It was in Pontefract Cemetery that the ritual began. It was to be a crime that they had spent months planning the massacre of an entire English village by its dead residents. They’d studied and perfected the craft of raising the dead. Endless tomes were all with them now, scattered about as they drew an arcane glyph in the graveyard dirt. It was the sigil of one of the old higher beings. ‘Astur or one of his lot. The deity's name was not as important as the ritual or its master. At the dead centre of the sigil and the graveyard stood Kailin, an elf, whose skin was as grey as the smoke of a fire and whose eyes glowed white as the full moon. They smiled through a mouth of porcelain teeth. They could feel the energy in the air, it moved through their body and lit the sigil with black fire that danced along their monkish robes.
“You can hear me now, can’t you?” They said. Their voice rang out in ears that had not heard the sound of speech since their collective pulse ceased. “Your coffins are weak to your hands, the dirt means nothing for you cannot breathe. Come to me now. Come and rend the flesh from your kin, rend the flesh from your neighbors. There is food in number for your endless hunger. Rise for me, beasts of the dirt. Beasts that were once men.”
All around them the dirt parted and corpses rose from rotten coffins. There were many words for what they were. In Treason, they were a disease called Flesh Madness. In France, they were called the Rotten Ones. In parts of West Africa, some tribes refer to the beasts with the name of snake gods, for their teeth were like those of serpents. Unlike the gods, these things birth nothing but death. The anti-life. The fate of all things who have not been consumed by the Earth.
The dead congregated around the ritual master. And they did little else. They simply stood and looked toward their master. Kailin blinked as they gazed out at their army which measured one thousand strong as they stood around and did nothing.
“Okay, well. Off you go then. Go assault the town and whatnot,” they said.
Still, the mass of the living dead did nothing. They made absolutely no movement. For a moment, they believed as though there was some hiccup with the ritual. A thousand ghouls and not one made a move? Was it rigor mortise? No. They would not have gotten up if that was the case. If else, such things mattered not when magic was involved. After a solid ten minutes of standing before the crowd, the conjurer began to feel rather silly. They felt like a child, being judged by a crowd. They picked up a ritual staff and walked towards the biggest ghoul that stood closest to them. In life, the monster had been an English Orc. He was still dressed in the burial garb of a black silken robe and his fingers were adorned with rough jewelry. Kailin took the lower end of the staff and smashed it into the monster’s side. The wood splintered and broke against it, but still, the beast refused to move.
“Well…fuck. Goddamn it…Fuck!” they growled.
They moved from the dead Orc to a smaller figure, a dead Goblin. They took the creature by the shoulders and shook it around. It did nothing to stop them. It simply shook in whatever direction Kailin took them.
“Well…Just. Fucking come on. What is this? What have I done? Shouldn’t you all be violent or something? At the very least attack me. If only just so I can stop feeling like an idiot.”
They went over to the ritual sight and opened up one of their ritual tomes to a chapter on the beasts that surrounded them. In Josiah’s Manual for Foul Things, they noted the eighth chapter’s footnote: “³One of the many things that causes the dead to be left into a docile state is the presence of strong herbs. Namely that of Gancao or Lavender.”
They read the footnote over and over. Not once did they consider their choice of English town to attack. Gancao was known as Liquorice to the English and Pontefract had several dozen fields that grew the stuff. It was what made the city noteworthy at all. Meanwhile, they had chosen it because they liked the way the necropolis looked. This endeavor was doomed from the start and they were left holding the bags.
They pushed through the dead, lugging around a sack full of tomes. The dead occasionally turned to watch their exit but made no move to stop them. The effect only heightened the elf’s embarrassment about the situation. The following day, the town of Pontefract was left with an army of abominations. It’s rather difficult to find any uses for monsters such as these. But the farmers that did not grow the root posted them up in their wheat fields like scarecrows.
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There stands a fortress not far from Pontefract. It was once made by invaders from the north. Then it was a monastery. Then the monks split from one of the main churches and died in the winter. Then it became home to Kailin. Kailin was a person of the Satanic faith. They drew in their lot with The Goat. Over the years since their acceptance, they had found it difficult to actually do anything wicked. There are several major sins that one usually commits in life. Many believe that number is seven and all others are separated into such categories. But then, Kailin found it difficult to commit to most of them. Sloth was useless as far as vices go, if they were to sit down they would simply feel compelled to do anything. Lust was completely off the table as they had never lusted after anything in their life. Pride was difficult, as you had to accomplish something to feel pride. They supposed on a rare occasion they felt Envy, there were Russian and Atlantian mystics who had slaughtered hundreds if not thousands to appeal to the bloodlust of gods. But they didn’t know any of them personally. Gluttony sat in the same place as envy, sure they ate and subscribed to the occasional sweet, but they found it difficult to indulge to any major degree. Pontefract represented a major failing in the combined powers of Wrath and Greed, sure they had stolen magical tomes and wanted to raise the hungry dead to kill an entire town, but the dead were halted by the town’s goddamned licorice
They sat awake and decided to make a running list of whatever sins they committed throughout the day. They decided that raising the dead counted as more of an annoyance than an actual sin since they refused to murder the townsfolk. They recalled the events of the week. The theft of the books they decided counted as four since they’d nicked four books from the nearby occult library. Four for greed? Perhaps. They tapped their pencil against the paper as they tried to work out what else they had done. Their tongue rolled around in their mouth as though the act would conjure up more wicked tasks than they’d done. Ultimately, this caused them to draw a fat fucking blank.
The list of sins committed by Kailin was pathetically short:
Theft.
Greed.
That was it. Two sins in a week. It was a new record low. And to think of it as two was being generous. If you were to think of theft as simply being a subcategory of greed. They threw up their hands and tossed their list into the fire. Kailin was no philosopher, but they did have their ideals. Could they be a Satanist if they lacked sin? If not, then what would be the point?
Late into the night, after imbibing in monks’ wine, they internally marked down Gluttony. That put them at two, maybe three for the week. Their mind spun as they combed through a library of ancient texts. Old ritual manuals.
They spat at the book that they’d taken the dead ritual from, “Useless trash.”
But as they flipped through they uncovered something. A ritual to summon a demon. Deep into their cups, they shouted, “That’s probably at least five sins worth. Sure.”
They took the wax of a candle and drew the demon’s sigil on the floor of the great library. Never mind the desecrated holy ground or the fact that the internal sigil was off in some areas, if it worked then it worked. Simple as that. They took their ritual dagger in hand, running the blade along their fingers, spilling their blood along the sigil, causing the wax to evaporate into black flame. They half-remembered the words from the book, and being at the center of a burning sigil is hardly the best place for a magical tome to be. They felt a buzzing that echoed out from the center of the mind and shook the whole room. The walls began to tear. Not the walls of the fortress library, but those of the world. Looking at the white space that lived beneath everything made Kailin’s eyes feel hot, as though they’d been struck ill. The black fire in the sigil still held prominence. But it is shaped towards the sigil. A shape that reminded them of the legs of a bug. A writhing mass of flaming insect legs that were darker than the night sky. Like the buzzing in their brain, a howl sounded. It came out from the middle of their brain. It approached something like the buzzing of bees if they tried to form words. But in an instant, the walls restitched themselves and the shadow flame conglomerated into a long dome in the center of the sigil.
Before them, the dark dome turned to fabric and shook violently and a voice like thunder boomed, “You fucking idiot! You absolute fucking idiot! You cocked up the whole ritual!”
They pulled the fabric from the cage and were greeted by a black owl in the cage. Though in place of an owl’s talons, there were a pair of human hands.
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