@KatherinWinter@Queentze@dragonslayer1 "Very well. Let us be off."Jocelyn led the way out of the Guild Hall, pulling her skeletal bandanna over her lips curling softly into a pleasant sneer, her dark dress trailing gracefully behind her as if a miasma of smoke and dust. With a few rubies, she was able to procure a ride to their destination from a kindly old man and his mule driven carriage. Not the most elegant, as with every pebble and pothole the dimwitted mule decided to drag the carriage through, the constant rattling and rocking was enough to nearly jar the teeth from her jaw. But still, in most cases, beggars certainly could not be choosers.
Slowly as the rickety wooden carriage, creaking and groaning with every turn of the wheels, neared the village, a sudden chill perked the woman's senses. It was...such an unnatural feeling from the typical sense of ghosts lurking nearby, more or less like the nails of some ghastly beast raking down her bare back, clawing at her with such malicious and ravenous fervor. She steadied herself, a shallow breath she drew while the carriage came to a halt so quickly.
The old man driving the carriage, from him Jocelyn could sense it....fear, unmistakable terror to whatever awaited the four mages who dared to tread upon land forever corrupted by the wicked and the restless. He turned to them, hesitation in his voice,
"This is as far as I go, lass. Ye and yer friends'll just ave to travel on foot. Be warned...the spirits who inhabit ole Rook's Hollow, they don't take kindly to trespassers."Jocelyn, blunt as ever, replied,
"The dead have no stake to what is theirs in the mortal coil. We will drive them out and send them back to Oblivion where they belong." She said this as though not to the man alone, but the rest of her followers. And with that, she disembarked with both feet landing gracefully on the cold, packed mud, her eyes beholding the derelict hollow.
Moments ago when they had begun their relatively lengthy journey, the sun was shining at its brightest, the air cool and crisp with the soothing aroma of early spring, wildflowers dancing across the verdant meadows, exhibiting such beautiful and frail colors, such wondrous shades and hues against the backdrop of a clear blue sky. But upon nearing the forgotten Rook's Hollow, those beautiful colors faded into a drab and lifeless, ugly pallet of dull grays and charcoal blacks. The trees of the surrounding forest, they were barren and naked, no leaves or foliage whatsoever to shield their thorn ridden bark from the ill, chilling winds that now encompassed Jocelyn and her fellow mages. No longer the sweet scent of flowers upon the air....but a ghastly, rank odor, an amalgamation of dust and rotting corpses. This place...no doubt it was haunted. Twas as if no one had lived in this village for ages, the shambled shacks and cottages withering away, rotten wood riddled with termites and lichens groaning and creaking. In the distance, the cracked and rusted bell of an abandoned sanctuary tolled mournfully along with the woeful cackles of a few passing ravens, the howling winds like the laments...of the dead.
"Stay close." Jocelyn heeded, daring to take her first steps into the midst of the village, a lone, muddy road pocked with potholes and murky puddles of foul smelling water. The dark skies above filled with tumultuous, rolling black clouds, gave warning to the coming of rain, and yet not a drop graced the woman's fair skin, only the rumble of the distant thunder to follow.
From behind her back she brandished her scythe, and with a stern glare...towards nothing it seemed, the woman brought the shaft down hard upon the ground, producing an audible echo.
"Spirits, I call to thee!" Her voice, so authoritative as she called out into the dead silence.
"Come out from wherever you may lurk! Come forth and leave the living be! Return to where you once came, into the abyss of Oblivion!But...no reply to follow, only the faint whisper of the wind rustling the dead trees and snapping the window shutters. Her brow furrowed, the woman sighing perturbed. She assumed these ghosts were of the stubborn kind, for so willingly some specters would flock to the necromancer's commanding call. But not these....and....if only Jocelyn knew...how
stubborn they were.
"Hmm...they're not going to make this easy on us, are they gents?" She chuckled dryly, when suddenly a shout belted from her lungs!
youtube.com/watch?v=0xAGAVB1L3o"AHH!!" The ethereal, unearthly force grabbed her by her slender neck and flung her with ease across the village like a ragdoll, her body slamming through a fence of old sticks and dry wood and skittering across the muddy, mired surface of the road. Hastily, she rose to her feet, still in a daze and face caked with mud....and fear of her own. These were malicious spirits, horrific phantoms who could only have crawled out of the darkest recesses of the abyss. They had only one purpose....to torment the living.
, their wicked cackles resonated all through, an evil sound like no other.
Jocelyn...she could see them. Twas not just three or four of the bastards...but thirteen, thirteen hellish spirits who sought to drag them into Oblivion's horror. One of them, the ghost of a woman with a slit open mouth grinning maniacally, appeared behind Griffin, the shadow wielder. In her hand, she wielded a sharp butcher's cleaver, about to send it slicing through the back of the boy's head.
"GRIFFIN BEHIND YOU!!" Jocelyn screamed to the top of her lungs, hoping she had warned the boy quickly before he found a rusty blade buried in his skull.
