In The Dark
I lifted my torch high and stared at the dead form of Laertius. His fingers were curled tightly, biting into his palms; his face frozen in the final throes of a mad gasp for air. It was clear that he had suffocated inside that ancient coffin; his only company being the dusty body of some old Dunmer matron. We had been too late. I had no doubt that our killer, my Death-Warrant, had started targeting the Mage’s of the guild. No doubt a bit of knowledge gleamed from our dearly departed Rattmandu had aided him. I was disgusted.
“What was he doing down here?” I whispered.
The others, Hjalti and Aqua-Lung looked at me dumbfounded. Hjalti himself averted his eyes after a minute and pretended not to hear me. Aqua-Lung shrugged and eyed him suspiciously.
“I’m asking you.” I grabbed Hjalti by the collar with one hand. “What was he doing down in the catacombs?”
“Part of our studies!” Hjalti shoved me back roughly, “We come into the catacombs and observe the state of decay in the recently deceased! He was no doubt following up a bit of research!”
“Sounds suspiciously like necromancy to me!” I growled. I approached him, drawing my blade openly. Aqua-Lung coughed roughly and gave me a sharp kick. I looked at her and stopped my advance, although keeping my blade glinting sharply in the torchlight.
“No necromancy! No necromancy!” Hjalti’s mustache bristled with electricity, “Study only, I swear! I-I have permission from the High Ordinator!”
“Oh you do, do you?” I raised an eyebrow quizzingly, “Let’s see it then.”
“I…” Hjalti stopped short, “I’ll have to go and find it…”
“No,” I answered skeptically, “You stay here. I want you here for this.”
There was more to this story than Hjalti was letting on. A blind fool could see that. But I’d let him stew for a while and ponder if I knew more than I was letting on. Let him sweat it out and soon enough I probe again to see what else I could gleam out of him, all the while hinting that I knew more than I actually did.
As I said, Laertius was curled fetus-like against the desiccated corpse of some old bag. His face was a twisted visage of horror, mouth agape with the final gasp of diminished air. It was a miracle we found him at all. After an hour of searching the hive-like underground beneath Vivec, it had only been Aqua-Lung’s sharp eyes that had noticed the great amount of dirt kicked up around this particular sarcophagus. Studying the coffin I noted that a large rock had been kicked near the bottom lip of the door. Wedging itself against the ground, it had no doubt proven more than a match for poor Laertius. It would’ve taken a matter of minutes before the oxygen ran out.
I studied him a bit more here too. While I had no doubt that he had suffocated, I could tell by his corpse that he put up with a bit more than that prior to death. Bruises on his neck showed where a pair of strong hands had chocked him; I peeled his eyelids up and noticed the burst blood vessels that told me the same. I saw too where his nails had chipped, and the dried blood caking his fingertips where he clawed our killer.
“He’s stalking us…” Aqua-Lung muttered and put her hands around her bloated stomach. “Ratt-man must’ve talked. How else could he know where Laertius was?”
“How else indeed.” I growled. “He’s picking the Guild off one by one.”
Hjalti gulped and stared at the floor guiltily.
“From now on I want you, all of you, to stay together.” I said, “No one leaves the guild alone for any reason.”
“But your investigation!” Aqua-Lung began but stopped when I shot her a dark look.
“ANY reason.” I repeated. “We just have to make more focused tasks for the rest of you.”
Hjalti stepped forward, tears brimming in his eyes and studied his friend. The body had not yet begun to stink, save for the soaking of urine caking its britches. Hjalti seemed mightily affected by the frozen scream of terror on his friends face. He blinked several times to clear his tears, failed, and shuddered with scarcely hidden convulsions.
I stood back and observed him silently. Hjalti was up to something for sure. The others too for that matter. All save Aqua-Lung had exuded a certain sly withholding since I had shown up. The glances, the hushed tones, and the silenced conversations when I enter the room had all but confirmed this. There was something going on behind the scenes. It didn’t matter, as I was confident that I’d find out soon enough. Let them rot in the dark, and soon I’d shine in the light.
He reached up one hand and I saw the bristle of electricity. Blue-white jagged lines of lightning jumped between finger tips. Before I could stop him, he gently stroked the eyepatch that Laertius always wore.
“Don’t touch him!” I cried, “We haven’t started the auto-“
“Look!!!” Aqua-Lung cried out.
Hjalti took a step back in surprise when the patch Laertius wore began to glow. Its shine outmatched the torch Aqua-Lung carried and filled the crypt with light. I shielded my eyes and it burnt my vision, leaving rainbow like circles swimming in my brain. Hjalti cried out what sounded like a mixture of fear and joy. A smell like burnt matches filled the air and the room around us grew cold despite the torch I held in my own hand. The light faded and I opened my eyes.
Laertius had moved.
His face fell from terror into a solemn expression, the good eye blinked. The patch still glowed, but faintly now. He looked from me, to Aqua-Lung and to Hjalti. Something was there in that good eye, both dead and alive. What was it? I knew not, just that this was something foul and blasphemous. My every fiber screamed to kill the abomination. But I remained rooted to the spot.
With janky, spider-like movements, Laertius placed his blackened and blood-pooled hands on either side of the coffin and lifted himself out. He placed his feet on the ground, and almost came to teetering over. A dead thing began to move. Its footsteps were irregular and it was almost impossible to imagine that such a thing could even stand, let alone walk.
There was no sound, no words from the lips of that thing. Just the mute silence of the dead. His eyes betrayed no light, no life, and no soul. But he lived just the same.
Shuddering, ill-taken steps brought the living corpse out of the torchlight and into the darkness. His body wobbled backwards and for a moment he leaned so far back that he faced the ceiling. Just when I thought he’d topple over, he pulled himself upright and took three wild steps before resuming his gait.
He made his way over to a darkened part of the cave and bent over. Muscles popped audibly as the stiffened corpse moved the hardened fibers of his hips and back. It sounded like a chorus of ropes snapping from too much tension, or the ice cracking in spring’s early heat. For a moment I was sure that he’d collapse, but something unnatural kept him upright. When he came back up from his stooping, he held in his hand something curious.
A painter’s knife.
It was clearly a painter’s knife he held here in the depths of Vivec, where only the dead lie. Straining my eyes I swore I could see the flakes of dried paint, red and blue, that coated the edge.
The corpse smiled now, a ghastly sight. The lips, blue and fishlike, blubbered some silent words. The air had left his lungs, the biological process long since stopped. He took a few more steps closer into the torchlight, and now I noticed for the first time the thin trails of smoke coming from his body.
From his face, hands and feet, smoke had begun to curl and emit. I crinkled my nose as a familiar smell hit me. A smell that I had encountered more times than I care to remember.
Memories swirled unbidden and unwanted. Campaigns in the Wrothgarians and the Reach of Skyim. My commander, wild-eyed and half crazed with hatred and vengeance, giving us that final order. I wanted to remember myself as being reluctant to do as he ordered, but that would be apocryphal. I, like many of my comrades, was nearly insane with fatigue and burning hatred for our enemy. We had been willing participants. My commander’s words resounded in my ears, as loud and clear as that day.
“Burn the village. Burn it all.”
I had obeyed. Gladly. The smell was a burning body. Once you smell it, you’d never forget it.
Laertius paced quickened now, as if he knew his fate. The skin begin to darken and then go black, an inner fire consuming him quickly. The clothes he wore began to smolder and bits began to fall off, burning wisps of cloth that littered his trail.
He came to Hjalti, who rushed forward to meet his companion. Hjalti took the man by the shoulders, shaking ever-so-lightly, and screamed out to the dead man.
“Laertius! Laertius!” He shouted, “Is that you? Is that really you!?”
The corpse smiled a death grin, the lips splitting now as the skin parted. Coagulated blood slimed its way from the wounds, staining the front of Hjalti’s tunic. He pressed the painter’s knife in Hjalti’s hand. I stared dumbfounded at the sight, totally in awe in what I was seeing.
“They dead…come to life!!!” I thought irrationally.
Against my will I was suddenly called back to that ghastly apartment and to the image I saw there. Jeanne Thierry, holding out her arms and pleading.
“Help me…”
I shook my head to clear the vision. Verily, I know of Necromancy and its ability. The art of raising the dead, of giving life to the lifeless. I’ve even seen it in action myself, in the far-flung witch’s dens of the Wrothgarians. I’ve seen Necromancy and its tribe at their very worst. I’ve seen things that would turn your blood cold. The blood orgies of the wild Orc Tribes, their dead chieftains raised to give witness over the rite; the sand-blasted tombs of Elsweyr, their dead guarding secrets buried in the desert; the cults of Mannimarco, the Worm God, feasting on the dead to gain their strength. I’ve put my blade through many a dark wizard or sorcerer who had sacrificed infants to their dark god.
In all my time I had never seen something close to this. As far as my understanding went, Nercromancy was not strictly the practice of raising the dead. While true, the dead lived again, they were not strictly “alive” in the truest sense. Either a lower Daedra, or a spirit was conjured by the Mage and placed inside a corpse; the resulting automaton merely a vessel for the magic within. There was no life, no recall of the previous being. Instead the raised body was merely a machine of flesh and bone. No more human than a golem or atronach.
Laertius looked at Hjalti though and I saw clearly that he recognized him. There was a pleading look on his face. Hands, blackened and crackling like cooked bacon, grasped Hjalti by the shoulders and embraced him in a deep hug.
With a final shudder, Laertius dropped to his knees and collapsed. The body smoldered for a minute and collapsed into ash. All trace of the man that had been was gone.
“Necromancy…” I managed to gasp. “This is Necromancy sure and sure!”
“No…” Hjalti cried out weakly, tears welling in his eyes. “I swear!”
“Don’t you lie to me!” I roared and pulled out my blade. I rushed forward and grasped Hjalti by the robe. Slamming him into the nearby wall I pointed my blade directly as his throat.
“Just you wait until the Ordinators hear about this.” I growled. “You’ll be hanging by your thumbs in the Ministry of Truth before you can blink.”
“Please, Inquisitor.” Hjalti said, “Don’t you see? It was Laertius’s doing! He brought himself to life, through no action of my own! I swear I…I…”
“I. Don’t. Believe you.” I emphasized each word. My blade at his throat I searched his eyes, but they betrayed nothing. He was acutely aware that I had him dead-to-rights. There was nothing he could do to sway me. Again the image of Jeanne swam in my vision, unbidden.
“Help me…”
“This is a gift Inquisitor!” He cried, “Look at the knife that Laertius gave his life for!”
He held the knife. It was a standard painter’s knife, roughhewn handle of birch and tarnished steel. Bits of dried paint remained on the blade.
“What’s a painter’s knife doing here in the catacombs?” Hjalti asked and raised an eyebrow. I glared at him, my mind working at top-speed.
What was a painter’s knife doing here?
“A gift sure enough Inquisitor!” Hjalti grinned. Daringly, he put the knife to my sword and pushed it aside. “You need me still Inquisitor. The game has not yet begun to close.”
“This is no game necromancer.” I hated his guts. Cocky as he was though, he was right. One more clue. One more death. Another step closer. Like Rattmandu, in death, Laertius had given us another clue.
“So we’re looking for a mage. A Dunmer, who lives in the Foreign Canton. But now we’ve got something more. What we’re looking for is painter.”
I withdrew my blade and gave Hjalti a good shove. He slammed his head on the wall, buckled his knees, and slid to the ground. I gave him a kick just to show him my disdain.
“I’ll be watching you Hjalti. Watching you very close.” I eyed him. “If I see one trace of necromancy, it’ll be my blade you find yourself on the end of. For now though, I need you and the others to start canvassing for a Dunmer Painter. I need names.”
“So we’ve called a truce?” He frowned, got up and dusted himself and extended a hand.
“I don’t make deals with necromancers.” I ignored his hand and turned.
“Mage…” He said and slapped my back; a shock rippled through me as he discharged a bit of static. “Mage to you Inquisitor.”
He made it clear that there was no honor in that word. I silently agreed.
He and Aqua-Lung proceeded ahead of me. Lifting my torch high I made one more sweep of the catacombs. The sarcophagus still laid open. The corpse within was not alone.
A form laid curled up tenderly to it, one arm wrapped protectively around it. I stared, frozen in my place. The form turned its head and I saw the face in the flickering light change from Laertius to Ratt-man to Jeanne before changing to Laertius again. It gave a pleading longing look and an arm extended to me. The arm was rotting and barely attached, bits of sinew and muscle exposed through rents in the curdled milk skin.
“Help me…”
“By the Nine…I’m trying…” I answered solemnly.
Submitted January 10, 2019 at 05:01PM by TheBravestarr http://bit.ly/2RjUAU3
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