Necromantica: Introduction

Here is the introduction to my latest novel. Enjoy!

The Ash Woods: A Prologue
This forest knew life once.Among the elder sequoias and babbling creek a village of elves had lived.This forest knew laughter. It knew soft voices and gentle, tending hands.Everything the elves had given was returned to them a hundred fold. The sparrows sang louder. The figs plumped sweeter. The trees themselves grew taller than any of their kind. They shaped themselves to the needs of their guests, bending into homes and forming a village of earthen souls.For centuries the elves thrived. They raised their young. They studied the nature of life and developed magic around its principles. They were healers. They were harmonious keepers of the earth. They loved the land so deeply that it shared with them its name.Hylorn
But that was a word the rest of the world was told to abandon.“Forget the trees. Curse the elves. Do not speak of their ways- for their magic is twisted with sin and must be wiped clean from our lands.”Those were the thoughts of a human king- a man too content to a human mind.His words soon became the cries of a kingdom.A hundred speeches. A thousand declarations. In the end it was a single word that scorched this forest into oblivion.
“March.”
Now there are no bugs to bite larger backs. There are no deer, foxes, or snakes to leave tracks in the dirt. And there are no elves to speak of or be spoken for. The ground is dry, barren, and brittle. Only the fossils of trees remain. Petrified, they stand shocked as rock pillars, twisted and misshapen. The homes they once formed remain as crooked, jagged cavities.They have no leaves for shade.The wind cannot rock their branches.They stand as mere grey husks,headstones to themselves and the lives they cradled.
This forest is haunted.
With all the life scorched away too deep for the souls to pass, they remain trapped in a fossilized mockery of their village. Too hurt to scream, too tortured to weep, and too scorned to pass away, the ghosts of this forest linger in silence.The trees cannot recall warmth nor rain.The animals are unable to stir, feed, or frolic.The elves cannot rest.All together the creatures of this forest remain pained and afraid from their final few moments.
Amongst their void, a single life approaches.
Every ghost becomes absorbed in his arrival. Every spirit lingers over his entirety as he sneaks through their vacant spaces. He is a human. Nothing magical, remarkable, or even noteworthy in a living woodland. And yet this place is dead. It hasn’t felt life since the day the kingdom rained its magic fires. For the mortal’s passing, the forest engrosses itself with his every step. It mesmerizes itself with his breath.This human is tired. This human is frightened. But stubborn. He doesn’t admit the fear to himself. He only feels its symptoms. His heart thumps hard. His skin perspires cool, slippery beads. His eyes leak warm tears that streak clean lines through the stubble on his face. His shoulder, back, and calf all bleed. Despite his pain, he struggles to maintain his pace. His stumbles are frequent and jagged. Exhaustion and paranoia are the pendulums swinging his steps. Several times he doubles back over his own dusty footprints –the only footprints- and poises a crossbow to the path from which he came. Several times he holds his breath and takes aim between the trees, waiting for something, anything to reveal itself.But nothing does. Nothing will.This forest would’ve relished in another’s approach.There is only the man; this human. And he grows weak. His breath is hoarse. His lungs scavenge at the dead air. The ghosts absorb his inhales and exhales like notes of their favorite lullabies. Those that breathed such ways in life wrestle for their memories of it. Whatever it is to pant, blow, gasp, or sigh, many of the cursed souls try to recall. Those that remember mouths absent-mindedly mimic the motions. They feel the way he pulls at the air from within, clutches it tight for just a moment, and then lets it fade like a forgotten love.They feel the way his heart slows as he assures himself that he is alone.They feel the way his eyes grow heavy while his arms sag.He is tired yet continues to walk.This forest feels his stubbornness. It understands determination as he staggers his way along the parched earth.
He is a rogue.
Every ghost sees him for the life he lives. From birth to this clumsy, blood trailing dusk. This man is a thief. He is a murderer. He is a fighter, toting worn weapons and tattered clothes. He is a stranger to this forest yet all the ghosts understand him as they would themselves. They absorb his past like bedtime stories. As a boy, his uncles pitted him against dogs. Sometimes for profit. Sometimes for sport. This forest knows how he escaped that life with hopes of a knighthood. It knows how his repeated thievery and constant mouthing off kept him from his dream.Oh. Dreams.The forest stirs over how his mind, even while afraid of pursuers, still manages to wander. It feels how he studies the veil of ash over its hard earth. It relearns itself through his glances into lopsided windows of tree trunks, worried over an imaginary ambush. He thinks of trolls, rangers, orcs, soldiers, dwarves, and even dragons. The forest, in all its years of life, had never once known dragons. To see one in his thoughts so clearly and with so much disdain is a glorious treat. The ghosts relish in how he maps out the ground, calculates places to hide, methods of attack, and how he might defend himself against any variety of opponents. The forest loves the way he notices shadows, corners, and climbing paths among the branches. It loves the feeling of his perspective on it, mirroring all the depth it had forgotten of itself.This man is a strategist. He enjoys chess and card games but not gambling. He has a passion for music yet has only heard a handful of all the songs that ever existed. None of which had ever been sung in this forest.The ghosts swoon over every note he knows. Some struggle to put them into order. Others try to reason why music was ever so important. Others still simply miss the way rhythms happen. They focus on his heartbeat and imagine a tune as it’s reflected through his tactical mind with a natural talent for song that he himself will never be aware of.The forest sees all of his crimes. It knows how he’d begun with fruit in markets and then coins from pockets. He took for himself. He took for those he knew. He had escaped many times. Other times he’d been captured. As a boy he liked prizes and souvenirs. As a man he grew to prefer the crimes. He liked picking fights against those larger and faster than himself. He didn’t always win but he always got something he wanted.As he walks through the forest all the spirits feel what it was like for him to take life. He felt guilty for the dogs but not his uncles. Never his family. The spirits crash against waves of his emotions. Deep seated tsunamis of fear, anger, and hardship. Between them they detect even a few small ripples of joy. But all the waves, the fervor, grow smaller as he ages. It was only just before he started killing for money that all his feelings stilled.The ghosts who still know pity do pity him for this. He doesn’t know the gravity of his actions. He doesn’t understand the things he takes away. For all he’s seen and done, he can’t understand death like the forest.
He is a visitor.
The forest feels the way he begins to regard his surroundings. Exhausted as he is the dead trees and bare ground unsettle him awake. The flat gray of everything gives him discomfort. He concludes to know this place from stories and chatter. Discussion in pubs. The few words of the king he caught himself reading. He knows this place had once been Hylorn, but everything he knows with certainty is a lie. The forest wants to scream as it feels his version of its story. If only its ghosts could remember how.The king had told his people of a growing evil. He told his subjects how the elves acted in death as sacrificial creatures who would steal their children and conjure darkness throughout the kingdom. They were twisting life in ways unnatural. They were trapping souls in bodies meant to die. They were heathens raising the dead. They were a festering evil against the king’s great nation and grand gods. They would bring suffering, pain, and sin. And just like so many enemies of the pure kingdom, they were to be exterminated.The forest feels how this man recalls the chatter as he looks over its dead trees. It knows his discomfort by this place as he imagines its evil, snarling elves ripping the spines from babies and chipmunks in the name of black magic. This forest churns over his unrest and would give anything to remember what it was to ball a fist and punch his throat. This man, the first man, is first life the forest has seen in years, and he’s unnerved by it. As though the forest hadn’t already been hurt enough by the cruelty of mankind, now it must endure the judgment of this murderer’s naivety. It feels horror based on fables he only ever half paid attention to.And yet it can’t hate him for this. He is only alive. He is only human. Such a small, unremarkable, and magnificent thing. It’s not his fault for failing to understand.It feels his contemplation. He knows this as a cursed place, and wagers on the idea that his pursuers won’t dare enter. He looks to the darkening sky and sees stars speckling over the dead tree line. All of the ghosts remember the sensation of looking upon the stars. And what it means to be tired. And what a comfort it is to feel safe enough to sleep. The man is disturbed but knows the forest won’t hurt him. He understands why his pursuers won’t follow. They’re more afraid than him. Maybe even guilty.All of the ghosts collectively watch as he unfolds a scratchy cloth and several stakes from a pack. With the back of his crossbow he tries plunging the stakes into the earth. All of the forest hears the noise of wood clacking metal. It feels the man’s frustration when the ground is too hard to be broken. All of the forest feels him fight the petrified soil and slowly give up. He grazes his hand along the earth, smoothing away the dusty layer of dead ashes, and look sharply up at the trees.“It’s warm?” he whispers. He speaks! He makes language with noise and breath! He communicates to himself –out loud- in such a way the ghosts had entirely forgotten. There is something so familiar and yet it’s the most obscure thing they’ve ever witnessed. The words themselves gain gravity as he passes his hand along the ground, and then against the trees. Everything has a sensation to it. Rough, hard, and jagged. And every last bit is still warm from the magic flames of several years ago.This forest feels the man’s puzzlement. He looks at the trees, the ground, and the space between with new regard. He is in awe. He doesn’t use his word noises as a caution against some overlooked pursuer that doesn’t actually exist, but all of the forest catches his discontent as he ponders the place around him. It isn’t right. He’s certain of it. He’s run from the armies that had marched through this forest. He knows they killed the elves and this place is meant to be thought of as cursed. He knows it’d been burned, and of the people who gave it a new name.
The Ash Woods
But this is wrong. He can feel it. The forest can feel him feeling it. It swoons over the question seeded in his mind. What elves would cast magic to destroy their homes and themselves? What spell could’ve petrified the land and erased all signs of life? The man is unable to reason it for himself. The forest feels his confusion and grows immense with gratitude. It watches him continue to walk as he touches all of the trees and grazes his fingertips against their surfaces. It feels his friction ridges. It admires his calluses.The man steps into a dried out riverbed. He discovers soil soft enough to stake his tent. He’s quick and haphazard with the task. He slides beneath the canvas, makes himself a small bed, and then patches his wounds before finally lying himself to rest.
As he drifts off to sleep he ponders the forest.As he drifts off to sleep the forest ponders him.

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$7.99 paperback available atAmazonBarnes & NobleBooks-A-Million (BAM!)CreateSpaceTattered Cover Book StoreAlso available for download is Whisper, a free companion story that introduces the world and characters of Necromantica. Free eBook available at: Amazon KindleBarnes & Noble NookiBooks (iTunes)KoboSmashwordsFor more info check out:FacebookGoodreadsTwitter