Shadow World

Chapter 1 - Viktor Drichey, Part 1

The bedroom door creaked open and Father Wilkud entered the room where the dying men were to die. The air in the room was stale and heavy with the stench of death.

The flame of the single candle sizzled in the sudden draft of air, casting monstrous ghostly shadows that fluttered across the walls.

At first Father Wilkud barely made out that someone was huddled under the covers of the small bed. It looked as if one of the brothers had removed his habit and carelessly tossed it on the bed.

It wasn't until the seemingly empty garment moved and the wrinkled cloth fell from a head that was little more than skin stretched over a skull, that the priest was certain that someone was there.

The figure was frail and looked old, very, very old… His head was completely bald and dotted with freckles, and the only visible hair was thick gray eyebrows. His bony hands had been deformed by some cruel degenerative disease to look like claws. The old man's skin was paper thin, taut on the bones he covered, and his cold blue veins stood out against the white marble of the little flesh that covered his worn body. The bony structure of his face with its high cheekbones, angular well-defined jaw, and aristocratic nose, was clearly visible when silhouetted by the flickering candle flame.

Wilkud looked away. In his thirty years as priest of Mortis he had seen death in its infinite forms: soldiers who had suffered brutal physical wounds on the battlefields, plague patients, accidentally killed, murder victims. But there was something about the man that made Wilkud avert his eyes in revulsion.

It wasn't entirely due to his appearance; Wilkud had seen far worse things in his life.

It was something else that the old priest could not determine.

It gave the impression that the old man had to be already dead, and certainly he smelled as if he were. Nothing that was still alive should ever smell that way.

Father Wilkud shuddered and wrapped himself tighter in his black cloth habit; the bedroom was very cold despite the embers of the fire that was dying in the fireplace. The priest picked up the iron poker hanging from a hook by the fireplace and stirred the smoldering logs in the hearth, rattling the iron furiously.

"Father, is it you?"

The old man's voice was high and cracked like the chime of a broken bell, a sound that made Wilkud feel as if his spine were made of ice water.

He took a deep breath to regain his composure.

"Brother Mateo, right?"

It was the name that, according to Brother Walder, the old man had given when he was admitted to the hospital. To Brother Walder, as now to Wilkud, it had become obvious that the old man did not have much time left in this world. When they stretched out his convulsed and fragile body on the cot and tucked him up so that he was comfortable in the waiting room, the old man had asked to speak with the father in charge of the hospital. He would not serve any other priest; at this point the otherwise weakened old man had been adamant.

The old man's breathing was labored and panting. For a moment, it seemed to Wilkud that he could barely breathe, much less speak. But then, at last, the old man broke the silence again.

"Brother Mateo's name will suffice for now."

Uncertainty crossed Wilkud's mind. What could the old man mean?

Now that he thought about it, Father Wilkud was not sure how Brother Mateo had come to lie there in the temple in the city of Eastheim. He also did not know what the old man was dying of, although evidently, he now he lay on his deathbed.

No doubt his agony was due to the devastating effects of old age, and the Brotherhood of Mortis was responsible for making Brother Mateo's last hours as comfortable and carefree as possible, since he was a fellow servant of the Lord. solemn god of death.

"You wanted to talk to me, brother," Wilkud said.

"That's how it is. Yes, indeed, father ”gasped the old man. His voice was little more than a hoarse death rattle.

Wilkud was used to being called "father" by brothers and by those who came seeking the favor of Mortis and the services of a death priest for loved ones who had passed away.

But now, on the lips of this old man old enough to be Wilkud's grandfather, the term seemed ridiculous.

He had to easily be thirty or even forty years older than Wilkud, who was fifty-five; perhaps he was even approaching a hundred years old, though such longevity was almost unheard of. It must be the devastating effects of some terrible disease that had aged him so terribly, Wilkud concluded.

"That's how it is. Yes, indeed ”repeated the old man.

The man coughed and there was a horrible phlegmy gargle. With a hand that was little more than a skeletal claw, he clutched her belly above the blanket.

"Brother, what is it?" Wilkud asked with an anxiety now evident in his voice as he advanced toward the old man. "Let me help you."

"No." One hand held the veteran priest of Mortis at arm's length.

The dying wretch took a few more labored breaths before trying to speak again.

"I beg you to hear my confession."

Staring at the weak old man, Wilkud wondered what an old priest on his deathbed might have to confess that he did not already know about the god of death. But there were a thousand and one things that could disturb a man who stood on the threshold of the gate of the otherworldly realm of the dead.

A thousand and one things that could worry a man who gazed into the face of death as his eyes began to fail and saw beyond the veil of this world as he gazed at the stern, shadowed face of Mortis himself.

"Of course, brother," replied Wilkud, who sat down in the chair that had been left by Mateo's bed.

If hearing his confession could make Brother Mateo's last hours more tolerable and better prepare him to pass through the dreaded gate into the world on the other side, Father Wilkud would. It was very little to ask on the part of a dying man from a fellow priest.

In addition to the care they gave the dead, it was not uncommon for those who were at death's door to go to the hospital to request that they be heard in confession before dying, in order to enter the afterlife free of the burden. of his sins and hoping to more quickly complete his passage through the fields of Mortis.

“Yes, it is what I need. A father figure to confess everything to. A father figure who can guarantee absolution. " The old man laughed, but the sound was bitter and lacking in joy. "How ironic!"

"Sorry brother, what do you mean? I do not understand you."

"No, you can't. Of course not." The old man chuckled slightly. "But it does not matter. It does not matter. Like most of our short, pitiful lives. It doesn't matter in the slightest. "

The old man coughed loudly again.

But where to start? Where to start? " repeated the old man.

"You could start by telling me your real name," Wilkud suggested.

“Yes, that would be sensible, since you are going to hear me in confession. It would be pointless to confess under another name. After all, where would that lead me, with the austere Mortis. "

The old man groaned in pain as he rolled over onto his back.

"Very well. Let me tell you everything. My name is Viktor Drichey, son of Brechtal Drichey, and I was born and raised in the Kaleth Empire, in a town called Chipped, located ten miles southwest of Genbofen, next to the Black Mountains, on the border of that cursed vampire den from Transylvania. I was born a year before the reign of the famous Emperor Augustus.

Father Wilkud let out a soft gasp and leaned back in his chair as if he had been startled.

"That?" The old man fixed on the confessor very black eyes that seemed piercing like needles in the flickering candlelight.

"You are wrong, brother," Wilkud said. "That would make you have more than ..."

"Two hundred years old," the dying priest interrupted with a gasp. "Yes, I know. Two hundred and seventeen, to be exact. "

Brother Mateo's mind, or rather Viktor Drichey, must have been confused, Wilkud thought. He didn't know what he was saying. He certainly looked old, but more than two hundred years?

"Go on," Wilkud said as he prepared to listen carefully to each word.

“As I said, before the reign of Emperor Augustus. You will wonder how I could have lived more than two hundred years. Well, I'll confess that too. It's simple, actually. I am a necromancer.

The look the old man gave Wilkud along with these words plunged his father into stunned silence. The old man, Mateo or Viktor or whatever he was called, he was clearly insane.

In the first place, the fact that he could have lived more than two hundred years was ridiculous. Second, how could he be a necromancer, a dark sorcerer, a summoner of spirits? Necromancers were the enemies of Clerics, Priests, Paladins, and other servants of the gods.

They desecrated the holy resting places of the dead and plundered the kingdom of Mortis with their depraved morbid charms.

It was obvious that Wilkud could not trust a single word spoken by the man.

Wilkud wondered what had caused this man to go mad and lose his mind in this way.

Perhaps it was the consequence of all the years spent dealing with dying men and all the horrors he had witnessed?

Maybe it was due to something else that had happened more recently?

It was possible that he was the result of having dealt with a true conjurer of the dead.

Was this his own fate? Wilkud wondered grimly, momentarily distracted.

"Are you surprised?" gasped the old man.

“N… no, brother. No, of course not. It is just that…"

"You have consented to hear my confession," the old man reminded him sharply.

Wilkud tried to pull himself together even though he felt intense discomfort of the cause of which he was not quite sure.

Was it an understandable concern when faced with such a mental imbalance?

Or was it because the old priest's statement was plausible to him?

It was true that he had consented to hear the old man's confession, but he openly doubted the veracity of anything he might hear.

Yet he would hear it, if only to make the old priest's last hours more bearable.

After all, it was his duty, Wilkud reminded himself, though at this moment it was a duty he honestly wished not to have, no matter how many confessions he had heard up to that day.

"Go on, brother. I will hear your confession. "

"In that case, I'll start at the beginning."

And as the old man spoke in the crackling heat of the rekindled fire, Wilkud felt the cold close on him like the icy hand of death itself.