Pondering The Crypts

1st of Cylus 718

Here are all threads from before the Fall of Emea in 719 and all threads pertaining to the Fall. As of Ymiden 719 (1st June 2019), this forum is locked for new threads and is a repository for old content.

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Zip
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Pondering The Crypts

1st Cylus 718

She dreamed about Necromancers that freezing cylus night.

She dreamt about Gavrel, the master necromancer who employed his power on the petty, vindictive pursuits of revenge when he could have spent the full measure of his considerable power on other less half-witted pursuits. Even shackled service to the Ministry of Advisors or even the rumored Coven branch in Etzos itself would have been preferable to the way he squandered life, time, effort and ether.

A mage without greater ambition, without that drive for magical self-actualization, without the intended application of their abilities for either discovery, industry, or some cause beyond the base satisfaction of simply having magic was no mage at all. Heal the world, destroy a city, find a cure for all the world’s rashes, start a cult, rule from the shadows, delve into the depths of magic so obscure, so deep nobody else has dared - fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine.

But self-satisfied arcane masturbation masquerading as supernatural thuggery without actual profit or tangible gain? To scrounge up every last fiber of potential only to waste it on goals both mismatched to stature and not even beneficial to the mage?

Fuckin’ dumb. Gavrel’s own Necromancy master must have employed Sap on him a little too many times during his own tutelage.

Even if she knew when to call and when to fold. Sunken costs were just that: sunken and gone. At the bottom of the sea where you wouldn’t get them back.

Even Padfoot sought a plague beyond the limitations of his paws and teeth, a deformed, monstrous legacy that would leave a dark crest upon the annals of Etzori history - Gavrel had eyes only for short-sighted payback.

He was beneath even a Becomer who poisoned the poor.

For… whatever reason he did what he did. One theory asserted by a colleague in the Domain branch claimed that, in a crazed state, he dipped his blood into the food for the poor to annex everyone as totems. Another claimed he craved his own flesh and found a way to forge an abundance on it. Yet one more claimed the Hero Doran, secretly a vile and venal Faldrun worshipper, had sought to flood the market with Becoming reagents for… who knew. Small talk and idle chatter didn’t seem to hinge much on sense.

The dumbest one she heard claimed he had simply wanted to feed the poor.

Though… she was rather biased, she supposed. She had heard too many whispered, resentful, sometimes fearful mutterings about the Necromancer from their mutual ‘friend’ to ever have a proper, clear opinion on him. She had never even met the man.

The giant, writhing mass of flesh called a Stitchborn he had loosed on her last trial during the ambush, she mused, was the closest she had ever gotten. It had left quite an impression in more than one sense of the word. It probably even had more of a personality than him.

She wouldn’t accuse him of cowardice for his absence in the ambush; it simply made sense to hunt from the comfort of your Home when given the option.... But he undoubtedly was. Why else would he aim so low if not the fear of failure, of overreaching himself?

Or worse: he was content with where he was.

Though Finn disagreed, the ugliest thing you could say to a child was: good job

Don’t try harder.

Don’t be better.

Don’t improve.

Don’t get stronger.

Don’t excel, be content with the above average-

Don’t transcend your limitations.

Don’t-

Don’t-

He was a mage now too. Finn was a mage now too.

She gave him guidance, instruction, even affection, and he still let fell apart over one dead girl he barely knew. The fault didn’t lie with her, no, no, it was the sabotage wrought by-

She was dream-digressing again.
Last edited by Zip on Tue Feb 27, 2018 5:02 am, edited 1 time in total. word count: 659
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She dreamed about Necromancers that freezing cylus night.

She dreamt about the Attuner who had so readily sold herself into the service of the Master Necromancer Gavrel.

She dreamt about the mercenary they had subdue who screamed all the way as his life was choked right out of him and his soul was ripped out and ushered into the well; service in life mirroring intended service in undeath.

She dreamt about Neronin. Dreamed about Neronin.

It was hard -still hard- to reconcile the little boy, shorter than her when they first met in the dark alley on a cold cylus night, with the Master mage he had become.

She wasn’t sure whether either of them could reconcile themselves with who they had become.

Nine arcs down from those dirty, skinny children who fancied their trivial, insignificant secrets important enough to kill each other for became… a withered, white-haired skeleton of a man beyond his age who commanded cadavers the likes of which his boy-self would be lucky to even control for a fraction of a trill, who stole a soul like it was just another fine day shopping at the market.

And why shouldn’t he? Souls were a commodity to him now, apparently.

And her: more metal than flesh, more ether than soul. A bloodless, lifeless creature of corrosion and borrowed power from soil and fire, sword and armour. An automaton that walked like a person, talked like a person, sometimes laughed like a person, but could not-

Okay. That was okay.

She was okay with the both of them.

Thankful, even; she only regretted that the whatever contrivance the spark sat upon to cough up these so-called mutations did not conjure up one that would allow her to evade sleep. It would expand her allocated activity by an entire solid fraction, eliminate the string of Nightmares that had been plaguing for these past few seasons, and eliminate the evils of rest.

But regardless, she was okay with the both of them.

More than okay actually.

They never said they loved each other even when they were together. Aside from being a pointless gesture of sentimentality, it was also patently untrue: they needed each other then as children, then as teenagers, then as young, struggling adults. But the moment mutual use faded to professional convenience... so too did so much between them.

Or that’s how she saw it.

They were friendly, they had fun, they had complementary interests, they worked well, they exchanged gifts, they engaged in intimacy neither particularly desired but both thought, erroneously, would serve as some kind of necessary, shared rite of passage. They mimicked the whole courtship process down to a T when it suited them… and ignored everything they didn’t like. He wasn’t clingy, respected her when she said she needed an entire half season to herself and her own work, and didn’t need the kind of incessant emotional maintenance that came with a Finn or a-

Even a season after gutting him to death and tossing him off the cliffside of Foster’s for raping her brother into the mental ailment called Defiance, she still didn’t feel all that right about Robin Stark. She didn’t regret it nor did she shy away from the necessity of that honor killing, but he was… he was acceptable for a time.

She only wished she could have dragged his death out as long.

But in the end when it came to Neronin… no, not really. Not at all. She had never been able to make sense of what they really were, and the idea of not knowing was often more frustrating than the pleasant actual thing itself.

They were, ultimately, both professionals when it happened. Professionals monsters maybe, but still professionals. Nobody made too much of a fuss when she ended it.

And she would have thought less of him if he had said the dreaded 'I love..." first , but maybe, just maybe it would have been nice to just hear it once from him…
Last edited by Zip on Tue Feb 27, 2018 8:15 am, edited 1 time in total. word count: 679
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Pondering the crypts

But most importantly, she dreamt about Necromancy itself.

More so than the difference between Nero the lad and Nero the mage, It was harder still to reconcile what she thought Necromancy could do with what Necromancy could actually reap.

She thought she had his -their- measure, and proved woefully mistaken.

Hulks and Stitchborn, the ability to heal with impunity and the ability to rot an entire squad of attacks away like a nuisance, the ability to sharpen bones. Intellectually, she knew a lot of these things were possible from brief snippets of information with Neronin, but she supposed that, for all her time with him, she never really moved past her first, lasting image of Necromancy: her helping a skinny, barely-fed boy make his very first fletch; dependent, weak, of limited utility, with a bit more bravado than she initially gave him credit for-

That, too, was foolish sentiment. All of it. They weren’t those stupid children anymore, and past states were past states; irrevocably gone save for the fades of memory.

But what interested her was what Nero had called the Link. What interested her was the very same ability Gavrel had used to remotely pilot the Stitchborn as if it were his own body moving. The ability to pilot a thrall, any thrall, from a safe distance that could span even cities, with or without a well powering the beast, and see through their eyes as if they were your very own.

The possibilities there were… immensely staggering.
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Pondering The Crypts

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Comments

I love the repetition in this thread. Grammatically it was a delight to read something so.. jarring yet at the same time smooth. It felt very much like a subconscious train of thought, which I suppose is just what a dream should be. Lovely :)


If you have any questions, comments or criticism about your review, feel free to send me a PM and we can discuss it.
Thank ye.
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