Good morning, gentle reader(s). It's always morning somewhere in the world, just as it's always 16:38 somewhere, and evening somewhere. The salutation is the point, not the time.
This is the last "free" chapter of this series... everything that follows will be truncated or redacted in some fashion. Likely also with more time between posts (because that kind of editing takes time, too).
Hold onto whatever you've been holding onto for the previous 9 chapters - this is a massive undertaking! It gets tedious in places. It gets boring. It gets fed-up with all my bullshit and just goes home. Then, at the end - the chapter concludes. When you get to the end of the chapter, I'd be interested to know whether you suspected Matta was the "hero" during Chapter 1 & 2. Was I just head-faking?
It's a long chapter, but you can get through it! Don't cheat yourself by skipping to the end (not that I'll know), and I'll see you at the end of the chapter! HERE WE GO!
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Majutsu-shi no Chikara loosely translates to "Sorcerer's Power"
CHAPTER TEN: Memories in Ashes
The curse of undeath is not so simple as most folk might think. Among the learned, it is widely accepted that undeath is like most other disease -- if magical in nature -- and can be remedied in like fashion. Often, the result is the final death of the body -- releasing whatever trapped spirit or soul (lore tends to conflate the two and hold them separate by turns) into the ether and forcing it through the boundary separating the material plane with those planes more suited to such entities.
An ordinary zombie is no abomination inhabited by the restless dead -- but a magically-animated corpse under the command of a Sorcerer or Wizard. This, too, can be said of animated skeletons which, in no small manner, are held together solely by the magical force of their necromantic conjuring. Severing the ties of magic to body or magic to mage will end such constructs entirely -- though their remains could just as easily be reanimated by another skilled mage.
The true horrors and wonders of undeath are in those forms inextricably bound to the original soul or a possessing entity. Such revenants are assumed to be at least as capable as their living counterparts; reported stories, legends, and things of nightmare often include undead Wizards -- sometimes called Liche, depending on the social or academic circle of discussion -- and are among the most rare of undead monstrosity. With good reason, these creatures are hounded-out by every church of every faith, save that of the ever-patient Maiden of Bones... She who waits at the end of all things... and She will not suffer her faithful to rush needlessly into death, for their work in her realm is endless.
While the halls of knowledge continue to expand, many academics weigh the manifold causes of such undead beings. From the nebulous "unfinished business" to incredibly specific alchemical and magical genesis: the ethereal ties that can hold a spirit or soul into a corpse of any measure are dangerously difficult to study. Though most Wizards might hesitate to call such intelligent undead "anathema", it is often times easier to destroy them rather than capture and study them to discern their innermost arcane workings. Couple this with the secretive study surrounding necromancy (even in the much-lauded preservation and embalming of corpses), and it is small wonder that necromancers are often held to blame whenever some shambling thing erupts from the ground and begins clawing its way through town in a murderous spree.
That's precisely the sensation one's fear might give, when confronted with the decayed husk of a former life, memories of days past flayed to the bone and devoured by the mangled jaws of the undead that has become the waking world.
Standing on the far bank of the stream, Damon looked over the smaller fields with a detached wonder. He could see his home, a streamer of smoke rising from the low coals in its hearth, and he knew at least his father had survived. Abhilash had said as much, that morning: she had delivered the man to South-wold, herself.
He couldn't weep, though he wanted to, and his feet stuck fast to the ground. Shadows of memory raced around the houses or stood in effigy of the houses that were gone. Voices now silent whistled through him, before he saw the outlines of people -- men, women, and children -- going about a broken reflection of life. They moved with all the semblance of the living -- but with too much space between them, and too little laughter or conversation. At any moment, he expected them to vanish like the trails of smoke above his father's home.
His feet ached from the long trek through the Willow Wood... blisters covering several toes, and one had burst on his heel... though it hurt to stand, he dared not move. He dare not break this spell of uncertainty. Perhaps, if he waited, more of his kin-folk would emerge unharmed -- the familiar gait and cadence of voice revealing that those cherished memories were still housed in human form and not already cold ashes in a hundred pyres.
When one head turned and stared at him, then another... even as joy and terror took arms within his chest and beat against his lungs and stabbed behind his eyes, they gathered with loved and favored voices -- though always too few.
Ginga appeared from the further fields, her scarf whipping around her face. Damon's breath at last caught in his throat and his legs found the will to move. All at once, the world filled with swirling, freezing water, and the barking laughter of stones and orks as he plunged forward into the stream near its deepest point.
He didn't care.
His hands clawed through the mud, ignoring the painful cold as he scrabbled forward blindly. His body knew the larger stones well, and these braced his hands and feet in spite of the slimy, slippery algae coating them. Before Abhilash could follow and drag him up from the water, he was clear of the inner bank and running. Naked flesh shining in the midday sun, hair flopping a sodden, tangled braid behind him, he ran on bleeding feet across the field -- trampling sprouts and creeping gourd-vines with newly-fleshed thorns -- toward Gina.
She could not likewise say she recognized him, at first. He had looked the part of a ghost, though the delighted cries of children and cousins had called her name before even daring to say his, and she had run to them -- heart racing -- to be confronted with a specter that wore the flesh of her lover she had thought dead until the day before. It had been a cruel joke, then, to learn he lived; the nymph's soothing presence giving no comfort in that moment to her wounded spirit. On this day, as she was sharpening her hatchet just past one of the corrals, the call for her had stirred her feet with an urgency she'd not anticipated.
"Ginga! Ginga! Hurry! He's back, Ginga!" So many voices, and yet too few.
It was a most human hunger they felt -- each wounded and needing... all of them desperate for some happiness outside the knowledge of their own survival. While this could not call the dead back to them -- this one lost son returning home fed them in ways a nymph's power could not.
Shrieks of joy and relief, praise to heavens and gods stumblingly uncertain of where credit might be due. Ginga and Damon's bodies clapped together, spinning as they were swarmed by others. Both blinded by their grip on each other, tucked together and clinging tightly and feeling about to be sure that this was real.
"You were dead."
"I thought I'd never see you again."
"Am I dreaming? Is this real?"
"I missed you so much."
Every conceivable formulation their tongues could muster spilt out or broke apart as they said it. Then laughter. Then weeping. Then they dared to look each other in the eye. All the while, they were pressed by cousins and friends -- many wanting to find an end of their own grief and secretly knowing they would not.
Dozens of hands touched Damon's shoulders, back, and sides.
"Is he real?"
"How can this be?"
"It's a miracle."
Ginga met Damon's eyes and they smiled at each other, seeing one another at last in brief stillness as they caught a breath between them. Then kissing.
...
"Well, he is safe from himself a while." Abhilash grumbled, crouched low in the rushes by the stream.
"Good. Let's see what food we can..." Kamakshi shifted sideways upstream, looking to use the crowd's focus as a distraction to sneak into the village.
"No." Abhilash shook her head and pointed, the luminous figure of the nymph entering her view. "You do not want to test that one."
Kamakshi moved closer, following the low angle to the slight female fae. The ork gnawed her lip and growled.
"Best we wait here." Kamakshi snarled.
Abhilash nodded, frowning.
Mutely they watched as South-wold converged on Damon, the slender moment of peace he found in Ginga's arms wrested from him as his father crushed him and kissed his face among tears and swearing laughter. The humans spoke too quickly and over each other for them to hear anything clearly, but it was obvious that the subject of two she-orks lurking by the water had not yet risen. The whole mass of villagers at last turned itself and began to shuffle back towards the houses, giving Abhilash and Kamakshi time to pass in silent contemplation... or, in more orkish fashion: fuming with impatience.
"Shit."
"What?" Kamakshi was basking as best she could without flattening too many reeds.
"Wait here." Abhilash forded the stream to retrieve the magical sword and returned to the village-side of the water.
"Why?" Kamakshi sat up. "What's happening?"
"I don't know yet." Abhilash twisted her neck and jaw with a loud pop as she limbered her shoulders, blood just beginning to ooze from a nostril. "So wait."
"How long?" Kamakshi hissed, tempted to follow anyway.
"Until you or the nymph are dead." Abhilash grunted over her shoulder, breaking into a near-silent lope.
In her mind, the jailer was laughing at her and battering the bars... or was she the jailer, now? In any case -- she could
feel
the wrongness, the danger closing-in. Something in the air had changed, and blood would flow... then doom. Perhaps for the best, but the needling flames did not let her wait for oblivion to come. So, she went to meet it.
...
"I don't understand." Akuji's smile was fading, dying on his lips as his son's face became a stone red mask.
