A Long Day’s Work

A Long Day’s Work

Trigger Warning: Violence, Gore, Loss, Death

We thought we were ready.

We thought we had seen it all.

We thought we could handle anything that could be thrown at us.

To be fair, up until that point, that was true. Armond and I had survived so much together on our little adventures, that we no longer thought of ourselves as mortal in the traditional sense. What was the threat of the average, mundane weapon when our training could simply knock it away? What was the threat of magic when we had magic of our own? What was the threat of injury, or even death itself, when our adventures had given us the ability to just ignore such trifle things?

We honestly had forgotten what it was to be afraid for our lives. For our very souls.

Once upon a time, things had been different. When Armond and I began adventuring, each of us set out on our quests for riches and thrills of danger, we knew the risks. That was before we knew each other. Before we knew the rest of our little band of adventurers. Before we knew the stalwart Hogan or the curious Jamilla or even Bartok and his lute.

That was before we’d ever heard of High Lich Ferigold.

We knew that it would be dangerous, of course. Anytime you delve into the darkness, particularly when black magic is involved, someone ends up dying somewhere along the line. But that was my specialty. Maybe it was something simple, like closing up an impalement or replacing a lost organ or two. Perhaps it was something harder, like pulling someone’s soul back out from the beyond and putting it back in their now reconstituted body.

We thought we were ready.

We were surprised when we first entered the tower. It seemed less like a dungeon, as the realms and reaches of the darkness are more colloquially known, and more like a temple. There were no traps. No monsters waiting for us. Just Icons. Texts. Murals. Pieces and offerings to a dead god from a dead follower who had yet to realize that the dead should not walk around lest the proper gods bestow life upon their dead bodies once more.

But this was different.

We reached the heart of the tower without so much as a stubbed toe, much less the battalions of goblins or zombies or other such monstrosities we’d come to expect. We thought that the answer to the question of ‘where are the creatures that will be our brief downfall?’ would be found beyond the teleportation mirror we found in the High Lich’s study. But, again, we were surprised to find ourselves, instead, in an empty graveyard outside of a small grove of apple trees. The graveyard was not overrun with the hordes of the undead, or even set up with an ambush or traps. It only had a single occupant: the High Lich himself.

He didn’t register when we first arrived. He was too enamored with his book as he had his little one-monster tea party, just sitting there reading next to his mausoleum like he wasn’t an abomination in the gods’ eyes.

Jamilla was the first to go.

I didn’t know yet that she would never come back.

She hit the ground like a sack of potatoes, the High Lich never even looking up from his book. There was just a snap of his fingers and she was gone, like a puppet with her strings cut.

Bartok was next.

By the end, the only person that remained was me.

Me, the withering corpse of the High Lich as it turned to dust before the might of my god, and the lifeless body of Armond.

I was shaken, only having just escaped with my life through the use of such powerful magics as I’d never be granted again by the God of the Sun, but we’d been in scrapes before. We’d almost lost everyone before.

I just had to call them back.

I’d just have to call Armond back to my side.

He was always the first one to come back.

If I didn’t have him, what did I have? I used to think.

The magic swirled about me as it always did, like glittering starlight that I’d managed to catch and trap for my ballet. It spun, crackling with the power of the gods, but when I placed my hands upon my love’s chest… Nothing.

There was nothing.

There was no one waiting for me as he’d done so many times, just on the other side of the veil. No presence at the gates of the underworld, ready to rush back into my arms.

Where was he?

Had the spell failed? Had I failed somehow?

It costs a great deal to try again. It costs enough that it would mean camping in this godforsaken graveyard for a whole day to try and bring one of my other friends back from death if I wasted another resurrection on him. But I didn’t care.

I tried again.

I focused on the words. I focused on the will of my god and the power that Solus filled me with. I brought down upon him all the love and holiness that I’d been granted with my title as I took hold of Armond’s shirt to rip him from his grave.

But there was no one there.

Nothing but meat and bone that was slowly growing colder by the moment.

“ARMOND!” I screamed, my voice sounding hollow in the empty field of gravestones and markers. “WAKE UP!”

The magic was gone, again absorbed into his body as it had done dozens of times before, but no spectral soldier materialized as my reward. No smiling, bearded face. No loving, mocking words. No ghostly apparition to even confirm that he was reentering the world of the living.

Wait! Maybe the issue is that he isn’t dead! That had to be it. If he wasn’t dead, a resurrection spell would fizzle. He wouldn’t be able to come back from the dead if he was only hurt badly.

A wave of relief came over me as I realized my mistake, the spell already twisting in my hands, a ball of green and golden light. I placed the healing spell on his chest, ready to have my love laugh at me for trying to resurrect him while he was still alive. I smiled down at him so I’d be the first thing he saw.

His eyes remained closed.

Lips blue.

Nothing changed.

“Armond!” I screamed again, my voice now cracking. “Wake up! This isn’t funny!”

But my love gave no response.

I tried again. The magic swirled, more powerful this time. Far more powerful than any cleric ought to use except in a life-or-death situation. The only thing more powerful would have been another resurrection spell, and that hadn’t been the answer. I pounded my fists into his chest with the swirling mass of ethereal energy, actually causing a ripple of energy to explode forth from his body.

Small green vines and the buds of a few flowers began to sprout around his torso from the desecrated ground.

But he made no motion. Not even a twitch.

“No…this can’t be happening,” I begged, the tears and realization beginning to form. “ARMOND!”

I tried again with the healing spell. Nothing. Perhaps he was paralyzed and I just needed to break the paralysis’s spells hold on him? No. Poison? Sleep?! WAS THIS EVEN MY REAL HUSBAND?!

Minutes had gone by and Armond now lay upon a soft bed of grass and vines, reeds, and flowers, all of which had slowly bloomed around him with each demand from my magic. He lay as still as he had moments before, except for the attempts to shake him awake. The tears were hot on my cheeks and I couldn’t see through them, but I kept trying.

“Armond…” I begged him, holding onto his shirt like a lifeline as I couldn’t see him through the tears that stung my eyes. “Please. Come back… Come back!”

By the end, I used all of the magic I had been granted by my god. I even resorted to magic I was never supposed to use. But he never returned.

And now I’m here alone.

Norman remained silent through the tale, staring at the gossamer cloud that seemed to drift, shimmering in the daylight, between the two stone mausoleums. He turned his attention back behind him.

In the high noon sun, he was greeted with the same strange sight he’d had when he entered the graveyard a few hours before to bury old Gunther. The body of a man, tall and bearded, wearing a silver plate and leather. He laid upon a bed of flowers and grass and vines. Draped across his body, a skeleton that had long since bleached in the sunlight. And, all about them, the skeletons of what looked to be three others, all equally ancient and picked apart clean by the wildlife outside of Greencreek.

He glanced back at the spectral figure, then again at the body.

When he’d found it, he thought the man was just sleeping. Just there for a little nap in the sunlight. Odd please, Norman had thought, sleeping in a graveyard, but the grass and flowers seemed pleasant enough. But the graveyard outside of Greencreek was quiet, never really used. Heck, the last person buried there was Adrianna’s son. What was his name? Ferigold?

And then he’d realized the other skeletons were there.

“I’ll see he gets a right proper burial, miss,” Norman said with a nod.

The gossamer figure nodded solemnly, though she said nothing more.

“I’ll see that you all do,” he added as he adjusted the shovel on his shoulder, preparing himself for a long day’s work.