A Witch of the Dead

She considered the question and the man who asked it. “I know you seek the aid of a necromancer and that’s why I’m here, but I’m not him….or her. The prophecies that guided me to you were not always clear on gender and faces. Or time for that matter. It’s actually quite miraculous that I came across you at all, except that there are no miracles or gods to perform them. Aren’t supposed to be, anyways.” Caligari made a face and looked around at the newly covered buried valley, it’s terrain transformed by the avalanche. “All I knew was who I was to meet and where so I passed through this valley night after night. For two decades. And now this valley is forever changed and there are dead buried in preparation for the next battle to be fought here. History has a way of repeating itself. Mind you, I had no such good fortune, had to drag each of my bodies through the snow myself.”

She wasn’t sure what else they needed to know. That she’d been alone in the wilds without the company of the living? That they’d have to excuse her lack of refinement while she made the transition to a collective? Should she share her drugs with them? No, never that. But an actual introduction would help.

“I am Caligari Calarook, a witch of the dead, not a necromancer in the traditional sense. I’ve dedicated my entire life to circumventing Hella’s dominion over the dead. She holds them trapped in her realm like coins in a storehouse. She will never spend them; she will never release them. She hordes their souls, but I would see them freed to move on to their final resting place or returned to the land of the living. It changes with my mood.”