Enjoy! Have yourself a lovely day, and see you tomorrow at eight AM for more!
The Warlock I by Mackinley Clevinger, May 25, 2016
“I offer my blood that the spirits may hear my call.”
A bright moon shone over an ancient cemetery, the scraggly, overgrown grass and worn-down grave markers untouched by man and beast for centuries. Ivy-covered tombs dotted the expansive graveyard, stone walls that had once held sigils and wards long since fallen and reduced to gravel. Before the largest of the tombs had sat a fountain, now no more than a wide basin bereft of flowing waters.
Into the basin had been cast wood from trees that’s sap poisoned any creature that consumed it, rune-carved stones hewn from caverns older than the first lives that crept from the shadows into the sun, and stinking oil that stuck to whatever it touched greedily. A panting, cloaked figure raised a ceremonial knife above his head, gleaming with a red sheen in the pale moonlight, and slashed it across his wrist, pouring the thick flowing blood over the twisted concoction in the basin.
“With this sacrifice, I call out to the twisted aether. Heed my call, and bring forth the soul I serve beyond even death!”
The figure cast its arms to the darkening skies as he screamed the word ‘death’, the filled basin bursting into green flames that cast the cemetery with a deathly glow. The hood of his cloak was cast back by the sudden roar of fire, revealing the manic and gleeful expression on his aged, gaunt face. He held his hand in the rising flames, black blood seeping from his wrist to form a swirling black cloud within the twisting green fire as his flesh remained unburnt.
The echoes of his screaming voice sounded throughout the graveyard, his body quivering as the sound petered out and the graveyard was silent but for the crackling of an evil, eldritch flame. A body stirred behind him, emerald eyes flashing open in a panic and a muffled voice beginning to whimper. His head whipped around at the sound, sunken eyes glaring the bound girl into silence as he continued to wait.
“Rise, my lord. I have waited centuries for this; do not fail your faithful attendant.”
The ground trembled beneath the cemetery, the green flames falling to crawl along the foul concoction and offer the man a view of the great tomb’s doors as they shuddered, the stone cracking around their edges. Ivy that had fastened itself to the tomb for decades withered and fell away from the tomb, vile green leaves turned black and dead as the trail of ivy that had surrounded the door was replaced by a trail of cracks that released stone chips and dust into the fouled air.
With a final cracking of the stone façade, the trembling came to a halt and left the ancient cemetery still. The green flames rushed in a swirling vortex beneath the twisting black smoke that had gathered around the man’s still-bleeding wrist, his veins taut and turning black. From the silence came a horrendous crack within the tomb, and the doors that had held-shut for centuries fell away from the tomb and released the spirit within.
The black smoke rushed from the man’s hand into the dark tomb, tethered to him by a thin strand that ran into his veins. Shrieks of a being with no mortal throat, forcibly dragged from another realm of unrest, deafened the man and the girl as the black smoke found the soul it had been sent to retrieve.
“Come back to me, my lord!”
Gripping his taut arm with his hand, the man jerked his arm away from the tomb and dragged the black smoke towards the swirling green flames. A whirling black ball drifted from the dark recesses of the tomb, absorbing the light in the cemetery as it came out into the open. Outside of the green light cast by the flames, the world turned to complete darkness as the whirling ball came to a rest above the basin.
“It has been so long… No longer shall you bear the torment of death.”
Grabbing ahold of the tether of smoke in his arm, he ripped it out of his veins and thrust it into the basin. The green flames flew into a frenzy, the twisting vortex rising to meet the black smoke. The man stepped back from the flames, face resolute as he lifted the girl to her feet and stood her between him and the basin, knife dripping with his own blood in his other hand. She shook, frozen by fear.
“Yours is a worthy sacrifice; know this much before your end.”
He plunged the bloodied knife into her stomach, twisting the blade as blood soaked into the wool robe she wore. He lifted her dying body with both arms and thrust her into the flames, jumping away from the basin as the flames turned black and rose to shield its contents from his vision. He wiped the knife against his robes, cleaning it of blood as he dropped to one knee and bent his head in dark prayer.
The shrieking of the soul torn from the tomb changed. From an otherworldly shriek born of no mortal throat, a living screech grew to replace it. Through the black flames a figure could be made out, hanging limp in the air above the basin as the fire and black smoke swarmed above them, crashing back down to be consumed by the reviving spirit in a frenzied current that flowed into their throat.
The hanging body lowered to rest against the basin as the last of the foul fuel was fed to the flames, the smoke and fire crashing down into the basin in one final blast that sent a shockwave of cracks racing from the basin to the farthest reaches of the graveyard. The masking flame dispersed at last, releasing the cemetery from the thrall of the dark ritual as moonlight shone down through a cloudless sky once more.
“My lord… are you…”
I was… alive? Oh, the fool finally managed to… to… How long has it – no, I know how long it’s been. Too long, trapped in that accursed – why is my chest so… Breathing. Right. Something else. Need to… to…
From within the tomb there came a streak of light that buried itself within my bared chest, sending my body into convulsions that struck my body against the stone basin beneath me, but caused a regular vibration to shoot through my body as my senses returned to me.
That’s it. Heart.
I gasped, sucking in air that stank of familiar rituals: a scent that turned every fiber of my being yet still attracted my interest as much as it had the first time I’d come across it. Something was still wrong, but what? I hadn’t been alive for centuries, but I don’t remember this feeling. It had never felt like… like…
My hand flopped from the granite briefly before crashing back against the torn stone, tearing the skin on my knuckles and sending pain racing through my new senses. Breathing deeply and moving it slowly, I brought my hand against my chest, panting after the effort of raising a single arm, and tested my evidently new body’s abilities until I found how to raise my eyebrows in surprise.
“My lord! You’re… you’re…”
I’ve had centuries of isolation as a spirit to think about my past. Centuries to consider the death I’d been given by those ‘heroes’, centuries to think about what I’d do when I was brought back from the pale of death. Centuries alone to think about everything; and yet, despite it all; despite worries that Carmen would never be able to bring me back, despite the fear that I would never get another chance, despite all my planning; I never even considered that this, of all things, could happen.
“Carmen. Why do I have breasts?” Those are the only words I remember saying before I fell asleep – before my mind turned off – for the first time in centuries. It was bliss.