6
"May I?" Shathalia asked eagerly standing before the remains of Nagaara village she had visited previously. She hoped Nivrin would say yes.
"May you what?" Nivrin asked not looking at her. He was busy examining part of the outer edge of the village remains. He did not care enough to even glance over at her, he thought he might be on to something in the area he was studying.
"Create minions for myself, of course. I can feel their bodies yearning for life." Shathalia fluttered her fingers towards the direction of the many bodies she could raise within the buried houses.
Shathalia had quite the time adjusting to the new grouping situation, but found herself in good hands and, most of all, in a good mood. No temperamental shifts, no change of heart, but she found herself in a spot of adventure she had not yet experienced. Nivrin, although intimidating, was quite charming and knew how to talk to her, it was as if he knew how and when to talk to her before she would erupt into an emotional lapse.
"It would be rude to the dead here," Arrik blurted with Vaskar agreeing behind him with a nod.
"But the bodies lack a soul and are no more," Dalvyr was in agreement with his fellow Sylvari, " to deny her deathly companions given the situation and the dire nature of what is at stake, I say the more the merrier, personally." Dalvry looked to Nivrin lifting his eyes from the pile of remains and debris.
"I don't see why not," Nivrin said sighing now looking to the two Sylvari. He too agreed with Arrik, but given Dalvyr's argument, he was swayed, "They are dead anyways."
Shathalia smiled and began a ritual. Her arms waved lightly as green and black magic began to encompass her. The bodies buried beneath the debris of what was once Nagaara village began to make their way dramatically from the dirt in the same unholy auras. He wondered why all the bodies were the same color. Sworn verbally inquired what he wondered.
"Why are they all black?" Sworn mentioned watching a few of the dead bodies slump over to Shathalia in their dull ebon coloring.
"I do not know, but I know they are now my own," Shathalia said with a smile.
"Shadows maybe?" Verona asked knowing some of the necromancer arts and their fiends.
"That's not right," Chain said eyeing them over.
"They should be dirty, bloody, and missing skin, not," Sworn started trying to find the right word, "charcoal." Sworn shook his head.
"Perhaps they were burned first?" Kydrei asked too wondering of the discoloration.
"No evidence here suggests flames of any kind," Arrik said recalling when they were here last.
"Odd." Chain commented looking over the minions. He noticed even their insides and the blood that dripped were blackened in different degrees."
"Might they be the remains of those shadow-things we fought last we were here?" Arrik asked with a shiver thinking perhaps they were.
"I do not believe so," Nivrin said looking them over again.
"My new minions have bodies and aren't transparent like shadows," Shathalia said somewhat peeved.
"Doesn't matter guys. Whatever the case, let's get to work," Nivrin commanded whipping his head back to the area were he searched for clues.
Some time passed as the group searched. Shathalia's risen minions raided their own burial site. Collecting together to pick up heavy objects, sifting through the debris, and putting aside anything that might tell the story of how and why this happened to the village.
"What exactly are we looking for out here?" Verona asked kicking some dirt that resembled a face in her mind. Her beliefs and experience led her to believe there were clues to this tragedy elsewhere, not at the village. Starring into the face, she really wondered why and how she ended u in this jungle.
"We search for anything-" Nivrin started, but Arrik interrupted.
"Out of the ordinary. Got it."
Nivrin shot Arrik a glance tinged with slight annoyance. "Arrik, everything alright?"
"Yes, why?" Arrik asked with butterflies in his stomach. He was uneasy being back in the area. Uneasy about Shathalia's minions, how close they were to Arrik's past haunts, let alone Shathalia herself. Being in the group with her drove him crazy, however he was an adult and in the end, he could handle it, despite not wanting to.
"Wondering is all. Not like you to interrupt me." Nivrin looked Arrik over in that moment, knowing Arrik was hiding something.
"Nivrin," Arrik began with a grin, "I've known you for how long now? I know what, how, why and when you're going to say something. Nothing new."
Nivrin wanted to slap the Norn, but realized this was part of his ongoing plan: Nivrin was as predictable as he wanted them to believe. "True. My apology."
Arrik smiled, now scanning the ground for anything of importance. He looked to the side seeing the risen minions do a lot of work for Shathalia. They were lifting what remained of their belongings, their village, and their old homes and not even knowing it, in essence desecrating their own graves; sifting through memories, hopes, and the once daily lives they lived without knowing they were doing so.
"That's just not right…" Vaskar said before Arrik could say it.
"Yes, I completely agree. They are their own grave robbers Niv," Arrik commented atop Vaskar's words now looking back to his guild master.
Nivrin looked over to the minions, watching them as they aided in the investigation as Shathalia instructed. He too felt how wrong it was, but shoved it aside for the matter at hand.
"I see workers working. How is that something to disagree about? They are helping us investigate at a faster pace. If anything, you complaining is more of the hindrance here." Nivrin walked over to where his fellow fallen Whispers Agent had been strapped to the effigy.
Arrik huffed as Vaskar looked offended. Vaskar motioned to walk over to Nivrin and tell him how he was wrong. How their bodies weren't meant to be alive in un-life. Vaskar wanted to give the guild master some insight on better etiquette, but Arrik stopped him, extending his hammer in Vaskar's way.
"No. It is fine," Arrik said humbly, "Leave it be and do what we had set out to do."
"But," Vaskar started before Arrik merely shook his head. Vaskar sulked and whipped around, back to the searching.
"Well, this is peculiar," Tipps said picking up a clump of something.
Nivrin sharply shifted his gaze to the Asura. The others did as well.
"What is?" Kydrei wondered aloud in query.
"What did you find?" Nivrin asked leaving the effigy alone for the time being. He wanted to pull the entire effigy out of the ground, but Tipps interrupted the action.
"Potatoes," Tipps said with a plain stare.
Nivrin did not respond as quick as he would have liked. His face showed just how baffled he was at the thought, wondering if the Asura had a brain malfunction or if perhaps Tipps was hungry.
"Potatoes?" Dalvyr asked, too bewildered; he walked over to see what they were talking about.
"Yes. Potatoes." Tipps bent over and picked up a couple more. He threw one to Dalvyr, one to Chain, and the last to Nivrin.
Nivrin caught it and immediately knew why these potatoes were different.
"They are wooden," Chain said looking it over, "Are you positive these are even potatoes?"
"I am. Look at them in detail. They are potatoes. I would know. Trust me," acclaimed the Asura with a quaint look. He loved potatoes. These were not the favorable vegetable Tipps knew and adored. They weren't made of the typical substance in which could be mashed, cut, or baked, but instead made of petrified wood, as if left there for centuries under the sun.
"No, the Asura is right. They are potatoes, but they are made of old wood," Nivrin said wondering of the timber vegetables.
"Maybe they are toys of sorts?" Dalvyr offered looking over his.
"I don't believe they are. Here, look at this one," Tipps said tossing another to Dalvyr.
"We came all this way for toy potatoes?" Verona asked now wondering again why she was in this forsaken jungle.
"Oh my!" Dalvyr said looking over the newly acquired potato.
"What is it Dal?" Nivrin and Arrik asked around the same time.
"This potato is half regular potato and half wooden, as if the wood part is a disease of sorts…"
Nivrin's look of confusion only heightened. "Give it here Dalvyr," Nivrin said hopping down from the middle mound of the prior Whispers Agent.
Dalvyr tossed it to Nivrin, where he got a better look.
"This is interesting. The potato is suffering from a wooden plague," Nivrin said watching the wooden parts creep its way over the potato.
"Is it related to Mordremoth?" Chain asked legitimately.
"Perhaps it is, we do not know. We only know these are wooden potatoes…" Nivrin responded.
"What of this? Maybe we are looking at a correlation between the Elder Dragon and these little finds," Kydrei said brushing dirt off something on the ground before him. The rest looks to see Kydrei pick up a limb; the arm had once belonged to one of the villagers, at least at first glance. The arm was intact and even had part of tattered clothing attached, however both cloth and flesh were made out of hardened dirt with vines entwined.
"Is that what I think it is?" Sworn asked looking it over.
"It is a limb off a villager, however I highly doubt the villagers were of the elemental type," Kydrei mentioned with dull humor.
Nivrin walked over to Kydrei with the rest not too far behind, also interested.
"See?" Kydrei said raising it, "It appears Sylvari, but earthen. Something is definitely amiss of all this. What lived here again Niv? My specialties lie in Cantha and the Tarnished Coast. Well, southern Tarnished Coast."
Nivrin looked to his avian companion, "Uh, mostly centaur and some humans," Nivrin said while baffled a little at the appendage.
"Humans -and- Centaurs?" Verona asked with doubt, "Highly unlikely. We've been at each other's throats for quite a long time now. A village with both living inside? No. Just no."
Verona. Those in this village were never part of that ongoing feud. They were among many villages in the area who still participated in druidic ways, much like Ventari. In fact, it is his ideals these miscellaneous groups and villages still practice." Nivrin looked back to the remains after talking to Verona. He was baffled and confused.
"Ventari?" Verona said, "Where have I heard that name?"
"It is the one our entire race has given thanks to. His teachings and writings are what we are all about." Dalvyr said recalling the tablet that hangs in the Omphalos Chamber back in the grove.
"Oh, that's right," she said nodding her head, "That guy. He was a centaur, right?"
"Yes," Dalvyr replied with a nod.
"Wait, so there's Humans and Centaurs living together out here in the wastes?" Chain asked wondering the same as Verona. He was a little slow at times, merely because of all the things running through his mind. That or all the battles fought in the Borderlands corrupting his mindset from properly functioning.
"Yes. There are many small villages and groups wandering around together that still practice his teachings and live by them. It is not just the Sylvari that admire him." Nivrin looked to the side after a few seconds, trying to correlate the druids of the era and the Elder Dragon.
"Centaur live out here?" Tipps asked remember seeing them when visiting Queensdale.
"Yes. Some too in other areas," Nivrin began.
"Those nasty creatures also infest the Shiverpeaks too in some areas…" Arrik chimed.
"They aren't just located around Queensdale and Kessex," Nivrin looked to Arrik after hearing his comment, "Or Shiverpeaks. These are the tribes that wandered this area back in the day. When the wastes were still green." Nivrin began to see an obvious connection in his mind after he spoke, but wondered of the details.
"Also, a reason why you do not see Sylvari in these parts is because these druidic orders around here give them exalted status, as if the personal army of mother nature herself. These groups feel they are unworthy of the Sylvari's presence and escort them away back towards the edge of the wastes, back into Brisban and Caledon," Kydrei added.
"That's odd. Why not worship them at that point?" Sworn asked not understanding how these druidic groups work.
"Because they instead worship nature and the natural order of the world. Sylvari are only born from what they worship, thus being seen on high esteem," Kydrei explained it perfectly.
"I thought the Centaur migrated over to Queensdale a long time ago…" Tipps thought aloud.
"Not all of them. You really expect all of an entire race to just up and walk away from their homes? And at that collect to one central place?" Nivrin asked with a smile while dropping the half wooden potato.
"This isn't right…" Shathalia said with an arm out towards the rubble her servants were sifting through.
"Now what?" Nivrin said wondering just what Shathalia meant. He wanted to just study the arm Kydrei still held.
"My new companions were not only searching for evidence of this new dragon for me, but also moving stuff out of the way so I can make more minions… and…I'm unsure how many more complete minions I can conjure…"
"And what?" Nivrin asked seeing Shathalia falter in properly explaining herself.
"And I was only able to raise half of some of them, less of others..." Shathalia nodded to the one in which she originally made her comment from.
The undead stood on two blackened legs, however just above the stomach of this humanoid was a Sylvari-like body with dirt beneath it. It was limp and hanging over the risen part, as Shathalia had no control over the nature-corrupted parts.
"Wait, you can raise those Jungle Troll things we fought against?" Arrik asked looking it over still wondering why he was looking at it.
"No," Nivrin commented tilting his head, "Look at it with your eyes Norn, that is no Jungle Troll…" Nivrin said blinking realizing they had their first clue.
The body Shathalia had raised was part of a Centaur, only she could control the front two legs. The rest was made up of familiar foliage. Vines lined throughout, leaves and some flora abundant about the corpse, and hardened dirt caked underneath the rest of this risen half horse humanoid.
"Oh my Bear! It's a Sylvari Centaur!" Arrik said lowering his guard from amazement.
Nivrin darted his eyes to the minions Shathalia had already risen and noticed it wasn't just debris covering the all-black of each of their undead entirety, but instead was entwined into their makeup. They hadn't been completely turned by the nature spell, and yet Shathalia had control over the parts that weren't infested by the disease of the wild.
"We need to move out. Now," Nivrin said dropping the arm Kydrei found.
"Why?" Chain asked whipping out his greatsword as if it were time for a fight against enemies.
"Well, we don't have to. Unless you wish to be viney and full of dirt." Nivrin said as he turned his back and began heading towards the mountain range in the distance. Chain nodded, and put his greatsword at his back, following Nivrin. The rest too were soon leaving behind the buried village.
Verona gasped looking back to the dirt pile she had shifted with her foot. It didn't resemble a face because it was in fact someone's face before becoming completely made of soil and undergrowth .