Tales Of Grimea (4 page)

Undead? That couldn’t be. Just now, Claudis
had been going to get some honey. Then her arms raised
involuntarily, and she saw three things. Firstly, the Markus
backing away from her, leaving his hat behind on the grass near the
tree, was older than she remembered. Second, she was the only one
going towards him, with everyone else heading somewhere behind her.
Lastly, her flesh was rotten with maggots where her hands should
have been human and rosy. She still didn’t understand what had
happened exactly, but the woman tried to get her head around
it.

She was dead. A dark force was using her body
against her will, and it had managed to give her wrong directions.
Instead of going after whoever owned that clear bell like voice,
she was going to kill her husband. Something clinked, and Claudis
realized that there was a white ring still around her death
infested neck. Ever practical, she focused on the task at hand.
No.

With everything she had, the woman tried to
fight the voice’s control. It hissed in delight. Behind her, she
could hear the two voices clamoring against one another.

“Your gods do you no good here, girl. You
should have given up last time.”

“Merla guide me, take my hands. Slim lights
grow bright when they know what has been done and what is to be,
for the river flows towards good and the depraved shall seek
nothing but love.” This was a prayer of a goddess outside the
niners, rarely worshipped in this part of the country. The woman
who stated it did so with conviction, and lights shone from behind
Claudis. White and blue, it was. It brought warmth and pain and
strength. She could hear fire and blades and bones being crushed
while sighs filled the air. The old man’s voice gained urgency, and
he focused on his spells. Thus the two battled.

Then Claudis focused on her own battle. She
let the large one behind her rage one, praying for the priestess to
vanquish her foe. The wind howled and lighting appeared out of
nowhere, pitting light against dark as it sheared the world in
half. Still she tried to stop moving those murderous limbs of hers
without success. In desperation, the woman focused on her right
arm, willing it to hold on to a nearby branch. The strategy
succeeded, but only momentarily. Her husband was dazed with shock,
and tripped with a crack and a cry. He crawled for dear life, but
she would catch up with him. Scenes of their happy life together
flashed, and the woman realized that for this man, she’d give up….
Yes. Exactly like he’d said the night before, although it must have
been years ago. He still came to visit her, and she still saw a
ring upon the terrified man’s finger despite the ashen streaks in
his hair. He still came here, when the moon shone bright. She knew
it instinctively, as if her cold body had remembered. For him…

As the fighting behind them intensified
between priestess and foul magician, Claudis focused on her arm
again. Every struggle against the forces holding her in their grasp
caused the pain in her head to blossom red and hot. Still she
refocused the former strength of her happiness, shaping it into
pure will. Her arm moved, picked up a stone from the ground when
she next limped close enough. She took a deep breath, seeing how
close Marcus was now. Part of her, unbelievably, was happy to see
everlasting love in the despair of his expression. She swung,
striking her right leg. A snap was heard, and she lurched but kept
moving. The incantation took on a lighthearted tone, as if mocking
her efforts. “Ah, a feisty one. And going in the wrong direction,
no less! Oh, oh, I see! Well, now then… I took your feelings out of
mercy, hurmph! Let’s see what happens when I give them back, shall
we?” Instantly, a gnashing within her bones almost caused Claudis
to black out.

“What drivel do you speak, old one?” demanded
the priestess.

He cackled. “None of your concern, child of
light!” With that, the battle continued.

The two fought. Their songs clashed, flames
of dark and glowing blue blades facing off amidst behind the woman.
From the bangs and lights, Claudis was sure that the priestess was
surrounded but advancing, wreaking havoc on the sorcerer’s undead
army. She was sure that the havoc within her was worse still. Her
brain felt like sea froth. Crushed lungs struggled to gather
something unneeded whilst her bones grinded against one another.
Even the falling skin and tunneling of insects could be felt. More
than once, Claudis knew unbearable pain. At the same time, she did
not give in. She knew that her husband could not move faster than
her, and to give in was to doom him. The rock was still in her
hand, and she swung again, fully shattering her right leg with an
inhuman cry. She fell to her knees, and the undead within her began
to crawl. She kept swinging again and again. The physical torture
was nothing compared to what would happen in her undead heart if
she killed Markus.

When the battle ended, the priestess in her
white and blue garb was victorious. With an unholy cry the magician
fell, along with most of his army. She lifted her black candle and
mace, one in each hand, allowing a final songspell to leave her
lips. Just then, the sun was peeking over the horizon, attempting
to dispel the night’s terror. It revealed a mangled undead minion,
barely more than a torso, kneeling just a foot away from a man
shocked beyond belief. “Oh, my darling,” he murmured in a torn
manner, trying to keep himself strong. She’d hated it when he
cried. “I wish you’d let me join you.”

Claudis was in the throes of a sweet void
then, offset by a single pinpoint glow. She could see nothing else.
The light beckoned, and she was almost ready to go. She heard
footsteps behind them, but the priestess remained silent. “I…”
Claudis started in a gurgle, then struggled on. “I… you s… solemn…
moon… ring….let…ppy…” She hoped that he got her meaning, for there
was no strength left in her broken form. As she let go, content
that her love had survived, the priestess offered a long slow
prayer.

Year:822 Post Kerallus. 230 Pre Adventus

The following is an excerpt from the diary
of Mardow Grame, a prisoner and one time apprentice of Krulov
Gregerovitch, who would one day lay waste to cities numerous and
wreak havoc over the eastern continent of Jerr. Eventually he would
be stopped far west, at the gates of Lor, but not before he even
managed to force Haq Ramad, the shadow spear, to slit her own
throat.

Today, I heard a tale that caused my stomach
to churn. Abused from the tender age of three and turning to crime
earlier than I could walk, I had thought this tired heart incapable
of sympathy, but the master’s story was unusual in its simplicity.
My very heart cringes at the memory, and I pray never to become
like him, for it was not the circumstances of his tale that spoke
of woe, but rather the very destruction and depravity evident
within mind and soul. I know now that the man, if unleashed, could
cause the very world nausea.

I had gone within his cell, which was the
only one beside mine perpetually unlocked by prison wardens, in
order to bring the man some soup and stale bread. He sat there upon
cracked stone, weathering whipping wind laced with ice. The window
next to him was unbarred, for none could climb down the
mountainside in such freezing condition. Not that he would try.
Kurlov Gregerovitch was here of his own volition, though naturally
the mind controlled guards treated him better than most. That was
why I found him wrapped in a course blanket, shivering contently.
I’d found out early that the master enjoyed having pain inflicted
upon his body, as long as he could control frequency and
intensity.

“Master,” I said to him by way of greeting,
to which he nodded at the hot bowl of soup in my hands. I handed it
to him, accompanied by a loaf of bread. Ignoring its greenish hue,
the brown skinned man set upon his meal with the grace of a noble.
Dipping chunks delicately into the murky liquid with two of his
fingers, the man said, “Say, Mardow, how fares your training?”

“It’s not faring at all, Master. I am no
closer to leaving my skull.” The words were spat out, for it had
been a month already since the man accepted me as his pupil in
psionic, and the only thing he’d told me was to try and leave my
skull. It was less of a technique and more of a described state,
according to his explanation, where the mind can come in touch with
what is beyond it. “I don’t understand. How does the brain do
something like that?”

“Not the brain, boy!” snapped Master Kurlov
in annoyance, his beard and wavy hair seeming to writhe. It seemed
to cause him frustration as well, and I wished there was someone
else I could ask. “The mind is different from the brain. The second
is housed within the temple, but the other wanders freely around it
like a cloud or a soul seeking salvation.” His words made no sense
to me, but that was the paradox of attempting to learn something
completely new: The action never makes sense until you were already
able to act it out. Thus I kept my peace and let the man speak.
Outside the wind howled agreement and the drop beckoned as it
always did. “To leave is to find enlightenment and awareness. You
begin to understand truths and touch others.”

“But how, master? How do you reach that
state? Is there a mental trick or exercise or-“

“I don’t know!” His eyes shined, and I could
tell that he was thinking so I let him at it. It was frustrating to
be stuck at the doorstep of knowledge for so long, and so my temper
fumed. As he thought, two prisoners powerful enough to be allowed
out the cell walked around, although they gave Krulov a wide berth.
Had I been alone they would have bullied me, but I was with the
master. I pulled a hair out of my grey beard, placed it on my palm,
and blew in their direction. Scret hissed quietly but the other
pulled him along.

“The key isn’t to think hard, but rather to
think wide.” The master had oily hair, and now he brushed the
straight length with his dirty fingers. He was dressed in a coat
and cotton gloves, and I wish I knew what color they’d originally
been. There was an emblem at his chest, stitched out, but the thing
was so faded that I could not for the life of me make it out, and
he’d never told me anything about himself. “You let your mind
expand and at first it stretches you thin then you understand that
thin is relative because space is for physical things. When you’re
there the understanding from your mind will touch things and tell
you things relative to what they know back home. Ah, but the selves
won’t match at first because the me and the I only exist as me and
I in the center, and when the world is the world and not what my
world then what I see of me isn’t what I see but what the world
sees and things become as they are. Thus one touches the all and
begins to understand with a new sense…” At that, his lapsed off
into another fit of drivel about colors and compounds and different
frequencies of mental chirping and spectacles and towers of the
mind. I could make no sense of what the dark haired man said at
all, and so sought to distract him before I lose him
completely.

“A lot of the prisoners here are insane,” I
said, and the man stopped talking, looking at me as if I had
interrupted something vital. “I think it’s the system here. The
guards seem to enjoy letting prisoners run free and wild, but they
also want us locked up and quiet. Men turn into beasts easily when
in a caged jungle.”

“Well,” said the master whilst eyed one of
his gate’s bars. He stood and went to look at it in interest for a
while, then put his hands on the thing and tried to bend it. He
struggled for a full minute valiantly with the desperation of a man
requiring release, pulling and pushing and tugging with all of his
weight. His grunts were loud and his face was flushed with effort.
Foiled at last, the prisoner went back to his spot, ignoring the
open door completely. “There’s nothing wrong with a little bit of
insanity.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it has its uses. To be insane is to
ignore reality, whether it be painful or angry. To be insane is to
see with new eyes and be free of the world’s shackles. That is how
I gained my powers, after all.”

“Truly?” It was true that the master had his
moments of nonsense, but I had thought the man was mostly coherent.
“So you’re insane?”

“Not right now, no. But I was for a moment,
and every now and then I would embrace that sweet freedom and see
colors that shan’t ever exist. That’s when I know the ultimate
cruelty of existence, crystallized in its own perpetual nature.” He
was beginning to lose me again, and so I decided to seize the
moment. I asked, “Master, how did you gain your powers?” If he was
able to tell me that, perhaps I could recreate the experience.

I assume he knew my intentions, for Krulov’s
eyes glimmered and he smiled in deceitful innocence. And then he
told me his heinous tale. “When I was younger, I was a noble in
Xera of no real consequence. Versed in etiquette and knowing it was
my destiny to become an official, I submerged myself in studies and
found I had a roaring intellect. Soon enough I rose and was able to
hold position, and that was when my father did the sensible thing
and forced a woman upon me.”

“Sensible, sir?”

“Indeed. In Xera most would disagree, but I
believe that if the person is indifferent enough and agreeable
enough, there is nothing wrong with having a future partner decided
for him or her. But there was a twist in my case, because despite
being convinced that it did not matter who was chosen, I was
infatuated by Helia upon our first meeting. We both agreed to marry
readily and enthusiastically. She loved to enjoy her time more than
I did, and despite a quiet nature had a way of being heard. Her
hair was honey, her skin was milk, and every second with the girl
filled my heart with such warmth as to make me walk the streets of
Xera with no regard for ice or cold.”