The thick tome, bound in stretched white Eeee hide and with fittings of a copper alloy that has long ago turned green, has a single symbol embossed (o rbranded) on its surface, resembling an ankh with two horizontal bars.
Inside, the title page identifies the book as being The Sylvanian Heresy, though the name of the author is not volunteered. The pages are of a dry rag-cloth that speaks of great age, though it has managed to hold together – perhaps with the aid of zolken strands that can be seen interweaving the rag-cloth, giving it a faint shimmer. The ink is dark and thick, to the point where bits of it have flaked off, leaving only shadows on the page and requiring a bit of squinting and mental filling of gaps to make out what was being said. As for what is being said, it is written in Rephidim Standard, not Sylvanian or some more obscure tongue.
Excerpts from The Sylvanian Heresy:
I am me! Not another. Not a shade or shadow or homunculus or golem or changeling or some other wretched pretender. Of course, dear reader, when you hold this book, you read the words of a dead man. Dead men tell no tales, is it not so? It is not. Here are my tales, and I tell them to you myself. But as for my name, it matters not. I am long gone, and I have no reputation to draw upon. Ask me no questions, and I shall tell you no lies, as another saying goes. Read into this what you will, and judge for yourself.
Perhaps it is worth saying that I was once a mage. A wizard. A bender of the laws of nature. A shaper of the elements. Of what sphere? More than one. A master of none of them. I sought power, as many magi do. I tried to find it by breadth rather than depth. Perhaps I would have been successful, but I followed many of my peers into the magicks of spirit. Cursed sphere!
Sylvania. Land of forests and mountains and so much beauty … and a great deal of swamp and ancient wounds as well. What is it about the land, that the sphere of spirit seems to predominate amongst the magi who call it home? Tradition, I say. The young mage seeks power and understanding, and it is much harder to try to seek it on his own, or be forced to travel far abroad from his homeland. Therefore, it is only natural to study what has gone before … and, if he is too eager, to try to pry into all those forbidden keeps and the vaults of wizards passed on, to steal some insights lest he be forced to come upon them himself.
But wizards are vain. They speak of their accomplishments. They rarely speak of the cost. The tomes that speak of great power are not for the purpose of instructing some upstart cantrip-weaver of some new generation. Not in the least. What glory is it in your own name, to have your life's work imitated by some runny-nosed baggy-pants, who, if he succeeds, will claim it as his own? No, the purpose of such tomes is for glory in the teacher. It is to sing one's own praises – but in order to entice someone to read so far, to endure so much self-edification, there are those concessions of power and knowledge. But the emphasis is on the success. Any dire warnings are almost guaranteed to be vague, no more useful than an urge to "Be careful". They don't tell the cost. They don't tell the reader just how STUPID they were on their path to glory.
So I turn this on its head. If you are reading this in search of long-lost spells or maybe a cantrip to impress your friends, go no further. You'll find nothing here. Rob some tomb or delve into a dust-bathed library, and hope for the best instead. But what you will find here is a warning. Here are my failures. Here is my foolishness. If you have an inkling of wisdom, you may well find this more valuable than a collection of spells.
If you do not, give this book to someone else.
Necromancy. By some reckonings, it is but a sub-set of the sphere of Spirit. By mine, it is a field all unto itself, not worthy of inclusion into the natural order of things. I write to you as one of the guilty.
How did I come to this place? If you are one of those delving into this area, you might perhaps suppose that necromancers are warped old men who are so desperate to cling to life that they wouldn't mind frolicking around in graveyards dressed only in their bones. Or perhaps you think of hunched-over, warty, kink-tailed witches, cackling to themselves gleefully, glad to further evil for its own sake.
Evil is not like that. It's never so simple as that.
Raising the dead. What power that suggests! We all know the natural order of things. Even Countess Ophelia and her "immortal" kin shall meet an end, by the sword or accident, if not by withering bodies and age. All dies. Some accept that, as part of the cycle of life, or they cling to hopes of a life beyond. Magic offers a solution. Magic offers a way to break the rules. Cast a spell, and it will solve all your problems, yes? Oh, maybe a bit of ritual and maybe several years of study, but then you'll be able to order Dagh himself around, yes?
Or, perhaps you delude yourself with more benevolent aims. Raising the dead. Perhaps a lost loved one that you wish to see again. Maybe you wish to ask forgiveness or advice, or just even to say 'I love you', one last time, even if it's only to a spirit. Or maybe you have greater ambition, to bring back not only a spirit, but form as well. Turn back now. My words won't stop you, I know, but you have been warned. You deserve what you bring upon yourself.
And so it was that my comrades sought out knowledge not only within the boundaries of our own land, but apparently abroad. Kalos returned after a journey of several years, missing an eye and a limb, and the tip of his tail. Surely he had many tales to tell, but he told none of them, save that he had come back with our means to power.
This means to power came in a casket. That should have been ominous enough. It was like no casket I had ever seen before. It took several Rhians in his employ just to move it into place, so thick was it, and made of stone. Runes were engraved upon the sides, and the lid was sculpted in relief. There were traces of semi-precious stones and perhaps even gold foil that had once graced the surface, but it had been largely pried away. Chisel marks could be seen and more curious wounds, where someone had attempted to open it to get inside. But the "lid" was in fact part of the vault. A closer examination revealed that the fault was only a groove.
Only by breaking the casket – and potentially what lay inside – could it be opened. And that would be a feat in itself. However, there were other ways. Vardo the Heavyhanded was, after all, of the sphere of Earth. With a ritual, he would be able to open the casket.
Poor Vardo. Or perhaps he was blessed. His ritual indeed worked, but he must have unleashed some curse sealed into the casket. As soon as the stone groove began to deepen into a seam, his concentration was broken as he let out a most bloodcurdling scream. At the time, it was the most frightening thing I'd heard. Before our eyes, he crumbled away into dust. It was not, I assure you, a peaceful way to go.
Power-maddened as we were, we did not flee. We reasoned that his spell had gone awry, and that the sphere of Earth was a little more unstable than we had supposed, or Vardo a bit more incompetent than we presumed. Kalos's Rhians were called back into the room and told nothing of where Vardo had gone, and obediently removed the lid. Within was a sight to make any Kavi fall over dead with envy.
The mummified corpse inside was bedecked in jewelry, the head covered in a gold-foil-covered death mask. It was all in perfect condition, as if it had been placed here but the day before, even though the strings holding the strands of beads should have crumbled away just like Vardo, ages before. For a brief moment, I pondered some sort of hoax, but, in our hearts, we all knew better. Our hearts warned us to flee, but we were too entranced. We were drawn to the light of power like flitters to a flame. It was only a matter of time before we would draw too close and be consumed.
On the first night of the great ritual, there was, as is not unusual in Sylvania, a terrible storm. Intent upon completing our dark plans, we continued regardless. I was one of the lesser of our group in terms of power, and so I was given a suitably lesser role – an errand-boy, rushing about and acquiring various components that they kept determining they needed through the course of the night … and then the day after that … and a night again. We all defied fatigue, and at some point passed into that realm of acting without thought. We were but puppets, acting out a shadowy play, little conceiving just what we were doing.
At some point, I awoke, standing, in the casting chamber, to the smell of blood. Some of it was my own, and as I gazed dumbly at my wounds, it took some moments before it occurred to me to grab some scraps of cloth I'd brought, to bandage myself. As it was, I was weak, and could not bear to stand for very long. Boro, barely more than an apprentice, was in the same state, and none of the others looked untouched. I idly wondered who had injured me, or whether I had done it myself.
Then, I noticed the others. Stupidly, while I was bandaging myself, I noticed a "sleeping" peasant girl, and thought to myself how pleasant she looked, and wondered if after this was over, I might talk to her. It took me a few moments to realize that she would be speaking to no one, nor the others here and there about the room. If I was not so numb, I would have been smitten by the horror of the situation. But, before I could focus on any of this, I was transfixed by the culmination of the ritual. The mummified body on the stone slab in the center of the vaulted chamber was, without any assistance, sitting up.
I will never forget that hand. That slender, delicate hand, wrapped in ancient cloth, and each finger bedecked in a metal ring. That delicate hand reached out and casually tore out Nysto the Naysayer's throat. Then, the two hands joined, and together they removed that golden death mask, dropping it unceremoniously to the floor, and tore away the swathes of cloth covering the corpse's face.
But rather than revealing the empty-eyed stare of a skull, I saw two eyes, set within the most beautiful face I'd ever seen. So numb was I that I thought this was far better than the peasant girl. I wasn't concerned for Nysto in the least. By Kalos' expression, certainly he was not, either.
It took me a moment to try to place the face. She resembled a Khatta, but with markings that might make one mistake her for a Savanite of the south. As soon as she spoke, however, such mistakes would be brushed aside as quickly and violently as Nysto was. I have no idea what she said. It was in the heavily-accented tongue of her kind, the Aeztepan. By that time, I had learned to decipher some of the Aeztepan writings, but, of course, nothing of the speech.
For some reason, she spared us. At the time, I did not really care.
