By Medicine Life May Be Prolonged

Her eyes bolted awake; she didn't even realize she drifted to sleep high in the tree. Instinctively with muscle memory she clamped both hands tight around her mouth as she screamed from her night terror. The screams gave way to tears. The tree held her stiff in security, not in comfort but in security. For the first time she felt that the ability to be strong was beyond her reach, and in the stability of her hiding spot she fully let go her pain into her clamped hands. The pain of her loss, her fear, her inexplicably unbearable guilt.

In her mind, this was all her fault. Wasn't it?

Thought the theories on the why and the how regarding the Purple Mist were as varied and vast as the Plains themselves, the truth was gnarled and tangled...leaving only tears and anger behind as fact.

Those who spoke after said they saw it first coming from high on the Hill in the castle. More truly, they smelled it first. It was sweet, almost too sweet, like overripe fruit almost fermenting into wine. It filled the air warmly, it was intoxicating and enticing, like something terribly forbidden and wicked. Those in the homes of nobility residing in Courtside, the city just within the courtyard and vast gardens of the castle on the Hill, were the first. They followed the warmth and smell coming from the castle and saw the Purple Mist. It moved as if alive, entrancing in its way. Flecks shimmered in it like starlight, and the people found that they stood still in awe, shock, wonder, and terror. People moved away as best they could until the Mist seemed to lunge at one noble. He dropped to his knees and struggled to resist the pull towards the earth with all he had. There was not sharp pain, but an inexplicable weight. And care left, all will to do more than breathe vanished from the heart and bodies buckled under the pressure.

Screams of terror.

Screams of panic.

......

The Mist passed beyond the Hill, beyond the villages and towns into the Plains, into the Woods, passed into the places unseen. It moved like a predator seemingly both mindless and calculating at the same time. It was living yet not alive, hungry but not devouring in anything physical. Its needs were unknown, and where it came from was a mystery. What was its purpose? Was it born from the earth to punish, was it the life in the air angry for something, was it a purposeful summons from an Enchanter, a request from her Majesty after her loss? Was it a mistake?

The people felt that the worst was over as the Mist moved onward, and that they could learn to live with the shadow of memory of that empty feeling, the weight of utter despair it laid. It wasn't until the days that followed that the land truly knew what the Mist truly did. What it raised...

The people thought certainly they must be dreaming, that their sights were borne out of the emptiness the Mist left in their hearts. But in a terrifying moment of clarity, everyone realized that those that walked were those that they had laid to rest in the earth and sent to Coelum. They were no longer at rest, and they were no longer of the earth. Those they loved in life and sent with precious songs to rewarding rest came from the place of Goodbye and returned where return was impossible. The same, but not the same; living but not alive.

Plucked from Coelum and the rewards of their lives beyond, the Mist passed over their sites of rest and brought them back to the air and sun. No longer in peace, no longer in joy, but back to what assuredly was Hellfire when compared. And their bodies no longer had the spark of true life. The bodies held pools of stale blood, cold and untouched with no hope of warmth. The spirits of ones cherished in life were stolen from painless and utterly joyful plenty and violently thrust into bodies that no longer lived. It was the most grotesque violation imaginable, the birth of Immortuos.

And they were angry.