Nehmasis

A Divine Childhood - 2 - Umbra

The Twelfth Year of the Blessed Day of Righteous Vengeance, Time Immortal, Fields of the Lost, Outside the Fourth Gate of the City of Ersetu, Underworld

Nehmasis

The shattered soul crawls along the silken grey tears of the Fields of the Lost on disjointed limbs. It's movements a bizarre lurching motion, like a marionette with an insane puppetmaster. Covered completely in grey ash, the soul would be difficult to see, if not for those psychotic motions. Every so often, it stops, sniffs, and eyes the same grey color of the Fields dart to and fro sightlessly. The blank orbs blend with the mangled skin covered in the same fine silt.

"What sorrows do you have?" I ask it.

Its head twitches my way, nostrils flared, eyes still fruitlessly seeking vision. It inhales a rattling breath before it speaks. "Pain," it rasps out the small amount of air in its lungs, the word fading at the end.

"From what?" I ask, watching dispassionately as it begins to pat the ground before it, sending little eddies of grey dust into the air. Flakes of grey fall from its form. A being made of tears and sorrow.

"So hungry," it whines on another breath.

"You are an Obahaun," I say dismissively. "You were greedy, gluttonous, destroying others to feed yourself selfish desires, and now your soul yearns for the lifeblood of others. Lifeblood that isn't here," I add mockingly.

I step away from the Forgotten soul and wander to the next. The silken tears slide cooly under my bare toes. Whispers and wisps of ash swirl in lazy puffs with each step. Every so often, I feel a phantom tug on my skin, but nothing substantial is ever there.

The Obahaun lunges at me, its mouth wide with far more razor-sharp teeth than any creature of the Above boasts. Its breath is as putrid as any rotten carcass could be. Its eyes are rolled back in its head, showing only the greyish-whites as it blindly seeks my blood to feed on.

I laugh, dancing out of its grasp easily. I could end this monster of a soul, but what is the point? It barely belongs here, on the edge of the Fields, far from the other wandering souls. This thing is lucky it hasn't been tossed into Eruk for an eternity.

"Odd," I muse out loud, "that such a despicable thing is so far from the entrance to hell."

The Obahaun hears my voice and turns its blind eyes my way, rage and hatred burning in its shallow depths.

"Shallow depths," I laugh at myself, now. "No such thing, and yet your pathetic soul is the perfect example of such a thing."

It swings its arms at me. I watch as its fingers curl, its claws a mockery of true ones. Longer than my arm, sharp, but too thin and brittle to be of any use.

I grab and twist, feeling skin slough off under my grip until its weak claws are buried in its chest. The Obahuan shrieks in fury and thrashes in pain until it manages to tear itself free. A moment later, other shrieks echo across the desolate expanse of this lone, forgotten part of the Fields.

Time to leave.

My feet are nimble and so fast that all you see is a dark blur racing over the Fields of the Lost. The sky in Ersetu is always a bit dim but as I run, it begins to echo dawn, with purple and pink spilling across the inky expanse.

It is beautiful, my home. Even on days like today, when I can feel the weight of hāzeni, the great sorrow, stirring in the forgotten and broken souls wandering lost in the Fields.

I snuck out when the sky was still dark and slipped through the Fourth Gate. My dagger, etched with just the slightest bit of Grandfather's soul-rending black iron, is utterly fabulous for cutting the pain away from lost souls.