Shadows & Sorcery #59
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This week, we join the wizard Carloman as he battles the Moon Undead, we tag along with those who follow the Pilgrim King, we unearth the strange secrets of the Demon Graves, we quest deep into the Woods of Despair, and we learn just what it is that may inflict the Madness of Dark…
Moon Undead
From his perch upon the hillside, the red wizard Carloman gazed out over the battlefield. A pale moon tinged faintly with watery green loomed over the wide plain. It was perilously low. Far behind him was the sounds of soldiers' revelry and the calls of honour from the commander's tent at the summit of the knoll. They had no idea what was about to happen down on that plain. There was no time to lose.
Night had fallen fast, faster somehow than Carloman had expected. Clouds, or what he assumed where clouds, obscured the stars. The fire lights of the mercenary camp were dulled in the distance. The wizard took out a small orange gem from a pocket in his robes. He held it in his palm as he breathed upon it, and it slowly began to come to life. He quickly set it atop his staff. The staff was decorated in symbols of all kinds, serpentine designs, arcane words, and even carved, illustrated scenes of things. At the top was a scene of the firmament, of the sky and stars over the moons, and his gem was the sun above all. He entwined the index and middle fingers of his free hand before the gem in its scene, his own sign of binding, and the light stabilized and grew. But it was a far cry from the great sphere of light and scouring it represented, and the far regions of the battlefield were shrouded in a darkness that was more like a fog.
Around him now, rent maille and brigandines stained red. Bodies laying a short distance from where they fell, having tried feebly to escape. Corpses ransacked after their demise by opportunists. Faces were turned upwards in many places with slack jaws in their last cries, and sometimes there were only eyes to peer up, but Carloman had to turn away from it all regardless. The wizard was no stranger to battle and violence, but he'd scarcely seen such a place that reeked of a real revelling in violence. Though he was loathe to admit it, bloodshed can sometimes a miserable necessity in the long run. But this battle had been neither important nor necessary.
The moon was peering right over him. Moons are not healthy bodies, and you didn't need to be a wizard to know that. Every culture in the known world has its stories and warnings about them. The dead men around Carloman had slowly left this place, to go to their gods, and find themselves in due time, in new bodies to experience a new existence. But sometimes, as souls ascend into the sky, they are intercepted, and their spirits soak into the dark-tinged earth that was thrown up by the downfall of a traitorous being that had once sworn to be an eternal guardian so long ago. The moons, and what dwelt in them, looked down upon the world with envious eyes. A moon can be so laden with reaching spirits it sinks from its wandering path while the earth slumbers. This one was so low that the wizard could almost feel its hunger.
He stood in the midst of the reeking remains. He'd been hired by a particularly superstitious and forceful commander to read omens and signs, and had Carloman known just what was ahead, he'd have likely refused, be at the point of a blade or not. But now he was here, surrounded by the soldiers he couldn't help but feel a partial responsibility for. Maybe if he chose to read the omens wrong, some of them might still be alive. He mouthed an apology to them as he looked around and lightly clacked his staff into some bare earth and began to work a mighty ward.
The radiance the moon lent here was uneven, hazy. All knew to mistrust moonlight even at the best of times. It either obfuscated and confused, or revealed that which ought not to be seen. But it couldn't hide everything from the wizard, though what he saw now as he ceased his spellmaking, part of him almost wished it could. It looked the way rainfall does in the distance, as a kind of sheet or descending cloud, but it was all around him. It was coming from the moon. In the almost absolute stillness of the benighted battlefield, Carloman could hear the clank of metal, and rustle of cloth.
The wizard had encountered some of the worst horrors the world, and things beyond the world, could muster. He'd seen what still lurks deep under the sands of the cold southern desert, he'd fought with twisted forms corrupted by the outer dark, and had personally aided the gory works of necromancers calling up the souls of murder victims. But the sight of the freshly dead soldiers rising upon broken limbs, animated perhaps by their own souls, or by ancient spirits aching for the warmth of life, was something he'd remember for as long as he lived.
One by one, the moon's undead turned to the wizard. They would not let him deny their return to flesh. Faces he recognized in passing stared with comprehension that may have once been human. He spared no second--the wizard banged the butt of his staff upon the earth, and with a shout, raised it up as he entwined his fingers near his chest, and spoke phrases in an old arcane tongue, these particular ones intended to evoke flame. His gem, his red robes, and the words. Flame. Carloman swung his staff out in a wide arc around him, emitting a great burst of searing light that sent the undead reeling back. Corpses twitched and shivered near him. This could go no further.
With an outward thrust of his staff, flashes of white-hot brilliance felled the animate flesh of several undead, causing the rest to still themselves, though with a frightful tension in their forms. The wizard whispered an apology, but it had to be this way. He stood up straight and took in a deep breath. The stench of battle and the frigid air of the moon filled him and helped him focus on what it was he meant to undo. He mentally ran through the twenty charms which hung about his neck, from little rough medals on thin twine, to hammered discs on leathern straps, each one a god, each one a power, each was one with him--they were part of the living symbol of sorcerous might that was called Carloman.
"Fellow spirits and guardians, come to me, aid me in helping these folk who placed their trusts in you, and you alone..." The wizard began to intone his conjuration.
"Serpent's coils, loosen around these lands, permit your kin entry, and embrace these souls as your wards."
He wondered idly if the Voerlunder veterans back on the hillside felt that curious shifting just then, too.
"Gaoth, send them through your air, over Lochod's waters, to Cannoc's earth."
Though his focus was elsewhere, a little part of him acknowledge the breeze which crept across the battlefield.
"Oros, usher them, in your infinite aspects, to your mountain of Baletor."
There was a clangour as of brazen gates, from a great distance, but clear as dawn.
"Great Sun, Brother Lightning, Firstborn Flame, light their way back to the shores."
The sun did not suddenly rise, but some of the moon's pallor immediately faded.
"Heroes of the Mounds, sound your horns for their glorious return."
And the wizard could swear that then, from a vastness beyond this land, they did call.
Gods moved this night, not for Carloman, but for the souls of those they had sworn to protect when the world was made. And as quickly as it began, did it end. Bodies slowly dropped to the ground as succumbing to sleep, and the rain-like soulmist ceased to fall. Carloman stopped, and stared straight up. He could only imagine what the spirits within that moon could see, and stood and watched with a measure of both relief and sorrow, as the moon visibly retreated back into the heavens. One day, he promised, he would stand by them in new bodies, in new lives.
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