The shadows were infinitely deep, and on nights like this they loomed like hollow tunnels eager for wanderers to consume. They hid the ground from the sky, and they hid souls that dared to move beneath the shivering boughs of this place, the aptly named Black Shroud. No matter how beautiful it was in the day, it bore the name of it's night, and it's darkness.
In that darkness, she moved the earth with her hands. She breathed the scent of mud and exhaled the cracked sound of dry weeping, soar throat and swollen eyes. A young girl, a Miqo'te with long hair and a thin tail, spoke to the ground, "I'm sorry." She said to the mud, "I'll do better next time," and the shaking of her shoulders and shivering twitch of her mournful features was audible. Her delicate ears looked like the leaves in the trees; they quivered in the wind. Her skin was the color of the earth. She was like the shroud given form.
But she was not welcome here. The trees bent forward. The darkness moved. In the bark and roots, the warm awareness of the forest reached towards her.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm done." She patted the earth as if to sooth it. But the forest was not soothed.
Out in the night, there was the loud crack of breaking wood. The girl's ears pinned flat against her head, the fur on her tail bristled, and her feet dug into the ground as she stood away from the pile of earth she'd been tending and turned to face the trees. An untreated yew branch was in her hand, pointed as a threat at the aura of ink around her. From her wrist hung a band of feathers and bone. Thunder rolled, but lightning did not flash. The girl growled, but did not bother speaking to the forest. Conjurers could not beg indulgence from these woods with words, and the place was thick with the weight of the girl's profane rituals. The forest would have no mercy for her tonight.
She brought her dark hood up and pulled it over her head. A mask fell down over her eyes. Again, thunder rolled, but lightning did not flash. The girl frowned at the woods and cast a mournful look at the earth behind her. "I need to do better," she said. When she walked into the night, the shadows consumed her, and she displayed no fear of the forest.
The night stretched on, and the air of profanity, of a dark ritual with many victims, clung to the pile of disturbed dirt that the girl had abandoned. Over the dirt, the monument lingered. It was a lump of stone carved with many symbols. It seemed to be a gravestone, but the forest reached for it. The forest reached for the monument, but could not touch it, as though it were unbearably hot.
Lightning flashed, but there was no thunder. A tree stepped out of the blackness and into the darkness, and then from the darkness and into the shadow. From the shadow, the tree walked into a patch silver light muffled by overhanging clouds and torn apart by the canopy. The leaves shivered overhead as the dead tree, seemingly limbless, approached the disturbed dirt. The tree moved towards the monument.
In the gray light, the bark of the tree was revealed to be wrinkled flesh, its trunk an impossible thin body. Its lumbering movement was the weathered steps of an ancient being, but not one of the forest. It wasn't a tree at all, but an elderly Duskwight who could barely move, plodding out of the forest with curious gray eyes. His hair, brown like a dead plant and tinted green as though with moss, lay dirty and thick over his face. His arms swung limp at his sides. The old man's breathing was indistinguishable from the wind.
Lightning flashed, but there was no thunder. A wild stag broke into the clearing, but it was already dead. Its legs collapsed as it pitched is head into the dirt, spraying warm blood from its open neck.
Wiping the gore of the kill from his knife before he put it away, the Duskwight turned his gray eyes to the woods around him. His voice was like the sound of living wood bent in the wind when he muttered to the sky, "Oschon, why am I here? What do you want me to see?" He turned his eyes to the monument. In the darkness, the tattoos on his wizened face like like crags in his skull. "Why do the spirits of the Shroud hate you, gravestone? Why can they not touch you? Why..."
He heard movement in the dirt. Like growing roots, like digging animals, but also like open wounds and gaping breath. He sensed the forest reaching out, trying, trying, desperate. He heard animals move in the darkness, summoned by the forest. They were likely meant to break the gravestone. Was it enchanted with a counter-spell? The beasts would not come while he was here, though. Not while the corpse of the stag lay hot and twitching to one side.
The monument, small and simple, loomed larger than the shadows. Gray eyes watched the dirt.
The corpse beneath the monument twitched and moaned in time with the groaning fury of the Shroud. The soil that swaddled it both gripped desperately at flesh and bone, seeking to contain and restrain the nightmare that had been forced upon it, and shuddered away, repelled viciously by the profane shadows that wrapped its shallow grave. Fungi seeking to carry out their inexorable duty of reconstitution withdrew their many hyphae from the corpse's form, and even the tiniest of microbe could find no purchase on its sick flesh.Â
The corpse beneath the monument drew a ragged breath.
Dirt filled its mouth, its nostrils and ears, pressed in at the corners of its eyes, compressed ribs that still felt the memory of being crushed under a metal terror but no longer felt that pain. Oxygen fled that place, and in its absence there came desperation. The corpse saw fire above, blood below, heard the screams of hundreds, no, thousands in their death throws - crushed, flayed, burned alive beneath the mighty heat of a falling sky.
Fingers curled in the dirt, pushing up towards the fire, fearing more the blood below and the ill shadows that wreathed its scent than whatever purifying oblivion would greet it in the flames. They clutched and clawed and tore at the earth that had inexplicably swallowed it until the corpse felt certain nothing but polished bone remained. With its remaining, meager air, it expelled a sound of a dying beast into the pitiless heart of the Shroud. A sudden surge of frenzied strength bore through its limbs, and with that sound it broke through the earth to the fire raging above.
But no blinding, blazing agony greeted its grasping hand, only cool air and emptiness, like a void.
It was not roots that broke the soil, though truthfully, the difference between flesh and earth was a technicality. The Duskwight's small eyes grew wide in the night, but the brows did not rise in fear. No, the old brows fell, his lips twitched, his older fingers curled in recognition of what at first looked like a bestial claw. Covered in mud, all gray and black in the darkness, that hand out of the earth clenched and released, clenched and released, shook its fist at the world.
The Duskwight gave the monument an accusatory look. If it had been a gravestone, it had been a lie. The dark nature of the thing was unmistakable, but what was it. He exhaled in a huff.
That hand in the earth: it moved. What had Oschon brought him here to see? Was it the monument, or was it this grasping hand? Was it beast or man, word or task? What vision had the wanderer brought him upon?
A high-pitched screech, shaking as though in panic, cut through the limbs to the Duskwight's ears. It might have been a pained cry from the girl that had been here before, or someone else. A person had screamed, but the cry had not interrupted the noise of the forest. They continued on, perhaps grew louder in response. Beasts in the darkness began to huff and groan. They began to stomp loudly to get his attention. The bark-like skin on the Duskwight's face scrunched up, the tattoos drawing sharp points at his confusion. There was a stink of alchemy in the air. It knit into the mud and the wind and the warm of the angry spirits, the scent of the dead antelope that finally stopped moving well to one side.
The forest protested the evening. It protested the monument, the hand in the mud, even the Duskwight himself. It seemed energized by the scream he had heard. Oschon, as ever, was reticent. The Duskwight was tempted to seek the screamer, but he did not. His old knees hit the mud with in front of the monument, and his wiry hand gripped the grasping hand in the earth. If it were not just a disembodied limb, then it was something worth looking into. He pulled on the hand, he dug feebly at the earth. His old bones hurt, but he ignored them.
Another limb sought to join its brother through the soil, clawing with a vicious force at clumps of dirt and grass and rock, seeking the void that seemed a chilling relief to the fire burning in its chest. Its mouth opened, heedless of the earth that pressed in, tasted age and rot and a damp sickness on its tongue, and then coughed into the oppressive shadow, pushing up further from the grave. Above, the monument stacked carefully at the grave-head wobbled as the soil churned.
When unknown fingers wrapped spindly bone about its freed limb, it was as though a curse had been dispelled. Vague memories scattered at the touch, fleeing to far corners unreachable and leaving behind only a sharp terror and the keen awareness of one buried.Â
Alive.Â
The not-corpse gripped the hand that had found it until its muscles ached in the same way its lungs screamed for air, and it was with this leverage that it managed a great heave that dislodged much of the soil packed down around it. A body lurched up from the grave, still buried waist down, painted in mud and grass and old blood. Wild eyes, impossibly blue in the ominous, angered shadows of the Shroud, rolled about in confusion as its mouth hung open, gasping for air it could finally take in. It coughed and sputtered and did nothing but try to breathe.
"Calm and breathe," the Duskwight said, barely able to breath himself through the weight of his age. He put a hand on the man's back and pressed firmly, "Is there dirt in your lungs? Are you cursed?"
A scream again broke the air. The Duskwight's eyes perked up, but his ears wouldn't be fooled. Beneath the scream, from another direction, came the hoofbeats, the stag with its antlers lowered as it was spat from the shadows, trailing the fury of the forest like smoke from its eyes. Metal cracked its skull open, the blade visible and shining polished silver before it was snapped to the side be an unseen force. Red blood, warm, was thrown to the ground, and the blade jerked out of the stag's head so fiercely that the animal's neck broke with an audible crack before it fell. It slid in the dirt and struck the monument, which shook, but did not topple.
The blade vanished. The scream did not return. Breath slid out of the dead stag with a gurgling his for a moment, and then the woods were silently watchful once more. The Duskwight that looked like a dead tree could feel the weight of his knife, clean and cool in his pocket, as he returned his hands to the man that had pulled himself from the earth. Skin like mud, hair like clay. He was like the girl. He looked like the ground come to life.
"Calm and breathe," the old voice repeated.
For a time following the scream and the old, unfamiliar voice, there came nothing but the ragged, wheezing sounds of strangled lungs gradually going accustomed to a now steady supply of air. Still half-sitting in the dirt, the not-corpse now identifiable as a man bowed over, coughing and gagging until something thick and wet dislodged from his throat. It sank into the disturbed soil and left behind an old, coppery taste in the man's mouth. Nothing seemed to come after it, however, and the minutes ticked by as he followed the command of that strange voice.
Calm and breathe.
The man gradually grew aware of his limbs and a dull tingling there, as though the circulation had been cut off for some time and was now rushing back into place. He flexed dirt-caked hands, feeling a soreness in his fingers and shuddered at a sudden recollection of awakening beneath that grave. He recalled thinking of fire, but could not pinpoint why; it left him with the heavy weight of dread and a strange sense of inexplicable resignation.
The dirt shifted around the man as his body moved in a renewed desperation, seeking to escape fully whatever trap had sought to consume him. In the shadows, he caught glimpses of a lurching, gangly tree that, at another glance, became the thin form of a person, shriveled and bowed. Legs kicked, weakly at first and then, as the soil loosened, with sudden fervor until his whole body burst free of the grave, leaving him to roll away to one side and pant against the ground.
A low groan escaped the man's throat, raspy as though he hadn't spoken in years. Chapped, dirt-stained lips moved as though to form words, perhaps of thanks or confusion, but nothing could quite make it in the face of the shadows, with a once-grave at his back.
Framed by dead stags, the Duskwight stretched a single weak limb towards the unearthed man. His placating gesture was almost lost in the darkness, and his weak voice almost lost in the breeze, "Calm. Do not flee this place, or the Shroud will claim you. I think you are safe here for the moment."
The Duskwight's eyes stayed on the panicked man. He noted the powerful muscles on the man's body, the tattered tail behind him. Another Miqo'te? He was so much like the girl that had been here before, who seemed to scream out in the forest. He listened for the girl in the woods, but could only hear the animals that paced and growled in response to every twitch of the unearthed man. Would that the Duskwight could have observed both the man and the girl, but even Oschon could not split him in two.
"Stranger," his breath shook thinly out of his lungs. "Have you voice? Have you a name?"
That he couldn't find the sun seemed a strange, unnerving thing to the man, and blue eyes rolled up to take in the impossibly large trees arcing up into nothingness and casting great, vaulting shadows. He searched for even just a pinprick of light but could find none.
The aged voice spoke again, from behind, and the matted, rusty hair atop the unearthed man's head shifted to reveal the high set, fur-covered ears of his race straining back as though anchoring to the words. It took several moments of shuddering breath before his still disoriented mind made sense of the questions, and when he finally did, he found nothing but silence in his own mind to answer.
The muscles along the man's back, thick and defined as one who put their shoulders to considerable work constantly, shivered and flexed as he brought his hands, still caked in their own grime, up to wipe at his face, spitting out lingering clumps of dirt lodged between his teeth. The taste they left behind was bitter at the back of his throat.
A voice? A name? Grimacing, the unearthed man rolled onto his back so that he stared up into the dizzyingly dense and dark canopy above and came to the second coherent realization since had come aware: He could only answer one of the two questions.
His tail twitched uselessly on the ground next to him as he worked his jaw and finally croaked out, "I don't... know," voice low and crackling like rocks grinding against one another. He coughed, spat out some more persistent grains of dirt, and strained the emptiness of his thoughts for anything, any sign, any sound. The effort left his skull pounding but came with the reward of a single note almost entirely engulfed by the shadows of the Shroud: "Thal... I think my name is Thal."
"Thal," the Duskwight repeated, the sound like a croak from his haggard throat. "Thal," he said again, as he paced towards the man on the ground, the movements slow, the body rickety and hard-edged, almost as dark as the shadows around him. His hermit's linens, hanging thin and tattered over him, were old and gray enough that they might be a funeral shroud robbed from some moldy tomb. "Thal. Twin aspect of Nald and overseer of the underworld."
Dark lips smiled beneath that ragged beard, "Interesting." Spreading his wiry limbs to either side, threads and torn scraps of cloth swaying in the wind beneath, he said, "Thal, aspect of Death. I am Megiddo, acolyte of Oschon the Wanderer. Allow me to be of service. You appear... Hm. Confused."
This place smelled ancient, the man who thought his name Thal thought - so many layers of scents, of rot and green and stone and blood and something unidentifiable, that it left him dizzy and he closed his eyes against it. The hungry shadows of the strange forest around him followed, pressing against his eyelids, waiting.
He shuddered and then, without thought, laughed, his mouth twisting into a crooked grin. The expression felt natural, if strange in this situation. "Understatement of the era," the man muttered, ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth, and then spit out more dirt. He opened his eyes again and dragged a hand up through his hair, wearily shaking out some of the mud clumping it and in his ears. "I don't... where am I? This isn't..." He blinked and let the sentence fade, not entirely sure what he had intended to say. Whatever this place wasn't, he didn't know either.
The Duskwight's own smirk grew into a smile as he heard the man laugh. A good-humored god of death was so rare. Usually the were somber and boring. He walked forward towards the man, his steps small and laborious. "Allow me to be the first to welcome you to the Sixth Umbral Era, which has just begun. You are in the Black Shroud, outside of Gridania. What is left of it. Your coming, Thal aspect of death, is very well-timed. I should not be surprised."
He gestured to the darkness and said, "The Shroud is possessed of vicious spirits, maddened now. They seek to harm you. If you trust me, we can get you out of here in one piece."
"What?" Gridania. The name sounded familiar, but in the same way some distant fact learned off-hand from some overheard conversation might. In short, it did very little to dispel the man's confusion, but he couldn't hold it against his aged savior - because he was pretty sure that spindly figure had been the one to find him. Buried. Alive.
The one who called himself Thal shuddered and finally moved to push himself upright. His muscles groaned a protest, as though the limbs hadn't been used for years. He wondered if they hadn't, because he couldn't remember a time of even existing prior to this moment. This thought confused him further, and he resigned himself to the feeling with another, instinctive laugh. Sitting up now, the unearthed miqo'te stretched his spine forward, hearing and feeling with some satisfaction as a few joints popped. There was a moment after this where he froze, grappling with a confusing fear that his action had somehow snapped every rib in his chest into multiple pieces, but it passed almost immediately.
The man shook himself, clumps of mud crumbling from his body at the gesture, and then squinted up at the thin form. "Seeing as I just crawled out of what I think was my own grave... I'd like to stay in one piece, yeah."
"Then hold still and let me see your face," the ancient Duskwight breathed. He knelt in front of the man and reached out to grab him, one hand behind his head with surprising strength and the other hand brushing mud from the man's cheeks and brow. "If we obscure your features just right, the Shroud will be confused and will not act against you. Spirits can be stupid like that. Do you see my tattoos?"
The man was a shivering form in the darkness. He seemed to be hewn from the shadows themselves, except for the silver eyes that caught even this very slight like. His hair hair lay over his pitted face. If his tattoos were visible, they were just as black and dark as everything else.
The acolyte of the Wanderer painted lines of mud on the face of the aspect of death. "This may just do. You will need a mask in the future, I think."
He almost recoiled from the Duskwight as those hands reached out to take hold of his head, but was stopped both by his own will and want to survive, as well as the impossibly firm grip at the base of his skull. He grimaced as knobby fingers wiped at his face, pushing the mud about in rough patterns. "... Right, I mean, I'd wanna wash one of these days... nights..." did this place even have day? The heaviness of the shadows implied that it did not. "... anyway."
Resting his weight back on his hands as the Duskwight disguised his features, the mud-caked miqo'te listened to the groaning of a wind he couldn't feel and smelled scents he couldn't place. His eyes, pupils dilated as much as they could, could pick out next to nothing in the darkness, only able to make out his apparent savior's form thanks to his movement and proximity. He thought to question why something as simple as smearing dirt on his face would ward off apparently blood thirsty spirits, but then decided that escaping one's own grave was enough of a conundrum. It would be better simply not to worry about it. As long as this stranger was right. But then...
Why would spirits want to kill him? The question came suddenly, and his lack of an answer only added to his confusion. He wanted to ask a great deal of questions of this stranger before him, but he could not think of where to begin.
The old man's hands fell away and he rose like a rickety wisp of smoke, sliding backwards away from the man. "That's good enough. You shouldn't linger in the wild." One limb extended forward, the tin fingers curled back towards him, "Follow me. We must leave the forest before it discerns how I've obscured you."
The shadows of the Shroud consumed the old Duskwight hungrily as he moved off into the trees, where the sounds of the animals had turned confused and agitated. "Follow me," the man repeated, "Quickly. And touch nothing that has life, for it will betray you."