The Tale of the Headless Horseman

There are stories that could chill your spine to a point that you feel a whole mountain has frozen you in place, this, unfortunately, it is one of them.

All happened in a morning of winter, a cold one that was not anticipating the chilling nightmare I was going to suffer. As we returned to the Gorge after a small expedition outside of town, my friend Will Steel, one of the defenders of our Hawk'in, and myself, walked back to the village, but as soon as we turned to face the village, we found something we were not expecting at the graveyard.

A large figure of an armored horseman, without a visible head, transparent as the crystal, spear in hand, was incantating in a language without words, the ground was shaking violently, as darkness was starting to pour from the rifts in the ground, scared, we tried to stop the ghostly figure by capting it's attention, but the ghost did ignored our attempts, perhaps he did not notice us, or just was ignoring us, or it was the image from another time, but it continued corrupting the land as the undead starting crawling out of the darkness, surrounding us like a storm of flesh and teeth.

The ghostly horseman, meanwhile we were surrounded, did yelled in common as we were fighting for our lives "My beloved, this is the time that the living will understand our power" as it vanished while more creatures of vile intent grew in numbers, turning the day into night, the hope into nothingless, and turning life, in death.

We separate, I need to say I am not the most suited for combat and my only fruitless attempts to stop the undead was calling for the celestial powers to try to buy time until the villagers could help, I yelled, screamed in terror for help, and the valiant defenders came to try to stop the filthy wave that was still growing as we were retreating to the gates.

I had never been so scared in my life, after fighting for years against uncountable creatures, the impotency and the fear shook me like I were a young hin trying to stop the river to flow with buckets.

In this situation, I'd say buying time was the best option I had, as more reinforcements came, just in time, as the undead were breaching our gates and flooding them like it was not existing for them, in all that conmotion the horseman appeared once more, a sinister laugh came, mixed with the metal of his armor and tormented us as it yelled again in common: "Today Darkness will triumph, and everything you know and love will perish, you'll know my pain".

A sudden light happen as more reinforcements came, with them Caenfyddel who were able to push the undead, with the help of those who remained defending the gates we were able to push the attackers back to the graveyard, and for a moment in middle of the storm, there was calm.

Yet for very short time, as we were figuring out a way to stop the ritual, which was starting to become more violent, one of the patrolling Hawk'in came running to us, injured and in it last breath he screamed: "The memorial graveyard, we are under attack!", as he fell down death and cold.

The remaining defenders, with Caenfyddel, and Will, who returned to us after faking death, tried to approach the memorial graveyard at the Gorge, a place of respite and rememberance where the most prominent heroes of Bendir have their last rest, but as soon as we reached the gates, we saw it, undead were already crawling out from the ground to meet us, and another bloody battle started.

There was screams everywhere, as defenders and undead were falling down, one by one, like leaves in a tree in middle of autumn, until I was alone, at the end of this, only my celestial companion and myself were the only remaining, I can't forget that sight of seen everyone, enemies, allies, and friends, dead around me, in that precise moment I don't know how I were able to keep my mind straight without falling into madness, perhaps it was my celestial companion, who, crouched for a moment, and put her gentle hand on my shoulder, I don't recall her celestial words but they gave me strength to bring back to life our friends.

After the gruesome battle, we tried to disrupt this ritual as well, we had Caenfyddel, who was our best mage to stop rituals as he studied magical rituals, and how to disrupt them, but whatever foul power had this ritual, there was nothing we could do to stop it's power, even after investigating the ritual.

Our investigation gave a conclusion that the ritual was made using certain rare components to keep it's corruption working, we discovered traits of saints' blood, star sapphire dust and brimstone apparently performed by an infamous drow and her dwarven slave, however, as I said before, even with that information we could do nothing to stop it.

As we were preparing to leave and return to the village to check for the other graveyard, the ghostly horseman returned, riding its ghostly horse who was neighing to the silent night, as it run away through the gates, the infamous metal voice screamed again: "You did this, living beings, you took my belover, and thus, I will take whatever you love with me!" As the figure left, he struck one of the corpses of our beloved defenders with his spear, as he laugh to the night, disappearing through the bridge in an unnatural mist, the defender started convulsing, its bones expanded, the flesh broke appart as a dracolich was growing from its body, extending its bone wings over us.

Another battle exploded here, where the dracolich was our only enemy, but a formidable one who breath darkness over us, but the valiant efforts of our people at the end defeated this new menace.

We returned to the other graveyard as we defeated the Dracolich, as we meet more of our already old undead enemies, in this moment it's when we receive more reinforcements, and the help of a druid by the name of Veisha, who suggested we performed a ritual to stop the undead from spreading, instead of stopping the running ritual.

Thus we did, it helped to heal the lands, from one graveyard and the other, we did had to fight plenty of undead to try to keep the ritual running, but at the end, a new dawn grew in our hearts as the ritual started, slowly, to reduce its strength, it did stood there for a bunch of days more, but at the end, the ritual disappeared and peace reigned in Bendir, once more.

Written by Sarah Elatha Rosewind, at the date of 28th of Uktar, of this year 177