Twisted Koans and Burnt-In Thoughts

[Savas Tigh]

Solo.


Trust is its own dagger, held not in the hand but lodged securely in the back.
- Throgoth Visinore, the Black Seer of Old Corogh

There is a profound sort of wisdom in those words. One that you have to give yourself over to an entirely aberrant moral system in order to understand. All Ordered magi do well to live by it, be they nominally Light or substantially Dark, whether they are Warlocks, Wizards, Witches, diviners of countless shades, even the favored Miraclemen of the Thaynes themselves. Murder is considered a natural cause for the death of a Wizard, even to this day.

Throgoth Visinore, the Black Seer as he was called, was the head of a small clan-empire in Corogh -- one of the dozen or so proto-countries that eventually became Corone, once the Gods stuck their dicks into everything and swirled the whole mess around with the breaking of the Tap. He was, as magi go, a true visionary. The pun is unintentional. He vied with the Forgotten Ones themselves, and was acknowledged as one of the most powerful mortals of his era.

His last words are recorded because his apprentice, Dogan Sarrow, thought that history would get a laugh out of them. If there's one thing I've learned in all my years in this wretchedly green country, it's that the Elves of Raiaera don't pay any attention to history at all. There are literally Elves who won't acknowledge something that happened yesterday unless it fits conveniently into their personal version of history. Part of that is probably arrogance. Most of it could be trauma-induced naivete. Either way, it tastes like crab.

With the war ended and old prejudices now free to reassert themselves, especially in the wake of Salvar's apparent collapse and some sort of invasion by Alerar, the Elves are much, much more trusting than they used to be. In part because they still have not learned the danger of one well-armed human puttering exhaustedly down a road in broad daylight.

The father's name was Egwyn or Aegon or Egon or something like that. Not important. I didn't catch the son's name. But I did catch the son, and that's the important part. The horse has no name I know and fears me rightly, and I'll let it live for now for that reason. There was no wife, else I would be busy doing something better with my time right now.

Accurate as the quote is, I wish I'd had the time to use my dagger. The axe did the trick but it's just not the same. More of a hatchet really.

I did get a neat hat out of it though. Dwarven, of which the father was a bit of a philliac for. Makes the ride that much easier. The wagon helps too.

Savas looked up from his book as the cart rolled over a particularly large rock. The horse made a sound -- neighed? neighed -- and picked up the pace for a few seconds before slowing back down. It was well trained, had been well fed until yesterday, and probably had a few more days in it before it could drop. It was distressed. It was terrified. It was stupid.

Savas reached beside himself and picked up the wand of divination, holding it high and focusing his will into it. He had to stop once or twice to keep the wide-brimmed hat from blowing right off his head. The wagon's movements also threw him a little, but spirit flows are spirit flows and there was a leyline beneath the road. In the years Savas had spent in Raiaera, he had often noticed that the Elven infrastructure seemed to relate directly to the leylines below; as if the Elves had shaped their whole civilization on a framework they couldn't even see directly. That was what they really meant about being in tune with nature. Trees and grass and green shit didn't figure into it at all.

"Keep going north," he mumbled to himself, echoing the spirits that echoed in his black-haired head.

There were clouds that way. Boiling black, ugly clouds; like sin turned to vapor. Even at this distance, he could hear the buzzing of angry bees.

[Savas Tigh]

Most of the pages have mud caked along the edges after this. It's a testament to Elven craftsmanship that only one of the books is so stained.
I was there the day Eluriand fell.

Well. No, I wasn't. I was there the day Eluriand failed. I consorted with a harpy matriarch that day, bargaining blood for blood, life for life. I gambled hard and I lived by dumb luck more than anything else. The harpies ate their fill from the citizens. Right in front of me, I saw bones snapped open. I saw the marrow sucked out, the blood used to slake thirsts, and I helped capture the souls for workings diabolic and worse.

All in all, it was a swell day!

Today, however, was not so swell. I see now why Blueraven was such a heavy journal-writer. It keeps the mind focused, if not necessarily sane. It helps cultivate survival instincts. The whole time I was running for my life, I kept thinking, "I have to write this! I have to write this! I have to write this!" I laughed my beard off, but that's beside the point. And I'm getting ahead of myself.

I made a mistake today, specifically in assuming that the city of Eluriand was still relatively uninhabited. It was the toughest, nastiest, bloodiest nut we ever tried to crack in the entire war. Even when everything but one piece of Istien fell, there were a handful of Bladesingers holding out. I have no idea how, but I was only ever treated to rumors. The last I heard, even the last 'singers were giving in. Given all that, I figured the leftovers of the city would be...if not hospitable to someone like me, then at least useful. Black markets crop up all the time after any war and this one was never any different. Black market, black mage*; sounds spiff, right?

* Dark Wizard/Necromancer.

It didn't work out that way.

I have no idea what happened (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=20971), but the city of Eluriand is completely changed. The dead told me nothing and I was too busy running away to listen if they even tried. All I know is that it looked like some kind of Warlocked citadel had been merged into the fabric of Eluriand, and I didn't get close enough to see more than a few shapes moving through its shadowy spires. Big things. Awful things. Wonderful things. And also dangerous things, as my beloved pile of meat-horse can attest.

I got just close enough for some kind of insects to take notice of me. By the time I actually saw them, it was too bloody late. I got out through the back of the wagon, lost my hat doing it, and then beat a hasty retreat. I looked back just in time to see the wagon reduced to a pile of splinters, burning cloth and flaming sludge. The horse ran wild and was torn down by the bugs, whatever they were, and I swear to all nine Hells and the eternal Nothing Beyond that they were trying to do something to it involving cards. Daemon Tarot, presumably; I've heard a few stories 'round the bonfire about it.

Anyway, I kept running until the sky was blue again. I fell into a ditch by the road and buried myself in mud and filth and then I prayed to anything listening. I heard the buzzing, the beating of fevered wings, and the sizzle of ground burnt by acid...

...and then nothing.

I lived.

All in all, not a very good trade. I will now do something about that. Something nasty. I'll write more later.Savas took a deep, shuddering breath and shut the book and bound it tight. He tucked it into his bag and then drew out the Wand of Divination, carved from the rib of a watchman Savas had murdered at the edge of Lindequalmë.

The next minute or so was spent dragging the rib's point through soft dirt and grass by the road. It was sunset now, but Savas was still blatantly visible and he hadn't done many more foolish things than this. Not that common sense was enough to stop a determined, mud-caked madman with a hatchet to grind. When he was done, there was a circle etched into the ground, encircled by eight tiny arrows. Each one sported a rune at its tip.

Savas stood and tossed the rib into the circle. Then he crossed himself and muttered a quick chant; total nonsensical babble, but the actual words weren't so important as the intent behind them.

"Shau vas, lau röng. Ekgzet sa'roh, vini graz. Nashyn! Shau! Vas!" which translated from babble to intentions as, I command you, come to me! I know your name, stupid ghost. Nashyn! Come! To me!

And sure enough, not five seconds later, Nashyn the Elf materialized in a swirl of light green and blue ectoplasm -- spirit-stuff. The ghost screamed like a banshee, loud enough and unfathomable enough that it would have driven Savas completely insane to hear it unprotected. The circle acted as both a jail and a filter, locking the spirit and its power in place while Nashyn exhausted her rage and lethality within. Savas had learned the hard way that you needed to keep spirits in their place, lest they do to you worse than you could ever do to them. He still remembered being a passenger in his own body to an Elven family for a week.

The spirit became solid and opaque enough to hammer at the circle's borders, which were much too small to be any measure of comfort. She had to press back to one side and bend her arms just to lift them. She finally set her blank white eyes on the Necromancer and bared teeth that looked like polished porcelain one moment, and tarnished daggers the next.

The dead always hunger. The unquiet, ill tended dead even more so.

So too did the living. Savas smiled back at Nashyn, with teeth that were big and blocky and knew well the taste of flesh.

"Nashyn, Nashyn...you lead me astray," he Said. "Yours was the voice that spoke loudest in trying to take me to Eluriand. But your name was on the wind, and on my wand. You almost got me killed."

She pounded at the walls of her invisible cell. Savas watched and waited, then took out his dagger. The banshee recoiled in fear, as if forgetting for just one moment that a mere steel dagger wasn't going to hurt her.

Then Savas began to nick a tiny series of lines into his left hand. Too shallow to burst any major veins there, but still deep enough to draw blood. To draw life. And Nashyn wanted that. She wanted it badly.

"I'm not gonna have that happen again. So I'll make an example out of you, ghost-bitch."

Savas stalked up to the circle, then plowed through the spiritual wall with his left hand. He grabbed the ghost and she should have scattered to the winds as ectoplasmic vapor; an abomination of undeath wrought into the material world through one man's force of will. But the same will that called her up to start with kept her in place now, even as Savas dragged her out of the circle. She screamed. She keened. She wailed. She fought, clawed at him for all her worth, but Savas had a hand on her neck and a thumb holding her jaw shut.

The living are stronger than the dead, for so many reasons that it boggles the mind. The dead normally win out based on a combination of fear and ignorance. The educated living, however wretched that education may be, know how to use this strength at will, and know little or no fear as a consequence. What little they do fear is, more than anything else, justified.

And the Necromancer called Wormaxe knew no fear of the dead Elf called Nashyn.

"This is all your fault," he told her, just to rub it in one last time as she clawed feebly at his arm. Savas pulled her in. Brought his mouth close to her...

...and bit a chunk out of her face. Clear to the ethereal bone.

Then he did it again, taking her left eye. Her eyebrow. Part of her temple, bone and all. The end of an ear, and finally part of her brain. Savas literally ate Nashyn, and she was fully conscious enough in death to feel every single bit of it. As death knows only inevitability and eternity, she experienced every single bite as if it took hours, days, years, centuries; forever. And she keened. She keened and she keened until Savas had chewed her skull wide open, and then she stopped wailing when he pushed his thumb up into her lower jaw and tore apart her ghostly tongue.

And then, like so much garbage, he threw the ghost away. The last vestiges of daylight shattered her -- would leave her broken to pieces for months. Maybe years. All while the ghostly power taken from her mended his hand shut and warped his senses, such that he could see the glowing echoes of all the other spirits lingering by the roads. There were men, there were women, children and animals. There were humans, dwarves, elves, wyrmfolk; all new, since the ancient dead had long since been harvested for whatever they were worth.

And in every single face, far as Wormaxe could see, there was fear.

He grinned to them and waved with his fingers. Then he told them all, "Remember that."

[Savas Tigh]

Make a meal out of Death and you'll never go hungry.
- My personal hero, the Ghosteater

...and you know, Logs, I was going to spend the better part of this entry rambling about how I haven't actually been hungry or thirsty in days, but I feel a history lesson is in order. More to myself than anyone else. Nothing keeps knowledge fresh quite so well as brutish repetition. Especially the good stuff.

Ghosteater was born Bumblefuck Nobody in the township of Who Gives A Damn and

No, no. Must tell the story properly now.

Ghosteater was born Tön're Aullum-Seu. Or he might have been a student of that particular Dark Lord. The old bastard was known for shell games even during his imprisonment. Either way, his existence began about...A Great While Ago. Between a few hundred and a few thousand years. Yes. His actual origins are often disputed. He could've been high-born, low-born, mid-born, unborn (it's possible), reborn... The specifics of his birth and early life aren't very well known. And most of them blend so tightly with Tön're's that it's hard to tell if they're one and the same or not. All that matters is that Ghosteater was a recurring pox on the worlds of every race for decades, and he was a truly magnificent whoreson of a mage.

Ghosteater was exactly what his namesake implied. He ate ghosts. This was initially passed off as a form of exorcism; something to do with the chain of life or whatever. When the established Wizards of the day grew wise to Ghosteater's antics, he passed it off as a harmless ritual. Because who can actually harm a ghost, right? When they finally figured out just how dangerous Ghosteater was, the Wizards tried to kill him. Predictably.

It didn't take.

He ate so many of the dead that his own soul just...added them to itself. He became solid enough to manifest back into the world, then pick up right where he left off like nothing had happened. The Wizards killed him again and he repeated the process. Again. Again. I don't know how many times they killed him, but he just kept coming back. Each time, he grew stronger. More cunning. Better educated, which is a lot more lethal than it sounds when any kind of mage is involved. He finally began to go on the offensive after something like a dozen deaths. The Wizards replied in kind, kicking off a guerilla war that persisted in shadow for years. They stopped him in Raiaera, in Alerar, in the ancient and lost city of Halberd's Point, in nations forgotten by history; even in fabled Kevyraz, they stopped him. But they never actually figured out what it was they were stopping.

Then, on the night that Tön're the Blacksoul was executed, after his eighty years of imprisonment and warfare by proxy, Ghosteater showed them the awful truth. He performed a ritual that has, basically, gone on to form the basis of a half-dozen different myths and legends, bed time stories, and even a holiday in parts of Scara Brae. As the White Lady spoke Tön're's death sentence, Ghosteater gave shape to, and communed with, and finally conquered the primal concept of Hunger through a cataclysmic working called the Harrowing of Night -- Harroween in Scara Brae. Most of the stories I was told of depicted that awful scene as a great black vortex swirling out of the darkened sky, twisting from the Antifirmament itself and writhing down Ghosteater's throat; and with that power, the souls of every living and dead thing within a hundred leagues. Or more.

I like to think that one of two things happened, since the Harrowing happened at the same time as Tön're's death: Either the Dark Lord sacrificed himself to obtain godhood, if he was Ghosteater, or Ghosteater timed the ritual to humiliate and devour his old master. The lore supports either happening.

When Tön're died, Ghosteater rose anew as a Thayne; as a mortal man transcended to true godhood. Perhaps not on even standing with the Elders, those seven endless shadows of the First God, but still mightier than any man since the Sundering of the Tap.

And he went on a godsdamned rampage the likes of which still scars the world, if you know where and how to look.

The stories say that the White Lady Anon lead a rainbow cabal of Wizards to bring down the rogue Thayne, backed and empowered by the Elders themselves. Whether they actually succeeded or not is dependent on whether or not the tale is told to children or adults.

Ghosteater's Harrowing remains one of the most sought after spells in the whole knowledge arcana. It's been imitated, duplicated to a lesser extent, but never truly repeated, and it's"-my life's goal...to...what's a good word for this?" Savas asked.

There wasn't a soul near him to answer.

[Savas Tigh]

There was no log entry for the nineteenth day of Savas' rambling journey to nowhere. Mostly because his appetite came back in earnest and his stomach reminded him that spirits are high in calories and absolutely nonexistent everywhere else. His thirst was such that the man actually chugged river water raw, knowing full well the risk of whatever might have been lurking in it at the time.

When he was done with the initial shock of hunger, Savas went into survival mode. First he tried to find another spirit to chow down on. When that didn't work, he looked for someone on the road to kill and eat. When that didn't work, he cupped a hand to his ear and Listened. Not for the voices of the dead, but for the pulse of the living. And he found it. A lot of it. Savas started to move, walking towards the pulse at a brisk pace. The closer he came, the more clearly he could hear voices; even with whatever distance separated him from them.

"-towards the Deadlands," someone was saying. "There's bound to be something worth the trip there."

"Been sayin'at since we got here, Gray," someone else replied. "All we got t'show for it's a few wagonloads o' junk."

"Junk? Junk? You honestly call three hundred pounds of war-beat metals junk? D'you know what this crap'll go for if we can get it to an auctioneer, let alone a smithy?"

Sighing. Lots of it.

And then one of the lifebeats dropped without the slightest hint of a warning. It was so quick that Savas didn't even realize what had happened until the second voice said simply, "Thanks, mate. Real tosser, that one."

"Indeed. Shall I?"

"Greyhawk the sonofabitch. There's a swamp not too far from here-"

"We would be better off leaving him here, Deacon. The wolves will do the rest."

Deacon grunted his assent. "I'm still takin' 'is clothes. Those's some damn good shoes."

"They won't fit you."

"So?"

Deacon was met with an irritated hnnnn. Silence followed. Savas drew closer to the conversation and then-

Stopped cold.

The Necromancer dropped flat into the grass, drawing out his hatchet with one hand and flailing for a bone wand with the other. He traced a quick ward in front of him, for all the good it might do. Tensing and suddenly wishing that he'd had the foresight to take that dead elf's armor, Savas lay still as a corpse and waited.

Deacon's voice was gone.

But, more importantly, there was someone Singing in his absence.

[Savas Tigh]

Greyhawking is an old Salvic term, dating back to the plunder of the Greyhawk Manse and the formation of the League. Wandering bands of self-styled 'adventurers,' many of them the forerunners of guilds and companies still lingering to this day, would raid the Manse's ruins for treasure and pride. It was out in the middle of one of the most climatically diverse parts of the region, with green summers and springs, dead autumns, and hellish winters. The Greyhawk family was renouned back then, in part because they were rumored to have cut all kinds of deals with everything from Thaynes to demons to Nethering blights and whatever else you can think of.

Warlocks, that bunch. Foul, awful Warlocks. And when they were gone, the whole family vanishing in one night for reasons still unknown to this day, they left behind a network of tunnels, dungeons, catacombs, tombs, and who knows what else beneath their family grounds. Word got out. The place was raided, first by the Witchhunters of Jeremiah Evernorth, then by others. There was a very high mortality rate involved, and somehow...the traps always reset. There was always something new to find. Always something worth the risk.

And with the harsh reality of the 'adventuring industry,' people who died invariably wound up being stripped naked and chucked into the Manse's swamp. If they were even given that. It's a properly heroic way to be buried, I think, but then I'm not heroic.

I found two Men lying Greyhawked in a field between dead Eluriand and Tilgonar. The field in question used to be a forest, but the trees are gone and the ground ripe with purified soil and surging grass higher than my waist. There was a road nearby, blood spilled just about twenty minutes before I arrived judging from the smell of death. The second body was ripe for lunch. I made a few cuts off it to hold me over until I get to Tilgonar, assuming it's been repopulated by now. Both had been beheaded. Smooth cuts, right between the vertebrae. If I had time enough and the help to do it under cover, I'd raise them as minions. The deaths are fresh, the souls linger close by. It wouldn't be hard at all. And I could use the kind of help that won't tire.

Better I not. In part because I don't know if I could. I can smell -- I can taste the lingering hints of power in the sword that took these Men. And the lyrics of the song I heard earlier remind me of a Turlin funeral rite I heard once, right before we tried to desecrate a prisoner only to find his body wouldn't rise.

The goods that the dead men spoke of are long gone. I saw tracks on the road. My best guess is that a Bladesinger did this, though I can't even begin to guess why. In all the months and years we spent fighting them, I never saw one of those clods sink down to a level where we could actually understand how they think and reason. It was always Honor Honor Honor, Song Song Song. This...is blatant theft and murder. And even if I can figure out plenty of good reasons for it, I've seen them do enough crazy things to know they won't be the reasons this cretin is using.

On my guard. Might be best to bypass Tilgonar entirely. Can't seem to reach any of the local spirits now, which is odd considering how easy it usually is even after asserting dominance over them.When he was done writing, Savas put the log down and helped himself to a strip of jerky. It was like chewing pig-fat and leather. He looked himself over then, taking stock of all the options his clothing and equipment presented.

Steel sword, knife, hatchet. Elven tunic, clothes. New shoes, oddly enough. Whoever had Greyhawked Deacon left his shoes on. Savas still wasn't sure why, but there didn't seem to be any magic in them and he wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. He took another bite of jerky and looked on down the road, where a distant light flickered atop a far away hill.

[Savas Tigh]

Only the twisted, tarnished, tainted questions lead to solid truths.
- Jeremiah Evernorth, Scourge of the Salvic Witchbreed, Father of the Frontier, all-around moralistic jack-off with the occasional good point.

My long-term goal is long-term. It'll be long enough that I can basically screw around trying to figure out how to achieve it. Which is good because Wizards tend to live a very long time, provided none of their enemies gets lucky. Necromancers even more so, because our lot tends to plan for the day after one of our enemies gets lucky. In the meantime, I have short-term goals. Which are sort of like sexual fetishes, except more pragmatic and a little more obsessive and useful.

So probably not like sexual fetishes at all.

In any case: ...

I'm pursuing someone. Yay! ! !

I'm bored, actually, so this is as good a reason as anything. Plus self-preservation might be a factor here. My target has a horse-drawn wagon by the look of tracks in and near the road. Judging by the damage to the bodies and utterances of Deacon and Graydon's souls, I'm dealing with some kind of Bladesinger. Turlin-focused. It took me a long while to figure that out; Deacon and Graydon couldn't be compelled so I had to basically pinky-swear to avenge their deaths. Haven't seen that since Lord Krull flogged my entire coven for being unable to raise more than three quarters of the people who fell at Eluriand, but I've heard the stories.

Turlin is a true bane of my arts. I can't do much to it in any sense. A body stricken by Turlin-blessed weaponry is useless as anything but food: the bones won't even hold a workable inscription, blood can't be used for ritual purposes, corpses can't be raised, spirits can't be compelled. Not easily at any rate. A master of the Dead Weaves can deal with Turlin as easily as anything else, but one of my skill...

Furthermore, my opponent is one of two things. Either this is someone very, very, very skilled...or very, very, very inexperienced. They left behind used kabob sticks and an intact, if extinguished, campfire. I can see the impression left on the grass by the elf's sleeping mat. If it is an elf. I heard rumors that the Bladesingers were accepting humans and halfies by mid-war. Since the elves are known for their idiotic sense of loyalty, honesty and integrity, I may be up against a human. Or a halfy. Full-bloods probably wouldn't hack down allies, even in banditry.

I have to wonder just what exactly drove a person of such a noble profession to such a vindictive lifestyle. The Bladesingers are almost as honor-obsessed and broom-in-ass uptight as some of the stories I've heard about Akashiman warriors. To see one Greyhawking bandits in the fields of Raiaera...

Interesting.

Whoever it is, I think I'll eat their eyes. Starting to get a real taste for this cannibalism thing.For now, he contented himself with more jerky and a night spent lying in a dry ditch with grass as his pillow and blanket. His target was moving at a liesurely pace towards the northeast. Savas suddenly felt that he was in no hurry at all, and Tilgonar, if it still stood, could wait a while yet.

Far, far ahead of his little spot by the road, there was a fire flickering into the night. Savas closed his eyes...

...and heard music.

[Savas Tigh]

Savas took notes. He studied his prey the way an apprentice studies a poem, looking for meaning to every action, every sound and spoken thought.


He camps regularly, with fire-making equipment and supplies to spare. The fires burn for two hours and are reignited once per night. The fires are always set in the same circular pattern. Its boundaries are set into the ground using small rocks or a circle dragged in using what I think is a fingertip. The circles are close to perfect. The fires have a ward of some kind. Pyromancer? I'm sensing after-magicks either way, and the local dead aren't being very helpful about it. The wagon has six wheels. Common Raiaeran design trait, especially with war reminding everyone how useful redundancy is. It's heavy enough to put grooves in hard-packed dirt. The animal pulling it is one horse, of a Raiaeran breed, which explains why he's travelling so slowly that I can keep up. Turlin magic pisses me off. He's singing songs nightly. Lullabies, specifically. Lullabies weaponized into exorcisms and purifications, putting the locals back to rest. Further investigation shows that he relives himself semi-rarely. Half-elf? Elf? Judging by his pace and some of the garbage I've found at camps, he's not wanting for food and water. He's probably headed for Tilgonar. That's the only place this road leads, and the wagon isn't suited for going too far off the beaten paths. He either knows I'm watching or he's just an idiot.Savas finished that last word with a flourish, then drew his wand and fired an entropy blast over his shoulder.

He tagged a praerie dog-seeming thing native to the fields of Raiaera.

Then he closed his logs, tucked the books away in his travel pack, and spent the next hour hacking through the grass to make sure that he wasn't being watched or set up for an ambush. The Necromancer didn't sleep again until he'd set up a thorough ward to hide behind. He was starting to suspect the Bladesinger was onto him.

[Savas Tigh]

Paranoia stayed his pen for three days. Savas rolled the praerie dog's bones before deciding to continue his pursuit. It took him until nightfall to write anything else, and only after a few precautions had been taken.
It is everywhere.
- Tön're Aullum-Seu to the Red Mage Arcae Vas. According to witnesses, he was smiling when he said it.

The whole reason the Dark Lord smiled, according to most of my coven and my first mentor, old Dead-Eye, was because he never deigned reveal what It was. Arcae Vas reportedly went insane with paranoia, dedicating his life to a mastery of detection spells and wards of security, entrapment, defense and isolation. He died of senility, insanity, and self-induced asphyxiation when one of his workings backfired and cut him off from oxygen. This was supposedly a week before Tön're's execution too.

That magnificent bastard.

At any rate, there's a moral here: Paranoia. It can be useful-Savas actually included the dash as he stopped writing and looked up. The first detection spell had gone off without a hitch and so did the second one. The decoy had worked exactly as planned, if it had even been noticed, and that just left the entrapment spell.

Ectoplasm whisped into view behind and to the right of him, further from the road. It was bright green and ghostly, and quickly broken with the swing of an honest-to-gods Fluteblade -- one that had an actual tune and played music depending on how it was wielded. Its destruction of the barrier did several things, and Savas was counting on every single one of them.

First, it slowed his attacker down enough for the Necromancer to get himself up off the ground and make a quick dive for the road, wand already in hand. Second, the barrier's formation and demolition served to stir up the Antifirmament, which made it much easier for step three: Savas' would-be assassin lunged at him and then slowed to an insane halt.

Ectoplasm was barely visible all around him, but this time it was in the shape and consistency of a gelatinous cube. Ten feet by ten feet of nothing but metaphysical slime with a Bladesinger at its core.

"...or it can be deadly," Savas finally said aloud as he snapped his book shut and stuffed it into his bag. It took him a few seconds before realizing it would've been cooler to say, "And it can be deadly. My bad." He drew out the sword he'd taken from Kinolan, the guardsman at Lindequalmë, then pointed both it and his wand at the Bladesinger. He smiled with teeth and added, "Nice try though."

The Bladesinger glared at him. In the low light of a nearby campfire and the poor glow of his cube trick, it took the Dark Wizard a few seconds more to realize, "...you're a woman?"

The reply to which was a barely muffled but increasingly ear-splitting wail, something straight out of a small church chorus rather than an opera house. Turlin notes rippled and writhed through every single second of it, casting a golden light through the thin linen mask she wore over her mouth and nose. Savas found his eyes and ears both hurt to be exposed to that power, but it wasn't enough to distract him.

The Bladesinger had a mannish figure. Her voice was deep and booming, her skin the dark brown of either a Fallien or Kebiran. Her face was mostly concealed by a combination of a handkerchief mask and a hood sewn to the vest she was wearing. Her eyes were brown, and her clothes were dark and plain. The only outstanding features about her were the sword and the strip of blue fabric wrapped tightly around her right arm.

In an instant, Savas had a sinking feeling about who he was up against and just what that meant. His suspicions were realized when the Bladesinger succeeded in shattering his cube-prison.

[Savas Tigh]

The Bladesinger struck without preamble. There were no witty comments, calls of challenge, not even a spare insult or introduction. She sang as she attacked, although Savas had a feeling that she was making the song up as she went.

Language arts were difficult even by mage standards.

He fell back without one hint of counteroffense. Her sword clanged violently against his, and the metals reacted with a sound that was like a finely tuned triangle or chime being rung. The Necromancer ran out onto the road and finally gained enough distance to fire off a few entropy spells at her; nameless evocations carved into the arm bone of the same elf who'd died giving him his sword and clothes.

The Bladesinger dodged three spells in rapid succession, then split the fourth and charged in through the gap. Savas actually fired a wild shot to her right side, expecting her to continue dodging. Her sword was less than six inches from his chest when he realized the error, and then reflexes carried him clear of being stabbed through the heart. This close in, Savas had the advantage of size and positioning. He tried to bowl her over with one of his arms, but the Bladesinger ducked past him and came up with a short spinning jump and a swing of her blade. Had he not been running away at the time, his back would've been cleaved open two inches deep.

Savas whipped around and fired off another blast from his bone wand. The Bladesinger hit a particular high note and the spell literally rebounded from the air about three feet in front of her. The Necromancer ducked and almost lost one of his ears in the process. He went rolling into the ditch by the road, scrambled up out of it and took off into the grass with the Bladesinger at his heels.

[Savas Tigh]

Two days later, hiding beneath the stump of a dead tree about a mile south of Tilgonar, Savas finally felt alone enough to try writing again.
Any battle you can run away from.
- Deño Deacon, Warlock Violencia, who lived to the unheralded age of 333 years. Proud owner of the title, The Runner in Arrow's Shadow.

Right now, I feel quite a bit like that.

My opponent's name is still largely unknown. For the time being, I'm just going to call her Blueraven. Specifically because she wears a strip of blue cloth on her upper right arm and wields a Turlin-blessed Fluteblade with skills that are obviously self-taught. Her magic is music-based, but she's clearly never had much in the way of practical instruction; it's all improvised, and probably strongly influenced by that weapon she's carrying. I have to wonder if she even knows it.

Chances are good that she's one of the survivors of the Blueraven Brigade, my most recent tutor's former ad hoc militia movement. I know there were a handful of amateur mages involved in it, most of them apprenticed directly to old school Blademasters. From the rumors I heard, from the living and the dead and the whatever, all of them were Men. Rumors may well be wrong. She has a very manly figure -- broad shoulders, her clothes make it hard to see if her waist has any curves and her breasts might be small or bound, but her arms are burlier than mine. I don't know if she has a woman's hips or not. Her singing Voice is deep and scrambled enough to pass for a man's, but that's not really saying much.

I determined her gender because of her eyes, by the way. The lashes and the make-up? gave it away. They may be tattoos, if she's of Fallien or Kebiran extraction. I've heard that women in some cultures in both lands do that kind of thing to cope with the sun. Her skin is dark enough that it might be more for ritual than practical benefit. Either way.

The sword is of particular interest to me because it is a Turlin artifact. It loosely resembles a Fallien scimitar or Akashiman katana, widest near the tip and curving only slightly. The spine of the blade is hollow, with holes in it for air's sake. The hilt is literally in the likeness of a flute. It has no guard, just a tiny protrusion on both front and back to keep the hand from slipping. More important are the magicks embedded in it: Turlin is musical anti-magic, tuned specifically to counter talents like mine.

Which is why we made it a point of killing and desecrating every single Turlin we could find during the war.

Admittedly, I have some training in genuine shadow magic, but Turlin is light incarnated in song and my skills there have atrophied due to my experiences during the Corpse War. I could try fire, but I channel that through ectomancy. Blueraven's Sorcerous Name is spread out and her birthname is unknown to me, which means I can't just curse her. She's a better swordsman and a superior athlete; I only evaded her through a mixture of adrenaline-fuelled desperation and better exploitation of the terrain. Which isn't saying much since she's something of an acrobat.

And since she was able to detect me at enough of a distance to ambush me after days of surveillance...It bears mention that Savas had warded the ground hundreds of feet around the tree, in multiple layers, and with multiple hidden alerts; that he was underground in the hollow beneath a petrified tree's thick stump and roots, with only one way in or out that was easily guarded and already mostly blocked...

But he still scooted up to the entrance and made sure the rock was sturdy, and the flow of air uninterrupted. He still made sure he had at least a dozen inches of empty space between himself and the nearest surface. When he felt remotely secure, he went back to his Log -- lit by a tiny green flicker of ectoplasm anchored to a dead elf's knucklebone -- and continued writing.
I must assume she has better skills as a tracker and ambusher than I do. I was probably lucky to snag her when I did and probably won't get the chance to do so again.

Not without a lot of effort, anyway.

Something Blueraven told me -- the Wizard Blueraven, not the Bladesinger -- back when we were rotting in Eldarin cells in the village of Hidden Leaf...

Think ahead. Think around. Think under, over, beside. Think always. Whatever you do, don't stop thinking. Not even when some pompous zen monk tells you to clear your mind. Evil or not, Named or not, you are a Wizard, Bonekeeper. Train your mind before anything else. When you can think six-dimensional backflips and know the lives of your opponent's grandparents before their fathers were born, you are unstoppable.

Admittedly, Blueraven had/has ever intention of trying to kill me next time we run into each other. But he did give good advice, even if it sounded a bit melodramatic and secondhand. I'd love to pick his own mentor's brain, whoever that is.

All the same, one Blueraven's mantra must be the key to defeating another: Never stop thinking.

[Savas Tigh]

The plan was relatively simple. So was the spell for that matter. Getting reagents was the hard part.

The Corpse War had completely decimated Raiaera's ecosystem. Where once there would have been whole herds of just about anything fluffy, edible, and remotely majestic, now you'd be lucky to find a feral cat. Migratory species had been hit less than most, but most of them were in other parts of the country. Rats and similarly sized pests had made a comeback, but it would be decades before the region's wildlife fully recovered from the blow Xem'zund's legions had dealt it.

Savas viewed this with mixed feelings. On the one hand, he was proud to have contributed to such a large-scale impact on an entire region. On the other, he relied on bonecarving and corpse-raiding for most of his spellcasting. Including a fair portion of the thaumaturgy that dominated his talents as a mage.

He spent the better part of a day chasing after squirrels. Then he found a meerkat and chased it for an hour. Then he dug up a mole and bit the damn thing's head off.

After he flayed the meat from the bones, Savas set about cooking dinner and putting together a basic scrying spell. It wasn't much, but it was easy and 'soft' enough that the Bladesinger probably wouldn't notice it. The simplicity of the spell allowed it to serve several functions, albeit none of them very well, and allowed Savas to anchor it with a minimum of effort.

He started by taking the dagger and heating it in the same fire he cooked the mole's meat with. Then he slowly but surely etched a few ugly little runes into the mole's (barely chewed) skull and set it on the ground. He used the knife to draw a circle around it, then heated the blade and started notching the other bones as best he could with its tip. One by one, he went through twelve bones this way. Every single one got its own little circle, until all were laid out around him. He then drew them together, one line for each, and finally heated the knife one last time.

Then he pricked his finger.

With boiling steel.

If Savas weren't used to this sort of thing, he would have screamed like a little girl. He still grit his teeth and winced as the blood began to ooze out, and then the wound went numb. One drop for each of the lesser bones, and then a drop for each of the mole's eye sockets and each rune he had carved into it. Savas set the knife down and waited exactly thirteen seconds before he Spoke again.

"Dead of the Night,
Slain by our shared hand,
Grant me third sight,
Through your own land."

He wasn't able to pronounce the extra quotation marks, the way a more veteran Wizard might, but that was beside the point. Savas took a deep breath and focused on his own forehead, imagining a third eye there. He focused and focused, and repeated the chant a few times for emphasis. Through his closed eyelids, he saw the shapes of vengeful dead elves and men hammering at his circle -- at his mortal senses -- and he fought off a smile at their expense.

Thunder struck in the distance. A storm was coming.

Wormaxe felt his third eye open into the Antifirmament, and the shock of Sight layered upon sight was enough to make his blood run cold. It showed in the veins on his forehead, even if there was no physical eye to match. He took time to catch his breath and adjust to the changes; Wormaxe had been a henchman to enough arcane rituals to know the value of taking it slow and steady.

When his breathing was steady, and his Sight was clear, Wormaxe dared to Speak again. He uttered a Name.

"Blueraven."

What followed was a brutal rush of faces, of names, of lives. With his Sight, Wormaxe viewed more than a hundred men and a few women. He saw scrappy soldiers struggling to survive. He saw a bard trying to play one-handed on the street of a city in Corone; a man-at-arms duelling for his life in Akashima; a woman screaming in the throes of birth in Alerar. There was a war-scarred farmer turned to sowing seeds in Salvic tavern wenches, while his long lost brother drifted in the Kebiran sea as the price of piracy. There was a man returned to his homestead to find his family long gone, and another drinking hard in a Dwarven bar, and a bona fide Bladesinger weeping bitterly at the end of Eluriand. Here and there and everywhere, the Blueraven Company was scattered and their ranks thinned by the horrors and savagery of war.

Even as the facts hit him so hard that his real eyes and forehead began to bruise and bleed, Wormaxe had to take a moment and admire his most recent teacher's cunning. It never occurred to any sane mage to spread their Sorcerous Names out among other people. Doing such a thing was like a cession of power, of identity, of purpose. It had probably put Blueraven -- put Caden -- through such turmoil that Wormaxe could scarcely imagine himself doing it. But the act had also saved that Wizard's life dozens of times.

Most of the Brigade didn't die in combat. People like Wormaxe had cursed them to death trying to hit the Wizard whose Name they shared.

And it was an almost bitter irony that Savas actually saw his ersatz master scattered throughout the visions. Every single one of the former militiamen had stark memories of the moment when he gave them his identity. Once, and only once, Wormaxe saw the actual Wizard himself. Caden Law was walking the long way towards...Anebrilith? Savas made a mental note to avoid that town for a while.

And at long last, he found her. Savas felt blood gushing from a phantom wound to his nose as he slammed into the vision of the Bladesinger. The impact was so hard that she slapped the side of her neck on reflex, mistaking it for a bug bite. For a fraction of a second, the woman began to hum and Wormaxe felt his Sight go blurry and gold-tinged. She stopped and came back into view almost immediately. He saw a lot of facts about her then, and he saw her without her mask and hood as well.

She wasn't young. She was probably close to his own age, maybe twenty-four or so. She was a half-elf with a Fallien mother who had given her most of her looks. Her hair was braided in beads, all of them red and gold and jade. Her father, a Raiaeran artisan, had given her his ears, the shape of his eyes and mouth. From neither, she had a body built for war. Through the Sight, Wormaxe could see that the Corpse War had put a lot of that muscle on her, but she'd been a farmer before that. She had a piercing in her tongue that helped to channel her Voice for Bladesinging, and she had picked up the Turlin sword during the Siege of Eluriand. She managed to get out with the rest of the retreat, and Wormaxe saw her learning the Turlin arts themselves through osmosis, trial and error.

It was almost amusing. The elves disliked her more for her skincolor than her bastard parentage or her acquisition of a sword. Her idealism lingered only because she'd found someone. Who was, coincidentally, gone now. She kept fighting. Wormaxe skipped through her exploits in the war, trying to find her actual birthname and never managing to do it. He saw it in flashes too short to read, and in close-ups too large to catch more than a stray letter or two at a time. The spirits enabling his spell weren't very kind about that.

She wasn't heading to Tilgonar. The Bladesinger was going to Tembrethnil.

Blueraven grimaced. Wormaxe steadied himself as he opened his eyes once more, trying to layer his perceptions through the real world and the Antifirmament. He looked to his knife and then lifted not his hand, but the spirit of it. He didn't grab the knife. Wormaxe grabbed the idea of the knife.

And then he carefully drew the idea of a circle onto the back of the mole skull, carefully locking his Sight onto Blueraven as he did so.

When he was done, he drew his consciousness back through the lands. Dirt and bugs, roots and bones, and a whole lot more all swept through his vision from behind. He Saw all the way back to the inside of his own forehead, and then he slammed the third eye shut so hard that a little red line formed in the approximate location of a lid. Wormaxe carefully broke the circles in the order they had been drawn, then broke the lines connecting them in reverse. He pocketed the mole skull and left the rest where they lay.

His face was caked with blood and his nose was encrusted with the stuff.

But he could feel Blueraven now.

"Step one, complete," Savas said aloud in lieu of writing it.

Then he went over to his campfire and helped himself to a badly burnt pile of meat.

"Simple and easy my ass," spoke the Necromancer.

[Savas Tigh]

Magic in motion, stays in motion.
- Lord Ashaiac Nyzen, the Arch-Lich of Sunken Tolmerain, Imperator Necrotic of Cradled Rao.

I am going to try and overtake Blueraven over the next few days. It will mean bypassing Tilgonar completely, but I'm going to need an ambush scenario if I want to have any chance of besting her. Or worsting her for that matter.

For personal reference, musclebitch keeps them bound.

Tembrethnil is, to the best of my knowledge, still a scourged ruin of its former self. The Deadlands were viciously scarred during a battle that cost us two Death Lords, multiple armies, and Dread knows how much in the way of supplies. With how thinly stretched Raiaera's military forces are, it is a place mostly left unguarded.

Lots of dead bodies there.

This could actually work to my advantage after all.

Must be going now. I'll eat on the way.And with that, he closed the logbook one last time and began to trace a circle in a dirt clearing. Wormaxe cleared his throat, then called out to the first spirit he could think of.

[Savas Tigh]

The only thing Savas had time to do now was write a quick quote.
Experts are useless. All they know are the limits of the possible.
Bring me beginners, who haven't yet been tainted with knowledge of their limits.
- Attributed to the Artisan, a Warlock enchanter whose true names have been lost to history, though his works...
Savas stopped there and looked around.

The Deadlands of Scourged Tembrethnil were...dead. Well and truly dead. The only leylines still coursing beneath this ground were all deep things, frail and thin and nothing at all like the huge rivers of power that had fuelled its previous growth. The forest surrounding it was warped, deranged like a war-veteran who'd been amputated and left to fend for himself. Passing through Tembrethnil to reach its dead heart was a lot like going through a newborn Lindequalmë; a place where the woods hadn't experienced several thousands years to let history, myth, and legend pile up and deform under their own weight.

Savas wasn't worried about that. Wizard Blueraven's necro-nuke had torn the life out of the Deadlands, but no-one had come along to do anything with the souls. Power was still there, you just had to know where to look.

First things first though: "Bodies. I need bodies."

And he found them. Months old corpses alongside ancient tangles of leathery meat and bone; the result of fresh zombies mingling with older ones. None of the animated trees had survived, but the bodies had been left to fall where they may and lie there until the end of the Corpse War. Savas hadn't been so lucky since the last time he stumbled across a mass grave.

It was like a gold mine, except deader.

Using his rib wand, Savas raised five skeletal minions from the grey dirt and went to work. The first task was setting down a control zone. Savas dedicated his initial minions to just that by having them circle the entire prospective battlefield. Two dragged war-wrecked swords in their wake, and three more worked in concert behind them to scrawl runes into the ground. Once the boundaries were set, the first two went about the process of hiding them while Savas used the other three to construct a control array.

It was complex work. Without his recent tutelage under Blueraven and his experiences in Lindequalmë. Savas would've been totally incapable of it. The heart of the array was a petrified stump of wood, formerly belonging to a dead and rotted Walking Tree. Savas used his minions to obliterate the old spells on the stump, carving off all the bark and several layers of outer wood in the process, then he went at it using a half-broken warhammer and a knife. While he did this, the three skeletons dragged bodies into the boundaries, throwing them here and there, scattering them about, intentionally breaking parts and pieces; making it look like they'd fallen during the war.

Once he was done carving, Savas and his minions began stacking bones onto the stump like layers of armor. Ribs and vertebrae, hand bones and joint bones for filler material; a casing for the wood. The flat top of the stump was covered ritually in skulls and teeth, and Savas patiently carved himself a new bone wand for the specific purpose of channeling through it.

When he was done with all that, Savas had his first batch of minions seek out a good weapon for him. They came back with a battle-axe. It was an ancient Durklan number, steel and below average at best, but it was short-handled and functional. Savas could use it in a heartbeat.

He left the minions to their work while finishing his log entry.


...his works endure in the nightmares of the world.

The day I raise a Serevenant is the day I blight this world. It won't be today. But it doesn't need to be.

[Savas Tigh]

In the Deadlands of Raiaera, where the forest of Tembrethnil once anchored its mighty heart, there lay a single shredded page from a leather-bound logbook. Blood cakes along one edge, and another is so neatly cut that you could concievably reassemble it with the other half and not see the split. The letters are faded, the paper is disintegrating.

But if you look closely enough, there's a quote still written on the paper in fading ink.


Kôju. Wéi. Fân.A body lay nearby.

[Savas Tigh]

Blueraven arrived as the sun set. She stopped at the edge of the Deadlands, where the warped wood gave way to unhallowed gray ground, and instinctively drew her sword. Turlin notes hummed and chimed out from its blade, magic shaping each sound accordingly. Light followed, glowing gold for a few precious feet in every direction. Behind her was a wagon full of swords, armor, spears, arrows, and other such weapons; enough raw metal to outfit an urban militia, give or take a bit of maintenance. It was drawn by a horse that looked more and more skittish for every step it took out of the woods.

She waited, muscles tensing visibly with the light of Turlin song to give them definition.

When nothing happened, she crept forward by a few steps, and the horse followed after her. Minutes ticked by and still nothing happened. The animal began to relax, but the Bladesinger didn't. It was just as well that she kept her guard up.

Five minutes into her approach, Savas Tigh triggered a spell carved into a handful of teeth laid in a circle around him. In an instant, the teeth served as anchors for tiny pillars of charnel green light; dark in color but visceral in their intensity. The pillars lit the Necromancer up as if he were drawing power for a spell, and swirled around him when he drew up his axe.

"Let's dance, Muscles!" he Called, his Voice booming in the dark of a newborn night.

Blueraven replied by singing something obscene at him that manifested as a fireball trailed by golden musical notes. Savas triggered his second circle of tooth-spells and the Turlin magic obliterated an unseen barrier. The visual effect was that it smashed into thin air and dispersed in a tall ring of golden fire, stopped short of its mark by no fewer than six feet. Savas grinned, but it didn't reach his eyes: that was his first gamble. He hadn't the time or the teeth to repeat it.

Blueraven lurched forward, as if to run, and an instant later her song and light wavered. A darkened spear glanced off the edges of her Bladesinger magicks and took the horse straight in the collar. It kept going until it passed out of the beast's hind end and embedded itself to the hilt in the wagon. It then unceremoniously caught fire.

That was gamble number two, failed because Blueraven moved and Savas had underestimated her magic. Judging by the look on her mostly masked face, she had been completely unprepared for it. Judging by the stumbling recovery she made, Blueraven very well could have died just now and she knew it. Savas wasn't getting that chance twice. He just hoped he didn't need to get it twice.

Blueraven charged at him, holding her sword like a seasoned veteran instead of a trained fighter. The difference was down to teaching: she had learned most of what she knew through hard-fought experience and bitter trial and error. Minimal instructions. Not all that different, in theory, from the man trying to kill her.

She went across the threshold and Savas felt the boundaries hold. Blueraven hadn't noticed them. Her sixth senses weren't that developed yet. Hope flickered through the black mage's eyes as he turned and ran for his life, drawing out a bone wand as he went.

Skeletons, just five of them, lunged by their master and attacked Blueraven with spears and a pair of daggers -- one of them had been behind the horse's death. Turlin magic weakened the bonds that held the bones together, but Savas had learned a lot about countering anti-magic techniques during the war. Carve a spell deep enough and it would endure just about anything, provided the material framework wasn't destroyed outright. Blueraven was stunned that the skeletons didn't fall apart outright, and it showed. She hacked through three spears and dodged the fourth, then spent precious seconds vying with daggers for her life before scoring a direct hit on the dagger-skeleton and cleaving it in half down the middle. Necromancy flooded the air around her for a few moments and Blueraven staggered, her light dimming as the remaining skeletons rallied.

Her recovery was fast, brutal, and effective. She yanked one in by its blunted staff, stabbed it through the head and hit a high note on her singing. The skeleton collapsed to dust and shrapnel, and the power animating it blew away from her and took out a third skeleton in the process. The other two lasted longer, but not by much. Blueraven wasn't a full-fledged Bladesinger proper, but she had Turlin spellsong and a war veteran's experience.

Savas threw away the rib, which promptly snapped in half as the last skeleton dropped. Blueraven chased after him, singing an awful promise of justice with her every stride. She was faster. She was more athletic. She was just plain better than he was. The only thing she didn't have was an army.

Which, incidentally, was one of the only things that Savas did have.

He reached the control array at the heart of his boundary zone, threw himself at its base and willed the appropriate wand into his hand. It was the only decent evocation that the Wizard Blueraven had been able to teach him. Savas held the wand aloft for a moment, then aimed it at the Bladesinger Blueraven's face. She was just thirty feet away when he shouted, his Voice crackling as the words came tumbling out.

"To me, my army!"

Blueraven lunged in, sword swinging. Too late, Savas now realized. Too late.

[Savas Tigh]

In a perfect world, the bad guy always dies in the moment when he realizes that his plan isn't going to work. Maybe he claws futily for that one last breath, maybe he struggles desperately just to stay alive; it's useless and nobody will mourn his passing except for that one idiot who has the temerity to respect his foes as worthy adversaries. Except that men like Savas weren't really worthy of anything. He was, in many respects, a total failure and a complete monster besides. He was alive because he'd eaten people, in both the flesh and the soul. He was scum.

But the world of Althanas is imperfect, and Savas was something inherently worse than a bad guy.

He was a Wizard.

"No!" Wormaxe cried, his Voice momentarily shutting out Blueraven's. The Turlin light sputtered as the necromancer threw himself forward and blocked her sword arm with his axe wrist. Blueraven was a better hand-to-hand combat, and she was stronger to boot: Savas blocked the sword but she swept him up somehow and leveraged the man over her hip. One good threw and Savas didn't hit dirt for ten feet, landing flat on his back with all the grace and skill of a serial murdering self-taught academic.

He was still wheezing for are when Blueraven came at him again. Survival instincts alone pushed the necromancer out of the way, and he took a kick to the face as he was standing up. Blood gushed out of his nose in an instant, but Savas focused through the pain even as the treads of Blueraven's boot ground across his face.

His teeth rattled. His skeleton jarred from the neck down to the knees and back up again. He did not give one inch until the force of Blueraven's kick was spent. Almost instantly, broken nose leading the way, Savas pushed back and started Screaming the Bladesinger down. It was the crudest, ugliest counter he could've come up with -- but it worked.

A tone deaf heckler in the audience will ruin any show. The same is true in magic.

Blueraven staggered back and struggled to recover as Wormaxe starting swinging at her. He had none of her skill with a weapon, but axes were the improv weapon of choice for any war for a damned good reason: skill with one is optional at best. Just keep swinging.

Eventually, the Bladesinger jumped back and hit the ground rolling away from him. Savas thrust the bone wand towards his control array and Spoke again. "RISE!"

Blueraven charged at him once again-

And tripped immediately as a rotted leather-skinned hand shot out of the ground and took hold of her ankle. Faceplant into the dirt, and another hand grappled the back of her head, forcing her down so that her voice -- and her magic -- was muffled. She struggled. It was one hell of an effort. But the light went out of her sword in short order, and the army finally rose as it dimmed. She kept flailing though, kept fighting. With her free leg, she kicked the first hand so hard the bones shattered and the skin ripped and dust spilled out of the stumps. She pulled her body up and flipped free, coming to her feet with a raging gasp.

Before she could start singing, she was surrounded. Sabers swung, and warhammers too, and an axe as well. Savas hung back, watching the show.

"Kôju wéi fân!" the Wizard laughed out loud in a bastard dialect of a dead tongue. "NEVER! STOP! THINKING!"

Blueraven ignored him. She fought like all Hell was nipping at her heels. She dodged blades from every side, sometimes all at once. She parried whole swordsmen, not just their weapons, and used them as shields against their fellows. She found her rhythm and sang anew, slowing the horde of some forty zombies and even destroying one or two just by proxy. The light she produced was blinding, gold and hints of blue. The song she sang was all war and hope and the conflict between them. At its crescendo, she would destroy every soldier that Savas could raise.

He solved the problem in a way that would have done her namesake proud. First, he threw the control bone-rod at her. Without even looking, Blueraven sliced it in two. Necromancy erupted at point blank, blinding her and blowing out every zombie and undead in sight the same way strong winds blow out feeble candles. Standing corpses collapsed to dust instantly, and bony skeletons faired no better.

Wormaxe charged in under the cover of deathlight, bending as low as a man could while running near full-speed. Axe clutched tightly in both hands, he lunged at her with one mighty swing. Even half-blinded, Blueraven saw him coming.

It came down to a single stroke battle. Savas tumbled past her with a morbid scream as blood went gushing from the side of his lower torso, along with the entire upper half of a log book. The pages tore free in mid-air, some of them soaked with blood and others merely stained by it at the edges. Wormaxe continued on for a half-dozen paces, then collapsed face-down in the dirt.

It began to rain.

Not a cloud in the early evening sky, but it still rained in the Deadlands of Tembrethnil.

"Dammit," Blueraven sputtered as a pile of internal organs came spilling out of her stomach. Many of them had been cut clean in half. She collapsed a few seconds later. If she wasn't dead by the time she hit the ground, she didn't last long afterwards.

[Savas Tigh]

Savas Tigh was the only son born to a puritanical Denebriellian family in Knife's Edge. By all accounts, he was a happy and upbeat little boy with an infectious laugh and a bright, sharp mind. They told his parents that, after six daughters, the Saint was finally showing favor upon their line.

His magic first manifested on a dark, snowy night in the middle of a blizzard: Savas blotted out the light from the fireplace. The heat didn't stop, the actual fire still burned. The light just went out. He wasn't even six years old.

His father beat him bloody and toothless, then threw him out into the night with a fury that lingered in his nightmares to this day. Savas tried to get back in, but his only answer was a face full of boiling water and the litanies of the Saint. He staggered into the night and there, in the cold dark shadow of the Saint's Church, the boy who would be Wormaxe was found by the Wizard called Deadeye.

He did a lot of things in the years after that, learning the basics of Salvic Wizardry in Her Glory's service. And then something happened. Savas didn't even remember what. All he really remembered, as he lay there with blood pouring from his side and rain beating down on his back, were dreams of becoming well known and respected enough to come back home with Her sacred brand on his hand and a smile on his face. Dreams of looking his father in the eye and telling him, Denebriel smiled upon you.

Maybe, Savas thought in those days, he would actually mean it.

All he could think now was...

"...live...must...live..."

Not why he had to live. Not how he had fallen so far from that wide-eyed idealist who needed magic to put teeth back in his jaw. Nothing more than live.

He looked over to Blueraven's corpse, still fresh and warm, and knew what he had to do.

[Savas Tigh]

What follows are pages written in mixed blood and ink.


I ate the Bladesinger. Like the worm for which I am named, I burrowed into the gaping hole in her belly and I ate until I was whole again.

Certain Coronian faiths believe the soul is anchored near the stomach. I believe it. I healed fully, with her blood and flesh boiling in my gut, but I didn't stop there. Her name -- her actual birthname -- was Rhondra Golefen. I chewed my way up into her ribcage and devoured her heart. Rain beating down on my body from all sides, soaked through with her blood and mine, I ate and I ate and I kept eating.

Her brain wasn't half bad. Neither were her memories, or her intentions.

Turns out that Rhondra wasn't coming to Tembrethnil to do any purifying of the land. She had it written off as a lost cause. She was making her way through her with all that metal to use it as part of a blade-ward; swords and axes and spears, armor too, all buried in the ground in the dotted outline of a huge containment spell. The sort of thing that can literally starve powerful spirits and entities to oblivion if left in place long enough. Her destination was all the way on the other side of the forest.

I honestly feel kind of insulted she didn't plan to do anything about me. Whatever.

What matters is the Name of the spirit she sought to contain.

Kholia Horren.

The Dark Wizard Blightcrow.
It isn't apparent until a few pages later, but Wormaxe was giggling the entire time he wrote this particular entry.

[Savas Tigh]

Don't think your death, never mattered
- Ashaiac Nyzen, infrequently known as both the Forsaken Philosopher and the Laughing Lich
Kholia Horren's grave-cage lay on the western frontier of Tembrethnil, just a few dozen yards outside a thick band of lively forest that helped to encircle the Deadlands. It was an artificial hill that would've been missed by anyone who wasn't a trained arcanist, and more than a few who were.

To a necromancer of Savas' experience, if not necessarily his skill, it stood out like a sore and bloody thumb. The hill was too steep compared to the surrounding land, if only by a few degrees. It was covered in nightshade and mushrooms, with a recent layer of ivy and a little grass that seemed to crop up like an afterthought. The plantlife all grew in patterns that a trained eye could readily see: Sideways Raiaeran and Salvic, the depth of each letter determined by the heights of its constituent parts.

Even without coming close to it, Savas could feel a seething power; a determined feeling of stay put that someone had slammed into place in a frenzy of grief, anger, and self-loathing. The bindings were in layers, strongest at the actual hill with every one outside of that reinforcing it.

There were countermeasures in place for would-be graverobbers too. Savas could practically smell them without so much as hinting at the sixth senses of his magic nature.

"Nice try," he mumbled while shifting his weight to accomodate about a dozen swords crammed in an arrow quiver. Waste not, want not: the wagon had things he knew he would need, and Savas didn't have any taboos left to worry about breaking. "This is going to take a while."

[Savas Tigh]

Savas was right. It took a while. The better part of three or four days, in fact. As is often the case when a Wizard of any alignment or standing gets carried away, Wormaxe lost track of time almost as soon as he started. He was taken by the art, the science, the effort of his Working; and he would be rewarded for that dedication. Provided it didn't kill him horribly.

Stranger things had happened.

It began with a quick jaunt back into the Deadlands. Savas planted a sword into the very edge of that blighted territory, then used two others to carve a series of lines around it. In arcane terms, this was the equivalent of an airlock being set in place. Once that was set up, Savas dragged the two swords through the forest and carved the deepest trenches he could with them. He was lucky that there were no rivers in his path. It was a straight 'tunnel' of sorts, carved from the arcanairlock to the outer forest.

Once he breached the tree line and arrived in sight of the grave-cage, Savas merged the tunnel's lines together and planted another sword. He then dragged another line from there to a point just past the mound, planted another sword, and repeated the process. Again and again, until a spiral was clearly visible from the Deadlands of Tembrethnil to the grave-cage of the Wizard Blightcrow.

When he was done with that, Savas scouted out the furthest edges of the containment array and jammed a sword into the ground. He accompanied it with a small clattering of rat-bones courtesy of the only thing he ate during this whole process.

Savas then went back along the path and, one by one, blew the hilts off of each sword. They always landed with pommels facing the Deadlands, like arrows.

This was the easy part.

He spent the rest of the Working scrawling instructions into the dirt using an archaic form of Salvic; the closest thing Savas really had to fluency in an ancient, magical tongue. To his credit, this was solid work -- sophisticated beyond reason for someone who had spent most of his arcane career as a henchman rather than an understudy. It was also ritualized, like the dozens of curses he had helped to cast, and time-consuming, the way thaumaturgy always is. The more he completed, the more the ground between the lines died: grass withered as life was sucked out of it, funneling into the great metaphysical emptiness of the Deadlands.

He put the final period at the beginning of the spiral to Blightcrow's mound. Then he went back and crossed all the metaphorical T's and dotted all the metaphorical I's.

Then he sat down close by and just let the spell do its work -- which didn't take long, compared to everything else. Blueraven's wards had been cleverly designed, emotionally reinforced; sturdy things, but not at all designed to handle the kind of attack that Wormaxe was throwing at them. This was slow, methodical, patient. It was an arcane siege bastioned by the sins of greed, gluttony, envy and the follies of pride and wrath. Wormaxe's spell literally inhaled all the energy keeping Blueraven's wards stable, funneling it all into the Deadlands. The magic didn't collapse destructively because even that had been accounted for.

All Savas had to do was wait.

[Savas Tigh]

The wards came tumbling down.

Once they were gone, Savas' spell made short work of the rest of Blueraven's defensive setup. All it took was patience and forethought, and he had both in excess when he set his mind to something.

It began to rain again as the last defensive magicks collapsed, each one sparking out on the hill top. Flowers and grass alike burned an unnatural mix of blue and green, violet between them, and the flames reached high into the wet, muggy night. There was no going back now. Not that Savas had ever intended to do so in the first place.

"And now the hard part," he Said to himself, and to anyone else who might have been listening in at the time. Savas took a deep breath, inhaling power in the process. He forced it down, settling the energy somewhere between his belly and his lungs, and then he grabbed the very first blade he could get his hands on.

Slipping and sliding in suddenly muddied ground, the necromancer still got a running start. He dove onto the hill and immediately began tearing it apart with his bare hands, using nothing more than the blade's pommel and grip as a hammer or wedge to get rocks out of the way. It was rough work. His hands ran bloody long before he was done. But he didn't need to be precise.

The locals had seen how Kholia was buried. Seen and remembered. They knew exactly how he was oriented, which way his head pointed and everything. And that was all Savas needed.

Stones went flying as he ripped the burial mound apart. None of them were bigger than a softball; Blueraven had been a weak geomancer in those days. There was no coffin. That was probably intentional. It meant a revived Blightcrow would have trouble moving even his mouth to incant for a spell, nevermind being able to breathe. The burial mound and all its magicks had been designed as much to hold Blightcrow in as they had been to keep anyone else out.

And for good reason. Savas knew little of Blightcrow, but he knew of the Dark Wizard's type. They were necromancers, all of them, well prepared for the day after someone got lucky enough to stick a knife in them. Given sufficient time and motive, it wasn't a question of if they might come back, but when and in what capacity. The only answer was to take precautions and hope against hope that nobody would ever come along to undo them.

Savas always loved being contrary about things like that.

"I'M COMING, BLIGHTCROW!" he cackled into the night, Voice carrying clear to the other side of mortality. Even with the empty void of energy his own spell had caused around the burial mound, Savas could feel the unquiet dead shuffling away. He could feel them making a path.

Kholia was already on his way back.

By the time he got the dead Wizard's head, Savas was gasping for breath. Exhaustion was nipping at his heels and his hands were an unsteady wreck of trembling and shuddering and-

Something screamed.

Someone screamed.

And eventually, their scream became laughter became an expression of undescribable rage and contempt. Blightcrow's soul had come back, and the only thing keeping it at bay now was Savas' spell. It was only a matter of time before the dead Wizard disarmed it; destroyed it from the other side. Time didn't work the same for the dead as it did for the living. And once Kholia was done with Savas' spell, the rookie necromancer had no doubts as to what his elder would do to him.

Focusing through fear and exhaustion, Savas finally released some of the power he had inhaled. He focused it into his arms, stilling the trembles and steadying his hands.

Then he cut off Kholia Horren's barely decayed head and ripped it from his grave. Savas could hear the spirit screaming from the other side, loud and furious beyond reckoning. He ignored it, even as his ears began to bleed. Savas quickly tore off the metal plates that had been fixed to Blightcrow's skull during his service to Xem'zund. Bone chipped as the bolts holding them in place gave out, and leathery, worm-chewed flesh tore as binding magicks collapsed in the energy void.

What remained was a severed, dessicated head. The eyes were nothing but empty sockets. Kholia had paid dearly for every ounce of power he got. He hadn't needed eyes to see. Much of the nose was gone too, with the mask-plate shaped to replace it without damaging the leftovers. There wasn't a hair in sight anywhere on it.

"Ugly," Savas noted.

Then he raked the blade over the skull and, in a few swift motions, stripped it of all the outer skin. Blightcrow shrieked rage, and even an ordinary person would've seen the yellowy silhouette forming just outside the void-spell's barriers.

Savas held the blade tightly now, as he notched in the first few runes for a containment spell.

"I'll have your head! I'LL MAKE YOU PAY!"

"No you won't," Wormaxe replied with a sick little grin. He notched in the another containment spell. He was starting on the third when the void finally shattered.

Blightcrow stormed in, now semi-realized as a ghostly humanoid in robes and armor, wielding the powers of undeath-

And then his form collapsed, shrieking again, into the mouth of his own skull. The sockets immediately lit up, burning like tiny dead stars.

"You're mine now," Wormaxe declared.

The dead Wizard said nothing to contradict him.

[Savas Tigh]

Two weeks slogged by as the man called Savas Tigh lurked through the Raiaeran countryside. His string of murders trailed off whenever he came close to patches of actual civilization, but he never really could bring himself to stop it all together. With the devestation of the war and the lawlessness between so many of the surviving townships, there was nobody to even figure out that a serial killing necromancer was still at large in the country. He was too small a fish in too big a pond for anyone to even notice he existed.

That was how he finally ended up with a pair of well worn moccasins and a burlap travel bag, complete with some poor bastard's change of clothes. When Savas finished, he looked like nothing more than a wandering woodsman in the post-apocalyptic splender of resurgent Raiaera; one man making his way through fields of crisp green grass high enough to meet his waist. That night, he ate something that looked and tasted like jerky while writing his next entry. Blightcrow's skull was hidden away in the bag. The dead wizard had said nothing since his capture.


...and that's just fine.

I'm headed for Anebr Beinost come morning. I've been in Raiaera for so many years I've lost track of time. The land and the dead are tapped here. Nothing remains for me to exploit and grow with.

Blightcrow will speak to me in time. I'll break him if I have to. I carved out one of his long bones as a keepsake, but haven't done anything with it yet. If I can ever figure out the formula? for a blasting spell, I might use it for that. Or perhaps for raising the dead en masse. Either way, I'm going to need a proper base of operations. I've heard warlocks spend decades building them; entrenching their covens, establishing their foul supply lines, gathering their minions. I'm not a warlock, but I might be able to borrow some of their tricks if I can find the right place.

I'll be heading to Scara Brae once I arrive in Beinost. Master used to whisper of tombs in the dark as he slept. Wizard Blueraven actually muttered about it in his sleep too. I'll have to be cautious in avoiding him if he's there. If Scara Brae doesn't work, I'll try Fallien or Alerar. Maybe even Salvar, all things considered...He closed the book on that.

Spent a little while staring off into space, listening to the winds and the ghosts that still wept into them. Then he took out Blightcrow's skull and stared into the simmering stars where its eyes should've been.

"I think I'll decorate you," Savas told the skull. "Yes...jewels maybe..."

"Lines. Painted lines," Kholia replied with a Voice that was little more than a vitriolic whisper.

The Necromancer smiled.

[Revenant]

Condensed Rubric requested.

STORY: 23

CHARACTER: 24

WRITING STYLE:23

WILD CARD: 8

TOTAL: 78

This was a thoroughly enjoyable read. You seem to have a very good feel for the character and have managed to make him dark and sinister without going overboard. I love that there is still a whimsical feel to him at times, even as he is committing atrocities.

Savas Tigh receives 1269 exp and 345 gp.

Spoils: All requested spoils are granted.

Savas Tigh levels up to Level 1.

[Taskmienster]

Exp and GP added.