Date: 12-28-2023
Tags: The Mournery, Etron
Long shadows stubbornly cling to the base of embalming slabs patterned across the echoing stone hall. Each shadow tries its best to avoid the drops of light that ooze through the canvas covered skylights. A young hand shakily guides a scalpel towards a corpse laid on a slab. Beside the young girl a man with age engraved into his eyes watches carefully. Soft whispers are lost among the shuffling noises of morticians working. O: “Steady your hand, a guide should not be afraid of the path ahead.” G: “Sorry, I am scared… I don’t want to lose them…. Or to die to them…” O: “Taking life and guiding death are intimate things, intimacy requires trust, it requires responsibility” He raises his arm gesturing to a shimmering shade, a silhouette, clinging desperately to the head of the slab. Two green dots that form its eyes take the shape of worry. O: “How can you guide them if you are afraid of being lost?” O: “Trust yourself so they can trust you.” She makes a precise incision across the length of the corpse’s diaphragm. As the chest falls, her gaze drifts towards the shade. She is met by a third light, a thin green line parting the darkness below its eyes, a smile. She returns it for all but a second before she is blinded. A sharp light scatters the Mournery’s darkness as its doors crack open. A lanky figure slips inside, a drow. His white dreads throw out the last rays of light before the doors are closed again. The elder furrows his brow as he begins to pace towards the drow. He leaves the girl with a parting whisper. O: “Taking life is to steal trust, to force responsibility on others, may you never stray into that path.” She and the shade observed the men from afar, each one carried a mantle of darkness about them. Clinging to the drow like a wicked cape were the silhouettes of dozens of shades, and to the elder, even more; All of them with faces twisted in rage.