Arda, Middle-Earth, Dunland, The Crystal Caves: T.A. 2994

Mab picked her way across the Healing Cave that she had set her workshop up in. The bodies on the floor were separated by severity of condition. Those that had only the very start of the symptoms, little more than a stomach ache and a bad case of diarrhoea, were kept at the front of the cave. It was a little colder, but the air was fresh and pure, so after the stuffiness of some of the Dwelling Caves few complained. The more severe cases were kept further back, pure air could do little for them now and the heat of the fire was stronger closer to the middle of the cave.

The healers clustered round the patients, fussing over one and rubbing ointment on another. Their quick frightened movements looked rather like rats when they knew they'd been caught. Mab stepped over one of them with her ear pressed to a patient's chest. Just a few years ago Mab would have little cause to even go see a traveling healer…but now it seemed she couldn't escape them.

The young Sorceress passed the patients in the back of the cave, little more than rotting flesh on somehow still breathing bone. It would have been kinder, she thought, to put them out of their misery…many of them begged for it at the end. But this was a strange and cruel plague, only killing when the last ounce of hope left the body. That sounded like 'Mystic Talk' as The Leomhann would call it, but it was terror inducing to realize how very true it was.

She'd seen people hold on to a hope that they would get better, or at least that this was all a dream, then when that fled them, they hung onto the hope that it would kill them long before they became the living skeletons of the Burning Caves. That never happened… they always became those skeletons and only when their last hope left them, and they became resigned to their fate of continuous agony, did this cruel plague finally release them.

She'd left the Healing caves behind rather quicker than she should have, certainly much quicker than she wished she had. While the Healing Caves were vile now, and hardly fitting of the name healing, they were a mile high better than the Burning caves.

A dark collection of rooms that before the plague had been used to store meat in, now filled with the rank smell of burning flesh. There were bodies in here as well, some of them even still alive, but unlike its neighbour these were not lain together in neat little rows for the convenience of the healer. Or resting on soft wool or hay and wrapped in as many blankets as the healers could spare…no, these did not even have clothes on their backs. Their bare and rotted flesh left uncovered for all to see. In the middle of each of these caves stood a fire, or bone-fire as the burners called them, much larger than the Healing Caves' blaze and with a far ranker smell.

Large burly men tossed the brittle corpses into the bone-fires, their mouths and noses covered by thin rags tied around their heads. These were the Burners; they disposed of the bodies as quickly and as efficiently as possible. There were simply too many bodies to bury, even if that had been the custom in these lands. And, it was known that the Enemy didn't possess bodies that were burned, though quite frankly what spirit in his right mind, would think it a clever idea to take one of- these poor souls' bodies? Most of their legs were gnawed away into thin stick like mockeries of legs and their arms only spared that fate by crumbling away into nothing. It was an Abomination as the Elder of her tribe would have said, well would have said before he caught the plague himself.

From the corner of the room Mab heard a groan, it was small and highly pitched… like a child's voice. Mab felt the bile rise within her throat and her knees knocked together like they'd done when she was a young girl. It couldn't be possible, there wasn't a child still breathing in here…the younger you were the quicker the sickness took you. So, it just wasn't possible and yet as she listened, Mab could clearly hear the tell-tale sound of a child's whimper.

She didn't have to pick herself across this floor, for all the bodies were stacked high ready to be burned. And in one of these stacks lay the child who she could still hear whimpering. Her hands guided her around the piles of quickly decomposing bodies when her eyes failed her, the sound of the child was becoming louder which meant only one thing…she was getting closer.

'Help…Help me.'

Mab scrambled towards the voice, her hands sliding over the faces of the dead as she searched blindly for her goal. Then…when she had all but given up hope the voice came again, so loud this time that she could swear the child was standing right behind her.

'You…you…found me! Please help me…this is all new to me.'

Mab bent forward and peered down at the boy's face, but it was hard to see anything once you were past the reach of the fire's glow. She could only just make out the child's features: they were more than just skeletal…they were bone. The flesh had rotted away almost entirely, and the skin that remained was mottled green and foul smelling. One eye rolled in the skull's eye-socket, as it clattered its teeth together trying to make sound again.

'Goheno nin'

The girl's hand jerked away but not nearly quick enough, for the bony claw of the possessed corpse was on her…scrabbling at her arm like it was a piece of rope they just couldn't get a firm grip on. Mab screamed and the yells of the Burners in the distance took on a more frantic note. The creature wailed in-between clattering of its rotted teeth, whether it was more of the enemy's strange language or just plain gibberish Mab no longer had the presence of mind to guess. Around her the body stacks trembled with the strength of her rage, in years to come she would have the focus to do amazing things with the reach of her magic, but now – if her mind was not focused on its outcome, it would never come to pass. And right now all her energies were dedicated to wriggling out of that vice like grasp. But no matter how hard she wacked it or struggle the thing just wouldn't let go.

The sound of heavy footsteps from behind her almost gave Mab the strength to yank her arm free, but just before she did the creature dug its claw deep into her arm, leaving a trail of blood down her right side. She didn't know whether she was screaming again or whether she had just never stopped in the first place.

The light of a fire torch filled the chamber and for the first time Mab was able to see her attacker in all his repugnant glory. It had once been a child; the body that is, the tiny size spoke for its self. Small pincer like hands reached out to her as the tiny skull clattered to her in the spirit's tongue.

Then fire encompassed her sight and the creature screamed; Mab scrambled out of reach of both the body and the Burner's torch. She lay there, her heart in her throat and her breath coming in short panicked pants and tried to collect herself. Still shaking, her right hand reached in to the pouch on her belt and fished out a hand full of flower petals. She pressed the sweet-smelling flowers to her nose and breathed in deeply, they blocked the smell of the burning bodies at least, but whether they would influence this plague as they had others in the past, Mab was starting to have her doubts.

Whatever the case, one thing at least was clear… she needed to get out of this cave, a handful of posies couldn't block the smell of death forever.