Nosoi

Nosoi sees herself as a failure and it's possible she always will. However she has a very clear idea of who those around her are, especially those dragons who first welcomed her to the clan and helped her recover from the broken wing that resulted from her crash landing after being struck by lightning. Her close friendship to Intestinum, Haema, Porcelain and even oft-surly Aerugosanguis is something both remarked upon and respected, and for all her own self-doubt many still turn to her for her opinion and advice.

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Day 2, Prompt: Death

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It is years, now, since Nosoi left the Plaguelands and settled with Tethys' clan. Years and she has grown used to the sense of ash on her scales, of sulphur and smoke in the air. Years to grow accustomed to the dry heat of the Lair.

And all those years mean nothing when she sleeps.

--

When Nosoi was a young necromancer she was reckless. She can see that now. She could cure anything, she thought, and curse anyone. So, when a travelling clan dared near her home, she cursed them.

She was not prepared for their necromancer to curse back.

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Nosoi rarely sleeps alone. Tethys' clan is open with affection, even the Faes of the clan oddly expressive in ways Nosoi was not prepared for when she first arrived. Instead she joins the group piles in the main chambers, and sleeps with half a hundred bodies pressing around her and atop her. Other nights she slips into the Infirmary, to Haema's ever-and-always home, and curls up by the giant Imperial. With Nosoi's sleeping hand on her neck Haema's breathing always eases, and she's ever willing to extend a warm and feathered wing over Nosoi's shoulder.

But very few sleep still, even those tired and of ever-ill health.

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Nosoi has always known the role of a Necromancer. She was raised with it ringing in her ears. To strengthen the clan, to cure sickness, and to curse Plague's enemies.

As a Necromancer she had thought that her enemies were Plague's enemies.

She learned that lesson all too painfully.

--

Nosoi curls close to Haema's warm bulk, but Haema shifts in sleep and her wing withdraws. The warm air seems chill after the feathered pressure, and Nosoi shivers.

In her dream, she shakes.

--

Nosoi was prodigal, she knew that. She learned every disease faster than her mentors could teach her, picked up treatment methods both magical and not with ease. It was only natural she would take the trials, and overcome them.

She supposes that her recklessness, her pride, her hubris, are the reason her clan was cursed.

A curse she could not overcome.

--

Nosoi shivers, tries to tuck her own feathered wings around her but they cannot bend quite right to cover her. Her back is cold, and her legs and she rolls, still fast asleep, seeking warmth.

--

Her father had sickened first. Falling, failing. Nothing she did could help. Then her mother, then her siblings. Then her mentor, the old healer, then the captain of the guard.

Then the leader's mate. Then the leader.

One by one they sickened, and Nosoi could do not a single thing at all to help.

--

In her sleep Nosoi whimpers. It is the only time in her life that she makes such a noise.

--

Nosoi remembers the day she left. The strongest members of the clan carrying the dead to burn them. The bodies, the blood, the bones. Bodies covered in sores. Blood slick and shining. Bones shattered and broken by spasm after spasm.

Nosoi spread her wings, and flew.

--

Nosoi's eyes are closed shut but the dream continues. The flight, the flight that took her to her new clan, but in her dream it never ends. Arguably, it never truly begins.

Instead she flies and flies and flies with all her might, caught in the cloud of death spiralling up from the pyres of her birthclan.

Looking down she can see corpses. See bones. See skulls. She can see the shape of her father's, of her mothers.

Nosoi beats her wings harder, tries to angle herself against the wind so she can escape-

--

Nosoi twists and falls hard to the ground. Her eyes stutter open. Slowly, her breathing eases.

She is safe. Her clan is gone, her parents dead, but she is safe. She has a new clan, and the only death which touches it has to first go through three Necromancers and two 'servi.

--

Featured: Nosoi, Haema.

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Day 4, Prompt: Familiar

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Nosoi's had many familiars over time. Her first one, the earliest, if she recalls rightly, was a Mith of some kind - possibly a Cinder Mith and the idea of such foreboding would amuse her but for the fact that it died with her birthclan. When she arrived at Tethys' clan she'd been adopted by one of the Serpenta's trotting around, some magenta and burgundy creature with a tongue as toxic as her touch.

After a while it had trotted off - she's no idea to where - and she'd been found by some kind of Axe-mimic, then by an undead Tatterwing. Now, she has a Webwing, all red and black.

She never named any of them. She doubts she ever will. Familiars tend to stay only fleetingly with her before they find her lack of attention boring or her business distressing. The Webwing, she thinks, has stayed longest, second only to the Serpenta. Sometimes, she wonders what will replace it, when the time comes.

Other times, she watches it preening its feathers and laughs at the expressions it pulls.

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Other Necromancers wear markers of what they are. Aerugosanguis, Earthborn Priest of Plague, wears plants and fungi in his skin, things which cannot survive the Wastes, but can survive on his flesh. Pleurisy too wears roses and thorns twined into his skin, malodorous smoke rising from ankles and wrists to distribute plague or plague-cure.

Their 'servi resemble them, in their ways. Intestinum is his father's son, but he also has mechanicals that match his father's fungal wing-skins, a face-mask of bone like his father's of fungus. Pestilentia carries a different Plague-smoke to Pleurisy, one he designed for her, designed to open the airways and ease breathing, so as to make her pouring plague less of a threat.

Nosoi doesn't have a Necroservus. She's not sure she wants one. She wears little by way of markings, either. A few small pieces of jewellery, her wings, feathered and mechanicalised. A pouch, to carry curses and cures she dares not carry in her flesh all of the time.

To Necromancers, to those who know them, all things have a purpose. Can symbolise dedication or rejection, sophistication or brutality, sneaking purpose or bold confidence.

Since arriving at Tethys' clan, Nosoi has regained some of her old confidence, and she wears the marks of it at the end of her claws.

Other Necromancers wear blades. As marks of strength and of aggression; of Plague's desire to conquer all else and make them mighty or watch them fall. To test the world itself. They wear knives and katanas, cutlasses and cleavers.

Nosoi wears her claws, limned in Alchemist gold and Staphylococcus aureus, and needs no blade at her belt.

--

Featured: Nosoi (Necromancer), Aerugosanguis (Necromancer), Pleurisy (Necromancer), Intestinum (Necroservus), Pestilentia (Necroservus). Fingers crossed, this Inktober will give me some ideas for lore for Pleurisy and Pestilentia.

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When the moon rises Nosoi does as well. Slowly she paces through the quiet halls of the clan caves, and walks outside, into the field of ash and stone just beyond.

The moon shines. For once, the sky is clear.

She paces across the field, down the slope. Round a bend and past some charred trees. After a little while she finds it: the spot she had first touched down on. The place she'd crash-landed.

She sits and from her bag pulls a number of things.

First she pulls out candles. Beeswax and yucca thread, some of them are blue but most are golden. A horn and bone scrimshaw, carved with the Goddess's image, and a terracotta statue of the Goddess of her new home. A moth-eaten mith doll, worn and faded. A skull of some small feline thing. Not the one she'd eaten as she'd crossed but another, traded for extensively.

She sets them, carefully, in a neat line. Goddesses at either end, mith before Plague and skull before Flame. The candles are a neat line between them. Nosoi lights each candle, lets the ash slowly settle as she sits in quiet.

And she cries.

It's been a long while now, that she's been settled with this clan. A clan that took her in and gave her a home. Have given her friends and a family. A place to belong.

But no matter all that because she cannot, can never, forget. where she was born. What she lost.

She strokes the mith doll - it had been that of her dearest friend, a friend she'd failed to save.

She trails her claws over the Gloomwillow skull - a creature much like this had fed her on her journey. Perhaps not the best food for a creature better suited to seafood, but she'd had no better options.

She sits. She weeps. She remembers.

This one night of the year - the night of her failure - she sets aside all she's grown and gained from everything that's happened, and lets herself feel woe and grief.

Everyone, after all, even a Necromancer, must grieve.

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You can read all of Nosoi's backstory over here - https://archiveofourown.org/works/17287199/