The memory of the primordial night was coming up to a full hour in duration even if the intention for it was to be nothing more than a brief glimpse. Despite this, Anastacia had no issues busying herself simply by watching the abundance of life around them, which dwarfed any other place she had seen in both variety and scale. Wondrous creatures soared far above them in the sky, waded through the nearby forests and roared in the distance – and even the smaller beasts that scurried along the ground and hid in the trees made their distant offspring seem unimpressive in a whole new way. The more she took in the ancient world around her, the more Anastacia began to feel she was from a time where it all had been diluted to a barely recognizable state.

While the necromancer gasped over every bird and bug she found, Acacia remained less than thrilled for the unplanned turn of events. They had given up on trying to unbind the vines and now simply laid still on the ground, waiting for their misery to end.

Though she had much left to look at, the lack of enthusiasm from the spirggan’s side did dampen Anastacia’s mood as well. “Do you want to talk about it?” She suggested and sat down on the ground to rest for a while.

“What wisdom do you reckon you’ve gathered, that I haven’t lived ten times over at this point? This is nothing more than a mistaken interpretation of my being by your mind, there are no other explanations I am willing to accept.” Acacia hissed with more than a hint of doubt in their voice.

“Are you sure? I feel like you know exactly what’s going on and just don’t like it. That’s a lot of vitriol to have towards a random misinterpretation if you ask me…” Anastacia said, hoping Acacia would take the bait and open up.

Staring up at the sky with their empty eyes, the spriggan said nothing for a while. “My words are final, mortal.” They finally grunted, choosing secrecy.

The necromancer sighed. “Well, if you decide otherwise, this would be a very opportune moment to talk about anything that bothers you. We’re well out of earshot of the grove and anything you say here will stay behind when we leave, trust me.”

As there was no response, Anastacia returned to enjoying the sights. For a while now, the scent of embers had steadily grown stronger along with the singing becoming less and less distant. It hadn’t gotten to a point where she had really paid much attention to it, but all of a sudden, the stinging scent felt almost like it was directed towards the pair. Sure enough, glancing in the direction of the smoke pillars, the glow of fire had noticeably begun to spread towards them and sounds of revelry had also begun to echo along with the song.

“Should we be worried?” Anastacia asked and pointed at the flickering orange glow.

“This is a memory; you have no reason to be worried. Nothing here has any more consequence than recalling any other memory. Granted, as you have a memory of death, it might not be pleasant should that happen.” Acacia said without even pretending to look at the potential problem. “Those are just The Children of Mer, nothing I can’t deal with if need be.”

Anastacia scratched her head while tying to find a specific bit of trivia from it. “Mer? Where have I heard that before…”

“Mer was – is, I guess, he’s hardly dead – a being older than the primordial night itself, a thing from before our world – and that is all I truly know about him. As far as I remember, he was struck down during the first few days and now slumbers somewhere deep in the ground.” The spriggan explained tiredly. “I’m surprised you’ve heard of such a thing.”

“Merfall! That’s what it was!” Anastacia remembered a city from her somewhat recent travels. “There’s a city called Merfall that’s build around this massive hole in the ground. Do you think what they say about it is actually true then?”

“It would be a very people type of a thing to find a fallen beast from the void of nothingness before time and then just put a city there.” The spriggan pointed out and chuckled dryly.

Anastacia couldn’t help but to agree, people did have a tendency to do things like that. “And you’re saying that he had kids? I hope this is a solved problem since I haven’t seen many of them running around.”

“Dear old King Alabaster sorted them out not much after Mer himself fell. Just another one of those things that needed to go for people to prosper, although not one I miss this time – nothing but foul bastards and beasts the lot of them.” Acacia said and dismissively waved their arm in the arm, as if to bid the creatures their farewells. “You can ask Ulmus about the details of how they came to be, but as I recall it, there was a queen of fire nymphs of some kind, who had great aspirations and actually managed to charm the void creature to a degree – her name escapes me but it was probably something to do with fire. In the end, she stole a chunk of Mer’s essence and created their children, but not without being corrupted by him in the process and becoming a rather vile thing herself. Hard to say who got the last laugh there, as this no doubt made felling Mer much more feasible, but the queen was turned from a fairly respected being, not that unlike ourselves, into a fiend that sustained herself with the misery of others – a trait their children inherited and then went on to be a big part reason why you mortals dread the old night so.”

The lesson in ancient history would have been much more fascinating to Anastacia, if it wasn’t for the part where these Children of Mer were clearly heading their way. Even if Acacia was more than a match for them, she herself appeared more or less defenseless in the memory, and not too keen on testing the supposed lack of consequences getting hurt had.

Slowly but inevitably, the flames spread along the undergrowth like an oddly contained wildfire that arbitrarily chose trees to engulf while leaving most of them untouched. Eventually the first few beings of fire and metal emerged from the shade of the trees. The smell of smoke, ashes and iron was overwhelming even a couple of hundred meters away and only kept on getting stronger as more of the fiery beings appeared from the burning forest. It was hard to make out any details against the orange glow behind them, but there seemed to be no consistent form between any of Mer’s children. The number of legs, arms, tails, wings and even heads was almost unique to each member of the group as far as Anastacia could see, and among the few dozen that showed up, no two looked strictly alike. The fire seemed to follow in their wake like a pet or a companion, rather than any of them actively setting their surroundings on fire, though there were no shortages of burning weaponry and heated metal to set a forest aflame should they want to. The group had obviously noticed the necromancer sitting on a small hill in the distance, but not all of them appeared be interested, as the main bulk of the force departed into the direction of the lake after what seemed like a brief argument, only leaving behind two that insisted on seeing what the lone human was about.

“They’re coming over, what do we do?” Anastacia worried as the pair began heading their way.

“They are a far cry from their father, you shouldn’t worry, my presence will keep them in bay.” Acacia said reassuringly and rose up from the grass.

The appearance of Acacia only seemed to increase the already worrying amount of pep in the beings had in their step rather than discourage them, and they cheerily pranced their way up the hill, humming and laughing in the process. The smaller of the two, only barely taller than most humans hopped onwards with her cloven hooves of iron. Several long and curved metal horns jutted out of her skull in no particular pattern and the jumbled mess they created reached over a meter in every direction aside from the front. The only pieces of clothing she wore to cover her ash-grey skin were scraps of mail that seemed to be sewn directly into it in places, and a gruesome lopsided skirt which was sewn together from bits and pieces of skin and fur, some of it definitely from people and worryingly fresh. The lower part of her face was covered by another scrap of mail, which dangled from a few metal pieces that seemed to have been burned all the way into her skull. A fairly large amount of blood had recently dripped from below the piece of mail onto her chest, which made her somewhat hard to look at for Anastacia, but acting against the urge to look away were her bright orange eyes. Which had been impossible to not stare into all the way from the edge of the forest.

The other fiend was considerably taller, closer to three meters in height, and almost malnourished in appearance. A pair of fiery wings gently flapped behind him and were undoubtedly his most defining feature, occasionally flaring bright when he used them to make a small leap and dripping a steady stream of molten metal in his wake. For clothing he had a fairly complete set of plate armor made out of scorched iron covering his legs, and a helmet made out of the same material, which had no other opening besides one for his mouth. His chest was only covered by an extra pair of arms, which crossed over in the middle and held onto the shoulder on the opposite side with metal nails that dug deep into his similarly ashen skin.

While grotesque to say the least, both of them appeared somehow oddly familiar to the necromancer. Something about them made it feel like this wasn’t the first time she had come across these Children of Mer, but their hasty approach kept her curiosity in check for the time being, instead making her slowly creep closer to Acacia as the fiends failed to stop at a reasonable distance.

Suddenly Acacia raised their arm and the pair stopped in their tracks only a few meters away from Anastacia. “Foul pests, bastards of void, leave or be freed of your heads.” The spriggan stated tiredly.

The two fiends stared at the pearlescent being towering over them, confused by what they had heard.

“It speaks in mortal words!” The winged one amazedly whispered to the other.

“Wear their skins as disguise, voice their words as distraction. All the same, none different. Breaks their bones for marrow in the end, slithers into their souls to feed. All the same, none different.” The smaller of the two answered in a beautiful voice, which released a stinging stench of fresh blood into the air.

Anastacia immediately covered her nose and turned to the spriggan. “Hey… uh…Why can I understand them?”

“You heard what she said, they learned mortal languages to distract and taunt you – and accuse me of the same.” Acacia said, not bothering to be discreet. “Now, begone beasts, you have no business with us.”

“Well, that’s not entirely true.” The winged one said, sounding very polite and refined for someone with his appearance and company. “Dearest sister and I were simply wondering if we could have the human? Surely someone like you has no need for one. In fact, there is a small village of mortals back there, no doubt they would be very receptive of some divine guidance right about now. Their condition may vary, but their minds are perfectly ripe for your type.”

“A tale of six dozen, caught unaware. Dozen stitched together, feet to feet, hand in hand, face to face. Dozen blessed with kisses of metal, burns within burns within burns within burns. Dozen embraced together by chain and wire, warm and cozy as one. Dozen fed well, entrée of nails and dessert of glass. Dozen now inside dozen, forever together.” The shorter one happily sang of what had happened where they came from. “Of these, dozen left living… as a treat.”

“You mistake me for something I am not.” Acacia sighed. “But the answer is no.”

Anastacia had expected the situation to turn into a fight pretty much immediately, but the fiends still showed no signs of aggression and were merely perplexed by why their offer didn’t entice Acacia. Slightly emboldened by the apparent peacefulness of what were still very clearly horrible creatures, she decided to speak up. “So your plan was to come over and ask nicely? And then what, just kill me?”

“If I say no, will you come along?” The winged fiend said, sounding a bit hopeful. “If so, no we’re not going to kill you, I promise.”

“That seems like a lie.” The necromancer very correctly assumed.

The female fiend offered her hand in turn. “I will teach you of song and dance, of arts lyrical and visual. I will teach you the heights of joy and depths of misery. I will take you an adventure to show you sights no mortal has seen. I will teach you languages from across the world. We will cross seas, fly among the clouds, dwell into the deepest parts of the world. All this I promise for you, all this and much, much more… Our bond will strengthen beyond trust, beyond companionship, I will become the one for you to believe in. So truly, is it so much to ask, that I get to eat most of your skin?”

“Well if it’s just the skin…” Anastacia pretended to consider the offer. “No! Obviously, no!”

“Worthy attempt nonetheless – none of it true in any case. Not a moment would I have spared to nibble on your face.” The fiend sang and shrugged.

Suddenly the winged fiend came to a realization and placed his hand on the other one’s shoulder. “Sister dearest, perhaps we should have introduced ourselves before attempting to gain the trust of the mortal!” He suggested and bowed deeply. “I am The Late Herald, one hundred and sixty-seventh son of Mer.”

The shorter fiend lifted slightly up from the ground and graciously spun around in the air once. “The one and only, Melody of Malice. The first of his daughters – after seventy-two others.” She said cheerily and landed without a sound.

“Why are you entertaining these stains on existence?” Acacia asked without trying to hide their words from the fiends, most likely actually wanting them to hear in fact. “They are not worth your time.”

“I don’t know, there’s something very familiar about them but it can’t quite place it. I was hoping to figure out what it was.” The necromancer pondered. Some hard to define aspect of the pair resonated within her, and strangely enough, she was almost certain it was in a positive sense. Nowhere near enough to outweigh the disgust towards them, which was just as instinctive as the terror Acacia caused in her – but still definitely there to taunt her, was her morbid curiosity. As she was stuck in the memory for the time being anyway, she might as well investigate why this was the case. “Say, you two, I’m not too familiar with The Children of Mer-“

“You… you’re not familiar with us? Have you lived under a rock so far? At the risk of tooting my own horn, I can confidently say that everyone knows us, and I do mean everyone.” Herald puzzled, attempting to take a step closer but being put to his place by Acacia lifting their arm.

Melody opened her glowing orange eyes fully and shot a piercing stare at Anastacia. “But don’t you see, brother of mine, strangeness is afoot here, bordering on mystical fuckery. The soul is luminous with recondite hegemony unfulfilled, frail mortal shell cracks, snaps and creaks below the weight of dominance. A beacon most magnificent. Screaming, screaming, screaming to be seen. Not ushered from the glorious void, no repugnant stench of the ones above: a retaliation manifest of this realm? Yet, bones unshattered, skin free of flaying, no seared meat, laughably free of pain eternal. No failure of ours, no victory of gods, yet promise remains unfulfilled – of unending torment.” She sang, sounding almost frustrated somehow.

“A fair point well made, sister. That leaves us with a theory: she is not from this world – but where is she from then? And perhaps more importantly, how do we get there?” Herald wondered and grinned maliciously.

“A failure of a hypothesis. None so convenient, none so simple. Even chronal designs fail and wither to produce our moment. Events contained, broken reconstruction, dislocated memory, stolen thoughts. Little by little by little by little it dies. Walls grow closer, our fates imaginary, crushed as the moment ends.” Melody corrected her brother.

Acacia let out a callous chuckle. “Correct! Your disgusting existence is both false and about to be over. I can’t even promise you two were real in the first place, for your kind was far too insignificant for me to remember any particular one of you bastards.” They revealed.

“Am I to understand our kind once was but no longer is?” Herald asked, completely unbothered by the revelation, maybe even slightly amused.

“Hunted down like the vile beasts you are.” Acacia chortled. “By mortals of all things as well. Now run along and despair, along with the others of your ilk.”

The fiends glanced at each other, exchanging smirks before bursting out in laughter despite the dire news for their kind. This visibly annoyed the spriggan, causing them to hastily make their way over and forcibly grab Herald by the throat. The fiend struggled against them for a bit, flapping his wings and kicking, but soon enough realized there was no escape. Acacia’s sharp claws dug into his ashen skin and thorny vines quickly spread from the cracks in their body to further tear into their victim. The extreme heat emanated by the fiend fought back just like he had, but failed to burn the vines in the end.

“I fail to see what amuses you so, void filth.” Acacia hissed and tightened their grasp slowly.

As her brother was being strangled and could not answer, Melody did in his stead. “What consequences does our end bear? For we have already won.” She laughed mockingly. “Mortals are broken, souls forever stained by our gifts. Our lives spent to inspire feelings, and so we have. The eyes of even this one burn with primal fear, hate and disgust most delicious, from the people we have tormented and taught fear to, indistinguishable. So deep is our infection in the deathbound ones, that fear is in their nature now. What greater victory is there than to corrupt the lives seeded by the divine? To bend and defile their precious souls beyond remedy? Our grand designs live forever on in flaws of nature now, and to you, god, I pose a question, a dare: name an immortality more meaningful than our stain upon creation. Produce an existence more lasting, for there is none. We have already won.”

In a flash, the calcification took seed in the fiend in Acacia’s grasp and turned his mocking grin into an everlasting one as the thorns shattered the brittle white material that was left behind. Turning their attention to the remaining fiend, Acacia simply swung their heavy arm. Another loud crack echoed across the area, matching the one from the earlier and for similar reasons, as the spriggan’s arm had just barely come to a halt against the fiend’s much smaller ones.

Bracing against the impact with her now broken arms, Melody let out a final giggle that felt like it had much more weight to it than before. “And for ruining the divine creation, we have inspired wrath in the gods themselves. Seethe and despair, o’ deity from some unknown future. Seethe and witness our eternal triumph in your failed world!” She sang her final mockery as Acacia’s other arm landed its blow, calcified her in a blink of an eye and scattered the pieces across the side of the hill.

For a while, Acacia simply floated in place and stared at their hands. It was impossible to tell what exactly they were feeling or thinking as the featureless face revealed very little, but their unbothered image was quickly crumbling away by the second. Anastacia didn’t dare to speak up, fearing she would have interrupted something important the spriggan was trying to grasp within their ancient mind. Instead, she turned her attention to the crumbling remains of Herald, which seemed to be rapidly turning into dust after the vines released their thorny grasp off them. As was so often the case in her life, trying to figure out something only led into more questions. She was no wiser about the reason why these fiends felt so familiar, but now she also wanted to know why Acacia seemed to despise them despite their common distaste for gods, or who these fiends even really were. Without a doubt they were as close to evil as anything she had ever seen, but they seemed far from the nightmarish beasts she had imagined based on what she had heard. Correctly understanding their situation so quickly painted them as intelligent if anything.

“I apologize.” Acacia suddenly spoke up and collapsed onto the grass. “I should know better than to let their words get to me so, but…”

“What ‘victory’ was she talking about?” Anastacia asked and picked up a piece of the white material, which immediately disintegrated in her hand.

“As much as we wish to simplify The Children of Mer to be nothing but errant evil in flesh, they are more than that. They are creatures of pure emotion and oppose us, beings of purpose, with their entirely recreational existence.” The spriggan explained and grasped the blades of grass with their claws. “Most of the forms of art still practiced by mortals to this day were taught to them by The Children as a way to inspire emotions in them, but such cheerful cohabitation quickly ended as they found fear and hate to last much longer and burn much brighter than joy or thankfulness. So instead of teaching mortals about song and dance, they introduced the first few generations to fear and misery. So, just as the gods who had given their creations what aspects they themselves found most important for one’s character, most of the negative emotions were brought on by these beasts of void. The permanence – or often dominance, of such feelings in all mortals is their victory. Not many beings can claim as much success as they can, even in death…”

“And are you sure all of them are gone?” The necromancer wondered.

“Absolutely sure? No. The world is vast and has plenty of burrows and holes full of forgotten old things. Mer still exists, and who knows, perhaps their mother is still out there, plotting the creation of more – I can’t say I remember hearing of her defeat either.” Acacia sighed.

While this hardly answered all the questions Anastacia had, she could tell Acacia was no longer in a mood to explain things to some mortal twerp. What was supposed to be a brief glimpse into the past had turned into a rather taxing experience to the spriggan, and adding to that wasn’t Anastacia’s wish.

“Necromancer…” The spriggan spoke up again, now staring at the starless sky above. “Is the offer for your ear still available?”

Anastacia immediately perked up and basically dived into the grass besides Acacia. “Of course! What’s up?” She asked, almost unfittingly excitedly, though only because she was eager to help.

“The last we spoke; I gave my thoughts on the troubles of your friend – them passing the line towards the divine…” The spriggan muttered, still whispering even when there was no one else to hear them. “I’m afraid I myself hurled over that line long ago – and kept going.”

The necromancer placed her hand on Acacia’s arm as a sign of understanding and compassion. “So… are you a… god? Like they said, I mean.” She quietly asked, not sure how to word her question.

“There are no simple answers beyond foolish assumptions in this world, little one, but ‘no’ might be closer to the truth. Each of the divine stumps in their higher planes are manifestations of their aspects, I am no manifestation of anything in my form outside of this false memory. Yet, my spirit is beyond corrupted by the divine prey I’ve hunted, so to call me a nature spirit is equally wrong. In the end, what I am is a cancerous false spirit, masquerading as what I once was.” Acacia said, struggling to word their explanation in a way it would make any sense to a mortal. “That is, for now. Each day I spend much of my might suppressing the filth of divinity that has consumed all but my hard shell, rotted me from within, but this is a battle I will one day lose. I doubt the time the grove will no longer call me its own is far either.”

Anastacia nodded understandingly. “And no one knows? Not even Ulmus? Maybe they could help if you-“

“No.” The spriggan interrupted her. “The divine essence I have consumed on my mission to hunt for more is no longer a part of me, it is what I am. To solve the issue would be my end as well. There is nothing to do beyond waiting for the tipping point. I had simply hoped for there to be more than enough time, but what you see proves such hopes as stuff of fools.”

The woes of a being like Acacia weren’t exactly something Anastacia had much hope aiding in, she hardly knew of a miracle solution the spriggan hadn’t already considered a thousand times before she had even been born. But she hadn’t been asked for solutions anyway, she had simply been asked to make good on her own offer to listen, which she did without further interruptions.

Acacia took a moment to collect their thoughts and chuckled dryly, as if mocking themselves. “In all honesty, I understand this is a consequence of my own greed and fully accept it, but there remains one thing I can not accept yet. Our path of seclusion from the mortals will bring nothing but strife, but most of the others have not seen the transient beauty and glory only mortals can possess. They hold on to the old grudges and killed what curiosity they once had with their stubbornness. I had hoped to use the weight of my words to change our course before they would no longer be heard, but that has proven more difficult than expected… Sometimes I wonder if fading into legend is what we’re good for these days… We boast our eternal existence, but all leaves will fall sooner or later, and staying stranded alone in our home will do nothing but shake the tree. It is why I found so much promise your and Xamiliere’s companionship, I knew it would undoubtedly spark curiosity within some ancient spirits who have yet to grow bitter below their bark.

“And that is the piece of my mind I wished to share, the barely hidden truth of my false existence, and the denied fact that we are not excluded from the withering of this world despite our stubbornness.”

Anastacia waited for a while to make sure the spriggan was finished. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think it’s too late for the spriggans to turn around, and I do hope I’ve at least managed to make a few of you question the current state of things. If anything, I have more faith in you guys being able to make peace with mortals than Mournvalley being able to do so.”

“Kind of you to say so, and there is still some time for me, quite a bit in your scale, I think. So I am still not without any hope.” Acacia said while staring at the burning village in the distance, mostly because almost all life had slowly begun to fade as the spell was finally beginning to sputter and die, so there wasn’t much else left to look at.

The necromancer leaned against the spriggan’s calcified body to watch the flames with them. “So, what exactly will happen once you no longer count as a nature spirit?” She asked, hoping it wasn’t too insensitive.

“Hunt.” Acacia laughed. “The Great King Alabaster’s record has stood for far too long for my liking.”