Ashes of the Fallen

Chapter 1: Delve In Deep

Nemera wasn’t used to all this company.

Sweeping her long hair back out of habit more than anything else she pulled her treasured hat over her eyes and took a deep breath. It would be the last one she’d get for a while. 

Tarragon wasn’t her usual spot for plugging customers but with the recent battle most people wanted to get in, pay their dues and get out. But not tonight. There…on her left, chatting amicably despite the circumstances was a war hero and…an idiot. Holding up her work just like always.

Biting back her annoyance, Nemera tried to let her mind drift into the familiar zone of mindless work to be done and pulled up her sleeves. She couldn’t complain. After all, it was the night shift. Alone or not, there was work to be done. They could wait til morning for all she cared.

“Excuse me!”

She fought the urge to ignore the call, to retreat into the back alleys and never return. But she was taught to face her demons head on. Nemera couldn’t help but smirk at the irony.

“Can I get some service, please?”

Nemera’s rapid heartbeat drummed out a rhythm matched only by her own impatient tapping until the single patrons became a wall of voice she was all too familiar with. Now. She nodded wordlessly at the crowd to move, a young blonde girl no older than ten waiting patiently at the front. She had the greenest eyes….

Nemera clicked her teeth, chastising herself for falling into that same habit. She focused on every practised half breath she took like a mantra, falling into that deep, dark calm she knew too well. Before her breath became…nothing. Exactly as her Master taught her. 

The dull reminder of loss became adrenaline that blurred into a haze of shapes that turned her vision colour blind. Her steps were lighter than air even as the mass of people began to thin and the stifling heat made her distinctly aware of how long she had left to go.

“Help me, please!”

Nemera let out a breath of frustration, not realising her mistake until the thrum of noise became deafening. Staggering behind the bar she dragged up a sign for last call, the surge of bodies almost overwhelming even her. The sour yet sharp scent of incense and alcohol made her cough but there was no relief left in her lungs. Damn it all to Hellgrind.

“You could help, y’know?” She called out to the duo in front of her, half desperate to start bursting into more than a few colourful curses.

Normally, Nemera would be completely mad to ask anyone for help but most of the clientele she dealt with were a little more…translucent than the guests she now had at her Spirit Bar. They seemed unperturbed by the mismatched rush of shades and spirits interrupting their evening night cap but only one dared to speak. The other was still an idiot.

“I did not give him to you to sit on the sidelines, Deathkeeper. Summon him.”

“But-“

“Nemera. You know the consequences.”

She really didn’t want to listen to some stuck up, two faced General of an army and her random lackey who started this entire mess she had to clean up. But, when Basra the Gorgon of Tarragon tells you to do something you do it. 

Nemera clicked her fingers and summoned her Agar.

Every Traited, be it shadow or flame or everything in between all must pair with another to keep the curse of the Eternal Death at bay. To fade to dust together, as an Oathed or alone as an Agar the latter only recently discovered.

Some believed it was a blessing, others saw it as blasphemous or cowardly but Nemera would never mock the choice of Oathed or Agar. It was what kept her Trait, her grimoire and in turn, herself alive.

“Easy now, Trollian. We ain’t here to sightsee.” Nemera said, sternly attempting to channel the same discipline her Master prided herself on.

A ball of flame burned away all her precious shadows a little too voraciously for her liking, the pyro spirit far too eager to help and far less refined than her previous companion. Nemera sighed, attempting to focus on the fact she was still alive even without her dragon. Nemera closed her eyes, ignoring the ache in her chest and tried to focus on the task at hand.

“Comet, give me a little light and I’ll let you out to play for a little while.”

The Inferno Trollian whirred in a circle, the little appendages that made up his arms sending embers scattering across the room before he disappeared into a spray of joyous fireworks. The long corridor of furnished wood and flickering lanterns began to puff out one by one as she worked through the crowd steadily, her dwindling supply of shadows getting scarcer by the minute. So much for a usable Agar.

“Comet! Come back! Argh, for-“

Nemera didn’t need this. 

“Fuck it.”

Grabbing the nearest bottle she could find, she poured all of her anger and frustration into every crevice of her shadows, her lack of concentration filtering through by the minute and lobbed it right into the greedy pyro’s path. Basra didn’t move a muscle even as her whole world went up in flames. 

For Nemera, it already had.

The shades made no attempt to flee. Embroiled in flame they embraced it like an old friend, coiling around the room in a sea of dark matter until finally, Nemera’s vision began to waver. The flickering lights of her comfort zone became nothing more than an illusion, leaving her stranded in an empty field with only the thousands of candles she had summoned for company.

A row of flame a mile wide stretched along an endlessly burning sky that was so close she could touch it. The ground beneath her feet was no longer solid wooden planks but uneven marshy ground now scattered with blankets of ash. Ashes that had once made up the people of Tarragon. The people her Master swore to protect. The people her dragon had not.

The memory of that night stung at Nemera’s eyes, setting the long, thin handle of her scythe into the marshy bog below. The blade receded back into its chamber and returned it to the void of her Shadow Trait, creating even more darkness than what was necessary. 

Comet was nowhere to be found.

Cursing more at herself than anyone else, she saw no signs of the fabled General who had rudely interrupted her busy night shift. All Nemera saw was the glint of pristine white armour that irritated her the more she looked at it. She was from the Excelliars. Fan-fucking-tastic.

Letting out a breath of frustration more out of habit than necessity, Nemera didn’t have to guess long to notice the shaking knees and wide eyed expression of a glorified messenger girl. But her Master had taught her how important first impressions were to someone outside of Shuriken and she wasn’t about to cause a riot so quickly after the last one. 

“What, never seen a necromancer before?”