Sorcery is Not Necromancy!

[Pravus Zambrano]

Lorrd
The Library of Lorrd University
Mid-Morning

He had asked for precious little from the old librarian. Petite and angry, she was a woman with eyes that shined grey and alluded to a once vibrant hue of blue. With a dancing bob of wiry straw-like hair, color resembling ash beneath a mantle that had not seen fire for several years, she once moved about the expansive repository with a permanent scowl.

“What do I need an inkwell for?” He grumbled, mocking her wavering tone, as he pulled a lavender feather from the plume of his vibrant pauldron. “A hanging preposition is a reflection of poor character, Mrs. Cobble!” He spoke sharply to himself as he pulled out the bound booklet. The wailing face of a awestruck man looked back from the cover, visage fixed in a instantaneous point of sorrow and regret. Like the pain afflicted could never overcome the amount of unfinished business, left in Sebastian's wake.

The gargantuan figure, hunched over the distressed wooden table, sighed a sound of relief as he moved his fingers over the face’s stretched skin, pulled tight and supple across the grimoire. No matter how poor his mood, looking upon his work always seemed to elevate his mood.

Unclasping the brass lock, he opened to the next blank page and dunked the quill deep into well. Across the glass, there was the faded indentation of a skull and crossbones - a tankard once used for poison storage. And now it held an even one to one ratio of ink to ghoul blood. And as Pravus pulled the hardened follicle across the parchment, he heard the clink of that ghoul as he moved about the library.

Mrs. Cobble had scoffed at Darron, more metal than meat, as it were. A limb gone here, a limb gone there - nothing a good broom handle or item grabber couldn’t fix. The Sorcerer was always impressed with the will to go on, despite the shambles of flesh that remained. But that scoff from the old woman soon turned to horror with a flick of Pravus’ long ungainly fingers.

He snickered as he began his doodle, enjoying the silence of the place. Only now, there was the sounds of a crippled ghoul walking about, wailing at his own condemnation yet forced to consume to survive, and the spasms of a deceased library keeper as her clogs twitched against the polished floor in the distance.

Only distantly connected to the Empire, Pravus had put out a request for some assistance regarding a genealogy study that he was soon to embark upon. Lorrdians fascinated the tall spellweaver, largely because of the divisive disparity between them and the baseline humans. Both, as far as he were concerned, were vestibules of mediocrity and not entirely fit for speciation, but he was content to throw a dog a bone. Bless them with his scholarly presence, as it were. But if Mrs. Cobble was any indication of the tenacity of their breed, he might just have his work cut out for him.

Dear assistant of likely uninspired capabilities, I am in need of what I assume will be the extent of your prowess. Labeling bottles, preparing petri dishes, and disposing of garbage. In return, you will reflect upon the work of a true master. Come to Lorrd, the University of Lorrd City. Within thse confines, you shall find me partaking in the lore and culture held captive within the great Library. Be punctual, you’re already late.​

[member="Thesh"]

 

[Lief]

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Lorrd, The Outer Rim Territories // Lorrd University, Library​

Answering A Summons // With [member="Pravus Zambrano"]​

♫ // Waiting For My Words​

Seen But Never Heard​

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Lorrdian.

Growing up that was a word which had been used against him and his family, uttered as though it was a curse which ought not befoul the tongue of any good man. For his part, Thesh had never understood their reasoning for it; outwardly he looked just like the rest, a human, sure he may have been a touch smaller but that was not due to his species any more than it was simply a product of who he was. His father had been a towering man, after all. The boy had simply taken after his mother. Redhair was not even a trait of their people, necessarily, and the rest of his features were frankly generic.

Yet it had become a thing he abhorred about himself regardless. The unnecessary stigma. Thesh had always been led to believe that Lorrdians were simply humans born on Lorrd, which was where his parents were from before moving to Ession. If that was the case, though, then why the discrepancies?

Thesh had never been to Lorrd.

Though his parents claimed they left of their own volition, the mere fact that they never really spoke of the world, of any family they might have had there, told a tale of its own, and given that Thesh was taken at so young an age, thrown into slavery, he'd never had a chance to visit by his own doing either.

As such, the sight of Lorrd City, and the University that the shuttle was bound for, had the boy filled with curiosity and wonderment. He kept his eyes glued to the viewing port, the anticipation building as the structure grew in size and the world shrunk down to one spot, one moment in time. Gone were the tiny ants milling around, and instead he had just another cityscape to contend with, like the one he'd grown accustomed to back on Bastion.

Though he wanted to oggle and take his time, Thesh was well aware that time was of the essence. According to the note he'd received he was already much too late to be dilly-dallying, and where many might have fought the assumption that they were somehow to have known that they were expected, even prior to being summoned, Thesh still had yet to outgrow all of the traits he'd gained from years of enslavement, though the steps he had taken away from that time had been substantial in and of themselves.

The interior of the University's Library was somewhat musky. Morning rays were cast down through skylights, and windows deep set into alcoves, revealing centuries of dust within the air. The main space was gigantic, and as he walked through the rows of books in search of the correct area, his dark robes swooshing around his feet, he could not help but feel a desire to read all that was on offer. If he thought that he could lose a thousand lifetimes in [member="Darth Maliphant"] 's personal library, then he would need a hundred thousand, if not more, to truly digest what lay within these archives.

Time he did not have.

Yet.

Rounding the final corner, the boy almost ran head long into what appeared to be a shambling bag of bones and taut skin, missing limbs replaced by foreign objects, and lifeless eyes deep set into its shriveled face. His own eyes almost threatened to fall straight from his skull, he was so surprised. Yet he managed to keep that harrowing scream from breaking free, though it rose within his chest all the same.

Thesh had read about such things during his studies, had been utterly enthralled by each word on the page, but to see it up close and personal?

That was something else all together. In fact, in that moment he quite forgot that he was already late.

 

[Pravus Zambrano]

He was hard at work, waist deep in the toils of obsessions and passions. On his left side stood an opened book, detailing the fictitious story of a sorcerer who had been granted the power over life and death at the cost of his loved one. The one person with whom he couldn't revive. The dusty text was filled with subtle lessons, moral and practical, that denounced the practices of alchemy and instead glorified a sense of druidism.

As if nature were inclined towards balance!

He scoffed as he read each line, struggling between the notions of defacing and outright destruction. He had started by scratching out words, here and there, changing the story to show that dreadful mistakes were the cause of all this turmoil. That the protagonist, if he could be thought of as such, was besieged by melancholy formed of his own volition. But Pravus had soon found that there were no amount of reconciliation that could turn these lies into truth so instead, he did only what made sense.

The sound of parchment ripping could be heard, echoing through the great halls, as he read one page and followed it abruptly by tearing it out and whimsically tossing it towards the dancing flames of the nearby sconce. Some landed on the floor, others hung loosely from the wrought iron of the rigid stand, and others tossed and turned in the brass bowl as flames consumed them.

"Can you read?" He stated loudly and sharply, bulbous eyes lifting from the text on his left. His right hand continued to doodle, methodically, as his grimoire seemed to quiver against the table on his right. Even in the lowest of lights, the red mop of nonsense stood out upon the young mans crown and brought utter disgust to the sorcerer. Such things deserved a lab table, not life, he thought to himself, as he lifted a bony finger. And forming a circle in the air, like a branch in the wind that would soon dizzy the dragonfly, Pravus indicated towards the ghoul with unseen tether.

"Turn around Darron, show the boy." A whistle escaped the mans lips as the nearby fire flicked in the sconce, another page taken in a bright show of heat. Across Pravus' face, the characteristics moved, as each wave of the flame formed a different face across the long features of his skull. "Tell me..." The stern tenacity of his voice was equaled only by the shrill and high pitch, as if sincerity and curiosity lurked somewhere deep beneath his hungry eyes. "What do you see?"

Darron turned on command, clicking as he stumbled, as a good dog should. Across his bruised and swollen back, like a cadaver that had been left in the river for far too many days, a great display of iconography stood for measure. Images, red and black and blue, twisted upon each other. To the left, a serpent with a broken jaw, spitting flames from a bleeding throat. On the right, an old pauper with a book held open to the monster, a spear birthed from the pages and binding, striking at the adders heart. Around them, spiraling infinitely, approaching infinitesimal across the ribs and small of back, Sith Ruins. Even with canvas faded and wasting with age, the words seemed as if they were fresh and raw to the touch.

"Well...speak up!" In the distance, he heard someone shoo him, likely for speaking loudly in a library. And for the briefest moment, a fleeting tempest of anger flashed across his expression.,

[member="Thesh"]

 

[Lief]

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Lorrd, The Outer Rim Territories // Lorrd University, Library​

Answering A Summons // With [member="Pravus Zambrano"]​

♫ // Waiting For My Words​

Seen But Never Heard​

______________________________________________________________​

The sound of a gruff voice drew him from his terror.

His eyes remained locked upon the raggedy remains of some one or some thing that stood before him - honestly, what it was wasn't easily decipherable at this point - even as he tried to glance instead toward the owner of that voice. Gaze remained trained on the husk until the very last moment, even going so far as to flicker back once or twice, before he looked finally upon the one who had summoned him.

Or, more appropriately, who he believed had summoned him.

"Yes, Sir," came his response, as he swallowed down all of the rising trepidation, eyes piercing through the hazy darkness which surrounded the man. It wasn't until just a few moments later that he realized the horrors had yet to begin. He who stood before him now was hunched over, a behemoth of a man whose face was cruel and strange. Mayhaps it was the shadows fault, a trick of the light, but the more the boy stared the more he realized that was not the case.

His eyes fell to the grimoire at the first sign of its quivering, and it was with grim realization that he noticed how it seemed to hold a life of its own. The very core appeared to be taut flesh, cracked and in perpetual torment. Thesh had to let out a small breath to keep himself from losing his head, the nail of his thumb on his right hand digging into his index finger as though pinching to ensure he was awake. As a distraction from the abstract horror around him.

Attention became torn by the further tearing of pages, and the boy watched in surprise as those leaves of literature were cast into flames. What the contents had been Thesh could obviously not say with any certainty, yet the actions of the man before him made him more than curious to find out. Not that he'd have a chance to.

As the walking bag of bones turned around and revealed its back, Thesh returned his attention to the task at hand. He stared at the various imagery and runes which lined the poor fool's back, head tilting slightly to one side.

"It... It looks like a ritual, Sir," the boy responded, a hint of uncertainty in his tone, after being told to speak up; he tried to read the runes, in order to make further sense of it, but he was still new at deciphering such and could only make sense of a few of the archaic symbols. The book, the runes, flames, and the spear manifested between them, it conjured up quite the pretty image in his mind, though of course the boy did not know for certain what it meant at all.

 

[Pravus Zambrano]

He raked a long and sharpened nail against a break in the wood. Not a quick and fast movement, anticipating a greater gesture, but the slow and steady and anxious flare that gave way to thought. And to something deeper, perhaps a sense of trepidation. Not for the boy, though Pravus sensed much within him. No, the sorcerer gave, to the eyes of a babe, his very first concoction. A tapestry of love and obsession, grafted and carved from the back of the unwilling.

It was a baptism, set upon Darron and gifted by Sebastian. And despite his outward appearance and intimidation tactics, Pravus very much cared what others thought. Even strangers.

The chair scooted back, scuffing across the floor and putting up a meager fight before tilting and falling against the floor. The sconce rattled and shook, hanging chains swaying about, as the man stood to his full height. Even with the hunch of his back, he was a monstrous figure.

Approaching, his pass at the flames showed preview of the vibrancy of his clans. A robe adorned him from shoulder to floor, covered in hues of purple and reds. Circling about his neck and extending down his left shoulder, a plume of feathers formed collar and pauldron. Gripping it tightly, the sealed grimoire now hung near his waist in what appeared to be a re-purposed worn leather sword belt. He moved with a lumber, like a Troll trudging through water, as if his ankles were bound by a quarter meter of rusted chain.

But he made his way to the young man, slow and steady, until he came to a complete stop. He allowed the momentum of silence to continue, a pause perusing between master and technician, as he rubbed his hands over one another. Until it was time to break the silence.

"Quite right." He leaned forward, the light giving way to an almost comical smile as he perched with wrists seemingly held at breast height, afflicted with moments of vulturism. "But..." He lifted his right hand, index finger aimed towards the very stars. "Looks can be deceiving." His tense rose with each word, as if he were offering statement and question at the same time. Pravus scooted forward and leaned in front of Thesh, pressing a sharpened nail into Darron's back. The ghoul moaned restlessly but relented without a struggle.

"A ritual of thievery, from life and death both!" He chuckled. "To lasso a star!" He nodded, agreeing with himself and the poetry of it all. It seemed that story had worn off on him, afterall. Looking to Thesh, he glanced at the red hair and back down to his eyes. "You understand, yes?"

[member="Thesh"]

 

[Lief]

The boy stared at the ruminations marked upon the flesh of the ghoul right up until the point in time that his superior rose and proved himself to be even more of a towering behemoth than he had previously deduced. He found himself forced to crane his neck just to look upon his face, meeting his gaze as best he could as he lumbered around the desk and brazier toward the two of them.

His movements were slow, yet Thesh assumed it was more to do with his odd gait than any measured or more calculated reason. There was a madness within the eyes of the man, as though his sanity was holding on by thin strands, a chaotic demeanor that spoke of the darkness swirling within and without.

Truth be told much of what the man had to say seemed rambling to the boy, superfluous, yet in an odd way it drew him in all the more, engrossed the boy and tempted him closer. There was something mystifying about him, and the words he chose to use.

Thesh did not necessarily know exactly what the man meant, yet he nodded his head slowly and regarded the flesh-borne tapestry all the same as a digit was thrust against it.

"I think... Life taken from one, and given to another?"

It was a guess, of course, yet the more he looked at the markings the more ideas that came to his mind. He had a feeling he would be disappointing the man with that answer, which was a shame given that he had seemed quite excited that the boy understood to begin with. Thesh did not know why he cared what the man thought, why he wanted to understand, and to do him proud, but he did. As though a spell had been worked over him, the boy found himself thoroughly intrigued by the man, he wanted to know more, to understand what it was that he saw.

He looked between the man and the back of the ghoul, this Darron, deep in contemplation. He could feel his heart racing, slamming against his chest, a very real pressure weighing down his shoulders. His mind raced back to all he had come to learn in the past few months, all he had read with his nose stuck deep within some tome or another.

Nothing could have prepared him for this.

[member="Pravus Zambrano"]

 

[Pravus Zambrano]

The interior artwork was utterly pointless, a doodle by the man so close to apotheosis that his ascent was nearly visible. He envisioned himself like the beggar, using literature and knowledge to conquer the physicality of the universe. Such was his station, overcoming his gypsy upbringing to be consumed by the power of his bloodline and his Goddess. To become better than the Goddess, to one day triumph over all through astute observations and endless experimentation.

"To surmise take...we must assume that life and death hold ownership over us." He held up his finger, not unlike he had before, as if he were popping a suspended epiphany - soon to splash down upon them. The etchings of his own ritual shined violet across the top of his hand and down his wiry forearm, disappearing into the robes."That will not do." He stated as that star struck hand snapped and Darron twitched, his body reanimated with a low groan as he moved back through the books shelves. Stumbling, decrepit and clumsy, Darron fell to the floor and dragged himself along the body of Mrs. Cobble. And began to consume of her flesh once more. Her clogs began to spasm, twitching against the floor.

Pravus looked towards the young man, his eyes in particular, and searched for disgust. And moreover, for hunger. From the womb, the innocent and naive are taught to fear and disgust what does not immediately make sense. But if wonderment can triumph over the basest instincts, than anything can be achieved.

Circling around the young man, memories of Rose flared in his mind, and of the most recent debacle in particular. But he washed wayward thoughts away as he coiled his hands over the boys shoulders. Not to restrain him, but to focus him, to fix his visage upon the everlasting consumption. "Life wanted this mans soul in the beginning, Death in the end. So I have ensnared him somewhere in the middle. But to sustain this ritual, death must be appeased so that life can be held at the door."

The words upon his back held little importance. It was the mixture of ink and ysalamir blood, the incantation and obsession, the curse of entrapment that had made this horrendous and beautiful thing possible. A zombie brought to life, forced to consume to sustain himself, in hopes of thwarting his master at every turn. "Darron, his name in life, carries the obsession of my undoing. I yanked him from the world, like the hands of a doctor. And now he exists to one day exact vengeance upon me." He spoke as if he grew prouder and prouder by day. Darron was once so hopeless but now, he had given into his needs. And he had become something else entirely. "Does this holiest of work interest you, boy?" He pulled his hands from the young man and retracted, stepping past him to approach Darron.

Gripping his grimoire tightly, he loomed over the deceased and dying, and watched quietly. Eyes gleaming passionately.

[member="Thesh"]

 

[Lief]

The boy looked on in grim intrigue as the ghoulish fiend pulled himself toward the body of a woman Thesh had not even noticed up until that point. It wasn't until he looked upon her that the stench of blood wafted through the air toward him, and a momentary spike of horror was surprisingly enough overtaken by morbid curiosity. He went so far as to tilt his head to the right, watching the desecration of the woman's corpse unblinkingly even as the lumbering man continued to speak.

Of course he had initially felt disgust upon stepping into this unsanctified section of the library, upon looking upon the grim visage of Darron, and the strange sight of the man himself, yet as the initial shock waned and a subtle numbness fell over the boy, the same fascination he'd derived from the various tomes he'd read with [member="Darth Maliphant"]'s blessing arose within him.

"He pays the price for your meddling," the boy stated, rather simply, tone laced with what could easily be surmised as acute appreciation. To see all that he had read played out before him, in so tangible a form, was harrowing and enlightening all at once, "Takes - nay, devours - life, in order to sustain the limbo you've cast upon him. It's brilliant. Simply remarkable."

The hand which had snaked upon his shoulder went unnoticed, for the boy had not once sought to turn away from the frenzied actions Darron. He had winced once, maybe twice, his body's natural response to seeing a similar vessel torn apart so easily, and somewhere along the way his skin had turned a very subtle shade of green, a product of the gore which lingered between the woman's corpse and the reanimated brethren it was sustaining, and yet even so Thesh found himself taking one very subtle step closer when his shoulder was released and the man neared his creation.

It wasn't a large step by any means, in fact in the eyes of many it would appear more like a shuffle, a scuffed boot against the ground, yet in the same instance the boy craned his neck to get a better look, fighting to keep down his body's natural revulsion the entire time.

[member="Pravus Zambrano"]

 

[Pravus Zambrano]

The grand sorcerer sneered as he looked upon Darron, feeling the contempt as the ghoul went about his requirements. In truth, he could have cast another ritual, removed the need for the man to do as he hated. But where's the fun in that? He enjoyed the suffering of ghoul, removed from his lover so long ago on Maena. Like rays of the sun cast upon a blossoming dandelion, Pravus felt rejuvenated in the wash of it all. And turning his attention back to the young man, Pravus contemplated the circumstances that now preceded their departure further into this reservoir of knowledge.

He wasn't sure he quite believed the young man's platitudes, though they seemed brimming with sincere veneration. His eyes spoke more than his lips ever could, indicating awe and amazement hidden behind such young naivety. And what were words, if not the precursors to rooted foundation? If spoken enough, anything could become the duracrete for which a persons character was formed. Repetition, after all, was the bailiwick to all formative science.

"Adulation..." The Sorcerer stated slowly as he turned, that wicked sneer turning warm as the fire illuminated his image. "Will get you quite far here." He giggled childishly, his shoulders rattling as his hands remained fixed to his breast. "Quite far indeed. Come now, I'm in search of something." He waved his hand for the young man to follow, giving Darron a hard kick to the ribs before moving forward. "You too, darling. We musn't delay."

He began his movement through the towering shelves of books not unlike a snake would move through a maze of caged field mice. Eyes beaming with promises and potential, he supped on the hope that within these walls, he find proper footing upon his quarry. "I am looking for three books, my boy. Quandaries of the Qatamerian​, a collection of philosophical discussions between three prominent Lorrdian philanthropists on the difference between Lorrdians and other base-line humans." He paused, flicking through some bindings, and ticking his tongue as he continued forward. "Frezen in Time, a memoir of a man whom survived the bombing during the Kanz Disorders. It details his slow death from nuclear outfall." Pravus chuckled, finding particular interest in that one. "And Economics and Progression." He stopped in his tracks. "A quite controversial dissertation on the affects of slavery and how that has provided evolutionary benefit to the Lorrdian species."

Turning to look at the young man, hungry eyes beneath his hair of fire, he smiled. "These should help a good deal with our studies."

[member="Thesh"]

 

[Lief]

All at once the moment was over, and the spell crumbled from being, forcing the boy's body back into action. Gone were the timid steps, those grazing shuffles, and instead when the time came for them to move on through the walkways of stacked bookcases and creaking wooden floorboards he fell in line without missing a step. His gaze lingered on the ruined corpse of the woman, what remained of her that was, for but a moment, before generalized apathy had him looking away, back to the task at hand, his final inspection of her rather more clinical in nature.

That aforementioned numbness had truly taken a hold of his core, suppressing the horror ingrained in most everyone in favour of keeping at least some small measure of sanity.

As the trio of tomes were listed off, his gaze drifted from eye-level to the great heights above where signs marked particular topics of interest, categories so to speak, in order to make perusing the shelves that much easier. Philosophy, Historical Biographies, and Progressive Economics: Three vastly different subject matters, in truth, no doubt housed within differing sections. And in a library so large as this, it might take them all day to unearth what the man was looking for.

Luckily for them, however, there were systems in place for finding such things.

"If I may, My Lord," Sir, My Lord, Master, who knew which title was preferred, but at this point he strayed toward perhaps the most respectful of them all with full sincerity, "Perhaps we might make use of one of the terminals, in order to discover their locations?"

Not that he had any issue with walking and unearthing them of his own volition, of course, simply that he was not so certain how much patience the man had, how much time he wished to invest in seeking them out as opposed to utilizing them.

[member="Pravus Zambrano"]

 

[Pravus Zambrano]

He was a lord but of what, this whelp could not know. Lord of Life, Lord of the End, Lord of the Beginning. It was simply a matter of timing, his power would one day be so overwhelming and absolute - he was sure of it! But the payment of respect he was due, it helped to stave off the insult that might have come from the implication of the statement; That Pravus had not considered the technological inclinations of the more modernized repository of knowledge. In truth, he had been surprised the place had even had printed pages. Everything seemed so inclined towards digitization, the smell of parchment and fresh blood-soaked ink was a thing that was slowly disappearing in the world.

Besides, he had read multiple medical research indices that denoted a faster rate of knowledge consumption via reading hard copies - versus something on a datapad or the like. And if these terminals weren't the gateway drug to such things, he didn't know what was!

Fluttering his hand nonchalantly, he thought on his response. "What is your name..." He waved his hand as he continued forward. "Oh, that doesn't matter yet. Listen, my boy..." He began, ever soaked in the state of condescension that he had earned. Through hardship or high birth, it didn't matter. It was there all the same.

"We must never..." He lazily lifted a finger to the sky, veering towards a shelf on high. Manifolds and Destiny, the Life of an Engineer. Not what he was looking for. "Rush knowledge." His finger shifted into a fist held up, slowly retracting back down towards his chest. "Consumption must be done at ease, quietly and introspectively. The brain and the spirit must be massaged." He stopped and checked another book. No dice. "Because the true vigor..." He turned around and moved towards the young man, now confined to the shelves on each side and a lurching Zambrano before him. "Will be needed for the tests! Oh..." He lifted his hands, as if requested by some puppet master, who would claim his faculties on a whim and stretch of fingers like inverting roots of a great and powerful tree. "The experiments. The hypothesis. The failures! The screams! The pain!" His eyes, oh so big, glowed with fervor. And then he took a deep breath, hearing someone off in the distance who was actively shushing people.

Dropping his hand to his side, he nodded, as if the young man had agreed with him. "You'll see. You'll understand soon enough. Now chop chop..." He waggled his finger as he turned. "Frezen in Time may be of particular subject, but I'd hate for someone to grab it before us. It would end poorly..." For them.

[member="Thesh"]