The History of the Kes Wraith

Cercune, Era 27 After the Skydance
         The small boy ran flustered into his mother’s skirts. His hands wrapped around the rough spun fabric and he buried his tear streaked face into them whimpering slightly. Concerned, his mother reached down and ruffled his dirty blond hair.
         “What is it my darling?” The mother was not old, but she was far into her middle years. Her son was the last remaining tie to a husband long gone and she cherished him. He was frequently tormented for her affection. Assuming it was another child’s prank she steadied herself to chat with the tormenter's mother. She steeled herself for the future interaction. Patiently she looked down at her son, waiting for him to respond to her question.
                He turned his young face upward and fearfully whispered, “The Kes Wraith walks…”

Centemere Capital of the Kes Empire, Era 12 Rule of the Priests
                The young girl’s green eyes were red with tears. Her stained face was pale with fear. Day after day priest after priest walked by and touching her bound and gagged form thanked her for her sacrifice. Whenever she had first been brought here she had screamed and kicked at them until her voice was ragged and her legs were bruised. They shoved the pristine yellow cloth that decorated one of the lesser alters into her mouth and bound her hands and feet saying as they did that the great god Kes deemed it unsightly that a woman would ask a question of a man, especially of a priest.
                Truth be told she felt more like one of the goats her town priest had slaughtered and then distributed to the people than a human anymore, after the days of being patted and praised. She retched a bit at the thought of those poor animals that she had walked by patted on the head and thanked for their sacrifice even as they were probably screaming “It isn’t my sacrifice!” just as she was now.
                Two acolytes of Kes walked up, barely over fourteen, only a few moons younger than she was. For a brief moment she thought they would free her, but her hopes were dashed as they too patted her and told her what a wonderful sacrifice she was making for the glory of Kes and hauled her bodily to a brick alter in the center of the sun drenched courtyard.
                The bent old high priest of Kes , God of glory and sun, bent and finished sprinkling the last bit of white in the complicated salt sketch before him. Not many priests ever had the opportunity, or the need to use a spell of this power, and he was honored that Kes had chosen him to lead the chant. He brushed his gnarled hands free of the substance and looked at the young girl bound terrified to the alter at the side of him. The old priest looked at her and smiled kindly. She would make an eternal sacrifice for the good of the empire. As the six other chanter-priests of Kes lined up at their places amongst the salten circle. The eldest priest’s eyes overflowed with tears of thanks to the great Kes for favoring him to cast this spell. His gnarled hands shook as he drew the long topaz hilted knife out of its sheath.
                The empire of Kes was at war. It needed a new type of protector. The power of its’ priests that had held strong for so many years was crumbling before a new kind of magic.  The new magic was not simply for coercion like the salt spells of the Kessians were. The salt spells were well known. They used the precious substance to channel the caster’s will through intricate patterns to influence the actions of living things body. The salt carried in the blood and body of every living thing was powerless against the command of a properly held salt ritual.
                The spells wielded by the fair haired people of the south washed the gentle coercion that had held the empire of Kes complacent to its rulers for so long away.  The priest murmured a prayer that was taken up with the rhythmic chanting of his fellows as the terrified girl began to scream behind her gag. As his voice faded and the chanting of the others fell to a low rumble so did her struggles she stayed still unable to move by the priestly power of the God of Glory. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she watched the smooth skin at her wrist open of its’ own accord and begin to bleed. The blood ran swiftly down her fingertips as if drawn to the salten circle that touched her bound hands. The priest smiled and began chanting a new refrain as he opened his own vein; binding his will and personal sacrifice to the girl by use of the salten circle. One by one each priest of the circle let their own salty blood join the mix each chanting with a slightly different note or word. Each compelling the girl’s body to betray her forever more to the will of Kes.
              “Ach cereturn tumaoy dulhiemich. Ach cereturn tumaoy dulhiemich. Ach cereturn tumaoy dulhiemich. Ach cereturn duhliemich Kes wraith!” The light went out of the priests blue eyes as his life’s blood flowed into the final circle before mingling with the small pool of blood that flowed from the girl and spread slowly along the salten circle surrounding them both.
              “Ach cereturn Tumaloyna dulhiemich.” The second priest’s body crumpled to the floor as his blood too joined the mix.
              “Ach cereturn Francindire dulhiemich.” The third priest fell, giving his life force to bind her.
              The girl watched franticly, unable to move as each of the seven priest’s fell, their blood joined running through the web of salt moving steadily towards her to mingle with her own. She was unable to react as the most powerful salt spell ever wrought descended on her, bending her to its’ cause. As the blood mixed and began to return to her carrying the salt back into her open wound not even the yellowed cloth of the gag could silence her scream of horror as the life and humanity in her green eyes went forever dark. Thus the Kes wraith was born.

?, Two Months Ago
              Her eyes were hollow orbs empty of caring or light. Her body bore the scars of a thousand weapons that had bitten into her skin.  When the first red welt from a knife of her own hand had crusted over with salt she had looked at it in horror; betrayed by her own body, not even able to end her own life. Now the crisscrossed scars were an armor of their own. They told of her survival across time and battlefield. People saw her walking the streets and hid. Children were threatened with her tales.
            No one attacked a being that would not die. She lived, if one could call it that, eternally. The bonds of salt held her body so tightly that she was unable to age, unable to die, unable to do anything but survive until whatever master knew the words of command ordered her to murder or thieve.
            At first she had tried to live among those who were her people, but as ever year passed and she did not age and as every sickness passed her by over the rest of the small village they looked at her more and more with unease.  After being stoned by her nephews and cousins she had taken to wandering.
            She walked and slept, and killed those that attacked her as dispassionately as the desert killed. Her reputation grew. People soon forgot about the young girl Desarie who had a future as a dancer with her flashing green eyes and smiling face, and only knew the Kes wraith, walking reminder of the power and harshness of the god Kes and his desert priests. After a century or two people forgot even the desert god, and feared only his creation the Kesraith. She had outlived each high priest that had known how to command her do their bidding in the name of the god. She had outlived even the village idiots who stumbled on the words of calling and had control of her formidable skills until their greed and lust for power killed them as surely as one of her knives.
            In the light of her small oil lamp she polished the twin topaz hilted beauties that the acolytes had given her when she survived much to the gloating delight of a small round piglike priest who had been her first master and cruelest trainer. After years of his ministrations she could fight like a demon, and obeyed like the best trained hunting dog. It was amazing what tortures could be enacted on those that could not die, and who if commanded could not even scream. The Kesraith pushed the thoughts from her mind as she sat the gleaming daggers on their shelf amongst her rag tag assortment of weapon and armor. She turned to her bowl of soup;  thin watery stuff with sparse chunks of vegetable and a few tatters of egg. She ate without caring, just as she lived her daily life. Silently she lay down on a stone outcropping, smoothed by centuries of her movements, that served as her bed and pulled a thin blanket over her head hoping that maybe this time it would be a shroud.

Deseerem trade city of the Southlands, Two Months Ago

         A withered old priest hobbled to the top of a tower. His cane made an irrythmic thumping as he set it down to try and hold his weight off of his shorn leg. The first rays off false dawn were just bursting over the mountains in the east and if he looked at the cool green meadows he could almost forget the carnage that raged only furlongs to the southwest. Sadly he turned his eyes and ruined body towards the cloud of brown red dust on the southern horizon. Tears of pain fell across his crinkled cheeks as he ungracefully knelt to lay the salt symbols in the correct order to carry the words he hated to say to the woman he hated to call.
          Ashamed, he asked forgiveness of his own goddess as her whispered the unholy words that had been handed down at such a price for generations.  His cracked whispered voice gained strength and speed. It carried a command across the mountains, “I, a priest of the Faith, call upon thee, you who are sought, you who are bound, you who will answer. The Faith summons you through me darkened one. I call you, a Kes wraith, a defender, a body to fight for the Faith. Come to me.” The priest stayed seated for a long while, the words of the command having drained strength to fly from him. When he slowly reared his head it was with tears of more than physical pain in his eyes.

         Countries away a pained look came over the face of the sleeping woman. Threadbare sheets were thrashed and thrown to the floor with her increasingly restless slumber. An oil lamp hanging overhead burned out in a gust of wind that crept through the cavern.  With a shriek born out of rage and frustration her green eyes flew open in the darkness. She was summoned.

Deseerem, Present Day
         
         The Kesraith neared her destination with an unabashed look of disdain barely cloaked behind her veil. Her carriage said nothing of dancer, or dreamer, things she might have been called in another time, now her movements spelled out only one thing to those who knew how to read them - death dealer.
         Pretty was once a word she would have been glad to be called, but now her lips just curled in a mockery of a smile when she heard the term. Her tall form was covered with mismatched bits of armor, scavenged from the battlegrounds of her lifetime. Here a shield from a fallen knight, there chainmail patched with leather from a skirmish long forgotten into time.
         Her weapons were just as eclectic: a pike from the southlands, an axe from the frigid north peaks, and a sword that looked like nothing the people this far East had ever seen before, and concealed close to her hands the topaz daggers. Bits of blood stained cloth showed from beneath the assortment, marking bloody wounds received.
          It was a rag tag look for one who could have been beautiful once. Her green eyes rimmed with thick lashes would have looked exotic and flirtatious over the sheer veil if they were anything other than deadened. The elegant line of her neck would have been swanlike, if not for the lines of scars weaving across it like a bizarre tapestry. Her lustrous black hair would have shone if it had not been shorn short and covered in the blood and grime of a life of hardship.
         The woman known only as a Kesraith – her name forgotten into time approached the tower. She ignored the looks of fear and fleeing children.  The looks of pity though, from the elders who remembered hints of history, the knowing glances struck hard at her barricaded thoughts and brought vestiges of memories of herself giving the same looks in days forgotten by time.
         Had that pig bodied priest not commanded otherwise she swore sometimes she would have cried, but still she made her way to the tower and whatever new master had called.