“How now? Who are they? The dead?” said she as her knife hand cut the arteries cheerily.

“There are things not even feys nor gods may learn. And things only the greatest lords dare glimpse! Pray, quit this needless folly! Take his heart and let us be gone!” Mastema was charged with fright now.

“A thing unknown even to a fallen angel! How intriguing! Did you not claim those of the Tribe of Danan could be touched? Why fear? Well, curse me if I care, and come if you dare, ghosts or evil beyond gods and devils! Come!”

The heart was exposed for the taking now. A soft thing, a fragile thing, yielding readily to the touch.

“Am I given to know of their nature, I would not!” Mastema hissed. “There are strange things about this night and this place! And so forbear! You speak as one possessed! This cannot prove well!”

“I am sane,” she said, picking up the heart and eyeing the grotesque thing with mild interest. “As sane as someone in a fight with all the gods can be. What is another enemy made? I welcome them to flatter me with new enmity.”

And she set her mind to the task, to the soft thing upon her hand of unwholesome stench. Her hatred of the guard did not make human flesh any more delectable. Nor had she a mind to quit now. Her nose wrinkled, her eyes shut, and she bit on the thing, trying not to think of the taste. She did not know how long it took her to consume the thing entire, but it was done. And she whispered the words.

image [https://i.ibb.co/YQ75jqJ/CS-3a.png]

CORDELIA VON JORMUNGANDR

PATRON: Lord of Serpents and Deception

Orb Progression: 15%

Blessing: Shed Skin

Patron Quest: Gain the trust of the Maiden of God

RACE: Snakeling

Orb Progression: 100%

Alignment: Neutral Good (T1)

Racial Ability: Household Protector

Power Capacity: 8/12

Attributes:

Might - F

Masteries - F

Endurance - C

Spirit - F

Perception - D

Charisma - D

Leadership - F

CLASS: Temptress

Orb Progression: 18%

Title: -

Power: Silver Tongue, Forked Tongue, Ethereal Beauty, Detect Holy, The Favored (Privilege), Sedative Miasma, Camouflage

The dark tablet appeared. And as soon as she had confirmed the change in her number of open powers, she threw up. Everything: not much, only the meager meal a day consumed, and two human hearts.

Well, there’s nothing to it now, she thought, sitting with her back against the stone table where the young woman lay, heaving as her stomach still savagely protested. This heart had given her only one chance at another power compared to Sir Derrick’s five. Though it was sensible such a base man would be worth only a knight’s fifth, it was nonetheless somewhat disappointing.

The formless, immaterial wind was still howling as she rose leaning on the bed, full of mockery. “How the dead do protest, yet would not put their existence into action, as I do.”

It was then she took a gander at the still floating tablet, and suddenly cried out. She guessed she lost her footing then, for her back struck the stone bed behind her afterward. And she was laughing.

“Get ahold of yourself!” cried Mastema. “Quit this place!”

“And the devil doth protest!” she screamed. “So this is how it is! I was lied to! Tricked! This is how it is! The meaning of death - the bending of a mind - and so they say thus truly: we are what we eat! Or wrongly, perhaps? I cannot tell!” She was laughing, truly as Mastema had remarked, as a thing possessed. She was raving.

With a wave she dismissed the accursed tablet, rose, then fell over again. The candle went out.

Were they come then? She did not know. Only a strange pressure was being put against her, a burden upon her brain, so that her mind was addled, so confused. It was now as though someone was whispering into her ears, not simply such echoes from far off, but sounds far more intimate. A sound as personal as assassination, as appalling and a-purpose.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“Do you hear, Mastema?” she groaned, groping blindly in the dark for a thing to grab onto. The thought of those corpses strewing about could not deepen her fright. They might as well be wholesome slumberous things. And had one reached out from the realm below to seize her wrist then, she wouldn’t have even panicked, for even that would be a lesser horror than the eerie whispers about. These rose in undulating chorus, intoning something singsong like a hymn, which was not in the least like mindless moanings, but communally done.

She felt a miniscule tug at her wrist as the familiar stirred wildly. “Fly! Fly! Fly, I say!”

But she could not. Something was holding her in place, its grasp unrelenting upon her heart of hearts.

“It’s breaking,” she heard her own quavering words, and yet their meaning escaped her. Perhaps it was someone else who spoke. Perhaps she was becoming someone else. A heavy weight was dragging upon her lids and eclipsed her faculty for speech. “Ah, little one...” she sighed, and her eyes dimmed.

She shut her eyes, and even then, the shade of darkness did not change.

In a place faraway, her familiar’s voice was calling out. But she was feeling sleepy. And she dreamed.

In her dream the dead rose from their beds, their skin glowing in a phosphorescent light. From their empty, lifeless sockets stared out something malign. And they came for her. There was no end to them. The undead horde crawled out from every dark corner, slid from the shadowed beams, emerged from the edge of vision. And they came, arrived, from the past, from the future, from the present. With every last breath drawn all over the world this night they were born anew, strange and otherworldly, untouchable by mortal or immortal folly. And more and more they arrived, for life and death stretched to their respective infinity onwards and backward. The ages elongated and yet their destination remained one. Everything filled the house of the dead. And all that had once lived fit in this place, finding their own corner in eternity, there dwelled away from changes and suffering and endings. All, but her. Cordelia stood in their midst as the one and only who lived. She knew this. They knew this. And they sought to make amends for this. They descended upon her, the horde of dead. Their broken limbs tore at her damp hair, their rotten teeth gnawed on her yielding flesh, they drank and spat her blood to the earth, where the earth sucked it desperately, till her corpse was unrecognizable, till she lay on the ground soaked in her own blood, maimed and disfigured. Even then they were upon her, heavy like filling soil, like the finality of a burial. Heaps and heaps of bodies slowly blocked out her view of the darkness, replacing it with an indescribable void. And her body was being crushed under their weight, its every molecule dissolved. After a time she became very small, and yet still more and more they came upon her. But she was small enough now - small and slender and nimble - so that she slithered through the tiny gaps of the undead. And worming her way through the maze of flesh she made it out of the macabre pile. Once outside, she looked backward, saw the bodies, and saw her old body crushed beneath it. So thoroughly destroyed it was that the thing seemed no more than skin, old and torn skin. But Cordelia was fresh and young, was new and untouched.

With her new skin came new eyes. With new eyes she saw the undead for what they were: nothing fearful but a medium borrowed by some otherworldly being for a vile purpose. And she saw behind the dead who filled the morgue a singular shape. It was something almost human, even as her. Presently it noticed her gaze. There were no features upon this being’s face, for they were not there, and what she saw was only an idea of their existence. She thought that it smiled without seeing the lips. Then it was gone. And all the undead was gone. And she was in the quiet darkness again.

“You are back,” Mastema guardedly.

“What happened?” she gasped and groped for the candle.

“Something came. I still don't know what. I do not know if it was the work of another einherjar, the magic bears a stench I cannot recognize.”

“How did I...” she struck a fire, then for a while stared dumbly at the wholesome candle flame. “How did I see through the illusion?”

Was it even an illusion?

“ ‘Twas a close thing. You shed skin in time to endure the challenge from this unknown force.”

“Ah,” she gasped. The sight had taken her off guard before the sudden nightmare conquered her. The vision of it came back to her now, no less dreadful. It was that one not-so-subtle change after the heart of the guard had been eaten, which finally filled her racial orb. And next to it there engraved those meaningful words.

Alignment: Neutral Good

“While you still can, let us be away!” the snake nagged.

“I shall, I shall.” She ground her teeth. “Only tell me, you know, do you not? The truth behind this heart-eating business?”

“I hardly comprehend your meaning. And this is no place for chatters.”

“Fine then,” she growled, “there’s no relying on a demon.”

She went straight for the spare keys hanging on the wall. Much was on her mind as she tried each key. Most burning was the questions regarding what she had seen upon the dark tablet, but also the event of this night.

The door unlocked, she went out and slammed it shut behind, hopefully never to return to this place and its dark secret again. But not until she had made half across the town did the clammy sensation of being followed by unknown eyes cease.

Nor did she delude herself with such wishful thoughts as by happy chances to never encounter that thing or being again. Whatever it was. For though on her path in this world many dangers mortal and immortal had always lurked, something in this unpleasant expreience was telling her this one would prove the greatest trouble yet.