Awake
Light.
There was Light.
Gold. The light made things gold. No, the light showed gold. And books. And glass. It showed and showed and showed. I looked. The darkness came and burned it out of me but the light showed it again. And again. And again. Gold on the books. Glass on the table. Shadow in the corner. Light. I remembered.
The Light was not mine. I knew the Light was not mine. The Light came from somewhere and the somewhere pulled. It came from Him. Him and his sharp words and golden clothing. Gold like the books. They were His because they were gold. He brought the Light. The Light followed Him, flowed from Him. Obeyed Him. The Light inside me obeyed, and so did I. He brought the Light and He brought the words and I obeyed and obeyed and obeyed. Then He took the Light away, brow laden and pinched, hands steady and black, and the darkness consumed again.
[I]In Gold Grove Burial Grounds, series of unmarked sacrificial graves were opened and their contents emptied. Authorities are currently unsure as to why the bodies of what appears to be a series of sacrifices to the Banished One would be stolen, but the proposed explanations are all as unlikely as they are unpleasant. The guard will be increased on Gold Grove Burial Grounds and the neighboring cemeteries in an attempt to either deter any more theft and tampering or catch the perpetrators. At the moment the threat appears to be low, but the Arcane Council and higher authorities recommend staying in after dark for the next couple days. [/I]
I was not alone. There were others. Others pushed by the Light. It did not come for us all at the same time. They lay lightless on the ground. Tucked in their corner. I obeyed around them. He needed us. What for, I never knew. Knowing wasn’t my job. My job was to obey. But I learned. I learned to clean. To sweep ashes into the glowing hearth. To put away the books with gold. Gold writing. Gold words. But not golden light. He took them out and I put them back and the dark came and the Light came and I obeyed all over again. Sometimes I held The Book. The Golden Book. I held it and he read from it and he took the book away, up into the other place. The place we could not go. The Book never left His side. Sometimes the Light would come and I would stand in the corner. Waiting. The others would do the jobs, cleaning and holding The Book and staring blankly. They did not remember. I remembered. The Light pushed them up but it did not reach their eyes. I did not know if it reached mine.
The Light was not His either, I learned. He had to call it up from The Book. The Book had the Light. That is why The Book never left His side. But calling the Light took energy. Energy He did not want to waste on us. “Useless. What is the point of a—a servant if they’re only around for a couple hours.” He gnawed on a quill. Ink dribbled down his chin and onto his white, linen shirt. He didn’t notice. He was staring at The Book. It was always like this. When he got the Book nothing else mattered. I waited where I was supposed to wait. Alone today, I tidied the desk around him. The ink I left to his right. And when he spat out the quill and folded his body round the withered, gilded pages, I tidied the ink splatter. The softness of his plush, suede chair swallowed his lithe frame. Together they melded into the background, flickering fire fights catching wild eyes and gaunt cheekbones. The books swarmed them, buzzing on their shelves and his mad scratching increased. The firelight cast itself over the stone. In flickering moments it blazed, gilded. The wetness of underground. The sphere of stove heat. Ink on paper, steadily scratching. Crackle-pop went the fire. The Light, humming. The books whispering He murmured to himself steadily, a song of words crackling under the fire. The words themselves washed over me. They were far from the simple orders he’d grunt at us. These lilted, wavered, and dissipated in the quiet. Heavy with the Light. Beautiful as they were, I trembled under them. He would murmur and write until the Light left and then maybe till it came for me again. I folded myself into the corner with the others till the firelight washed gilded over me too. “Maybe…” he murmured and turned to a new page. Watching him, I did not know why, but I did not want the Light to come for me again.
The first potion gorged itself on the air. It bubbled and hissed and clawed its way out of the bowl. He held it with tongs and thick gloves, grinning as it sizzled. He beckoned and the closest of us stepped forward. We looked the same, and yet, we did not. Our clothes rotted and wrapped around us differently than His did. Dully. With dirt woven between the fibers. Our hands frail with sagging flesh, but he handed her the vial anyway. Her flesh blackened and the sweet acridness of burning skin filled the air. “Drink it” he commanded and she did, no hesitation, no waiting. It gurgled down her throat. For a moment, her eyes lit. Steam bubbled out of them. Ink-like they melted and her mouth opened, the frothing black spilling down jaw and neck. The skin bubbled and curled in it’s wake, burnt. She collapsed. He sighed, shook his head, stepped over the mess of her and continued to mutter, already scribbling down the next iteration.
Burning flesh hung acrid and sweet in the smoke accumulating at the top of the study. He’d sworn and raged when the last trial failed, there’d only been two of us left when the body collapsed, ooze leaking from every orifice, shimmering gold and reeking. He’d stared at us, expressionless and cold. Considering. I should not look at him, but I resisted the urge to anyway. To look Him in His eyes. To watch Him. To see Him think. To see Him be. Eventually, he turned, grabbed his black coat from his chair, and stalked up the stairs and out of the underground. We cleaned the mess and burned the body and went back to waiting.
When He returned, I was alone. The other of us lay in her place, a heap of tissue and cloth, lightless. He thundered down the stairs, bundled cloths tied in twine draped over his shoulders. Puffy and angry, he deposited the wrapped body on the floor and went back for another. Then another. Then another. He swore on every trip, cursing names of things beyond my understanding, but their names hung heavy in the air. Like the Light, they came with weight. A weight I shirked back from. The movement caught His eye and he stumbled, staring at me. His face set in a hard glare, his jaw twitched into a clench. He checked his watch, stared, then strode heavily over to me. He grabbed my face and twisted me this way and that. Looking. I did not look back. I waited, pliable as he inspected me to his liking. When he did step away, his mouth remained a firm line and his eyes peered from under the thick, heavy shadow of distain. “Unwrap and prepare them.” He said, pointing. Still Looking. Staring. Thinking. I obeyed. He stayed and watched as I unwrapped the bodies and drug them into place. He grunted and left, taking the stairs slower than before. The dirt was fresh on their skin, under my fingernails. It stunk of rain and grass. These were fresher, Their flesh firmer then ours was. It encased them and the touch of decay had only just begun to set in. Some had their eyes open and I closed them. They would sleep until he woke them, just like the two of us. I looked at the other bundles. There were more of us now. I stood over them and watched for his return until the darkness swallowed me.
[I] More graves have been opened across the cities cemeteries. Authorities are currently still investigating these thefts. The Arcane Council has been asked to step in and conduct their own investigation. Information to follow presently. The public is reminded that all forms of tampering with the dead, experimentation, and/or Necromancy is strictly forbidden by the Arcane Council. Any infraction will result in consequences. If you have any information, contact the proper authorities immediately or face prosecution. [/I]
He’d stoked the fire and in the tongs was another frothing concoction. This one shimmered like oil, like the colors of fire through mist, like the wavering darkness between awareness. He beckoned me over with a jerk of his chin and held it out. The others watched, fresh eyes empty. They would not remember this. That was good. I did not want to remember it either. I hesitated, staring at the tonic. It was death, I knew. The fire blazed, hungry, and two with firm hands waited to feed me to it. His books lay open to the next blank page, a fresh pot of ink ready for the next iteration. This was death. “Take it.” He commanded, sneering, and the Light lifted my hand to take it. The vial burned. It seared the flesh of my palm, scorching the exposed bone. Pain followed. A strange feeling, pain was. Sporadically sent through deteriorated nerves, it registered like lightning. Like Embers keeping watch in the darkness. Like the needle point of glass in callus. He made a noise of frustration. His face kept twitching, contorting into strange, wild shapes. His lips moved the most, jerking around his teeth as his jaw wound tighter with a click click click. “Drink it already.” And he looked at me. Looked at me in my eyes and I looked in his. There was fear there. I drank the shimmering, frothing oil, holding his gaze until he looked away. The oil, cool and slick, ate the Light that flooded through me. The Light shrieked, refracted through glass and bite into the bone. The burn of it writhed under my skin, bright and terrible. It felt like melting. Like burning. Like living. The oil boiled the Light. It was stone that held me as I convulsed, gold leaking from my mouth, from my eyes, from the gaping hole in my side. I sizzled, the stench of it in my rose and mouth. I gasped and my lungs expanded and there was no relief in it. No easing of the thick wetness in my throat. The oil ate through my esophagus to drip through my ribs. Wrapped in crushed bone and rot, my heart jolted, it’s deadened flesh painted black and shimmering. The burning cooled. I wiped the ejaculated gold from my mouth and stood shakily. He was not looking anymore, not watching. He had his back turned, bent in predicted defeat, scratching away with his quill. His whole body quivered. The two by the furnace stood uneasily. They had no body to burn. I breathed again, a wet gurgle. Oil dripped from my side, aerated. “For the love of all that’s damned, clean that mess up already. I can’t bear the stench.” But the two did not move. They stared blankly. He tossed his head and spun “di you not hear me? I—oh.” He looked tired. Laden. There was a heaviness to him that dragged his whole frame down. Lithe and spindly, he resembled a cave spider at work on its web. He gaped at the sight of me and I inclined my head slightly and blinked. Another gurgling wheeze filled the quiet. “It worked.” He gasped. Breathless, on an exhale, frail with disbelief. He brightened, exuberance lightening his face. “It worked!” And he scrambled from his seat and swept his hair away from his face. “Stand over there.” His words fell flat on my ears. Muted. They, unaided by The Light, could not curl around my biceps and move me to their will. They held no power. He held no power. Strange. When I did not move he stopped and stared at me, eyes narrowing. I did not stare back but I looked to the floor like I had, unsure why I would do that. “Go on.” He said again, deliberately. I obeyed, putting my own feet in-front of me and moving where he told me to of my own volition. The thrill of it left me giddy and the hardened flesh of my heart twitched it’s exuberance. He poked and prodded and took samples of my tissue and of the oil dripping form my side and the gold dribbling down my throat. He preened. Cheeks ruddy, skin damp with excited perspiration. It left uncomfortable races on my wrist and neck as he arranged me where he’d like me. “Don’t move and don’t touch the timer. I’ll be back,” then he skittered up the wooden stairs grinning, leaving me alone.
The darkness did not come for me that evening, nor any following evening. This overjoyed Him, but he left up the stairs and shut the heavy wooden door all the same. The fire burned low and I lay the risen to rest in their places. I cleaned what had not been cleaned. Then I waited. And I waited. And waited. Without the darkness, the nights grew very long.
He had many books. So many. An amount beyond my ability to count, but I tried to count them anyway. Their titles meant very little to me. Few words I recognized from his careless instruction, but most were just gold. Many had the same phase on the bottom, “Azurath, Arcane Counselor”. In them was writing like that which came from his hand. Maybe He was not just He. Maybe he, like the books, had a title. He was Azurath, Practitioner of the Arcane. That word, too, I recognized. He was very eager for me to know it. Arcane. Magic ordered. Magic learned. It was Magic the brought me, us, to life. It was magic that Azurath studied and magic Azurath taught and magic Azurath hoarded in his book, The Book. His precious spell book. Most of his books were about Magic. “You and I are going to do great things.” He’d say gripping my head in his hands and his grin bony-white and his eyes flashing the gold like madness. But then he would depart in a whirl, out into the upper world and he would not return for a long time. So I looked and I learned in the darkness of his absence. The stone I was already familiar with. It’s shape imported in the marrow of my memory. The wood of his shelves and grain of his desk, too, I knew intimately. The pages I studied, their words a mystery, a puzzle whose pieces I had none of but I carved my way through regardless. Presently, amid the dripping of cave water and the acrid stillness of the air, I began to understand.
He began to brew another oil-slick concoction.
It started slowly, the understanding. A word here, a sentence there. The pages buzzed beneath my fingers, and whispered on the shelves, too quiet for me to hear. It felt like they could understand me. Like maybe, just maybe we were similar. Like they, too, were touched by the Light. The Arcane. Magic. They whispered in runes. Dull things gleaming between their page. As I watched, as I listened, as my understanding grew, so did their glow. Wriggling glowworms of blues and soft greens, they glimmered on their shelves. The pages rustles and hummed and whispered and I listened and listened and listened. I tried to catch them once, to hold the runes, but they dissipated. Intangible, incorporeal. But beautiful. It was from them I learned. He, Azurath, could not see them. He preferred to wright his own runes than listen to the disturbance of others. His came out sore and pulsing, a beating heart ripped from the pages. They seemed to scream where the others sang. I did not listen to his writings much.
[I]
‘Councilor Nelishel, Divine liaison to the Arcane Council, on re-leaglization of Necromancy and related magics. ’
“No, no, Necromancy is banned for a reason. Desecration of the dead is not something to imitate. It is an unholy, blasphemous act. A mockery of life. Do we remember so little the terror these monsters brought upon our society—for they are monsters. The Mass burials? The senseless violence? We banished their god for his bloodlust and we banished them for their unholy disregard for the Dead. I will not loose what we have gained because of curiosity.
No, in direct response to Councilor Azaroth’s proposed legalization of necromancy I say this; When did we become a society with such little respect for our history, for our people, that we would willingly defile them for our convince. I will stand against this proposal indefinitely.
I’ll take no questions. Thank you.”
[/I]He prowled around the room and hurled words at us like a cave-in. Rock on rock, they sparked like flint, savage and hot, wet by spittle. “The cowards,” he thundered around his study, his humid breathes fogging the air. “So afraid of the repercussions. It shackles them.“ In a wordless shout he swept his desk clear. Bottles and components crashed in a cloud of color. The veins on his face pulsed and his whole body trembled in the silence. He uncoiled like a spring twisted too far the wrong way. Fingers contorting, teeth grinding, he wavered in the ruin. A vibrating mass of tension and thought. Behind him, his Spell Book rustled. Alive in the same way I was alive. Dead in the sense the others were dead. Like the books on the shelves, it glowed. Red and sore, but bright all the same. He muttered swollen runes and sigils that cut his lips. One caught between his teeth and he snapped to attention. He scrambled to his desk and ripped it open. Vial after vial he tossed, cursing and swearing under his breath till he found and brandished it. The oil-slick concoction. “This!” He laughed, manic, “ You! Oh the potential, but they refuse to take it! To seize it by the throat.” He raged through his teeth, eyes golden. His book rattled on the desk and all the flasks chimed a warning. A whirlwind. A cave in. A force of nature, terrible. I’d learned to stay back when he was like this, to stay hidden in the rock and hope he did not see me. It was safer that way. But others had not learned yet. One, eager and obedient, moved away from the wall to clean the desk. She tided and worked while he paced. The fire raged and laughed with him, flaring up till the heat became insufferable. Vials she swept back to the drawer. Papers she tidied and he messed them up and she tidied them again. Ink caped and quill put up. She touched his spell book. Instantly he lashed out, catching the hollow of her cheek with a vicious back hand. She crumpled. “Don’t touch that!” he shrieked. There was a wildness to him, untamed. Golden energy cracked around him and he closed in on her. She didn’t move, only stared up at him with her eyes wide. Maybe there was fear there, maybe it was a reflection of him. As if in slow motion, he hefted her frail frame by the back of her hair and raised a closed fist. Obscenities flew from him, spittle flying. His coat swept back, arcing like bat wings. His shadow loomed monstrous and crackling. I caught his wrist on the down swing. I don’t remember intervening, or crossing the room to do so. I do remember the silence, the shock that splayed in his eyes. Madness cowed by resistance. In an instant, he turned small, shrinking in on himself, his cheeks gaunt and pale. I sneered and felt no fear of him. I did not pity him either. He did not deserve it. I released his wrist and he fell back, clutching it to his chest. He retreated, glaring empty and murderous threats and I stared back un-cowed. He fled up the stairs and shut the door. I checked on her first. The light, the magic holding her up had fled so I shut her eyes and lay her in an alcove carefully. I covered her with a rug. Peace, I wished upon her. Peace in the darkness. Peace in her death. The others watched me, golden stringed marionettes. Time would snip them loose so I did not worry about them. Instead I looked to the desk. He’d left his spell book behind. His precious book. It hissed angrily when I approached and rattled like a snake when I lay my fingers on the cover. I did not want much from it, but I did want something. The pages did not turn easy as I searched, one eye one the door, one scanning thoroughly. There, reeking the same way we reeked, ‘The Rite of Summoning’. I ripped it free and fed it to the fire. We would not be torn from our rest again. I tore another page out, unsatisfied. Then another. Then another. The destruction freed me. It unshackled the facade of obedience, the terror of repercussion. He, the terrible, powerful He had no power over me. Not any more. A giddy bright feeling filled me. I ripped the swollen red books from his shelves and toppled the components. Glass crunched into my feet but the bite soothed rather than stung, like cold wind on the cheeks, like muscle-ache after achievement. When I turned I found him hunched on the stairs, a hot fury darkening his face, an iron crowbar gripped white in his hands. “How dare you.” Quiet. Hoarse. Strained. His voice passed through the tight ropes of his throat. His face contorted, shadow staining and morphing him beyond recognition. “Your Mine. I Made you, you stupid Zombie. I gave you life and this is what you do?” Steadily he stalked down the stairs, his voice never twisting above a level whisper. I held my ground, watching him, the ruins of his work a mural of defiance. “I can do it again. I don’t need you,” he darted forward, crowbar arching overhead. I dodged, a step forward into his space and shoved. He staggered, whipped to the side, crowbar striking left. It caught my jaw. I stumbled. “You are nothing.” He growled, eyes glowing gold, the whites bleached and wild. He glowed, a golden furnace of Light. I spit black. Oil drowned the Light. His light. “No.” I said. The word felt strange in my mouth. My voice barely more than a hoarse whisper, but distinct. He stopped, startled. “I’m nothing. You are.” My heart twitched, and the iridescent oil flowed. It dripped from every orifice, building in frothing pressure in my gut. It burned terribly and, in a hoarse scream, it flooded out from me. Azurath barely had time to scream before it consumed him.
[I]Counselor Azurath found dead surrounded by the remnants of the forbidden magics. The depth of corruption is as of yet undetermined. Investigation into the Arcane Council and related entities pending containment of the current Crime Scene. [/I]
Grass tickled when walked on barefoot, I learned, and water ran cold over smooth stones. A delicate blue, the blue of runes, was the sky. When the world darkened, the moon and stars persisted with just a gentle glow. No more was the unending, inky blackness. I sat, content, on a rock overlooking the mountains. On the horizon, the city. Beyond that, the ocean. The sun rolled warm over me and wind cooled my face. “Zm-Bie.” I tried, my mouth uncertain of the shape. It was not perfect, it did not sound like what I was. But it was close enough. Like the books, like Him, I will have a name. I breathed out, long and slow. “My name will be Bie.”
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