Tombs

A highwayman's club once determined the course that the life of a decent man would take. Due to his injuries, the man could not speak nor perform complicated tasks. His son despised the father for what he saw as the elder's weakness. After the son left, the man's wife could not work and take care of her husband at the same time. She beseeched the Church to take him into their care, to find some rewarding task for him.The priests made him caretaker of their rarely visited cemetery, said to be haunted by the children who died during the Years of Ice. The caretaker made dolls out of wood and grasses, and placed them on their anonymous graves.

When the Void assaulted the town years later, the caretaker did not flee with the other residents. Instead, he defended the resting places of the children until his last breath. The very ground shuddered beneath the weight of the attacking Void horde. The tremors disturbed the tombs and the mausoleum of a forgotten hero — locked through all the years of the caretaker's service — lay open before him. He entered, and emerged wearing the hero's armor and bearing the hero's arms. True to his purpose, he died in defense of his beloved children.

Though unsung, his heroism was not unwitnessed. The wayward echos of the children's consciousness gathered about their caretaker at the last, pulling him back from final Consumption, reshaping him even as the Void restored him to the semblance of life. A strange semblance, for the being called Tombs no longer resembles the man he once was, nor any other of Ainon's races. He is a thing of earth and stone and memory, a necropolis in miniature, animated by the echos of the grateful children. It is their love for him that strikes out at enemies during battle.

Coming soon...