Somewhere on the border of Baron Elyss’s territory

Outside the Yu-Bine Forest

 

“How many times have we done this dance Girl.” He was a tall man with a pudgy body wearing shining metal armor over scale leather armor. I recognized it as the armor of Baron Elyss’s Knights who have been running wild after the baron ran away to a rival nation. Of course I would have known this man regardless. He was my Master. Slaver. Owner. However you wanted to phrase it. He was a sociopath who excused owning another person by not raping and torturing them.

 

“Twelve times.” The metal collar around my neck began heating up but I resisted, refusing to call him that word aloud. It could burn me and kill me but I wouldn’t be bound to his man.

 

He sighed with that disappointed tone of voice but waved his hand disabling the collar’s burn but keeping it bound to me nonetheless. 

 

“I don’t understand what you want from me-”

 

“My freedom.”

 

“Obviously, but we both know I can’t give that to yo-.”

 

“But you can.”

 

“If I did you would just be captured by someone els-”

 

“That’s just an excuse!” I shouted and started to stand and take a step towards him but was forced back by an invisible repelling force

 

“I treat you well don’t I? All my slaves love me.”

 

“You’ve brainwashed them! Don’t think I don’t know about the box”

 

He tsked before turning around and shaking his head. “You would have been better off forgetting that.”

 

“So it’s true…” I turned away from him in frustration.

 

He spun back around raising his hand to hit me but stopping at the last moment, before laughing bitterly. “Of course you were lying. The magic was working fine and you just tricked us into thinking it wasn’t. I guess I owe him an apology. I don’t know where I went wrong with you. Those kids liked me with barely any trouble but you… I guess I just have to admit when I’m beaten.”

 

I stepped back wearily, carefully preparing a spell to help myself escape but when I did the collar began emitting light like I’d never before. Before I could shout in surprise my entire body seized up and fell to the ground. After a moment I felt myself begin to float but when I looked down I saw that my body was still laying there. My physical and astral forms were bisected. 

 

“Name: Unknown. Job: slave. Class: necromancer. I should have done this when I first got a hold of you. I was never able to figure out how you always seemed five steps ahead of us when it came to breaking out and then staying gone for months on end. You should thank the gods that the church has such specialized equipment for dealing with necromancers. This is your own fault, if you hadn’t tried and cast a spell it never would have bisected your physical and astral bodies. It’ll be OK though, I’m going to make you better. Without your memories and power leading you astray you’ll be eager to accept my help.”

 

I tried to curse him or rejoin my body but I couldn’t seem to grab ahold of my mana. It felt like trying to hold water in my hands without dropping any. 

 

“No… No… I won’t go like this.” I pleaded desperately as I tried to cast with my mana.

 

I calmed my breathing and focused on the tenets of my magic, my necromancy.

 

For a normal mage, being stripped of their body might incapacitate them, especially for many mages who focus on raising the dead but that has never been how I use my magic. 

 

I call, listen, and embody.

 

I’ve let myself be possessed probably more than any person alive, even if I can’t get into my body to save it there isn’t any reason why I can’t call for help from a wandering spirit. 

 

Call.

 

I grabbed ahold of the wisps of mana holding together my astral form and the remnants connected to my body that were being frayed by the Knight Captain’s curse. It was maybe a hundred or even a thousand times weaker than I normally could but I was able to form a call, covering my throat with magic I whispered out to the astral world.

 

“Wandering spirits, those hurt, beaten, enslaved, and killed by the mortals who still live. I ask you to help me now so I might help you…” 

 

As my enchanted voice echoed across the infinitude of the astral plane I thought I heard a dark amused laughter bubble out from the limits far beyond my sight but as I heightened my sense wondering if I had called something evil to possess my vulnerable body, instead I felt a will press down around me as if intentionally specters I could just barely make out. It seemed like almost a village worth of them, the only one let through though was a little girl.

 

She was paper thin, like many young children are in this country. She had long brown hair tied into a ponytail and wore a hand sewn dress with simple floral print designs of varying quality. It wasn’t something that could be called particularly pretty but still clearly done with love. 

 

I felt my heart break though when I saw her raise her right hand to wave at me before awkwardly lowering it, seeming to have forgotten that it wasn’t there.

 

“Did you ask for help, miss?” She was politely spoken again reflecting the love and care she was raised with compared to the abysmal attitude most peasants show. 

 

I wanted to tell her not to bother, as she was in fact polite but ultimately still just a child. I was hoping for a mage or warrior who could fight with my body. But as I looked around and again saw an even larger number of spirits frozen in place in a circle around us I became increasingly sure that something with a significant amount of power wanted me to talk to this girl.

 

I nodded at her as kindly as I could. “Yea. I’m hoping someone could help me get back to my body. You see, a bad man kicked me out of it. Do you have a name, little one? Do you think you could help me?”

 

The little girl sighed at me like an older sister chastising her younger one. “My name is Rosie, miss, but my grandpa said that when someone asks for your name they're supposed to give you theirs first!”

 

I gritted my teeth but reminded myself that the core of possession works on establishing a report with the spirit, “I don’t have a name Rosie, my parents-” I started to answer honestly, that they’d sold me into slavery without even naming me but I stopped myself, even if she was a hundred years older than she appeared and knowing she’d probably suffered horribly in life to have died so young I couldn’t give such an awful truth to a child. “My parents went away before they could name me.”

 

She frowned for a moment, maybe sensing my lie, but it disappeared in a moment as she seemed to have a flash of insight. She pointed at the ground and gestured for me to kneel so we were at eye level. 

 

Giving a worried look to my body that the knight had left in the carriage locked, as he’d been called out by something happening in the physical world I forced myself not to think about it and did as the little girl said. 

 

Standing on her tippy toes so she was just an inch or two taller than me she patted the top of my head and said “It’s ok. It’ll all be ok.” I bit back an angry reaction that wanted to bubble to the surface. She was being cute and I’m sure she meant well. It’s my own fault for having high expectations of a child almost half my age. I started to move away when I felt all the spirits around us suddenly start gathering mana and pouring it out into the earthly world making it shine in light clear as day despite the astral planes' perpetual foggy nature.

 

“I can’t help you miss but I’m sure Grandpa will. How about instead I give you my name?”

 

I nodded at her suggestion without thinking too heavily about it and instead focused on the first thing she said, “Who is your grandpa?”

 

She somehow smiled even brighter as if she was truly just full of innocence and love for her grandpa. “He’s amazing! He’s our village Storyteller! He could be grumpy sometimes and would always complain when he had to chase away my bunny-bears when they would eat up the fields but I once saw him beat back a fully grown direwolf with just a rake! He’s a superman for sure!”

 

I felt a little bit of her smile spread to me despite knowing that while this man seemed interesting he wasn’t what I needed right now. My astral chain was growing weaker by the second and I felt like I was going to be separated from my body forever at this rate. 

 

I sat down on the ground offering my lap to Rosie as she talked about her grandpa and the time he fought a direwolf. Apparently he was flying and the rake was on fire like a hero’s sword. It reminded me of being a child and listening to the older slaves tell stories about thier hometowns. A lot of the older girls were sold during times of famine in the hopes that they would be able to find food and survive till they could come home one day.

 

One girl would always talk about fishing in the ocean and catching fish three times her size with just a spear and rope.

 

As her story grew quiet and she seemed to be getting tired I quietly asked her what I wanted to know, “Your grandpa seems really cool Rosie but how is he going to help me? My body won’t let me back in.”

 

She looked at me like I was an idiot who wasn’t listening. “What do you mean? I’m not Rosie. You are. A ghost can’t possess it’s own body cause they died and their soul knows it. But you can possess someone else’s body as long as they accept it, cause your borrowing. Are you sure you're an adult? Even Billy figured this out and he wasn’t even allowed to help Grandpa farm. Besides like I said, Grandpa will help you. OOH! He’s there now!”

 

I felt like I’d gotten slapped by this girl with emotional whiplash and felt a strange sense of fear of what kind of magic she’d performed if she actually had managed to do some kind of shift in the nature of my soul. Even that had nothing to compare to seeing the hostile, frenzied, excitement from the little girl and the ghosts around us as they watched Rosie’s Grandpa.

 

The man wasn’t human, that much was obvious from first glance. His form stood at almost eight feet tall and his bones were bursting through his skin at all his joints, like his skeleton had grown but not the muscles and skin surrounding it. His hair was long, dirty, and white bearing the only proper indication of his age. What was perhaps most obviously inhuman and not just distorted was his face. His jaw extended outward like a hounds might but his incisors jutted up through his cheeks like a boar's tusks. 

 

His look alone was enough to make one sick but what was even worse was the way he tore through the slaver’s caravan. For once I was grateful that they deemed it to dangerous to have other slaves near me, no one else should have to witness this sight. I have never seen the demon lord they say is out east but I think it must look like this.

 

He first appeared in the woods where a magic of some kind made the shadows deepen and elongate outwards covering the dirt road the caravan was moving on. Then with a deep breath he let out a mighty screech that seemed to resonate with the spirits all around me who screamed back in response conjuring all manners of monsters alongside him from the shadows. Then he began charging.

 

His fingers sharpened to blades and he held them at his chest as he jumped, no, leaped, from the shadow coverage with his hoard of monsters and began to simply rip and tear his way through the slavers. Every part of his body, whether bone, tooth, or appendage seemed to meld its way into a weapon as soon as it made contact with another human being. Worst yet, whenever a piece was attached to him he would simply throw it into the air with a manic grin and snap at it with his teeth swallowing it whole.

 

It wasn’t a long slaughter. Maybe five, ten minutes whole. I thought my slave master would put up a fight. I remember someone saying he was a descendant of a hero but he didn’t even try. As soon as he saw the monster coming he simply ran for the woods, abandoning everything along with his pride. 

 

As for the few mercenaries that did actually hurt him, even one who managed to stab him straight through the heart. They all eventually fell and became his food and fuel. 

 

I’ve never seriously considered myself a vengeful person.

 

My parents abandoned me, but that isn’t out of the norm. I was just a bit younger than most when it happened. I was enslaved but I escaped far more than most and one time I even met a girl I would have liked to have fallen in love and grown old with. I’ve hated this world from the day I was born but that was always because it was clear that the world felt nothing towards me. 

 

I’m just a slave.

 

Until a moment ago I didn’t even have a name.

 

But now I do have a name.

 

I listened to Grandpa eating as I felt a child-like innocent smile grow on my body's face as my astral form sank back into it.

 

I think… I’m hungry.

 

Name granted: Rosie

 

Fame increases!

 

Title Gained : Named by the Dead

 

Trait Unlocked : Inheritor of Her Life

 

Title Gained : Inhabitant of the Astral Plane 

Curse Unlocked : Living-Dead : You must return to the astral plane regularly to maintain your life. When in the Astral Plane your body can become possessed.

 

Infamy Skyrockets!

 

Title Gained : Multiple Natures

 

Ability Unlocked : Hidden Motives : When having your identity checked you can choose to bear the name of Rosie or ERROR

 

Curse Unlocked : Infected By Hunger : Your hunger will never be sated.

 

Curse Unlocked : Touched by the Evil God’s Hand : ….

 

Curse Superseded : Laughter of the Evil God : You have heard the laughter of an Evil God. When seeing atrocities committed and the taboo embraced you will feel an intense desire to laugh and instigate.

 

Your Infamy Skyrockets!

 

Race Evolution : Half-Specter : You have accomplished a dream of Necromancers.