T Lain - The Living Dead

Devis did the first thing that popped into his head. He smashed the furry rat’s body with his fist. With a pop, foul-smelling gore, fur, and flesh burst from the creature. Devis marveled at how much awful stuff had been inside the little body. His nose flared in disgust and he let the rat corpse drop to the ground.

Devis was nearly to the crouching man. The smoke was so thick that Devis couldn’t see the man’s position, however, and he decided that the smoke would conceal him just as well. After pulling himself off the ramp, he crouched and walked carefully through the haze to a point near where the elf should be, if it was indeed an elf.

The wind shifted and the smoke cleared. The crouching man was gone. Devis rocked onto his knees to look all around just as something heavy struck him across the back of the skull.

Mialee dreamed of eternity.

The energy that was the essence of the wizard no longer thought of herself in terms of a name. She had no name, but she did have vague memories of words. Some words were names, such as “Mialee,” “Biksel,” “Favrid,” and something called a “Devis.”

Really, Mialee did not “think” at all in the conventional sense. Thoughts did not move through a brain of tissue and blood, crackling electrically from nerve to nerve. Instead, she existed because she knew she existed. She was energy and vague consciousness. What had been the essence of Mialee the wizard soared through the multiverse, propelled across planes of existence by nothing more than will to move. It orbited distant, blue suns in a heartbeat, stopped in on the end of time. More words resurfaced: “spellbook,” “notes,” “stars.” There was both surprise and delight that stars were not just points of light, but immense beyond imagining.

And there was something else. Memories, perhaps, or hints of memories, of a physical world, one among millions. Why was there memory here?This was no place for memory. What was happening? What could happen to conscious energy?

Another memory intruded. It hinted at life and afterlife, spirits and souls. Was this afterlife? After-what-life? Suddenly, the consciousness wanted very much to be somewhere else. The limitless expanse of the roiling multiverse was on fire…

A hand clasped her ankle. Such a strange sensation, yet comfortable.

A voice carried over the tumultuous ether. The sound echoed in the flaming void.

“Mialee,” the voice whispered, shouted, and sang.

“What?” Mialee asked.

Mialee’s eyes blinked open.

She found herself looking up at the beaming faces of Zalyn and Devis. A tiny raven perched on the cleric’s shoulder. Darji squawked in surprise. “She’s awake!”

Hound-Eye and Diir also stood over her, wearing looks of relief. A stranger, a male elf adorned with the same antique armor that Diir wore, also loomed. This newcomer looked as if he’d seen even more combat than Diir. She felt warmth and heard the crackle of a fire in a fireplace, and past the onlookers she could see a high, curved ceiling of smooth, brown wood. The height was misleading because of her prone position. Her eyes rolled left and right and she saw that the room was fairly cramped. It held another couple of strangers and…a child? She smelled incense, tea leaves, and something else, something foul.

The nasty smell was coming from her clothes, which still pinched like a corset. And Devis. And Diir. All of them were covered in—

The events of the last few days came back in a rush, and Mialee bolted upright, eyes wide. She stared at Devis and squinted.

“Snowdrop?” Mialee asked. “Pear best tax collector green?”

The others stared at her. All but Devis and Zalyn actually took a step back.

Mialee frowned. What was going on?

“Snowdrop!” the girl barked. Slowly and loudly, like an aristocrat trying to explain an order to a dim servant, she repeated her question. “Pear…best…tax collector…green? Sextant owl?”

“Zalyn,” the bard said, worried, “What’s she saying? What did you do?”

“Um,” Zalyn explained, “I resurrected her. The most powerful resurrection spell I know. Ehlonna should have returned her to perfect health.” The gnome shrugged. “Maybe it had something to do with the broken ne—I mean, many scholars believe the voice comes from—” She shook her head and pursed her lips. “This isn’t a normal side effect, I swear.”

“What in blazes is a ‘sextant owl’?” Hound-Eye asked.

“Troll interrogate sickle, snowdrop,” Mialee said more urgently in an effort to get Devis to explain what was going on. “Goblin trampoline bugbear!”

They all just blinked. Mialee fumed.

“Oh, dear,” the little gnome muttered, and she dashed off to her large leather satchel. She rummaged through the clanking vials and produced an empty one, then held it up in the firelight to read a tiny label that Mialee could hardly see. The elf wearing armor like Diir’s looked at the label over her shoulder.

“What is it, elder?” said the elf.

“Haystack?” Mialee asked in shock. Zalyn didn’t look like an “elder.” She was barely an adult gnome.

“Yes, that’s it,” Zalyn said and pursed her lips at Mialee. “Aphasia.”

“Marmot proclivity?” Mialee replied. When she received another round of blank stares, she leaped off the wooden table and jabbed an index finger at the vial. “Friendship! Apple friendship!” she repeated, exasperated.

Zalyn looked apologetic. “Mialee, I’m sorry. When you died—”

“Pear turnip swimming?” Mialee asked. She died? She remembered everything up until the point she spotted Favrid down the forest trail, then nothing.

Hound-Eye jumped in. “When the thing, er, killed you, I sort of panicked,” the halfling explained sheepishly. Mialee guessed the man didn’t often confess panicking. “I took a bunch of those potions and poured them into your mouth.”

“It seems one of them wasn’t a healing potion, though,” Zalyn interrupted. “It was something we call hinual quar, the ‘talking dance.’ I assure you, I had no idea the brothers kept this sort of thing in their stock. Probably left there by someone trying to play a joke.”

There was something changed about the gnome’s voice. She spoke with confidence, authority, and no trace of the nasal accent of the Dogmar gutters. Zalyn frowned and continued her explanation.

“It’s a prank potion, really, popular with youngsters and students. They think it humorous to slip it into the teacher’s tea before lectures, that sort of thing.” The gnome shrugged apologetically. “I believe that we’ve inadvertently given you aphasia, Mialee. The effect is temporary, I assure you.”

“Dragon turtle dangle?” Mialee asked.

“Can she hear herself?” Devis asked the gnome. “Does she know what she’s saying?”

“Turnip gazebo wagon, potato,” Mialee told him.

“I do not believe so,” Zalyn replied, “I suspect that she has every belief that the words leaving her lips are perfectly clear.”

Mialee began to say something more, but snapped her mouth shut. It would explain the situation. She didn’t remember swallowing any potions, though, let alone dying.

The creature had her by the throat, but her athel wood collar protected her from the wight’s crushing strength….

Sweet Ehlonna. Her final memory, walled off by the resurrection spell to keep her from losing her mind when she returned to life. The feeling of brief flight followed by a crunch, and agonizing pain followed by a split-second of chilling numbness before life left her body. The wight had killed her. She’d seen light and colors, dimly remembered. All of which made her presence in this cramped room all the more baffling. Zalyn certainly could not have brought her back from the dead—the little gnome was barely a novice, and not even accepted into her order, despite what she’d said. That was just lunacy.