Death March
Off Topic
Based on consequence here.
While traveling in the current season, Zemos come across a seemingly sick human male with two brands on his face and a silver circle on the back of his hand. His clothing is in tatters, he has no shoes and his feet are bleeding. He has a cough that keeps him from getting out many words and the words he does say don't seem to make any sense. It could be thought that the sickness is affecting his body and mind. If nothing is done, the man is dead by the following trial.
While traveling in the current season, Zemos come across a seemingly sick human male with two brands on his face and a silver circle on the back of his hand. His clothing is in tatters, he has no shoes and his feet are bleeding. He has a cough that keeps him from getting out many words and the words he does say don't seem to make any sense. It could be thought that the sickness is affecting his body and mind. If nothing is done, the man is dead by the following trial.
Zemos knew the signs of a death march when he saw them. He saw the abandoned campfires, the rush away from the site, belongings left behind. It was at this first sign, this abandoned campsite where Zemos found a weapon he decided to adopt for his own. A spear, bladed on either end. It appeared sharp still, made of iron the blades were and the shaft was properly fired. Being from a heavily forested place, having seen his share of wood worked, he could tell good work when he saw it. Or at least he hoped he could. At any rate, a weapon was better than none. An improvement to his present condition and predicament.
He wasn't entirely sure what he was searching for, coming this far south. Did he expect to find a way to Desnind through some western port? Rharne might've been a better bet, but the roads there were well patrolled, and necromancy strictly prohibited there. Meanwhile, Yaralon was somewhat neutral to it as far as he'd learned from his time in the Empire. Some nations were just more practical than others, and less superstitious toward the dark arts. Zemos didn't concern himself with the why, just the practical facts on the ground, which stated that this way Necromancers were more welcome than the other.
Add to that, he needed his thralls still, as a matter of survival, and he couldn't part with them.
He took the double-spear, and began testing its weight, trying some practice strikes against the air. The principle seemed simple enough. Poke the other person with the sharp end, in this case either end would do. Block with the shaft or the blade, it seemed not to matter. If it came to a desperate fight for his life, Zemos was confident he'd be able to at least do some damage with the giant massibex carcass he'd reanimated. And the human husk? It would serve as good poisoned bait, to weaken the pursuit of any others.
He didn't expect trouble from humans. Most people were clever enough to be wary of an obviouso mage and necromancy, and would wait for easier quarry. Animals on the other hand were not always so discriminating, when it came to their next meal. Especially when the wafting fumes of death followed that person. A siren song if ever there was one to a hungry carnivore.
But for now, there was a perfectly good campsite. Despite the apparent desperate fate of its previous user, Zemos thought better of travelling any further this second night in the Cut. He'd heard howls on the wind. Best to make a stand, and not run out his energy if it came to a fight with a pack of giant dogs. Or something worse. He did make a point of improving the campsite, making it less conspicuous by hiding the signs of passage from any nearby eyes. Finding a sheltered rocky outcrop, and there making himself as comfortable as he could. His giant thrall, the massibex, stood at the read at the bottleneck he created with a few branches of brush wood. Forming a walled lean-to that would shelter him as well as could be managed. He didn't bother with a roof. He didn't expect he'd need it if the dogs got that far before being noticed.
And for now, he spread out the human thrall, setting it at the far radius of his control. So that it wouldn't draw too much attention to his massibex, which he surmised he'd have greater need of. The fetch on his belt, and his swarms in their leather sacks were dormant. He didn't want to spend the ether to animate them unless it was absolutely necessary. Instead, he began conjuring a miasma of black ether around him. This he bound to his shadow, creating a Haunt. He suspected it would be useful if they were set upon unexpectedly, and whatever it was made it past the point of his spear.
There, Zemos meditated after conjuring the Haunt. Then he turned his attention to the massibex, which appeared to be deteriorating faster than he'd hoped it would. It probably wouldn't survive the entire way to Yaralon, but it didn't need to. It wouldn't need to, if Zemos could find another fresh corpse of a beast, or else produce one. He did wonder how intelligent these beasts were when alive.
Bits into relaxing, he was almost on the edge of slipping into Yithnai torpor. But then, something caught his attention.
At first he dismissed it as the rustling of mice beneath a bramble, or something equally pedestrian and expected in a wilderness as this. Rocks falling from a cliffside? No, this sound was wet, scratchy. Almost like... a rasping and hacking cough.
He shot up, jumping to his feet as he realized that his companion on the death march was not far from where he was. He looked to the massibex thrall, which groaned and growled as noxious vapors escaped its corpse-like body. He had it follow him, while the mancorpse took his place on the leanto. He followed the sounds of the hacking cough to its source, not very far at all from his leanto, but further to the south.
There, beneath a shot of rocky crag, he found his latest companion. The man seemed insensate, on death's door. Zemos ventured to speak loudly enough for the poor man to hear, "Friend?"
He asked the word in common, then tried it again in Xanthean. The other man lifted his head weakly, his rheumy eyes staring at Zemos, milky and yellow. "Ahhgh. No world left!"
Not making sense, the disease seemed as much physical as it was mental, or so it seemed to Zemos. Or perhaps it was a wound, compounded with disease. In either event, Zemos was suitably intrigued. He fixed his multi-faceted eyes upon the man's form, trying to diagnose his illness.
The remarkable thing about diseases, the wonder of them, was that few beyond those versed in the healing arts understood just how wonderfully complex the concept of disease was. Some people heard a few words and ascribed it to a set of attributes or symptoms, fixed in their way. For people like Zemos, and more accomplished healers, they understood it on another level. Disease was a community, full of individual systems of attack, defense, and reaction, all of they vying for prominence within a living creature. It was fascinating, as fascinating as the inner lives of insects living out of a hive... if you were into that sort of thing.
And Zemos most certainly was. He could tell the man was suffering from a few minor ailments, and one greater ailment underpinning them all. But if he could isolate some of the minor ones, or even alleviate them, he could get to the bottom of what was ailing the man. So, with an extended hand, he took the man by the shoulder, and began dragging him out from beneath the rock. As he pulled him out into the open, he absorbed no less than two of those minor ailments. He couldn't very well take the deadly ones, not at his level of power and devotion in Yithnai. Lisirra had yet to grant him that much favor. However, the two lesser ailments, if there were that many, would be removed and placed into Zemos, for him to carry and transmit as he wished.
Then, he tried again, to make sense of the man. "Friend? I have taken some of your illness. Can you tell me where it hurts, how did you come to this condition?"
The man's eyes, slightly cleared of the white film that had overcome them previously, searched Zemos' face. He opened his mouth, and wanted to speak. Zemos could tell he wanted to speak. And when the words came, they came out in a rasping scream, tearing through the man in pain.
Zemos regarded him with some calmness, although he was slightly unnerved by the volume of his scream. Less by the scream itself, and more by the possibility of being located by some of those wild hounds.
