--- TURSTE ---

He remembered a fleeting consciousness, but that didn’t matter. He remembered vaguely the sense that something was near, something he could eat, something he could become just like so long ago with the ferien but somehow so much worse.

He grasped onto it with the desperation of the mad, though he couldn’t be mad, could he? He couldn’t remember being mad, he couldn’t remember much of anything. Except the beautiful sight of a ferien hunting.

He drew himself to his feet and was dimly surprised to find there were four of them. Some weren’t as…real as he’d hoped, he didn’t feel real. His mind was still a mess even as something in this body fought him with the valiance of a falling ferien. It even had a similar form to his beloved beasts.

He fought against the creature, finding it weak in the bounds of this world. Slowly as the daylight came and went and another creature visited with kind, worried words, he won against the beast he’d been sharing it with.

His mind still wasn’t working quite right, but he could finally see, he could finally think. After a long time he wondered, do I have a name? Fire. Something with fire, or ash. Like the devastating winters of his homeland. The second winter, fire, and ash, all three named after an angry god of volcanoes.

He pondered this for many days until eventually he had it. His name meant Warrior of the Flames.

And now, it seemed like he was made out of wood.

How long had it been?

--- FORA ---

The village of Beial moved.

It wasn’t a particularly interesting town, founded by an eccentric shifter and a determined lot of monster tamers. After three hundred years, Beial didn’t move as much as before, but it still migrated between four particularly nice spots every five years or so.

The people had little to no say in where the city went, all those monster tamers were long dead by now after all and the mountain didn’t really listen to anyone else. It wasn’t a popular idea to build things on top of giant migratory spiders, but the people of Beial were just weird like that.

Besides, their mountain had only sat down and crushed another village one time.

The idea of moving to Beial and literally dropping off the map was increasingly tempting as I made my way onto the beach of deadly poison. In fact, I thought I could see the ‘mountain’ from here! It hadn’t been there in most of my memories after all.

My lungs didn’t like the sandfrost any more than last time, I could probably do some sort of dimensional shenanigans to filter the air but I was soooo close to figuring out the spell. Just a couple more days to perfect it and then I could go back to normal.

So, because I didn’t want to wait three more days to get on with Geneseri, I simply suffered.

I examined the beach for the zombie, the scent of sandfrost was almost overwhelming this time, but I could still detect the underlying rot. “Jeref!” I called out, wondering if it would be worse this time. It might be. I hoped it wasn’t. I didn’t want to have to tell Niun that his undead zombie was dying.

Everyone said that was impossible but sparks, with my luck I was surprised it had lasted this long.

I made a very unladylike noise as something tackled me from behind, knocking the air out of my chest. Sharp splintering claws dug into my back and I got a face full of sand. Half my body was laying on top of a patch of mushrooms when my mind finally caught up to the assault.

The growling didn’t stop as I tried to both arc my back away from the claws and turn my head to get a better look at Jeref. I managed it kind of, but I still felt the unpleasant sensation of scratching at my exoskeleton.

“Hey….Jeref!” I wheezed, he was much heavier than me, but thankfully the air seemed to still be coming in.

The zombie growled again, and spoke. Sparks, even intelligent zombies couldn’t speak and most saeldens were dumb as trees! Maybe Jeref had been an honest to goodness Dryad. I didn’t think those could die though unless someone burned down the whole forest, and weren’t they more…spirit-like?

“You… Who are...you.”

I mean, I really should have thought something weirder was going on when he first started making noises that sounded like words, but I never claimed to be a very smart person. “I’m nobody!” I managed to squeak, “I’m just a Tuvei who’s supposed to check up on my friend’s zombie!”

“Your name.” The undead dog growled.

“Eliax.”

“No…your name.”

I froze, terror and incredulity pouring through me. How did this thing know? Could it smell lies or something? I could escape from here, but if I did that, I might not master the spell in time for the queen’s arrival. Illila would throw a fit if Eliax didn’t attend, but The Hero probably needed to be there too. “Foralen.” I said quietly. “But it’s just Fari.”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

The creature growled again but seemed to be relenting. “How long?” He asked, “How long, how long, how long.”

“Who are you?” I asked instead, figuring it was only fair, “You can’t be the same zombie I left here.”

He was silent for a long moment and then to my amazement got off me. I scrambled to my feet and backed up as the creature began to pace back and forth, snarling every couple seconds, “I’m different.” He eventually growled. “I think… I needed an empty body. How long.”

A possessor entity then, that was good, that meant Jeref was probably fine and Niun wouldn’t kill me. “How long since what?”

“Alanerea. Since the…Alanerea got...”

“I don’t know what that is.”

The creature stopped in its tracks and said something that sounded like a curse, though it was either in a language I didn’t know or its voice was finally giving out. Probably the first one since the thing started ranting in that same language incomprehensively.

After a while I took a step in the ‘away from here’ direction, “Well...I hope you find what you’re looking for, but I’m really going to have to ask that you extricate yourself from my friend's zombie. I don’t think he would be very happy about you being in there.”

“Can’t.”

I gave him an incredulous look, “...why?”

The thing snarled again, he was doing that a lot. “I don’t know.”

“Well...who are you?”

This time he laughed, “Turste. Maybe.”

“You’re sounding more and more unhinged.” I took another step away, intent on running to find an exorcism spell, but he didn’t seem to notice. Sparks, would an exorcism even help? It might banish Jeref too.

The sun made its way behind a particularly large cloud.

The sandfrost growing on him brightened and the voice spoke again, more clearly this time. “My mind is wrong, the creature fought me, no room for memories.” He glanced down at a pile of mushrooms and a strange grin spread across Jeref’s face, the creature clawed at the mushrooms, screaming, “Die die die! Haha, pathetic, destroying destroying destroying.”

“Turste, right?”

He glanced at me, “Maybe. Probably.”

“What do you want, Turste?” I tried.

He paused, still glaring at the mushrooms, “I want to be a person.” He jerked his head in that disconcerting way. “I want to be Turste.” He started screaming, “I WANT LIFE.”

I watched as the possessed zombie marched around the beach, screaming every so often and destroying mushrooms. He didn’t seem to notice that the very same kind of mushrooms were growing on himself. “And... what are you, right now?”

He glanced back at me and the sandfrost growing on him brightened again, “I don’t like mushrooms.” He muttered, “But I am an ALANEREA. I am the greatest race, a steward of the world, a protector-” He cut off, falling to the ground for…some reason. “We betrayed...he...why did he TRUST US? Did he curse us? Alner? Did you curse me? I can’t...I can’t...His gift is gone.”

I tilted my head at Turste, suddenly feeling a bit of pity. He was clearly insane. I didn’t know if that was because he was possessing an undead creature without enough brain cells for speech or if it was because of the possibility of centuries in that ‘how long’ he kept asking. “Who’s Alner?” I asked gently.

He snarled, getting to his feet and once more pacing back and forth. “You know nothing. How did they...how long? HOW LONG?”

The cloud moved away from the sun and his speech returned mostly to gibberish, not that it had been very understandable in the first place.

--

“So,” I finished, “I’m really busy for the next few weeks but after that I can probably look into exorcism, what do you think?”

Niun was staring at me.

I stared back, sparks I would never pass up an opportunity to cream someone in a staring contest.

“My zombie is possessed by a possibly ancient spirit.” He recounted slowly, “Besides Yera, I don’t think there’s anywhere that would have exorcism spells. They like doing it themselves to make sure people are keeping their stuff to code.”

I frowned, it was unlikely that anyone would be willing to help out, even though owning a zombie or two wasn’t strictly illegal, most mages and nobles would raise a huge fuss over it. It would get back to Starsbane and they probably would never let Niun out of his suspension -which was already an iffy thing.

“This is so stupid… Maybe we could break into the repository?” I certainly wouldn’t mind doing it again.

“What? There’s no way they’ll give a couple of civilian mages a pass. Besides, we don’t even know for sure what kind of possessor it is.”

I shifted, “Yeah...that was a stupid idea, forget I said anything.” I should have looked at him with my soul-sight earlier, I could probably find out more about the possessor entity at least. But how would I explain that to Niun?

And then I had an idea.

An amazing idea.

“Do you know any other soul mages that might have something? I’m pretty sure necromantic spells are only so restricted on this side of the continent. Like in Sanaria it was sooo much easier to get a hold of stuff, but that’s weeks away and it would take forever to get there.”

Niun paused and started thinking, “Anyone with a soul affinity here doesn’t tell folks about it. Besides my family, you, Illila, and Starsbane no one knows about mine. I could ask the soul teacher at Starsbane but he would never help.”

“Do you know of anyone else?”

He hesitated.

Perfect.

“I think so...Give me a bit to try and talk to her, she probably won’t help either, but it’s worth a shot.”

I grinned, “let me know if you need me to do anything!”

I knew he probably wouldn’t inform Eliax of the results until he had the spell. I would know anyway though, since I was ninety percent sure he was about to ask Foralen. Hopefully he wouldn’t insist on coming with me to the repository, the illusion wouldn’t work in there after all.