Zalphon's Drabbles, A Collection of Short Stories Options

[Zalphon]

The Bonelord of Samarys
By Odral Uvirith, Underpriest Diviner

The life of an Underpriest is one of service to those who have left this life for the next in all its forms. We are those who prepare their remains for eternal rest within the Tombs and those who stand vigilant in those tombs against those who would dare defile them or seek to take from them the treasures left behind, but there is more to the Underpriest than being curators of the fallen. We are also caretakers of those who guard these tombs and we are the ones who enact justice against those who defile them and put to rest those whose slumber has been hindered. It is a calling that few understand and even fewer embark upon, but that calling is one of our most sacred traditions and important duties.

You may wonder why I elaborate so thoroughly on what it is to be an Underpriest before I begin my story about my encounter with the only bonelord I ever underestimated—my best friend; I do this to remind you that the topic we are about to embark on is not one to be taken lightly. The Bonelords are not like other undead you will see within the Ancestral Tombs and should not be considered as such. There is a saying that one rogue bonewalker is one Underpriest’s problem, but one rogue bonelord is every Underpriest’s problem. That is because there is a qualitative difference between these two types of undead. The Rogue Bonewalker is akin to the rabid beast; it is in pain and lashes out at whatever crosses its path without forethought, but the Rogue Bonelord is not a creature tormented by pain of that regard; it is a creature whose ambition has grown beyond that of the tomb he presides over. You can contain a rogue bonewalker by sealing the tomb until it can be put to rest, but a rogue bonelord knows no bounds. It is gifted with magical aptitude and it will project itself beyond the tomb in an astral form or it will simply turn the walls of the tomb to dust and leave that way. Do not underestimate the Bonelord or you will serve it in death as I nearly did.

I recall a time when I was a Curate that I was pulled from my tomb with news that my mother had fallen deathly ill with blight and that it had progressed too far to be cured; it was the last chance I would get to see my mother and I took it to say my goodbyes to her. I cherished these moments until I returned to my tomb, Samarys Ancestral Tomb, to find the signs of break-in by a few adepts seeking to prove themselves as ‘true underpriests’. To intrude upon a tomb, especially while the curating underpriest is absent is a grave violation of our order, and I intended to bring them before the Diviner myself for their disrespect, not only to me, but to the residents of this tomb and the Guardians who stood watch in my absence.

What I found was that I could not bring them before the Diviner because Dralen, the Bonelord who presided over Samarys alongside me, had already killed them and raised them as lesser bonewalkers. I could tell by the fact that their Adept pins were still on their bloodied robes. I was greatly troubled by this and Dralen did allow me to put them to rest, but he could sense I was troubled by this a great deal. Dralen and I had developed quite a friendship over the years that I had been a guest in his home and I considered him to be a trusted friend and even a mentor at times, despite this incident.

But the Temple was not pleased at the death of these Adepts and ordered Dralen be put to rest. I pleaded before them to show mercy—that Dralen was not responsible and he had only done as I had asked him to do, but they would hear none of it. When I refused to enact their execution, the Diviner sent a new curate to take over my watch at Samarys and decided that it would be better if I handled the cremations for the time being, because as he put it, “I had lost sight of what is important.”

Little happened at first, but the weeks did go by and I overheard talk that the new curate sent to replace me was dead. He had been stripped of his flesh except for a patch on his chest on which Dralen etched: “Odral.” I had thought Dralen dead, but by ALMSIVI, he did yet live. I rejoiced inside at this at first until I remembered that he had taken the life of yet another of my brothers. I went before the Diviner and requested the right to put Dralen to rest myself. He granted my request.

I do remember the trek back to my tomb. It was long. Rainy. Wet. Cold. And contemplative. I came to think more and more as I journeyed back to the place that had been my home for so long. There was no pleasure at the thought of seeing my old friend or the bonewalkers who I had come to see as a macabre sort of family, but only a sadness that hung over me until ultimately, I concluded that I would not kill Dralen. I would spare him and deliver message to the Diviner that I had killed him when really I had not.

This was my plan and my journey suddenly seemed much less dreary and miserable as I looked forward to seeing him oncemore; I looked forward to another game of chess, something which I sorely missed given no one posed much challenge to me except for him. He was my closest friend and I looked forward to his company greatly and it only grew greater as I neared the Tomb until finally I was there.

He extended salutations in the way only Bonelords do. They are a taciturn sort and use as few words as possible, but that is not to say that they are completely without feeling. They have the ‘cold’ feelings—dispassionate ones such as respect or an icy hatred. They never feel things which are in and of themselves passionate such as rage or love. But I believed that Dralen had taken a liking to me, again in the way only Bonelords do, and I was wrong.

The days returned to normal and we were unbothered. There came a morning when I bid him good morning as I went to rest and he gave the standard response of “Sleep.” Again, a taciturn sort of creatures, but I did not sleep well that day. I awoke to a Greater Bonewalker atop of me and attempting to pulverize my skull. Had I not been so versed in my studies of turning undead, I would have died on that bed.

I found Dralen and he did not speak; he only turned from me and I approached him with a fury in my heart that he would send one of the bonewalkers to harm me. This is where I was mistaken. I believed that this was a momentary lapse in judgment for Dralen or perhaps the bonewalker had simply gone rogue, but he waved one of his arms and I felt every muscle in my body constrict to the point that I fell over and tried to scream from the pain. “It is time to rest,” he said. But he did not mean it as in sleep, but as in put to rest.

He stood over me with the calculating gaze of his empty eye sockets and it was only because the Diviner had caught wind of my deception and come himself that I did not die there. The Diviner was a studied mage who many thought had been a Telvanni before he joined the Temple in no small part due to the efficacy of his spellcasting, but not even the Diviner could hold off Dralen’s magics. I watched as Dralen approached the Diviner who lay paralyzed on the ground and it was by the grace of ALMSIVI that my muscles relaxed enough for me to move. I leapt to my feet and tackled Dralen into the ground, but he did not give up. He put his hands upon my face and I felt the heat get sucked out of my body by his skeletal grip. It was then that I made peace with the fact that I was going to die, but I was spared by the Diviner who capitalized on Dralen being distracted with finishing me off. He put Dralen to rest in that moment using every bit of what he had left in order to stop him from finishing me off.

Before that day, I had always considered Dralen to be my closest friend and the Diviner to be my worst enemy.

That day provided clarity. It gave me a new respect for the Diviner and it gave me a greater understanding of the Bonelords. At the core of their being, they are not like us. They are not our friends. They are not our family. They are dangerous guardians who know only chilling apathy towards most everything that lives with an exception to rare sparks of absolute hatred for those they deem to be intruders. If you listen to nothing else I have said, I beg of you to listen to this: Do not trust the Bonelords.

[Zalphon]

The Telvanni Guide to Illusion
By Sakiran Maesa, Spellwright of House Telvanni

My patience has once again been tested by one of my fetchlings; I suppose they do have names, but they are of little use for more than fetching the most basic of things given the events that transpired today. I gave one of the retainers enough gold to collect for me my personal items (such as Sload Soap and Telvanni Bug Musk) and told him that if he was timely in the matter that I would allow him to keep the change from the transactions. I should have known that sending someone of his stature to do a job like this would result in failure, but yet I did it anyways; I can not blame him for disappointing me any more than I can blame a fish for not climbing a tree. One should know better than to send a retainer to do a job that even a simpleton can do.

My residence is within one of the smaller towers of Sadrith Mora. The marketplace is grand and alive with many exotic delights and foreign goods befitting of the eccentric nature of many of the members of my House, and equally so, the merchants are quite savvy as to the tricks of the amateur illusionist seeking to charm them. The retainer is now being sold off to a club in Suran and I only hope that the merchant (who is a personal friend of mine) can accept my apologies for this fool’s rude behavior, but it has become clear to me that there is a gross misunderstanding of the field of Illusion amongst those aspiring to become Telvanni. I plan to dispel these illusions and I encourage you to read carefully.

Illusion is perhaps the most difficult school for the Telvanni, because it is not about understanding the metaphysics of reality or having the will to shape it. The school of Illusion is about something infinitely more complicated. It is about understanding your fellow man (or mer). You see, Illusion magic operates by creating false stimuli at the smallest level within the brains of the subject, but unlike other (purer) forms of magic, it also requires a level of guile that is typically lost by my House.

We are not like the other houses in that we hide behind honeyed words and sweet lies; the Telvanni way is to openly announce your will and then to enact it, because to do otherwise is a sign of weakness. That is why there is no reason to suspect a Telvanni of lying, because we do not need to lie. If we tell you that we are going to kill you, it is because we will. If we tell you that we are going to take your house, your home, and everything you love, it is because we will. There is no need to lie to you, because you’re not worth lying to. It’s much easier to just tell you the truth, because we have nothing to fear from you. That is why Illusion is so frequently forsaken amongst my house; it is the art of liars and deceivers and we are speakers of truths, no matter how uncomfortable they may be.

Equally so, it requires a level of empathy that is often lost in the transition from aspirant to Telvanni. I myself once had a great love for my fellow man and sought to proliferate knowledge to such an extent that I worked to improve the degree of literacy amongst the civilized Tamrielic races, but ultimately, I have come to realize that I could devote my entire life to teaching ants how to read and the results would ultimately be the same. We are not an empathetic people, because it is hard to empathize with something so infinitely beneath you. I do not mean that to offend you, but it is simply a statement of fact.

Again, the school of Illusion is difficult for us, because we feel no need to hide from you. But I do believe in offering the tools to reach greater power for those who seek it, so I will explain just what Illusion magic is, even if it is not a pure form of magic like you’ll see with other schools.

Illusion is divided into two primary sub-schools: Mental and Shadow

It should be noted that this divide is not in the way the magic works, but in the produced effects. All Illusion magic requires the creation of false stimuli, but the types of false stimuli differ. Mental magic tends to deal more heavily with emotional stimuli, whereas Shadow magic tends to deal with aural, ocular, olfactory, gustatory, and kinesthetic stimuli.

The Retainer sought to charm my friend with a spell I taught him some time ago. The way a spell such as charm works is that it creates an instant feeling of trust between the caster and the subject and it is actually incredibly effective in most cases, but those who are trained to resist it can sense that they’ve been charmed. Every merchant in Sadrith Mora and really any merchant with any serious ambition in Telvanni territory is trained to resist it and it is seldom, if ever, met with those same feelings of trust when they can tell they’ve been charmed. That is why this retainer failed in his (foolish) plan to charm my friend, because unlike the retainer, my friend is not an idiot and doesn’t do things (like become a merchant in the Council Seat of the Telvanni) without thinking them through (learning to tell when he’s been charmed).

One can be trained to detect all kinds of false emotional stimuli created by Illusion magic, but a true master of resisting Mind effects can detect the transcendental failings of it. There are subtle signs of being charmed, demoralized, or otherwise affected by an Illusion effect that only someone incredibly well-trained can detect in themselves (even if they’ve not been trained for that specific effect). It’s not the intensity of it, so much as the purity. I have felt intense trust before, but it’s never been without some sliver of doubt as well. There is no natural feeling of absolute fear or absolute rage or anything of the sort; it can feel absolute, but it can not be absolute in nature. If you are completely and utterly filled with one, singular emotion—you are under the effect of a spell. And that can be very hard to tell, especially when you are emotionally charged and therefore unable to think clearly, but the ability to differentiate between natural emotion and magical emotion can be the one that saves your life; I encourage any serious aspirant to seek training at the hands of a Mouth (Master Aryon’s is actually quite skilled in this) in exchange for services. It will save your life and I say that from experience.

Now we come upon what Illusion is actually known and named for. The Shadow Sub-School. There is a great deal of confusion about this school who think that the only effects produced by it are that of Chameleon and Invisibility, but that is actually quite untrue. There are a plethora of effects produced in this school that make it quite useful, even if its parent school is a lesser school.

To understand it though, you must first understand your five senses and how each of them factor in to paint a picture of your surroundings. You may think that sight alone is all that you need to have an understanding, but that is incorrect. Sight provides a canvas for the painting, but the paint on that canvas is brushed on by the sounds you hear, the way it feels, even the smells and taste. One can not tell me that looking at a portrait of the Foyada Mamaea is the same as actually walking it. There is an entire world of experience that is being missed by only looking at the portrait and that is what needs to be understand by any illusionist specializing in the Shadow sub-school.

So often I will find retainers practicing their “invisibility” within my tower and trying to sneak around, but their footsteps betray them. They do not muffle them in the slightest either magically or otherwise; they move with the grace of wild guar and many of them are so slathered in Bug Musk that they smell like them too. Understand this: your illusions are only as good as your worst sense. If you can not mask all five senses from being noticed, then you may as well not mask any, because you will be found and you will be killed. The only illusionist who survives is the one you never knew was there and that illusionist is not the one who drags his guarhide-soled shoes across my floors or the one who bathes in Bug Musk.

And you may wonder how your shadows seem to follow you in certain cases (such as Invisibility) when these effects are not actually affecting you, but those around you. That is because it creates a magical aura of false stimuli that clings to you and radiates from you. Contrary to the Bent Light theory of the Mages’ Guild, Shadow-type illusion spells do not bend light around you; they are purely the result of false stimuli or masked stimuli. You may doubt the truth behind my words, but I beseech you to perform an experiment if you do doubt me. Take two equally gifted pupils with but one difference: social grace. Find a brilliant pupil who is blessed with intellect and personality in accord and one who is blessed only with intellect and you will find the former to be the better of the Illusionists, because his understanding of people is greater.

Note From The Author:

I hope that the two of you who were mentioned in this text find a copy, lest I need to resolve this issue more directly.
-Lady Sakiran