Darkness in Valhalla

Chapter 10: Discoveries

The journey was a seamless one, simple and lacking adventure. When I arrive in the slightly cooler hilly planes, I search for the foliage I was sent to find. Having grown fond of the mare, I tie Cassie to a tree and let her graze while I wander towards the collapsed wreckage up ahead. An eerie aura lay in the air; something amiss, something that I realized didn't make sense standing here. I shake my head and go on, I found everything misleading, but I still hoped this was one of the times I was wrong.

Two locations were on my list. The ancient ruins up ahead and the half-tundra forest fifty miles east of this wreckage. While I enter the broken place, I can't help but admire the beauty in the broken. This used to be a sanctuary of a wealthy local poison master, but with her murderous demise, her home was subjected to the same treatment. The myth was that all her toxins soaked into the earth and mutated the soil to give birth to flowers whose essence would kill you with one drop. Folk stories had a way of dragging death into nature, not knowing that that was exactly how the cycle worked.

Casually, I spend an hour here, going from collecting Nightshade blossoms to bloodshot Cynthias. At least the flowers smelled better than the reeking mushrooms in my satchel. When I'm done, I wander around, taking in the pleasure of being here, away from responsibility and blood, embracing the peace that comes with it. But that doesn't last when I notice something out of place. Suddenly I stop.

"That's why."

I realized why I had been so skeptical of this place. This entire plane has no bodies except one, which was realistically impossible. Wherever I had gone, corpses were always there, no matter how deep. But here, as long as I can see, there is nothing in the ground save for one body beneath me, and something about it interests me. Throwing my satchel on the dirt below, dust rises and makes me cough, but I don't care because what I'm about to do will be my first brainlessly reckless act of the year. I wrestle through my things to find a small spade I use to dig up roots, and with that, I slowly start digging.

The wind sends chills down my spine, but I dig until the hole is big enough to hide what I'm about to do. I put the spade down, push my hands against the grains of soil, and concentrate. The body sends a vibration back, and I carefully pull it with the invisible strings that tie us together.

"Easy now." I calm myself.

I don't rush it, and it's not entirely voluntary. My powers are rusty, and it takes me ten minutes to do what I could've done in seconds a few months ago. I grit my teeth and try to focus; soon, the skeleton is out. What's alarming aren't the bones; it's the dark, faded journal that lies tied to its chest. I frown and pull it away from it and take a look. Yellowed pages, with pages of somewhat illegible handwriting, I almost throw it away until I find a word that throws me off, 'Necromancy.' I flip to the beginning, the very first page, and read the title, and I'm terrified.

"Necromancy: The demise of those who controlled Death."

I gasp, afraid of what I've found. Hurriedly, I use my powers, bury the body back in its space, and cover the hole again. But that isn't all. I take some debris and cover my tracks, and while I process what happened, I glance at the book. Somehow, I would finally get some answers, but at what cost? Packing my things, I walk back to Cassie silently while my mind begins a war inside.

Still shaken, the tundra slowly appears in my sight after an hour of travel. Cassie gallops with a sure thunder in her muscles, and I can't help but wonder if she somehow feels my unease. My satchel and my mind feel heavier, but I push it all to the side and halfheartedly focus on the job. We stop before we enter the cold, and I let her rest. Patting her back, I simultaneously take out my jacket and tools, ready to get it over with.