The Undead King’s Daughter

The bounty to recover Silvana was a lifetime of gold, or so the herald claimed. Silvana: the Death Knight of Decay. Mistress of Woe. Third daughter of the Undead King, Gorizzin. She fled from her father’s island keep, in the dead of night 3 weeks ago. Now he wanted her back. Her trail was easy to follow once I found where her boat had landed. She hadn’t bothered to hide her tracks- heavy boot prints broke branches and her path left deep grooves in the mud. Not that she could hide her trail in this overgrown forest that she now wandered, for the necromantic aura that kept her alive withered the vegetation as she passed. She was a walking blight nature fled from.

This forest was known as the Pyre Wood. Some seventy or so summers ago the woods, along with a small hamlet nested inside, was burned to the ground by the Undead King’s forces led by Silvana. Since then, the forest had grown back, but thicker, darker, and more abundant, as if nature was doubling down in rebellion to the king's will. Those with deep connections to the land say the woods are cursed or haunted.

“Figures,” I grumble under my breath, “of course she would come here.” I entered the forest, walking swiftly along the trail of brown and rotted vegetation. “I’m just here for her.” I softly whisper to the spirits of the forest, “I mean no disrespect.” I look about the dark forest and hope the spirits haunting here want her gone too.

I hurried along the blighted trail, holding my weapon tight so the chain didn't give me away. I felt her first, a sickening nausea that hit me as if a tidal wave swept me under an ocean of decay. Her aura of death tugged at my very life, trying to wither me as she did the plants around her. I gritted my teeth and willed myself to ignore the feeling as I worked my way closer. Now that I was closer, I moved off the trail and used the woods outside the blight as concealment to hopefully get the drop on her. My heart raced, my pulse drumming behind my ears, as I picked my every step, moving as silently as I could. I told myself it was exertion. Maybe excitement. But in the pit of my stomach I knew it was fear.

Then I hear her, the rhythmic clunk and rattle of her black lacquered plate armor shifting from her steady gait. I moved behind a tree and looked around it, then I saw her. Bone white hair trailed in her wake as she walked with measured steps. Her skin, pale as burned ash, somehow still held the beauty of youth. She stopped and turned, her milky white eyes looking directly at me. There was something familiar about her, some part of her face stirred my memory, but I didn’t recognize her. Nor could I place who she reminded me of. I tensed, watching her in hope that she didn’t see me and would move on. We both held our position and I wondered why she didn't draw her sword or try to cast a spell at me.

Steadying my nerves and shaking off the feelings I didn’t understand, I step out from the cover of the forest and stand in the trail of death she had left behind her. Her eyes followed me and looked me over as I stood there watching her watch me. After a moment her brow wrinkled as if she was concentrating hard on something. “Do I… know you?” She asked. Her brow eased as the words came out, her eyes looking at me expectantly.

“Do you?” I evade her question as I let the steel chain of my weapon slide from my fingers. I had expected a threat, or mockery, maybe even just brutal head on violence, but she spoke, with a soft and elegant voice that stirred a memory I couldn’t see, only feel, as it melded with the other stirring questions.

Her gaze lingers on me as her head tilts slightly to her left. I edge my right foot back, non-threatening but ready. We stand silently watching one another as I feel tension growing inside me. Her emotionless gaze just watching without a micro expression to hint at the thoughts in her head as her aura eats at my will. “I suppose not.” She says, then rights herself fully and turns to walk away.

Acting quickly, I threw my lash-knife at her, the heavy knife aimed for her back. With the ring of steel she draws her sword and parries the attack. Her blade strikes the chain and redirects the knife away from its apparent target. But I was counting on the block and already pulling the chain taut as the knife carries the portion of chain that had passed the blade, around it then wraps around the chain itself. I shuffle forward and stomp on the chain expecting resistance before disarming her, but Silvana holds firm and I over balance as she looks at the chain with mild curiosity. My foot slipped and I landed with too much weight forward. She pulls her sword up and back forcing me to stagger to my knees.

As soon as my knees hit the ground I roll to the right, getting back on my feet quickly and preparing to dodge away from a sword strike that I was sure would follow. But I saw the woman was already pointing her sword to the ground and letting the chain of my lash-knife slide off her weapon. “I don’t want to fight you.” She states simply. Once her sword is free of my chain she slides it back in its sheath before she begins to walk away again.

I frown at her declaration. The Mistress of Woe, the death knight who gave the Pyre Wood its name, the Undead King’s Bloody Fist and favorite daughter, doesn’t want to fight?

Gritting my teeth I send the lash-knife spinning. I speed up the knife and with a loop around the toe of my boot I kick it out, intent on catching her around her neck. In a blur of motion I could barely see, she dips and grabs the chain just behind the knife and with inhuman strength pulls me closer, while simultaneously stepping towards me and striking my side with the back of her gauntleted fist. I feel ribs crack and the air explodes from my lungs. I collapse onto my knees coughing and gasping as I hug myself. She drops my lash-knife in the dead grass in front of me and through the tears in my eyes I see her corruptive power turning the steel chain to pitted rust. “Don’t make me kill you.” She commands coldly before walking away.

Breathless, I am left wondering why she didn’t kill me as she continues to follow whatever was compelling her forward. I take several shallow breaths and I quietly thank the divine when her aura tapers away. What was it that provoked the woman to show mercy even though she doesn’t even know the meaning of the word. With a groan of pain and will, I climb back to my feet. I frown down at my ruined weapon, then the way the death knight departed. I consider turning back, glancing the way I came, but with a shake of my head and an arm clenched tight to my damaged side, I follow after her.

Her pace was slow but undeterred as she walked along a path only she knew. I held back far enough that her aura didn’t affect me too much. I study her as I follow her, looking for a weakness I could exploit. All around me the blackened and crumbling ruins of the village press in. Haunting smells of burning wood and flesh inexplicably linger all around and I’d swear I can see ghosts lurking in the deeper shadows of the trees. I had only known this place in stories. Tales before bed, my mother telling me of my grandfather, the brave knight who saved the few who escaped the slaughter.

Silvana walked deeper into the town, turning from the ruins of the village square and continued down a broken and winding path. Eventually she stopped at the ruins of a village farm house. She stands looking at the ruins and when it became apparent she wasn’t going to move on just yet I dared move closer. “This…isn’t right…” She says, her words slow and stilted as she speaks, her tone confused.

“It was destroyed.” I deadpan, wondering if she remembered it was her command that razed this place to ruin. Her orders which had sent a swarm of the undead to kill and consume all but a small handful of survivors.

“Yes…” she nods with the affirmation. Her hand rises and points to a large pile of broken stone and long since rotted wood. “There was a windmill here.” The timber of her words growing soft and floaty. “And a farm house with a blue door…” she adds her ghostly eyes drifting towards the split in a line of stone that would have been the doorway for the house she spoke of. She begins walking towards the doorway. “I…” she begins as a smile starts to form on her lips, “was so…” she continued but her face drifted from joy back to indifference as whatever was trying to reach out of her was pushed back under.

I stood back at first, fearing treading on the dead and earning their wrath. But as she continued to walk towards the doorway I began to feel like the haunting spirits were kept at bay by her and I quickly walked to join her. “So what?” I probed.

She ignored me as she stepped onto the stone doorstep. Lingering in the doorway, eyes scanning the remains of a small two bedroom cottage. As her eyes settled on the collapsed chimney and what remained of the hearth, she began to hum and sway. The tune was a soft and sweet melody and as she walked towards the ruined fireplace I realized I knew the tune.

“How do you know that tune?” I demand as memories long abandoned stir in me. “Where did you learn that?” I ask, my voice unsteady as long buried tears try to break free.

She ignores me as she is lost in whatever memories play behind her eyes. As much as I wanted her to answer, I watched transfixed as she reenacted the memory. She hummed the familiar tune as she slid to her knees beside the fireplace and sat back on her heels. She runs her hand over her lap as if she were smoothing out a simple dress before looking at a pot that no longer hung in the fireplace. She reached out and delicately took a phantom spoon to stir the non-existent stew.

Her eyes then shift to the door and I see a serine smile on her face. She looked almost alive as she grinned at her ghost. “Alexander! Tanya! Dinner!” She called and I felt the strength of my legs fall out from me as my head spins and I collapsed to my knees on the floor.

“Who are you?” I ask her softly, hoping to pull her to the present without fully snapping her out of her illusion. “How do you know then?” I questioned her as I tried to focus.

She doesn’t hear me, or perhaps ignores me, as she continues to ride out the fantasy. Humming the tune to herself as she returns to the imaginary stew. I shut my eyes and allow myself to remember the tune my mother hummed whenever she put me to sleep or if I felt ill. As the tune Silvana hummed synchronized with my memory I joined her and hummed along with the tune. That was until I felt cold steel at my throat and opened my eyes to see Silvana staring down the length of steel as her white eyes bored into mine. With the faintest flicker of fire in her eyes, she demanded, “Where did you learn that?”

“My mother,” I state defiantly. “Tanya Flowers.” I say her name like an invocation as I add, “The Paladin you slew at Durnson’s pass.” I hold her gaze and see nothing register in her. Resigned to failure I close my eyes, readying myself to die.

I gasp with shock when the feeling of steel leaves my neck and I hear Silvana stand. My eyes open and I see her walk away towards the door. “Stop!” I command her as I draw the dirk from my boot and chase after her. “You killed my mother! I demand-“ My call for vengeance is cut short as she stops mid stride. Suddenly, my dirk is sliding between her plates, prying through chainmail, grazing off a rib bone and embedding itself in a lung that hasn’t been used in over a century. Simultaneously her hand grabs my throat and she shoves me back to spill onto the dirt covered floor.

I start to get up but her boot steps on my chest. She stopped short of crushing me, her inhuman strength held me to where I couldn’t get up, but could breathe fine. I grip her leg and try to twist it, but I may as well have tried to twist a mountain. I look up to her and see her looking down at me with a strange black icor oozing like tears along her cheeks, despite no other emotion displayed. “And I will kill my grandson if you don’t leave me,” she says in a soft but firm tone.

“What?” Was all I could mutter. I blink as the dots begin to connect. The familiarity of her face, so similar to my mothers, the tune, the home. My mother had told me her parents were killed by the Undead king. It was part of why she had joined the order. It’s why she hunted down Silvana, but she never said…”no,” I gasp.

Silvana steps off of me and pulls my dirk from her side, dropping it to the ground with a clatter. “I know the one you speak of. She was my daughter in another life. A life before I died.” Silvana says as I get to my feet. “But what was done to me is not undone… just… weakened. I will kill you if you pursue me further.” She says in a commanding monotone, “Let me wander. Forget me and know your mother is avenged, for it is her I seek…but will never find.” Her eyes trail to the hearth once more and her words grow distant as she begins to walk towards the hearth humming the lullaby that had been passed along my family for generations.

I linger in the doorway, looking at the thing that was once my grandmother, conflicted on what to do. I came seeking the Death Knight to avenge my mother, who fought her to avenge her parents. I looked once more at Silvana, “I’m sorry mother,” I sigh and turn away from the death knight.

I had managed to walk a short distance back when the sound of Silvana’s footsteps came from behind me. I stop and look back to see the death knight following me. I waited, letting her approach. “Do I know you?” She asks her head tilting.

“No.” I rasp. I watch her. Wait for what she will do next, I was beaten and now weaponless. If she chose to attack I was as good as dead.

She gives a contemplative hum before nodding, “As you say. I’m looking for someone…someone important…” she states.

“I hope you find her.” I tell Silvana as I force a polite smile.

“Yes…her...” She says as she walks towards the ruins of the village square and turns to trudge deeper into the woods. I watched her fade into the trees humming. I had come here to kill a monster and avenge my family. I was left haunted by a lullaby.