Sentinels Story Challenge: Forged

(OOC Note: Posted for Forged, the Slacker!

The dripping dead man blinked at the caretaker. Rain thundered down around the two Forsaken, churning the earth beneath their feet into a cold, sucking mire. The newly-arisen recruit thrust forth his head and snuffed like a dog, hissing like steam escaping from a tea kettle as he picked up the scents of the tainted bats and wolves in the hollow flanking Deathknell. Undertaker Mordo watched this one curiously: the guards had found him a few weeks ago, caught in the traces of a dead team hitched to a blacksmith's wagon, face blackened in death, body twisted in the final throes of the plague. Death had not treated the new recruit's formerly brawny body kindly. Flesh had fallen away as the corpse rotted, revealing moldering ligaments and earth-stained bone. Only the breadth of this one's shoulders, and the broken hand that the guard had inflicted on the body in order to pry free the smithy hammer the corpse had clutched even in death, gave any hint of what the recruit might have been in life. "Dunno his name," one of the guards had told the caretaker, shrugging as he dumped the body with the others and shovelled dirt over the wreckage. The guard tamped down the earth with his shovel, pausing to spit a wad of rotting flesh hacked up from his lungs. "Death forged this one right enough, just like he used to do with his steel. His bad luck, I guess, but good luck for us. We could use another smith, what with the fighting and all."

Those grimly-voiced hopes were dashed with this rising of this new Deader. Undertaker Mordo frowned as the newly-arisen Forsaken looked about, his eyes flaring yellow and malevolent. He remembered nothing, that was plain: the older Forsaken could see it in the easy acceptance of the surrounding, the lack of horror as the new recruit glanced down at his ravaged body. Already the broken fingers were knitting back together, proof of the unholy force that animated the walking corpse. Fierce intelligence burned in those eyes, eyes that remembered nothing of the sunlit lands they had once seen, or bright summer days numbered among the Living. The recruit locked his gaze on the caretaker as Undertaker Mordo cleared his throat to speak. "About time you woke up. We were ready to toss you into the fire with the others, but it looks like you made it." The new Deader's voice rasped out as he looked around the surrounding buildings curiously.

"Nice place. Yers?" Undertaker Mordo's eyes narrowed at the recruit's rough style of speech. Well, this one wasn't deaf and dumb at least, like the last one that had crawled out of the crypt. He ignored the question, and rattled off the new Forsaken's task. "Speak with Shadow Priest Savris in the chapel at the base of the hill, he will tell you more of what you must know." The new Forsaken hesitated, and the Undertaker gentled his tone. "Go along with you now, Forged." Thunder boomed overhead as the newest of Lady Sylvanus' subjects shambled down the path towards a dead future.