• Memory • Sons of Plague and Fury (Kovic)

Narav goes to see a woodland gallows.

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Narav
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Joined: Mon Apr 25, 2016 3:14 pm
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Sons of Plague and Fury (Kovic)

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"Since I was young, I've had a fascination with death. Empty bodies, empty eyes. Edward always worried I'd find a taste for it and kept me far away from executions, sheltered from the brutality he feared I had inherited. I'm not like them, though. I don't want to cut my way through innocents to examine the innards of some poor soul as they bleed out. This world is just full of inscrutable mysteries and I want to gaze deep enough to pierce them. But sometimes I feel this anger in me, creeping beneath my bones, and I wonder if Edward was right to be worried after all. -Journal of Narav


Ymiden 10, 415

Swing. Swing. Swing.

Edward had gone to market that day with strict instructions. Narav was to stay indoors studying the Etzos tongue. Enough traders made their way to Hiladrith, just up the Long River from Ne'haer that it would prove a useful tongue to learn. Narav made no argument, burying his nose in a thick tome on dialect. Satisfied, Edward had left him and taken Danielle. Nearly alone in the Tobelle mansion, he had quickly lost interest in the glottal intonation of Etzos tongue and its curious verb, subject, subject pronoun construction. Leaving the book turned pointlessly toward the middle, Narav stole into the kitchen and gathered two hunks of bread, some dried fish, and three apples. He dared an extra moment or two to snatch a small wheel of cheese and tied it all together with a a tablecloth. Outside he affixed to the end of a stick and shook the bindle experimentally. Satisfied it seemed stable, he scaled the south wall of the estate, using the thick creeper vines as footholds as he climbed.

Swing. Swing. Swing.

It was a windy day, clouds chased narrow and long across the blue afternoon horizon. Narav reveled in the freedom, tapping his foot musically with each few steps and turning in a few poorly balanced spins. Shake his head, he balanced the bindle a little easier on his shoulder and made for the edge of the city walls. It was still early enough that the gates were open to allow traffic in and out. A sporadic stream of covered wagons and dusty travelers stepped in and out, vaguely appreciative of space and respectful of the shiftier figures weaving between heavy wagons with hidden hands. Among these people Narav set out. Tolkim, a friend he'd met by the docks just a few trials earlier, had let him in on a secret his father forbid him to tell.

"Swear on the salt!" He'd said, dipping a finger into the sea and crossing it over his lips. "Pa says Ne'hear likes to keep things neat and sometimes they'll hang the marauders and bandits in a grove outside the city walls. Hanging Boughs, they call it, all those dead men doing a wind jig till birds peck em dry!" He'd mimed the pecking of a bird, tucking his hands beneath his armpits in awkward wings. They'd laughed, but Narav committed it to memory.

It wasn't hard to find, a mile outside of town there was a small sign that marked where the road diverted. Jenny Glen, they called it, but someone had carved Hanging Boughs into the back of the sign, deep enough to be seen as shadows collected in the dark, jagged letters. Narav debated here, unsure whether he should continue or not. The raw interest pounded under his temple, an itching that drew him forward despite the rules Edward had set. Taking a deep breath, glancing both ways to assure himself no one had followed, Narav made his way off road and into the trees.

Swing. Swing. Swing.

They were hanged high, messy painted signs dangling from their swaying feet. The low call of carrion birds swelled in the grove and every branch seemed filled with the hunger-eyed creatures. Seventeen bodies in all, in various states of decay that drifted aimlessly from each branch among many of the trees. Narav sucked in a sharp breath, held it, and let it out with a shudder. The light had fallen enough that he couldn't see their faces, but the curious angle many of their necks broke made it clear that the dead-man stare could be angled down in a way not possible from a living man.

Thief. Mage. Murderer. Deserved it. The signs that hung from each foot told mostly one word stories of vague indictment. There was no law out here, beyond the walls of the city the road set its own judge, jury, and executioner. Narav found he was transfixed, looking up at these swinging corpses with unbroken interest. They were so...empty, like man shaped sacks belonging to the wind.

He didn't notice he was not alone. He did not notice the silence of the birds.

Swing. Swing. Swing.

There was only the dance that deadman do, the string-song of ropes rubbing the branches.
word count: 842
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Limbo
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Sons of Plague and Fury (Kovic)

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After the woman had claimed to be pregnant, and had claimed he was indeed the father, she had been locked in her basement. Her response was that of violence and panic, of despair and agony. Twice a day she was fed with whatever foods remained in the floor above, and when that had ran out, she had been recycled corpses. By the time she realized there would be no other choice, the woman had killed that part of herself and become little more than a slave. Her words came rarely. Her eyes never left the ground. What was once a beautiful young woman had devolved into little else than a wild animal, filthy and ugly like the rats she had learned to devour. One day, her psyche had snapped, and she attempted to claim the unborn’s life with a jagged femur. She lacked enough desperation to harm herself, but her master had claimed every finger and toe once had with harsh bites. Three were gifted to her for dinner.

Finding victims was starting to become problematic. Neighbours were becoming aware of the many disappearances of both people and animals. The militia patrolled through the night, and the guards were on the lookout during the day. Unafraid of confrontation, the mortalborn did fear, however, his child being discovered. Constantly evolving to fit every adversity, he now fed somewhere else, carried all he could in his stomach, and regurgitated it for the female to feed. Primitive as it could be, it was a successful approach. All sorts of living creature were chosen as fodder; travelers, the homeless, any animals left unprotected. Nobody missed them, and if they did, they would never be found. Perhaps the hardest of this whole thin semblance of a plan was trying to mask the smell coming from the squatted house.

Fate brought him to the gallows today. The smell of flesh, rotting or not, he sniffed in the breeze. His steps followed no road, instead trekking directly through the woods.Thorny bushes and sharp stones drew blood from him trying to stop him in vain. Only when he laid eyes on the hanged corpses, and the youth visiting and perhaps mourning them he stopped.
“You’re alone,” he said.

The bushman stood partially hidden behind a dying birch. Wild blond hairs were held back with dry mud. An uneven and shameful semblance of a potential bead manifested in partially hidden features. Pale flesh, filthy, unwashed, and smelly, presented itself due to the individual’s lack of clothing - save for some tattered pants perhaps as old as Idalos itself. No matter the heat, or the scorching intensity of the sun, the man’s flesh lacked both color or sweat. Perhaps the most striking feature of the scavenger was that of his lack of expression; his eyes only stared, widely so, with that blue gaze that refused to even blink, fixed upon the youth. Even his voice, as rarely as it came, served as proof that, whoever and whatever this young adult was, he did not understand how people worked.
“I want to be your friend.”
word count: 518
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Narav
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Sons of Plague and Fury (Kovic)

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Perhaps he was unsurprised, more than he should be, when he heard the voice. It sounded like a dead mans voice, rough and gargled, more the product of violence than syllables. Had it not come from behind him rather than above him, Narav might have simply assumed it eased from the mouth of the black-faced dead turning gently above him. Turning, careful to brush the hilt of the dagger his father had given him while his hands fell to his side, he sought out the shape of a man behind the trees. Oncoming darkness had shrouded much of Kovic and the the dying elm did a fair job obscuring the rest. Blue eyes, chipped sapphire, caught the fading light like witchfire. He looked homeless, no, worse than that. It was as though the phantom had dredged itself up from a shallow roadside grave, stumbling to the company of its kin high in the branches.

Arcs ago, Narav had seen a dog with a similar stare outside the slum districts of Ne'haer. Feckless, wanton, it had stared at him with the same blank absence. It did not drool for food nor raise its hackles in the preemptive dance of combat. Its tail was a flat, dead thing that hung limply between shit-caked haunches. Kin in memory, this loathsome beast also shared the same blank menace. At the time, Narav had backed away from it slowly, daring not to run until he had turned a corner. Perhaps the dog had remained there, vacant and endless till death finally remembered and struck it down where it stood. He'd never seen it again and part of him had always wondered what lived in that gaze. Who but the grave-walking saw eternity laid out like stepping stones across murky river water.

A needle of fear wormed its way into his gut, nestling amid the swirl of thoughts he'd already considered. He could see no weapon, but his beaten figure told stories of wretched terror no dripping axe could ever hope to mimic. It was his absence that felt so sharply of danger, not his presence. It was precisely because there was so little of him, such sparks of intelligence rare and flickering, that Narav took a whiff of peril, mixed with the sick-sweet corpse stink and something ranker still.

He spoke once and then again, the same inflection on each word. Narav swallowed hard, his throat dry as a Nashaki desert and looked up. The dead peered down crooked, no more interested in intervention than in freeing themselves of their deadly necklace. Alone, none came to the hollow of these dead but their murderers...and the deed long done they were unlikely to return.

"I..." He croaked the first syllable, surprised at how dry his voice sounded, swallowed, and tried again. "I came to see the dead."

Between them, such words were barely a passing excuse, and the corpses above knew it.

Wsh Wsh Wsh

They laughed with the wind.

Wsh Wsh Wsh

Come little boy, join our grand council of rot. Here. See? We bring you a man to swear you in.


"You're...hurt." It wasn't too much more than the hazard of a guess, but dirt and filth were likely to be hiding something worse. Narav bent down and swung his rucksack off his shoulder. He'd packed lightly for the day, but more of habit. Edward always cautioned to be prepared should the worst befall. Out came a roll of linen, a small bottle of grog, a checkered tablecloth wrapping bread, cheese, and meat, and finally a change of clothes, leggings and a maroon shirt. "Did you...know someone here?" It felt fake, this pretense. No, of course the creature knew no one here. Both he and Narav had been drawn for the same reason and their curiosity were harbingers of each other. "I can share." He dipped a hand over the offering, "If you're in need."

Wind whispered between them, unspeakable truths neither would understand.

"What is your name?"
word count: 678
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