NOVEL NEXT Chapter 87 – The Long Walk Home
"Yeah, I dunno where that lady went either. All I knew was that I woke up with the worst hangover right in the tavern the next morning, and she was long gone by then. Never knew why she even came over to our little podunk village to be honest.
Martha and her kids supposedly left the village during the night as well, to the priest's annoyance. I think they might've taken Jerrod's ashes - or whatever was left in that pile - along with them since we found the place cleaned up. I don't blame them to be honest. Got to be a bad feeling to have your husband killed twice in as many days, in a sense.
Father Francis had insisted that we give chase spouting shit about conspiracies and necromancers and whatnot all the while. None of us gave much of a damn. We knew Jerrod and Martha, we understood how she must have felt, too. We gave a lazy semblance of a chase for a couple days before we just turned back and said we found nothing. Not that we ever saw hide or hair off them anyway." - Carl Redevan, militia leader of Ashendale Village, circa 75 VA.
Near Barniff Shore,
South-Eastern Elmaiya
Second Elmaiya Empire
5th day, 3rd week, 7th month, year 75 VA.
"So you're actually dead?" Martha asked her husband as she walked through the sparse undergrowth with her baby daughter cradled against her chest. Their escape from the village they lived in had been smooth, partly because when she got too tired to go on, the hooded woman - she had since learned of her name as Aideen - had simply carried her on her back and kept going, while her husband carried their children.
"In a way, I suppose. I'm not too clear on the specifics myself," replied Jerrod, cradling his sleeping older daughter in his arms. They had been on the run for over a week now, and more often than not their children slept while being carried in their arms. "Maybe ask lady Aideen. She seems to know far more about this."
"You can say that, yes," replied Aideen from the front where she led their way through the small grove of trees. Their destination was pretty close by now, another day or two of travel at most, and she was glad that their travel had been uneventful.
The past couple of years, as the Bone Lord's experiments came to a halt due to their convenient test subject expiring, and Aideen had went out and about, collaborating with Myrddin's spies and agents for finding other Unliving in neighboring lands that had needed help.
Nobody had really trusted the Bone Lord when he freely shared the information about the unliving to his neighbors, as they believed it to be a trick from him, the beginnings of a plot, perhaps. Many people had awakened as Unliving in the decades since Aideen first did, with at least two hundred such individuals now living in Ptolodecca, where the Bone Lord offered them unconditional refuge.
Yet these were just the ones who managed to escape persecution from their own homelands, and at times even from their loved ones as well. Others were not as lucky, and were often put into so much suffering they chose to let go and perish.
Over the past couple of years Aideen had went out and helped free such people before it was too late, with one such outing even involving her crossing the Massad-al-Hadur desert, on foot, a feat that had taken her months, yet also likely saved the lives of a dozen or so unliving she rescued from the many small nations north of the desert.
The nigh-impassable desert proved to be far less of an obstacle for them, whereas their pursuers were stopped by its harsh environment and wildlife. It took them several harsh months to cross the desert, but they did it. Sneaking through Antemeian lands on their way back to Ptolodecca was by comparison far easier.
Even this trip, where she helped out Jerrod, was a coincidence, as she had originally come to the empire to help another. That mission had been accomplished, and she had split from the other agents to hopefully help throw off any pursuers, and had accidentally stumbled on Jerrod's situation.
After a day of asking around for information, she had acted during the night, gathered his ashes and discreetly regenerated his corporeal body from them, then brought him to his family, which led to their current escape.
"In a way, we are dead, and yet alive at the same time," explained Aideen as she brushed a low hanging branch away. "Our bodies are basically corpses. We do not need to breathe, nor does our heart beat, but you can also say that the part that makes us, us, is still well and truly alive, and in control over our actions."
"I see… wait, we?" Martha asked with a raised eyebrow over the way Aideen worded her answer.
"Oh right, haven't told you that bit of the story I guess," said Aideen nonchalantly as she shrugged. "I died around… forty years ago or thereabouts. Was one of the first, if not the first of our kind, pretty sure."
"Forty years ago?" Jerrod asked with some trepidation as he exchanged looks with his wife. Neither would have pegged Aideen as any older than her early twenties at most. "Wait… just how old are you, lady Aideen?"
"Bad boy. You should never ask a woman their age!" Aideen scolded playfully, which caused Martha to chuckle as well at her jest. "To answer your question, though… I would have been… Sixty one now."
"You… did not age since your death?" Jerrod asked with some worry creeping into his voice. "Would that also mean…"
"I never intended to hide it from you, but thought it might be better to talk about it later," confessed Aideen with a sad voice. "Yes, you would not age, and no, I do not know if we even die naturally at all. We can die, Jerrod, but it basically needed you to truly want to die from the very bottom of your heart and soul. Otherwise, we might as well be… immortal."
"And believe me when I say this, but it's not necessarily always a blessing to be immortal. Not at all."
