circles around the obelisk less than a hundred meters away from them. Curiously though, it appeared that there was a skeletal figure hunched in a tree on the far side of the clearing as well. She let the film recede from her sight, turning to tell Tai what she saw.
“Someone's decided to watch us tonight.” She said.
He merely nodded.
It was unfortunate that the ember's still couldn't speak directly into Charity's mind, despite her new found bond with them. Tai had taken the time to explain much to her, writing through entire pages of instructions as he tought her how to best move bodies, and what commands were most efficient. That had come with an explanation of how the ember's themselves worked in a way that they had never shared with the team until now. It was like she was finally being accepted to the inner group that knew.
The change was not only there in how they treated her, but also something within herself as well. She had changed by degrees at first, then by more and more as she raised the dead in the graveyard to join her. For every bit of power she took from the afterlife, something was taken away from her in exchange. And she gave it away, gladly.
The cold indifference of this mark on her soul allowed her to simply accept whatever was happening with the stranger in the woods. If Tai wasn't worried about it, then she wouldn't worry either. The group wound their way into the clearing with words of awe coming from the newcomers behind her. Even Charity found the location to be slightly eerie despite how much time she had spent in the place.
She led them into a small circle in front of the monument where the land had been cleared away to reveal the soft dirt below. The families placed their burdens on the inside of the circle as she indicated, and she started her well practiced ceremony by this point.
“Seekers of truth, thank you for being here tonight.” Charity spoke just a little bit louder than normal, allowing her voice to ring clearly throughout the circle.
“You came because this world has taken from you, wantonly, and unfairly. It has taken your loved ones before their time was due, and it has taken them without remorse for the fact. But now that we exist here before the gaze of the mother of death and her kin, we have been granted the chance to change our fates. Look before you at those you wished to reconnect with, and bear witness as they RISE!”
Three corpses in front of her shook in the night, shaking the coffins and bags that contained them in death, they returned at her call. The bag broke first, a tiny white arm and hand escaping from the bag towards the open air, then a ripping sound as the small skeleton made its way out of the enclosure. The coffins followed its example, bursting at the seams as the more flesh covered bodies from within rose into the night. A putrid smell spread throughout the group as the rotting flesh was exposed to the open air.
‘Curious. The child must have been dead longer than the others.’ Three corpses rose to a standing position in front of their awed families, then stopped as they finished straightening their backs. The child's mother was the first to step forward, a scarred needy step as she drew closer to the body of someone she had lost before she ever really got to know them.
‘EMBRACE.’
The small child skeleton opened up its arms as its mother finally found the courage to take the next step and the next, all but running to pick up her baby one more time. As the young skeleton wrapped its arms around the woman peacefully, the other corpses opened up their arms, trying to obey the same unspoken command.
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Charity continued to feed the skeletons commands now as the families greeted their lost ones. ‘HOLD, RELEASE, GAZE, BOW, WAVE.” She ran the skeletal figures like puppets in the night with unspoken commands as their families tried to connect with the hollow corpses. There wasn't anything really left of their loved ones, not that Charity could return to them at least. But what she could do was at least give them a chance for a last goodbye with something that approached life. It was something.
Near the back of the group of eight, one of the men was starting to look agitated. Charity took note of the man, all too aware of what was probably about to happen.
‘Why's it always one of the men?’ She thought. Still, the inevitable came to pass and the man stopped grinding his teeth for long enough to point a finger over at Charity and start his tirade.
“What have you done to my little boy?” He asked, tears streaming down his face. Charity took note of the fact that his ‘little boy’ was nearly as tall as he was. She told the corpse to STARE at his father for dramatic effect as she began to counter.
“I have done nothing but return your child to you for a parting goodbye. Allowed his soul but a single minute more on this green world so that you might be able to share one last moment.”
“But. He.” The man could barely talk, snot bubbling out of his nose as he tried to make sense of his grief. Charity commanded four skeletons behind her to RISE, clad head to toe in armor and weapons as she had readied them in advance, then set her new companions to GUARD. Just in case.
The man continued to stand there, groping for reason as he stared at her pure white mask like he could make sense of the graying eyes that lay behind them. His eyes darted between the armored guards that had appeared behind Charity, taking in the adversaries as he calculated his odds. And he gave up. The man fell to his knees, tears released as Charity commanded his son to COMFORT him in his time of need.
Charity felt, rather than saw, as a shadow fell from the sky into the center of the group, a massive force coming down upon all of their shoulders as the strange form slowed its descent and touched down lightly upon the ground. The man spun to face her as soon as Charity could determine that he was in fact a man, a massive burst of wind pushing past her like a massive hand had just punched through the air. The four guards which had been standing beside her disappeared, slammed backwards by the massive force into the stone pillar and sending their bones scattering out in a spray of broken pieces.
Behind the man the trees shook violently, leaves and branches tearing back from their trunks like an equal force was sent behind the man as what he used to attack with. The man wasn't done. He withdrew his sword in a smooth action, leveling it between himself and Charity as he rested the edge upon her collar bone.
‘Feels a bit like history repeating itself.’ Charity thought. But no emotions of fear guided her actions like they had the last time a soldier had invaded the flock. Her flock. No, she was having trouble feeling any emotions at all these days.
“I'm glad you finally decided to join us, soldier. I was wondering when you'd decide to come down from your tree. I will say, it is a shame that you've decided to cut these people's time short though.”
‘WAVE.’ She commanded the remaining corpses.
The families looked just as confused as the soldier did, though he kept his sword in place at her neck.
“You blasphem and trick these people with petty lies.” He told her.
“Blasphem? I'm nothing if not pious. And there are no lies here, just the last moments of a parting soul.”
‘REST.’ The skeletons fell apart, falling to the ground as a pile of bone and rotting flesh once more. The families finally drew their attention away from the wayward soldier, eyes wide as they stared down at the forgotten remains of their loved ones. Their moment taken from them by another. The kneeling father was the first one to rise to the moment, standing up from the ground to grasp the soldier by his shoulder and turn him around with a snarl.
“You've taken them from us?”
“N-No! It wasn't” His sword drooped in his hands as the father took a solid punch into the soldier's gut, sending him gasping.
At this point in the ceremony, Charity usually had to explain that she could only bring their loved ones back for a short time. But through worship and devotion, they too could gain the power of life and death. Today however, she had a different excuse that had come flying straight from the air itself. Divine providence.
Another man walked up to the soldier, his child’s body left in the dirt as his wife cried over the bones.
“This was our last moment. Our last chance. And you simply chose now, of all times to try and swoop in.” His knee came up as he grasped the boy by the side, slamming into his gut a second time, dropping him right to the ground.
Charity allowed it all to happen. She didn't even have to open her mouth at this point. The seeds were already sown. Yet Tai still chose now to walk up beside her, dueling cane held in a firm grip, even as the family members started to kick at the downed boy.
“Please. I'm here to help.” The soldier tried to tell them, but still the blows rained on him. Heavy kicks from angry fathers. even a few of the women joined in as they left their sisters behind to grieve over the fallen bodies.
The air suddenly started to suck inward, towards the fallen soldier. A massive inhale engulfed the entire clearing as the dirt seemed to rise from the ground and the very trees leaned inward. Then Tai's dueling cane landed squarely on the back of the boy's head, and the entire world released its breath in nothing more than a shallow exhale. The blow knocked the boy unconscious immediately, face first in the dirt as the family members looked questionably towards the second preacher who never spoke. Charity took the moment while she had the chance.
“I apologize for your loss ladies and gentlemen. Your time may have been cut short tonight, but it was always going to end at one point or another, for I am but one person. But one soul in service to a greater being. So now I ask you, what has the Lord of Whispers ever truly done for you? Why do you serve a master who does not serve you in exchange?”
“Pledge yourselves to the Path of the Fallen. Pledge yourselves to Lord Tai and his brethren, and you who grieves so heavily this night might be given a chance to take control of death for yourselves.” She gestured towards Tai as she mentioned the embers, and the people responded.
Fifteen souls dropped to their knees that night. Fifteen new motes for the fire that raged in the void. And one unfortunate soldier who had gotten in deeper than he should have.