The Rising Festival

A Story of Segrus the Necromancer

The Rising Festival in Stalwen was a flood of celebration, the revelry of which echoed into every room in every building on the street until it filled Segrus with jubilee. People crowded every storefront for trinkets and food of the moment. They chatted, and laughed, and pointed, and yelled up enough commotion to sweep a person into itself. He was dragged from one place to another by the immense undercurrent of his expanding high spirits. Evening grew alight with the joyful night.

When the sky dimmed its illustrious display. The painted, serene fire deepened to royal purple and then warm black, and new light appeared on each thoroughfare. It was still a rare sight for Segrus to see so many ball lightning magically caged for nighttime in one place. Segrus suspected the city paid to have mages of the Source brought here. Each orb crackled with living energy above, safe with its distance overhead. Slight variations in their color—some yellow, others orange, red, even blue—indicated to Segrus small differences in their magical casting. He was not previously aware of their distinct uniqueness. They maintained their steady glow as a reflection of their dozens of masters.

He saw clearly the displays of the festival as the crowd parted enough and allowed him to approach a food vendor. The cart was distinctly popular for its wares: a small, round ball he had been told the previous day was very tasty. After he passed the stall girl a drop of silver she served him quickly an essence of this festival. It was colored an unusual very bright red and was warm to the touch. Upon taking a bite it tasted delightfully sweet. It reminded Segrus of an unassuming pale fruit which did not grow near here, and yet the treat’s inside looked no more than bread. He made space for the person behind him and devoured what he held.

The cart had thin fabric decorations of bright colors embroidered with golden thread, much like everywhere else Segrus looked. Some buildings had pinned streamers from their roofs and hung nearly their first floor. Young and old who passed underneath jumped and tried to touch them. Flags were being carried by performers to exaggerate their movements as they danced and twirled on the street. Everything felt alive and moved.

These ensembles of symbols expressed the festival’s purpose, to uplift those who had passed on and into a burial in the earth. Neither diminished the other, the living from the dead nor the dead from the life of the city. The Rising Festival was held by the city as a respect to life. A reminder to how life was inexplicably refreshed of its brilliance by its completion in death.

Even still not all the traditions which surrounded it were respectable, though Segrus did not see those presented openly here. He heard about the festival’s revelry as home to those of Vurshole, treacherous and soulless men who lost themselves in the dark. The king of the damned, Vurshole, held its believers fast in the promise of eternal health and riches.

They believed in a corrupted earth, how it granted power to avoid its grave by the sacrifice of blood. A sick expectation how the dead owed them life to rise up under any injury. Their mouths ran red as teeth gnashed unfortunate victims. Unfortunately, the everlasting quality they sought was granted to them.

Segrus hoped not to find any here. He knew only the rumors of how they operated and appeared to people. When he left to see this festival for himself, he made a vow to seek their demise should any show. This thought of such a foe, vile in its blood-letting and sacrilegious eternal life, intruded into his mind until it distracted from the present.

Wrapped into his thoughts, Segrus realized he had followed the crowd to an important stop for the event. Blank, coarse dolls filled wooden boxes near the city’s center square for any participant to take. They were meant as a homely effigy, burned in the close bonfire.

He remembered they were meant as a symbol for loved ones, to place them in the pyre and wish them meaningful rest and release in the hereafter. Segrus took one and held it in his hand for a moment. The memory of his small family was distant. Overwritten by others, he pressed on to meet his fate and yearned not for days no longer tangible to him.

The razing pyre before him, he gripped the doll gently and could not help imaging a hint of a face. Suddenly, a small hand pulled on his square, black mantle for his attention. Segrus looked down at a very young girl who too held one of the dolls, no more than six summers old.

“Little one, what is it?” he said as he stared down at her. His face was inscrutable as the fire played with the shadows there, and he was unsure what expression she saw on him.

Her small voice could barely be heard. “Sir, yer suppose’ t’row it an make a wish. That’s wha I’m doing for my mommy.”

“Did your father get you one to throw?” he asked, and did not look away.

She was too young to answer quickly, and glanced down at what she held while she worked out the words. “Bu...I only’ve one doll.”

Segrus scanned the faces of the people nearby, those who stood back from the fire as an audience to this part of the festival, and found a couple who waited expectant for the girl. They were older, though were not yet infirm, and the gentleman called out a name he did not hear in encouragement.

He knelt down, brushed his cloak away to do so comfortably, and spoke again, “Then take mine, so you’ll have all you need.”

Segrus watched as she threw both dolls into the fire and returned to her family. The night and the city wore on into the early morning hours without pause, and he joined with them until what swelled up inside blotted out his reservations and painted something new over some small fraction of his memories.

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