The Shining Wyrm

Leo Haeborne looked down to the wyrm spawn that so resembled the child he’d been quite utterly fooled by before, that he had taught, and it was disquieting. She was as tall as she had been when they met, as he’d grown used to her being, she looked almost entirely the same.

But she was not.

Even three years after she hatched, it was so strange. She had long since grown to look just like Gem had.

It was her memory that stood out though, she did not recall the same lessons as she once had, or rather she did not always know them until he reminded her and then she hurried off to her ‘mother’ to remind her. It was uncanny to see, she’d go from a confused, even frustrated child, finding herself unable to do what she expected and then not even an hour later she could recite, speak, argue on the topic as eloquently as he’d come to expect from her ‘predecessor’.

It was disturbing, especially given the matter that the Countess had set him too, the search for the resting place of departed souls.

He was beginning to fear that he would not find them, despite all of the Countess’ wish to locate and assure herself of the safety of her Father and former Captain’s souls? Leo was concluding that it was not the work of a single lifetime to accomplish such a feat.

Perhaps not the work of a hundred life times.

Maybe it was impossible entirely, maybe there were no souls at all to find?

Only memories, like his Lady’s long departed friend, stories written into the cow’s skin. Or like the similar inscription that had begun on the bull’s hide. Like how this ‘Gem the Second’ could be so much like her older sister one day and then suddenly left in a terrified lurch when he reminded her of what she did not yet know.

Was that all a life after death would be? A child filled up with the missing memories of the dead, like a page being corrected for a mistake. But seeing that done to the Wyrm spawn? To the Countess’ own daughter?

“Do you recall what Galen said on the matter of his treatment of the great plague?”

He watched for it, the familiar consideration followed by a widening eye of panic, the tension in his new student's shoulders and neck, the way she began to recoil backwards ever so slightly as a pink flush welled up under her scales.

“I-I j-just a mo-”

Leo placed a hand on her shoulder, holding her gently, not truly enough to stop her, she was both stronger then she looked and terrifyingly skilled in slipping from grapples in the sparring ring, but Leo’s hand was enough to keep her still anyway.

“It’s alright Gem, I don’t mind going over it again for you, it can be good to refresh one’s recollection of such things, It would be good for me as well. So please let us go over it again?”

The furrowed brow of befuddlement followed by the distinct consideration that he had come to see was unique to this new Gem, he could not say he truly could guess the nature of the Wyrm spawn and how they functioned, but there was to him at least a changed nature.

Whether that was because as she and the Countess attested they were changed by the experience of death and dying, or because this was a new life being buried by memories?

Leo could not say.

“Why don’t you tell me what you can remember little one, and then we can work our way over the gaps hmmm?”

He watched the suspicion rise up in that scaled face, the roll of the eyes as whatever paradox of youth and aged wisdom behind them decided on what he was doing, more and more often their conclusions were right.

“Fine, but for your own memory more than mine Priest Haeborne, and I will confer with my ‘mother’ after.”

It was so strange the way that all the spawn said ‘mother’ when they meant the lady Jewel was always awkward, in contrast when they referred to the Widow Rochford, their grandmother there was an intensity and feeling to it, but every time they referred to the lady that actually birthed them? Hatched them? Whenever it was about the Countess herself there was a mocking tone, a sufferance of expectation.

It was clearer in the youthful Gem, but he’d heard it in the sparse times that the warrior spawn spoke as well.

They did not see the Countess as their mother, not really.

She spoke, voice firm, so alike to how it had been but far more musical and flowing then Gem had ever managed even at her best.

“In the time of the... during... during a very bad plague in the old cantor times Galen was a... h-healer? A man who could speak to gods and tend wounds, and he did something, something foolish, asked for something he should not have?”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Leo nodded, keeping his face calm, smiling a bit with encouragement to help the girl with her frustration, trying to foster her to try and work at whatever memories she had now before she ran to her mother and washed away her ignorance. Painted over her own words.

“Ah yes, that’s right, Galen called upon the gods, he asked that the dead and the ill rise again with full health, and the gods answered him, they gave him precisely what he asked for, but the illness remained, the dead walked but they still rotted, they were not fully alive, and they-”

He stopped, she was trembling, shaking, her throat flexing there was a feint keening coming from her throat. He gripped her shoulder tight and shouted.

“Gem!”

She shuddered, shook her head, blinked tears away from her eyes, then turned an even more intense pink, pulling her head back a bit too far for a human to ever manage.

“I-I’m sorry Priest Leo, I-”

He interrupted her, his voice soft, gentle, soothing as he’d practiced to talk to the grieving.

“No, I apologize, I’d forgotten, that you’d know better than I how terrible a thing Galen did out of a desire for kindness, a want to do good.”

Did he really need to worry at all? Despite how often she seemed to try and drown herself in the strange wyrmish sorcery the memories didn't wash away the young woman he was coming to know.

Gem, the second he had to remind himself some times, shuddered and nodded hard.

“Truly, if he had made dozens, hundreds, even thousands feel even half of what it means to be dead and yet live... That was no kindness.”

Her voice buzzed on the last words, the furious glare curdling her brow so much sharper for the glint of tears in her eyes.

Leo took in a heavy breath, but before he could bring up that the records said Galen’s miracle had touched tens of thousands at least across Old Cantor’s Empire there was a sudden wet squelch and a pungent stink of rotten eggs.

He gagged, Gem recoiled back from him, taking a step and spinning to glare at something behind him, a clammy hand suddenly fell on his shoulder with a moistness that seeped into the cloth of his robes of office.

“Hum, Gem, you are learning with Priests and God Botherers now?”

The voice was something terrifying, a croaking sound that was wet and rottingly pungent, there were squelches and rattles in that voice. The longer that hand lay on his shoulder the more he realized that the fingers were far too long and as he felt the tips idly tap on his collar bone through his clothing there were far too many fingers.

Six, seven, eight-

“I know you, yet I cannot recall-”

Gem’s voice was confused, uncertain, Leo dared not look behind him to apprehend the thing that was gripping him, well honed reflexes to protect one from a wild god holding him in place but he pleaded to his student with his eyes.

The voice, the thick, roiling somehow muddy croak spoke again.

“Hmmm? What’s this! you don’t?! Oh... Oh my apologies! My my, you are just the spitting image of Gem, so you had another spawn then Jewel? Congratulations! I’ll just go and greet the larger bit of you now.”

The flingers slid off of his shoulder and left a clammy coldness that seemed stained into his flesh, he still had not found it in himself to count how many fingers it had, Leo wasn't even sure if the number had stayed consistent while it rested on his shoulder.

There was another wet sopping squelch, like a giant’s boot sinking into mud, and then he fixed Gem’s eyes with his own and asked in as calm a tone as his training allowed.

“Gem, what was that?”

The girl frowned, eyes drifting from him to the stone floor behind him.

“I think it was a friend of my ‘mother’ but I cannot remember more than that. I think maybe it was a wizard?”

Leo reached up to feel the soaking wet cloth of his shoulder, but disturbingly found it entirely dry, the clammy, seeping cold in his skin from the thing’s touch fading away as he brushed at the disturbingly dry cloth.

He had been sure it was wet, soaked through, but just like the feeling of horribly unclear fingers it was already fading.

“I think perhaps we best go meet with your mother then Gem.”

She nodded slowly, but her gaze was distant, he turned slowly, cautiously on his heel, trying to catch a hint of something dangerous to behold before he fully saw it. Only to find the stone floors behind him perfectly undisturbed, even though everything inside him was insisting that there should have been black muck.

Or a puddle, a bit of glistening dampness.

Anything.

But, the floor was perfectly dry, and somehow that bothered him even more.

He nearly jumped when the delicate scaled hand closed around his left, his two fingers filling her entire palm, a softly trilling voice that was so much more melodic then Gem ever had speaking soothing words.

“Don’t worry Priest Leo, I’m pretty sure they are my friend, I just need to remember precisely who they are.”

Leo kept the shudder he felt to himself, letting the child that was both young and old lead him away.