#ENGINES OF WAR GRIMOIRE SKIN#

Pieces are cast to the aether at such tears within the natural order and one must take heed to retrieve them, lest they be left a hallow hush, all but void of their past self, no better than mindless undead that so many necromancers raise about the Coast of Swords. I come back, as I will so many more times before my final oblivion, but only a fool simply carries on. People come back from the dead and the spirits of ancestral guides despair and wail at the injustice of it.īut even here, death still holds a cost. Deep seeded loathing for the place I am to revisit.

Defeat is imminent in the end, but we can tear what time we can from death's grasp, perhaps even to buy us another life after this hell. We, the fragile little specks of nothing can defy anyone and anything for long enough. Should they ever come to be erased, the taint would swiftly seep back.īut such is what we mortals can do against even the eternal forces of beyond. You will wrap it in casing, so that it may burn for longer, before it consumes itself. The aim is to delay this, for as long as the flesh holds.

They claim you by spreading their taint through you and let you end yourself. As if trying to bind another inside a flesh-vessel, but this time, inverted. A pattern traced for each shackle placed upon the soul, across a spot corresponding to the inner self.

#ENGINES OF WAR GRIMOIRE SKIN#

Skin is inked in the letters of binding, with scorching needles and carefully prepared dye. Beneath that, they are simply entities, powerful and fallible. Each one of them, studied with care, knowing them as they know you. What grace once was, sold for power to do what is needed in doing, to purchase as much as one can, before the bill is due. The one in front of me draws a first shallow breath. The words ring in my ear and burrow deep behind the darkness of my troubled mind. It is all the answer required to seal the agreement. The words are spoken truth that cuts deeper than any knife. Another will die, so that this one may live again, and you will carry the knowledge of it, and add it to your long list of burdens!' 'A year of servitude!' the crowing repeats. this?!' I exclaim, insulted and outraged at the mere suggestion. The words hurt because they ring so true. No, I will not deprive myself of a useful servant.' And you and I both know that taking your life would only be saving you from this misery. The murder of crows laughs, a joyless crowing of malign minds: 'Only death can pay for life. I barter my own years any use them as coin to buy time for this one.' came my words, almost unbidden, trembling, revealing weakness. 'You know you should have had.' the crowing heard again. 'You should have left her corpse rotting in the ground, -her spirit fly screaming to the afterlife.' came a crowing low rasp of a myriad dead throats, as if a murder of carrion birds, descending at a darkened mind. The fire blackens and overhead a murder of crow circles the dead carrion. Words are spoken and all but the one candle are snuffed out. Ritual site is chosen for the relevance of events that once took place upon its swampy soil. The blood to sate the hounds of death and the dying breaths of mine to call the one who whispers to the grave. The fire to guide the spirit and convey the voices of beyond. Prepare.The runes of communion, the anchors to bind the vessel. With my last light I say to the City: War comes again from the Moon. I am too small to hold the vastness of them, or the terror. She tells me things that I immediately forget. I feel her presence as a rip and a knot in the world. They draw from another force, something that corrupts, that distorts, that eats and will not be satisfied. I have seen black seeders prepared for invasion. I have seen chasms beneath the surface, falling away to green nothingness. I erase and dump as quickly as I can - they will learn little from me - but I am studying them, I know - pain. The Wizard comes now and then to probe with her scaly claws into my systems, to inquire about my making, the City, what I have seen. They have clamped me to this spire while a black foulness eats my Light. Past writhing worms that they swallow whole. They took me down into the dark, past tiers of massed Hive, more than we believed could exist. At the doors to the Temple he fell for the last time.

Engines of war grimoire