There's an old, old cemetery on the outskirts of Tasuil Beor. It's small, as cemeteries go. Around its iron fencing there's a mishmash of flowers and trees, which to a horticulturalist would seem both foolhardy and downright ugly. But it would also confound them, to see that such a confusing array of species grew alongside each other with both respect and a quirky sense of comradery. They make the cemetery beautiful, in a disturbing and chaotic sort of way. They also hide the interior from view.
Walk through the gates and you'll see several rows of gravestones in the front. In the middle is a wide, barren expanse of constantly churned dirt, speckled black and grey with the ashes from the bodies of Tasuil Beor's poorest citizens, burnt because their families – if they had one – could not afford a burial or service or tombstone. Sometimes there are indentations, footprints in the soil where the rare visitor treads. Rare, because this is the Cemetery of the Forgotten.
Most remarkable about this place is the Angel of Remembrance, a statue that sits in the center of this resting place of tens of thousands. We don't know how it got there. It was there before any graves had been dug, appearing on the very morning after the fence had gone up. It stands upright on a small pedestal, with wings fully extended as if it is about to take flight. There is a chair placed in front of it, facing outward.
If you sit in this chair, you'll sit between the statue's arms which – no matter your species or your size – will have its hands placed on your shoulders, as if to comfort you. Its head is bowed down, to stare at whoever is seated before it. The sculptor has hidden the face behind a hood, so we do not know if it is female or male, or its species. Its hands alter their appearance in different lights and angles. Some say it is alive. Others that it was alive. Some, after sitting in the chair, flee the Cemetery in tears.
"Such sadness is too much to bear," say some.
"It laughed at me!" say others.
"I will never sleep peacefully again - it is netherkin-spawn!" a few have reported.
"It is Death, come for us all!" one famously said, before dying in front of it. If it is Death, I suppose it did come for her that day.
But we, my friends, live in an age of horror and wonder. And this is a true tale of both.
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Beorian Tales 14 - The Necromancer and The Angel
FantasyA father-daughter spat sends young necromancer Emilia Mortalis to seek out her real parents, beginning with a summoning in a cemetery, where she encounters a faceless Angel statue. When her foster father is killed while fighting in the Badlands, sh...
