[spirokeat]

Plaguetongue
The old cemetery was silent in the burgeoning night and the marker stones were barely visible under the covering of foliage that had flowed into burial grounds in the years it had remained unkempt. Plaguetongue looked about, the revenant had a sense for what was needed and his dead gaze came to rest on a grave, long settled, that he knew would suit his purpose this eve. Removing a cracked and rune carved bone from the folds of his robe he began to sketch out a circle in the ground around the slight indentation that outlined the old burial. Completing his scribing of the circle Plaguetongue smiled, the dried and leathery muscles, which still clung to his moonlit skull creaking with the rare movement. Taking a large pouch from his belt the revenants desiccated hand reached in to produce a fine white dust, which carried the same luminescence as the glimpses of bone through the torn flesh of the arm; which he then sprinkled carefully into the outline of the ritual circle. Standing at the foot of the grave the robed horror issued forth fell words into the humid night, each syllable seeming to hang in the night air as though from a gallows, strangled and pained. The earth shuddered within the circle and the soil, which had previously lain still, churned as it gave up its gruesome contents. Finishing his chant Plaguetongue stopped briefly to gaze upon the corpse, which lay worm eaten on top of the dirt within the glowing circle. Rotting skin clung, moist and filthy to the putrescent remains, the eyeless gape of the skull seemingly screaming to the dark night and ragged and rotten clothes outlining withered and shrunken breasts. Without warning the eyes of the corpse opened, rotting orbs rolling in their sockets and then more movement as the cadaver twitched, pale rotten fingers clutching at its own body as the skull lolled and began to shriek and sob its pain to the night. Reaching forward Plaguetongue grasped the jaw of the corpse and viciously forced it to look at him, its arms flailing feebly at his iron grip.
“You were not called for strength at arms, my pretty.” The revenant spat the words.
Still the corpse moaned in agony. Grasping the decayed woman by the throat Plaguetongue straddled her torso his other hand, leathery and wicked began to pick the black and shrunk eyeball from its socket like a scab with his filthy torn fingernails. As if feeling the injury the woman struggled and screamed in pain but to no avail, her corpse not granted the killing strength of a risen zombie. Grunting in satisfaction, Plaguetongue looked briefly into the gaping black holes his work had created. Tipping a velvet pouch into his outstretched palm he looked as two dimly glowing purple orbs each pulsing with an inner light were revealed to the night. Taking the first between bony finger and rotten thumb the revenant carefully pushed the amethyst of death into one of the black eye sockets, its inner glow illuminating the ruined face of the long dead woman, quickly the second followed.
“I have given you the eyes of the night, my pretty can you Ss-eeeee?” The question was whispered as Plaguetongue got to his feet. At first there was no answer as the corpse raised its clawed and broken hand in front of its luminescent skull.
“I-I’m dead?” the questioning words croaked from the long disused vocal chords.
“Long dead, my pretty. The body your husband once longed for is now ugly and shrivelled in its rigor, the womb that birthed your children now barren and spent. You would lay still in atrophy had I not called you for my task.”
The corpse slowly looked up at the revenant, its visage long bereft of its ability to show emotion.
“I worked in life, I had hoped to rest in death. Such is my lot.” Spoke the corpse.
The revenant pointed to the mountains in the distance, the moon high above them outlining their grim crags and peaks.
“I seek dark knowledge from the land of Dershid a land given to the Obsidian Lord by right of blood and death.” The words were formal now, the ritual observed.
“By command of death and right of blood I see the land and taste its despair.” the words came unbidden from the woman in answer to the primeval rite. Plaguetongue reached into his pouch once more and retrieved the last precious amethyst.
“Will you pay my grave price for the dark knowledge I have seen” the woman’s hand slowly opened and Plaguetongue placed the gem into it.
“A Black Tower, filled with ancient death and kept secret by dark hearted conjurors and their Circle Master adepts, lays hidden amongst the high peaks.” The woman intoned.
Plaguetongue nodded, he could not have hoped for a greater discovery. Her reverie ended the woman began to sob again as Plaguetongue looked upon her before turning his back uncaringly to walk from the old graveyard he had found. Nopalxochitl, watched as the revenant strode into the darkness and she became aware again of the only living thing within her, the pain of death. Images of the black tower were fading but rising from the agony filled murk of her mind came other images, more painful than anything she could imagine. Two children, ran through a field of golden stalks, smiling at their mother, sweeping them into her arms she turned laughing and was met with the stern face of a sullen priest who clutched a forked stick which looked slick with some dark substance, soldiers behind him moved as he pointed at the young ones. Unable to face this image anymore Nopalxochitl screamed and tore at her glowing eyes, tearing them from their gorey sockets, where they fell to the ground along with her grave price. Struggling to her feet the corpse slowly made her way into the night, abandoning the cemetery along with its handful of death gems, one clawed hand touching the birthing scar visible on the dead flesh of her stomach, her eyes crying maggot tears for her long ago sacrificed children.