The Memoirs of Gregory Rėza
I was a young man when I first began studying necromancy. I certainly wasn't the first in my lineage. It's part of the slippery slope of using blood magic for life manipulation. The deviation is chastised, and the aspiring necromancer usually recants his endeavors and returns to the light. I was more audacious. But it was all purely academic until the plague took the woman I loved. My Elena. In my youthful folly, I threw all caution to the wind to resurrect her. But I was too late. The woman I loved was already gone. All that remained was a monstrous husk. Even then, I couldn't bring myself to kill her. My actions were discovered and my dear Elena was dispatched as I watched horror, seeing her die a second time.
After some persuasion by my parents, I was exiled as opposed to executed for my transgressions. Though I escaped the stake, my works were burned. I only managed to sequester away a few notes in my garments, the pages on which was the map that would lead me from my forsaken home to immortality.
One might think it's a sad tale that the loss of everything I had must affect me deeply on some emotional level. But truthfully, the dark arts I practiced gnawed away at my humanity. I was decaying spiritually long before my death. Indeed, that is the path of a lich: to have one's magical skills consume the practitioner until little remains but a corpse held together by sheer will.
I traveled through Europe, studying the ancient cultures and secrets long forgotten by the Christianized western world. I settled among a group of Druids in England and protected them with simple illusion spells and curses from the persecution of the Church. In return, they would place my body within a stone tomb along with my phylactery at my demise.
I remember months of preparation for that fateful day, all my research culminating to my greatest arcane experiment. My body was saturated in pungent herbs and spices to preserve my flesh as I stood within carved earthen rings under the blood moon. In my left hand I held a cup of poison, in my right, a stone knife. Within the centre of the rings was a carved diamond gleaming red in the moonlight, this common gem imbued with enchantments to hold an eternal soul. My muscles were gripped with fear and excitement, my skin raised into bumps in anticipation. I drank in every sensation knowing they could very well be my last: the chill of the wind on my bare skin, the scent of the foliage and tilled earth, the sight of the flickering torchlights at intervals around me, the sound of the Druids' prayers whispered in hushed, anxious tones, the stale dryness on my tongue as I uttered the spells with a parched, trembling voice, the unperceived impending doom somewhere inexplicably felt in the deepest part of my innards. But enough of this world--a toast to the next. I raised the cup to my lips, downing the alchemical formula in a few quick gulps. My pupils dilated, and I felt hyperaware and yet clouded by the overwhelming sensations engulfing my body. The cup dropped from my shaking hand. My lips were moving as rehearsed time and time again, but no audible words came. They seemed written in the sky above me, emblazoned upon my skin in scalding burns. I fixed my gaze upon the gem which seemed to glow with an ethereal light as I placed the tip of the knife to my chest. Everything seemed to stop. The only thing I could hear was the rhythmic thumping of my heart. It seemed so loud now, deafening as it pounded within my chest. Now was the time. I drew the enchanted stone knife back in both hands... and sunk its singular fang into my breast. The pain was sharp yet also somehow dull and burning. My body grew cold as the warm blood spewed from my being. I could see myself collapse from some great distance as my felt my soul ripped from my body. There was a sensation of infinite falling as the universe spun around my severed spirit. I could hear the singing of heaven and the screams of hell in a cacophony of eternity as I fell down the chasm between them, a forsaken conscious not allowed to partake in the finality of eternal reward or punishment.
Then there was nothing. A void consumed me, became me until I was awoken by a spark of renewed existence. I was aware. I was aware of my body opening its eyes as for the first time. I traced the gaping wound in my chest with my bloodless fingers as my eyes gazed across the tomb at my new heart: the red soul gem wherein was written my past, present, and future, my life, my death, and my undeath. I was born a mortal man, but now I am the Rezurrection.
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