Don't Fear The Reaper (Reggy!)

[Eckhart_Von_Musel]

It was a chilly Autumn day. A brisk wind blew through the trees as Wallace hope made his way down the road. The leaves were just beginning to turn orange, having yet to fall off their branches and blow away. The young man gazed at his surroundings wistfully as he walked, enjoying the peace it brought. Darken Vei had always been beautiful the is time of year, but he'd rarely gotten a chance to properly take it all in when he was younger...

"What are you waiting for Alex? Just pull it down!"

"I can't, Jason! It's stuck!"

The sound of voices pulled the man from his thoughts. Two children stood by the side of the road, staring up at a large oak tree. Upon getting a bit closer, Wallace could see an expensive looking kite tangled in it's branches. "Ughhh, my dad is gonna kill me..." the boy named Alex whined. "This is his favorite one!"

"You two need help?" Wallace asked, walking towards them. The boys glanced at him quickly, then looked back at the kite.

"It's no use..." the one called Jason said. "It's not like we can just pull harder, it'll rip that way." The boy suddenly looked at Wallace again, eying the man's stave. "Hang on..." he said slowly. "Are you a wizard? Can you like... magic it down?"

"Can you please, Sir?" Alex chimed in, now staring at Wallace excitedly. "I don't want to get in trouble!"

Wallace smiled. "Yeah!" he said, squinting up at the kite. "I can get it down, sure!"

The man closed his eyes, reaching out with his mind as he tilted his stave upwards. The two boys watched him excitedly for a few moments, then grew impatient. "Hey!" said Alex. "Where's the spe- oh Kia..."

The boys attention turned to the ground at their feet, excitedment melting into horror as an emaciated squirrel crawled out the dirt. The tiny zombie moved towards Wallace, who pointed up at the kite. Immediately the squirrel scurried up the tree, grabbing the toy with it's paws. It fidgeted with it for a few moments as it worked to untangle it from the branches, until the kite fell from the tree. "There you go!" the necromancer said happily, turning to look at Alex. "No worries!"

But Alex had already left, dashing down the road in a panic. Jason backed away slowly, shaking his head. "You're one of those bad wizards..." he mumbled softly, eyes as wide as dinner plates. "I'm supposed to stay away from people like you..."

"But... I got it down!" Wallace began, but it was too late. The terrified boy turned to run after his friend, and both soon disappeared from sight. The necromancer sighed glumly as the undead squirrel climbed onto his shoulder. "Nice going, Wallace." he said under his breath. "You ruined everything. Again."

[reggybsr]

Cold.

Gritting her teeth against the autumn wind, Tenna Ghwayne trudged down the road nearest the border. She could barely feel her feet; she'd been walking for Kia knew how long, and the bite of the chill through her thin, black garments was not helping at all.

Shivering slightly, Tenna reached up a hand to brush short black locks of hair from her eyes. Her dirty fingers caught on a few strands—sticky, greasy, slick with small clumps of dried blood that past rain showers weren't able to wash away.

The blood...she could smell it. The tangy scent of iron sent chills down her spine, and not for the first time since...since then, she felt split in two. One half of her wanted to cower, to curl up in a ball or perhaps run frantically to the first source of water she could find to scrape all of this grime away. But the other...

The other knew that the blood in her hair wasn't hers. And...and she wanted...she wanted...more...

NO!

Tenna stopped short, a different kind of chill freezing her in place, sending her very bones quivering.

She couldn't...she...she won't...

She took a deep breath, forcing herself (selves?) to ignore the smell. Take a step forward. Another. Another, and another, until she was walking again. Shaking a little, she pushed the strands of hair behind her ear, and focused instead on the Terrin mountains looming to her left.

They were huge. Bigger than she expected they would be, having only seen them from a distance within the kingdom. In the Order's base back in Moonspear, the mountains seemed so small, so possible to scale over.

Since she'd left the battlefield—how long ago? A week? Two?—she hadn't yet found a mountain suitable enough to climb, not in a state like hers. They were always too steep, too slippery, too full of rocks. She couldn't possibly scale up terrain like that, not even with her new and improved—shudder—senses and reflexes. She had to find another way, even if it meant walking this path forever.

A far off sound made her stop. She straightened and cocked her head, newly alert. It was coming from her right, a little ways in front of her.

She looked on longingly, wanting nothing more than to return to her Serendipity. Which city was she nearest to now? It must be Darken Vei. The trees didn't tell her much, but the distant Terrin mountains to the north looked closer much now—

"Hey!" A young boy's voice found her ears, carried over by the wind.

Tenna took a few more steps forward, and peeking through the trees, she saw them—a trio of people, crowded around a particularly tall tree. Two boys and a young man of lanky stature, holding up what must have been the heaviest stave she'd ever seen.

"Where's the spe—oh, Kia..." one of the younger boys had been saying. Following his gaze, Tenna found what made him invoke the sacred deity's name.

Her eyes widened, horrified.

Something scurried up the tree. A squirrel? It can't have been, and yet, there was no mistaking it. A-a dead squirrel? But how? Necromancy is forbidden within—

Tenna gasped softly. Necromancy. That man, with the stave...he was a necromancer.

One of the boys—the one who she'd first heard—up and ran for his life, the other not far behind him. "You're one of those bad wizards," the second boy had mumbled, his voice loud to her hyper-sensitive ears. "I'm supposed to stay away from people like you..."

Tenna swiped her dagger from her boot, her mud-caked fingers closing around its familiar, leather-wrapped hilt. No one's around, she thought. No one's going to take action. I'm still of the Order, I can still take him down—

With that thought, Tenna burst forth from the trees that covered her, a growl ripping from her throat as she sped towards the grumbling necromancer.

[Eckhart_Von_Musel]

Wallace watched the boys disappear in the distance, a gloomy expression on his face. The necromancer had been in this position enough times to know what would happen next- the children would tell their parents, who would tell the town guards, who would organize a team to hunt him down. Best he could do at this point was-

An angry snarl to his left broke the silence, causing the man to flinch. Wallace whipped his head around to see a rather dirty woman charging him with a knife. He stumbled backwards in a panic, instinctively clutching his stave to his chest. The undead squirrel fell limply off his shoulder, no longer under his control. "Wait!" Wallace yelped, eyes nearly as wide as soup bowls. "It- it's not what you think!"

[reggybsr]

The necromancer whipped around to face her, eyes widening in shock. "Wait!" he was yelling, but Tenna could barely hear him over the sound of her blood rushing in her ears. "It- it's not what you think!"

Snarling, Tenna knocked the necromancer to the ground. His head roughly bounced from impact, his chin barely skimming the tip of his stave. "It's exactly what I think." Tenna leaned closer into the man's face, eyes wide with fury. "Necromancer."

The man struggled under her hold, but she kept steady, her training from the Order and her new and improved strength coming together in ruthless harmony.

She brought the dagger to his throat. "I, Tenna Ghwayne, of the Order of the Moon, hereby attest to your crimes of using this branch of dark magic, forbidden within the kingdom of Serendipity." She leaned in closer. Her nose twitched, the necromancer's scent mingling with her senses. She forced herself to ignore it, a grunt leaving her lips from the sheer effort it took her to do so. Her fingers curled around her dagger tighter. "I will give you one last chance to defend yourself. Then I will rip your jugular from your throat."

[Eckhart_Von_Musel]

Wallace had no time to react. In an instant the woman had knocked him over, pinning him to the ground. "O-order of the M-moon?" he managed to choke out, now overcome with dread. "But-"

"This is it. I won't be able to escape without hurting her, so now I'm going to die here." the man realized, tears beginning to well up in his eyes. "I'm sorry Mom. I wasn't able to do it...

"Unless..."

The necromancer reached out with his mind hurriedly, feeling for any traces of necrotic energy. As humans tended to collect their dead in graveyards rather than leaving them scattered about the countryside, Wallace had long since learned to make do with the bodies of other creatures. He silently thanked the gods as he found what he was looking for, and his eyes began to glow a strange, off-white color...

~~~~~

In many ways, Autumn marks the proverbial "death" of nature. Leaves wither and fall off their trees. Flowers wilt, and grass turns from green to brown. Animals fill up on food and hide away, and the birds migrate south until the return of spring. And after laying their eggs, the insects simply die...

~~~~~

An awful clicking noise could be heard as thousands of tiny carapaces pulled themselves back together. Half-decayed wings hissed and whirred as they took flight once more, and soon the woman's arm and blade were swarming with undead mothes and horseflies. They wouldn't bite or sting her, but it certainly wouldn't be a pleasant experience. "Please, drop the knife..." Wallace rasped. "V-violence isn't the answer... Please..."

[reggybsr]

Tenna's head lurched backwards in surprise just as the necromancer's eyes turned into a milky off-white. "What? What are you--"

Clicking noises filled her hypersensitive ears, dragging her eyes to the source. C-carapaces? thought Tenna in complete shock. No, dead carapaces. "Necromancers!" She uttered the word like a curse.

For all her newly acquired speed, Tenna still couldn't get away fast enough. Soon they were crawling up her dagger arm. Feelings of dread and disgust sent chills down her spine, feeling like those blasted carapaces which were currently swarming up her sleeve. "Please, drop the knife..." said the necromancer. "V-violence isn't the answer...Please..."

Like hell she dropped her knife. Tenna jolted up from her position on the ground, fear and disgust squeezing her throat in a choke hold. Her dagger clattering on the dirt beside her, she swiped fruitlessly at her now free arm, trying to get the dead insects off her person.

They were crawling up her chest now, coming from all directions. Up her legs, up her spine, up her neck...they were going to trap her. She couldn't breathe. Up, and up, and up--why can't she breathe?

Something was wrong--so very, very wrong, and the realization crept upon her more startlingly than the carapaces ever could. She couldn't breathe. She was trapped, she was struggling, she...she couldn't breathe.

"PLEASE!" She begged, trembling with a new sense of urgency that extended beyond her dread for the carapaces. "PLEASE, MAKE IT STOP! MAKE IT--"

She was choking. The edges of her vision were turning red, a flipping sensation taking hold of her stomach with a vice-like grip. A loud ringing sounded in her ears. "Aggghhhh," she groaned, clutching her ears tightly.

She fell to her knees and curled up into a ball, the carapaces--almost--completely forgotten. She tried to focus on staying calm, staying...staying human, but it was no use. The too-familiar feeling of transformation beckoned to her, and again, she felt split in two.

No, don't! she begged internally. I can't...not again...

Yes, please!! hissed her other self. It's too much, I can't breathe, we can't breathe--

She screamed, and a familiar pain washed over her.

~~~~~

Corpses.

She smelled corpses.

Tenna opened her eyes to see bodies of zombie-like carapaces, unmoving and doubly lifeless upon the dirt. Blinking, she shrugged out of a pile of cloth--her clothes!!--and looked around her.

Autumn. It was autumn...yellow and orange leaves fell everywhere around her, looking as dead as the insects before her. How ironic it is to meet a necromancer during the season of death, she mused, despite the disgust clinging to her relentlessly.

She was a wolf again--the same wolf that killed her friends, her family. The same wolf that she once swore to destroy. The same wolf that she had become.

Her eyes met the necromancer's, and in that moment, hopelessness met dumb shock.

But the moment was brief. Hackles rising, Tenna sank her paws into the ground, growling in fury.

[Eckhart_Von_Musel]

Wallace's shoulders relaxed as the woman jumped off of him in a panic, though his breathing remained sharp. The woman seemed to be having a panic attack- which seemed strange, considering she was part of an order of warriors. "Oh no... does she have a fear of bugs?" Wallace thought as he slowly crawled backwards. "Maybe that was too mean of me. I could have thought of another way..." Wallace flinched as the woman screamed, raising his hand. "A-alright! I'll call it off, just-"

In a matter of second, something.... happened. The woman's skin began to twist and writhe, her screams growing more gutteral than human. Wallace distinctly heard her clothes begin to tear, and immediately looked away. "Wh-wat is going on?!"

After a few moments, the screaming had stopped. Gingerly uncovering his eyes, Wallace looked twards where the warrior had been standing to see a large, furry monstrosity in her place. The girl's clothes lay shredded at it's feet, which could really only mean one thing. The werecreature growled menacingly, causing Wallace to crawl backwards a few more feet. "Um... hi?"

[reggybsr]

"Um...hi?" The necromancer breathed, a surprisingly gentle tone in his words. Too gentle for the likes of his kind, in Tenna's opinion.

Tenna growled again, trying to control her pants. It didn't work, obviously, seeing as she is now technically a dog.

She shook her head in frustration, a small whine escaping her throat. Now is not the time for these thoughts, she chided at herself (Selves? Which one, she wondered.) Now, it is time to kill a necromancer.

In her wolf form, her senses were even more pronounced than they had already been. Different scents were hitting her nostrils all at once, her eyesight experiencing so much more yet with so little colors. Suddenly she could see further into the shadows--the smallest leaf, the slightest movement. She could hear more, as well: the way the wind whistled and ruffled the rotting leaves, the sharp breaths of the man before her, his eyes wide with fear and panic.

If a wolf could smirk, she would at that very moment. How she would just love to tear him apart...

No. She growled again, but more towards herself than anything else. I will kill him for the Order, and not for anything else.

If she had to live as this...this wretched creature, then she'd make use of what she had.

It is the necromancer's fault that you transformed in the first place, a voice appeared in her head out of nowhere, and her mangled thoughts finally cemented.

Whether for the Order, or for her bloodlust, or whatever the hell was going on in her tainted mind, in the end, she was going to kill him. For herself.

With that, she took a menacing step forward, her eyes set on the would-be dead necromancer.

[Eckhart_Von_Musel]

"Oh. This is not good..."

Wallace continued to edge backwards as the werebeast moved in closer, sweating bullets. He flinched as he felt his back hit a tree- nowhere to run now. "Come on..." he whimpered, clearly terrified. "Don't... just, erm..."

Suddenly, an idea hit the man.

A really stupid idea.

The necromancer gripped his stave tightly, tapping it against the dirt. After a moment, the skeletal remains of a deer emerged from the earth, collapsing in between the man and the wolf. "Dogs like bones, right? Maybe I can destract her..."