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I write this as bid farewell to my second cycle of life. The spirit bleeds from the multitude of gashes that have been inflicted in my brain, though if you were to see me you would not be disgusted by gore upon my face. But dare you look into my eyes, and you would know that I have seen the undescribable. If I had the courage to face these images and tear them from my mind, I would have done so long ago. Unfortunately for me, I haven't such inner strength to do so, never had, and have instead decided to expire by my own means so as to stop my torment.
I feel that by recording what I have seen, done, caused, I will somehow find peace, and maybe even find redemption. I read that confessing your greatest sins can earn you forgiveness by the Light, and, with little faith in little, I cling to this idea. Perhaps the Light will forgive me, but if I was the Light, I would surely not.
I believe it started when I was a boy, eleven years of age, and uncorrupted. Indeed, my father was eager to tell the others in the village how wonderous a man his son was destined to be. Though the blood I lacked, the qualities of royalty I possessed: honor, kindness, charity, optimism, love. Yes, love, most of all. Love was what made me what I was then. Love for the cherub Draena Ormwald, the fine young woman with a smile that would make a dead valley rejuvinate, a house build itself, a battle break.
True, I was probably too young to understand what love meant, but the fact of the matter is that by my definition of love, I loved Draena. And would it not be right that she love me back? A fair trade, I convinced myself.
After her arithmetic lessons with her tutor, a wizened man no taller than I, with an overturned spire of cotton for a beard and eyes, blue eyes that could freeze water and shatter glass, I would see her walk towards her home at the north western end of the village. As she would carry herself across the cobblestones, I must have made a fool of myself, more than once, for many a time had she turned her face and giggled with her hand lightly covering her mouth. And I felt a fool, a fool of the greatest degree! It was not right that she refuse my attention and cause the bitter drop scythe down my cheek. Yet my feelings disappeared as soon as I saw her the next day.
This carried on for many years. I grew strong, and tall. I could wield the lumberjack axe better than my father could, and read better than my peers. I knew the sciences' axioms word for word, and I was well read in the works of the great writers: Aushel the Magician, Augur Widgetwax, Marshal Kronarus. Yet like it had been for years, I returned home feeling as if I was the village idiot after my brief meeting with Draena.
I was seventeen when my father scolded me for my indecisiveness over picking to help cut wood for my father's carpentry business or help the town guards collect foodstuffs for the next campaign against the bandits to the south, near the dead copse of pines. "Well, what do you want to do, son? What do you want?" he rattled sternly. The words stuck with me.
I did not decide to cut wood or find bread, but I decided to speak with Draena, face to face, and not leave feeling inferior.
The next day, I had skipped my studies and chores to rehearse what I was to say to the woman who would not escape my dreams. I decided that I would ask her why she made me feel so foolish each day, and state that she and I should get to know each other better. After all, we were neighbors, and not antipathetic towards each other. Yes, I convinced myself, that would be the reasonable course of action.
I consulted her. I may have bungled it, somehow, for I left with a red welt on my face. The events I do not remember well, but I had grabbed her roughly, and instantly regretted it. But instead of return home feeling a fool, I followed her, determined to get what I wanted.
Her home had large, clear windows, and the sun's glare did not interfere with my sight as I peered through the glass. She had entered the house with a prominent grin on her face. Ah! She must have enjoyed the encounter with myself, I thought, though I was confused as to why she hit me if this was the case. I soon discovered that it was not the case. Another woman was there, the Harper's daughter. She smiled at Draena. Draena smiled back. They walked slowly towards each other.
I had only seen seconds of what happened next before I screamed. A horrible, piercing howl I let fly. I shrieked until my throat went dry and I vomited. Not only had my efforts been in vain, but her love had been reserved in a manner that I had never dreamed of. It was...inappropriate. Wrong! Perhaps if two I did not know, had been involved in that way, it would have been understandable, but no, Draena needed a man at this age, and in the man's place, my place, was someone that should not have been there, something that should not have been there!
I did not recognize the people that dragged me home, for the tears blocked my vision. But it was on that day that the first cycle of my life descended into madness.
Please note: I am not against homosexuality. The narrator's opinion on this matter does not reflect my own. It is simply how I chose to write this segment of the story.
I was kept in a sickbed for a number of days. During that time, I was simply fazed. Minimal food passed my lips, the bare necessary amount of water trickled down my throat. The once bright, enthusiastic mind that was based within my skull was dazed, confused, totally lost. The sight I had seen was as virulent as the most deadly of toxins. What was I to do when what I wanted most had been corrupted? Tainted? Fouled by the essence of an unworthy thing, a dastardly, terrible, light-blast-it piece of hound feces! Ye Gods, how unworthy of life this demonic thing was!
Several days after my mental incapacitation took place, my father’s words clawed their way through my subconscious and into the light, the words that had caused my torment in the first place. “What do you want?” the inner voice asked me? I shot up in bed. I screamed, oh, I did scream! Howl I did at the voice, “I want Harper’s daughter dead! I want her dead! Expire, decease, you horror!”
People rushed to my side and soothed me. I hit them and scratched them and drooled furiously as I cried furiously. “You die, Harper! You die! Your corruption of such innocence shall be dealt with! Strike you! The light strike you!” My fingers drew blood from a restrainer, and my head was held still, but I was a strong lad, and my muscles trembled as I shoved and kicked against the hands I could not see. “Heresy! Heresy with execution! Die! Die! Die!”
My arms gave, my adrenaline sought escape from my vessels. The hands restrained me, unnecessarily, as I had no fight left in my body for the moment. As a balm was applied to my temples, I rasped the fate of the Harper daughter. “Die, die, die…”
Sleep engulfed me for a very long time. I found relaxation in a void that I had grown unfamiliar with. There was no Draena in it. I found that disappointing, as the sight of her face would have brought me to a state of extreme comfort. Alas, there was no Draena to bless my otherworldly visions, but there was great darkness. Darkness as far as my eyes could see. No stars, no baubles to catch my vision, just a warm, cushion-like darkness that I hovered in.
I didn’t contemplate my issues in that session of hovering, but simply stared into nothing and felt happy. Happy that nothing was plaguing me, troubling me, causing me hurt. I was a comfortable soul.
Upon waking I found myself no longer in that state of happiness. The prophetic mutterings that I had stated violently in the past returned to my mind, and once again, my anger swelled, a titanic force within my bosom that tightened its grip on my windpipe and gut, and caused my muscles to shake and flex, tighten in preparation for what was to come.
It was night, and the house was quiet. I had lost all sense of time, but I knew it was a time when not many people would be about the streets. I carried my refreshed self from the sweaty, rumpled bedding to the window that overlooked the west quadrant of the town. Goldshire’s blacksmith could be seen far to the north, the tall forge peeking over the forested edge. Soft noise covered the grassy land, drawing it to bed and relaxation.
I ignored my disheveled state and tip-toed out into the cool night air. My muscles flexed negatively towards the hard cobblestones, and I decided that if I was to carry out what I was about to do, I should be prepared for it. Hopping a fence, my worn boots managed to hobble into the orchard, where I stretched for maybe nine minutes. I loosened my biceps, shoulders, legs, knees, and wrists, before padded back into the main street.
I knew the way well. It was not an enormous village, and I had made deliveries to the place many times.
The door to the Harper house was unlocked. I spat on the door crack where the hinges roughly were, and opened the door slowly. Soundless. The floor was carpeted, which allowed me to cross the rooms quickly without raising a ruckus. The stairs were difficult, as they were rickety and uncarpeted. It took me a four year long session of fifteen minutes to climb the seventeen stairs to the top floor.
The Harper daughter was there, in a bed shared by her brothers, the disgusting, kobold face with rat hairs and pukespit lips.
The siblings did not wake, as the execution was done quickly. A swift, rocking blow to the larynx of the girl, and it was done. Her eyes opened, as did her mouth, but nothing would escape, nor enter. Her body would not respond to the crisis. Only her mind functioned, releasing frenzied electrical reports to the organs warning of a system shut down.
She died. I left the house. I left the street. I left the village.
It is a challenge to run through a pitch dark forest as fast as you can, but I managed to take a rough south west course, away from the most of the major hubs of Goldshire, towards the Fargodeep Mine, where no sane human would possibly go. I probably wasn’t sane anymore, so I didn’t let that last characteristic of the place bother me. I had committed an act that that the victim deserved, though most would not believe that she deserved it. Is it not a ironic how fate rears its ugly head in such a way?
I stopped running when my legs collapsed, throttling my body into the grass. I stayed that way until my body welcomed sweet unconsciousness. What my body experienced after that I don't know. I was unable to care as my body followed my body's example and slipped into a catatonic state. It felt good.
I discovered upon waking that I must have been unsuccessful in my attempt to flee to the mine, as I found myself in a cell.
It was very dark in the cell, and I knew not if it was dark or light outside. It was also very quiet. Seldom have I been in a place where it was totally quiet. Even the abbey to the north of my homestead was never as silent as this stone structure, as it was a silence accompanied by the rustling of paper, the chirping of birds. Here, however, I strained to detect an outside noise.
It was difficult to see what my current state was, so out of habit, I stood erect and brushed myself down, straightening imaginary creases. It was difficult to bend down to adjust my trousers as my spine was suddenly host to great pains. With nothing else to do, I stretched myself, and found that I had been abused quite severely.
My back had been bruised. This I could tell by applying pressure to it. My shoulders and biceps were in a similar state, as I found it impossible to lift them above shoulder height. My ribcage had been battered, as had my skull, this being discovered when I became giddy upon quick movements.
I sat down, and waited.
Though pain was arching through my system at speeds exceeding that of a bolt of fire, I found it oddly simple to recall what had happened. I had committed murder. I had been driven by blind passion, and my lust had caused the death of an innocent. A vile, soulless innocent, but an innocent nonetheless.
I began to run through what other options I had besides the taking a life, but I dismissed it quickly, realizing that such an action would only depress me further. In fact, most things I dismissed, as it would only worsen my state of mind, which was probably, unlike my body, beyond repair.
I cycled through all the knowledge I had stockpiled in my school years. The Auchlaean Screw, the utilization of cross beams for supporting a roof, the theory of Advanced Augury, the application of basic spirit to reinvigorate one’s body, the legend of Uther, the debate on whether or not Dexicultan teachings on the Light should be taught or not, the Elemental Equation…
It was a long time before my cell door opened. A large silhouette blocked the torchlight from the halls. The shadow crossed the room and roughly hoisted me up. It hurt. The shadow ignored my weak protests as it shoved me out through the hall and into a courtyard.
I was momentarily blind, as my eyes had adapted to the darkness of the cell in which I had been staying. When the blur cleared, I took into account my surroundings. The courtyard was surrounded by a wall several feet higher than I could reach. It also appeared to be some sort of cloister, with windowed halls and rooms behind the walls. There was stained glass, so I decided I was within the confines of an abbey or church armory. They were all made of finely crafted stone blocks. The courtyard had a gallows in the center of it, with three men standing by it. One was my father. His arms were folded across his large barrel chest, and his mustached face was expressionless as my beaten carcass was pushed towards the noose. The middle man I did not know, but he appeared to be a servant of the Light. The third man was obviously the executioner, as he wore the black hood and symbolic spaulders of one of his kind.
It was difficult for them to get the noose around my neck, not because I was resisting, but because the noose was too tight. As the executioner adjusted it, the large shadow (who turned out to be a fat friar with a leather sap on his girdle) gripped me powerfully, making sure I would not attempt escape. It was an unnecessary precaution. Had I tried to, I would not have made it as far as the wall before I collapsed in a heap of bashed bones and ruptured vessels.
The complication was fixed, and they fitted the rope around my neck, and bound my hands behind my back with strong wire. Whoever had designed this execution had done it in a wicked way, as I was standing facing my father, who still remained expressionless. I tried to stare back at him in the same way, but alas, I failed to do so, as tears welled up within. I had failed to impress my father, live up to his standards. It hurt more than my bruises and torn muscles.
The church figure was muttering some words from a small leather bound book. I couldn’t hear them, but I quite honestly couldn’t care less. I gasped a little, and sobbed once or twice, before squelching the sadness inside of my breast. I then stood as tall as my battered spine would allow me, and sighed a little.
The platform beneath my feet dropped, and my body entertained my small audience by doing a few steps of the hangman’s jig. My neck was in an enormous amount of pain. Panic overtook me. My eyes bulged out, as did my tongue, and strange caking noises emanated from my squashed larynx. I barely noticed the warm stuff that seeped from my trousers and down my legs to the grass below.
It went dark mercifully quickly. Had I not been deceased, I would have felt relieved.
The next thing I noticed was that I was noticing things, which seemed contradictory to what had happened what seemed to be seconds ago.
It was dark, and strange in that place, but I could hear things, and they didn’t sound like things I would hear at the sight of an execution. There were, for one, voices. Odd voices, spewing forth words in odd tongue. Dripping noises, too, and the soft clinks of metal tools bounced back and forth across the air above me. The place had a strangely peaceful feel to it.
My approval rating of the room plummeted when I started screaming and bleeding from my neck. I think my eyes shot open, but I wasn’t sure, because everything was still dark. There was lots of pain in my throat. Bile crept up into it, but didn’t reach my mouth. Squirming was the only thing I could do after the vomit prevented me from screaming more.
The voices became excited, and understandable. “You idiot! What are you cutting?”
“It’s all over my finger bones!”
“Get the staples.”
“That is so disgusting.”
“Will you two shut up?”
Something entered my throat, not by means of my mouth, and began scooping its insides out. More bile projected from where my Adam’s Apple used to be. My limbs exploded into action as the panic overtook my body. There were shouts of alarm from around my head, and I felt very confused.
“Keep scooping, I think we’re almost done.”
“He probably won’t be able to talk now, you imbecile. You’re writing the report.”
“Shut up and give me the plugs.”
“I can’t, I have a spoon down his gullet. You go do it.”
“Remove the blasted spoon and give me the blasted plugs already!”
My body lurched as it tried to empty my stomach of its contents, but there was nothing left to regurgitate but stinking gases and a dribble of acids. My head jerked and jolted to no avail, as its movement was impaired by an outside force. One of my feet connected with something soft, and my arms flailed in sweeping arcs as they received insane orders from my brain to do something, anything, to stop the pain.
There was more lurching as what I thought were hands reached into my neck and fiddled around. I began choking viciously, and oozes and liquids rocketed forth from my mouth and nose. There were more shouts and jolts of pain.
“Juice his brain already.”
“Did we cut all the parts?”
“Do it before we drown in this stuff!”
“And the screws?”
“Juice it! Juice it before I remove your only gender defining feature with the battery, you miscreant!”
There was a popping noise, and everything went peaceful once more.
It was quiet for a while, then very bright. I blinked. Dark to light. My eyes appeared to be in working condition. I was staring at a very monotonous stone ceiling, and it made me a bit more confused, as I had been hung in the open air of a courtyard. Blink blink. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to sit up or not.
“He isn’t moving.”
“I told you to check if everything had been cut!”
“They were cut!”
“Maybe we should hit him.”
“And break his spine again? You know how bad that would look on the report?”
“Which you will be writing.”
“Don’t make me hit you, Cheever.”
There was too much noise, and I felt my upper body rising to tell the noise to stop. It didn’t hurt, which in my subconscious, registered as totally surreal, due to what had been going on in past minutes. My eyes fell upon human like things, but not human in a way as well. They were twisted. Their bones showed through their loose skin. Their eyes emanated a cold, golden glow that illuminated the cracks of time on their cheekbones. There were two, and they were about as intimidating as a fawn tied to a wagon wheel, and were arguing bitterly with one another.
I must have said something then, because they stopped, and turned to me. If they had eyebrows, they would have shot up.
I’d been saying a lot of things without realizing it, so at first I thought it was I who suggested to write the report. My suspicions were declared false when the true speaker came into view. A large violet wizard’s hat with a gold band around it poked into my field of vision, disrupting my view of the two surgeons. Underneath the wizard’s hat was a jaw that jutted out from the skin, revealing the off-white bone. I felt saliva drip on my neck.
The figure with the hat gripped my jaw with his right hand, and examined me, though I couldn’t tell how, as there didn’t appear to be a glow of eyes underneath the hat. My face was jerked up and down, left and right, my nose pried open with cold, sharp fingers, my mouth thoroughly searched. The two surgeons fidgeted with their tools the whole while.
The figure dropped its hand after retracting an unwelcome appendage into my ear, and nodded. The ludicrous hat bobbed up and down, and a raspy voice emitted from its interior. “I’ll make sure this goes straight to Varimathras. I may not even bother writing a report. Perhaps I shall go straight to him. Yes, I shall go straight to him.” The hat swiveled towards the two uncertain surgeons. “I’ll mention your excellent work. Keep the procedure writings, and make sure none of that gore gets on them.”
The figure with the hat left, and the two figures started moving about the room. They occasionally glanced at me suspiciously, their scalps creeping across their skulls as they raised what used to be their eyebrows. I looked down at my body. It was covered in blood. Probably mine. I doubted that the surgeons had accidentally hacked off one of their limbs in the process of whatever it is they were doing. I felt queasy, so I lay back down and craned my head about.
The room was a small one. I lay at the center of it, and was surrounded by shelves and tables. There were a great deal of manuals and handbooks on the shelves, and some diagrams of the anatomies of several creatures nailed to the shelf boards. Cases of phials and decanters were in small crates on the tables, each neatly labeled in a text I could not decipher. Models of bones, kits containing scalpels and screwdrivers, and parchments littered the rest of the stone room. Some of the papers were soaked with blood.
One of the strange surgeons had a towel and had begun wiping my body down in short, rough strokes. The other was shuffling through a pile of papers, tossing carbons and charts around wildly. I noticed they were clad in dull blue and grey robes and what looked like heavy rain boots. The one sifting through the papers had a single rod of hair that jutted from the top of his skull and up into the air. A gravity defying toupee, perhaps.
There were loud footsteps some time later, and three more strange figures entered the room, though they were noticeably different than the surgeons or the thing with the hat that had exited some time ago. They wore chain mail and dark scarlet hoods, and there were immense swords strapped to their sides. Two were very large. The other, flanked by the bruisers, was considerably smaller, almost feminine. It had a long curved falchion instead of a massive axe-like blade, and a cloak draped across its left shoulder. It pointed to me, and the two bruisers produced a stretcher.
The surgeons questioned the smaller figure. I couldn’t hear over the sound of the two soldier-like figures scraping my body off the stone table and onto the stretcher. It occurred to me that I was understanding the language of these things, which seemed odd to me because it wasn’t Common. It was more raspy, and harsh.
I was carried through stone halls. Several hundred stone blocks shot past my eyes as the trio of red hooded things marched my body on. I wondered if I should call for help, or try to swing my legs over the side. I wasn’t sure if I knew what help was in this strange language, and if I swung my legs over, the small figure would have tossed them back on the stretcher. They had swords, anyways. Best not to try anything for a while.
I then found myself in another monotonous stone walled room, except this one had a stone table that resembled an office desk, a long metal bench, and several wooden chairs that looked as if they would crumble beneath the weight of a house fly.
The stretcher was sucked out from under me, replaced by the bench. It was cold. I would have fidgeted but I was too boggled to do so. I heard the trio talking amongst themselves. Then I felt a hand upon my shoulder. A voice said, “It may be the future of the Forsaken. So guard it with your lives.”
I lay on my back, vaguely aware of the dampness from the gore on my chest and the alien rings in and about my spine. The ceiling, one that looked the same as others I had stared at, were it a face, would have looked as hopeless as I looked, except the ceiling hadn’t been the victim of brutal surgery recently.
There wasn’t much to ponder, so I pondered nothing.
It was a long time before I heard footsteps. I noticed that I could have tried to sit up or maybe something constructive, but it hadn’t occurred to me to do so. The footsteps were of that sound that a woodblock makes when it is dropped from waist height onto a limestone surface. There were two sets of footsteps, one heavy, one light.
I continued to stare at the ceiling as I heard a scabbard scrape the stone walls and the ripples of some person’s robe brush against the floor. Had I been blinking? I didn’t notice if I had or had not been lately. I really needed to pick up on analyzing what was going on.
A trio of claws brushed against my chest. Someone said “You can leave us now. There should be no need for force.” Someone else started to reply, but the original voice said, “You can stand guard outside the door in the hall, but not in the presence of the Prize, Deathguard.” The voice was very soft, and were it a concrete object, may have resembled a trickle of honey.
There was some silence. The ceiling stared back at me.
The voice spoke again. It had that effect that voices do when they’re spoken in empty rooms. “Can you hear me?”
I tried nodding but I felt nothing, so I made a noise. The three fingers tapped gently against my sternum. “Alright,” it said. “Let’s try getting you up first.” He made an upward waving motion with his hands, and I brought my body up to a sitting position, my legs splayed out in front of my. I saw the figure. If it weren’t so inhuman, I would have thought it to be a kindly old man. But that wasn’t the case.
Acting upon the assumption that it was a former kindly old man, I decided that those that resembled him would be male, and those like the small Deathguard would be female. It made identification so much easier.
He nodded. The perfectly bald head gleamed. I realized that there was a brazier in the corner. It exaggerated the lines on his face, especially around the nose and eyes. The face was soft, but the bizarre glow in his eyes made him look secretly malicious. “Good. The Screw in your back works.” He clacked his teeth together and tapped two fingers together in thought. “Good, good,” he muttered again. It must have meant that me being able to move my back was a positive.
He stood up. He wasn’t very tall, but the robe was too big for him, and the small pauldrons on his shoulders sagged. It made him look even more willowy than he probably was. He put a bony hand on my knee. It wasn’t cold, but it wasn’t warm, either. It felt like a curved slab of wood had touched my skin – devoid of life, with no blood coursing through the labyrinth of veins in the body. A dead hand.
A dead hand. Consequently, a dead owner of a dead hand? I stared at him.
The hand patted my thigh. I realized as I looked down that my leg had become withered, somewhat. Lost muscle mass, most likely. It also had an unhealthy pallor, as if the white of bone had leeched through the tissue to secrete throughout the many pores. I heard him say, “Swing your legs off the table.” I kept staring at him. I was beginning to realize something, but I wasn’t sure what it was yet.
The hand removed itself from my knee, and the male thing shuffled closer to me, by my side, just to the right of me, in fact. The hands gripped my biceps. It felt like having two books pressed against my arms. “Swing your legs, now. Your back is screwed into good condition, so you shouldn’t have much trouble. No need to be afraid.” I kept staring at him. His skin became tighter over his cheeks and several pearly white teeth grinned back at me. It wasn’t much of a smile, but it was the first thing I’d seen that betrayed humanity in these pale abominations so far. So I swung my legs over the right side of the table.
The books slapped my arms gently. “Good, good,” he repeated.
He was about to say something when I lifted myself off the table and stood up. My left leg buckled, but its sibling stayed strong and held. My left arm scrambled backwards and grasped the table’s edge for balance. The hands quickly grasped my shoulders and lifted me with surprising strength back to my feet. I felt tired. That took energy? My left knee quivered slightly.
“Ambition is the key to your rehabilitation,” the wooden man said. I nodded. He leaned closer. “You understand what I am saying?” I nodded. The weird grin reappeared on his face. He pushed me softly onto the table. “Sit,” he commanded quietly. I did.
He shuffled back two steps and dug under his robe. The hands were efficient and made only the necessary movements; lifting the edge of the robe, sweeping the other hand in and to the belt. No scrabbling around. The right hand came out with a small book, black and leather bound with a small insignia on the front. I did not recognize it.
He craned his neck and looked at the door. Then he nodded and dug under his robe again through the neck opening, and produced a small pair of wire framed spectacles. I stared at the spectacles. A human creation.
The glasses were brought up to his head and balanced carefully on a nonexistent nose. A small bump of cartilage was all I could see, and the frames slung perilously, as if in fear of falling to a grisly death. The hands opened the ledger, and the mouth moved. “I want you to tell me if you understand what I say.”
I nodded. I also made a noise that sounded like yurk.
The head drooped a bit, and another grin smeared across his face. I wondered if his skin would split down the middle, it was so tight over the bone. A finger pointed to something in the book, and he recited.
If the subject matter possesses not the physical capabilities
nor the mental agility, spirit, strength of will, etc (see
section seven paragraph nine for complete description of such
problems), the apothecary, who is qualified to do so, may also
conduct the testing of expertise in the field of alchemy, surgery,
engineering, and toxification of supplied subjects. The apothecary
is to follow the procedure outlined in the following section
in order to determine if the subject matter is capable of
operating in previously explained professions. Should the
subject matter fail to meet these qualifications, the
apothecary can decide to either shut down the subject
matter’s support systems or send him to testing
for manual labor.
I understood, and I nodded. Yurk.
The grin came back. The maliciousness in the glowing eyes intensified, I think. He looked suddenly very dangerous. “Well,” he said through his pearly teeth, “I think since you understand, you know what’s at stake.”
I did. I didn’t like it, but I did. I had to qualify. If I failed the qualification trial, I would die. I hoped I was as promising as the Deathguards thought I would be.
Great work. I rarely say that in these forums, but you hooked me in early. I enjoyed it - it looks to be a long story, which I appreciate. Keep it up, but take your time in editing the story. I can't wait for more.
I am a rather poor editor because at first wheN i type things, they appear to be grammatically correct. It's usually when i post it when I notice I made a mistake.
And I can't find my "Edit" button on the page.
There was no way I could tell how much time passed in that room, as there was no time piece or window to view the sky. I could tell, however, that the bald apothecary worked with and instructed me for a great number of hours. When he would leave, I would collapse on the stone table, and stare at the ceiling, unable to sleep, but exhausted nonetheless. Then, after a long stretch of quiet, he would return, and I would toil as I did before.
The bald apothecary switched back and forth between helping me gain my locomotive skills and my speech. It surprised and disappointed me to discover that my once conditioned body had been reduced to a state of frailty. It took a huge amount of effort to shuffle from one end of the room to the other. Several times, I collapsed to my knees, my muscles burning, my chest heaving for air. The apothecary would watch me recuperate, and would help me to my feet, before instructing me on how I should hobble around and where I should place my feet.
Occasionally, he would bring with him a cork ball with small indentations acting as grips. I would hold the ball in one hand, and squeeze for a specified period of time, before switching its position to my other hand. The first time I tried it, the ball rolled out of my hand and bounced along the floor. I was too weak to grip it. I thought that perhaps it was due to the state of my hands; the skin over the knuckles and wrist had tightened, and I could see the bone move around under my epidermis like a young spider working to break free from its egg.
I remembered speech being different than what the apothecary taught me, but I never discovered how so. I was taught to use the tongue to pronounce certain consonants, and the throat’s natural ability to produce guttural sounds to pronounce others. My first word was “dark”. The apothecary seemed pleased by that. Progress.
I discovered that while I lay on the stone table between teachings, I could immediately open my eyes at any time. I could then close them and return to regaining my energy. It wasn’t sleep, but it worked well enough.
During one of the rehabilitation sessions, the apothecary dropped the small leather-bound book onto the floor, and pointed to it. “Pick it up,” he told me. I bent at the waist, and shifted my weight to my right foot as I placed it forward ahead of me. My left hand found a hold on the spine of the book, and clutched it with much of my strength. I had to use the table to help straighten my body, but I managed to extend my arm and give the apothecary the book without having my shoulder tear off my body from strain. Progress.
I learned the letters of the language I was to speak quickly. I had been a good student before, and thankfully, my mind had not decayed nearly as quickly as my body had. I read letters off of a scroll with an elaborate insignia printed on the top. It took me several hours to finally say it, but my first sentence had the apothecary grinning with uncontrollable delight.
My finger had been down on the scroll, which was on the table, and I pointed to the insignia. A small line of text was printed on the lithograph picture. I narrowed my eyes to focus on the text. “Dark . . . Lady . . . watch . . . over . . . us,” I murmured.
The apothecary kept grinning at me. The maliciousness in his fiery eyes seemed strangely welcome. The sprites of excitement danced around his invisible corneas as his gaze lay on me. “Yes,” he said. “Dark Lady watch over us.”
Many sessions later, I shuffled around the entire room without taking a rest. I squeezed the ball in my right hand for two minutes, and in my right hand for one and a half. I could pick up the book from the floor in eight seconds. Progress.
Then, one time, I sat up as the heavy wooden door of the room swung open. The apothecary that I was so familiar with did not walk through, but the small Deathguard with the crimson cloak draped about its left shoulder, the two giants that had no doubt been standing guard at the door, and a bald man with wild hair colored green, huge mechanic’s goggles, and what appeared to be studded belts across his face forming an X at the nose filed in and looked at me. The wild haired man was dressed in a sleeveless linen tunic and worker’s pants, with many belts around his waist, draped across his shoulders, and around his legs, upon which hung numerous bottles, phials, ledgers, and satchels. I wondered how he could stand under the weight of all these amenities, but I knew not how to ask.
I was marched slowly out the room, and down the hallway. I struggled to breathe after several minutes of walking, and had to stop several times for breath. During one of these stops, the small Deathguard had spoken to the wild haired man in a raspy whisper of a voice. “Can’t you give him something that will make him move faster?”
The wild haired man shrugged. His voice was very tinny and sharp, and it caused me to flinch upon hearing it. “Of course I could, but Molokk told me not to. The last thing we want is our prize disintegrating because of an allergic reaction to swiftness potions.”
Apart from that, there was no conversation. The bruisers helped me up a flight of stairs that seemed unconquerable in my physical state. I noticed that even though I was very weak, I had been walking for a long time without much help from my escort. Progress.
They lead me to a room with a reinforced metal door, and shut me in it. I looked around. It was a huge improvement. There was a cot in one corner of the room made out of straw and light wood. A brazier hung from the ceiling, and it occasionally spat out ashes and embers that fluttered to the floor. A book case lined one wall. There were no books on it apart from a small black bible-like book, a thick, finely made book with gold writing on the spine that read “A History of Undeath”, and a ledger with no writing in it.
The trek down the stone halls had left me exhausted. I considered opening the encyclopedia and reading a small section of it, but thought better of it. Instead, I shuffled over to the cot, and lay down on it. Compared to the stone table, it was a feather-stuffed four poster bed. I closed my eyes and promised myself not to open them for a very long time.
My eyes opened when I started contemplating reasons for past events.
Why had I moved? I had traveled a great distance from my previous cell to a room with a heavy metal door in a totally different environment. There had been no forewarning of this event. It was done mostly in complete silence. It surely wasn’t to assure my flight from my keepers’ grasp; I wasn’t even in proper physical condition to escape, let alone find my way out of the labyrinth I resided in.
I was continuously referred to as an important object: a prize, the “future of the Forsaken”. Was it to assure that I was kept safe from harm? I tensed. It was possible. Man was a victim of vice, and burglary of prized objects was surely not unheard of. Perhaps this was the case with me? But of what value was I? I barely remembered my studies, let alone know anything of value to the monstrosities that encaged me within these stone chambers.
Perhaps it was my awakening. But no, the book on the shelf was labeled “A History of Undeath”. Had I been through a ghastly process of reanimation? There was surgery. It was highly possible. I had heard tales of ghoulish necromancers raising armies of the dead, so the resurrection of one was far from unlikely.
The fact hit me like a hammer blow to the head. “A History of Undeath’. My unhealthy pallor. The tightness of the skins on my keepers. Fingerbone claws. I was amongst the Undead. These were zombies I was kept by. Though how had they come to their current state? Were they raised as I was? Or was there a different method?
I swung my legs over the side of the cot, and stood up. I was quicker doing so than I was what seemed an age ago. I shuffled over to the bookshelf, and heaved the large book to my chest. It was like carrying an anvil with accompanying blacksmith’s tools. I staggered uneasily to the cot, and collapsed upon it, the book to my right. I gasped lungs of air, and when my circulation stabilized, I picked up the book, and began to read.
A History of Undeath
As compiled by the members of the Royal Apothecary Society
Dark Lady Watch Over Us
Accreditation goes to the following esteemed members of the Royal Apothecary Society
Master Apothecary Faranell
High Apothecary Astan
High Apothecary Evel Bezelbaob
High Apothecary Molokk
Apothecary Argyle
Apothecary Corinthius
Apothecary Farquad
Apothecary Fyldemoer
Apothecary Keever
Apothecary Lycanus
Apothecary Theodore Griffs
Apothecary Zinge
Chemist Cuely
Chemist Fuely
Doctor Martin Felben
Doctor Herbert Halsey
Doctor Marsh
Contents
I. Foreword, as written by Master Apothecary Faranell
II. Origins of Undeath
III. Evolution of Undeath: Formation of the Thuzadin Complex
IV. Evolution of Undeath: Surgical Reanimation
V. Effects of Undeath on Primitive Life Forms
VI. Effects of Undeath on Developed Life Forms
VII. The Human Being: The Perfect Subject
VIII. Lady Sylvanas Windrunner
IX. The Breaking with the Scourge
X. Forsaken: Early Makings
XI. Forsaken: Varimathras and the Greater Organization
XII. Formation of the Deathguards
XIII. Formation of the Royal Apothecary Society
XIV. As We Stand Today
Foreword, as written by Master Apothecary Faranell
With the compilation of this book comes the gift of knowledge of who the Forsaken are and were in ages past. These texts go as far to illustrate the evolution of undeath to our current state, as well as outside interventions on the part of the most revered Lady Sylvanas Windrunner, the Banshee Queen. From most primitive raising of the dead to the surgical reanimation to the mystery of Gutterspeak being unlocked, the members of the Royal Apothecary Society present this encyclopedia of heavily researched information with great pride and good knowledge that it shall be invaluable in securing a strong position in Azeroth.
Whereas previously published essays, reports, almanacs, and the such were indeed revealing and thought-provoking pieces of scientific writing, they were not adequate for the difficult task of discovering what our state of undeath is and how we can utilize it for our best interests. A numerous amount of such previously mentioned texts have been assimilated into this ultimate book, but only those that have been scientifically proved by our most esteemed Apothecaries.
True, a number of texts were refused from the contents of this book, but that is due to the inaccuracy of their content or the vastly complex and/or theoretical basis for the writings. As such, these have been properly stored in the appropriate facilities for further reference; should such texts be required for research and even proved to be true, they will be implemented in the next edition of “A History of Undeath”, of which there are already a vast number.
The foreword went on for eighteen more pages, and I decided to skip it until I found a motivation to contemplate Master Apothecary Faranell’s words. Before I could flip to “Origins of Undeath”, I glanced back at the Accreditations. “High Apothecary Molokk” was mentioned on the list. No doubt he was a prominent figure in what I assumed to be a greatly esteemed research organization. The wild haired man had mentioned that Molokk did not want me to ingest foreign substances. Had he taken a personal interest in my being? Was I that important? Why?
Before I could formulate any theories on the subject, the door opened, and the Apothecary that had been assisting me through rehabilitation shuffled in. He looked at me, and nodded. “Good,” he said. “Now, we do as we have done.”
And I got up, and did as I had done countless times before.
Linear Mode
