Free of the Flesh, Bound by Power (Open)

[Agonel Carnefice]

All he had know for days was blackness.

It had seemed to stretch on forever, an endless nothing. There was no heartbeat or breath to count the passing of time, no change in his surroundings. At the time, he as not even aware of having thoughts at all, but as the mental fog cleared as consciousness returned, he remembered that vast emptiness, and shivered.

His mind woke slowly, as though from an incredibly deep sleep. Awareness came in a slowly moving tide, the waters ever rising, but so slowly as to be unnoticeable. At last he was able to blink his eyes open, and confusion immediately struck him. The endless black had been replaced by an impenetrable fog, the gray haze filling his vision and also seeming to muddle his thoughts. But here there was change.

The fog swirled in gentle eddies, every slight movement of the air illustrated by the wisps of cloud. Yet, Agonel found that he could feel no breeze. Groaning, he began to sit up, trying to push off the ground and stand. Instead, he simply floated to his feet. Confused, Agonel stared down at himself. He was translucent and white, the edges of his form blurred, and all around him swirled wisps of white that were slightly lighter than the surrounding fog. He barely seemed to exist at all, and his thoughts did nothing to dispel this sensation.

Agonel floated idly, trying to remember. There had been something before the endless blackness, he knew it, otherwise the dark would not have been so tormenting. It had been a long...absence of both thought and action. You could not be tormented by the absence of what you had never experienced, so what had come before?

He thought hard, vague images flashing through his mind, vanishing before he could examine them. A swirl of sensations filled him. Agonel had been alive once, alive and happy, but that was long ago. More recent emotions came, equally jumbled and confusing. He had been alive until just before the darkness came, but he had not been happy. Desperation. Sorrow. Rage. Pain. Nothing. And then this.

This? Agonel looked around, trying to see through the fog. All around, unclear objects rose from the ground. Drifting closer, he was able to make one out. It was a tombstone, a marble obelisk that stabbed into the sky defiantly, parting the fog. He was in a graveyard, how appropriate. But where was this place, and how had he come to be here?

A face flashed in his mind, a face that would always be burned into his memory no matter what happened. A young lady, noble and elegant, and to him the most beautiful woman in the world. Syeve Carnefice, his wife, the love of his life and now, seemingly, of his death. He had gone to Sahova to find her, certain that she would be there...for some reason. Agonel could not seem to recall what had led him to the island of the dead, but he assumed that was where he was now. Those were the only solid thoughts in his mind, that Syeve was missing, and that he had gone to Sahova to find her. And he was dead, though he could not remember how it happened.

Lost and uncertain what to do, Agonel drifted in a random direction, beginning to see signs of other spirits roaming. The dead wandered all about, fading in and out of the fog banks. But there were no signs of life at all. The grass, the people and even the trees were all dead. Just looking around, Agonel knew this was no place for the living. Despite his need to find Syeve, he desperately wished he didn't find her here.

As Agonel drifted, he ran into a solid barrier, pressing against an invisible wall. He followed it for many minutes, hand running along it, searching for any hole. But there were none. He glanced back at the graveyard, sorrow filling him. No hearts beat in this place, and if he wanted to find Syeve alive, he would have to find some way to leave. Steeling his soul against the surge of depression, Agonel continued to trace the invisible barrier, needing some way to get past it.