(EDIT Sorry for the 4 pings!! The forums gave me an error.)

(I wrote this in 2011 or 2012, I was inspired to try and find an origin tale for Jaxon, and create a few deities for the Darkside)

A Morostide Tale

It was dark in Shadowglen woods, the warmth of the weak autumn sun had completely dissipated and was being replaced by wisps of light grey fog seeping up from the ground. Small sobs sounded from behind a grove of gnarled ancient trees then faded away into sniffles. Nekroya, fledgling goddess of death had been lost for hours, looking for her beloved twin. Oh why had they decided to travel alone, and so late in the year? The young lady paused to wipe her pale white face with a handkerchief and to look around. Even thought she knew it was futile, she called for her twin in a wavering voice “Nyyyyctia!” There was no response other than the flapping of wings high above her head. Nekroya stifled another sob. If only she and her sister hadn’t left their steeds, a Whisper and a Nightmare tied up at the entrance to the woods! She knew her Whisper would have come to her a thousand times already if it weren’t for the binding reigns her sister had insisted on using.

Of course Nyctia would be just FINE in the dark, in the middle of nowhere with nothing to eat. Her slightly older twin was the goddess of the dark and wouldn’t be tripping over roots and rocks. Nekroya sidestepped a squishy looking pile of what she wasn’t sure, just in time to get her feet tangled in some vine. She sprawled forward but instead of landing on her hands like she supposed she would, she plummeted down a steep hill and into a ravine filled with tangled vines and large vegetables of some sort.

It took several minutes for the dizziness to pass and when she opened her eyes she saw a pale grayish face peering at her.

“You ok miss?” The man’s accent was rather quaint and it surprised her that anyone lived this far into the woods. She sat up and felt her arms and legs.

“Yes I suppose, I’m a little bruised but I don’t think I broke anything.” She shifted to try to stand and the man leaned in to help her. “NO!” she shrieked. He backed away instantly looking alarmed. “I’m sorry” she whispered. “But you mustn’t touch me.” He nodded, still looking alarmed.

“Well miss, I assure you I won’t hurt you, my name is Jack and this here is my pumpkin patch. My house is right over there, just a few steps.” Jack pointed over his shoulder to a small house with a hay roof and cheerily glowing windows. Nekroya nodded and tried to stand up, balancing herself on a large pumpkin in front of her. She had almost gotten her feet under her when an agonizing bolt of fiery pain seared through her left ankle and leg. With a tiny cry of pain she collapsed, unconscious.

It was hours later when Nyctia finally came across her sister’s walking stick, a beautiful staff carved to look like bones, a delicate teal gem tied to the top of it. “Oh Nek,” she moaned, “where are you!?” She continued through thick underbrush, listening intently to the hoots of wowls and screeches of bats. Eventually she saw a glimmer ahead of her. She kept walking, picking her way down an uneven slope and through a patch of pumpkins until she got the back door of a quaint farm house. The door was open and a pretty black Maliss wound it’s away around her legs. As she stepped inside a terrifying and confusing site met her eyes.

“Nekroya?” Nyctia could barely choke out her little sister’s name. She rushed over to where her sister sat, cradling what might have once been a man. “Is he... is he dying?” she asked. Nyctia nodded.

“I fell down and he must have touched me when I passed out! Oh, oh! I told him not to! Why didn’t he listen?” She flinched as her twin reached to pet her hair. “He keeps begging to live but I don’t know what to do!!” Nyctia knelt down next to her sister.

“You do to know what to do, you can call on the spirits, you can unleash the power of the Darkside and turn him into a phantom.” Nekroya shook her head.

“And damn him to a life between both worlds? How is that saving him? I won’t, I can’t!” The distraught girl felt a tug on her arm and looked down and the rapidly deteriorating man. He leaned up to whisper to her.

“Do whatever it takes, I’ll pay the cost.”

It was a few hours later when Nyctia finished laying out the sacred markings that would bind Jack to this part of Subeta forever. She then helped her sister bring him to the center of his beloved pumpkin patch and lay him down in another group of markings that had been etched into the soil with the sharp end of Nekroya’s staff.

“Oh I hope this works!” Nekroya cried. Her sister put her fingers to her lips and then lit one of the large tallow candles she has taken from Jack’s home, she then began to call out.

“Great spirits of the Dark, come to aide thy Goddess! Creatures of the Dark, lend me thy strength, come to me, devour and rebirth this mortal known as Jack!” She finished and pushed her sister forward into the circle.

“Spirits divine and cursed, sacred and unholy, come to me, Goddess of Death, Spilt blood awaken, torn flesh renew, ground bones come together this night to form a new vessel for the dying man I now protect!”

The twins stood in silence as they watched magic older than they take over the land. The dying man moaned, his flesh dropped away, his bones fell into heaps of dust and his soul left, flying to the stone hanging from Nyctia’s staff. Next to what had been Jack’s corporeal form was a new body, pieced together by the spirits of Subeta. Nyctia touched the glowing stone to its forehead and watched as the eyes fluttered open, the chest began to rise and fall with unnecessary but long remembered breathing and eventually, memory came to the man in front of them. Long, slender fingers reached up to feel an unfamiliar face, to trace unknown scars over his left eye, to reach forward and sit up.

“I’m not the same.” he said plainly. The twins nodded. Jack looked wistfully around the pumpkin patch, unfamiliar magic still coursing through the vines. “But this is still my home.” He stood and gave a little laugh at the deep crimson that stained the girl’s cheeks. “I think I need a new name, and perhaps, new clothing.” A plaintive mew got him to look down. “Snowflaik!” he cried as he scooped her up into his arms. The Maliss looked uncomfortable but gave her master a small lick. He laughed again, quieter than the first time and headed towards his house.

Nekroya looked exhausted and began to cry. “How will we get home now?” she wondered out loud. “Are we bound here?” Nyctia sat down on a pumpkin to ponder.

“I don’t think we’re bound here, but we have to leave before sun up and I can’t use my powers anymore until we get home!”

“So we have no light to guide us?” her sister asked in a small voice.

“Not necessarily” The young women turned to see Jack coming towards them with a lit candle. He stooped down where the ceremony had taken place and tore some vines from the patch. With a few deft movements he had tied them around an object at his knees, then placed the candle within it. The girls stared in wonder as he lifted his former skull, candle light flickering from the eyes and nose. “Take me with you.” he said with a wry laugh. “Let me light your path.” Nyctia nodded and grasped the vine handle.

“Thank you for my new life little one.” Nekroya nodded and turned to go with her sister. She stopped after just a few steps.

“Wait,” she said to the retreating figure. “I want you to have this.” She held out her staff. “It’s no good to me anymore, but maybe you can use it for something?” The earnest look on her face amused him but he reached out to take it. “What are you going to call yourself?” she asked as he took the staff. He smiled a mysterious smile.

“Jaxon, for I have been reborn of myself and Skelly, to remind me of my past.”

“Jaxon Skelly,” she whispered. “It’s a wonderful name.”

“Go now, or you will never escape the woods by dawn!”

Nyctia and Nekroya got to their horses and rode away just as the sun began to creep up over the leaf strewn land of Shadowglen and returned to their homes in the Darkside, never to return to the woods where they had been lost. But many tales come from their adventure that Autumn night.

Some say it was Nyctia who bestowed life to pets who had passed on, creating the haunting Graveyard look. Others say that when the sun sinks low in the West and the nights are cold and dark, people cheer themselves by carving pumpkins to look like skulls, lighting them with candles and calling them “Jack’s Lanterns” in remembrance of the sacrifice a farmer gave to protect the Goddess of the Dark.

It has been a good number of years since these tales began and out of them grew many of our hallowed Morostide traditions.  Are they true? We may never know.  But some cold night, if you find yourself carving a face in a pumpkin, or braving the wrath of a certain pumpkin patch owner, look around, you may be surprised to see the lingering magic of a night so long ago. 

I like it, very nice!

Wow! What an awesome story! I want to read more!! You should ping Keith to come read it..no I can do that! Check out this cool Morostide tale written by !

Thank you very much!

Very impressive, thanks for sharing it again!

You are most welcome! you have an awesome talent!

very nice!

Awesome!!! Are you an book writer in RL? LOL this is really great.

I write short stories and poetry IRL. I edit novels.

EDIT: "Not recently. He's been a ghost for a while now. He is only able to come through during Morostide, vanishes again when it is finished, and is trapped here at the Skelly estate for the duration. It's why we've been working on this project- I'm trying to bind him to the physical world."

OMG YOU GUYS.

Heheh, I thought of your story when I saw that.

Even if it's not intentional, I am really super excited! :D It's like it's practically canon now. xD

Hmm... Really cool, or very sinister!!

Didn't appreciate the spoilers before I had a chance to do the plot... :( Maybe put that quote in a spoiler tab next time?