Post by Aatami Tarathiel on Jul 11, 2016 8:39:53 GMT -5
A Hunting We Will Go
Ar lasa mala revas
“And then, they finally take off their masks and he realizes that he picked up the ugly sister,” Aatami finished off the story of the many dalliances that had happened at the recent Summersday party in Skyhold.
He knew he wasn’t the best storyteller, but his audience was less than responsive; nary a chuckle came from the body walking beside and slightly behind him. Of course, his audience was a body, as in, a corpse. The corpse walked a bit slowly and a bit stiffly, the spirit animating it slowly working through rigor mortis and becoming smoother as it acclimated to having a physical form. The body appeared to be in fairly good shape, minus a few scratches or places where bugs had nibbled. Aatami had even wrapped a stabilizing cloth around the gaping hole where the corpse used to have a throat before the corpse’s unfortunate pre-death encounter with wolves. The lack of an esophagus or really anything besides a spine and some stabilizing muscle likely had something to do with the possessed corpse’s silence.
Aatami huffed and looked down the trail again. “You are such a riveting audience,” he complained. His companion was silent, though he felt a teasing tug on his staff as the spirit sent a pulse through the magic that kept the body moving, in one piece, and swept the smell away from Aatami’s nose and any other predators that roamed the area. The spirit possessing the body was one of Aatami’s favorites, a death spirit that was more curious than violent and willing to listen to what Aatami’s magic asked in exchange for a few minutes across the Veil.
They made an odd pair, a redheaded elf with an obsidian bladed staff and a human male body that had spent twenty four hours or more in the dirt. The body had been tall and noble before, and thought it slouched more and more as rigor wore off, it still stood over half a head taller than Aatami, who was about average for an elf and not willowy slender like his woodland relatives. The mage had had worse traveling companions; walking with a corpse in various states of decay was fairly common for a necromancer like Aatami. The mercenary company he worked for often sent his squad, the Crows, on searches for things like dangerous creatures, mysteriously rumored artefacts, or bodies. This particular job involved searching for the second son of an aging local lord. He’d gone hunting alone and had never returned, for reasons that became obvious as soon as Aatami followed the whispers of death to the body. In situations like this, Aatami usually found the corpse first, which was a positive in his practical squad’s mind, as Aatami didn’t have to roll the corpse onto a litter and carry it back to the waiting and mourning relatives. He just called up a spirit and asked it to give him a hand walking the corpse back to camp.
A noise reached Aatami's ears, but he didn't pay much outward attention. The rest of his squad roamed these woods, doubtlessly making enough noise to scare off any predators, as well as remaining in reach to provide back up.
Ma ghilana mir din'an.
