Tal, The Risen

I recall nothing before I awoke, screaming into the void with lungs that tasted of saltwater. Like most infants, I was naked. Unlike children, I was not born alone. Dozens of bodies began moving at once as the energies of the necromantic ritual animated us, bringing unlife to death.

“Praise be to Vorulsht, for you are reborn whole!” called the voice of a zealot. “You have drank from the waters of the underworld, and you return to us not as you were. You have shed your weakness. You have shed your mortality. You have become as you were always meant to be!”

The voice continued, and I listened, but I did more than listen. I watched as the flashing lights of unclaimed souls swirled through the rooms, occasionally selecting one of my yet-to-awaken brothers for possession.

I watched as the priests sacrificed a young woman, slitting her throat as she stared, glassy eyed, uncomprehending of what was being taken from her.

I watched as her soul departed and a new one took host in her corpse.

And I saw the difference between them.

I felt, then, as I always would, the pulse of the energies flowing through me. It is like the way I imagine the living feel their blood.

I wouldn’t know.

I have never been alive.

Circulating that energy was my first ever act of will. Everything before that, and for ten years everything after that, I did because it was simply as I must do. Bound as I was by the enchantments and the magicks of the priests, few who understand the way of things would pass any more blame to me than the sacrificial knife used upon the maidens that day.

Am I evil?

Is that knife?

One hundred thirteen young men.

One hundred thirteen young women.

Many little more than boys or girls.

Some of themwereboys and girls, children come into their height early enough to pass for adults.

All of them murdered for the ritual that brought me and my brothers and my sisters to life.

Every two weeks.

For thirty years.

And the priests did not even know their true purpose.

All to make one like me.

I am Tal. The Risen.

* * *

When the ritual completed, and the last of the drowned boys was risen and the last throat was slit, the priests spoke to us and ordered us to circulate the energy we must feel animating our bodies. They brought us out of the ritual room, deep into the bowels of the temple, to a room where a crystal pillar thrust up through the floor.

The flavor of that crystal’s radiance is the closest thing I can come to pleasure. It is how I imagine the sun feels to the living.

I wouldn’t know. Day and night are the same to my eyes. The sun does not warm my skin, and the moon only casts shadows.

They did not give us clothes until they determined which of us would rot. We were not worth the linen if we were ephemeral. Those of us who failed to cycle the energies after being told to do so would eventually die a second death.

Their corpses would be sent to the front lines, where they would be reanimated again with a lesser ritual. No graves for the Empire of Zozheim, all of our dead, from infants to geratrics, all of them had their purpose.

I had one hundred and thirteen brothers born on that day. Thirty died within hours. Another thirty died by the second day. By the end of the week, four of us remained.

The females were different. Although lifeless and cold, they lacked the spark of awareness that some of us males possessed. They were collared and sent out into the markets. Cheap labor for fields and those who could afford it. Better than a living slave, who might dream of liberty and freedom.

Once the priests decided that I and my four brothers had passed their test, they clothed us and gave us our names. Taking us into a room, we four of us stood patiently while the irons were heated. Kul was first, his name-rune branded into his forehead.

The smell of burnt flesh did not bother me. Even when it was my own turn.

I was last. My brothers Yos and Sul preceeded me in receiving their brands.

As for the pain?

What is pain?

I do not know.

I know that the living fear it.

And that is how I know when something is alive.

When I smell fear on something, then it must not have died yet.

And the living wonder how we find them.

* * *

I recall the first time I smelled true fear. It was shortly after I was given my name. The priests— they smelled of fear but also sweat and herbs and other things which hid the scent—brought us to the rooms above the crystal pillar and told us that it was customary for the successful harvest of last week’s ritual to prepare the corpses for the next.

We were brought into a panopticon room with one hundred and twenty cells. One hundred and twenty because there were often some who managed to take their own life and ruin their bodies for the ritual. When this did not happen, the surplus was simply saved for the next week.

In the center of the room was a pool of water, and I recognized it at once as the water from my lungs. I still smelled it on my breath.

“To start with, you shall go two to a room. Take the young man inside the room and hold him under the water until he has stopped moving for five minutes. You are much stronger than they are now, and should easily overpower them. Do not damage the body aside from what bruises you must inflict in your grips,” the priest ordered.

He held in his hand a staff, and the Magick of the staff commanded absolute obedience. It was necessary, for otherwise we might have obeyed the doomed men.

Instead, we went room to room. When the first door opened, the occupant screamed. When the others heard his scream, that is when I smelled the fear.

It was overwhelming.

Only by submerging them in water completely did we remove that smell from them.

We freed them of fear.

Is this not my first act of kindness?

* * *

When the last boy was drowned, the priests had us carry the bodies to the sacrifice room. We dumped them where we were instructed to dump them, then went back for the next. It took longer to carry them all up those stairs than it had to drown them, and my memories of climbing and descending endlessly are clearer as well.

It was a simple purpose, one which I could do without constant direction once I had been shown it the first time.

That was the first time in my unlife I was left unsupervised.

I continued to carry the bodies until the last naked corpse was placed. Then I went back for another.

I did not find one.

I did find a young acolyte.

So I drowned him, and I stripped him naked and I carried him up those stairs.

Then I did it again.

And again.

And I kept doing it time and again before the command staff was found and I was told to stop.

Fortunately the extra bodies could be preserved for the next ritual, so they did not go to waste.

The priests kept a closer eye on the phrasing of their commands around me after that.

* * *

I was privy to the conversation that determined my fate. The head priest and those junior priests who had survived my initiative carried it out right in front of me, with the head priest holding my command staff and listening to the others make their arguments like the final arbiter at the gates of the underworld.

One faction, led by a young man who was accused by the other faction of being a lover of two of the men I had drowned, insisted that I was too dangerous to be tolerated, and that I should be destroyed. His arguments were intense and emotional.

His emotions smelled rich.

Especially his fear, as I was told to drown him.

The faction insisting I be destroyed vanished after that.

“We do not waste promising Inalten. Tal is what we have made him,” the head priest said as I stripped the body of its wet clothes and started to carry it up the stairs. “Tal, wait. Put this one in the freezer over here instead.”

Wordlessly, I obeyed. The others who had come to watch the farce, be it with horror or grim satisfaction, simply parted as I walked between them.

“This one is more alive than most,” one of the priests who thought I ought to be dissected said. He wasn’t too committed to his argument, he just wanted to study me. To seewhyI was more alive than most.

“I wouldn’t call it life,” said the one who wanted me sent to serve the royal family. They were outwardly hoping that I would kill someone important, perhaps the emperor himself.

I found the freezer, where the other bodies were stored, and I placed lover-boy next to the other corpses that were to be preserved for the next ceremony. Then I returned and saw another young man arguing that I should be kept at the temple. He was not watching as I stepped up behind him and grabbed him by the arm.

He gasped in surprise as he realized what was happening. I dragged him to the pool and shoved his head under the water.

The other priests watched in silence.

Including the head priest, holding my command staff.

“Stop, Tal. Let him breathe. Pick him out of the water,” the head priest commanded just before the body would have gone still. I obeyed.

“Do you still think we should keep him around?” the head priest asked the young one.

The man I had nearly drowned sputtered and raged, and he stormed off. I did not see him again.

“What do we do with him, then?” asked the final faction, the ones who admitted they did not know how I should be treated.

“Why would we do anything except what we do with all of his brothers?” the head priest asked. “He shall go to the army like they do. The army gives us the sacrifices and we give them Inalten. That is the way things are, and the way things will be until the church of Vorulsht is absolute and the empire of Zozheim rules all corners of the world.”

The arguments continued, and I almost drowned two more when the head priest had a point to make. But the decision was already made.

* * *