The Necromancer's Daughter

|| one ||

The first thing she remembered was a drumming noise.

It was faint at the beginning, almost inaudible even in the vast, isolated silence that surrounded her. The beat started steady but with each rumble, each heavy pounding, its loudness grew and grew as if its source was moving closer to where she was. It filled her as she unsuccessfully covered her ears with her hands to muffle the sounds. She soon realized, a little too late, that the sound wasn't drawing nearer to her, instead, she was being whisked away towards its root. Its pull rhythmically became stronger the louder the drumming got.

As the tug of the invisible force amplified, her other senses simultaneously woke up from its prolonged slumber. Her nose registered a foul, rotten smell; her mouth tasted metallic and vile; and a paralyzing cold blossomed from her chest, spreading outward in quick successions mimicking the rapid drumming in her ears. The weightlessness she had been accustomed to slowly left her, and the familiar pull of gravity she didn't know she'd been craving for took hold of her entirety. She felt the sensation of free falling. To where, she didn't know.

Finally, with a sharp streak of light slicing through the darkness, the abrupt return of her eyesight, her lungs expanded and she drew a huge breath. Her first in two years.

Next came an excruciating pain she had never experienced before. Every breath she took scraped its way in and out of her lungs. Each movement, each slight turn of the joints and muscles, hurt like she was being bludgeoned with a mace. She wanted to cry, to scream, but all that was coming out of her mouth was a peculiar white smoke. A sign of the Resurrection Ritual done right.

"Welcome back, Lilian." Said a man's voice.

She started to feel cold and her skin recognized the sensation of moisture...no, water. She was soaking wet. She had been lying on a shallow side of a quagmire, momentarily bobbing on the surface of murky brown waters; until the intensity of life coming back jolted her into a sitting position. She was able to see, between the water and mud streaking down her face, the dark midnight sky above her and though no moon could be seen, a huge bonfire roared on the shore a few meters from her feet. It was unlike any bonfire as it was burning green and purple flames, casting ominous shadows to the thick and equally eerie woods surrounding her.

She would've ran away at such a frightful sight if she had any control over her limbs, now uncontrollably flailing in sporadic spasms on her sides, all over her, and beneath the water. Her whole body shook and shivered, creating huge ripples and splashes in the water gathering around her waist. She tried digging her fingers on the muddy substrate in an effort to steady herself but she was rendered impotent with pain. Her face winced in agony and although the pain seemed enough to make her pass out, she remained conscious, feeling every single fiber of her being, every organ, every vessel of blood inside her, reawaken from death.

Her mind was a gaping blank, void of memories and recollections, and her perplexing current state didn't offer anything. No clue to help explain why she was in the middle of the woods, naked and drenched in what was becoming clearer to be a swamp. In spite of this, she knew in the deepest pit of her soul she wasn't supposed to be here.

"Rise." The man's voice thundered again, revealing that its owner was somewhere behind the bonfire, "Rise, my daughter! Reclaim the powers Death has stolen from you!"

His voice resonated a soothing sensation to her aching body. "Walk among the living..." he continued, and slowly, her hurt numbed off to become only physical fatigue, not trauma, and her shaking subsided to a halt.

"Come back to me!" He hollered.

She was suddenly compelled to stand up and walk towards the voice. It healed her aches and, feeling empty and devoid of spiritual substance, her body responded with an unrestrained and primal longing for the person the voice belonged to. Her arms found strength to push herself up and her feet found footing beneath the mud.