Threads of the Soul

The slender fingers of the decrepit hand wrapped tight around his wrist, locking together in a vice-like grip and squeezing tight around Seth's wrist. Yet despite it all, Seth barely felt the grip in all honesty. It was as if he was arm wrestling a child, a severely atrophied one at that and he wasn't exactly sporting a body builder's physique himself. A

In fact, if he so wanted, he could tear the arm off just by pulling his arm away with enough force. There was something that stopped him. It wasn't instincts or curiosity or anything of the sort, instead it was a raspy, strained voice emanating from what he had previously assumed to be a corpse. A voice that sounded like it hadn't spoken in decades.

"Dusty old pile of bones, eh? Well that may I be, but that doesn't mean I can't still whoop your backside for trying to steal from me."

The not-corpse raised its head, gazing at Seth with a pair of glowing emerald flames flickering where eyes should be. When Seth finally saw the librarians face, or what was left of it, he couldn't help but feel a twinge of pity, instead of fear. He was sure that many would be screaming their heads off, being grabbed by a crypt keeper and looking into those dead emerald eyes, yet for Seth it was honestly on the tamer side of what he had seen so far.

In fact, it wasn't even the first time he had seen a zombie. His very first encounter had been with one, after all, and he looked much more horrific than this one, and spoke a hell of a lot less.

While the first zombie he met was a pile of liquefying and actively rotting flesh, this one was much the opposite. In fact it felt wrong to refer to him as a zombie, he looked more like a mummy with its bandages removed or a somewhat well preserved Draugr.

His flesh was wrinkled and dried, almost indistinguishable from a prune, as it clung tight to his bones. He had so little muscle definition that Seth could feel the joints of the man's knuckles digging in as he held Seth's wrist.

The draugr's face was devoid of emotion, most likely because it was nearly impossible for him to express it. His lips had peeled back, merging with his blackened gums, revealing his teeth in a permanent snarl. The emerald flames he had in place of eyes flickered with every subtle movement of his head, yet they couldn't display the secrets of his soul like many others could. His skin clung so tight to his skull that Seth could see every intricacy of his bone structure, except for that which was hidden behind a great big bushy beard.

Yes, surprisingly enough the draugr still had an impressive beard of tangled white hair clinging stubbornly to his face and draping down his chest. A beard that began to tremble as an eery sound escaped the Draugr's non-existent lips. It took Seth a few moments to realise he was laughing, although it could be called more of an evil overlord cackle. At the same moment, the Librarian released Seth's wrist and leaned back in his chair, thoroughly amused in his own antics.

"I'm only messing with you son, don't worry about it. I do it to everyone who wanders back here. Sometimes it's fun to hide around a corner and leap out at them instead, Hahaha!

Lass with the intense eyes nearly blew my damn head of with her sparkle fingers when I did it to her."

Slapping the table a few times, he cackled to himself without a shred of expression on his seemingly centuries old face, it was honestly quite a disturbing sight. Letting him have his laugh, Seth's eyes drifted back down to the book that the Librarian was reading. A thick and heavy looking leather bound tome that looked straight out of the middle ages, with metallic latch to lock it shut.

What was most curious about it, however, was its contents. Line after line of intricate, hand written symbols. The same symbolic language that Angel was composed of and their equipment tattoos were made from.

"Ah, You must be wondering about that, huh son? You're the first one to take interest in that. The others are too busy with their special new gifts."

Shifting his eyes back to the bearded undead, Seth gave him a wordless and questioning look as the Draugr responded with an eager grin. At least, Seth thought that he was grinning, it was really impossible to tell, but he felt like that was right.

"Well, That's my gift. While others can shoot lightning from their fingers or lift mountains, I got the gift of a whole new language. Oh. but don't worry about me, I couldn't be happier. Let the youngin's have their flashy powers, There is more than enough power in this knowledge. Nothing better than a new book, eh?"

"What kind of power exactly?"

"All sorts, if you use it right. For example, I know that that there ring on your finger lets you teleport, doesn't it?"

A shiver ran down Seth's spine, giving him the sudden urge to cover himself up, as he felt completely naked under the watchful gaze of this elderly Lich. Yet he controlled himself, resisting his naturalistic prey urges under the intense predatory gaze, he simply gave the man a subtle nod.

"May I have a closer look at it son? I promise I'll give it back. I would swear on my life but, well, you can see how that might be an issue now."

He cackled again as he held out his wrinkled prune hand to take the ring. Hesitating for a few seconds, Seth eventually pushed the ring off of his finger with his thumb before placing it into the awaiting grasp of the decrepit old man.

The Draugr nodded his head in appreciation before starting to examine the runic detailing on the ring closely, even placing a pair of half moon eye-glasses on the end of his noise despite not having any eyes to begin with.

Muttering softly to himself as he worked, he often referred back to the book before returning to the intricate carvings on the small metal band. However, something was gnawing at the back of Seth's mind. It wasn't the urge to get his ring back, he wasn't obsessive or thought of it as something precious, but instead an annoyance at something the man had said. Or more to the point, something that he didn't say.

"If your gift is the knowledge of the systems runes then..."

"Then why do I look like a sun dried raisin?"

"Well... Yeah, Kinda. I know some people have side effects but this seems a little extreme."

"In that case you'd be right. I think the system called it a... oh what was it again dear? Ah yes, thank you. An Abberation. One of my scores was too low, thanks to my dusty old bones, but my mind was high enough. So when we all got changed, I was spared turning into one of those monsters, but it didn't help me much in the looks department."

"Is that why you're sat over here all alone? They think you're a monster?"

"What? Oh god no. I'm sat over here because I wanted to get away from them. Some of them are really annoying, especially that guy who never shuts up about his fudge tokens or whatever."

Ah, that made sense. Seth had spent many years of his youth as the lone boy in the corner, playing games or reading books by himself, so he knew that feeling all too well. His sister had always said that he was a bit too comfortable by himself, but how could being comfortable be a bad thing?

"Plus they've all got their little groups to keep out the 'monsters' anyways. But who cares about that? We have knowledge, fresh knowledge at our fingertips. It says here that the ring has 3 uses before it has to recharge for... ah, here we go. 3 uses every 24 hours. That's a pretty nifty piece of jewellery you've got yourself, son."

He scribbled a few notes into the massive brick like tome, actually using a quill to do so, before tossing the ring back to Seth after drawing a quick sketch of it. As Seth placed the ring back onto his finger, the Librarian kept scribbling away, unaware of what important information he had given Seth, as well as the ideas running through his head.

For a while now he had been wondering about how long the ring would recharge, if it even would at all. There were many situations in which he could have used it since he wasted all his charges, and it definitely wasn't because he had forgotten that he had it.

But finding out secrets of his own equipment wasn't the best part. If he could learn to read it like the Librarian could, then all of his enemies secrets would be exposed. Well, maybe not all of them, he doubted anyone was going to let him take a close look at their sword unless it was stabbed through his chest. However if he could read the tattoos, it would give him an edge.

The worst part of equipment like this was you never knew what an opponent might have up their sleeve, literally. But if he could read their equipment like a book, while they were none the wiser, that would definitely be a massive advantage when he inevitably came to blows with more people. People who weren't idiots which relied solely on their powers and whose egos he could exploit. Plus, who knows what else this mysterious runic language was capable of?

As Seth gazed at the Librarian with a profound, and hungry look in his silver eyes, this time it was the fearsome undead's turn to feel a shiver run down his spine.