Ascension - (Alarian Warriors)

The night air was cold as he walked across the soft grass. The trees hummed as they made their way through a dark forest. The elf he pushed in front of him yelped as she tripped on a protruding root, smashing into the ground. The way she moved was odd, it was as though her limbs were not her own, like a newborn learning to move.

“Stupid dead doll, why can’t your brains work after death.” He spat. Reaching down he roughly gripped her forearm yanking her to her feet, it seemed they had finally reached their destination.

“Are you sure this is the spot!?” His deep voice was sickly and worn.

“Y... ye..s.” The elf croaked through dry, parched lips. The skin was peeling from her face, flaking off onto the damp ground.

Tossing her aside the moonlight illuminated her features. Her once emerald skin was a pale and greyed-out green. Her face and limbs were covered in stitches like she had been pieced back together, in a somewhat hastily manner. Her eyes were sunken in, glazed over and expressionless as though she were blind, her raven black hair lay tattered and mangled down her back. She was merely a shell of her former self.

The man who had escorted her coughed into his hand, pulling it back to reveal a silver substance coating the inside of his palm. “Curse that wench!” He whispered with venom.

His body was decaying, and he wasn’t sure if he could stop it on his own, that was the reason he was here. The reason he had lowered his standards and turned to necromancy. Well, that wasn’t true, he just didn’t like attaching a soul to a dead body. He preferred complete control; empty vessels were the easiest to control. Though in this case, he had no choice, no one else knew where what he wanted was buried.

In his weakened state he slumped to his knees and began to dig at the ground, it wasn’t long before he had found what he was searching for. It seemed they hadn’t buried what he wanted too deep under the surface. He smirked, they should have burnt it, idiots.

A mummified hand burst through the dirt, clawing for freedom. The male grasped hold of it and pulled the creature free from its shallow grave. It coughed clearing its throat, its body was shrivelled and all dried up. The mummified skin clinging to the bones, it’s clothing in rages. Its head unnaturally kinked to the side. It tried to move, its limbs not strong enough as the sound of snapping brittle bones echoed through the night. It tried to speak but no words came out. Its body far too decayed to be of service to it any longer.

“Feast on the elf, as you are now you will need flesh to replenish your own.” The man told him.

The skeletal creature flung itself at the elf like a raging beast, its jaws locking around the elf’s arm. Sounds of tearing flesh filled the night air as it tore into the pale green skin and devoured its fill. The bone-crunching sounds ceased as the creature seemed to return to some sense of itself.

“Welcome back to the land of the living, Bevan.” The man stated.

“And to whom might I owe the pleasure of freeing me from this state of death?” Bevan’s body was slowly filling out, his figure becoming more human as time passed.

Though one of Bevan’s eyes did not come back, the other shone a bright golden colour. One could only guess where he had gotten that from.

“It was not me who brought you back, though I do know how it happened.” He stated standing to face the newly arisen wizard. “I am Lord Ashera. I believe we could be of assistance to each other. You see, an escapee of yours has become a problem. You’ve broken her before, and I want you to do it again.”

A grin spread across the wizard’s face, flesh falling from his teeth. “With pleasure.”

To be Continued...