#psst is it necro if it's a ghost?

[making-music-with-you]

Hi hi!! How about 🍀 for whoever you'd like?

Hi sorry this took so long but I couldn't decide on how to go about this but now that I'm deathly(hah) in love with 💀 I got a brain blast for this. Took some liberties on the prompt, hope that's okay! Okay maybe a lot of liberties. Not really much 'fun' outside, but outdoors nonetheless.

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It's warm in the Dry Steppes. But in this season it's a bearable warmth. A cool breeze makes the golden grass sway. His servants are idle as he tends to the small shrine he's found. Rarely visited, fallen into disrepair. It'll probably take the whole day to fix it, but he doesn't mind the work.

He hardly pays attention to the sensation of a spirit watching him. Likely the guardian of this shrine, just like that other one had been for the previous shrine he prayed to. He's just enjoying the nice break from blood and demons.

He hears bones clattering and looks towards his servants, expecting that something is interrupting him... But it's just a brief back and forth between two of them. A playful jabbing, a chattering laugh of teeth.

He smiles to himself, then turns back to his task. He sees the edge of a pale figure beside him. The spirit from before. He just continues to clean. Pulling weeds and rewriting incantations. If they had something to say, they would say it.

He gently takes a piece of leather and examines it. He can just barely make out the words written in it. But the leather is worn badly and is beginning to show the edges of rot. He turns it over in his hand, trying to decide if he should replace it.

After a moment of silent contemplation and finding a deeper cut of rot, he stands and turns to fetch his material bag off of his now-iron golem. It takes a bit of searching to find a scrap piece large enough, but he finds one. A few quick cuts with his blade to get rid of any poorly cut edges, and he decides it's good enough.

Now to go back and rewrite the prayer from the original--

He freezes as he looks back at the shrine. At the spirit that is looking down at the little shrine. Long hair hiding half his face from view, a tall staff embellished with a skull... And a gentle smile on his face.

The name catches in his throat, desperate to come out yet terrified to disturb what's in front of him. He clutches the leather in his hands, leaving impressions of his nails in the cured animal flesh.

Had it really been him there that whole time? Watching him work? He takes a cautious step forward, then another. The apparition doesn't disappear. He becomes abruptly aware of the figure's slight height difference over him, but kneels by the shrine again, regardless.

He carefully uses his paints to recreate the prayer... And what a fitting prayer it is. Asking for balance in a mind lost to chaos. It must have been left by a necromancer conflicted by something, as he was now.

The spirit beside him moves... And out of the corner of his eye, he determines he's sat beside him, now.

And still the golden grass sways. The beasts of the Steppes still roam and graze. The sun continues its path towards the horizon.

He affixes the new leather piece to the shrine once done and sits back.

"...it would be odd for me to recite a prayer with you sitting right here, wouldn't it?"

"A bit."

His heart catches in his throat at getting a response. But he manages a chuckle around it and nods. Silence falls from his lips for a moment. There's a hundred questions on his mind, but none of them breach the surface of the silence. Instead, it's a statement that comes out of his mouth.

"I want to know you."

"You know me better than any one person alive, now."

"Not like I want to. I was a bit late for that."

Now the silence comes from beside him. Elsewhere, a beast bellows. A giant hornet hisses. Nothing that concerns him. He turns his head towards the spirit, and finds him gone.

Well, he supposes it must have taken a lot to manifest himself, as powerful as he was. Is. With a sigh, the necromancer returns to his work on the shrine, eyes barely focused on the job at hand.

That voice still hums in his mind like a good song from a bard continues in one's head long after it's done.

He suspects he'll be visiting this shrine fairly often.