Eoanira Ceviran - Account of a Dead Living

[Shiokara]

Eoanira sits broken outside the Vehl gates, talking to himself. His robes are pressed. Clean. His cloak fresh. Only his sleepless face, which appears somewhat spectral as an old Elvish face, connotes his trouble. He rocks on flat feet.

"They're scraping dirty scraping against the floor as ash. Dry and cracked join us they say. You are dry and cracked they say."

How long was he there for? He couldn't remember when the girl with the big hammer asked him. She was going to the crypt. He would go too because there was something nice about work and her face wasn't too twisted. All these colors upset him anyway.

In the crypt he found life. He found it in the undead--his life. Join us, they would say, but not for long as his hammer pounded the air out of them. Hers, too. She was strong. Strong and a hard hitter, but see the sadness of undead. They just made her angry.

"The real fear of undead isn't the shuffling attack, it's that it can be anyone. The face of the undead can be your friends. Your comrades. Anyone."
"Right." She didn't get it.

How could she, though? How could anyone who hadn't seen the screaming ash fall? Who hadn't experienced the change of death at large to know the love of life in small? It was better she didn't know, he said.
"What?"
"Nothing. I need to pray. I hope we make it out for noon prayer."

They did, and with the ashes of a terrible mummy. Outside the bricks turned into faces. Moaning faces. A wall of death to keep in all the life. It made perfect sense. Eoanira sat and cried, listening to the wailing wall call to him and the scraping knuckles in boxes.

[Shiokara]

Eoanira dances skeleton knuckles one by one into the fire.

He repeats as a mantra, "Clawing, scraping, knuckling knuckles become ash and burn, burn away to death and rest in the arms of the Keeper of Life." With each syllable he steps the knuckle forward and bobs it side to side, dancing each knuckle one by one into the fire. Each small sacrifice kept the falling ash at bay. The falling, screaming ash. It was his job to keep it from falling now, and he did his duty tirelessly. He would improve the quality of living for everyone. They would never have to see what he saw, and then he thought, how sad that they should not see what he saw--the true beauty of life as can only be glimpsed through death.

How many times had he been down there now? With how many others? His memory was like the fuzzy ash that waited to fall if he did not continue his ritual.

"Clawing, scraping, knuckling knuckles become ash and burn, burn away to death and rest in the arms of the Keeper of Life."

There was so much blight on the land. So much work to be done. The crypts here were just the start. He had been to the gloom woods. The wood was rich with death. The ground stained red with the clay that forms from mixing blood and dirt. It sucked at your boots. His thighs remembered marching in it. Fighting in it. Falling in it. The aroma--the smell right before growth. The demon responsible wouldn't listen to reason. It was undead in its own way. Dead to outside influence. Dead to the Caring Light.

There was a tower near, too, of some lord. Rumor said full of undead. If only he could have someone take hold of his charge for a while he could investigate. If only. He danced another skeleton knuckle into the fire.

[Shiokara]

Eoanira sits and thinks about body parts. He's seen them all: attached, unattached, nightmare, real, fleshed, and fleshless. None of them were the Shining Hand, but now the Shining Hand was in his way. Funny, he thought while walking his skeleton knuckles over the ground like soldiers, the Shining Hand is blocking the warm radiance of the Caring Light. The Keeper of Life is kept away from that tower. Why?

Why was a good question because it could never be answered. He thought and crushed the skeleton knuckles into the ground with his hammer. "Rest." Yes, rest, he thought, and marched towards the One-Eyed Harpy prepared for war.

[Shiokara]

Eoanira sits in the Harpy, pulling at his face. Remember your purpose. What was his purpose again? Follow the Captain's orders. No, those were old. Help those in misfortune, for gold is valueless next to life. That's right.

He looks at the table littered with knuckles. They could be crushed, he thought. They should be. Otherwise they'll dance. No. Eoanira puts that out of his mind. Dead comrades file in at a table across the bar. Eoanira doesn't look at them. Not at their undecorated bodies caked with mud, nor their gaunt faces. There must be something he could do. He sweeps the knuckles into a box, stands, and walks out towards the markets.