I have moved, and things are settled down enough to start writing again. Hopefully I will soon have internet of my own even.
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A few days later I caught up with the Scottish specter. I brought with me a bottle of high shelf whiskey imported from Scotland complete with a cheesecloth bag containing a piece of the barrel it had been aged in floating in the drink. well not so much the actual drink as rather a bottle of tonic water mixed with sugar and part of a 2x4 that Sul changed into the drink after he'd spent an hour examining the real thing in the grocery store because had I tried that, or tried to magic up money I would have just as likely created a brick of something unrelated as I can only sense it and am nowhere close to being able to mold things like that.
We met up in the college's park and once I proved that I had brought the drink did the scottsman finally start talking, though I did employ one of the sparse tricks I had picked up since I had changed. Localized foul weather, in this case I simply intensified the fog in the park by agitating the water in the small brook that ran through it to kick out more water vapor, and give people less of a reason to be out and about in the park what with some hooligan having taken up the mantle of "Jack the Ripper" as of late.
"You held up your end of the bargain.... so I should too I guess...that and I'm puzzling over how I'm to drink it since it'd be rude to just possess 'yeh. hmmmm...I know." I blinked and he vanished, though a few moments later a larger than average cat, almost knee high from paw to tip of the ear, black with darker almost violet stripes wandered over and sat down in front of me. "....not ideal, but this way the whiskey will last me even longer."
"So... What should I call you..or rather what is your name?" I cracked open the bottle and poured a shot for the Scott in the glass I had brought and set down for him. He sat there quietly sniffing the liquid before experimentally lapping at it. "To be honest I couldn't tell ye my family name if I tried... wow this is good...Ah, you can call me Eion... or John if you so prefer."
"So, when were you born?"
John paused his lapping at the whiskey to ponder the question for a time, laying his head on his paws and toying with his tail as he worked out the math. "Hmmm...I'd have to say... about when the historians now call AD-40 or somwhen around there couldn't be too much before that since I did fight roman soldiers under the command of Queen Bouddica. well till I died in a fire when we sacked and burned Londonium."
"Historians now?"
"Aye.. time is a bit murkey isn't it, and without a papertrail you've only got guesses, right?"
"Eh, perhaps your right....so...how did you become a spirit?"
"The war witches Boudica brought us back...well those of us who were willing. I was one of the luckier ones since I didn't get to badly burnt. Could pass for a normal person, others.... burnt flesh hanging from bones, reanimated and motivated as they were. Could still fight, the romans were terrified of us. The Dark legion they called us even though we only numbered a thousand. We charged in ahead of the living."
John stared off into space as I thought about this revelation. "So...they employed necromancy?"
He shook his head. "Nay. Necromancy is a dark thing, yes we were reanimated, but only because we still were motivated to fight. Those that were at peace remained at peace. Hugr and Draugr have no place in war, those dark things are nothing but foul beings intent on death."
"So what happened when the war was over, when Boudicca died?"
"Most of us had died again or fallen apart and could no longer continue the fight by that point anyway and the rebellion was crushed by Gaius's legion and local conscripts... most returned to the earth their hope crushed as the news of the Queen's assassination reached us. I wasn't...yes I was sad, but the same I was interested..what would tomorrow bring. And so that night I curled up to fake my sleep I think whatever animated my body ended... possibly the war witch was killed or the totems binding us had run out of power...Everything went black. I couldn't move, I couldn't see or hear. I felt my body being moved and buried."
"But you persisted?"
"Damn right I did. I do not know how exactly how long it was, but a sliver of light pierced the darkness, I clawed at and followed it, finding myself in a thick forest. I was not there....but there. I could move through the trees as easily as you do air, but if I chose I could just as easily touch them, climb them even break the branches.. it was effortless."
"So.. about when do you think you found yourself."
"I would say... around 1200."
"So a hundred years before Willaim Wallace's Rebellion."
"Aye, and a bloody mess that was. Lords and Ladies claiming the throne of Scotland left and right, creating turmoil an' chaos. Damn scotts.... they ruined Scotland....Well them with the help of the English, stirring the pot and throwing out the ruling of the lords to put his own empty tabard puppet in charge."
"Did you fight?...in the rebellion I mean."
"Nay. I hadn't learned how to possess a man yet, much less a dog. I could be seen by folks though. People were much more in tune with the spirits then.. I stood by and watched. A great big oak on a hill out by Lanark. The sheriff came to ask me for advice seeing as how I was an "elda spirit from ages past". He knew William Wallace had come into town and that he was a marked man. Wanted to know what to do to keep the peace."
John paused for a time before continuing. "I told him I dinn't know what he could do to keep the peace. His choice was arrest or kill Wallace, or die. Either one was sure to spread misfortune. Arrest a lord and have the whole people against you, die and become a symbol of what was wrong with the English....He made his own option, cut his hair back, burned his brows off and scarred his hands. Picked up the trade his father taught him, overnight became the town cooper."
"Interesting...." I sat there scratching out notes as John continued his tales from the past, occasionally pausing to ask questions as he lapped up whiskey.
