Freedom?

[TheArbiter]

The ceremony was simple. If not for the mark now covering your forearm, there'd be no reason to believe there was any magic to it. From the outside, at least. From the inside... The difference is more apparent.

After the ceremony, you were given no special task, no requests, nothing but a pouch full of coin, and all your possessions from before your imprisonment. Given that, and sent on your way. For someone just released from prison, it seemed impossible that you'd just be trusted. No proof of loyalty or intent apart from the ritual, and even that didn't seem too convincing. Why not just leave? Take it all and go?

When you passed by one of the markets on your way out of the city, you overheard how it was that your predecessor, Taruk, had been lost. A necromancer had made his lair not far from the city gates, in a cemetery from the time of the last plague, and Taruk had gone to deal with the problem. He'd failed, and that was that.

And then you felt an urge to seek this trouble out. Perhaps being kept in a cell had made you anxious for something exciting, perhaps you have something to prove, maybe it's merely curiosity, but you felt it, and here you are.

The cemetery grounds are both soggy and foggy. The gravestones mossy and broken, placed in uneven rows. The smell putrid. So close to the stories you'd hear round a fire that it's barely believable. But you're here.

And so are they... A corpse walks on the surface, scraping at the bark of a tree, as a crow crows from the branches. Another stands dully at the entrance to a crypt, with no eyes and only one working arm. The other arm dangles loosely, ready to fall off at a breeze. Neither one seems interested in you, for now.