CHAPTER TWO
a secret carved from marrow
Ungtha belongs to the Gravenhold, where we go to die. The composter of the Echo. The twisted far reaches where even the animals dare not travel, where silence suffocates like a cold blanket. If death is evil, then she is its cruel mistress. The bog that devours. She needs not height nor strength to consume, for the soul seeks her when death is near. A beacon that draws you in, for the end. Easily feared but never vulgar, she is the inevitable. Ungtha the Inevitable. She was not a mother so much as a myth – a figure whose energy was certain, a spectral force. Her persona is elemental, neither benevolent nor evil, but purely a force to which all living things must yield.
“I expect a full retrieval today, Gersholm.” Ungtha spoke to him in her normal offhanded way, preventing eye contact by looking past him, into the thick woods. It was like Gersholm was not standing merely five feet in front of her, a feeling with which he was all too familiar. Accustomed to her detachment, as if his presence were nothing more than a necessary inconvenience in the long tapestry of her designs. He had given up, many decades ago, trying to catch her eye. Before the milky hue stole the green from her irises, he had learned. He looked past her, too, towards the archway behind her. The archway curved from bone and sinew had more warmth than Ungtha. Despite his indifference, practiced and flawless, inside his head he saw the last time his mother’s green eyes had met his… when she had forbidden him contact with his brother. Ghoro was Gersholm’s spitting image, young enough to be his son. His younger brother who refused his mother’s aspirations, prevented her prophecies, stole from her a voracious destiny.
He did not need to answer her, he merely turned, walking downhill into the valley where his men were. Retrieval happened every day, before Gravenhold’s greenish sun could rise. Souls needed collecting while the liminal morning cast only gray glow, when moisture hung in the air, and everything felt sticky. Years he collected the dead like fruit fallen from a wilting tree. He belongs here, and never thought he would find an escape. Gersholm wanted more, he wanted freedom from the oppressive fist of his mother. He wanted to kidnap his brother and bring him to a place where their true desires could manifest. Yet, that feeling of rebellion buried so deep with him, he continued to trudge downhill.
He felt the ancient rhythm of the place resonate within him as he walked, the boundary between himself and the land blurring until he, too, was part of the silence, a part of the gray. Reaching the depth of the valley, he found his men waiting for him. Hurold had been his friend for twenty years now, a man who found himself within Gravenhold by mistake. Many years ago, he sought death, the reprieve from carnage. He wanted the long sleep, coming to the withered woods to lay down his sword forever. His hesitation allowed Fate an opportunity to change his life forever. He had once hung from one of these gnarled branches, waiting for the life to drain from his face; instead, his rope broke, and he crumpled to the ground. This is where Gersholm found him one dawn. He never chose the Gravenhold life, it truly chose him instead.
The retrieval group was small, four men to conduct the work of several dozen. Licain, and Arzur filled the group. The landscape of the biotic bog did much of the work, and they collected the translucent and insubstantial energy left behind after the marshes had their fill. Gersholm no longer felt fear as his younger self did, but rather the haunting calm of familiarity, the certainty that he was an instrument in the hands of something much larger, something as old as the Grave hold themselves.
“There’s Hoark left, if you want, boss.” Hurold pointed toward their campfire, the charred remains of a hoark hung from the steel rod used to suspend it over the flames.
Gersholm merely grunted a reply, as he passed their fire and headed toward the gray glow suspended between the trees, hovering above the ground. His trained eye could make out the brighter spots farther away that indicated the deceased. The dawn mist crept in thick and listless, curling around Gersholm and his men like phantom fingers. Hurold walked at a steady pace, leading the way. He was the extrovert version of Gersholm, easily displaying his emotions without hesitation. There was an envy to that, Gersholm thought, as he followed his friend. They pushed onward in silence, the humid air pressing upon them as if the very woods conspired to swallow every sound.
Shapes around them seeming to writhe and bleed from the shadows, branches gnarled into cryptic patterns overhead, knitting a canopy that was less forest than prison. It sealed them in a darkness that only deepened with each step forward. They soon found themselves in a hollow ring of trees, withered branches extending toward one another, clawing together into a rough circle. Here time itself stuttered, each second dragging with lethargic malice.
“How…” Hurold’s voice trailed off as he looked around, “This isn’t…”
From within the gathering gloom, a figure took shape. At first, it was nothing but a smear of darkness, darker than trees’ cast shadows; but then it rose taller, pulling in the shadows around it like a cloak. They swirled around the dark figure, outlining the stranger’s silhouette. The rough shape of a man, elongated, with limbs that bent at unnatural angles, ending in fingers too long, too sharp to be human. A hood, manifested from the shadows themselves veiled its face.
“This isn’t Gravenhold.” Gersholm finished Hurold’s thoughts, taking a few steps back until he had rejoined his group. Sudden vulnerability struck him, froze him, made him feel like a child. Stripped him of decades of experience and left him small, fragile.
The creature raised a skeletal hand, and its voice slithered through the air, cracked and sibilant, as if centuries of dust had gathered in his throat.
“The toll must be paid,” it rasped, an edge of twisted amusement glinting beneath its deadpan tone. “None cross here unscathed. I request payment.”
“Absolutely not.” Hurold, the largest of Gersholm’s men, stepped forward, though his face was a rictus of concealed dread. They had fought many aspects in the Echo, they had bled energies of spirits ruthlessly. They had enforced Mother Nature’s cold will, without hesitation. This time… it felt different. The stranger loomed before them, no larger or stronger than other aspects they had encountered, but the feeling… it crawled along their bones and up their spines like a thousand spiders. It rose into their faces and flushed them, creating a ringing in their ears.
“What coin… do you take, spirit?” Gersholm interjected, not giving time for the Aspect to answer Hurold. He knew… he wanted to appease the stranger – perhaps they could bribe it with silver or gold.
The Aspect’s hood tilted in what might have been a smile if it had a mouth, the slit of void narrowing, “No gold, no silver,” it whispered in that sibilant echo, a whisper that shook the blackened leaves off the trees encircling them, “What I take is currency of the soul, a secret carved from your marrow. A memory, or dream.”
There was no escaping now, nothing material they could give the Aspect. This truth… this clarity spilled down from the tops of their heads like a bucket of ice water.
Hurold looked to Gersholm, who held his silence, then swallowed hard, bracing himself. He would pay the toll, perhaps then the other men could escape untouched, “Take from me… a memory, then.”
An unnatural angle jutted from the shadows, articulated in four separate places; it could have resembled an arm if an arm were ten feet in length. A bony finger pressed against Hurold’s temple. His eyes clouded, glazed over, his body staggered as the Aspect leached something vital from him. When the thin, shadowy angle retracted, Hurold looked hollow. A man who had not cried for decades, a man who had no need for softer emotions, let forth a silent scream. Hurold fell to his knees, hands reaching out to grasp what he could no longer remember. Mute, frozen horror strained his features.
“What did you take from him?!” Despite the cold helix of dread encircling his spine, Gersholm’s anger burst forth, desperate anger.
“The image of her face, the sound of her laughter. It is mine now.”
Hurold’s face crumpled, he staggered, trying to stand but the tremors in his knee crippled him. Unbeknownst to him, the memory of Isca was gone. His only child. Widowed, Hurold had one last friend in this world… and any memory he had of her was gone. Gersholm’s anger was quickly replaced with sorrowful pity, and instead of confronting the Aspect farther, he crouched down to place his arm around Hurold’s shoulder. The violent heaves of his friend’s body resounded through him, as well. There were no words to say, how do you reassure someone of something… they have no memory of?
The other two men hesitated, refusing to step forth. They almost turned and ran, but the atmosphere entangled them, a heaviness in the fog weighed down their frames. The strange Aspect thrusting his will down upon them like anvils. They need not move, as the Aspect moved toward them. Its gait was anything like smooth, it was like he was moving through a strobe light – shuddering from one spot to the next. It took from Licain his voice – a deep baritone that could make grown men weep, a voice he had used his entire life to soothe, command, and seduce. As for Arzur… his ability to manipulate the earth. The ability to grow fantastical plants. A gift that was like a warm phenomenon in the death that saturated Gravenhold. It happened so swiftly; the Aspect finished before Gersholm stood.
Finally, the Aspect’s interest turned to Gersholm, and he felt its gaze bore through him like hot iron. His breath hitched, but he held its stare. Something inside him flashed with resistance.
“Ah,” the Aspect mused, drawing nearer, “You hide much. Deeper wounds, deeper gifts.”
The Aspect’s strangely angular, and multi-jointed fingers brushed Gersholm’s brow, but Gersholm pushed back, a silent plea rising within him. “Not him,” he whispered, his thoughts resonating into the creature’s touch, “Take anything else.”
Briefly, the Aspect hesitated, its hollow face lifting as though sensing the defiance within him. A sound, almost a chuckle, and then it quickly withdrew its hand. Gersholm left intact, untouched. But the Aspect’s words lingered, dark and foreboding.
“You may keep your secret,” it murmured, “But know this: you cannot outrun what binds you, not even in rebellion.”
As silently as it had appeared, the Aspect faded into the shadows, the air cleared, leaving the men stony and detached, burdened by the tolls they could never reclaim. Gersholm began to steer them back toward Gravenhold’s village. He had escaped the Aspect’s tariff – but at what cost, he could not yet know.
a secret carved from marrow
Ungtha belongs to the Gravenhold, where we go to die. The composter of the Echo. The twisted far reaches where even the animals dare not travel, where silence suffocates like a cold blanket. If death is evil, then she is its cruel mistress. The bog that devours. She needs not height nor strength to consume, for the soul seeks her when death is near. A beacon that draws you in, for the end. Easily feared but never vulgar, she is the inevitable. Ungtha the Inevitable. She was not a mother so much as a myth – a figure whose energy was certain, a spectral force. Her persona is elemental, neither benevolent nor evil, but purely a force to which all living things must yield.
“I expect a full retrieval today, Gersholm.” Ungtha spoke to him in her normal offhanded way, preventing eye contact by looking past him, into the thick woods. It was like Gersholm was not standing merely five feet in front of her, a feeling with which he was all too familiar. Accustomed to her detachment, as if his presence were nothing more than a necessary inconvenience in the long tapestry of her designs. He had given up, many decades ago, trying to catch her eye. Before the milky hue stole the green from her irises, he had learned. He looked past her, too, towards the archway behind her. The archway curved from bone and sinew had more warmth than Ungtha. Despite his indifference, practiced and flawless, inside his head he saw the last time his mother’s green eyes had met his… when she had forbidden him contact with his brother. Ghoro was Gersholm’s spitting image, young enough to be his son. His younger brother who refused his mother’s aspirations, prevented her prophecies, stole from her a voracious destiny.
He did not need to answer her, he merely turned, walking downhill into the valley where his men were. Retrieval happened every day, before Gravenhold’s greenish sun could rise. Souls needed collecting while the liminal morning cast only gray glow, when moisture hung in the air, and everything felt sticky. Years he collected the dead like fruit fallen from a wilting tree. He belongs here, and never thought he would find an escape. Gersholm wanted more, he wanted freedom from the oppressive fist of his mother. He wanted to kidnap his brother and bring him to a place where their true desires could manifest. Yet, that feeling of rebellion buried so deep with him, he continued to trudge downhill.
He felt the ancient rhythm of the place resonate within him as he walked, the boundary between himself and the land blurring until he, too, was part of the silence, a part of the gray. Reaching the depth of the valley, he found his men waiting for him. Hurold had been his friend for twenty years now, a man who found himself within Gravenhold by mistake. Many years ago, he sought death, the reprieve from carnage. He wanted the long sleep, coming to the withered woods to lay down his sword forever. His hesitation allowed Fate an opportunity to change his life forever. He had once hung from one of these gnarled branches, waiting for the life to drain from his face; instead, his rope broke, and he crumpled to the ground. This is where Gersholm found him one dawn. He never chose the Gravenhold life, it truly chose him instead.
The retrieval group was small, four men to conduct the work of several dozen. Licain, and Arzur filled the group. The landscape of the biotic bog did much of the work, and they collected the translucent and insubstantial energy left behind after the marshes had their fill. Gersholm no longer felt fear as his younger self did, but rather the haunting calm of familiarity, the certainty that he was an instrument in the hands of something much larger, something as old as the Grave hold themselves.
“There’s Hoark left, if you want, boss.” Hurold pointed toward their campfire, the charred remains of a hoark hung from the steel rod used to suspend it over the flames.
Gersholm merely grunted a reply, as he passed their fire and headed toward the gray glow suspended between the trees, hovering above the ground. His trained eye could make out the brighter spots farther away that indicated the deceased. The dawn mist crept in thick and listless, curling around Gersholm and his men like phantom fingers. Hurold walked at a steady pace, leading the way. He was the extrovert version of Gersholm, easily displaying his emotions without hesitation. There was an envy to that, Gersholm thought, as he followed his friend. They pushed onward in silence, the humid air pressing upon them as if the very woods conspired to swallow every sound.
Shapes around them seeming to writhe and bleed from the shadows, branches gnarled into cryptic patterns overhead, knitting a canopy that was less forest than prison. It sealed them in a darkness that only deepened with each step forward. They soon found themselves in a hollow ring of trees, withered branches extending toward one another, clawing together into a rough circle. Here time itself stuttered, each second dragging with lethargic malice.
“How…” Hurold’s voice trailed off as he looked around, “This isn’t…”
From within the gathering gloom, a figure took shape. At first, it was nothing but a smear of darkness, darker than trees’ cast shadows; but then it rose taller, pulling in the shadows around it like a cloak. They swirled around the dark figure, outlining the stranger’s silhouette. The rough shape of a man, elongated, with limbs that bent at unnatural angles, ending in fingers too long, too sharp to be human. A hood, manifested from the shadows themselves veiled its face.
“This isn’t Gravenhold.” Gersholm finished Hurold’s thoughts, taking a few steps back until he had rejoined his group. Sudden vulnerability struck him, froze him, made him feel like a child. Stripped him of decades of experience and left him small, fragile.
The creature raised a skeletal hand, and its voice slithered through the air, cracked and sibilant, as if centuries of dust had gathered in his throat.
“The toll must be paid,” it rasped, an edge of twisted amusement glinting beneath its deadpan tone. “None cross here unscathed. I request payment.”
“Absolutely not.” Hurold, the largest of Gersholm’s men, stepped forward, though his face was a rictus of concealed dread. They had fought many aspects in the Echo, they had bled energies of spirits ruthlessly. They had enforced Mother Nature’s cold will, without hesitation. This time… it felt different. The stranger loomed before them, no larger or stronger than other aspects they had encountered, but the feeling… it crawled along their bones and up their spines like a thousand spiders. It rose into their faces and flushed them, creating a ringing in their ears.
“What coin… do you take, spirit?” Gersholm interjected, not giving time for the Aspect to answer Hurold. He knew… he wanted to appease the stranger – perhaps they could bribe it with silver or gold.
The Aspect’s hood tilted in what might have been a smile if it had a mouth, the slit of void narrowing, “No gold, no silver,” it whispered in that sibilant echo, a whisper that shook the blackened leaves off the trees encircling them, “What I take is currency of the soul, a secret carved from your marrow. A memory, or dream.”
There was no escaping now, nothing material they could give the Aspect. This truth… this clarity spilled down from the tops of their heads like a bucket of ice water.
Hurold looked to Gersholm, who held his silence, then swallowed hard, bracing himself. He would pay the toll, perhaps then the other men could escape untouched, “Take from me… a memory, then.”
An unnatural angle jutted from the shadows, articulated in four separate places; it could have resembled an arm if an arm were ten feet in length. A bony finger pressed against Hurold’s temple. His eyes clouded, glazed over, his body staggered as the Aspect leached something vital from him. When the thin, shadowy angle retracted, Hurold looked hollow. A man who had not cried for decades, a man who had no need for softer emotions, let forth a silent scream. Hurold fell to his knees, hands reaching out to grasp what he could no longer remember. Mute, frozen horror strained his features.
“What did you take from him?!” Despite the cold helix of dread encircling his spine, Gersholm’s anger burst forth, desperate anger.
“The image of her face, the sound of her laughter. It is mine now.”
Hurold’s face crumpled, he staggered, trying to stand but the tremors in his knee crippled him. Unbeknownst to him, the memory of Isca was gone. His only child. Widowed, Hurold had one last friend in this world… and any memory he had of her was gone. Gersholm’s anger was quickly replaced with sorrowful pity, and instead of confronting the Aspect farther, he crouched down to place his arm around Hurold’s shoulder. The violent heaves of his friend’s body resounded through him, as well. There were no words to say, how do you reassure someone of something… they have no memory of?
The other two men hesitated, refusing to step forth. They almost turned and ran, but the atmosphere entangled them, a heaviness in the fog weighed down their frames. The strange Aspect thrusting his will down upon them like anvils. They need not move, as the Aspect moved toward them. Its gait was anything like smooth, it was like he was moving through a strobe light – shuddering from one spot to the next. It took from Licain his voice – a deep baritone that could make grown men weep, a voice he had used his entire life to soothe, command, and seduce. As for Arzur… his ability to manipulate the earth. The ability to grow fantastical plants. A gift that was like a warm phenomenon in the death that saturated Gravenhold. It happened so swiftly; the Aspect finished before Gersholm stood.
Finally, the Aspect’s interest turned to Gersholm, and he felt its gaze bore through him like hot iron. His breath hitched, but he held its stare. Something inside him flashed with resistance.
“Ah,” the Aspect mused, drawing nearer, “You hide much. Deeper wounds, deeper gifts.”
The Aspect’s strangely angular, and multi-jointed fingers brushed Gersholm’s brow, but Gersholm pushed back, a silent plea rising within him. “Not him,” he whispered, his thoughts resonating into the creature’s touch, “Take anything else.”
Briefly, the Aspect hesitated, its hollow face lifting as though sensing the defiance within him. A sound, almost a chuckle, and then it quickly withdrew its hand. Gersholm left intact, untouched. But the Aspect’s words lingered, dark and foreboding.
“You may keep your secret,” it murmured, “But know this: you cannot outrun what binds you, not even in rebellion.”
As silently as it had appeared, the Aspect faded into the shadows, the air cleared, leaving the men stony and detached, burdened by the tolls they could never reclaim. Gersholm began to steer them back toward Gravenhold’s village. He had escaped the Aspect’s tariff – but at what cost, he could not yet know.
