Thin Walls

A Story of Segrus the Necromancer

The Kriss mountain pass housed a fresh gale on its circuit around the heights. Each nearby flurry weaved through the rounded crags for an outlet to the close bluffs, and returned to the surrounding cloud cover. Peaks raked the sky high above and forced command of the surrounding green valleys. Travel through the ancient rock was limited to short paths seemingly naturally carved, with scant trade routes used to navigate through its bulwark. The range, its features inscrutable to the human mind, persisted into the fathomless.

Segrus felt uplifted with the electric energy of the gale. His journey separated from a caravan when his direction split apart of theirs at a lower passage, and he aimed for crossing over by midday tomorrow. A mysterious illness was spotted by its mark of peculiar death in a place adjacent to here. The settlers he bargained a spare torch from even remarked of the uncomfortable visage bore by those afflicted. They had wished Segrus well and moved onward.

For the Necromancer, he gained resolve to see the affliction first hand. Morbid curiosity was remote compared to the galvanic need for understanding the cause. Unexplained loss gripped his bearing as a tremulous wake through the mainland. This was what drove him over the mountains and into the world beyond.

Wind continued to lick the flame of his light as he climbed the steep path. Bushes burst into view as the shadows backed away in the night. Vegetation was unkempt with the wild of the tough terrain, although the color was hardly visible in the darkness. Moss growth and tangled grass propagated through the stony landscape and made his steps require more balance.

Segrus reached a relief in the path unscathed. Tall rock piles appeared on each side, which fanned apart further and further until he discerned not their position. The little of the path before him was scarcely visible despite the fire of his torch and he decided to seek the possibility of shelter.

His search for an outcropping or shallow cave became laborious in the night. Neither moon nor star seemed to shine in the large, open spot of ground amonst the peaks. Darkness hungered for more darkness, and the torch dimmed imperceptible to Segrus’ eyes. He dared not clamor too far for he feared the trap of an unexpected drop.

When on the brink of forfeit to scale the increasingly dangerous path, Segrus found a narrow crevasse which served him. It hid illusory in one of the rock pillars he had examined earlier to no avail and his second look reaped a reasonable hiding spot.

The opening’s size was not matched to his height, and he ducked carefully to squeeze in. Although the width at first met both his back and front with little additional space he felt it widen abruptly. After Segrus shuffled no more than his length, the torch illuminated a dead-end space enough for five of his size.

Walls, floor, and ceiling were damp with moisture not present outside. A small puddle interrupted the center of the solid floor and his reflection shone bright in its crystal clearness.

Segrus turned back to his crevasse and trapped the lit torch betwixt the walls of crack using several small rocks. He wrapped his mantle tight against his body, the dark fabric fitting fully over his curled form. As he drifted exhausted against the cavern wall, he liberated his mind of the thoughts containing wild beasts until sleep took him.

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He jolted awake at the foreign presence in the cave, a heavy form pressed against the granite wall in front of him at it displayed itself proudly. A clean woman’s face jutted from a mass of feathers and slick cloth which had patterned on it tear-drop shapes in countless layers. Segrus suspected if he attempted to slice fully into this creature’s bulk—not that he knew his strength could manage—it would be filled to the core of shroud without body. Combined with its sickly emerald hue splotched throughout, Segrus felt unbidden fear thrusted on him.

Its voice was filled with a sinister hiss of something which spoke rarely, though he could not be certain it had ever spoken. The space hardly echoed the rasping deepness of its words, yet it repeated the same sounds until he understood, “Join with me.”

Segrus’ brow furrowed in immediate disgust at the suggestion and the unprovoked nature it supposed. He observed it further and paid close attention to how it settled in an almost relaxed, lounging way. His torch was too low and the very early morning had not allowed sunlight to filter to scrutinize the visitor’s origin. It lived in this crack then, forced to mete out time and existence without escape. He kept silent under its stare.

“My way...open to you,” the lips of the woman submitted. He refused to answer.

“My way...open...”the woman repeated blankly. It paused, as if it knew to patiently wait for response. “I heard you enter. I heard you enter. The smell of you...makes us…” The face twisted to form a word and failed initially.

“We are sister. We are sister. Death...our brother. Join with me.”

Segrus reacted to nothing in the words. Neither to grimace at the suggestion of familial embrace, nor the invitation to be composed into its will. He deliberated on what he heard in connection to all the terrible creatures and monsters he recalled from study. Scant few verbalized a human language.

Its body reflected the minimal light in a shimmer and it began to look as a reptile’s body to Segrus. Bunched into the small space, curled tight to deceive his senses, this wyrm on human life hid in this cave.

The woman’s face smiled so wide it appeared to split apart at the seams.

“Do not mistake me, worthless one, if this body weren’t devoured whole as I prepare to leave this realm I would devour your flesh too,” a new voice erupted with articulated vile. “As this woman was almost less than meal so too do I see your soul as rotten. You deign to hoist bodies for your purposes as if you worked above me. The burning brimstone reaches high for you, Necromancer. My kind waits forever for the chance.”

A terrible shudder filled the mask as facial features detached from the skull. The wyrm let go its victim—head and bare spine clattered to the floor as a result. Gaped, gummed mouth of the serpent bent towards Segrus and then at the watery puddle. Blast of sulfur filled his nostrils and caused him to choke as the puddle’s mirror opened into a portal.

Without cadence or ceremony, it slipped to something beyond through the portal. A world of its inhuman birth warned of by the spiritual.

Segrus sat still only to see the thin walls of this world pealed back and then wrestled his fortitude to abandon the shelter. He worked not his sorcery on the skeleton to see the poor woman’s life in hope of bringing her family peace. Terrible consequences laid upon those who saw the suffering of demonic possession.

Once outside, the path he sought unfolded in the dawn. Two directions progressed down the mountain. Segrus the Necromancer chose and moved forward.