"Sorry, but... well. When I come back with it, everything will be okay, right?"
No one hears me, barely even myself, but that's fine. The road is quiet, the light of my lantern dim, and a lone gray cloud hangs beneath the moon like a forgotten marionette. The horizon is clear enough that I can tell where the stars end and the lights of Carmathen begin. The start of my journey, the start of the start of a new life, a few more hours along the dirt and gravel.
Ennet Wesev still walks with me, even if I walk alone. If anyone born to these creaking mountains would cling tight to them even after death, it would be her. Every ghost story, even the ones from ages ago, all her the whole time. She'll never forgive me for abandoning Rielyr's haunt even for the two months this journey will take. But, she's dead, and ghost or no I'll make my own decisions from here on out.
Besides. Besides. Even Wesev knows it's not worth letting someone like Kathil Gare, or Stortga Bridger Barne get their bitter fingerprints all over the treasure. Sure, Wesev never knew those two, not even the stories passed around by the wolves and swallows, but I did, I knew them personally. And as the whispers among the ferns grew about the coming of Tetrasidon, along with smug hisses from geese, how could I possibly stay put? No. If there was any chance of either of those two, or even worse, succeeding, the world would be worse off. I'd rather try my hand and say I did something!
It's a promise I want to keep to myself. I told her, Wesev and anyone who'd listen, that I'd always stand against eyes that peer, teeth that bite without enamel. And the more I learned about Tetrasidon, the more I learned about the treasure, and the more I learned about what lay beyond those stories, the more I looked into those eyes that I hated since childhood. Everything the world should not be. Why not do some damage, prevent disaster? That promise burned brighter than the lights ahead of me. Even in the dark, I could keep stoking that fire.
They told me it was coming a year ago. Maybe two, maybe three. I didn't quite pay attention then, but the whispers in the reeds were quieter back then, keeping their secrets to themselves. Day by day, they grew louder. And soon I couldn't endure the noise anymore, and asked what the comments, the ripples in the pond, the crunch of hooves on dried brush, were all about.
"Only the fleeting tatters of future," they said.
Some days I had to eavesdrop and hope I overheard. Some days instead I shouted and screamed until I could only hear myself. The order of my understanding is jumbled, rolling around my head like rocks in a tumbler, all polished and pointing me forward.
And one of those whispers, a little piece of gravel, stuck in my shoe: "IT will kill death."
There's no way I'm having that happen. It would kill so much of what I love! And it would kill me...
A copse of trees groan. No, something in that copse, something hidden. The smell of treacle and iron. I can't resist, I can't resist, I mark a branch into the softest part of the ground I can find and leave the path. I can't go far, but I have to follow the heartbeats.
There she is, a squirrel, old and sick, making her deathbed out of the roots of a shrub. She tries not to mind me, but if I were to reach out and eat her she could do nothing to stop me. Her death is coming either way. But I don't want to eat her, only observe. Maybe ask. And so I ask, the first question that comes to me:
"Would you like to continue your time on this world?"
"Absolutely not." No hesitation, no desire. "I've already made my peace, and my bones are best left a statue rather than a puppet." She coughs out a squeak. Her eyes barely focus on anything.
"Even when IT is here now? Wouldn't you at least like to see it for yourself before you go?"
"No, even if you bring it to me, I'd rather rest. You can show my crumpled old skull once the feasters find me. Maybe adorn IT with a piece of me. But I will be too far gone to care."
She sweeps her tail against the dirt one last time.
"Try not to have too much fun."
Her final words to an old corpse. To myself and to her. Now I am alone, as I was before, and lost. Woods unfamiliar to me quite easily turn into mazes, and the scents and sighs are gone. A drop of water falls on a leaf above and lollops down veins and onto the ground, and a million followers join. Soaked to the bone and sensing nothing but water, I have no choice... I walk in whatever direction the fire inside me flickers, hoping for the best. Carmathen may well be lost to me.
Maybe Cyril will come looking for me if I'm late. Would they know where to find me? Surely I'm not the only wanderer to get lost in these woods on a stormy night... And that exchange of letters we sent the past few months, they wouldn't let me go to waste. It was them who told me what the treasure could do, what it could do for me and what it could do to me. For them, they're hoping I might save the world.
Trees give way to mossy rocks, a narrow pass where water rolls down old slate and pools in muddy divots. A path with only one branch? I'll take it to an open sea of night trees. If it leads nowhere, I'll know eventually.
A crack of twig and gravel from above, and before I can take to my feet a pack of wolves surround me! "Hello there, lost little corpse," they snarl in almost unison. "We'd pick your bones clean if you had any meat, so you'll just have to come with us. Your ivories will make good teething for our pups, and those clothes might sell for something nice where the humans make their markets."
Sharp fangs sink between the gap between my radius and ulna and drag me off to an old wolf's den. I regret not doing much research on the path here! Cyril and I shared so much about the journey to the treasure, I disregarded the journey before the journey. I considered detatching my arms for a getaway, but I don't know if I have the time to hunt through corpses for replacements. If I met Tetrasidon himself, when i met Tetrasidon himself, could I properly prove my mettle just by kicking at his shins?
1-who do you miss the most? Ennet Wesev, old dead teacher, was actually alive in the past. i wonder how i will make up leaving to her
2-what do you look like to others? -undead! not a ghost!
3-why go for it? an enemy (two) threatened something that matters to me. light threat, maybe just pride? probably a little more
4-where are you from? Rielyr's Haunt, place of weird magics and animals and things. A place of Cool and Good and Positive necromancy
5-why are you actually doing this? sworn enemy of tetrasidon, in some way or another... (what even is tetrasidon?)
6-how do you track the treasure? a mysterious vision. implied by the haunt's gossip?
7-who is your rival? Kathil Gare and Stortga Bridger Barne, two kinda crappy women. They are not (currently?) working together.
- what do you fear the treasure will do? change a strange feature. time to think of a different strange feature for the haunt. it will kill off the undead in the haunt!
- when did you learn a truth about yourself? from a dying stranger.
- where do you not want to get to? a forest I suppose... may think more about this later
- why must you search for the treasure? my home volunteered me... though I already wrote that I left it on my own when I wasn't supposed to! maybe it's part of the gossiping plants and animals
- how does the weather challenge the journey? a storm blows me off course
13 who do you trust most? cybil the blacksmith. who the fuck is cybil the blacksmith? i feel like i'm going to have to really twist this one - what do you hope the treasure will do? help stop tetrasidon
- when were you ambushed by bandits? while moving through a pass
- where did you find the bandit's hideout? add stuff
- why are you doing this alone? to test tetrasidon one on one
- how did you prepare for this journey? extensive research
