"I have searched far and wide for Aurika's body. I wonder now if she ever died at all. Did she betray us? Did she escape unharmed? Her magic was advancing, she may have even healed herself and let us die - but this is impossible. She must be found. I have dug up all the burned women I could find from border to border in this country, and brought them home. They have made servants, but non have proven to be Aurika. The more I search, the more I realize time has passed, she could have lived her life free of us and died long ago an old woman in her bed. That whore!
I must take more drastic actions. I will need to use my knowledge of the Amber Wastes to recruit living servants now. Perhaps then, and only then, will Aurika face the justice that must be served.-O-
This was the last entry in the Grimoire of Hortense Brāncoveanu. Her book was left in her lair, an old house on a hill deep in the Sullen Woods, and likely recovered by the second angry mob to murder her in her existence. Her death, with no last words, leaves only her sister Zenobia to avenge the family name now, and mars the hands of all involved in way or another - be it guilt, cold blood, or any other number of recourse. Her anger survives her, and lingers in the Sullen Woods as befittingly as the gnarled trees themselves, or the unholy shadows that roam it. Perhaps she herself is now one of those shadows, one of those things that go bump in the night and scare children in of doors when the gates begin to close. Perhaps no one will ever know truly why Hortense rose from the shallow grave so full of rage or what she was building towards. Or perhaps, they do, and the chill of it will haunt them for as long as they remember the time ...
... that Hortense Brāncoveanu rose from the dead.
The End.
