Nations of Rothel:

Noumenon: The nation of Neladrie, Savior of Souls. Her Mark grants the ability to raise the dead by lending a corpse one's own life force. All potential additional conduits are related to this ability in some manner. Noumenonians employ their tireless undead for many a laborious task.

I woke with a gasp, finding myself collapsed and in the crumpled ruins once more. Gone was the city of bone, the lonely Necropolis, the grieving woman. My heart hammered in my chest, pounding out a staccato rhythm with thundering intensity as a wave of newly acquired knowledge flooded in.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Each drumbeat thrummed through me, shaking me to the core, whispering of limitless possibilities - of second chances and renewed purpose. I knew nothing of who Neladrie was, nor of why or how she would bestow powers to another; at that moment, I didn’t even care.

I knew enough. I knew that the Mark on my shoulder, her Mark, had given me an outlet for my overwhelming force of life - somehow providing me powers in addition to my own.

I knew that I had gained another ability from her Mark following my vision of meeting her personally, separate from and more limited than the ability to raise the dead: [Unity]. The ability to become one with the things that I gave life.

I scrambled forwards against battered and broken stone, fingers digging through the cracks. I burned with need. The need to act, the need to move. The need to become more.

My hand met gnarled scale and torn flesh. I tugged at the fragmented Gift that had found its home with Neladrie’s touch. Light flared, and I felt [Unity]. At the same time, a well of power ran dry - I knew that it would have to replenish itself before it could be used again, but I paid it little mind.

I was far more focused on the effects created by [Unity].

My mind split, and I moved elsewhere. My mind split, and I moved nowhere.

My claws gouged into yielding earth. My fingers pressed against hardened scale.

My pulse fell silent. My heart thundered in my ears.

I was dead. I was alive.

All at once, I was more.

There was little that could serve to explain the disorientation inherent in the following moments, the unnerving sensation of suddenly finding myself with a new set of eyes, a new set of limbs, a new set of…well, everything.

The strangeness of it all sent me staggering, as both my human self and as the undead creature that now also housed my mind.

I spilled to the ground in two distinct thumps as my sense of balance was overwhelmed by the discordant clashing of two bodies’ proprioception. My skin ripped and scales rubbed with the force of the impact. Dull pain blossomed in my arm as skin tore, the sensation managing to feel both immediate and distant simultaneously.

Head spinning, I reached one hand to pull myself back up. My claws furrowed their way into the earth. Startled, I pulled the limb back. My hand came instead, sending me unceremoniously to the ground once more and bashing my all-too-human head forcefully against stone.

I laughed, the noise coming out as a series of sibilant sounds and hisses as my human half lost consciousness.

Oddly enough, I had found the unexpected hit rather helpful, the potential concern of brain damage aside. It cut off the frankly nauseating discordancy created by the conflicting sensations. If the damage from the fall was severe enough, I supposed that I could die and simply be reset by the influx of new life.

Huh. Thinking on it, functional immortality suddenly became extremely convenient when it didn’t necessarily come attached with the existential horror of knowing that I was bound to eventually end the world. Certainly, it made things far easier when it existed as a benefit rather than some sort of sick joke.

After a few minutes of practice while my human body remained unconscious, I managed to gain a passing familiarity with my decidedly less human half. I flicked a tongue out, tasting the air with its reptilian tongue. It caught a faint hint of salt, saturated by seawater evaporating from the nearby shore, along with a loamy earth-scent that I would associate with trips to the countryside.

Looking around, I realized that it would be more accurate to say that the boundaries of the countryside were less firm than I remembered. Ruins and rubble dotted the landscape, eviscerated by green growths and wild roots. Far off in the distance, great trees shot up into the sky, grasping for the sunlight. The canopy twisted and pulsed, shifting with the motions of unseen creatures within its heights.

With a throbbing ache, my body began to respond once more. No, not my second body, the first. Well, I suppose calling it my first body would feel just as inaccurate as referring to it as my second. Anyway, the human one. It was all very confusing. I’d have to come up with proper terms for myself - because, looking through my additional pair of eyes, I was certainly not me.

What was it that the woman had said? Someone had done something, and my life filled the void that remained when he failed. I felt a tinge of sadness at the thought, tempered by the knowledge that he likely made the attempt willingly - which was more freedom of choice than I had ever had.

Better this outcome than the body going to waste?

I guessed this was like recycling - and that was a good thing. Ergo, not a villainous body snatcher. Instead, I was a poster child for reusability.

Momentary crisis of morality resolved!

Feeling better already, I took a moment to observe my new self with a more discerning eye...the new recycled human one, not the new reanimated monster one.

I was quickly struck with a realization that pulled at the threads of guilt twisting their way along my heartstrings: I was rather young.

My newfound face still held a small portion of the exuberant innocence of youth, something that I was sure had been scoured away from me long ago. I even held doubts that, as I was now, I would easily be considered a proper adult. With a great enough application of dirt and rough living, perhaps. Maybe a firm need for corrective lenses, too, on the part of others.

Regardless, it was not that it particularly mattered in any manner beyond my own faint sense of guilt. The young face that I saw was now my own, in every which way that mattered. As such, it was unlikely anyone could come near enough to cast improper judgements based on my apparent age.

The olive-skinned youth’s - my own, I asserted to myself - face fell. The pensive expression set rather naturally, all things considered. Now that I was looking for it, I could spot bare hints of the life that was lived: a light scar here, a frown-line there, a certain lack of excess fat that spoke of hardier living than most city folk would be accustomed to. No, I knew better than to dismiss someone based on a dearth of information.

I was garbed in a sleeveless gray shirt, speckled with dirt and grime, which quickly drew the eye to the markings that adorned my right shoulder. Unlike before, I noted that two of the available spaces - conduits, I now knew they were called - were filled, while three still remained empty. However, even the completed conduits now lay quiescent, their charge momentarily depleted. The outer conduit would soon recharge, while the center had a long way to go yet. My pants were ragged, ripped and torn by bramble and thorn. Fortunately, my thick boots appeared to be made of sturdier stuff, having weathered the presumed journey with far greater aplomb.

Clasped around my neck was a black gem, held close by twisted links of bone. I quickly averted each of my eyes, as something about it filled me with a deep discomfort. Unfortunately, I was unable to remove it without shattering the bone links, as it seemed to lack any unlatching mechanism.

With nothing else for it, I decided to leave it alone for now, instead occupying my mind with other matters.

My Risen body - something about that term felt right - looked familiar, in the same manner in which someone I had not seen since they were a child might look familiar: faintly recognizable, yet altogether different. Still, there was enough to go by to make certain associations.

I was clad in dull-shaded scales, shifting from a forest green at my back into a dull brown underbelly. Running along my spine and down much of my equally long tail was a series of webbed spines. Each of my four powerful legs were adorned with three razor-sharp claws, and my mouth with a set of glistening fangs in its reptilian maw.

If it weren’t for the fact that its shoulders reached near my waist in height, I might have labeled it with greater certainty. I couldn’t help but note its extreme similarities to an Aryx, a catlike lizard that some kept as pets, yet there were some marked differences that held me back. Namely, an Aryx typically was about a quarter the size and significantly less...menacing.

Still, I supposed that it was as good a label as any, and I certainly wasn’t going to name it something ridiculous like a Mega Aryx. No, Aryx would have to do for now.

Between the minutes spent with my human half knocked senseless and the general passage of time, I was beginning to get a sense of control over my separate bodies. Though there was the obvious difference of my human half feeling far more familiar, those differences were less clear than one might think - at least when it came to reflexive movements and reactions. Despite that, I was gradually becoming accustomed to the disparities.

Something that began to become more and more apparent was a certain reduced sense of vitality within my Aryx half. It was as if my Aryx body was a cup filled to the brim with raw life, yet my human half was a veritable ocean, suffused with the weight of hundreds of thousands of lives. I could only hope that the discrepancy had a positive effect; though it was almost painful to hold fast to hope, I found myself doing so nonetheless. Though the Aryx’s body felt as if it were an extension of my own beyond that single detail, I felt an instinctive surety that - unlike my human body - it was free from the Reaper’s curse. I laughed in relief. Never again would I...

My breath caught, eyes widening at the reminder. Distracted by the discovery of an outlet for my power, I had forgotten those brief moments of beautiful, horrible vitality after I found myself alive again. Those brief seconds of wonderful, terrible power. I had killed again. I was a monster. A murderer. A villain. Always was. Always would be. Just like they said.

I could feel the panic setting in as my vision began to narrow, as the order to my thoughts began to dissipate.

“I’m sure they’re okay,” a woman’s voice whispered. “Maybe they got away?”

No.

No.

They weren’t.

They never were. Nobody ever got away.

For a moment, I allowed myself to wallow in self pity. I shattered my hand against stone. I rent my claws through soil. I screamed. I howled.

The moment passed.

A desperate, maniacal hope followed. I was sure that, were anyone close enough to see, they would be extremely discomfited by the sight - my eyes wide, teeth bared, face shifting in a cacophony of conflicting rapid-fire emotion.

A picture of instability.

I didn’t care.

I’ll put it back, I’ll fix things, I could do that now right? Just shove some life in the corpse, good as new, have a great day please don’t come back. Go back to your family go back to your friends never come back this never happened you never died I never killed you I can help you I can save you. I never killed you. I never killed you. I never killed you. I can help you. I can save you.

A voice in the back of my head told me it wouldn’t work.

I drowned it.

It burbled and bubbled, suffocating in a sea of chaotic thought.

I strangled it.

I could finally breathe again, so I did.

I could finally laugh again, so I did. It came out wrong, so I tried a second time. I decided that I’d work on it later.

I had somewhere to be.