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ark is the night
and dark are the cloaks /
Of the Meguahari!
Dark are the souls of those who die unshriven, unloved, and unforgiven /
By any god...
And such are the Meguahari!
You doubt what I say? You doubt such as they /
Walk the night, stalk the fields of the dead?
Listen well, doubting child. Listen well to my tale / Of the Meguahari!
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Image description.
Dark is the night
and dark are the cloaks of the Meguahari...
Image drawn by
Quellion
for Mystical Empire, used with permission. |
There was a sorcerer who went forth one eve, with his cloak on his back and his
staff in his hand. And he sought old battlegrounds that he might weave a cunning
spell of hellish might. Found such a field did the magick-wielder, set his staff
in its ancient clay, there where the blood had dried long since and the corbies
ceased from crying.
The power of
Ecuá he called and magicks he wove, strung from the lusts and the ancient hates
of the men who had died in the earth at his feet, dragged from the ground like a
gutloop loosed and yanked from a ewe by a hraven's bill. Up came souls who had
stabbed in the back, slit a young throat, stolen and lied - ripped from uneasy
rest they came, to tell him of how they had died. Up from uneasy graves they
came, murder and deathrack wrapping their bones, hatred clacking their teeth.
Meguahari! Wailed the wind, /
Whisking the fog to skeins of grey -
Listen, child, and believe what I say! - /
Up came their bones with an eerie light in the frightful sockets sunk in the
skulls
Green-glimmer ghost-fire tugging at fog to cover the naked rattling ribs, /
To wrap round the empty loins that were,
Shrouding the horror that hung where a heart /
Should beat in the chest of a living man.
Down went the sorcerer, staff flung awry; no incantation could save him now. The
Meguahari hunger for flesh, hunger for blood that will feed their hate! No - no,
they eat not, neither drink deep - no bony teeth to futilely gnaw down the
gobbets where missing jaw and tongue and belly should serve.
Came they in upon the mage, and they sucked of his soul and his spirit alone.
Out of his mouth he could feel the breath going forth, and the inrushing death -
no kindly air for the mortal fool, only the thin long scream of hate that
shriveled his lungs and his muscles and mind, and left him mad ere the screaming
stopped.
Dark are the souls of those who die unloved, unshriven /
With their blackest crimes
Graved on their hearts and rung in their bones... /
And when they are wrung from the Earth they rise
With cold green flames in their empty eyes /
As... /
Meguahari!
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