Reborn

[Inajira]

A small lantern bore witness to the grave-setting. It cast lengthy shadows, contrasted with the contained flame, that flickered and danced about the hooded and cloaked man. The man himself hunched over a shovel, slipping the sharpened metal blade into the earth at regular intervals and throwing it back into the grave he had already dug.

Iron scraped dirt and stone with each gesture and gentle breath from the hooded man. Occasionally he would cast about in the darkness of the countryside outside Myrkentown. At such a late hour there would not be any likely traffic, at least there was not likely to be any.

Inajira watched the dirt collect upon the hooded and chained figure below. A small purse of gold tugged at his belt, fresh and begging expenditure upon all manner of painful poisons, toxins and secrets. Alas temptation would have to wait.

After all, he considered, this one would not bury himself.

[Chained One]

A fistful of dirt fell.

It settled upon what served as his chest and dragged the dark cloak down further against the memory of flesh. Every several moments it was joined by another, the loose dirt and pebbles scraping over his sword, across his tattered garments, rattling along the length of the ponderous chain that bound him in fleshly form and service.

The only silence came from the night beyond the reburial.

It also came from the coiled silver serpents adorning each elbow. They regarded him with their silent, ruby, multi-faceted gaze. For once their prattle had grown still, their fanged lips no longer tempting and goading. Perhaps they were finally content with this, the last of their reported acts to transform him into something beyond their respective once-masters.

Valinor waited with an eager calm. His desires were dark, cloudy and wispy things. Power and the ability to wield it hovered so close to his wraithly grasp that his fingers began to worm in spiteful anticipation.

Soon, the serpents had promised, very soon now all would be as it should.

He watched as the last shovelful of earth sealed away his sight.

[SinVraal]

When the Ashfiend came for him in the orphanage, it told Vraal he had been right all along.

When the Constable and his companions sought to defame the Violet Dawn, it told Vraal he had best tread carefully.

When the populace marvelled but feared even the simply growing but persistant vegetables that the Dawn produced quite peacefully, it whispered to Vraal that this world was very much unlike the last he had inhabited.

When Alessandra fed Calomel information concerning the Violet Dawn's supposed child-kidnapping, orchestrated just for the constable to discover, it humored Vraal.

When the members of the Violet Dawn drank his heart's blood and professed courage to the end of the age, Vraal could barely contained himself.

As the last of the Violet Dawn perished beneath the strangling blades of the silver serpents, Vraal had been, effectively, deceased.

And when Inajira bought the lies his serpents had whispered, Vraal would have laughed. Alas he lacked lips at the time. Now, with the last blood of the "faithful" and effectively defunct Violet Dawn stirring within the chained one's wraithly corpus, he felt the memory of laughter. He felt feeling again, the pulse of heart stirring fitfully but ever stronger in his chest. He felt the rising of breath, the twitch of cramped muscles, and the coating of true flesh.

He felt satisfaction, in this earthly womb, as he arose from the heart's blood of all his faithful.

He felt determination as he took his first breath, stained with the ponderous scent of fresh earth.

He felt exhiliration as one foot brushed against the silver urn between his ankles.

He felt jubilation that it had all finally unfurled.

Beneath the earth, he began to laugh. As the shovel disturbed the earth once more on the far side of this fresh tomb, he laughed all the harder.

He laughed so hard that he cried.