[Winter Contest Entry 2021] FP: The Immortal Familial Bond

A pair of figures waltzed down an unkempt road, hand-in-hand, through an overgrown forest path, one a tall adult and the other a small child. As they approached the end, the early evening sunshine along the horizon greeted them, illuminating the tree branches and leaves showing their newfound spring greenery. “Grandfather,” the boy called out, tightening his grip on the man’s hand. “Grandfather, we’re almost home.” Upon leaving the tunnel of foliage, the descending path revealed itself towards a quaint village. The boy pointed towards it and looked up at the man, showing a smile that grew into a genuine grin.

The man looked down towards the boy, his fleshless, bony visage unable to match the child’s expression. However, bright blue shining orbs, like stars, within his eye sockets peered towards the child, then towards their destination. In return, he hummed a pensive and affirmative “hm…”

“Come on, Grandfather. I want to see Mommy and Papa. Hurry!” The boy hurried, tugging his grandfather’s skeletal fingers in his hand.

As they approached the village, the absence of activity was all that welcomed them. The boy stared ahead, steadfast, while the man peered around, allowing the boy to guide him. There were toppled wheelbarrows with scavenged, rotted, and desiccated crops, long having outgrown their use. They entered the village limits, but there was only a pack of wild dogs gnawing on bones to welcome them. On noticing the people, they became attentive and started to back away. The man calmly pulled the child closer towards him as the child grabbed onto his grandfather’s robe and silently looked on at the beasts. The pack gave the pair a wide berth and took the initiative to move on and leave the village in the opposite direction from the strangers. When it was clear they had left, the child pulled his guardian towards one of the buildings close by, one that had a strong presence in his memory.

Home—which had become anything but.

A wooden front door had fallen off its hinges and trails of prints and detritus led inside and out, showing the traffic of wildlife over time. The pale-white skeletal man stepped onto the premises and led the boy behind him, shielding him from what might lie within. On their entrance, large black birds cawed and flew out of the home through the front door and broken windows. Upon entering further within, where scavengers had already relentlessly rampaged through, his suspicions proved true. He would have shed a deep exhalation from what he saw, had he the lungs capable of doing so. “Where’s Mommy? Mommy! Papa!” The boy looked around, seeing the two mounds of disheveled and disturbed bones, clearly never buried, with marooned blood-soaked scraps of clothing in tatters around them. “They’re not here…”

After pausing to consider how to compose his words, the man knelt to the boy’s level and looked into his eyes. As he began speaking, his words hummed with an ethereal echo. “Child… They are right before you. Here they lay.” The boy looked on, confused, trying to make sense in his naivety.

“…They look just like you do,” the boy said solemnly.

“Hmm, yes. But they will not rise and walk like I do.” The boy looked at the bones of his parents and began to sob, unable to accept the conclusion.

“Grandfather, bring them back. Bring them back! Grand…Grandfather, bring them back!” he choked out as his sobs turned to wails.

“Listen, my child. It is within my power. But they will not retain their minds, nor their memory.” His cold gaze pierced the boy, with no response beyond noise. He looked at the boy’s necklace that he had entrusted to him before they left his necropolis, a leather strap holding a smooth, ornate, glass bottle containing a spinning sapphire light, a piece of his very soul and a resource of power. After pondering for a moment and seeing his progeny in tears, it moved him, perhaps swaying him away from reason more than he would otherwise. “Perhaps there might be a way to bring them back, but it won’t be for long, and quite possibly dangerous. You must do precisely as I instruct you and not endanger yourself. Do you understand me?” the child nodded as hope began to glimmer a return through stifled sniffles. “Answer me. You must do exactly as I tell you.”

“Yes, Grandfather,” the boy affirmed.

“Good. Now—assist me, then.” He had the boy remove debris he could carry from the room while he retrieved chalk from a satchel of modest supplies and began to draw circles and runes of necromantic meditation. He looked on at the subjects of the ritual and attempted to fit their bones together in his mind like a puzzle. It would be troublesome. Judging from the state of the outside and how the animals had ransacked what remained, the village had been destroyed for months. It had been wracked by a plague that cursed these lands, which was the reason his son rode to his secluded necropolis and left the boy in the care of his grandfather, unaffected by threats towards mortality. A pity that decision became a permanent one. Now here was all that remained of his son and the wife he had, and to make matters more complicated, minus several bones that dogs had likely scavenged. It was a certain impossibility too return them to life. There was no flesh to form even a wight, let alone a sapient one. However, a deep frustration arose within him at the loss of the family he isolated himself from. Perhaps it was a lack of closure, or a reckless faith in his ability, or even empathy to give his grandchild back the guardians he could not be, but nonetheless he persisted with his preparations.

In due time, runed circles and lines were drawn, connecting the piles of bones to the concentration circle for the spellcaster, intended for him. As he sat down cross-legged within the hollow center, the boy loitered at the side of the room. “You should leave, my grandson. There is no more for you to do here for now.”

“But Grandfather, I’m scared,” the boy cried. He was young and driven by instinct, barely halfway towards adolescence. And yet all this was to satisfy his naïve desire to see his parents again. Despite the fleetingness of such a feat, his grandfather beckoned him.

“Come to me, child, and sit upon my lap.” The boy did so, without hesitation, and sat down on the boned thighs of his ancestor. “Listen to my chants and forget not what you see, for it may be as brief as a whispered wind.” It wasn’t long before the reverberation of his chanting echoed off the weathered and torn walls of the building. The boy shuddered as the temperature seemed to decrease. He looked around with wide eyes as the light seemed to falter, as if the sunshine became hidden behind overcast clouds. Or perhaps night had already arrived, hastened from the time spent working, but almost as if the spell itself stole the very cosmic energy around them.

The bones in their own hieroglyphic circles started rumbling and shaking as an opaque green mist steamed out of the marrow. The boy could not avert his gaze even if he wanted to. The mist spewed and shrouded two ethereal forms that rose from the piles taking on images of the boy’s parents: the father, turquoise, and the mother, jade. Their spectral eyes fluttered open as they witnessed the beings before them.

“Father…” the ghastly man droned.

“My precious boy…” the ghostly woman wailed.

“My children…” the calcified elder murmured. “I pity the fate that has befallen you and your village.”

The ghastly man continued, “It was predicted that the plague would come for us too, like the other villages in these now deadlands, and that prediction came true. These lands are now cursed. It was our final hope that in leaving our son in your care, that he would be spared from such a horrid fate.”

The skeletal senior peered down to the boy shuffling restlessly in his lap, “My grandson desired to see you once more. I decided to grant him this wish. My apologies. Not even one with my ability can return you to the physical world with any permanence.” The boy, unable to contain his emotions stood and wailed out for his parents, rushing towards their grim miens.

“Mommy! Papaaa!” he cried. A paternal instinctual thought arose in the robed man, almost wanting to call him back from potential danger, but he watched on instead of interfering.

“We are here, my boy. You are with us now,” his mother soothed him. He could not take hold of the fog, unable to find consolation in the immaterial, so he stood there and looked upwards at them. “We will not separate again. You will be with us always.”

Those were words from the fallen that he had heard before, and though he deliberately wished the intent not to be malicious, the selfish innate desire behind them forced them so. The grandfather raised his arm towards the boy. “Boy! Return to me at once!” The child turned his head back, then forwards as his parents floated towards him and brought him into their shadowy embrace. The fog encased him, and he began to seize and shake. “Curse you, confounded spirits. Always seeking to anchor yourselves to the world, to your past, at any cost.” The older man spat, even aware of the hypocrisy of his criticism. He had to end the ritual before it was too late. With a shouted sentence, he scratched his bony fingers across the ritual lines linking his circle to the ones surrounding the two piles of remains of the departed. Their forms began to fade, hugging their child and appearing to soak in his life’s essence as if beckoning his spirit out of his body to meet them. The boy dropped to the ground, shaking, as his body subconsciously fought to stay alive. His grandfather rushed to him and inspected his state, cursing himself as a failure of a guardian. There wasn’t much time. He had to perform a ritual on the boy he had only completed once before on himself. He grabbed his chalk and flicked it around the boy’s body, drawing ancient runes long forgotten, eventually connecting it to his meditation circle, and to the remains of the parents. “If you seek to join him, let this be your chance to do so, for all eternity,” he offered towards the faded specters. They were all too eager to gift their part in this rare ceremony. He took his seat in the circle and spoke haunting words of decay. Long abandoned iron tools within the home flew in front of the skeletal spellcaster, magnetized towards each other, deathly magic stripping and twisting them into a small cage. He extended both arms with outstretched palms towards the parents, drawing their phantom forms into it, eager to belong in their new home. Finally, he looked towards the boy, his eyes teary and soaked, his shaking slowed as he was losing his ability to breathe. With a measure of sadness and regret, he called to the boy. “Forgive me, my grandson. Forgive this foolish wretch…” He moaned as he spoke out incantations of an old language. The bottle tied around the boy’s neck raised up as if lifted by a poltergeist. The blue light within was set aflame with energy, emboldened by the passion of the caster and power required of the service. Blue flames licked around the orb, pulsing with energy in synchronicity with the sire, channeled into the cage as a catalyst that was now swarming with haunted power. All that remained was the final stage, the most difficult and the least chances of success, but his determination carried him as he recited a mantra of mysticism, pulling the soul itself from the boy and channeling it into the cage as well. It was wispy and young, but nonetheless brought as the final ingredient into the cage. Whether it was the patron’s ability, the speed of the ritual, or by pure chance or inherited power, the boy’s soul caused a strong reaction within the crucible, turning the combination of souls of his ancestors an ethereal aquamarine.

With the ritual completed, the grandfather looked at the boy’s face. The color had now sunken into a deathly grey, his flesh now absent of life. “Was I too late?” he lamented. The outside night had no sounds of life, no calls from animals or even insects to answer him. All that remained was the floating, rotating cage in the air in front of his sitting form, a passionate source of energy that now contained the souls of his descendants. Was it now just a bauble, a memento of magic to remind him of his failure to safeguard his lineage? He stayed there throughout the night and meditated.

Against all hope of success, the body of his grandson animated. His eyes opened and he sat up. Despite the lifeless color of his skin, he moved as if normal. “Grandfather?” From his mouth came the sound of a combination of human speech and an eerie hum. “Grandfather, are we still home? Mommy…Papa…they were here…” The enchanter was in disbelief for a moment as he stared at his grandchild, until finally responding.

“You have returned, my grandson. Back to the land of the living,” he proclaimed.

“Returned…to the land of the living?” the boy repeated. His grandfather nodded and lifted himself up to his feet, walking to the boy, and helping him onto his.

“Yes. Although you are no longer living, you are neither dead. You are now undead,” he explained plainly to the boy while he grabbed the cage from the air, fastened a strip of leather around it from their supplies, and handed it to him. “And this, much like mine already around your neck, is your phylactery. It now harbors your soul. It is a source of incredible power, and much more so, now serves as the home of your parents’ souls as well.” The boy looked deep within the twinkling green-blue light, and for the briefest moment, could see the clouded and content visages of his parents.

“Does that mean I am like you now, Grandfather? Will I look like you some day?” he questioned, confused.

“Yes, my child. You are more like me than you will ever know. And some day, you will look like this too. Now come, we must return home to the necropolis. I will have to train you to use the necromantic magic that you now depend on.” He left the house and his grandson followed behind. An early morning sun greeted them promising a new adventure.

“Wait, Grandfather!” the boy pleaded as he looked at his patriarch for a time.

“What is it, my boy?” he asked as he knelt and looked at his grandson on his level. The boy looked at his grandfather’s hollowed face, staring into his bright sapphire-colored eyes. The man returned the child’s gaze and could see the faint glimmer of his own aquamarine light within his pupils.

“Here!” The boy lifted the straps of his phylactery over his grandfather’s head so that he would wear it. “Now, I really am like you,” he declared as he held onto his grandfather’s phylactery around his own neck, now understanding the importance and significance of the precious treasure his grandfather left in his care.

There were not many moments of empathy that a reclusive undead hermit such as he could share with the living, but as he pondered this moment, he felt intensely connected to his family in ways he had not experienced since he was living. Had he still his heart in his chest, it would have felt full. Even though his body shed that physicality, as the boy would eventually as well, this emotion persisted into the soul. He got up on his feet and extended his hand to his grandson, which the boy happily grasped with a smile so large, it harbored all his excitement for the days to come, united with those whom he held dear—forever.

An enjoyable read, I quite liked the skeletal imagery. I suppose this is why you changed your profile picture?

Nothing much to nitpick here as it's pretty polished up, my opinion is that your wording in some places is a bit verbose but that's entirely a style thing.

I find myself searching for some kind of deeper meaning in all this - is the message you're trying to convey that familial ties are stronger than death itself?

I also question why the grandfather was forced to turn the boy into an undead after allowing him to speak to his dead parents. Maybe I missed something.

I would definitely add some more paragraph breaks in the paragraph where the boy is turned into an undead.

Many thanks for your compliments. Yes, I was inspired to change my profile picture on completion of this piece and last year's avatar was similarly inspired by my piece then as well.

I suppose you can find meaning in the sense that the connection of family is something that transcends life with this story, that one is eternally connected to countless ancestors and is connected to their possible descendants. It most certainly is conveyed through the title and why I chose it. But I would struggle with calling that an intended moral or lesson here, rather I would prefer to think of this written with it as a primary theme instead.

About why he was turned, it's mentioned quickly in the sentences:



Although I'm not surprised if you missed it since it is part of the giant paragraph, and also brief. And perhaps it could be interpretted to be temporary. It's because his parents, returned as summoned spirits, took the opportunity to sap his life essence away so that he would physically die and join them in the afterlife. Not necessarily out of malevolence, although that was the natural affect on the child, but more out of their love in continuing to be with him. The grandfather chastised them, making it a point to show it as a common occurance for those who are departed and brought back. Since his grandfather wanted to allow the boy the ability to continue his "life" in the world, so to speak, he did what he could to prolong existence in his physical form, which was turning him undead through a ritual that would keep his sapience. It also allowed the parents to have their wish and continue to be with him as well. Perhaps this was also a selfish desire from the grandfather to keep the boy with him? I didn't write that explicitly, but it's fun to think about.

Thank you for your critique of the paragraph length. I knowingly allowed it because, as much as I searched for an appropriate place to break it, I couldn't find one, so I just let it continue until I finished writing the scene. Perhaps I will find a place to do so in the future, or maybe rewrite it so that there can be a natural place to break it up, as it does go quite long.

I see I see, thanks for the explanations and now that you've pointed it out it makes perfect sense.

I think it was the giant paragraph for me that made it hard to focus/follow. But regardless I did like the piece.

Liked it overall. I think some of the exposition could have been conveyed better, but the story itself is nice.

The first half was uneasy and unsettling in a good way. The imagery and uncertainty of where you are going with the story kept me on the edge of my seat.

Then the eventual transition into the grandfather's rituals was great. Personally I really liked that it was all one paragraph. I don't know enough about grammatical correctness, but I really enjoy messing with the writing ideas like trying to control tempo in writing. Whether or not you intended this, I'm not sure, but placing the rituals all condensed in one area really picks up the pace and gives the entire thing a sense of speed and urgency that is reflected also in the writing. I thought it was really cool.

Lastly, I really like how the story ties deeply into the themes of the contest; something that I value highly for events like this.

Unsurprisingly impressive story. It was a real pleasure to read!

Thank you for enjoying it, d.



Thank you for the compliments. I'm pleased to hear that it was every bit as haunting as I intended. I'm interested that you found the paragraph fitting. I honestly left it intact because it felt like every sentence was part of the whole situation. That added to why I felt so awkward about splitting it in any particular place. But maybe what you mentioned was a subconscious desire in my mind when making that decision, feeling that they were all connected and happening close together and quickly. At the very least, it's a positive way to look at it.

And thank you for noticing the thematic elements. I was pleased to work alongside your wonderful suggestions for this year.

Until the next!

What a bittersweet story. The beginning felt a bit slow, but I do not mean this too much as a critique. I thought that it was an excellent way of pacing the story as it picked up the pace by the end.

I am on both Yank’s and Nine’s side regarding the last paragraph. On one hand, it felt a bit long and overwhelming. The text was a little imposing and was aesthetically out of place compared to the previous shorter paragraphs. On the other, it did a great job of controlling the pace. Making the ritual one long paragraph really sealed in that feeling of urgency.

I had a few questions, but they aren’t really important. This includes why the grandpa chose to become a lich and how are they perceived in this world. Is he evil? Did his descendants approve? I guess at the end of the day, it was nice to see that he cared about another life other than his own, since selfish preservation tends to be the theme of liches. Though I feel as if there was a hint of fear in his line ending rather than out of genuine love. But, seeing as I assume the grandson can no longer have children, it must be out of love. Plus, the ending lines made him sound relieved and regretful.

I thought it was a good idea and well written overall. I’m sorry it took so long for me to read it.

PS - What is up with spirits always accidentally or maliciously syphoning life out of the living to join them? Are they just sort of evil all the time? I guess if you work with necromancy, that’s just how it goes.

Thank you for coming back to the entries this year to read them. I know that you tend to be busy these days, so you making the effort even after the fact is very much appreciated.

I'm grateful for your commentary on the story. It's always great to see how you react to certain parts as you interpret them, and definitely helps me analyze and critique my writing strategies.

As far as your questions are concerned, I will answer what I am able to. Unfortunately, the reasons why Grandfather chose to become a lich, outside of undoubtedly selfish reasons to prolong his life, is something I haven't thought about in much depth yet. Surely his reclusive life was a result of this decision, as I find it makes sense that it would be difficult for one who has shed their mortality to be able to reside alongside average towns of the living, who may typically recoil in fear at such a brazen expression of death. But, I also haven't thought much about that aspect in this world yet, in addition to how his descendants thought of it. I did make it explicit that despite severing his mortal coil, his love for his family persisted, and I hope that it his son and his wife felt the same way towards him. Why would they entrust their son into his care unless they felt he was safer with the living-dead than among the living-and-perhaps-soon-to-be-dead? But, technically according to the written word, it is open to interpretation, so I will enjoy thinking on this.

Thank you for your detailed thoughts about the grandfather's motives. They were nice to read, as I find those questions and following the logic fun to think about.

No apologies necessary on any tardiness. Honestly, I'm content that you came back and posted at all. I'm grateful for it.

Lastly, about the spirits, yes, it does seem to be typical in the case of your Tolkien/Fantasy trope that they tend to have an entropic effect on the living world around them. I tried to address this in the writing, about whether one can consider such things to be malicious or subconscious, or merely a matter of nature. I touched a bit on this in my response to Yanker, however, another aim of this story was to call into question the stereotype of the malevolent lich, which usually is interpreted that a being whose aim it is to selfishly prolong its life at the cost of harvesting the souls of the dead, and bends them to its will. But what if this were changed and interpreted with a more Eastern Monastic interpretation, and one just sought to prolong their life through devout attachment to the cyclical nature of life and death, and caring for or shepherding the departed? If the requirement of lichdom was not to have any negative effects on other living people, why would a lich need to be malevolent? Philosophically, how would a benevolent lich live? When one sheds their physical mortal connection to the world, how can they maintain a connection to the living world they left behind? Surely through family, and perhaps through other connections they have to the world that exist outside of themselves. So, an explicit theme of selfishness vs. selflessness is unavoidable in such a story, and one I was inspired to make the forefront of this entry. I just find these philosophical questions incredibly fascinating and was pleased to have the opportunity to write about them.

Thank you for showing interest, and it was great to hear from you again.