Lt Corvus
God Emperor
Registered: 06-2011
Location: Mount Pleasant, MI
Posts: 53
Karma: 5 (+5/-0)
|
Reply | Quote
|
|
Mourners' Rising
Ch. 1 - Reawakening
Something is different tonight.
Eyes long dulled with madness grow curiously sharp and alert. Their glinting orbs reflect the fire light from dark and sunken sockets, but there is a spark of life to them that has many years been vacant. The mouth, normally turned downward and frothing with expletives and mad talk, is straight, eerily silent. This is the man that a few know as Reimus, but more others know simply as a madman. Tonight he does not look the part.
Something is different. He draws his cloak around him when a cold wind blows from the East. He rubs his hands and presents them to the fire. There is a vitality in these small movements that does not match the madman they know him to be. They are used to lunatic antics, and these mundane gestures put them ill at ease.
Look how he rubs his temples, they whisper to each other, as if he has just woken from a long slumber. How strange that is at this hour of night. They are more correct than they realize. The man known as Reimus groans, trying to shake off this languor. It hurts, like a bandage pulled away from a festering wound.
As his thoughts regain their lost semblance of organization, of consciousness, the memories begin to return. He groans once more, louder, and it grows stronger into a scream of torment and anguish. He falls forward to the ground, clutching at his skull like a man broken with too much sorrow.
Suddenly as it started, the noise is over and the man they know as Reimus gets slowly to his feet. His eyes travel slowly over the surroundings, noting the stunned and silent faces, the yurts, the black banners with blue flame.
To his left, a man rises to his feet.
"Reimus…" the man says, his tone betraying that he speaks as if to a child.
"Fenris, last Captain of the Veris. I would caution you against speaking to me like that again, but the familiarity of it tells me you have addressed me as such for many years."
Fenris is stunned into silence. The door flaps open on a nearby yurt and another man hurries to the fire, hand on a hunting knife. The man stops a few paces away, dark eyes surveying the scene. As the man's eyes come to rest on the once-lunatic, he speaks again.
"Major Toland. Last time we met you had none of that gray in your hair." He pauses, for a moment, eyes unfocusing. "There are memories of how it came to be that way, but I cannot know the timing of them. I wonder how long it has been…"
"Reimus, are-"
"No," he interjects, eyes fastening sharply on Toland. "That name no longer holds me. I know not how, but a dark curse has been broken and I am restored." He takes a few steps towards Toland, raises his hand to place it on Toland's shoulder.
"My name is Corvus Caldera, last lieutenant of the Veris Squad, and the only survivor of it's destruction. We have many things to discuss."
--- Lt. Corvus
Mourner
Brother of Erlend
|
7/7/2011, 1:54 am
|
Link to this post
Send Email to Lt Corvus
Send PM to Lt Corvus
Blog
|