Nightmares

Excerpt from The Revised Compendium of Necromancy.

It is well known knowledge that the soul leaves a certain residue or mark upon the body. Though this is more in a sense of the metaphysical and not something easily identified or noticed. This ‘mark’ varies from individual to individual and rarely if ever presents in the same way even between twins. The beliefs, actions, and influences from the world and people around them might also affect the intensity of the mark left on the body. This typically but not always presents as a sort of ‘echo’ of the individual. This is why it is highly suggested to choose the body of someone who was of a higher morality in life, as a person is set to pass on to an afterlife filled with rest and peace is less willing to hold onto that life and mar the vessel with ‘scars’ of anger of their death as the soul attempts to cling to the body. This ‘Echo’ typically lashes out, though they have no control over the body any longer their presence has been known to unnerve even the most seasoned of necromancers. They are only temporary and will eventually fade as the connection between soul and body fades. It is strongly advised that in the time during this process to find a means to ground one's connection to reality, be it a person, object, location, study or concept. It is wise to keep in mind the ‘echo’ is nothing but a phantom of the mind and unlike demonic possession or even poltergeist this ‘operation’ is just as its name suggests, an ‘echo’.

Hemlock tossed and turned on the uncomfortable excuse for a mattress she’d managed to find in the wreckage of the town and drag to this basement for the stint of her stay. Tonight however it was particularly more unbearable than previous nights, the sheets kicked to the foot of the bed soaked in sweat and tangled around her feet in a clammy clump. Tossing and turning in a feverish daze unable to find a position to lay in that relieves the discomfort. Despite the cool air of the cellar, the heat of her body was so intense she wanted to disrobe entirely but even in the dizzying fuzziness of her brain she knew that she might need to fight or make a quick escape and that thought of doing that stark naked was equal parts mortifying and shameful.

The dreams came as fever dreams do. Strange, disjointed, complicated to explain or understand kaleidoscopes of horrific images and nightmarishly complex cryptic messages that mean both nothing and everything to a melting brain. Shocking her awake for a short burst between stretches of darkness, the stress having worn her out far more than usual and being unable to remain awake despite the want to. This dream took the form of a walk down memory lane. A rare but not unwelcome dream. A grainy third person experience, vague and out of focus like a vision through fog or heat waves. Like watching a play from a distance. She saw her younger self. So much different her first body was despite living it, it was always strange to see. A young child no more than six years of age, he was propped up on his knees in the dirt. When they discovered they could bring things back to life. A small kitten was born on the farm, it was the runt and wasn’t let to feed by its siblings. Grief stricken wishing it back to life a small glow of faint green light and the kitten raised its head. After that my father punished me. But before the strike came, the focus of the dream snapped to another life. Time a blur but Hemlock believed it to be my third life. A gaunt individual dragging a shovel through a decrepit necropolis. Heavily cured and now disused he was the caretaker. Or rather the one to deal with the byproduct of the curse. Stopping now and then at broken tombstones tapping on them with the spade before choking up on it like a club. Waiting for the dirt to move. When hands clawed themselves free and a head broke the surface of the soil, he would bludgene it until it stopped moving and reburied it before moving onto the next broken marker. Eventually I found a way to consecrate the necropolis and make it hallowed ground.

The next flash to the life she lived as a hand to the Queen Thalia in Dalen, Hemlock worked to help solve murders by speaking with the victims. Enjoying the job helping both victims and their kin. Things went well until she was working on a case for the queen that led to a run-in with The Emerald Scarves, a small-time but well organised gang. They captured her and put her in a small room that bombarded her with ice magic, keeping her from transferring bodies to one of them or casting any magic in general as it prevented concentration. A group of people saved Hemlock, and she became friends with two of them. One a Kalena Valade and the other Lafayette la Renard.

Then the dream snapped to the most recent life. That of the angel. Hemlock felt the weight of the wings on her back, and the braid over her shoulder. She looked at her hands. The changes were strange. She still felt human, but something was alien about the way everything moved. Though it felt like it could be the new muscles in her back for the wings. She focused and with some effort folded the wings in front of herself and touched them with one hand. This was surely going to take time to get used to.

“Are you enjoying your spoils, thief?” a choir of the same voice came from the dark all around her. “I do hope you are, because you have been marked. Bare your sins for the slaying of a divine being.”

“Half Divine.” Hemlock addressed the darkness.

With a hiss, the darkness gathered in a pool on the floor before Hemlock. Roiling into an inky mass that swelled into a humanoid shape, twisting and moving upward and outward until it became a solid mirror of Hemlock void of details. Hands shot out and seized Hemlock by the shoulders. A face appeared in the mass of black, a twisted parody of its original self, it shrieked and lunged for Hemlock’s throat. She snapped away in a blind panic trying to kick free of the twisted sheets before stumbling barefooted onto the cold stone floor looking for any sign of life in the dark cellar. “You won’t be rid of me this easy, necromancer scum.” a voice called, not from the dark, but from inside her head.