Death Is Not The End

[Ethereal-Star]

[Open by request]

((OoC: This thread is open for cleric or priestly types who have the power to raise the dead or at least, are affiliated with someone who can. An NPC perhaps? Regardless, the title is pretty straightforward as to what is going to happen to poor Elowen. A note though: The outfit she is wearing in death is not the same as in life, just saying. Her body still has all her armor on. One other thing and that is a question to anyone who reads this: Can you guess as to who the mysterious boatman is?))

The blow to the head came at her then, and Elowen tried to block it a second too late. The sun elf was currently fighting two immensely powerful demons of some of the worst kind, but to the demon hunter warrior, all of their disgusting brethren were of the worst sort. That was just how she thought.

After the hit connected, Elowen saw stars for a fleeting moment, before the blackness kicked in. Barely registering the pain before her life was ultimately cut short. She lay there in a pool of her own blood as the enemy laughed uproariously amongst themselves. One of them, the first demon gave her side a mighty kick, while the second demon who had dealt the death blow gave her dead corpse a thoughtful look. "She is a pretty one I'll give her that, despite all the scars she got. We could--"

"No! We are not here to play with it. This scum has been nothing but trouble for our kind for so long. I for one, am glad she is no more. Let's take what we can from its body and move on." the first fiend barked at his comrade, shaking its black horned head in disdain.

The second one wanted to argue but knew better than to do so with its superior. With a sigh and shake of its equally horned head, although the twisted horns were a little bit smaller, they began to search Elowen's corpse for any valuables, finding her coin pouch in the process. Taking it, they made to keep searching as well as to avoid her holy weapon which still lay beside her so as not to get burned anymore than they already were. The red-haired elf had put up quite the fight, the adrenaline still rushing through their bodies as much as ever. The first one examined the shield at her side, pondering whether or not to take it when they heard footsteps approach.

"That's our cue to go. Let's be off." The second demon did not argue and they teleported out of sight in heavy puffs of blackened smoke, the smell of soot and ash lingering long after they had vanished. Leaving behind a very dead Elowen.

                  * * *

In a thick haze of gray mist, a figure slowly stood up, rubbing its head as though from a mighty wound given. Yet strangely, there was no pain. Elowen stood up to her full height then, and looked around her. The place was utterly unfamiliar. Where the fuck was she? Looking down at her body, she saw she wore a black gown. That was a funeral gown if she was not mistaken. What the hell was going on here? What is this place?

Peering through the fog around her, even her enhanced eyesight couldn't pierce through it. Something was dreadfully wrong here. There was no doubt in her mind about that. Slowly walking, putting one bare foot in front of the other, the sun elf made her way through this eerie place, trying to find out just where she was.

Soon, a hooded figure by a boat near a river came into view then as the fog parted around it. It seemed to regard her with unsettling eyes as though it knew exactly who she was and every thing she had ever done in her life. The blackness under the hood was so incredibly dark so Elowen could only see the barest hint of the worn, but ageless face of a man underneath it. She immediately stormed up to the figure, and asked him in a demanding voice. "What is this place and where am I?!" she all but shouted at him. "Where is my stuff?! I have a job to do, you cannot keep me from it!"

The hooded man said nothing, but Elowen had the creepy feeling he was watching her intently, eyes boring into her very soul with his quiet, foreboding gaze. Finally, he spoke. "You do not remember?" he said quietly, as though contemplating a great mystery. "Ah, I suppose it is no matter. Come, the river awaits."

Elowen snarled at him. "I am not going anywhere with you, until you tell me what's going on!"

The man stared at her some more, quietly as ever. In a deep voice which spoke of the grave itself, he replied, "This place is the Realm of the Dead where all souls go upon their final breaths. You cannot go back to your life, Elowen. For you are dead."

((One more thing. I would like for her to be brought back to life in perhaps a couple posts later, but not just yet please. That is all.))

[Draconian]

Avery's chest ached.

It always did when his kind were near. Anxiety maybe. The smell of them set his heart racing. There was no warm familiar feelings. Simply fear and anger. Still, curiosity and anger set him moving and before long the smell was burning his throat and he looked around carefully, frowning slightly. His arms were out - all of them - his wing arms hanging at his sides, hands loosely opened, his more human arm was resting at his chest.

It took a moment, but he spotted the woman. A tilt of his head. A gentle frown.

Dead.

They'd picked her pockets clean  - which confused him the most - and he reached out for her weapon, curious about it before he gave a feral hiss, mouth opening to his ears, sharp teeth on display. The skin on his palm sizzled and he glared down at the weapon accusingly before moving to cradle his hand to his chest.

A dead body?

A weapon that burned him?

Kneeling beside the slowly cooling body he pushed hair from her face, examined her features and tilted her to the side. Interesting looking person. Different from the little humans he'd kept meeting.

A name echoed in his mind and he looked up, blinking, giving a small smile.

There would be one person interested in a dead body and a sneaky burny weapon.

Avery needed to find Zea.

At the promise of his body to Zea when he died, she'd shown him the Meeting Place. Having no ill intentions - usually - Avery passed through occasionally, when time was of the essence and now it was. There were animals about and he'd heard about Dragons in these mountains. Those would eat that weapon and the body.

Giving his hand a look - the flesh still searing a little - he made his way to Zea.

It would be early morning there.

Luckily the mode of travel was quick and he wouldn't be gone long.

Careful movements. Quick foot steps. He wrapped his wings around himself to keep as hidden as he could when he finally made his way to that strange polite little island. It was easy to find her house. Zea was an oddity - a curiosity to him - her house displayed that.

Letting himself in (politely, he wiped his feet off at the door ) he looked around, shifting his wings slightly, hunched over so his head didn't brush along the ceiling. Not bothering to keep his voice low, he tilted his head and took a few steps into her house.

"Zea. There is a dead body and a weapon that burns me. It's fresh - The body I mean. She wasn't human. Are you awake? Do you want to come look?" A chattering echo'd out through the house and Avery rolled his eyes, sneering a little at his feet. A few more steps into the house and hunching over so he didn't break anything he simply stood there and waited. He'd have gone to pull her from her bed but he wasn't sure where that even was.

[Cobalt]

A spark of alarm zizzed through the spirits who routinely drifted around Zea's home. Small cold fingers poked and stroked and a couple of them even scratched. Zea woke with a startled gasp. She hated it when they touched her. She'd told them not to do that.

A familiar voice calmed her a little.

Avery.

Zea dragged herself out of bed and slid open her bedroom door with her toe while her hands were busy tying shut a green silk robe.

"Morning, Avery." She dug her fingers into her hair to push the curls out of her face. "Morning Avery's chitter thing. Said you got a fun corpse?"

[Draconian]

Visibly brightening Avery smiled at Zea - the wide grins he knew she liked - before giving an enthusiastic nod.

"Yes. You need to come quickly though, something may eat it." He looked around, looked at her clothing and then looked at the door behind him, "I assume you need to get dressed."

[Cobalt]

Zea knotted her fingers together and stretched her arms over her head.

"Probably. Hang on."

She turned and shut the door again, retreating to her room only long enough to pull on a simple red shift and grab a black scarf for her hair. Her shoes were still by the door, though.

"Okay I'm good." She had to duck around Avery to get to the rest of her things, but they were already collected in a tough wicker basket wrapped in a square of packing cloth. "You know me. Always ready for an impromptu corpse party."

[Draconian]

Impatient.

That was a good word.

Avery was impatient because this body had been looted by demons and that weapon was evil -to him! - and it was a corpse which meant Zea would be interested in it! Another wide grin and before she could protest and after she'd gathered her things, he gathered her in his arms and made his way back to where they were to go. "We must be quick."

It only made sense to cradle her in his arms, his legs were longer, he could run faster.

It was a short trip - thanks to Avery's long legs - and before long the pair were at the clearing. Being around Zea made Avery's sense of spirits a little more heady and again, the chattering rang out from under him.

The woman's body was at the clearing and he gently let Zea down from his arms, taking a few steps closer to her before he hovered over the weapon. Frowning down at it. "I could smell my own on her," He supplied, looking at Zea, frowning slightly, "They looted her after killing her." A tilt of his head, " I don't know what she is. Her weapon burns me."

A tilt of his head and he took a few steps back, lifting his wing arms up to extend his wings to their full span - a wide area that made him an even more imposing figure. "I sense her though," He frowned, "I couldn't before." Another tilt of his head, "You bring them out, Zea."

[Cobalt]

Zea had never known anyone who could completely chastely pick up a woman and carry her around and genuinely mean nothing by it other than a sort of vague interest in her convenience. Someday they were going to have a talk about personal space, but that could probably wait until someone found him less entertaining than she did.

As it was... it was a nice change of pace.

The trip through the Meeting Place was barely more than a blur, as the route she'd shown Avery was the shortest straight to her home. Obviously if he were dying he couldn't afford a lot of detours delivering his corpse.

She squatted over her heels over the weapon in question. It didn't feel particularly strange to her, but then she wasn't any kind of enchanter. Maybe it just didn't like Avery. How rude.

"Yeah she's around." Zea put her index finger and pinkie into her mouth, took a deep breath, and centered herself on that boundary between material things and the ethereal bodies they left behind. Then she blew a whistle, loud and shrill, into both spaces. "Hey, you," she said at normal conversational volume, knowing she could be heard. "You don't look Adelan. You got someone to take care of you from here on?"

[Ethereal-Star]

Elowen could only stare at the boatman in disbelief. Dead? she thought. "No, that's not true! I can't be dead! You're lying!" she hissed at him furiously.

Looking around, she continued to rant and rave all the while the shrouded figure just looked on, saying nothing and remaining quiet. Just letting her rant. Charon was used to this, after all one would not be a guide to the dead if he hadn't heard such things before.

Pretty soon, the mist parted on the surface of the river and it was then in the water's reflection, Elowen saw her body. Her dead physical body lying in a pool of red blood. Her blood. Her head had been bashed in, her skull crushed. "Noooo..." she trailed off, staring agape at the scene. "That's not possible!" she screamed in anger.

"It is." the boatman said somberly, although not with sadness. "You must accept this and move on."

"I will not!" the sun elf screamed at him. "There must be a way! I can't be dead! I can't!"

The image rapidly faded and Elowen was left staring at the grey waters once more. She began to march off away from the cursed river and that infuriating boatman, no doubt some kind of guide to the dead. Elowen had no idea where she was going, but right now she didn't care. The figure watched her go silently, not making any attempt to stop her. The dead spirit would come back eventually, he was certain of it. After all there was nowhere else to go.

Tears threatened to spill down ghostly features as Elowen began to sob. "I want to live..." she whispered, no doubt a person attuned to spirits and the dead would hear her whispered plea.

[Cobalt]

No response, at first. Not so close, then?

Zea heard what came next, though. The new ones. She suppressed a sigh. They were always the worst, still all full of denial and emotions and various other difficult rubbish. More often than not... they still wanted to live.

They wanted to live and didn't listen for shit. They were at their freshest and realest and they still never frigging listened.

She reached out and carefully laid a hand on the corpse's forehead, sticky with blood as it was. She closed her eyes, and when she spoke her voice came out layered over itself several times, speaking as she did through multiple layers of her own perception.

"Listen to me. Listen to my voice. Then answer me. Are you Adelan? Who will take care of you after your death?"

[Ethereal-Star]

Through her tears, Elowen heard a voice then. It penetrated through the mists like a hand parting a curtain back. It told her to listen. And so with no other choice at hand, she did. The voice was undeniably female, with a thick accent.

"Is someone there?" she called out, uncertain at first. At the other woman's question, she frowned. "No, I am an elf." she replied back. "I am of the sun elf peoples. Daughter of...." Elowen found she couldn't finish that sentence for she had never fully gotten over the death of her family. Her mother, father, sister and brother's deaths were even now, still too fresh in her mind.

Then to her other query, she shook her head fiercely. "There is no one. None of my family live any longer." Her hands clenched into fists by her sides as she spoke this harsh truth. "I am the only one who survived."

[Cobalt]

Zea sucked her teeth in disapproval.

Some kind of weird celestial freak elf, then. No, she didn't reckon there were too many of those around to tend to the deceased.

"Gimme a moment, Avery," she said at normal volume, in the normal real world where sound was conducted through air. She gave a vague wave with one hand in his general direction. "Gonna check on this ghost first and then we'll see what you found me."

She turned her attention back to the layer of reality she and the ghost shared, away from the one she shared with Avery. "You're not the only one who survived. You won't like hearing it, but you're dead. You need to leave the rest of the way, you understand? You need to go. This isn't your body anymore."

[Ethereal-Star]

"No, you don't understand!" Elowen shouted, losing her temper then. "My family was killed years ago by those demonic scum! I did survive and I will continue to do so! I am not dead!"

Calming down some, she said in a quieter voice, the desperation clear as day. "You must help me!"

[Cobalt]

Ah, the shouting. Good old ghost shouting. Always a swell portion of any workday.

Zea sighed and dropped her face into her hands, forgetting for the moment that one was smeared with cold blood. When she remembered, she just lifted her face and wiped her mouth clean with her unbloodied palm.

"I understand that. You won't believe me but I get it. But haunting is bad for you. If you stick around outside your body because you are too angry to leave, you're gonna slowly dissolve until there's nothing left of you but anger. It's bad for you. I'm a Thanati priestess and I know this stuff."

[Ethereal-Star]

"There must be something you can do!" Elowen pleaded to her. "If you're a priestess, you can help me! You must!" The sun elf began clenching her hands together so tightly, they turned completely white. There was no way she was going to give up!

"I have a life to live! Demons to hunt! People to protect! Please!" Elowen's voice rose higher and higher in her anguish. "I'M NOT READY!" she screamed, her voice echoing through the cold void. The boatman merely looked on impassively, doing nothing but watch.

[Draconian]

While he wasn't in tuned enough to talk to spirits as Zea was, Avery was an interested viewer during the exchange. Just being around Zea had him able to listen in on the conversation and he gave the woman's body a curious look.

A demon hunter.

A self proclaimed protector of the people.

Another look at her weapon and Avery moved closer, moving to sit on his knees, all his hands in his lap while he watched and listened to the exchange. The chattering picked up and Avery glared down at the space between his wings.

"Can you put her back in?" His voice was soft, looking between Zea and the corpse.

[Cobalt]

"Well--" Zea sighed. Avery didn't know the basics and that wasn't his fault. There were a lot of very elementary facts she hadn't had opportunity to explain to him yet, so there was no sense being salty with him about it. Nor could a ghost be blamed. Ghosts just weren't much on the reasoning and prioritizing either.

"Theoretically, probably. But it's not a real solution. This body is inherently flawed. It was designed to die. I mean, look at it." Zea gestured to the cooling mess. "Someone's just going to hit it in the skull again, or it'll fall off something high, or get stabbed, or eat bad fish, and then it's back to dead again. It always comes back to dead."

She shrugged deeply, settling down more comfortably in the grass. "Honest to Inima, it wouldn't be doing her any favors in the long run to help her..." She made another vague hand motion. "...I don't know, procrastinate."

[Ethereal-Star]

If Elowen could have heard those words that were spoken, she would have no doubt gone completely ballistic. As it were, the sun elf heard nothing being that Zea wasn't directly talking to her at that moment.

"Don't you dare leave!" she shouted into the fog. "I wasn't supposed to die! Not like that!" Glancing around frantically as though that would solve something, Elowen continued to shout. "Bring me back! This wasn't supposed to happen! BRING ME BACK! I beg of you!"

[Cobalt]

Ghosts.

Ah, ghosts.

"I'm still here. Calm your ethereal ass down," Zea retorted, her smooth and gentle tone incongruous with her coarse choice of words. "I was just telling my assistant that I wouldn't be doing you any favors if I did that. Your body was built to die, do you understand? It was designed to break and die. If I put you back in at some point you will die all over again. Do you want to die again?"

Ghosts never did think seriously about dying. It was something they had in common with living mortals. Dying just never factored in. It was all life life life now now now, like a toddler screaming for a sweet before bed. At least, that's what Zea imagined toddlers were like. Little ghosts still in their meat.

Then again, that was everybody.

[Ethereal-Star]

Elowen positively fumed at hearing this. "You're wrong!" she snarled, still very much holding onto the belief that this was an accident. A mistake. The gods if she believed in them, which she most certainly did not, had made a fatal error.

Elowen had grown up to be a warrior, not some sissy religious type who believed in the sort of nonsense she was hearing from this woman, this priestess. Elowen was not familiar with the goddess Inima or her ways, nor did she give a crap. She wanted to live, and live she would.

"Whatever killed me is going to regret doing so! I will make sure of it!" Reason was not top priority to the sun elf demon hunter at that time, so she continued to cling fiercely to her life, to her dead elven body as best as she were able to in this form. Once again, her reckless behavior took full hold of the woman, fighting tooth and nail to get back to the land of the living. Where she belonged.

"I will find a way with or without your help!" Elowen was completely adamant about this. This was just one gods-awful mistake and she absolutely and utterly hated it!

[Draconian]

Leaning in a little closer, still on his knees, hands still politely in his lap.

A curious tilt of his head.

A shift of his wings.

"She's very adamant," Avery stated evenly, looking at the broken battered body on the ground. "Maybe you can put her back in anyway?" Like clock work, his head shifted from side to side, the glow of his orange eye cutting out with his long blinks.

A hand reached out and it hovered over her chest, hovering over her heart. "She's full of vengeance and anger." Then he pulled his hand back and placed it on top of his wing hands, tapping at the lethal talons.  "It would be interesting to see, I can keep other souls at bay if you're afraid of something else taking the body."