Hemlock: Seeking Help
As fate would have it when Hemlock arrived, The Mother was busy. One of the Fair Sisters had greeted her with a bit of apprehension on first encounter, but soon realised the situation and sent word that The Mother was desperately needed. But Hemlock was informed it could take some time for The Mother to be able to speak with her. Hemlock was shown to the main room of the temple, the large expansive ceiling causing each step to call back with sharp crystal clear echoes. The Sister bowed.
“Please just wait here.” she said, it wasn’t an order exactly but it was more or less a command that if she wandered from this room help would not be offered farther.
Hemlock nodded. “I will sit here.” she said and lowered herself into a pew, allowing her wings to drape over the back. And The Sister wasn’t wrong, it took a long time. The coolness of the air and the near perfect silence of the room caused Hemlock to drift off into a place where memory and dream danced together.
–
Hemlock's eyes opened again, feeling themself yawning, and the wooden handle of a shovel in hand. Looking down they saw nothing but a fresh shallow pit in the soil, dark, rich, moist, graveyard soil. Hard to remember if this was a new grave, one meant to be dug anew for the recently deceased or…the far more grim option this was a memory from…that time.
It had only been a moment in this memory and the exhaustion of this body felt crushing. But only one way to know. Pain or not, Hemlock pushed the shovel into the dirt, applied all the pressure this rail thin body could muster, and tossed the scoop aside, moving around the shape of the pit. Until the shovel hit something hard, solid and unyielding. “Oh…please let it be a rock…please…” Hemlock thought. Memories of digging graves were nothing new, memories of moving bodies later, though unpleasant were not foreign, but given the day or days they’d had recently it wouldn’t be a shock if it was a bad one. But Hemlock knew they had a job to do. Moving the dirt away carefully, slowly, with a touch like the coffin was made of glass. Maybe just maybe it could be different this time. That weird guy with the hat…Horo…he’d say things about time not being a line or something…maybe it can be changed? But Hemlock realized it was a silly thought to even have it was just a dream after all, even with that thought on the forefront it didn’t make Hemlock speed things along.
Dirt pushed aside Hemlock’s mouth went dry, and for what little their heart did beat it was frankly pounding. They tried to swallow but it caught in their throat, nearly causing them to choke. Slowly they backed up. Pressing against the hole and lifting themselves out. Taking up the shovel like a club, ready to swing.
In the distance they heard something, something new. Not from this time, not from this memory. Not like anything they’d ever heard before, a chilling sound like the mix of an owl and a crow laughing, with the malice of a human.
“You really think it could be different this time?” the voice asked, still a sharp contract from anything human, but undeniably human.
Hemlock could feel their body shaking, hands trembling, every nerve was burning like a fuse. “Hello?” they asked, startled by their own voice, and old voice, not in age but from a body long past. A distant memory seldom recalled. One of the few bodies in memory that hadn’t been a woman.
The voice laughed again as the coffin started to bow outward, crack, and something moaned from within.
“No no no no…” Hemlock repeated, tightening the grip on the shovel as much as they could. Then the ground all around started to rumble quietly.
“Yes yes yes.” the voice said.
Hemlock turned slightly just in time for something large to stand to full height, looking human shaped with wings in place of arms that took flight, no detail just a massive inky shape, cackling into the night.
Then it broke loose, the coffin’s lid shattered, the thing inside launching out more like an attack dog than anything once humanoid. The shovel connected. Sending a rattling up Hemlock’s arm as the makeshift club landed a blow that sent parts of decayed flesh and bone flying, the zombie sagged limply against the edge of the grave and fell back in. Just as more zombies clawed from their graves. All around Hemlock. A sickening sight even for them. Figures of all shapes, sizes, and states of decay. All having one thing in common, the lavender glow that came from their eyes and mouths.
The zombies groaned and started moving forward, slowly, some taking more force of whatever was making them move to pull themselves forward. A few even stumbled and fell on broken, or missing legs, and when they did they started pulling themselves along in a crawl.
Something felt different this time. New thoughts, something Hemlock had remembered from books of old necromancy. Something from before the art was perverted into simply control of the dead and manipulation over the domain of death. An art more the bailiwick of Clerics in modern times. Consecration. The ground here was tainted. This body had no connection to the angel. It was worth a try. If nothing happened it was just a dream…right? Hemlock knew so little about the subject of consecration but knew she had a few memories of it in her head. The zombies closing in, she hastily scribbled an intricate rune on the shovel’s head. The zombies were so close now she could smell them. “Please work, please work.” she thought. Taking the shovel with the blade down. Plunging it into the ground just as the zombies overtook her. In a blinding flash of white light swallowing up everything, Hemlock’s eyes shot open a scream had escaped in her sleep and was bouncing off the walls in a disturbing choir. It took her a moment to notice her out stretched wings, and their feathers standing on end, and a moment more to calm herself enough to fold them back. “Fair Lady…please let The Mother help me…”