Private Tales River Carry Me

[Vereshin]

With a big raven perched on his arm, Vereshin strode along the edge of a canopy of trees. To the side of him, a field spanned into the distance and adjoined to a forest which skirted the bank of the river Wda. Rays of sunshine stretched through clouds of melancholy hues and failed to completely touch the grass. The raven on Vereshin's arm cawed at a figure approached from the opposite direction, his harsh cries shattering the conspicuous lack of sound which held the field. Only the breeze as it blew through the trees to Vereshin's side remained the present trace of sound.

Apart from that, the landscape seemed almost dead. The lack of distinctive sunlight made the trees and grass appear monochrome in their hue. Sliding a finger under the raven's chin, Vereshin stroked the bird and gibbered away in a runic tongue. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the figure walk towards him, to whom the bird cawed in alert. As he turned his head to watch the other man emerge from the distance, the lines of his mouth turned upwards in a smile of anticipation. He continued to stroke the raven's chin to calm him down, all the while repressing his delight upon meeting Shade for the first time.

"Sh! Calm down, it's only Shade, he's not a magehunter." Vereshin cooed to the bird. He lifted his finger from his chin to his head and continued to stroke his feathers, which just so happened to resemble Vereshin's hair.

The space between Vereshin and other dark mage dispersed. Gazing forward, his green eyes glowed with his rising excitement and stood out brightly against a sky void of colour. As Shade's features came into view, Vereshin locked eyes with his own. He raised a hand, high enough for him to see and waved to him, the smile unabashedly locked into his countenance. The raven flapped his wings and told Vereshin that he desired to fly, most likely having picked up the scent of a corpse nearby. He turned around to face the bird, his brow furrowing with intrigue.

"What's that, Edgar? You smell something?" He spoke in a light voice, childlike and inquisitive, while arching his around to look into the bird's tiny, black eyes. "Go on then, show us what you can find!" With that, Vereshin swung his arm upward and allowed the bird to take flight. Edgar took off and flew into the forest.

Vereshin watched the inky wings of the beat against the breeze, only to vanish into the trees where he flew towards their prize. Satisfied, he turned his head to face Shade, who now stood only a few feet away. The two mages had been corresponding through an underground chain of letters which allowed practitioners of dark magic to find each other. The smile on Vereshin's face grew wide as he strode towards Shade, whom he had only conversed with through letters. A small amount of anxiety caused him to wonder how different Shade might be in person.

Opening his arms to greet the other mage, Vereshin brushed back his hair and smoothed over the strands which escaped the oil on his head. He tugged at the clasp sitting just beneath his shoulder and nervously adjusted the position of his black, woolen shawl. He seldom became nervous, for he did not care enough for the whiles of others to concern himself with what they thought of him. Since Shade harbored a passion for the same craft and an intellectual capacity which could match Vereshin's own, he valued his respect as a potential friend, something rare in the life of any wayward mage.

"Hello Shade, it's so good to finally see you in person." Vereshin chimed as he reached forward. With gloved hands, he gripped both of Shade's shoulders and leaned forward to place a kiss on either of his cheeks in a gesture of friendly affection. He released the grip on his shoulders and took a step backwards to allow him some space, compulsively brushing back his hair in the process. "I hope your journey was uneventful, didn't run into any magehunters I trust?" Tilting his head to the side, he asked with genuine concern. "I hear they're hunting us in Liadain. Fuckers." He narrowed his eyes and hissed, referring to the most recent organization of magehunters which had formed in the continent to the West.

"How are your studies going? Did you have much time to practice while on the road?" Vereshin asked as he flattened down the front of his shawl. "With a few good subjects and an active soul, we should have ourselves a nice little ritual." He rubbed his hands eagerly and contemplated their current project. Having sent Edgar into the woods to locate their first corpse, the two of them were only in need of a living sacrifice for the use of a soul. "Come, let's go and see what Edgar has found." Vereshin entwined his fingers with devious anticipation and gestured towards the forest.

"You would have met him when he sent you my letters. He's trained to locate corpses and the remains of the deceased." As he turned around to lead Shade into the forest, Vereshin explained the task of Edgar and what exactly the raven was trained to do.

Shade

 

[Shade]

Shade slipped to the ground in the shadow of a large tree, leaving his mist form behind in favor of walking from around the bole where he landed towards his colleague.

Humans had never been his favorite species, but they had quite the knack for ingenuity in their chosen fields. Whereas Shade himself would continue to tweak his approach minutely as years passed to fine tune his spellwork, humans tended to make larger leaps of intuition to get to the same place faster. Their limited lifespan no doubt gave them more impetus to make such leaps, dangerous as they could be in certain area of spellwork.

It was just such leaps that brought Vereshin to his ears originally. A contact of his had mentioned the name in a conversation, which lead to Shade doing more research. They had then become something of pen pals. Shade would leave letters with a colleague to be delivered to this dark mage, and the return would come similarly. After some time of this, Shade agreed to meet, having felt for a while that he could make much use of this mages abilities to destabilize the regions.

Out of habit, Shade looked skyward for a moment, smirking.

"Hello Shade, it's so good to finally see you in person."

"Likewise, Vereshin." He returned the greeting as smoothly as he could, though he was unprepared for the dark mages actions.

"I hope your journey was uneventful, didn't run into any magehunters I trust?" Tilting his head to the side, he asked with genuine concern. "I hear they're hunting us in Liadain. Fuckers."

"No trouble..." Shade put the mention of magehunters into a mental note. Such organizations came around from time to time, but he tended to utilize magic in small amounts unless he was actively destabilizing a city. Shade preferred subtlety in many things. "...I have not met any magehunters in some time. I had not heard they were troubling us in Liadain. I have been elsewhere for most of my recent years."

"How are your studies going? Did you have much time to practice while on the road?"

Shade smiled in a friendly manner. He'd done well keeping his normal mode of transport a secret, though it was likely his arrival that originally spooked his colleagues raven.

"I tend to travel alone, and so do not get a great deal of practice when on the road." He continued to smile as he spoke. "However, my studies have gone surprisingly well of recent, thank you. What of your studies?" His eyebrows rose in curiosity.

"With a few good subjects and an active soul, we should have ourselves a nice little ritual." He rubbed his hands eagerly and contemplated their current project. Having sent Edgar into the woods to locate their first corpse, the two of them were only in need of a living sacrifice for the use of a soul. "Come, let's go and see what Edgar has found." Vereshin entwined his fingers with devious anticipation and gestured towards the forest.

"You would have met him when he sent you my letters. He's trained to locate corpses and the remains of the deceased."

"I do remember." The latest messages had come directly to Shade, having given a token for the bird to use to locate the Elven dark mage as he traveled. He'd come of the opinion that Vereshin wasn't likely to try to kill him or steal his powers. When being a dark mage, such was always a possibility. "He seemed like a marvelous corvid, quite intelligent."

He turned and followed the human dark mage into the treeline, the sunlight fading to the familiar green dappled glow that Shade had grown up with.

"Yes, let us have a grand ceremony." He smiled. Despite the races involved, Shade was a mage first. Performing magic was his life, not just the means to his goals. This opportunity to partake in a ritual with a colleague was unusual for dark mages. They couldn't operate openly, for the most part.

 

[Vereshin]

From the shadows, Vereshin's colleague slipped into what light collided with the grass, his silhouette blurred by the shade cast from the trees. Just as the raven descended into the air, Vereshin turned to face Shade and approached from his position beside the forest. He watched the movement of Shade's chin as he tilted his head towards the sky, brandishing a smirk in the process. As Vereshin gripped his shoulders and placed a kiss on his cheek, he could feel him wince beneath his grasp. He smiled in response, a devilish smile which teased the other man for his discomfort, marked by a pause between them.

"Please, call me Vi." Vereshin batted the air with a hand, dismissing the use of his full name. "Good." Was all he said when Shade confirmed that he had not been harmed along his journey. Lowering his hands, he released his grip from his shoulders. "Word has traveled to the East of a group of magehunters operating in Liadain who call themselves the Blackwatch." He revealed the details regarding the rumors he had heard, only through letters. "They are hunting those who practice necromancy and other branches of dark magic." Vereshin turned to gaze at the horizon, his tone dropping in dismay.

"I too, travel alone, although I suppose curiosity wins me over every time I want to try a new technique." Dimples etched into Vereshin's cheeks as he accompanied the sentence with a bout of laughter. The risk of practicing magic while on the road never deterred him every time he found a new opportunity to practice. "You have more common sense in that regard, Shade." Vereshin continued to laugh, wiping away an imaginary tear beneath his eye. "We humans are impatient, always eager to do everything right away, wherever we happen to be." Vereshin admitted.

"Although you will find that the law is more relaxed in this part of the world. Dark magic is not regarded with as much stigma in the remote areas of Epressa. The laughter ceased and his tone became still once more. "You will even find citizens who might employ our kind." Vereshin nodded as he noted that certain professions employed dark mages such as himself, particularly those who killed for a living. "Executioners, bodysnatchers, assassins and all manner professionals who work with death." He creased an eyebrow, thinking back to his various patrons. The thoughtful gaze turned to a smile as Shade asked about Vereshin's own work.

"Why thank you for asking!" His voice immediately lifted at the opportunity to talk about his studies. He raised his hands in delight, splaying his fingers apart in the air. "I suppose my previous sentence answers that question to a certain extent." He lowered a hand and cupped his chin in thought, his eyes glowing with increased excitement. "I've been attempting to merge multiple souls in order to construct a new entity." Vereshin shifted his eyes towards the forest, and then to the field, dropping his voice to a hush. "I've been making progress, increasing the number of subjects with each attempt." He referred to both the corpses and living sacrifices he used in rituals.

Holding a hand by his lips as he whispered, Vereshin pulled his wrist inward and mused on the devious thoughts running through his head. The other mage appeared reserved in both his gesture and manner of speech, traits which made Vereshin feel more at ease when talking about his practice. When Shade recalled the letters he had received from Edgar, Vereshin piped up with a fond sigh as he remembered their correspondence in silence. As he turned around to leave the waning sunlight, he looked over his shoulder to see if Shade was following him, then crossed over the line where the forest met the grass. Resting a hand against a tree, he beheld the winding branches of the forest, listening with eager intent for the raven's call.

"They are almost as intelligent as humans and have the ability to smell death." Almost lost in his gaze over the wood, Vereshin fell silent for a moment before responding to Shade. Within the branches, a harsh caw traveled and Edgar flew towards the heads of both Vereshin and Shade. The raven perched himself on a branch, all the while cawing loudly and demanding that Vereshin follow him. "Very good, Edgar, show us what you've found." The mage spoke eagerly and waved a hand in the direction of Edgar, gesturing for him to take off.

With a flurry of black feathers, the bird beat his wings against the air and released his claws from the branch. He took off into the forest, flying at a low level so that Vereshin and Shade could follow him. The deeper the forest became, the more the light failed, leaving weak rays of sunlight to fill a void which stretched for miles. In the distance, the flow of water echoed, exactly in the direction where Edgar flew. Once the two mages caught up to him, he took off again and lead them to the bank of the river Wda. Vereshin followed Edgar to a bridge, where the raven took his perch on the railing. With Shade following behind, he stepped onto the bridge and saw what the bird had found.

The stench of death, watered down by the torrents of the river, still hung thick on the air, making itself conspicuous to Vereshin's nose. He walked along the bridge and gripped the railing, peering far into the water, where the stream failed to completely cover a gathering of rocks. The water was shallow beneath the bridge and appeared to become deep the further upstream he looked. Against the rocks, a large obstacle blocked the water. As he lowered his neck, Vereshin looked into the cold eyes of a dead woman. She lay splayed beneath the bridge, her skin eaten by the current and discolored with algae, the river her final friend.

Shade

 

[Shade]

Shade followed along behind Vereshin as they followed the raven's trail.

"You have more common sense in that regard, Shade." Vereshin continued to laugh, wiping away an imaginary tear beneath his eye. "We humans are impatient, always eager to do everything right away, wherever we happen to be."

"There is merit in such actions. Dangerous though it may be, you also arrive at the same plateaus of power that we Elves do, only far quicker on average." He replied, still smiling. Many of the more racist Elves took the very same position that Vereshin had mentioned, using it as a reason to disregard humans. Shade had had the same opinion in his younger years, only slowly realizing how beneficial it could be to work with the more impetuous race.

"Executioners, bodysnatchers, assassins and all manner professionals who work with death."

"I agree, I find the various underworlds of the cities to be full of people who aren't as...stuffy, as the Colleges and Cabals of mages." He replied, stepping around the bole of a tree, and seeing a bridge ahead of them through the dappled leaves. "Many of my colleagues are in the various guilds and cabals that hide from the light of the law."

"I've been making progress, increasing the number of subjects with each attempt."

"Intruiging, what results are you seeing from such combination of spirits?" Shade asked, his mind whirring with the possible outcomes. "I'd imagine you'd have a creation with more autonomy, and from that it might be harder to control, but it would be able to handle more complex instructions..." He trailed off, letting Vereshin speak on his own research.

They made it onto the bridge, and both Vereshin and Shade looked over at the young woman who had died in the river. Shade's eyes looked over the body, cataloging the various injuries and deciding if they were pre or post mortem.

"She still has bindings on her right wrist, and I don't see any bruising from those wounds. I'd say she drowned after being thrown in. A murder most foul..." He chuckled to himself. "I imagine the rivers flowing waters would hinder our ritual, grounding the energies and making our spellwork inefficient. Shall I move the corpse to the shore?"

He pulled a small orb from a pocket in the inside of his coat, it was dark in color with blue and purple striations within it. It was the size of a small marble. He looked to the side of the bridge they had just left when they stepped onto the bridge. He muttered a spell beneath his breath, unbinding the spirit of the beast he had trapped within it. He then threw it at a wide open spot between the treeline and the bridge. Bright blue flames erupted from the spot, but did not consume as fire. They instead swept the area of a ten foot circle clear of debris and excess dirt, leaving an expanse of largely level bare earth for them to work.

 

[Vereshin]

The raven cawed from within the forest, drawing Vereshin out the light with his harsh call. He left the meadow behind him and placed a hand against a tree, all the while listening for the cries of the bird as Shade followed. For a moment, the caws ceased and silence followed. Only the breeze could be heard, interspersed with whispers which dared the two necromancers to come closer. Retracting his hand, Vereshin took a step backwards from the tree and turned to face Shade, just as the caw of the raven interrupted the silence once more.

"Hear that?" He inquired, the ends of his mouth peeled upwards into a smile. He pulled his gaze away from Shade and stared at the leaves, lost in the grasp of the spirit. "There's something unquiet in that forest." He said as he turned back around, then walked into the shadows.

Feeling branches split beneath his feet, Vereshin avoided branches as leaves brushed his cheeks. When Shade mentioned the benefits which a short life span held towards study, the dark mage responded with a smile of his own. He held a hand a hand against his diaphragm and looked at his feet, blushing while he chuckled in response to the Elf's diplomatic evaluation. The breeze blew through his shawl, which he held in place with his hand above his abdomen, still combing the surrounding noises for any sign of Edgar's call. The raven flew over both the heads of Shade and himself, leading them towards the bank of the river Wda.

"Very diplomatic." Freezing in his stance, Vereshin batted the air with a hand, dismissing Shade's optimistic description of humans and their capabilities. "We're hardly an exceptional race, but I do think that is a testament to the skill of humans who do succeed, particularly mages." He admitted his opinion regarding his origins and how mages who proved to be powerful despite not being born of a magically inclined race were all the more impressive. Shade and himself stopped in a clearing, the flow of water rushing in the distance from where the raven had landed.

"Don't get me started on the College of Elbion." Lowering both of his eyebrows in dismay, Vereshin turned away from Shade, his view diverted to the raven. He thought back on his time at university and swallowed a spoonful of regret. "I haven't been back there since I was expelled." A chuckle accompanied the revelation. "Indeed, I was introduced to more advanced techniques through a network of dark mages who corresponded through letters, which was actually how I met you, Shade." Both of them stood before the bridge, where the raven cawed a few meters away and demanded that they investigate what he had found.

"Are you still at college?" Vereshin asked, allowing for a pause as Shade answered. When the other mage asked about his own work, Vereshin raised his hands in delight and almost clapped, then restrained himself. "So far I have been stripping battle grounds of their remains and restoring their spirits." Lowering his tone to a thoughtful pitch, although one which no less conveyed his enthusiasm, he folded his hands and regaled his most recent project. "By using the pieces I have found, I managed to isolate the traits of multiple beings and isolated them according to species, all in the process of creating a shade warrior with the charm of an Allirian knight and the brutality of an Orc." His fingers splayed apart, gleefully expressing detail after detail. "Of course this is all just practice, I am still in need of a foci to lock the pieces in place. He lowered a hand to his chin, which he cupped in contemplation.

"Perhaps I simply need to rethink my resources." The line trailed off Vereshin's tongue, his gaze drifting away as he pondered the idea. "Binding the fragments of too many souls might bite me in arse." He chuckled.

Turning from Shade to face the raven, Vereshin slid his hands inside of shawl to warm them and walked towards the bridge. Beneath his breath, he hummed a tune, almost singing in time with the voice of the spirit to calm who it belonged to. The smell of death, coagulated and eating away at the fauna hanging off the bank of the river, assaulted the air. He walked to the center of the bridge with Shade beside him and greeted the face of the dead woman. Her flesh bore all the marks of abuse from her last days in the mortal world, erased from view by coalesce. As Shade pointed out, all the signs showed that the woman had not died by her own hand.

Arching his neck over the railing of the railing, Vereshin moved his head from one side to the other in sick curiosity. Marks around the woman's wrists, faded by decay and the pressure of the water, proved that Shade was correct in his observation. For a moment, he was silent as he combed through the air and tried to make sense of the whispers which it conveyed, still lingering haplessly on the woman's blue lips. He moved backwards and walked along the length of the bridge, then around the side of the river bank. Slowing moving his feet down the slope, he tried not to slip and leaned in close to the woman's hand, the features of her face all the more apparent.

"Good of you to notice, but we won't know for certain how she died until her spirit is properly restored. Vereshin backed away from the bank, the hem of his shawl in his grip. The cause of the woman's death would only be known once Shade and himself managed to locate and commune with her ghost, a stage which he assumed, the other dark mage was already aware of. Walking back up to the grass, he brushed down the front of his shawl and chuckled in response to Shade. "I'll be most interested to hear what she has to say." He added.

"Let's each take an arm." Making a note on the air with his finger, he offered to assist Shade in pulling the corpse from the water, then turned back around to walk down the bank. While he waited for the other man to do the same, he slid both hands into the water and wrapped them around the woman's wrist. A chill ran down his spine as the water collided with his skin, to be replaced by the slime of decomposing flesh beneath his grip. With Shade's assistance, he pulled the corpse up the bank of the river, his ankle slipping a few times and staining his black trousers with mud, not that he minded.

"You're heavy aren't you, Miss?" He asked the corpse, his voice no less chipper than usual. "Had a bit too much to drink, you have." As both of them pulled, Vereshin jabbered away, realizing that the body was heavier than she had initially looked. The smile on his face dropped to a exhausted frown and he winced in dismay as Shade and himself continued to haul the corpse to the shore. "Fuck, she's heavy!" The dark mage cursed beneath his breath. With a further pull, the body emerged from the water and his boots were thick with mud. As the corpse lay on the bank, they could now see why she had been so heavy.

"Double yoke." He smiled, a wicked smile which failed to hide his joy. As he released the hand of the hand, he stumbled backwards with the impact and almost fell on his backside, but did not mind. He was far too preoccupied with what he had seen. Beneath her dress, the woman's abdomen was veritably swollen. She was with child.

Shade

 

[Shade]

Shade worked beside Vereshin to haul the body up. The water had soaked into every pore, causing the bloated specimen to be particularly heinous to move. While his colleague cussed and cursed, Shade worked in silence.

Once they got her up, out of the water, Shade answered the questions.

"I've never been to one of the universities in the major cities, my people trained me in magic as part of my upbringing." Was his only reply on his schooling. He moved around the corpse, his eyes on the pregnant belly.

"Well, you wanted multiple spirits..." Though, he wasn't sure if the child that had been in the womans belly would have had a spirit of it's own. Necromancy had never been his area of study, for the most part. "Will this still work for your experiment?" He thought a moment, then turned to his colleague. "What form of focus do you need?"

He thought momentarily of the peculiar form of gem magic his people used, that he had perverted to his dark manipulations of magical beasts spirits. He wondered if a focus could be fashioned from that magic for his friends purposes.