”Now that I think about it, you were alive back when the whole business with Alabaster was going down, right? What were you up to in those days?” Anastacia asked after a fairly long pause in a slow conversation she had been having with Xamiliere while doing this and that around the rock.

The spriggan almost seemed like she had trouble recalling such a distant memory. “That was well before I started questioning things, so I took part in things just like everyone else. Getting rid of things that should have faded into obscurity when the primordial night ended, that sort of stuff. Later on, when our active participation wasn’t needed anymore, I just looked after the borders of the third of the world we had been given. I fought people as well, if that’s what you’re asking.” She said, not drawing much joy from the past.

“The world must have been a mess back then.” The necromancer sighed.

“Mess is the word for it alright. The early ages in the night would have been a nightmare for anyone living now. We were made for that world and did fine, but the first people did not do well and we sure weren’t about to help them.” Xamiliere said with no reverence in her voice. “Then the sun rose, the primordial night ended and everything flipped upside down. I don’t think anyone knows how long the night lasted since time was a bit questionable as a concept back then, but it probably still outlasted what has happened after it. Yet, in a single lifespan of your average mortal, people took over the world. You can tell a lot of the spirits here are still suffering whiplash from that change – probably out of their own stubbornness, but still.”

Being around the ancient beings had made Anastacia wonder about quite a few things. “Everyone keeps throwing around the name ‘primordial night’, but I don’t think I know much more about it other than it was just kind of shit.” She muttered, not really as a question but maybe hoping she would be taught about it to sate her curiosity.

Suddenly an image of a glowing green grin and numerous eyes staring down at her from the dark flashed in the necromancer’s eyes as she blinked, and a voice that still didn’t fail to give her chills laughed form behind her. “Shall I show it to you then?” Acacia suggested while casually wading along the shallow stream that flowed around the rock. Though their entry seemed coincidental, that likely wasn’t the case at all.

“What, you’re going to snuff out the sun for a bit?” Anastacia joked.

“Don’t tempt them.” Xamiliere gave a fair warning, as this was probably not the wisest being to make such dares towards.

“Maybe one day, we shall see – but not what I had in mind for today.” The cat snickered and hopped onto the rock. “As was said, we were made for that world, as was the grove itself. In here we are shielded from the harshest of the accursed rays of light the sun casts on the world and the old night lingers in the shade. The days and nights of current times you can barely tell apart when in here, in case you have yet to notice. You also err on the side of night fairly heavily as a being, so it would hardly take a fraction of my might to construct in your head what lingers in mine from the past ages. A quick enchanted prick for a few moments of memories, a fair deal, is it not?” They smirked as the ever-moving thorns on their body scraped across the stone.

While the offer was tempting, it also came from an extremely suspicious source. Acacia hadn’t actually done much to earn the lack of trust, but when the base reaction of a human body to their mere presence was terror, it was hard to take them at their word. Anastacia was perhaps naïve enough to ignore the massive red flags popping up in he back of her mind, but did still turn to her friend for a bit of advice.

“Yeah, that sounds like a thing they can probably do, but you already know what else I have to say about any of them.” Xamiliere shrugged.

“Oh, do not be unfair, Xamiliere. It’ll simply be a moment within our minds, nothing to worry about! Think of it as a chance for education. I doubt many in the current generations have witnessed where we came from, and she is very fitting to be the sole one!” Acacia exclaimed and slowly inched towards the necromancer. “Physically she will remain in place, obviously, so you may guard her with your life for the few seconds the effect lasts. What is the worst that could possibly happen?”

“So, it’s just going to be like a quick dream or something?” Anastacia asked, having made the decision already but at least pretending like she was being careful.

“Dream… not quite. I’m sure Ulmus would more than gladly bore you to death with a detailed explanation. For the sake of brevity, I will use a metaphor: just as you are able to sing a story to a field mouse, which will hear the words but not comprehend them, I am able to whisper you a moment in time, which you can experience in what limited fashion mortals experience things in general. Using the primordial magics that swirl within the grove is hardly an exact thing, so there will be an element of surprise in it, even for me!” The cat explained. While not at all hesitant, there was a hint of uncertainty in the way they spoke, as if the whole explanation was to avoid further questions they would not have the answers for. “All you need to do is poke one of my thorns with a finger of your choosing!”

The necromancer glanced at her friend once more to excuse her curiosity, and received back a disapproving but ultimately understanding frown that was the closest thing to a permission she was going to get out of the spriggan. Xamiliere had her doubts for what motivated Acacia to provide such a service. To her, the claim that it had anything to do with sharing knowledge of the past seemed like a poorly disguised lie, but it was hard to tell where the line between genuine suspicion and prejudice towards her own kind went. Her best guess was that the cat was simply bored and found some kind of twisted enjoyment in confusing the necromancer with useless ancient knowledge that didn’t have a place or application in the world anymore.

Anastacia lined her finger up with one of the sharp thorns on Acacia’s back and took a moment to gather her courage. She didn’t know whether she moved her finger first or if the thorn suddenly grew just long enough to jab into her fingertip, but a flash of fairly intense pain told her that one of those two things happened. While focusing on the pain, a faint murmur of several voices echoed from somewhere deep within her mind. Their words were unclear but decidedly not in a language the necromancer understood – if it was a language at all. The fading of the pain in her hand allowed her to listen to them more carefully, and notice that her surroundings had changed drastically. The grove had turned into a mess of objects and colors, none of which she could recognize. The shapes were familiar and made sense but if asked to describe any of them, she would have lacked the words to do so.

As the voices in her head kept speaking, however, the world aligned itself in front of her eyes. Trees once again resembled trees, grass appeared green, mountains in the horizon were given shape that differentiated them from the sky. Peering at the distant mountains, Anastacia realized that the sky remained as an indescribable mess of colors. There were no points of light, such as sun, moon or the stars, only a haze that in itself felt like it provided some meager light, enough to cast shadows onto the ground. Yet the shadows themselves didn’t seem to have anything to do with the objects they were caused by, instead living a life of their own. Anastacia lifted her arm to see what would happen to the amorphous blob of darkness stemming from her feet, only to see it shrink in size until she lowered the arm again.

“A shadow is an entity of its own, a fact easily missed in present times.” Acacia’s familiar voice spoke as it separated itself from the group in Anastacia’s head and began assuming a form behind her. “Here, they were granted freedom to do as they may.”

Inspecting her shadow, Anastacia noticed that the grass around her feet was awfully lush, to a point where even the patches in the grove seemed dry and shriveled in comparison. Growing almost halfway up her shin, each blade of it was soft and pleasant to walk around in. The cool dew collected on them felt refreshing and she had to consciously resist the urge to just fall into it to have a nap. Soon, she noticed that this seemed to apply to all plants around, or rather, everything. Trees were unusually tall and lush, with no sunlight to aspire towards, none of them had shed their bottom branches in an effort to conserve energy, causing the bit of forest she could see to look vastly different from the ones she knew. Far above the trees, she could see a few flying creatures heading into the horizon, one of them may have been a dragon based on what she could make out, but the other two didn’t look familiar in the slightest. Similarly, large forms of something traversed among the trees, bending the massive pines and birches out of the way like they were saplings. Though the larger creatures that were hardly ever seen anymore were the first things she noticed, there ware also a number of more mundane ones in great numbers nearby. Countless birds sang cheerily in the trees and swarmed the sky above, a group of deer-like animals each of which would have boggled the mind of any hunter with their size rested by the trees, smaller critters that no longer existed darted between shadows and life seemed to flourish everywhere she looked.

“Huh… This is not as all what I expected. How is something called ‘the primordial night’ not even all that dark?” Anastacia asked, her gaze still fixated on the scenery.

“It is quite dark, just not in the sense most will understand the word. The world today is lit by that accursed globe of divine radiance, making a clear distinction between light and lack thereof, between night and day as you know them. The old dark, however, is quite different to either of those. It can be as bright as the desert sun, or pitch-black entirely depending on how well one fits into this old world.” Acacia explained with clear and delighted reverence in their tone. “Meek and fragile, most people fit here no better than they fit a nightly forest, hence the why the common tongue calls it a night now, even if there is no day to end it.”

“I was kind of expecting all sorts of monsters and bloodthirsty fiends as well, but honestly it’s just kind of idyllic…” The necromancer said, realizing that she was completely at peace in this time she had always been told was full of nothing but nightmares.

“The monsters you seek are there, make no mistake, but there is simply much, much more to the primordial night than that though. The beasts that tormented early people are all quite real, but are dwarfed by the absolute beauty the mortals were never able to witness in their rush to survive. This is as the world was meant to be, an eternity created in balance. It was both caring and ruthless, a truth both beautiful and ugly at the same time – instead what remains is a shriveled husk, full of meek beings drained by their supposed benefactors. If I had no hope for a recovery, I would consider joining those who wish to see it laid to waste simply for the insult it is towards the past.” Acacia continued reminiscing as a breeze carried a faint song from somewhere far in the distance, as well as the scent of smoldering ashes.

“Well, I’ll admit that it’s neat, but why did you-“ Anastacia was about to ask for the real reason for why the cat had insisted on sharing the memory, hoping that they would admit it a bit more freely out of Xamiliere’s presence, but when she turned around to face the spriggan, she didn’t see what she had expected, not even the massive mess of thorns from her nightmares – but something entirely different.

Standing, or rather gently floating behind the necromancer was a being almost four meters tall, roughly in the shape of a person but with greatly elongated arms which ended in heavy-looking hands with sharp claws that almost scraped the ground. The entire being appeared as if it had been made from some fragile, calcified material that had replaced its body over time, both of its legs had shattered below the knee, and the exposed parts of what seemed have once been some kind of a hard, insect-like exoskeleton instead of skin, were severely cracked all over its body. On its hips and left shoulder, the being wore tattered remnants of a ridiculously embellished and decorated metal armor that barely hanged on. The being’s chest was nothing but an exposed rib cage that housed several glowing spheres of energy, largest one of them being a familiar shade of green and the other four visibly trying to escape from its grasp but failing to do so. Attached to its back were a pair of stumps that had once been a pair of leathery wings, but were now useless and broken. The being’s head was mostly featureless, outside of a large missing chunk around its temple and two gaping holes for eyes. While all of this appeared like it could fall apart at any moment from a slightest disturbance, wrapped around the entire body were thorny vines that desperately held together the slowly decaying form, slithering out of the empty eye sockets and spots where the brittle white material had already failed – or at least that’s what it seemed like at first. Even at a cursory inspection, one could tell that the vines worked to keep open cracks and prevent the regrowth of missing parts, never fully breaking the body, but doing as much as they otherwise could to make sure it remained decrepit.

The sight caused Anastacia to take a step back and fall over as she instinctively scrambled away from the being. “What the fuck!?” She cursed and started to look around for Acacia.

“Is there something wrong?” The being somehow spoke without a mouth, but with the voice of the spriggan Anastacia knew. As it reached out towards the necromancer with its arm, it paused to stare at the hand it clearly didn’t recognize as its own. Moving its fingers as if to make sure it was indeed their arm, the being slowly brought it closer to inspect their body. “What… NECROMANCER! WHAT DO YOU SEE?!” They screamed.

Understanding that the being was Acacia, Anastacia started to slowly get over her initial shock. “Acacia? I… I think I see what you see.” She uttered from the ground.

“Noooo… oh nononononooo, this isn’t right! This is not what it was like!” Acacia kept screaming and tried to tear the vines off, but couldn’t, nor did they appear to obey their command like they usually did. The thick layer of jest vanished from their voice, as an uncharacteristic panic started to take root in the spriggan. They clawed and tore at the vines for over a minute while cursing in a dozen forgotten languages, but gained no purchase on them, nor managed to further damage the calcified husk they were now inhabiting against their will. The ancient words of despair echoed across the primordial plain and scared off most of the life teeming around them, even gathering attention from some of the massive creatures in the distance.

One such being, a giant or one of their predecessors as far as Anastacia could tell, lifted its head above the treetops and began heading towards the necromancer and spriggan. Unlike the giants Anastacia knew of, who mostly inhabited the less habitable reaches of the world in small tribes and were barely above making basic tools as a culture, this one was wearing a shiny armor with very intricate design for its size. Several neat braids of orange hair hanged out of the bottom of the helmet matching the rest of the armor and the pieces of golden jewelry attached to them clanged loudly against the metal as it rushed through the trees. Once it made it to the edge of the plain, where the trees grew sparser and it had more space, the giant grabbed an appropriately sized ornate mace hanging from its belt and stopped to look at the calcified being struggling with itself some hundred or so meters away.

“Kall thiur zeul!” It roared in a deep voice that shook the ground and pointed at Acacia as if it was accusing them of something.

The words caused the spriggan to freeze completely. “Zeul…” They muttered and slowly lifted their gaze to meet the giant’s stare across the field of grass. “Na zeul, verphyta!” They responded, seemingly understanding the giant’s language.

The giant let out a bellowing malicious laughter, which Anastacia took as a sign to get up and scram into the opposite direction to follow the situation from afar. “Verphyta zeul?! Do ocur allt!” It exclaimed, appearing extremely humored by what was being said, but its laughter ended abruptly as it bashed a nearby tree with its mace and began rushing towards Acacia with clear intent to swing at the spriggan next. There wasn’t much Acacia could do besides lift up an arm to shield themselves, as the giant closed the distance in a matter of couple of seconds and was already bringing down the cow-sized weight of stone attached to the business end of its mace.

A deafening crack echoed across the memory as the stone split apart in the metal fittings that held it in place when it came in contact with Acacia’s hand. The immense force of the impact let out a noticeable blast wave that rustled the trees around them in the silence that ensued after both the giant and Acacia realized that the strike had failed to so much as budge the spriggan, much less achieve any kind of damage.

The giant’s screams of terror forced Anastacia to cover her ears as it noticed the vines climbing from Acacia’s hand across the weapon, and felt the thorns tear into its skin. Unable to release its grasp anymore, it couldn’t do anything as the stone that was in contact with the spriggan began losing color and match the powdery white of Acacia’s strange new body. Both the thorns and calcification quickly spread across the giant’s body, eventually taking root in the ground and turning the whole being into a rather harrowing marble-like statue of a horrified giant.

Though they had been victorious, Acacia was far from being delighted by the turn of events. They kept staring at their hands in a way that made their disgust clear even through their featureless face.

“Is… Is everything alright?” Anastacia eventually dared to ask but stepped no closer.

“Nothing is…” Acacia uttered. “This is supposed to be akin to a memory, an experience already experienced. I was to be as I was once, not like… this – and as a memory, none of it should even acknowledge us. Yet…” They explained and pointed at the defeated giant.

“So what’s happening then?” The necromancer asked.

“I do not know… I think it might be for the better if I cut this experience short, and better for you to not speak of what you saw here to anyone.” The spriggan sighed fell quiet, presumably to unravel whatever magics they had used to usher forth the memory.

“Sure.” Anastacia agreed, and would have done so even without the hint of threat in the request. She sat down on the soft grass to enjoy it for a moment more and stared up at the strange starless void above. She hadn’t seen much of the primordial night during the brief stay, but could tell that there was a good reason why so many ancient beings were unsatisfied with the current state of the world, which seemed just flat out lesser compared to how things had once been. Necromancy seemed to not be of much use in the memory either, but she didn’t know if that was because of the spell or if that was how things were back then, but she was pleased to see it had taken her a fair bit to even realize it. Expecting the vision to fade soon, she took one more look at her surroundings. Besides the trees and the creatures near and afar, she could see a large lake far into the distance, as well as what seemed like spires with a familiar light blue glow to them towering over the water. Beyond them were even more mountains, one of which definitely seemed like a chunk of it had been blasted off in some grand battle between forces incomprehensible for someone from the present times. In another direction, the glow of flames illuminated the sky and the thick columns of smoke rising from them. The hint of cinders could still be picked up in the air, and both laughter and songs echoed from the direction of the fires. The necromancer absentmindedly marveled at the view and lost the track of time almost immediately, only coming back to her senses over fifteen minutes later, still very much within the memory. “Hey, I’m kind of noticing we’re still here.” She commented.

Visibly in agony, Acacia stared at the sky and trembled in either fear or anger. “It’s not dispelling.” They grunted.

“What?” Anastacia nervously asked.

Acacia sighed and floated down to be a bit closer to the ground. “I can not break us away from the memory. I’ve ended the spell but it’s not releasing us from its grasp… which should not be possible.” They admitted defeat.

“That doesn’t sound ideal. Any idea what’s causing it?” The necromancer got up from the ground and finally dared to get closer to Acacia.

The spriggan shook their head. “None what so ever, but the chances are that it would be the same thing that caused me to have this accursed form and twisted this from a memory into something else. Granted, I don’t use this method often, but I’m still confident it’s not a mistake on my part…”

An uncomfortable realization came to Anastacia. “Ah… So, I have this thing where spells and enchantments that are supposed to meddle with my mind tend to – let’s say backfire a bit. It’s like an allergy of sorts, makes things a bit unpredictable, but all the mages back home say that it’s just how some people are, since no mind is the same as another. Could that maybe cause any of this?”

Acacia stared blankly at the necromancer. “Yes! I could hazard a guess that you reacting adversely to messing with your mind probably had a lot to do with things not going like they should have when I messed with your mind! These things are better said before, not after the fact!” They exclaimed frustratedly.

“Well, sorry for not being up to date with spells literally no mortal has ever known! How should I have known your special brand of magic is affected as well?!” Anastacia refused to take the blame so easily.

The spriggan groaned at the argument they weren’t going to win and collapsed onto the ground in a fairly childish protest. Still bothered by their form, they kept staring down at the chalky white body almost like they recognized and despised it.

Anastacia gave up as well and sat down next to them. “So, how do we get out of here?” She sighed.

“Well, I’ve stopped the spell, which means you’ve managed to hijack it somehow. Would explain why we’re not experiencing my memory but creating a new one based on what I ushered forth. It should end whenever your body is too tired to sustain it. You being a feeble mortal in the end, it shouldn’t be that long.” Acacia theorized.

“Bad news on that front. I’ve just had a nap and eaten a ton of fruits, so I’m good to go for the day.” Anastacia said and gave a sarcastic thumbs up to the exhausted spriggan, who didn’t respond but seemed to find some humor in their plight.

For a while, they passed time by simply looking around and enjoying the scenery, or at least Anastacia did. Acacia was still far too bothered by their form and kept trying to helplessly pick at the vines both holding it together and thwarting its regrowth.

“By the way, what’s ‘Zeul’?” Anastacia suddenly asked, mispronouncing the word slightly. She hadn’t understood the brief conversation between the giant and Acacia, but the word seemed to be an important part of it.

The spriggan stopped what they were doing for a moment. “Remember, you’ve promised to not say a word of what you’ve seen here to anyone.” They warned the necromancer again. “It’s ancient titanian for ‘ascended’, a word they used for the first gods.”

“So, did they ask if you were a god?” Anastacia put together what she could.

“Accused me of being one.” Acacia uttered and resumed trying to rip the vines off their arm.