Ghost in the stones

"Tu'shoi, shi'trii'ui Vilorlith. 'Qrt cresi Ts'ihs voi, tythry'Iov." Each word rebounded as she spoke, like standing in the center of great bell in the middle of canyon. Echoing back through eternity, the weight of it was almost too much for my soul to handle. Falling to my knees I was surprised that blood spurted from my mouth. I wasn't even aware my soul could bleed, let alone like this. The next instant I knew the lantern fell from my hands, leaving the world dark around me. My sister's ghost lost to me without it in my hands, my guide in the The Shores Beyond, without her I felt cold.

Something rushed up to me, that woman from the stone, they said a woman would appear. Placing her hand on my chest, a warmth like one wouldn't believe seeping deep into to my heart. Though, I had never experienced it much, I knew she had healed the damage hearing her voice had done. The lantern grew brighter as the blackness drew back from the corners of my eyes, Emily had said there was a time limit.

"Can you repeat that, but in a way that isn't going to kill me?" I croaked out, heaving still. This woman had wiped away the blood from my chin like she would a mess from a child.

The woman cocked her head like a dog would have done hearing a sound it didn't recognize. Her eyes filled with some unseen understanding, her great ears lifting to hear every last noise my voice had made. Slowly, in Common, with a mix of her speech intertwined, though my mind corrected it for me, I wondered if that wasn't her doing. "Strange tongue, familiar. Distant, mine to. Your speech a... far cry from the original." Her ears twitched as she she spoke, correcting her own speech to make it better, flow easier, already figuring out a massive array of the Common tongue from just her own short statement.

The sweat beaded on my brow as she still spoke with that same weight, just not the same power. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew she was dialing it back more and more for my benefit. She knelt down again, straightening my hat and brushing the hair out of my eyes. Healing me again without even needing to touch me, I now noticed she was constantly humming, softly, but she was. "I get the feeling that isn't what you said before, what did you say first?" Asking as I tried to quell the happy feeling this creature was instilling in me. The flowers in her hair glinting with a metallic like sheen, she looked like something I had seen in a book.

"'How strange, that you two hunt for me. A being lost to this world, a life long forgotten.' Is what I said at first, you surprised me enough that I forgot that most Children don't react well to our language. You do not need to suppress your emotions around me, I may be a corpse, but I am not dead. I sense them anyway, you cannot hide them around me. Much like you couldn't hide them while I met you in the Necropolis." She spoke without malice, a comforting presence I couldn't explain or place.

My head shot up to stare at her at that, several things falling into place. Until she said it, her face was indistinct her entire form was besides her eyes and what I understood were her ears. Eyes sunken twinkling softly like starlight, her voice rang with a familiarity that was all too recent. "You... you you're. You're that spirit in the throne room, you..."

"Am the same spirit in the these blood-borne stones. Yes, Darling. You may not be one of my children, but you are my dear sister's. But such a call to the ether beyond life reminds me so much of my Brother, that lantern a guiding light much like the sun in the sky for which we named after our final sister. A glorious and touching ability you have, but I have a question for you Darling."

"What was it? Emily said that the few times Atrimir had been able to see you again there was always a time limit, why is that?" I asked her without letting her speak again until I had asked a question, the spirits of the dead were funny if reciprocation wasn't involved.

"There isn't enough time in one moment, a certain amount of power, a certain truth to be told for each shattered piece of me. Do you wish to know the deeper truth of your power? The true meaning as to why that specter of your long departed kin clings to you?" Martha had appeared beside me in her usual spectral way, an odd smoke clinging to her before this being. Hiding behind me, like a child behind their mother when frightened.

"No." I don't know why the answer came easy to me, I never felt a need to know why my twin sister's ghost clung to me the way she did. I never felt it was needed, to know the truth of this, it somehow made the nature of being a Necromancer feel less weighty. "Thank you, but I ask nothing from you, the two Sages that you have appeared before told me you grant a great power to those who need it. I need nothing, I was asked to speak with and attempt to figure out who you are. What you are. Why you have an immense and unfathomable amount of power contained in what you call shattered pieces."

The woman's form solidified at once, less hazy, outlines more intact. I remembered what I had seen from a book so long ago, a description so fitting. "Are you a spirit of the Goblins of the Skullbrood Clan?" I asked her.

"Tsui'Vilorlith," The full weight of her speech hit me again, though she grabbed my arms to hold me up before I fell to my knees once more. "My children are mine. Ysry'igo Viltoi Sha-do." We were taken somewhere, some place I had only ever seen from a distance. Rumors and conjecture, this being had teleported herself and my soul into the heart of the Goblin clan. I didn't understand how I understood it, I had supposed this creature had been forcing my mind to understand what I was seeing now. "My child, my darling daughter who called out from the chained darkness of her shattered fate. Saved from a fate I could do so little to stop in the first place."

She knelt down next to a Goblin with her ears relaxed splayed out around her while she slept, a sea of soft brown hair under her as somehow I understood her braid had been undone the night prior. The corpse woman in the stone brushed away a stay hair away from the Goblin woman's face, slightly upturned nose and soft features completely unlike what I had always been told the goblins were. She whispered something softly, despite it being in that strange language I understood it. Like she was speaking it for both our benefits. "I see the magic in this world, forced. Nothing like what I had taught you all in the beginning, it lacks force. It lacks purpose. You cling to this idea of intent, then force that power to do as you command it. Think of it differently, like a dream that shifts and changes, you are the dream, you are the shift and change. Intent yes, yet such a lack of grace. Sing your song to the world, and let my creations react to your voice."

I woke with a gasp in the middle of the spell circle inside the Sage's laboratory. Sweat drenched, candles having burned low, students and Masters watching my Seance with a rapturous intention. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I saw both Emily and Atrimir struggling to control the power surging through the circle. I head her voice again, speaking to me in that language, its weight stripped from the first time. "Thank you for letting me keep some of my power, I need it. I need to help her grow, I need to help Illy grow. Thank you, Valerica, I'm going to miss you until we meet again."

And the presence was gone, like smoke on the wind. Only the memory of a wildfire hung in the air of my mind, as Martha tried to bring me completely back to my senses. With a cough I sat up on my elbows, retching to the side. The power surging through the circle disappeared violently as both the Sages faces filled with the light of a powerful arc of arcane power, though to their credit they grounded the power effortlessly. Emily ran to kneel next to me, "Are you alright? Did what ever that thing was hurt you?"

"Tsui'Vilorlith." I repeated, as a set of eight black eyes ringed the circle unable to pass beyond it, appeared at the phrase. "She is something else, something ancient. Something powerful. Far older than anything I have ever spoken to before, yet..." Atrimir cast another warding spell, the eyes disappearing instantly the wards were amplified.

"Yet?"