MQ: Dawnbringers

[Flames of Hyperion]

Closed to those with prior permission. Please see here (http://althanas.com/world/showthread.php?t=20227) for further information or questions regarding the thread.

He was surrounded by faceless stone and heavy rank air, in an oppressively small room with no paths in and only one way out. The cavern was no more than a pocket of claustrophobic darkness deep within the Raiaeran earth, lit by a single brazier that flickered erratically despite the complete lack of wind. The arcane flame was a beacon as well as a source of light, reaching out into the war-torn homeland of the High Elves in search of suitable souls to complete its anointed task. With each individual it ensnared it grew gradually weaker, the murmurs of its fate-borne whisperings fading away like haunting echoes into the shadows.

For the moment, however, there was only one figure in the room, a motionless young man tucked away in the far corner like an unwanted ornament. He sat with his legs folded beneath him, on the cold hard floor facing the brazier; the flame reflected upon the armour of burnished gold he wore, playing upon the spectacles nestled on his brow and dancing in the depths of his darkly sensitive eyes. Beyond the object of his silent contemplation was a single doorknob embedded into the rock face, although there was no visible door to match it. It was easily identifiable as a portal, and Ingwe Helyanwe had no doubt as to where it led.

He felt distinctly uncomfortable seated in the shadows, decked out as he was head to toe in the Regalia Valora (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?t=19825), the ancient relic that had been entrusted to him by powers far greater than he. Ingwe disliked the feel of metal against his body at the best of times, and although the mythril was far lighter and more flexible than the vast majority of armours he was used to, it seemed to cling to his clammy skin with every breath he took. The remainder of his attire was completed by the staff propped up against the wall by his right hand, along with the shield resting against his thigh and the twin daggers he wore on his back. Part of him felt slightly overdressed in such resplendently extravagant finery; the other part knew that there could be no such hesitation when preparing to face one of the Forgotten Ones, the Dread Lord Xem’zund himself.

He sat within one of the last of the Necromancer’s strongholds, a hidden crypt deep within the Raiaeran soil beneath the Lindequalme. Ingwe didn’t know how it had been built, or how it had been found, or why it had been deemed appropriate that he should find himself there. All the young man knew was that beyond the innocuous-looking doorknob lay Xem’zund’s final resting place, to which the lich had been driven to after the fall of the Obsidian Spire and the siege of Narenhad, and his defeat at the hands of Nalith and Prince Turgon on the banks of the River Escaldor.

Neither did Ingwe know who had placed the beacon in this small hidden chamber, or how they had managed to smuggle it so close to the Forgotten One’s lair, or whether or not Xem’zund was aware of its presence and had taken the time to prepare a lavish welcome for them all. What he did know was that it had taken over twenty assorted Bards and Magi nearly two days to decipher the song in their heads and then prepare the ritual to send him to his current location. Such was the effort required that Ecthelion had warned that they might not even be able to track him, much less communicate, once he left the Legion of Light behind. Ingwe had only smiled gently and bade them take care, to concentrate on their own destinies as he would on his.

It was the job of himself, and that of any who joined him in that small chamber before the fire in the brazier sputtered and died, to defeat and bind the powerful demi-god who lay in the chambers ahead. Only then would Raiaera and its peoples be allowed to embark upon the long and hazardous journey to recovery.

He had no doubt that his companions would soon begin to arrive, drawn to the crypt like moths to the flame in any manner that fate saw fit.

Until then he closed his eyes and clutched gently at the pendant upon his chest, and allowed his thoughts to roam as they would… the path he had walked until the present, the dreams he held for the future, the battle that he would soon be asked to fight…

… and those who had given him the strength to come thus far.

He would either redeem their faith in his abilities and prove himself worthy of returning to see them once again, or he would die trying.

[Cydnar]

We are immortal in but one way, our memories. Through them, we are eternal and youthful, glorious and radiant, empathic and successful. An eternity binds us to the memories of others, and we live on after the physical corruption of death in the minds and hearts of those we left an impact on during our existence. Cydnar grew tired and weary of being nothing more than a memory, vowing to not succumb to such petty clawing at life, at brilliance – it was time, he thought, for him to forge his own destiny, even if it will end in a swan song of self-fulfilling irony, of sacrifice.

The Hummel are supposed to observe, to caress, and to maintain balance between the magical and the mundane. Men are supposed to die, but it is these two things, these fundamental laws being broken that has brought the Salthias into the catacombs of the mother earth, and it is these two sins that he would triumph or die for in the dark beneath all other dark. It is a funny thing, although humour is oft lost on elves and other folk, to be fighting for survival in the very essence of a race’s endeavours. The geological properties of Althanas are laid out before the gods, and he like every Hummel knew each and every edifice of stone. Here however, he was lost in a world beyond the salvation of knowledge, of petty and scholastic words.

“I am frightened Brother Cydnar,” he spoke slowly but surely, commanding the last few yards of stone aside with a flick of the wrist and a concerted brow, furrowing through the stone with mental contractions and resolute control. “We are too far beyond the realms of Yrene to hear his call, what manner of place is this?”

Cydnar decided against answering, and twisted and loosened the chill in his wrists. How could I safely tell him that I did not know? After the battle on the surface, after witnessing Love die and the authority of a thousand years crumble beneath the fury of battle, there was nothing left with meaning but a futile sense of emissary power, and a crushing wave of revenge, of taking vengeance on that which caused my kind so much woe. If this great ‘necromancer’ was not stopped, then the dead would walk the earth forever, and the balance of magic, natural and right, would break; even Yrene could not consume that much evil and malignant corruption in the soil – there would be a sundering, a proverbial twilight between man and manna. He lost himself momentarily in his thoughts.

The awkward silence purveyed a greater sense of urgency, of longing for an escape than he realised. He dwelt in his thoughts as they forged through the last of the granite.

The rock melted away, half pushed aside and half vaporised by the geomantic boon of their deity. The darkness beyond created a pocket of vapour, and the cold rushed into the warmth of the tunnel; the half-light cast from a distant brazier foretold of movement, of life, but no eyes could see the signs beyond. “Thank you, Brother Sajama; you are, as per the council’s mandate, to return immediately to Donnalaich. No turning back, no hesitation, no contesting of wills in the umbra cavity – you are to go home, do you understand?”

His young eyes glimmered in the distant azure glow and Cydnar felt saddened at the sorrow and understanding in them, welling up like a storm drain. Even he did not think he would return from this confrontation, but he would not be alone in both thought and action – “do not fret for my safety, the World Snake will consume and constrict all those who are not born of His Grace. I will return to the city to tell the council of Raiaera’s victory over its enemy.”

“Will such victory bring you peace, Brother Cydnar?” He stepped back into the tunnel as Cydnar stepped forward, the padding of leather on smooth stone floor covering the tracks of my hesitation with a smooth slide and echo.

“I have found peace in my servitude and my position in life, Sajama, may you in turn find yours.”

With a longing look, they nodded in agreement at one another and then the stone formed over the tunnel like a liquid spirit leaving no trace of creatures ever passing through it. The silence smothered the lone elf more than the darkness, and the magnitude of his stupidity struck him. Ever since those first clashes in the Citadel, ever since meeting the stranger in the woods who spoke of distant worlds and serving gods and monsters, Cydnar had wondered what Fate would inflict upon him. As he walked slowly through the darkness towards the flickering brazier, hand resting on the hilt of Freya, he contemplated if this last act of defiance of the Hummel would be his magnum opus.

Or his early grave…

[Mage Hunter]

Anebrilith – 2 Weeks ago

Drusilia watched as they ran towards the walls once again. Shambling and screeching their hunger filled most of the people on the walls with dread, even as she notched her bow with another arrow. Her eyes had taken on the bluish tint, as she focused once more on her chosen task, preformed faithfully since she had gotten back to the besieged Elvin town. Bringing the bow up, she smiled, seeing the stronger auras of blue amidst the ranks of the trudging undead, before an arrow shot off.

The necromancer who had been hiding amongst the undead was felled, as the other elves fired on the target, sending a hail of twenty arrows even he would have been hard pressed to dodge.

Another volley began in the same area, even as she notched another arrow. She had taken to shooting first at the target, showing the others roughly where to fire. Even if the arrows were not accurately fired, the fact so many were flooding the area produced the same effect. With the Dweller in the Dark dead, few necromancers could be spared, and the tide began to shift, ever so slowly towards victory. The elves had hope once more, and she began to see the martyrdom slowly leave their ranks, even as their “Pet Drow” continued to fight relentlessly against the forces of the necromancer.

The zombies immediately began to shamble back from whence they came. This brought a few sighs of relief as the call for more arrows was brought up from somewhere along the wall. Drusilia merely pulled out her flask and began to drink from the water within. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand she heard a familiar voice, “Harpy, I have some news for you.”

A small smile crept across her face, even as she looked up. An Elvin woman with fiery red hair was standing there, dressed in full armor and wearing the badge of an officer. Her eyes held a bit of a caring quality about them, perhaps her biggest flaw. Lieutenant Verryna was standing there letter in hand, a small smile upon her face. Drusilia sighed taking the letter she was offered into hand, before her finger opened the letter and with a casual flick of the wrist she was reading it. A few of the guard watched in silence, even as an eyebrow arched on the Drow’s forehead. Finally she looked up at Verryna before she said, “Think you can hold down the fort for a few weeks?”

“What are you planning?” The Elf asked, her own face taking on a look of confusion.

“Looks like Godhand flushed Xem’zund into a corner. They want me to move against him, guess I impressed them with my tricks against the Necrosition…” Drusilia said, her hand gently rubbing at a scar on her throat from where Lord Colin Crowley had attempted to choke her. Godhand had been there for that fight as well, much like they had since coming up against Warsong and Warsmith outside the no name town where the Anti-Paladin had fallen. Time had caused the two to break up temporarily with Godhand chasing after gods, and Drusilia honing her skills on a real battlefront, namely helping Anebrilith.

“You know what they say about a cornered animal,” Verryna cautioned. Drusilia laughed before she rose up and stretched her form.

“Careful Lieutenant, I might get the idea you care about me…” Drusilia said before they clasped hands warmly.

“Oh don’t worry about that. I just figured you still owe me another month or two of service on the wall,” The red headed elf replied with a sarcastic smirk.

“I figured it would be something like that. I don’t suppose you have a horse I could use?”

“As a matter of fact I do…”


~*~

The Lair of the Necromancer – Today

“This place reeks of necromancy,” Drusilia muttered under her breath. Living on trail rations and her wits alone had already soured her mood. She forgot what it was like to travel with no reliable means of restoring her dwindling food stores. The results were a rather irate Drow, who was nearing the lair of Althanas’ most dangerous mage. She continued forward, ignoring the slight pangs of hunger by taking the opportunity to nibble on a bit of hard tack. It worked for the most part, but really it was more a delay tactic.

She just hoped Godhand had an extra cigarette to share with her.

Moving down the passage way she had indicated on the small map she shook her head clucking her tongue, “Figures that they’d write in Elvin, at least I now what the hell they’re saying, even if it takes them five words to get the concept of tunnel across.” She continued down the passageway before she saw it, a light in the darkness. A small smirk crossed her face as she continued forward, tearing into the hard tack in earnest. If she was going to fight, she had better not be hungry while doing so, or else she would fast become a casualty on the field.

Moving a bit swifter down the tunnel she didn’t reflect on her life as much as she should have. She didn’t ready herself for death, nor did she steel her nerves. She wasn’t that kind of person, the Drow arrogance long turned into a pride that said she would not die with regrets. She had already done most of the things in life she wanted, her only regret was in not having kids. Even then, she wasn’t sure if her really fit being left so vulnerable. Perhaps she would never have kids, or perhaps she would when she had retired from the adventuring life. She didn’t know, but for now that didn’t matter. What mattered was the task before her.

Besides, she had Lieutenant Verryna to disappoint. Already Drusilia knew there was a pool going for her death, and when she came they would all find a small anonymous chip betting against all odds for one thing;

That she would be there to collect the entire pot from under them.

[Ataraxis]

Darkness reigned still and silent within the cavern, broken only by the glow of smoldering coals and the licking light of dying flames. The shadows steered clear from the burning brazier, pulling back then pressing on with the fire’s every wax and wane, lapping at the cold stone ground like waves upon sandy coastlines. Thus went on the ebb and flow, until the monotony was broken by a singular ripple in the dark.

The shadows seemed taken by a shiver of unrest, their surface disturbed by a light effervescence before breaking out into pitch black spume. Countless beads of inky darkness skittered across the stone, moving as one under the influence of some unknown hive mind, gathering at the base of a cavern wall, melding into one another as they collided and coalesced into a single body of darkness aggregate.

The resultant globule wobbled to and fro, rising from the earth with every sway as it attempted to take shape. The mass became flatter and flatter until it was nothing but an obscure film against the cave wall in the form of an archway. There it stood in perfect stillness, strange and silent, the only remaining fixture of darkness in a room otherwise bereft of any shadow. In its heart, one could only make out the blur of a pale silhouette.

Lillian’s head was first to make its egress from the portal, scanning left and right with wide, glacial eyes. She registered the brazier, the confined space, the few occupants that had arrived earlier than her, and she nodded: the premises seemed secure. The girl of sixteen walked through the sorcerous threshold without more flair than she would that of a tavern, though the slight bounce in her step seemed weighed with reluctance and wariness.

At once, the portal collapsed behind her to become an unstable black void of sorts, its ominous pulsing indicative of its imminent dissolution into nothingness.

Practice caution, girl, came a stentorian voice from the black hole. Point of no return: cannot come for you again.

“I know,” Lillian answered softly, looking back over her shoulder with a wistful smile. She saw two great orbs of pure, white light staring at her from the void, and she knew those were the eyes of the Shadow Child: more than a powerful elemental, it was a demanding teacher as well as a close friend… and she knew this may be the last it would ever see of her. “Thank you, Shalim. For taking me here… and for everything else.”

She might have seen a nod of acknowledgment before the sphere broke apart, wisps and tendrils of shadow gushing outward like sullen festoons, splashing against the cavern walls, trickling back down to where they belonged. Lillian sighed there and then, feeling rather vulnerable in her sudden loneliness. Succumbing to a pathological timidity, the girl took a last scan of her surroundings before engaging the few who had heard the summons just as she did.

In this room with no sound, there was a force all around. It bled from the stale and stagnant air like it did from the flickers of the brazier, each arcane drop becoming to the skin a fading ripple without touch or force, and to the eyes a subtle spark that incurred both wonder and enlightenment. Even as it weakened, even as the flames faltered with each valiant or greedy soul that answered its summons across the aether, it never lost its ineffable aura – that quality of being born from a numinous hand, and of carrying out a duty as noble as its maker.

There was comfort to be found in this sensation, but to Lillian, its presence itself was an equal cause for concern: whoever had carved this cave into the very stone of Raiaera, be it a powerful mortal or a divine entity, had done so as a last resort… and whoever forged this brazier, be it by a lack of power or an inability to directly intervene, could not defeat the Necromancer on its own.

She was, with those already here and those who were soon to come, effectively the country’s last hope of defeating Xem’Zûnd – a prospect that did not enchant her. That she felt herself undeserving of the call did not help either, but there was nothing to do about that now: her exploits at Timbrethinil and Tel Moranfauglir, however coincidental, appeared to have inextricably entangled her with the fate of Raiaera… and ultimately, she decided it would be silly not to see this through to the end.

“Present circumstances notwithstanding…” Lillian began, addressing both the bespectacled man in full plate armor befitting of royalty and the robed arrival that had only just walked into sight. She could hear other footsteps, announcing the presence of a third besides herself, though that person may have been out of earshot. “It’s always a pleasure to meet other foolish people like myself,” she quipped, offering them a bashful smile and the modest shrug of her shoulders.

Knowing that she could die on this day, and that these could very well be the last people to whom she would ever speak, she thought it only appropriate to give them her name, even though she did not expect to hear them reciprocate. “I’m Lillian.”

[Caden Law]

It all happened very quickly, with no dramatic lead-ins or anything of the sort. Nobody in the cavern at the time would've even had a chance to monologue about it.

The flame in the brazier turned yellow -- not gold, not even sunny, just yellow. The light that it gave off remained unchanged. The smell of smoke gave way to the smell of salty desert air, and then the flames changed again: They had an actual shape. Fire became a ring, the ring stretched to the ceiling and threatened to burn anyone near it as it expanded, and then a faded blue portal swirled into existence at the ring's center. The whole process probably took about a tenth of a second.

For another few seconds after that, nothing happened. It was actually a bit anticlimactic.

And then the portal basically spat out a man in a funny outfit, imploded in on itself and returned to being a simple red flame. It was, again, diminished by this latest arrival, just as it had been for all the others and just as it would be for any after.

The man stood up about as abruptly as he'd arrived, then patted himself down with one hand to make sure nothing had been chewed off en route. His explanation was, "I just got teleported cross continent by a preying mantis in a cheap yellow hood. Yes, yes, I am slightly concerned as to the state of my appendages, thank you." And upon seeing that everything was still in its proper place, "Right then. So."

He looked at the assembled group that he shared a cramped artificial cavern with at least four other people. One was a swarthy looking Drow lass with a nice rack. Another, Caden instantly marked as Jailbait the Second. One of the men was Drow?, the other was a human decked out in some patently ridiculous Elven garments that Caden was really in no position whatsoever to criticize. Even if the boy? didn't have a properly pointed Hat.

Contrast the splendid young Ingwe with the older, harder, much more heavily scarred Caden: The Wizard was wearing cavalier's steel armor in addition to a breastplate, all of it on top of a N'jalian spidersilk longcoat and his ordinary clothing. His hands were bare and pale, even in the dim lighting afforded by the brazier, and he sported a blue Mark on one cheek. He had a sword and an arcanist's rod on one hip, a nasty looking bowie and wand on the other, and he was carrying a relatively plain looking staff that seemed to be made out of anvil black Prevalida and some other exotic materials. He was also wearing a suitably Wizardly Hat, pointed and with a wide brim and a heavy leather belt holding it upright. The Hat had the same construction as the longcoat, and both were blue. All the armor was steel, obviously Conscript gear, but the craftsmanship was superb and the markings were unique.

Really, the only thing the Wizard had in common with the mage was being a human male wearing glasses and carrying a stick with some magic in it. The younger mage was, presumably, powerful in his own right. He had a staff that looked pompous even by Elven standards, and the clothes to match. Caden wasn't familiar enough with Adamantine to identify it on sight, but he could still guess at the power in that weapon. Little Mage Syndrome kicked in when the Wizard realized Ingwe's was longer and fancier.

Never one to dwell on such things, however, the Wizard turned his attention to the others. The first to catch his eye was the Drow woman, for the obvious reasons that she was beautiful, bountiful, and had a sense of tainted, imploded magic oozing off of her almost as bad as Caden probably did. Putting aside the obvious thoughts of undressing the woman, he told her simply, "You. Are gonna be useful."

The others were impressive enough in their own ways, but the Drow? man didn't have an aura of taint and neither he or the girl were especially flashy and powerful looking. In point of fact, he took one look at the girl and automatically had her earmarked as Jailbait the Second; she looked too young to even be here.

But she was here. All of them were. Caden could only assume they had earned it the same godsawful ways he did. With that as his basis, introductions ensued: "I'm Blueraven, by the way. Who are all of you and have any of you ever killed a demigod before?"

[Godhand]

Godhand burst into the barracks, squinting as blood poured into his eyes from a ugly cut above his forehead even as it dribbled out of his nose and mouth. He suddenly clutched his chest and a slew of soldiers hurried up to him, their 'hero', terrified he might be having a stroke. Godhand pushed them away and pulled down his collar, noticing a massive hematoma right over his heart from where that animal had tried to run him through with a spear. If it hadn't been for the ridiculous clown suit Nalith had ordered him to wear, he'd be dead. He pushed past the growing throng of soldiers, surprised at just how much reinforcements were waiting in the wings even as the battle raged just outside. More than likely they were being held back for the High Bard's last decisive push, but he didn't think that would be much consolation to the beleaguered troops being massacred by the undead. He grabbed one of them by the collar and shouted over the din of war.

"Where's Nalith!?"

"The Lady General is the war-room, sir!"

He let go and muscled his way into her heavily guarded headquarters, nearly tripping over a chair before collapsing on it. The stern general gave him a brief once-over, then nodded to an attendant.

"Heal him."

"Won't work. The sheath blocks all that out." He lifted the crimson sheath and ran his tongue over his bloody teeth. "And I'm certainly not giving it up. I don't trust a single one of you."

She let out an exasperated sigh.

"Then what?"

"Just have the broad stitch me up."

The impromptu nurse left the war-room and returned a short time after with a needle, thread and bottle of alcohol. Wiping off all the blood on his face, he waited impatiently as she wet a cloth with alcohol and began gently dabbing at his forehead. Finally, he grabbed the from bottle from her hands and poured it out over his head, hissing when it sunk into his cuts. She seemed like she wanted to admonish him, but instead merely went to work on the gash. Time was too precious not to talk all through the operation, however.

"Xem'Zund. I had him. I had the bastard, but I got bum-rushed by one of his generals. He won't be a problem anymore but the Necromancer disappeared. I have no idea where he could have gone."

"We know."

"You know?"

"Yes, our scryers have been trying to divine his location ever since the scouts returned with news of his retreat. We believe we've found it. I've marked it on this map."

Godhand shambled over despite the nurse's protests and looked at the diagram of Raiaera drawn over the large cloth. There was a small area in red, so seemingly inconsequential and out of place with the leylines of the war that Godhand nearly mistook it for a drop of ink accidentally fallen on the graph.

"What is this? This is nothing. There's nothing there; nothing goes through there, either."

"All our diviners agree. This is where he's gone. And we need you to go after him."

Godhand stared into the still beautiful elf's scornful eyes, his own features made even more haggard by the war.

"After I do this, we're done. I'm done. We get that seat on the council and you never see me again."

She smirked unpleasantly.

"I wouldn't have it any other way, human."

"That's still a three day ride, and I'm not going to be teleported there either. Leave my sheath behind, get massacred and then have it put in some goddamn museum as a 'relic of the Godhand'."

"We've obtained a cloth that should dampen the effects of your precious sheath long enough for you to be transported, but you need to move now."

-----------------------------------------------

There was a flash of light and then a ravaged-looking figure appeared in the nearly total darkness. The mercenary was certain they'd double-crossed him and sent him right up God's asshole to get out of living up to their end of the bargain, but when he noticed the other figures there he relaxed.

"Gentlemen."

He peered harder through the darkness and soon recognized the dark elf, her dusky skin making her nearly invisible in the black but her white hair giving her away. He raised a hand to shut her up before she even began talking; he knew she was going to start ribbing him about his clothes and he was in no shape to play that game. And then he saw her; he almost didn't believe his eyes at first. What was she still doing in Raiaera?

"What the...fuck? Lillian? What are you doing here?"

[Flames of Hyperion]

One by one the shadows grew in number, flickering in time with the flame in the brazier in the centre of the room. Little by little the same flame died a slow and prolonged death, the beat of its pulsing heart lessened by every new soul it drew to its location.

Ingwe introduced himself whenever necessary, made small talk whenever spoken to, and smiled his trademark gentle smile whenever he inadvertently made eye contact with one of his fellows. For the most part, however, he remained quiet, and it was not too difficult to see why; sooner or later, every conversation attempted was swallowed whole by the stagnant atmosphere, overwhelmed by the sheer stillness of their surroundings.

The mage with the distinctive pointy hat and preoccupied manner he recognised as the Wizard Blueraven, whispered rumours of which had reached even his ears. The bulkily armoured man was no doubt Godhand Striker, perhaps the greatest warrior to face Xem’zund in the current age. There were others as well… a young girl, a dusky Dark Elf, a pale warrior of indeterminate race… no doubt they were all encumbered with an equal pedigree, or else Ingwe doubted they would have been summoned for the task at hand.

Warriors and wizards, soldiers and sorcerers, they were each veterans of countless battles, firsthand witnesses of what the Necromancer had done to the country. There was a tacit harmony between them not only in what they had experienced, but also in their purpose in being there at that time, and the complexity of their thoughts regarding the battle that loomed ahead. Rather than ominous or menacing, the silence between them soon coalesced into a common ground, a unifying factor that served to enhance their individual resolve.

At least, such was the way it felt until the last of their number arrived, and the flame gave one last sputter before dimming out into darkness. For a brief moment the gloom was absolute and overwhelming, not even the keenest of their eyes able to pierce its indiscernible depths.

Then, before any of them could react in any way, the doorknob portal activated with a bright purple flash.

And a low unpleasant laugh sounded in their ears.

***

It’s a trap!

Attuned to the arcane and already on high alert, Ingwe was perhaps the first of the motley crew to sense the anomalies upon their arrival. His first thoughts were of the protection of himself and his comrades, his second of retaliation against whatever power sought to constrain them. By then, however, it was too late; they were caught like flies in a spider’s web, surrounded on all sides by a miasma of black fog that completely paralysed their bodies and nearly froze their minds in its icy grip. The sensation was one of absolute helplessness, of being stripped bare and placed under such intense scrutiny that every last fibre of his soul was obvious for all to see.

But there was only one entity doing the scrutinising, and it took only a heartbeat for the young man to recognise the stench of rotten flesh, the necromantic taint that hung low and heavy about his surroundings. He could not see, for it was as if somebody had cast a weighty black blanket over his head and left him to suffocate in its rancid depths. But there was no mistaking the voice that echoed within his mind, as it simultaneously echoed in the depths of all the others present, trapped as they each were in their own personal nightmare.

Ingwe Helyanwe… it mused dismissively, as if barely even granting him the honour of recognition. It was like the Forgotten One was deliberately setting out to goad him, to establish psychological supremacy even before the battle had begun. Anebrilith… Nenaebreth… Eluriand… do you truly think that your actions even qualify as a thorn in my side? Do you actually entertain such illusions of grandeur as to think that you’ve even made the smallest of differences in the greater scheme?

Ingwe couldn’t have replied even if he had wanted to; tendrils of the Necromancer’s foul power reached in his mouth and threatened to choke him from inside out. Instead, he concentrated his dwindling strength on focusing his powers, seeking the weakness in the spell about him that would allow him to break free…

Your association with that daemon’s pet girl, however, intrigues me… the voice continued, bouncing around the confines of his head like an echo about a cramped claustrophobic cave. At the mere mention of Yuka, Ingwe stiffened involuntarily in anger, although technically he was so under thrall that he couldn’t even move a muscle. I wonder if I should have brought her here today as well, just to see your face as I…

Something snapped.

Something very audibly, and very visibly, snapped.

A backlash of raw power swamped Ingwe’s body and mind, and suddenly he was free of Xem’zund’s thrall. He emerged from the darkness into a dimly lit cavern, the towering form of the Forgotten One himself looming over him like a dark daemon of legend. Grimly he brandished his staff, as one after another his comrades fought their way clear of their own nightmares.

The Necromancer simply laughed again.

[Caden Law]

The world turned pitch black. Considering that they were in a cave, this wasn't especially shocking. Considering that the dark had a certain peppermint taste to it that felt red on the brain, it was a little bit worrisome.

Caden grimaced and willed power into his staff with a deep inhale. He could still feel...something. Leylines, his instincts informed him, but he wasn't sure if they were the lines of his body or the lines of the land. It was like someone had dunked all of his extra senses in novacaine. The Wizard looked around, his staff providing a light. He found himself standing on what, at first glance, appeared to be a very long street in a rather gothic city. It was cobbled with some very big, oblong rocks, with the space between each big rock taken up by jagged smaller ones.

It took him a few seconds to realize that those weren't rocks. They were the tops of skulls, and the filler between them consisted of broken bones. A few seconds more and he heard a skittering sound all over the place, to which the Wizard simply replied, "I'm not asleep but I'm still carrying a big stick."

The skittering stopped. And was replaced by footsteps. Loud, heavy, red-on-the-brain footsteps; like a God deigning to idle around in some poor schmuck's boots. He focused the light of his staff down the street, eyes following its path, and the Wizard's gaze fell upon...

Himself.

Sort of.

Whatever stood before Caden Law, it looked like him right down to the scars and the Mark on the cheek. Except that it was paler, and it wore all red with a hood and robe instead of a hat and coat. The sword it carried had a wavy blade that undulated every few seconds, and a staff that looked like someone had crafted it out of vertebrae and a ram's skull. It wore a badge on each shoulder, clearly fashioned from scalps, and there were dried human and elven ears stapled to the belt.

It didn't have eyes anymore. Just necrotic fires burning where they used to be, and glasses that were purely for decoration.

"I don't think your stick's big enough," the thing said.

Caden stared. Then he laughed -- laughed -- until he was almost doubling over, propping his staff against his chest just so he could clap for what he was seeing. The thing cocked its head to one side, but said nothing.

"That's just rich, Xemmy," the Wizard said with a grin and a sigh. "How long did it take you to find that? How far did you go pilfering about in my subconscious before you dredged that thing up?"

"...what," said the thing.

"I've already faced you down in the flesh, my Fear. And I've killed you. You were backed directly by a God, by the most evil God that ever went godding about no less, and I still killed you. You're not real. You're not even a possibility. You're the sloppy work of a would-be demigod. Tell me, Xembo, did you even think I'd be here today? Or is that really the best you can do?"

Silence. It was utterly baffled.

"You're clearly insane if this isn't remotely scary to you."

"I'm a Wizard. There's not much of a difference. And I would remind you, Xem'zund," Caden raised his staff, and the light recoiled into it and enveloped him in a feathery aura. Ravens crowed from a direction that could not be named or pointed to. "I already hurt you once."

Down came the staff. The sound of ravens crowing echoed through laughter, through rage, through rampages and demonstrations alike. Xem'zund's black spell simply disintegrated off of him in an instant. The Wizard Blueraven had been through the Icehenge. He had conquered himself seven times in one night, and come face to face with the Elder Gods of the world. Fear traps didn't work on him because there was nothing left for him to be afraid of.

"It's high time that I did so again."

The Wizard started forward then, dragging his staff along the ground as lightning surged up out of the cavern floor and enveloped him completely. Sparks lit off of him at every other stride, some of them twisting and writhing into ravens that blinked out before they could hit the dirt and stone below. The Necromancer's laughter ebbed away in the same moment, and at least for that time, he wasn't monologuing or delivering threats. His speech didn't taper off, he didn't bother playing head games. He stood his ground.

"And I'm not even the best one here," the Sorcerer added with a wicked little grin.

"Indeed," said the Necromancer. He snapped the fingers of his right hand. Emerald fire erupted from his index finger, twisted into a skull above his right thumb, and launched itself at Blueraven with an echoing scream and a bright enough flash to illuminate the entire cavern.

Caden replied with a swing of his staff. The earth shot up in front of him, rolling as fluidly as any beach wave, and lightning cascaded all over it. The skull hit and the barrier was gone in an instant, but the Wizard remained. With one hand, he thrust forward and the aura about his body coalesced into a salamander red fireball in his hand. It launched for the Necromancer in the space of an eye blink; however many yards between them.

"I am not Denebriel," Xem'zund declared. The fireball hit him hard enough to torch the cape and hood right off, but it was like the shadows themselves twisted and writhed about him to form a replacement. The Necromancer himself didn't even budge. His armor wasn't smudged. "And you are not my equal."

"Prove it," Blueraven sneered.

In the future, the Wizard was going to have to remember to exercise more caution with his words. Xem'zund deigned raise a hand, spoke a single syllable, and a near-invisible wall of force slammed into Blueraven head-on. The Wizard went from zero to thirty-five in an instant, propelled along by a huge tranpsarent green fist that sent up a dust wave in passing. It faded out as he passed the other members of the demigod kill crew, leaving the Wizard flying for another few feet. Through the door, out into the first cavern, and back-first against the extinguished brazier.

"Proven," said the Necromancer with a sneer that could be heard through his mask. And maybe it was imagination, maybe it was desperation, but whatever it was...

...he almost sounded a little bit winded.

"Ow," Blueraven muttered to himself after the fact. It would be a minute or two before he could finish shaking the cobwebs out of his skull. Hopefully the others didn't die in the meantime. There was, however, a small flaw in the Wizard's plan.

He wasn't going to get the time to recover properly, because there was a ghoul standing at the mouth of the outer cavern. It was about five feet tall. Jagged in every way, and rotten to the core. And it was not alone.

"I hope none of you were expecting to leave this place alive," the Necromancer told them.

[Cydnar]

Cydnar contemplated using a fake name, a moniker of some lost and unsung hero they would not recognise, but what was the point in falsities, in remembering the unremembered? “My name is Cydnar Yrene,” he spluttered whilst watching the congregation of two grow to three, four…and still more came.

They were humming with magical auras, powerful beings, perhaps heroes, perhaps villains, but all here together we stood in a unified goal.

Then the door opened.

Before them stood the Magister, wreathed in a shadow the likes of which I had not seen, even in the darkest depths of the under dark. Beside her rested a pile of bodies, Hummel, clearly from the armour and the blood they were dead; Cydnar instantly recognised them as the captains of the Salthias, the last of the warrior kith who fought to stop the summoning on the marshes…the soldiers and friends and potential lovers who died under his guidance, and under the Necromancer’s hand.

A foreboding wave of nausea struck him and he buckled at the knees, the hem of his robe folded in on it as it fell into the cold floor and purity and cleanliness gave way to decadence and disgust.

“You are not real!” he shouted, fighting the need to flee, or to fight. “You are dead!”


We-h, are-h, eternal-h.

The bodies whispered together in a cacophony of shrill laughter, clearly lost in their own melodrama.


You-h, shall-h, die-h.

What was life without those you trusted and loved? What was living alone compared to death in the afterlife, with the glory of the sun on your back and Yrene’s might wreathed and coiled about you like armour. “I would rather suffer death than this travesty and mockery of life!” His nihilistic servitude shattered the tendrils which clawed at his mind, but their wounds were already deep enough to have left a mark; to have changed their target.

He gasped as the illusion rippled and the man unmistakably a wizard flew backwards through the door and fell at the brazier’s feet once more. A moment wasted, and he looked back to find the Magister gone, and the dark opening to the necromancer’s chamber ajar and unhindered. Cydnar sighed with relief, but the seed of guilt had been planted, and anger was swarming up from his heart to the logical and cold calculated state of mind he held as his own.

“I know none of you, but allow me to say this –" he turned to address the wizard, and propelled his voice through the chamber –“I offer no hope of killing this evil with my own hand, power is not something given to me – but we must defeat him,” he stopped as an audible growl interrupted his speech, something had crawled through the opening…

Cydnar caught the ghouls’ deep timber eyes and smiled, its bloodlust matched only by the joy of meeting battle once more. “I offer the last hope of the Thayne Yrene, and even if I am a mere sacrifice, let Raiaera’s will be done!” He drew the sheath upwards and hooked it off the belt, in a swift movement, he brought it down and the mechanism released the blade upwards with a satisfying ringing of hematite metal.

The fog dispersed, leaving only the faintest of wisps visible, but I knew enough to know that such illusions were separate, unique to each man’s mind. We would face horrors darker still as we worked our way towards death, or glory.

Catching the blade as it spun around mid-air and with a gracious spin, Cydnar settled it across his midriff with the sheath held in reverse in his right hand.

A voice, dark and foreboding like the essence of death itself broke the feeble attempt at rampancy, “I hope none of you were expecting to leave this place alive,” it said. Cydnar smiled.

“No, but we represent an ideal, and ideas, like hope, are truly immortal!”

As he swung the blade and ran towards the ghoul – he flexed his fingers and words to keep the crystalline weapon at the verge of reality. The Necromancer smiled, and with a twist of his own unseen hand he sent the ghoul and it’s brothers forwards, like a vampire sending it’s thralls to feed.

[Ataraxis]

The flames died out with a spark and a sigh, plunging the cavern in a deep gloom even she could not pierce – it all happened so fast, she did not even have the time to properly greet Godhand upon his arrival. There was a flash in the dark, a violet flare from the strange knob set in stone. Lillian could now feel a smoky breath upon her skin, could now smell the mephitic smog that was suffusing throughout the room. It entered her lungs, coursed through her blood, clouded her thoughts… and she felt her mind robbed of its secrets with every chilling exhale. Senses deadened by these intoxicating fumes, she was helpless before the violation of her soul, helpless as the elements of her life and existence were dissected and ground, diluted and decanted, measured and laid bare before cold, unfeeling eyes.

When had she slipped from consciousness? Lillian could recall nary a thing, save for the pulse that had roused her from her coma. Her sight was slow to return, even as she blinked profusely, but her other senses were not as unreceptive. The ground on which she lay was uneven, a pattern of corrugations and bulbs that felt slick to the touch, yet strangely warm. Something coursed by her palms, and she gasped: a pulse. She could make it out now, the floor beneath her… fibrous cords running in crisscrosses under an endless network of veins. Lumps of flesh were strewn about the landscape, leaking fluids and expelling gases, their rise and fall like the breath of sleeping newborns.

Towers rose from the viscera, their walls beseeming clusters of twisting worms. They were infested by nerves like cobwebs and climbing vines, all under spasm as if in the throes of an unseen anguish. And the more she stared, the more she realized that something… many things were staring back. The eyes growing within the walls were an infectious red, unnerving as they trained their gaze upon her, unblinking. And all the while, it had never stopped: the living pulse sustaining this endless organ, the pulse that told of a beating heart.

She saw it, then… saw her. The woman knelt atop a low, flat mound that rose from the flesh, a pedestal around which blood and bile pooled in a moat. The stranger was crouched over, silent and immobile: the position reminded her of prayer in supplication. The moment Lillian approached her, the woman pulled away from the ground, her back unwinding as she rose to an unhurried stand. She threw her head back, hair as dark as pitch cascading over her pale shoulders.

Remains lay at her feet, a male body severed at the hip. His intestines spilled over the beating ground, and his darkening blood continued to ooze from the pedestal. His right arm was absent, torn off at the shoulder, while the left was gnawed beyond the bone and to the marrow. There was a dripping crack in his chest, as if an ax had broken through his ribcage, yet his heart had been scooped out delicately: it lay in the woman’s hand, dribbling coolly on her skin. Saying nothing, Lillian watched as she brought it to her lips, taking in its perfume with sealed eyes and a longing sigh. With such delicacy, such frailty, she bit into the heart, savoring its spilled juices as if it were the sweetest of apples.

In silence, Lillian drew a hand to her chest. She felt its beat, learned its rhythm… and then she knew. It kept time – the beating of her own heart kept time with the pulse of this nightmare. The older woman turned towards the girl, and as they looked upon one another, they sighed as one. They were, after all, one and the same. The naked stupor bathed in blood and entrails, the dark hair like endless inkfall, the comforting smile that hid none of the sadness in their glacial eyes… they both looked down, that dreadful understanding now clear upon their faces. This was her world, this was her soul.

This… was her future.

“I would never have suspected,” came that depthless voice, its hollows and echoes a strange comfort in this morbid world. “To find such compelling… beauty… in the heart of an enemy. Simply baffling.” Shadows fell from the pitch skies, forming before her in a silhouette of luminous grey. The Necromancer stood before her as a ghost, his only solid feature the pale mask beneath his ethereal cowl. “Having seen this, however, I can only wonder: why oppose me? Theses gnats I have lured here, they must have seen in you no more than an innocent girl, when in truth… just as they fear me now, they may someday come to fear you.”

When the girl gave no sign of acknowledging his query, he pressed on. “Lillian Marici Sesthal, do you understand? Of those gathered here, you are the most like me.” He moved as a blur across this macabre dreamscape, coming so close that his fingers now brushed the line of her neck. She winced, the scales of his glove feeling like blades against her skin, and just as likely to cut her throat open.

“My intent was to make an example of you six, to parade your corpses throughout all of Raiaera as my new puppets. What small exploits you have accomplished in this war, they would be as naught before the massacres you were all to commit in my name… yet, I believe, an exception can be made.”

“Is this an olive branch I see hidden behind you?” With a strained smile, Lillian had grabbed onto his wrist, pushing his hand away with the tense delicacy of a vexed woman. “Your plan is to have me question my reasons for being here, my choice of coming here to kill you. You then rekindle my fear of death, and subsequently remind me of how foolish it is die for a nation not my own, making me all the more receptive to a tempting alternative.”

There was nothing left of her usual timidity, only a chilling calm in her evenly spoken words. Lillian raised her eyes, staring straight into the slits of his mask. “In exchange for my immediate survival, you thus propose… not an alliance, no. That would be presumptuous of me… Then, a partnership? Or am I simply mistaken?”

The necromancer laughed, not in disdain or amusement. If anything, it was delighted surprise. “Indeed you were not.”

“Then you must realize, this would be decades, maybe centuries down the line – if ever?”

“I would wait for you,” was his solemn reply. In purposeful deliberation, he turned to face the woman she would become, stopping before her in silent appraisal: though she could not see beyond his mask, Lillian knew he was staring intently, from her blood-clad figure to those forbidden eyes, sinfully aglow like lavender opiates. “For... her,” Xem’Zûnd continued, gallantly extending his hand. The woman complied, presenting him with her own.

Lillian felt sickened when he rubbed her ring finger, when his mask inched in almost as if to kiss it. “Like me, you will seek the power to exact vengeance upon those who murdered your kin… and like me, you will set on the path of godhood, a path from which you can never turn back. I… can sympathize.

“That is why I cannot take your life in good conscience: I will not waste a diamond in the rough… not for something as petty as this.”

“You make it sound like there’s nothing personal going on,” she began, crossing her arms as a passive mark of insolence. “But you lured us in, you set this trap… meaning we did more damage than you’d like us to believe.” Lillian grinned, raising her head in blatant mockery. “If your only purpose was to kill the last heroes of this country and make them an example, then where is Nalith? Or did she not take the bait? Even so, since this ritual of yours only seems to allow six of those who heard its call to enter your sanctuary, you should have been particularly selective in choosing her substitutes...

“Yet, here I am. A nobody. No one else knows that I had a hand in lifting the corruption from Timbrethinil: kill me, and they would be none the wiser. Make me an undead puppet? Only a handful of people would recognize my walking remains, even fewer would care, and as if those odds weren’t low enough, one of them is here!” She tilted her head to the side, giving the necromancer a derisive smile. “Face it: you didn’t choose me, or any of us, in terms of our fame or how much our deaths could crush the country. We screwed you over, hard, and now you want payback: that’s all there is to it. In fact, isn’t that basically your modus operandi?

“Lastly, what I am to become… that has nothing to do with you.” Turning her back on him, she began walking away. “You know where to put that partnership of yours.”

The billowing shadow that was the Necromancer seemed to have frozen still, though the ferrous stench of blood in the air felt heavier now, colder, almost crippling to the soul. Lillian knew those were the harbingers of a storm to come. “It confounds me, how I can offer you the chance to be the only survivor… and you choose to be the first to die.”

The blasts of raw sorcery expelled from his hands echoed as concerted thunderclaps, tearing through the air of this silent nightmare. The flesh underfoot rippled and broke off, mists of blood gushing out from the fresh wounds, carried off by this invisible force that ravaged all without prejudice, a force that would soon shred Lillian to myriad slivers within the blink of an eye.

The explosion resulted in a bleeding crater, a variety of fluids spurting or leaking from the pulp where Lillian had once been. It rained guts and bits of charred muscle, painting the skies a sickly crimson… under which a pale woman basked gloriously. Lillian stood behind her unfazed, pristine save for the gore they now both wore like he did his necromantic robes and mythril armor. In silence, they stared him down with those gypsy eyes, and a great unease surged through his spiritual form.

“With everything you’ve learned after prying my head open… did you really believe she was only a figment of my imagination?” Lillian asked, breaking the hush. “Look behind us.”

Beyond them was a cliff, the edge of a vein-infested hilltop he had not noticed until now. He had thought the plains in the distance but a continuation of this organic world, but he was wrong. Yes, it was flesh, but not these formless masses over which they stood. Greater than any battlefield, the plains were an endless bed of exhumed corpses. Millions upon millions, humans, elves, dwarves, countless other species he could not make out, or had never once encountered. So many misshapen, lacking legs and arms, so many rotting colossi among the mounds of decaying gnats, bleeding ink, bleeding slime… but all of them bleeding from a hole in the chest like never-ending fountains. Then he cringed, recognizing divine beings in theses dead trenches. “Impossible. This… this makes no sense.”

“Then clearly, you have yet to become a god,” came Lillian’s voice from his back. At least, he had thought it her voice at first, until he realized it was older, huskier, like a sensuous whisper. It was her, the other… and her hand had just pierced through his chest.

Xem’zûnd burst into a cloud of darkness, his astral body quick to escape Lillian’s nightmare like a frightened murder of crows. Lillian said nothing, only watched as her alter ego held onto a black puddle: it was a piece of the Necromancer’s mind, a fraction of his heart that she had captured after impaling him. Turning to the younger girl, she extended her palm, letting none of that tainted ichor escape from her fingers.

“Drink,” she said, smiling sadly. Lillian did the same, complying as she leaned to sip at the cup of her hand.


Lillian emerged from her nightmare with a gasp. She was now in a vast underground sanctuary with a high, vaulted ceiling and a misted atmosphere; she had most certainly been moved here along with the others by the violet flash from the doorknob portal. The Necromancer stood in the flesh a dozen feet before her, seeming winded by some past exertion. She remembered that parcel of his heart being ripped out, remembered robbing him of that portion of his power, but she knew there was more to it than that. For one, the armor-clad wizard that had just flown past her might have been the first indication that the fight had already begun and that their group had, with a price, gotten the first strike in.

Wasting no more time, she jumped into the fray, knowing that it was long overdue. In her right hand she drew a glass dirk, its blue-tinted blade invested with a sorcerous wind, while her left hand drew a Delyn rapier, bringing it to bear for a piercing lunge. She had not noticed the ghouls blocking the way to the cavern: in her mind, she could only see the Black.

Unbeknownst to the girl, something had changed in her since her awakening. There was no longer softness in her blue eyes… in fact, their sapphire hue had altogether vanished, replaced by a vitreous sheen of solid pitch. The air about her thickened, prickling the skin, and her whole body now exuded an aura of maleficence much like that of their common enemy. Upon ingesting the Necromancer’s blood, even in a world of dreams, she had triggered her darkest evolution yet...

And in doing so, Lillian had taken the first step toward ending her humanity.

[Mage Hunter]

The huntress was about to make a witty retort about liches, and further to talk about Godhand's rather dapper dress. She was about to show a bit of that Drow arrogance so many found alluring. Not that she was interested in any of the people present at the current battlefield, only that she was bound and determined to show the necromancer what he was worth to her. Drusilia knew without a second glance she was a trial for most of these people, and only one was weaker than her.

This much was gleaned from even a basic use of her ability to detect magical auras.

She never got the chance to say a word however. Drusilia's world went dark about her, even as she began to feel the nausea of being immersed in magic. This was not unlike the time she had taken Warson's enchantments upon her, watching in horrified fascination as they sought to do the same vile things upon the hunter's body. The Drow shook her head to free her mind from the unseemly magics, only to find them cling desperately to her head.

She took to a knee, even as the others were fighting off their nightmares. Softly she heard it, a solemn whisper in the back of her mind, which sought to seduce her, to let her accept the gift that she was being given. The strength it would give her, the ability to fight the necromancer. It was a truly terrible power, able to topple nations and force the gods to kneel before her. This was all laid before her, she only need open her heart tot he dark energies that even now, sought to pry open the door.

"You, who thought you could harm me by besting my lieutenants. You, who fought the Necrosition and survive. You have not done anything, but removed a piece from the board," The voice rang through her head, seeking desperately to shatter her defenses, even as she began to retch up the hard tack she had not swallowed five seconds ago.

She focused her willpower, wielding it as a club against the encroaching darkness. She swung it about clumsily, feeling some of the tendrils of magic fall away, only to be reconnected with a moment's thought. It sought her mind, tearing slowly at the hair she had pulled back only moments before into a ponytail, preparing for the worst. It clawed as her armor, her skin her very bones. The magic even now was seeking to claim her, to open her to the winds of magic.

Baruk's words rang in her head, "Zombie, though with the amount of necromantic energy in her we'd be lucky if tha's tha least she becomes. We might be looking at the next Warson if we aren't careful..."

She wasn't going to become a zombie; she wasn't going to die here. She wasn't going to give in, and gods be damned she was going to kick that necromancer's ass for making her spill what little food she had left on the gods be damned floor. The heat of rage focused her will, even as she reached for her belt. She shook her head before she managed, "Magic..."

"I see you still fight, that is promising. I think I shall make a new undead out of you, craft you into something far more suitable first. Perhaps make you into the undead version of the N'jallian Spider Magi..." His voice filtered into her head. She growled lowly, forcing herself back to her feet even as she felt the porous surface she was looking for and grasped it.

She was focusing on the litanies of hate, forcing them to march through her mind, focusing on the words with every inch she reached forth. Fully standing she spoke one tersely crafted sentence, "If you think I'm going out like a chump, you can kiss my purple Drow ass!" With those words her willpower focused intently on the stone in her hand, causing it to flash brightly. The white light expanded in an ever growing hemisphere until finally she was freed from the necromancer's grip. Letting go of the stone, she drew both swords, even as the Necromancer spoke of dying in this place today.

With the parting magic from her body she heard the soft words, whispering in her ears, "I didn't expect you to fall to that parlor trick. Not truly, but you will be mine. I don't let those who slight me live, and for poor Nialon Sunscar, you must die."

She grinned before she spoke softly, more to herself than anyone, "Looks like I pissed off the right guys..." Stepping forward into the chamber she didn't even bat an eye, seeing the true form of the Necromancer lording over her. A soft smile crossed her face before she looked back for Godhand, then shrugged not seeing him emerge from the fog and shouted to the Necromancer, "You made me lose an alright lunch back there. Now, I don't like horking up my food, so let’s just cut to the chase and you take your beating like a man. Rather than hide behind childish antics..."

A hand lashed out and a wave of sorcerous power slammed her back against the wall, the spell his only reply to her tort. She was more than certain he didn't like that, and the fact the anti magic she had spent the last week building up hadn't truly softened the blow meant she was really in trouble. The magic had the added affect of dazing her, as she shook her head from the fog it created in her mind. Once again the voice crept into her mind, "You're too weak pathetic creature. To think I was going to elevate you to a truly wondrous position. Perhaps I should make you into the next Warson, that anti magical aura about you should prove an interesting mix with the flesh crafters..."

She groaned getting to her feet, but still kept that smile plastered on her face. The beginning of another witticism was forming upon her lips. It was just proof that you could not shut the girl up, could not be cowed. There was nothing she truly feared in this chamber, only another monster for her to play with and take down.

[Flames of Hyperion]

He only realised that they were one person short when the fighting began in earnest, and when it became all too clear that they lacked a dominating presence in their battle line. The visions that Xem’zund had planted in his mind flashed uncontrollably across the back of his eyes, reminding him of what even a fragment of the Necromancer’s attention could do to a soul. No doubt the Forgotten One had readied nothing less than the most powerful of the illusions at his command to stall the most renowned of his foes, presumably with an eye to picking him off on his lonesome after dealing with those that remained. It was all Ingwe could do to spare a brief instant for the hope that Godhand Striker would be able to outlast Xem’zund’s will unscathed.

The priority of himself and his comrades in the crucial first moments of the battle was, by sheer necessity, that of pure survival. Even this seemed to be a tough task to ask of the motley band, with first the Wizard Blueraven hurled backwards against the rock at an impossible rate, and then the Drow swordswoman falling to one knee under relentless psychic assault. Not to mention, of course, the horde of ghouls – and not just any ghouls, but mutated monsters that were obviously personal favourites of the Dark Lord – that swarmed at them from the shadowy recesses of the cavern beyond.

Ingwe’s response was a split second slower than that of his comrades, as he deliberately leashed his impulsive instincts and took that crucial extra moment to analyse the overall situation. As he did so, his companions flung themselves headfirst into the action: the Elven swordsman charged towards the ghouls uttering a defiant battle cry, while the young girl ignored them completely in favour of Xem’zund himself. It struck him then just how precarious their situation was, and how he dared not afford to let it slip from their grasp.

The one thing that was immediately clear to the Nipponese warrior-mage’s mind was that they could not be forced to fight on two fronts at once.

Breathe…

His reaction was to close his eyes for a brief moment, reaching deep inside his soul for the absolute calm required for the fine control of his powers. Xem’zund had made a mistake in invoking Yuka’s name to upset the young man, and in more ways than one; this time, picturing her face in his mind, Ingwe could almost feel her presence beside him, encouraging him to give it his all. When he opened his black eyes to the world once more, directing his scholarly gaze to the outer cavern from which the ghouls swarmed, they burned with an arcane intensity backed by years of training and months of battle experience.

Here goes…

Drawing deep upon the Sceptre of Valour for the first time, Ingwe found the sensation reassuringly familiar to his usual spell-casting, only on a far grander scale. He could sense the very finest of leylines in the soil that surrounded him, even the minute whispers of the winds of power that had somehow filtered down to this far below the ground. His head throbbed painfully with the sheer pleasure of the raw power that flowed through his body; it took all of his willpower to only siphon off as much as he needed and no more, lest the consequences cremate him alive.

Gurengoku!

The results, on the other hand, were nothing short of spectacular. All Ingwe had to do was to point the phoenix that topped the long sceptre in the appropriate direction, and his mere intentions took care of the rest.

From the cavern floor to the ceiling above, a bright wall of sacred flame shimmered into existence, completely sealing off the cavern from the hordes of ravenous ghouls that threatened to swarm them all. Those of the undead constructs unfortunate enough to be caught in the flames as they were conjured were incinerated almost instantaneously, even their ashes devoured as fuel for the white-hot fires. Sheer momentum accounted for a few more as they eagerly attempted to push through to get at their prey; not even a mote of dust made it through to the other side. Best of all, Ingwe had acted quickly enough that only a handful of the ghouls had managed to successfully obey their master’s order to engage the small band of adventurers; even as he watched, Cydnar hacked one of them down in glorious abandon.

Let Xem’zund summon more reinforcements if he wishes to now… Ingwe murmured mentally as he swiftly reversed his gaze, now glaring down at the Necromancer over the rims of his oversized spectacles and behind the safety of an outstretched palm. It will only be one less chance for him to bring down necromantic doom upon us all.

A mote of a thought, and almost before the wall of flame had finished forming behind him, five small but intense fireballs spawned at his fingertips. Maintaining the fluidity of movement that was going to be crucial if he was going to succeed in going toe to toe with the Forgotten One, Ingwe sent the fiery spheres spiralling towards his target, each of them arcing in on the necromancer from a different angle as they covered the advance of his comrades.

But his foe simply took a step forward, leaned abnormally low to the ground, and exhaled cold rank breath in their direction. As one, Ingwe’s missiles were deflected mid-flight; their sacred white flames blackened by the corruption, they impacted randomly upon the rocky walls and ceiling of the cavern, showering him with shards and splinters that tinkled harmlessly from his mythril armour. The young man could not help but shiver at the consummate ease with which Xem’zund had nullified his magic, even augmented as it was by the power of the ancient artefacts he wielded.

“Come, now. Don’t you wish to play?”

Almost languidly the Forgotten One straightened tall and took a step back, robes of velvet black flowing like viscous oil in his wake. Deft sleight of hand revealed six sleekly smouldering summoning stones nestled in his right palm; before any of his enemies could react beyond recognition, he cast them skittering upon the smooth stone floor and uttered a single word of activation.

“Yala.”

Summon.

The bright flash of light and the puff of grey smoke that accompanied the spell were only embellishments, cheap parlour tricks designed to shock and awe those without experience of the arcane. The half-dozen new foes that stood in their way, however, were nothing of the sort. Vaguely humanoid in form, their armour was of heavy black star-metal with a lustrous purple hue; it encompassed their entire body without exposing any weaknesses, only a faintly glowing slit over their eyes giving away any hint whatsoever of what manner of man or beast dwelled within. Additional protection was provided by the oversized rectangular shoulder-guards that hung like large shields, reminding Ingwe of the o-yoroi armours that had fallen out of fashion in his homeland nearly a century ago. They were armed with long spears tipped on both ends with obsidian blades resembling straight double-bladed daggers, equally at home whether cutting or thrusting. The dully matted volcanic glass channelled the dark necromantic energies that sustained their wielders in a barely audible hum, freezing the very air itself as they dropped the temperature in the room by a full five degrees.

These were Xem’zund’s personal bodyguards, perhaps the most powerful of all the warriors in the necromancer’s service. Their presence indicated that the Necromancer meant business, and that he had no intention of being even remotely light-handed in the extermination of those who sought to defeat him.

This was a battle to the death, and they all knew it. As the harsh reality of that fact hit home, Ingwe grit his teeth and moved to engage the closest of his foes.

[Cydnar]

Shadow prevails, even in the most glorious of sunshine; encroaching on humanity like a plague eternal. In the caverns beneath the earth, the darkness clung for just a little longer, untouched by the dawn and fraternizing with the twilight between life and death, night and day. With each perpendicular strike and elegant swing of hematite blade, the last Salthias, a survivor of the Battle of Dead Marsh fought for the principal concerns of destiny and servitude. With each blow struck to the servants of the dead lord Xem’Zund, Cydnar came closer to understanding the importance of his faith, of his bondage to Yrene.

Exasperated and brought close to reckless abandon, his sword came down across a ghoul’s chest and tore through it with ease; expecting to succumb to the horde in a blind moment, he shielded his eyes from a rush of fire and conflagration that turned a dire situation into one of balance. Suddenly he felt weak, feeble and useless – who was he in this fight, if these titans of time could so easily wipe away all that he could never overcome?

“I…” his belief in his motives brought him to speak, but he stopped in awe of Ingwe’s mental display – the others fought with equal valance, each pitting their strengths against the necromancer’s presence. He stopped, like a statue contemplating its nature and watched the battle unfold in a chill silence. At the back of his mind, vulnerable in his doubt, a whisper encroached once more into his head, assailing his nihilistic personality.

Watch…as you can do nothing to save them.

Watch…as all about you people lose their lives, whilst you are left with yours…

Coward!

Cydnar roared a bestial and primal rush of rebellion – it shook away the tantalising thought and urges to drive his blade through his own chest and he ran forwards to the last clump of undead – spinning on one foot to bring the blade down in a display of aggression more drow than Hummel.

The din of battle faded, replaced instead by the necromancer’s swift tossing of balls and a scattering of chimes and rattles. Standing upright and alert and panting through deep drawn breathes, Cydnar watched the stones come to a standstill on the abyssal floor and felt a deep sense of revulsion as the beings conjured by the dark, selfish magic sprung into existence, called forth from whatever personal hell they had been entombed in.

Xem’zund’s nightmares spiralled around in his head as he watched, the slow and deadly gambit of emotion coming to a boiling point. Gripping his blade with a firm and resolute hand he stepped slowly towards his allies, watching the dense armour plating and wavering spears with a sudden curiosity that came with a love of battle and an astute affinity with…crystals…

“How….ironic,” he began, his voice tainted with fatigue and uncertainty, splashed with a wry sense of fun. He spoke to Ingwe but looked to those others he could see, “this man, this thing – this abuser of life is so content in his power, that he does not inspect his enemy…”

You killed them…and it shall be you who joins them in the shadows… Cydnar flinched, fighting the corruption in his mind with whatever courage he could find.

Freya rose and tumbled in a coy spiral, accompanied with a gentle rocking amble, like a boxer loosening his muscles before a bout. “There is little I can do to aid you in this fight – except offer myself to the last, no doubt in my mind will ever make me succumb to these tricks – haunt me!” He turned to the necromancer, “Tear out my soul and offer it for the world to see in all its wretched, empty glory!”

“But you shall fall – like all the civilisations of man who succumb to the greed of magic that is not theirs to command,” he smiled, sheathed his blade in the spring-loaded sheath and conjured sparkling dust into the air before him, tracing a serpent’s body through it.

“Magic has laws, rules, divine mandates – break them, and it shall return unto you threefold.”

That was the mandate of Yrene – even if Cydnar would die delivering it, even if he would not witness their triumph or ultimate failure – the message was sent with a flick of the serpent’s tongue, like a dart through the ochre twilight.

Xem'Zund's voice burnt into Cydnar's mind with a reckless retort, "I have re-written the laws - I AM the mandate - death has become me."

He clenched his fist and roared the arcane words of True Magic – as weak as it was, he pulled at the ether and pushed the energy onto the spear tips of the first of Xem’Zund’s Guardians, causing it no end of confusion, if such a thing could think in such ways, and giving the scion of the World Eater his opportunity to deal a blow to the thing that had taken his love, his brother, his kin from him.

“Foolish…” The necromancer muttered a word of command and turned his attention to the others. As Cydnar conjured the crystal to the spear, the hulking creatures began to advance.

“Elthiar nummel, tia’k lar!” The spell finalised and the quartz, a deep red shined for a moment as manna left it. Smiling weakly, fearing the brute strength and outmatched nature of the beast walking towards him Cydnar crouched, placed his hand on the hilt of both his swords, and prepared to put his money where his mouth was. He narrowed his eyes and pulled at the spear tips, fighting to wrench it from its grip in time to throw it with a mental pulse – like a javelin to the gods, like David’s sling to Goliath, like a twig hitting a giant….

[Caden Law]

It was dark and the cavern was cold. Then it was bright and the cavern was hot, and musical at that. Caden knew Elvish magic when he heard it, and even if the other mage was a human, his spellcasting still had all the hallmarks of Raiaeran spellwork going for it. The sizzling roar of flames actually had a rhythm to it, not unlike drumbeats. The mage tried to challenge Xem'zund directly.

It didn't end well. Caden didn't bother watching. The Elf and the girl were doing well enough for themselves. The hunter was starting to prove her worth.

"And, oh, look," Caden mumbled a few seconds later. "The big guns."

Six big leaguers. Ancient Dead or Necromantic constructs, or maybe some combination. There were probably demons or spirits or something bound to the lot of them. Caden couldn't tell and didn't especially care. Both he and the other mage had taken the opening shots and were, effectively, useless against the six-pack's backer, who in turn looked to be in the middle of some dread working of power.

Caden grimaced. He was already bleeding from somewhere under his hat, and his glasses were a pleasant memory. The ghouls weren't a problem. The big guy, the last arrival to their little party, was frozen solid in what looked like a self-contained horror show. That left the kill crew outnumbered five to seven and the presumed heavy-hitters' magic wasn't doing any good.

"Right then," he said, taking the time to put on his goggles. Caden took one last look at the action and used it to plot his next moves about five or six spells in advance. Maybe seven. He arranged the magic in his head, wiped the blood from above his brow and slicked it on his staff of power. Runes and sigils lit up from base to tip. Caden tapped it to the ground and drew in power from the nearest leyline.

"Mage! You and I deal with the back-ups. Drow, Jailbait! Hit the Necromancer! Elf, do whatever it is you're good at!"

A running start. Caden mapped out the cavern as he took each stride. It was big. The outer-cavern, where they'd met, was originally separated from the inner-cavern, where they were now, by a sturdy marble wall. The wall was gone now. The only entrance or exit was blocked, either by fire or rubble or burning corpses or some combination; Caden didn't look. The inner cavern was big. Very big. Not quite as big as Denebriel's Sanctum had been, but still large enough to cram a few taverns and a brothel into, maybe with room left over for a church. The ground sloped down to where the others were fighting, then leveled off abruptly. Lots of circles in the stone, ancient writings on the walls, and even some furniture now that Ingwe's corpse-candles were lighting the place enough to see.

Xem'zund wasn't big on decorating. And he didn't keep any particularly attractive artifacts lying around the way Denebriel did. Caden spotted a crystal ball the size of a grandfather clock on the far end of the cavern, accompanied by a table covered in scrolls and maps, and just one shelf with some books and trinkets on it. Nothing useful. Yet.

The Wizard was close enough to see sparks flying where the good guys met the bad. He bullrushed past the still standing Godhand, and the ground began to move with his feet; more speed for each step, until Caden looked like a lunatic iceskater more than anything else. He flanked the kill crew and the bodyguards, then changed course and the ground rose beneath him. In the span of a second, Caden Law went from a skater to a surfer on a tidal wave of dry earth, staff held high and back for balance.

He took three of the guards in one pass, almost grabbing an ally or two while he was at it. The undead went from standing, fighting, leaping, to being grabbed by the earth and pulled into its rock-smashing, bone-grinding embrace.

"NOW!" he Screamed at the younger Mage, and the Elf for that matter. It looked like he was able to hold his own, and there were three left and the situation was changing faster than Caden could really keep track of: Jailbait looked darker now, more inhuman, and the Wizard didn't know if the Mage had it in him to take two guards since he was meeting one in melee, and the Elf was an unknown quantity and that meant-

"Dammit," Caden spat to himself as he surfed the earthen wave around Xem'zund, trying to leave a path clear for Lillian or Drusilla. It didn't look like either was going to make it in time. The Necromancer had his arms drawn up and power was building in the air above him, every single gesture causing it to increase in size and potency alike. It looked like Xem'zund's own rendition of Blueraven's Siege Arcana. "Dammit."

Caden leapt off the wave and hit the ground running, staff in hand. It wasn't far. He didn't have time to put any spells to use. All the Wizard could do was become a lightning rod.

Point blank and Caden drove his staff of power hard into the Necromancer's spell. With an effort of will and intellect, he tore the magic right out of Xem'zund's grasp and negated the working completely. It went from being a tiny black necrotic sun to looking like a puff of smoke. Caden vented the energy right back into the ground behind him, guiding it through his staff and firing it into the earthmound where the three bodyguards were still trying to claw their way free. The mound disappeared in short order. The guards collapsed to dust. About three hundred feet of solid bedrock ceased to exist, leaving behind a twist in reality that didn't fade away for more than a minute. Demons blinked in and out of sight there, and it hurt just to look at.

For a split second after that, Caden was able to stand in place. For all intents and purposes, he was shoulder to shoulder with a physical demigod.

And then Xem'zund turned to him and Said, simply, "Be somewhere else."

The words hit like a shockwave of raw malicious intent. Dust whipped up at the Wizard's feet and his Hat came perilously close to blowing off while his coat billowed hard and his boots scraped in place. Caden planted his staff and stayed put by sheer force of will. He met the Necromancer, Sorcerous blue eyes to Necrotic green ones, and Said only, "No."

The air actually sizzled a bit between them.

"What? No monologue?" Blueraven asked.

"Not for you," Xem'zund answered.

And then he suckerpunched Caden square in the stomach, putting a fist-shaped imprint on a solid steel breastplate that'd been restored by one of the world's elder Gods. The Sorcerer went flying backwards and there was nothing willpower could do to stop him. He crashed down on Xem'zund's work table, bounced off without even jarring it an inch, then slumped to the ground and didn't move again.

"I'll deal with you later," the Necromancer decided, a bone-hilted sword already materializing in his left hand as he spoke. He turned, ready to defend against whoever had made the most of the Wizard's stalling tactic.

[Ataraxis]

Spires of blistering flame rose all around the sanctuary, cremating the hordes of ghoulish beasts that had only come to Lillian’s attention by the unholy screeches they let loose in the throes of their final death. She realized this was the fine work of the black-haired sorcerer, who continued to unleash his elemental prowess without missing a beat as he engaged the Necromancer in mystic combat, now that his grunts and a few combustible sections of his lair had crumbled to nothing but cinders and ashes.

Unfortunately, Ingwe’s flaming artillery had been easily neutralized by the Forgotten’s fetid exhale, blown away like dead leaves in a storm. Worse, with the use of eldritch jewels and a single word of power, the Accursed had beckoned far-off minions to gather before him: six had answered the summons. His funerary guardsmen emerged from the smoke, their exoskeletons glistening balefully under the subsisting flames. The armor of chitin fused to their flesh glowed with a vitriolic tint, almost as ominous as the obsidian spears they held at the ready for battle and bloodshed. In the ghastly light of their eyes, Lillian only saw mindless abandon to their master’s cause: she feared they would prove much more trouble than any of his generals.

And so, all hell broke loose. The robed elf named Cydnar had leapt into the fray, using a strange magic – a distant derivative of geomancy perhaps – to somehow disarm one of the armored patsies. The wizard with the archetypal pointy hat then shouted, hailing her with some obscure but almost certainly offensive term. She sighed: his request could be loosely translated to ‘carry on’. “Sure thing, Hats,” she muttered loud enough for him to hear, her sarcasm only slightly offset by a hint of amiable humor.

That was when he rode in on a colossal moving ridge of stone and soil, carrying off and swallowing three of them in its earthen maw. Seconds later, he leapt from his moving perch to intercept the body of distorted space and energy that had been massing above the Necromancer, using his staff as a conduit for the raw destructive force. Struck by the redirected stream of sorcery, the surf of stone and its three captives disintegrated into nothingness.

Alas, their elation ended there.

The wizard formerly known as Hats flew across the cavern sanctuary a second time today, the shape of the Black’s fist immortalized in his breastplate as one sizzling imprint. World-rending punches were no strangers to the girl: even as she ran for the Necromancer, Lillian reacted instinctively to the wizard’s dire straits. Exchanging her glass dirk with a throwing dagger of matte black, she closed her fist about the blade with enough pressure to draw blood. One unseen flick of the wrist later and the dagger flew to the wreckage in which he had collapsed, trailing wisps of red before burrowing effortlessly into the wood.

The dozen threads of blood lingered on, billowing above the weapon as would the pistils of a carnelian flower. They extended, circling the wizard’s inert form, slipping into his sleeve, coursing about his arm. From his shoulder they spread out over his chest in a web of pulsing veins; the infestation thickened and darkened until it seeped into his body, absorbed through the pores of his skin. The web empowered with her lifeblood had thus begun its work, resettling ribs, mending broken bones and staunching any internal bleeding. Lillian was healing him, as fast as she could: they had already lost Godhand… they could not afford to lose him, too.

She never saw the spear coming. Not from the front, not from behind, neither left nor right: it struck from the ground below. Caught in the ensuing rain of dirt and stone shards, Lillian suffered hundreds of cuts, and the spearhead had slashed her forearm open. The girl gritted her teeth, reflexively conjuring dark webs within the enormous gash to stop the bleeding. The guardsman clambered from the hole in the ground with one arm, the other torn at the shoulder and dripping a black sludge more oil than blood: he had likely lost it while escaping the necromantic black hole that had devoured his two comrades. Before she could even think of retaliation, the shadow of a second foe came into sight, twirling its long weapon in preparation for a heart-rending lunge.

They came at her without any shred of mercy: she had her arms full now, and nothing could keep Xem’zûnd from capitalizing on that perfect situation.

Clouds of power gathered about his upraised palm, and in its center globules of something terrible had begun to form. It was the stuff of nightmares, a hellish blend of black pus from lanced boils and masses of festering rot: a single touch of the necromantic substance could very well turn any living being into a monstrosity of undying but ever-suffering decay, if it did not kill them outright. It was too late to act upon her instinct to disengage her adversaries: the second guardsman had rammed her down to the ground, pinning her there with an unyielding fist. Its fingers curled about her throat, tightening like pincers. She gasped, hacking for breath.

Xem’zûnd lobbed the wicked matter with a laugh, watching as it crossed the room in a perfect arc that ended at her abdomen. The sludge struck her like a boulder, but that pain was nothing next to what followed: it spread from the point of impact, spread like an infection that would ensnare her in an oozing cocoon. The black film began to bubble, and she screamed: it was as if millions of flesh-eating insects had begun feasting upon her. The moving tendrils were already at her neck when the darkness in her eyes had become absolute.

A great chill coursed through the sanctuary, and in that fleeting instant, those attuned to the waves of sorcery would have felt an impossible presence…

That of a second Xem’zûnd.

The black sludge became inert, seemingly frozen stiff upon Lillian’s supine form. That is, until it leapt from her flesh and onto the guardsman that had brought her down. It unleashed a guttural bellow as its armor fell apart, fissuring along with the substance’s infectious propagation; blobs of grey flesh dribbled out from the cracks in its midpoint, covered in that squalid oil these monsters bled. Within grueling seconds, its towering body had been broken down to pieces of corroding exoskeleton, simmering in a mixture of their own fluids, filth and rot. Lillian stared at its remains, stared at the fate the Necromancer had reserved for her.

“What did you do.” The Necromancer was not amused: not once, but twice had his own powers been used against him. The frayed folds of his great cloak billowed with the waves of his rising anger, and she knew he was about to unleash something much worse: the Black had no intention of waiting to hear her answer. The bone-hilted sword rose high above his head, pulsating a sickly violet as he wrapped his spell with layers upon layers of raw destruction.

In that terrifying lull, Lillian reached deep within her soul, clawing at a different source of power. Within the glassy black of her eyes, rings of burning crimson came alight: raw and unrefined, constantly spilling out, this new force would be familiar to all – it belonged to the only warrior absent from the battle. Facing the elite guard that had lost its arm, she grabbed onto its obsidian spear with one hand, the other drawing back like a coiled spring. The amber pendant she wore about her neck shimmered like an earthbound star, matching the rings of flame within her gaze, infusing her body with far more power than any single human was ever meant to handle.

There was no moment more fitting for her to unleash the wrath of Godhand.

Her knuckles met chitin. A great boom tore through the cave like a cannonball breaking through a rampart of steel. Splinters of armor and smarmy oil sprayed out from the gaping hole her fist had left behind. The exposed muscles rippled outward as its body left the ground, careening through open space in a mad swirl. Lillian twirled the spear she had stolen from it, the shaft almost breaking within her grip as she readied it for a throw. Two quick forward steps; the flagstones burst underfoot, sending plumes of dust and dirt in her wake. Every muscle of her body tensed as one, and the colossal spear left her hand like the blur of a crossbow bolt.

Before the battered guard even came close to touching the ground, the spear’s tip burrowed into its guts midflight. Its body jerked, soaring even faster across the sanctuary… soaring toward the Necromancer. Charged with pure destructive sorcery, his blade swung down, too fast for him to retract. A tidal wave of power burst from the bone sword, grinding even rocks and rubble to fine dust in its explosive advance… but it had caught its first victim too soon.

Lillian was blown back from the ensuing blast wave; her body skittered and rolled across the slope, almost hitting the walls of flame Ingwe had conjured when her back smashed against a large stone column. She slipped from the dark basalt in a mist of dust, falling to her hands and knees while coughing up blood. The girl could not believe what force the Necromancer had mustered, but she thanked the gods that her impulsive action had managed to detonate the spell prematurely. Lillian could only guess what would have happened, had she been caught in the nucleus of the explosion… could only guess what had happened to Xem’zûnd.

When the clouds of smoke, dirt and debris cleared, the Necromancer was still standing. There was nothing left of his cloak but tattered rags hanging from his shoulders, and the black leather of his armor was charred, melted right off at some points. The inlaid scales of adamantine glistened underneath, marred only by stains of dried sludge – the only remains of the minion Lillian had thrown at him. He was crouching slightly, holding his weight with the broken blade of his immense bone sword, the rise and fall of his chest a telltale sign of onset exhaustion.

But it was far from over… though she had injured him to an unknown extent, Lillian knew there was nothing more dangerous than a wounded lion. She conjured within her the same healing webs that were currently treating the wizard, recovering enough from her wounds to charge once more.

After all, Lillian could not waste the opportunity to bash his mask in while his defenses were still down.



Convenient Summary

I figure keeping track of everyone else's posts might have been trying for you guys too, so I'll put this here to make things easier.


Lillian throws dagger imbued with her blood and her webs: the webs seek out wounded Caden and begin to heal him.

One of the 3 guardsmen (G#1) caught in Caden's rock wave escaped Xem's magic black hole, dug its way under Lillian and attacked her.

Another guardsman (G#2) jumps in and flanks her.

Xem takes advantage of that and casts a ball of death and rot at her.

Lillian uses the power she stole from Xem to protect herself against its effect, then hijacks the spell.

G#2 dies in horrible agony under the redirected spell.

Xem begins to casts an explosive death ray.

Lillian uses Godhand's power, boosts it with her amulet, and punches Guardsman #2.

She throws the spear she stole from it, impaling G#1 midflight.

Xem unleashes the death ray, but it hits G#1 who's flying toward him, only a few feet away.

Explosion.

Xem is injured. Broke his sword. Guardsman #1 is a stain on his armor.

Lillian charges: exact actions open-ended.

Note: by my count, there are only two elite guards left. Caden caught 3 in his wave, 2 of which were disintegrated by Xem's black hole spell, but one escaped. That one later exploded. Another unrelated guard was dissolved. That's 4 killed out of 6.

[Mage Hunter]

Everything went to hell at once. Ghouls erupted from about them to entertain, even as the younger of the two humans brought flames to bear upon the necromancer’s lackeys. A gesture of the Necromancer made it all a moot issue as he summoned forward his minions to guard him. Judging from the rough shape and size, Drusilia was more than certain these had been heavily augmented by magic. If she tried to strip them to their component parts, she’s risk becoming one, and that was a feat she didn’t need occurring.

The next step of the groups rather masterfully crafted plan was to have the other mage charge the front lines, hoping to clear a path as he ordered the Drow and the girl about. Dru was not used to being ordered around, by a mage of all people, but when he offered up the primary target, she didn’t complain too loudly. She only grumbled at the mage’s audacity. Still it seemed he was a bit of a glory hog himself, when he slid along the earth and through the minions right next to Xem-Zund stopping another arcane assault from hitting the group. As helpful as that was, there seemed to be the sin of pride in all of them as he refused to be cowed by the elder magician's magics.

The fact that the necromancer merely threw him across the room and through the furniture made things even worse. The mage was now by far the most injured of the lot, after Drusilia who had been shoved into a wall none too kindly. The situation was looking rather dour, until the girl threw a knife towards the downed form of Blueraven. Looking at the girl skeptically Drusilia watched as the necromancer threw an orb of magic upon her, only to have it rebounded and thrown back at him. That feat along seemed to take some effort from the girl, and Drusilia’s tactical mind told her not to bet that it could happen another time.

Soon after she was tearing through one of the constructs with a speed and grace the Huntress had only seen in Godhand, who was still battling with his personal demons. She tore the spear from the grip of the necrotic elite, before chucking it straight through the erstwhile attacker and right at the necromancer himself, who had charged up yet another spell, and was firing it off. The result was the once whole guard took the obliterating blow himself, and the spear did no damage to Xem’zund.

By the same token however, he didn’t do any damage to them either, just to a fourth guard who was now a pile of ash smeared across the floor.

From the get go Drusilia knew this would be a tough fight. She hadn't even gotten warmed up before she had taken damage, and already there were a couple of monsters between her and the almighty asshole himself. Things were looking rather grim, as one mage's magic was stopped cold, while another mage was lying amidst the ruins of the Necromancer's table, being healed by a third magician's magics. The situation was looking dire, until the young female mage managed a rather fancy trick in turning Xem'zund's magic back upon him.

Drusilia almost wanted to throw up again, so thick was the stench of magic in the air.

Still she kept her composure, she'd have plenty of time to throw up later, when she was collecting the pot in fact. Moving through the area slowly yet deliberately she saw the odds had evened, if only a bit. Three constructs were dead, one even becoming a black ichor smear across the necromancer's robes. The young girl who had redirected the Demi-liches power was already on the run, attempting to capitalize on the fact Xem'Zund was hurt to cause even more grief, and Drusilia knew her cue to act when she saw it.

Charging forward the scenery rushed by even as one of the necrotic elite sought to gut her with the spear. A snort left her lips even as she jumped and rolled forward, stumbling to her feet, as the spear tip plunged into the dirt, forcing the soldier to pull it out the old fashioned way, even as Drusilia recovered. Bringing her foot about in a solid kick the helmet of the necrotic guard flew off, twisting the head in such an angle a resounding snap echoed through the chamber. Her first sword brought down upon the now slack neck saw that the head was severed; before sword was planted firmly through the thing’s chest plate to the hilt. A savage stab into the earth saw that the thing was pinned down at the least, if she hadn’t killed it.

Wiping a bit of sweat from her brow she looked to the real target. She knew her drill sergeant would have kicked her ass for the horrible forward roll, but she had to keep moving at all costs. Pushing forward she saw the girl even now beginning a rain of blows upon the necromancer's head. Each step seemed agony, as the very presence of the necromancer sent her senses into overdrive, telling her a dangerous and volatile mixture of mana was present in the area. It was so overwhelming she had to shut off her sense of magic in order to proceed, figuring she couldn’t spit without hitting something magical in the area. It was a useless gesture to try and keep up with the auras.

She twirled her blade a bit artistically before she brought it before her in the first stance of the Kyorl. Her face lit up in a vile grin, happy to see she would get the honors of carving into the necromancer, washing her blades in his blood. Sizing up the big man even as the girl continued to pummel the demi god she let out a cautionary voice, "If I were you, I'd watch where I was punching, I'm about to slash this fucker back to the abyss he crawled out of..."

Bringing the sword down she let out a triumphant yell as the sword connected with the robes tearing through to the body that lay underneath and began her litanies, "Faer zhah whol l' yibin!"

Summary of Actions;

1) Drusilia watches the events unfold faster than she can react, somewhat nauseated by the magic flowing freely in the area.
2) Seeing a chance, she rushes forward pinning one of the undead guardians of the necromancer to the earth with one of her swords.
3) Moving on to the Necromancer she begins to recite the litanies of hate, and begins the hail of blows to hopefully finish off the necromancer.

[Flames of Hyperion]

Planting the adamantine Sceptre of Valour firmly into a vein of soft dirt amidst the rocky floor, Ingwe whipped both short swords from their sheathes upon his back as two of the guardians closed in upon him. To his right, the Wizard Blueraven shouted orders and raced into a sprint, the very ground itself churning to his aid beneath his feet. To his left, three more of Ingwe's comrades advanced to engage the Necromancer and his bodyguards, their blades singing death upon their enemies. Godhand Striker remained fused to the ground behind him, still caught in whatever distortion that Xem’zund had prepared; the flames of Ingwe’s previous spell danced from his craggy features, carving in them shadows almost as deep as those in the rest of the room.

The blinding whirr of twirling spears brought the young man's mind back to reality, and instinctively he stepped in to parry, engaging his two foes in a whirling dance of steel and starmetal. The flaring purple tips of his opponents’ weapons spun in graceful arcs almost hypnotically beautiful, were they not threatening to carve crimson streaks in his body. Instinctively he knew that a single touch would be enough to incapacitate, if not outright kill.

I can’t afford even a single mistake.

Normal steel weapons would likely have shattered beneath the stronger metal, but Ingwe kept just enough magic channelled through them to protect against that eventuality. Still, the very precision of his foes, the choreographed movements that kept him under relentless pressure no matter which way he turned, gave him no time at all to exploit any openings they might have shown. Outnumbered and outflanked, it was all he could do to protect himself whilst drawing the two guards away from Xem’zund, his twin tanto working in increasingly tighter arcs to parry their attacks.

And the stench of rotting flesh behind him suddenly made him realise that he was being driven into a trap. The last pair of ghouls who had survived the Elf’s onslaught were closing in from his unprotected rear, to take advantage of his distraction. At this rate…

A chance. The Drow’s rush forward drew one of his opponents away, peeling off with his spear sweeping forward in an attempt to divert her from Xem’zund. That left only one opponent to his fore, and half a second in which to take advantage of it before he was swarmed from behind as well.

Now!

Deliberately he slipped away, lowering both swords and leaving himself defenceless. The unorthodox movement seemed to confuse his opponent for a split second, just enough time for the young man to gather his power. By the time the skull-faced bodyguard had brought the purple tip of his spear to bear once more, Ingwe was more than ready.

Kuhazan!

Blades of translucent air swept forth from his twin swords, arcing as swiftly as any zephyr through his foe. Both of the bodyguard’s arms fell to the floor with dull thuds, followed an instant later by the clatter of the starmetal spear. By then, Ingwe had already stepped in with purpose; a sweep of his offhand blade took off the undead construct’s head, and a thrust of the other plunged steel through heavily armoured chest like a hot knife through wet snow. The constant crimson glare of the guardian’s eyes flickered once, twice, before slowly fading completely.

Ingwe was not off the hook yet. Shadows looming over his head warned just in time of the two ghouls behind him. Their wickedly clawed limbs were spread out wide, ready to rend flesh from bone…

A pair of flaming streaks, followed closely by another, put paid to their ambitions. Calm as a frozen pond despite the heavy breaths wracking his bony frame, Ingwe returned his swords to his sheathes; behind him, the last of the ghouls toppled to the ground as sacred flames ate away at their tinder-dry bodies.

That… was close…

Working hard to catch his breath at the same time as trying to analyse the situation, Ingwe carefully made his way back to where he’d planted the sceptre. The Wizard Blueraven now lay in another crumpled heap, this time slumped against what seemed like the Forgotten One’s worktable. On the other hand, it seemed as if he’d managed to buy his remaining allies enough time to engage Xem’zund in close combat, as a furious melee was erupting around…

Around…

That’s not Xem’zund!

Something was wrong, something fundamentally off about the darkly-robed figure at the centre of their attention. Ingwe couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but it was almost as if the opponent they fought was an echo of Xem’zund’s power, an empty vessel… a decoy.

The young man tried to scream a warning, the words welling up in his throat like a swelling tide. But the Necromancer was quicker. The build-up of explosive arcane power, focused on the false Xem’zund, was unmistakable.

There was no way they would make it away in time.

Quicker than thought, Ingwe’s mind reacted. His hands clenched tightly about the golden adamantine sceptre; his eyes closed shut as they focused on the dark power building up in the centre of the cavern. He had mere moments to act, even less if he wanted to actually stand a chance of stopping Xem’zund’s ploy. Concentrating his will on the swelling magic, Ingwe literally threw it in the Necromancer’s way, seeking to disrupt and divert the flow of mana into the material world. Even if he could not dismiss it completely, if he could shunt it away from his allies to save them from the blast…

Sudden fire and flame engulfed the chamber, followed closely by a heated shockwave and a powerful surge of dust and grit. Even this deep within the bowels of the earth, Ingwe feared for an instant that the rock roof would give way, and that they would all be buried alive beneath an overwhelming avalanche. Luckily, the worst of his fears did not materialise, and as the powdery after-effects of Xem’zund’s magic finally began to settle, he made out three forms thrown away from the blast… shocked, perhaps, but not badly wounded.

Ingwe’s brow relaxed from grim concentration, a relieved smile briefly taking over his youthful features. They were still in this fight yet…

The dark ray came from nowhere, speeding out of the shadows far quicker than anybody could react. It pierced through two layers of arcane warding as if they didn’t exist, before penetrating Ingwe’s flesh at the precise spot where the Dawn Armour failed to protect the base of his neck. To the young man, it felt like an eternity before the spell finally exited from the small of his back; in reality, it was all of a microsecond.

With no further sound, an expression of innocent surprise still carved onto his face, Ingwe’s body folded facedown to the floor.

Ah, but of course, the Forgotten One’s dark voice echoed throughout the still air, reverberating painfully in the depths of the mortal ears. Briefly he hung still above his worktable, and they were able to catch a glimpse of his true form: larger, more magnificent, and more malevolent than ever before. You have grown far too powerful for my pets to handle… that is why you are now here in the first place. But you were not so powerful as to be able to unravel my disguise, were you? How long I’ve had to prepare for this encounter… you didn’t really think I wouldn’t be ready?

With a wave of his ethereal hand, dark magics once again flowed about the chamber… past Godhand’s immobile prison, over Ingwe’s unresponsive body, around the three warriors at the centre of the room. It was not an offensive spell, but in the brief moment of respite before the arcane power began to coalesce, it was obvious to all that it was still a spell of great magnitude.

The first sign they had of its effects was when the undead construct speared to the floor by Drusilia’s sword tore itself free and turned to face them. Soon, it was joined in its action by three others – the two that had been buried beneath Caden’s spell of rock and rubble, and the one that had been carved into pieces by Ingwe’s magic. The fifth and last was slowest in arriving, reassembling itself grotesquely from where it had exploded all over the chamber. Only the guardian that had borne the brunt of Xem’zund’s own wrath, the one that Lillian had used as a shield against the Necromancer’s fury, did not regenerate.

This time, however, they bore little resemblance to the faceless guardians that they had once been.

This time, they reappeared as clones of the first Xem’zund, with the exact same powers as he.

Defeat me, if you can…

With an evil echoing laugh, the ethereal form of the Forgotten One swept across the cavern, dissipating into fine mist as it divided itself amongst its puppets. The implications were clear: they would have to defeat the Necromancer’s bodies one by one, but as they did so, his hold would strengthen over his remaining puppets until they became too powerful for the Dawnbringers to deal with. Furthermore, there was no way of telling for sure which body contained Xem’zund’s true essence… as long as it remained safe, the Forgotten One could keep on transferring consciousness until the end of time.

And of course, there was no way that Xem’zund was going to make it easy for them to work it out, either. Five bodies as one, he began to incant.

[Caden Law]

A lot of things happened. Caden missed most of them by virtue of being off in his Happy Place, somewhere between La La Land and Wheeeeeee. He came to with the distinct sensation of needles racing across his skin and gave a bleary-eyed look at the red lines coursing over his right hand. The damage to his body was mostly undone. He could taste blood. He was still bruised something fierce. But the healing spell represented a gap in his metaphorical -- and metaphysical -- armor. Caden cut the spell off through a dazed effort of will, severing red strings and leaving the last traces of Jailbait's magic to run its course. He straightened his goggles up and tuned out the endless dime store villain talk that the Necromancer was subjecting the others to.

The Wizard had, of course, landed in what passed for Xem'zund's personal workshop. He wasted no time between coming to and plundering the table, the floor, the shelves all in short order. Books that probably cost more than the island-nation of Scara Brae were yanked down, pulled open and thrown away in rapid succession. Scrolls older than countries were crumpled and cast aside when they revealed nothing useful. Caden stopped to examine a map of the leyline structure of Raiaera, but even that was useless to him.

The only thing that stood out enough to catch his eye was a small book with a yellow cover and the words, The Truth Beneath All Truths, written in Old Diamonic with a flourish Caden didn't recognize. The binding looked like the carapace of an insect. A spider, perhaps.

Or a mantis.

It was in that exact instant that Caden felt a breeze that was not there, smelled a scent that didn't exist, and reveled in an epiphany that would probably yield him nothing in the long run. He had known Xem'zund enjoyed the patronage of an Elder Thayne since Eluriand, when the Necromancer threw N'jalian iconography at the Elves, up to and including zombies riding on spiders the size of rhinocerouses. He had known that Xem'zund was operating with the patronage of an Elder Thayne since his trial at the Icehenge, when one of the Thaynes explicitly told him about the Forgotten Ones. When three of his own selves demonstrated what that would look like. And now he knew the truth.

And the truth was stale, like the heat of a desert at high noon. It smelled like dust and old books.

"You magnificent son of a bitch," Caden muttered, looking up from the table without an ounce of fear anywhere in him. There were five Xem'zunds now, but that didn't matter. None of it mattered. "I just figured you out," Blueraven declared with a manic little giggle.

The nearest Xem'zund stopped suddenly, thrusting an arm out to the side. It conjured a sword, bone-hilted with a blade almost as long as he was tall. Caden laughed at him.

"Finally gone insane, have you," the Necromancer said, then lunged forward.

Caden ducked under Xem'zund's own study table, geomancing the ground to slide all the way to its other side. Xem'zund flew right over him, the air scorching green as his blade passed through the space previously occupied by the Wizard's head. Caden came back up with one hand held out, calling his staff back from wherever it had landed. The weapon crashed heavy into his palm, almost knocking him over, as Xem'zund landed and turned around. The Necromancer threw power at him without bother of an incantation, and Caden rose to the challenge -- literally. The ground surged beneath him, carrying the Wizard up above Xem'zund's spell and giving him the chance to laugh harder.

"I FIGURED YOU OUT, YOU STUPID SON OF A BITCH!"

"You talk too much," spoke the Necromancer in a crowning moment of irony. Which promptly turned to unbelievability.

The Wizard jumped down and, wielding nothing more than a completely blunt staff, dove right into melee combat with one of the most powerful magi to ever menace Raiaera. He drove the point into Xem'zund's throat with the skill of a swordsman adapting on the fly, ducked under the Necromancer's blade and came back up with a swing that was all feathers and arcana -- point blank Blast, and the Necromancer actually staggered back a step.

"It's not that I'm talking too much," Blueraven Said as he ducked and sidestepped successive attacks, never meeting the Necromancer strength for strength. Armed with Dueril's training and his own experience, he kept giving ground and manipulating the flow of battle, always staying just a few inches clear of the Necromancer's strikes. With magic alone did the Wizard vy with his foe: Xem'zund cast spells at point blank, and Caden attacked them instead. Somewhere along the way, he added that, "I haven't been talking enough."

Caden jumped back from a swing and came in with a thrust like a pool player gone to war. It caught Xem'zund in the left eye, and the Necromancer stopped cold. He wasn't hurt.

He was just irritable.

"All this time, you've been blowing me off because you didn't want to talk to me, on the off chance that you'd slip up and give me a little clue here or there. You were actually afraid, weren't you, Xem?"

The Necromancer pushed forward and the ground beneath Caden gave in kind. Aside from being pushed back, the Wizard didn't move an inch.

"All this time, you've been fooling everyone."

The Necromancer stopped. Caden met him eye to eye with a bloody toothed grin that bordered on psychopathic.

"You've been drawing your power from Khal'jaren since day one. You're nothing but a necromantic fraud. All knowledge, but your corruption is formulaic. In the end, it's the difference between a seeing a fire burn and knowing how it works at a chemical level. You use ritual and entropy, technique and skill to mask what you're actually doing."

Silence. The Xem'zund that was fighting Caden simply stopped moving.

It even went so far as to drop its sword. The weapon didn't clatter so much as it went thump and then collapsed to dust and rust and ruinous age.

"What else do you know."

The Wizard lowered his staff by inches. He Said, "When the Elves came to Raiaera, they exterminated a people called Durklan. The Durklan fled to the Black Desert in their last years. Khal'jaren's library is fabled to be in the Black Desert. He's your true patron."

"Is that all?"

"I'm thinking."

"Good," Said the Necromancer, just before lunging forward and grabbing for the Wizard's throat.

Caden was faster by an inch. He clasped Xem'zund's wrist with one hand, then drew his staff across his own back with the other so that the tip aimed squarely at the Necromancer's face. An instant later, the ground beneath them twisted and deformed, runes simply collapsing into place as if hammered by unseen hands. The air turned green and then blue in rapid succession as Xem'zund called up power and Caden Law stole it in short order.

"Knowledge Arcana: Sorcery," Caden invoked, "Cutting off a Sorcerer from his Patron. Concept Bypass: The Naming Arcanum Bound by Strings of Dominion.

Energy levels were fluctuating madly around the two. Caden's veins were showing, starting to turn green. Sorcerous Marks lined their way all over his skin, all glowing blue, and every single syllable caused birds or feathers to flutter around him. Xem'zund's free hand worked frantically through somatic gestures while his Voice raced through seven incantations at the same time and his eyes blurred at the iris until the bolts of his black mask were all glowing like tiny stars.

"This will never work," the Necromancer spat, perhaps accompanied by a few of his other selves trying to intervene.

"It already is, Zundalon the Cantor, Possessor of Abbot Xem, last survivor of the Durklan." The grin came back. "That's how you do it. Underneath that mask, you're wearing Devin dan Sabriel's face because your first true power was the ability to take the identity of anyone who killed you. That's how you became a Sorcerer, acquired access to the Tap and everything else."

"Which is why this won't work!"

Fear.

The Necromancer actually felt fear.

"You wear the mask because you're tired of not having your own face, Zundalon. The face is part of the identity. That's how I hurt you at Eluriand, and how you've been hurt elsewhere. Lose the mask and you lose the anchor of your identity."

For every spell Xem'zund was crafting, Caden was simply eating that power raw before any of it could be used, siphoning it out and channeling it into an increasingly large, glowing, somewhat unhealthy looking array of runes circling the pair. But he couldn't diffuse all of it. Sooner or later, there would be a price to pay.

"Lose the anchor and Zundalon is just one of a thousand, of tens of thousands! All vying for control, all wanting to be free!"

"You're wrong," Xem'zund Said, full of an all too mortal sense of conviction when he spoke.

"No. I'm a Sorcerer. A real one." No grinning this time. Not even a chortle. "You're not."

The array reached critical mass and collapsed, the circle forming a ditch less than a foot wood and more than twenty feet deep, positively overflowing with the stuff of magic. Every single rune deformed, and the air started the catch fire in trails around the two of them. Letters wrote themselves in the wake of every flame, congealing into words and then sentences, paragraphs and more.

"Concept Bypass: Greyspine's Tower Incarnum and Blueraven's Sanctum Severance."

Energies, putrid and otherwise, warped into a tower around Caden Law and Xem'zund #5. It was close to a hundred feet wide at the base, easily three or four times as well, and shot straight up into the ceiling of the cavern and kept going until it burst out of the earth above. All the while, the tower turned and turned and turned, blue feathers clashing horribly with green bones and ectoplasmic bricks; the feedback loop finally overloading itself as the Wizard tried to play damage control and at least keep his spell from killing everyone else.

The Tower endured for all of twelve seconds.

Then the top of it exploded into a bona fide mushroom cloud, complete with a shockwave that perfectly sliced trees and stones in half for a few dozen yards in every direction. The Tower's base actually imploded up into the ceiling, and took every single bit of debris with it, leaving behind nothing but a wretched looking crater in its wake.

There stood the Wizard-Sorcerer, his Marks no longer blazing, veins standing out starkly all over skin that looked pale as cheap parchment. A rusted mask clattered to the ground in front of him, a jagged break running from its forehead to the upper lip.

Caden coughed up a glowing blue feather or two, looked up to the sky and promptly collapsed where he was standing. It was a pyrrhic victory at best, and only one of the five or six that they were going to need to actually win this battle...but it was a victory, and that was good enough.

tl;dr Caden just ate Xem'zund #5. The nuke-vomited him up through the ceiling. The other four are still functioning as normal and I leave it to whoever to determine whether or not Xem got any of the power back for #5. Most of the info/etc in this post has been established, implied, hinted at, or otherwise had the groundwork set for it since the beginning of the FQ, and Caden's little read-your-name trick was established way, way, way, way, way back in the Siege of Eluriand. It was named here in order to give it more power, allowing it to actually work. Concept Bypass worked faster than usual for expediency's sake, and can be handwaved for any number of reasons. Given the nature of Caden's Voice, there's a pretty good chance at least one of the others would've heard his spiel clearly.

Barring another heal or some kind of interaction with XemCo or the Good Guys, Caden is basically down and out for at least two or three rounds of posting, if not the rest of the thread. He's certainly not going to be in much shape to do more than support the others now, and he will not be able to use any further Sorcery or bona fide Necromancy to do so.

Caden dodged the total identity hijack by virtue of only (technically) wounding Xem'zund as a whole (or something; like chopping off an arm instead of shooting the head). Feel free to tweak that as you will.

[Cydnar]

As Cydnar pulled back the spear to throw at the guardian, a light erupted from nowhere and cleaved through Xem’Zund’s resistance. Silence descended, blocking out the elf’s perception of the events still ongoing around him.

Slowly his hearing returned, and the sickness brought on by the wall of manna thrown into the atmosphere dimmed to a faint throb of his temples.

Secretly he sighed, thankful that he would not have to endeavour to bring such a hulking and brutal creature to its knees by merit of skill or effort. But his words were unheeded by the great serpent in the shadows, as the shattered creature churned and moved and reformed even from death beyond death. A whisper peeled away the momentary shock, dark tendrils of taunting nightmares seeping up through the cavern’s floor to lash at the elf’s mind once more with promises of succubus dreams.

“I will not listen!” He wobbled his hand to concentrate on the pull between his fingers and the long shaft of the spear, still laden with the crystalline chunks at each end. You shall perish, you shall wither, you shall fall. “I will, not, listen!” Then you shall meet the death you have come to barter with, did you think your pathetic race could ever hope to stand against the ancient magic that spurns your young god to life?

The voice spoke to Cydnar not with lips or maw, but through the shadows themselves. As he wrestled to maintain focus, the guardian’s corpse turned into a copy of the necromancer, who moments ago had finally succumbed, or seemingly died. He had not witnessed the battle between the necromancer and Caden, but had his own mettle to test. “Puppetry – dangling taunts before me to see if I will succumb to your lies. I will not, and shall not. The Hummel are meek and feeble in the face of your selfishness, of your anger. But we, like all life, will persevere to maintain that state. I will not give up, not for vengeance, nor for hatred. I fight only for the altruistic truth that is existence!”

Xem’zund’s shadow flicked its wrist and the fabric of reality began to rupture, its voice joining the others in an unholy incantation.

“In the name of the World Snake, and of the ancient lore,” he pulled back his arm that held the spear aloft and keened his eyes onto the flamboyantly adorned chest before him.

“I condemn thee to death; on the charge of abusing the tenets of magic,” he pushed, and the spear flew forwards like a bolt thrower’s defiant challenge to a siege tower.

It took a mere moment for the clone to levitate and blast the spear with a ball of darkness that hummed the anathema of the world; in a cloud of splinters and purple dust it exploded, and in a hairsbreadth Cydnar spiralled about and attached his mentality to the largest of the fragments of quartz with agile grappling hooks of will.

“Yrene’s grace is with you!”

They rushed up and around the debris and hovered for a split second before Cydnar clicked his fingers and delivered a counter-attackt. The sickening sound of heavy blunt material connecting with arm, leg, forehead and shin broke the silence that followed with a ray of sunshine, a little glimmer of hope.

He breathed heavily and slowly, pain wracking his lungs and a wave of nausea rocking his temples. He regained a momentary smile, one brought about by the thrill of battle he had discovered in the Citadel, and at the heart of the dark marshes in defence of the Magister’s Prophecy. He had lost so much getting here, he dare not consider letting down the Council now. He turned to survey the scene behind him and traced the outline of the others who had gathered to fight through the gloom. Magical spells and witty retorts were flying left and right, and some of them were injured.

He made a single step forwards, and stopped.

“Did you think that would kill me?” Xem’Zund’s voice glued the elf to the stone. “Such an innocent thought – rocks, petty little fae incantations.”

Defiantly Cydnar turned to watch the clone stand upright very slowly. With each minute movement bones clicked back into place and the caved in skull, a crater of carnage in the mind of a madman rebuilt itself in a flurry of black threads. The rush of cold from behind him suggested that he had been invigorated with a new life, a new modicum of being, and a new aegis of power with which to crush an already feeble resistance. How could Cydnar have known that with each death, his opponent in his own personal war would grow in power?

They did not have much time.

“-Úccfë”…Cydnar pulled his twin blades from his belt and started to walk forward, his robes trailing behind his opening arms like an eagle descending on its prey. As he closed the gap, Xem’Zund drew his long blade and smiled with teeth and grimace. He neared his target and Cydnar dropped to his knees, bringing both sheathes down hard and leapt into the air in a forward flip.

He landed with swords crossed before him, their tips pointing downwards and their hematite pommels glinting in the half light. “Anyone!” He shouted, “lend me your aid, lend me your valour, lend me the magic you wield in the Truth of the Ancient Lore and we shall crush these abhorrent fiends!” The necromancer ran forwards and Cydnar met his charge with a clash of blades and a new beginning in his tale; he hoped his plea would be heard as he pulled back, scooped up and around and swung Freya into the path of the necromancer’s weapon.

They clashed once more, a deft defence rising in front of the remnant of an old god’s prominence.



'Oh Fuck.'

[Ataraxis]

The more protracted the battle became, the more Lillian depended on nothing other than reflexes and instinct. Events began to blur into one another: newer, stronger enemies rising as the previous fell, more wounded allies to restore with her blood and sorcery. This, she knew, was in no way a good thing. Ingwe had been pierced through the base of the neck by a lance of black energy, the fallen guardsmen became replicas of their dark master, and Hats the wizard had fallen twice now. Granted, his revelation of the Necromancer’s origins, of his powers and of his weakness, had been of interest to the scholarly girl. More relevant, however, was his prompt disposal of one among the five clones. The earth gave way, beneath and above: nothing but rubble remained underfoot, and the ceiling of the great underground cavern had been blown clear off.

The girl thanked her stars for surviving the spire of raw eldritch power, and that was all. She had cleared away from the other clones, whose united spell-casting had been interrupted by the magical surge, standing closer to her comrades who had escaped the blast just as she did. With a flick of the wrist, she retrieved the blue-metal dagger she had invested with her blood, the same that had carried her healing webs to the wizard the first time. Applying pressure on its flat, she split the weapon in half, the left piece turning a glossy white sheen while the one in her right hand took on shadows of matte black. The twin blades bit into her palms, drawing her lifeblood, and she threw them again: one at Ingwe, the other once again at Hats. There was, however, no time to watch them work her magic.

The robed elf – Cydnar, she remembered from their meeting in the hidden grotto – had called for help. More explicitly, she understood from his embellished supplication, he requested power: the power to bring his bizarre variant of geomancy to new levels, to cause the wretched Necromancer a pain that would prove permanent, for once in this god-forsaken battle. Lillian wondered just how she could comply; she tried to work out the mechanics of life-force transference, but she feared that was no feat to be achieved like this, on the fly. That is, until she realized what new power she had gained.

“Necromancy,” she muttered darkly, the ink in her eyes roiling in malignant ripples. Lillian had gained a parcel of his necromancy: she had learned to resist its rot, to commandeer dark spells not her own, but more importantly, she had learned its gruesome mechanics. The knowledge to infuse life where it no longer belonged, to drain it from those it still served... it was hers, now. It was hers, and she knew how to use it in conjunction with her own inherent abilities. There was still much residual power in her body, a temporary boon granted by the unleashing of the amber amulet she wore. It quadrupled her physical prowess, already empowered by the blood of Godhand, but it was of no use to her, now – not against four necromancers armored in scales of adamantine.

Lillian flung her hand outward, fingers spread-eagled as five threads of jet black shot out from their tips. They spun and spiraled, cutting through the air, weaving about with only the power of her mind guiding their path, guiding them to Cydnar. They wrapped about his form, and she screamed for him to let them entangle him; thankfully, that had stopped him from slicing them with his blades in fear and reflex. While he would not have been able to, considering their shear and tensile strength, Lillian did not want him to waste his strength trying.

A dark thought went through her mind, and in response, shadows coursed across the webs. They lost their solidity, lost their texture: they were now wisps of half-darkness, strands weaved from the very stuff of Elder Shadows. She had only ever used them to drain the life out of her foes, to rid them of their defiance, their perseverance and sometimes even their will to live; however, with what she had stolen from the Black, today… she had learned to reverse its flow.

And to reverse it explosively.

Mists of pale light fired across the black lines of power, like a rain of shooting stars or swarming comets. The life had not been drained from her: it had been wrung from her very soul, from her mind and from each and every taut cord of her muscles. The raw wave of life struck Cydnar like a lightning bolt, and Lillian cursed: there was too much of it already, and still more to come. He screamed, taking in the power as best he could without letting it tear him apart, but there was only so much he could do for so long: she needed to divert the rest elsewhere, and quickly.

Her right hand shot up, and more threads burst from her fingers, seeking all of her allies: The fallen Ingwe, who she hoped was still alive; the wizard with the pointy hat, who had banished one of their greatest foes from all of existence; the mercenary Godhand, who still struggled against his personal nightmares; lastly, the drow woman whose presence seemed an anathema to the wielders of magic surrounding her. Yet, Lillian knew the power transmitted through her webs would not break helplessly upon her like transient waves against a stalwart reef. What she sent her way was not magic in and of itself, but the raw force of her own breaking body and soul. When there was nothing left within her to give, the threads burst into puffs of shadowy smoke, breaking her link with all five warriors.

And in the blink of an eye, she was spent. Her body felt light – too light, as if the bones that held her weight were suddenly gone, turned to nothing, carried off in the wind and through the great gaping hole in the ceiling. There was no force within her limbs, and she wondered how she still stood on her legs, how she had not fallen over, bursting into dust like a desiccated corpse. Until, she wondered no more.

It was only curiosity. Yes, she was simply curious… curious to understand what manner of devilry had charged the air all around them.

Curious to understand what destruction Cydnar was ready to wreak upon them all, with this new power he was never meant to wield so soon.

Summary


Dagger-healed Ingwe and Caden.
Created a link to Cydnar with her webs: used her Shadow Twist ability in conjunction with Necromancy to transfer her lifeforce to him instead.
Because there was too much residual energy from her quadrupled Gargantua's Might, she divided it amongst everyone: Cydnar, Drusillia, nightmare-trapped Godhand, even the KOed Ingwe and Caden. This extra boost could possibly revitalize them much faster than her healing spells could on their own.
Everyone besides Lillian now has a free pass to do things they couldn't do before due to individual limits.
Lillian is spent, and will not be able to post any more this round. Cydnar, however, is posting next to finish his spell.

[Cydnar]

As the shadows faded and Cydnar deftly parried a low-strike from the necromancer, something in the dark stirred. Beneath the shadows, and beneath the dark beneath the dark, Yrene opened his eyes with a low keen growl and spiralled from his cavern; his seat and throne of power. As magical energy flew into the last of the Salthias, the Wailing Sons of the Hummel, the World Eater rose to aid him and crush him with equal determination.

Lillian’s magic worked, but horribly so. Without warning the elf spiralled upwards, arms outstretched as if pinned by an invisible force. He began to spin mid-air, and a dense and deep hum permeated the noise of battle. At each of his fingertips dark purple lightning arced and above each palm, two small spheres of quartz of a colour Cydnar had not seen before appeared; violet, crimson and pearl in a swirling pattern of change.

The pain swelled in his chest as he caught a vision of the Snake lunging up from the pit. Realising what it was he had done, Cydnar gave in to the corruption he felt, a sickening and unending greed. He had suddenly tasted the very powers he was trying to crush, the very wealth of knowledge and magical prowess the Hummel kept at bay – he doubted himself, for was this any better than Xem’Zund? Was this simple act of sacrifice on her and his part worth the hypocrisy of being?

A vibration filled the air in the cavern, very slight at first but growing exponentially until it became audible by all but not distracting enough to test their concentration or mettle. Each pulsating rock rumbled, like a snake wavering across the desert, or a great earth worm crushing rock and pushing geode aside in a behemoth like advance. The lightning arced stronger and brighter and more violently as the transfer reached its zenith and the geomancy that was instilled in Cydnar took over with a will of its own. From the ground beneath, the great maw of the world serpent rose in all its terror and wonder.

Even a god such as he could not destroy Xem’Zund himself. Such corruption consumed would have tore Yrene apart from within, but the god could not sit idly by and watch the world come undone at the hands of the very thing he embodied and was formed to protect, so many millennia ago. As it roared, and the cavern shook with its mighty presence, it shed a single scale that plummeted down and dug into the ground with a shudder and a scattering of rock. The deep purple quartz shone in the twilight for a moment and then with the same gusto and might, the World Snake dove back into the cavern’s floor and tore a hole down into the bowels of the world.

A faint rumbling of Yrene's passing lingered long after he had gone.

The monolith of quartz sung an ancient and crackling song and Cydnar was drawn to it, like a moth to flame. As his toes slung loosely beneath his cross-like form touched the very tip, Lillian’s magic, along with Cydnar’s own pious nature and the very essence of the Hummel combined together. It unleashed a fury that was never meant to be wielded, let alone endured. His back arched, his wrists snapped straight, his eyes glowed with inner fire and vengeance.

The monolith shattered into a hundred smaller chunks, shards and a cloud of sparkling but ever deadly dust. It spun about his feet for a few moments, like a galaxy compressed into a puppet’s form. Cydnar spoke through gritted teeth to the clone he had been sparring with moments before, who held a calm and casual indigence about him, even as the elf ascended. “The Ancient Magic has spoken. The Ancient Lore tried and tested, you have been found wanting.”

The dry cracked lips spoke, “I am forever wanting, and forever tried – your words mean nothing.”

Cydnar smiled, graced and touched by his deity’s presence. As he did so his incisors lengthened, reinforced and curved into vicious fangs that leant out as his jaw lowered. For a moment, he thought it a mistake but realised suddenly that he had been chosen as a Salthias for a reason. Even if such a thing were an illusion, or an avatar of Yrene’s will, belief was a powerful weapon against the darkest of enemies and gave life and light to the weakest of men in times of need. He resisted the overwhelming surge of connection he felt to the crystal storm pent in anger beneath his floating form, and let it rush outwards across the cavern with as much force and rampant aggression as his mental will could muster.

The Salthias…the Sacrifice. The leader of leaders and the warrior who survives, only to give his life for the cause of the World Eater – falling as champion, scion, lord and master of all and none…

He passed his judgement, and arced backwards in sheer pain as Lillian’s life force acted as boon and curse, propelling the swarm of quartz to engulf all of Xem’Zund’s mirrors but also driving his own bones under thumbscrews, racks and iron maidens.

“For eternity’s sake, I succumb to destiny…”

The first wave of the storm struck the clone that was closest to Lillian, pummelling the adamantium with a torrent of larger chunks and battering it down and lose and asunder with brute force. As it spiralled around like a swarm of locusts, the fine dust and dagger sharp shards found their way into up and around the leather straps, stripping plates off the lich so that some of him lay exposed. Such was its power in consuming the energy of the first and second clone, the wounds healed with dark strands before it could notice; but that was not the storm’s purpose.

The second found itself under similar attack, as Cydnar guided the galaxy of violence to each of the Dawnbringer’s enemy’s in turn. One by one, he tore a path through the defence of Xem’Zund, inflicting nothing more than minor wounds to skin, ego and patience alike. The third and fourth lost as much, and the elf drew the quartz storm back around him like a shield of scorn. As the storm returned, the lightning shot about his body, lifting the hem of his deep purple robes into a sail stripped almost bare by a heavy hurricane's kiss.

The silence from the fifth and as yet untouched clone permeated realities far beyond its own. It spoke, slowly, and lifted a slender finger to point at the levitating Dawnbringer. “You shall certainly give your life, as will all of you.”

A black sphere erupted from his slender digit and collided with the moving shield. The feedback from the kinetic energy swirling around Cydnar rocked his mind and caused his muscles to tense, rupture and drain of energy. With the last ounce of concentration he could muster, he drew the quartz shards igam ogam* to form a solid wall before the slowly advancing spell, which even he knew would ring a death knell more transitory than simple, sudden and painless.

Energy built up and the fabric of reality in the air around the two men's will shattered. Lillian’s life-force slipped from Cydnar at last in a single finale. The quartz storm gathered in one giant mass, and drained the spell of all it’s worth. A mass of crystals fell to the floor like sleet, some evaporating from the intensity of their connection, others falling colourless and lifeless, like mosquitoes on the dawn wind.

In the last opening Cydnar rose further still and lifted his right hand back, then his left; each motion pulling the mass apart into a floating maelstrom of sundering. With a smile and a sense of ironic defeat, he pushed it forwards to strike the last clone with a downward and definite motion. It tore the armour apart and cracked bones and sinewy flesh, before tumultuously cascading onto the cavern floor like a wave of gems.

As Cydnar fell backwards, still half held aloft by the remnants of his geomancy and the wings of Yrene the fifth clone clicked upright and hissed; holding onto its unlife only through bitterness and hatred of being hurt so much by someone so meagre. The elf fell slowly, until his descent was almost suspended. There was a faint twang, like the threads of fate snapping and then he fell with the momentum of a star.

Thud.

The elf came to a standstill and fell unconscious. His swords scattered either side of him with no proof of his passing or his deeds remaining - other than a bed of crystals hidden deep within the earth.


*igam ogam, celtic (Welsh) term for zig zag.


+ Cydnar damages the armour of all the clones revealing weak points. He significantly damages the clone he was fighting, but falls unconscious doing so. This will be temporary, but he cannot use The Crystalline Conflux for the remainder of the thread, and his telekinetic control of the quartz will be severely weakened.

[Mage Hunter]

(Assuming that Duffy's post will not be done soon, so rather than wait to incorporate I'm going to post and go back to edit in changes later.)

Things began to change rapidly; to the point Drusilia wasn't sure what the hell had happened. One second she was hacking away into Xem'Zund and the next she was flattened onto her back as some explosion rocked the room. Things moved on at a quick pace, as Xem'zund rallied his forces once more for another round of punishment. Even then the group threw themselves with all the lathering frenzy of berserkers, and none of the martial prowess to back it up. She almost wanted to begin barking out orders, but wasn’t sure it would help any.

Blueraven was down again, not that that was much of a surprise to her. It was simple attrition math, the more Blueraven pulled off his tricks, the more it hurt him. When he died, Xem’zund would have access to the same tricks, without the downside of losing that minion if it got itself killed performing them. Ingwe was probably thinking up his next spell to be spectacularly dismissed by the Necromancer. Not that Druslia wasn’t impressed by his actions it was just that she couldn’t exactly call them helpful, just flashy.

Cydnar was trying desperately to lead the charge anyway he knew how, before pulling back and trying to perform some version of the arcane when he realized it wasn’t going to work. Gods bless him for trying; at least he had the right idea. The pressure had to be kept up on Xem’zund, otherwise Blueraven’s tactic accomplished nothing. Lillian however, took the first steps towards bolstering the group, rather than using sacrificial techniques to almost no effect against their foe.

Forging a link between the group and her, she seemed to wield the very essence of life in a way that didn't immediately set Drusilia vomiting on the ground. Instead it bolstered her, if anything strengthening her ties to the anti-magic that fueled her being now. She felt it surge to heights she had only heard of, and were theoretically beyond her possibilities now. She knew she could pull off something spectacular given enough time to build up some more; she just had to buy time. Her head went from swimming in pain, to clearing, and she knew what had to be done.

It seemed that Xem'zund was trying a shell game, with his essence hiding in the corpses of the fallen guardians. Grumbling she muttered, "I'm getting tired of this shit..." She then stabbed her titanium sword into the ground, letting it stay there, even as she reached forward with her hands before she crowed, "If you're going to hide like a petulant child, then you should have no problem with me taking your toys away!"

Her hands clenched into a fist as she gripped the strands of magic in the area, and began to rip them towards her, opening up herself to store the excess mana. The results were quickly noticeable as Drusilia began to take on a black glow, absorbing the strong necromantic energies that suffused the cavern. Her hands continued to shred and tear the mana away, before she opened the vortex, slowly pulling in more and more mana as the effects continued to drain the magic from the area. She only needed to start the process, before it became automatic, her only need was to make sure it was held aloft through her willpower.

He savage grin lit up her face before she said firmly, "I'm not sure if I can drain all of it out of him, but I'll do what I can. Just make sure the bastard doesn't get a good hit in. I can't exactly move while controlling the funnel..." Already she found sweat forming on her brow, but ignored it. She had bigger fish to fry than worrying about working up a sweat. The fact it had taken her this long to start draining the magic from the corpses was amazing, but perhaps it was best she hadn't tried it earlier.

This was probably the best trick he had to stop them before they began the fight in earnest. If the shell game failed, and he was forced to drop the charade, they could focus on the real Xem'zund and finally get this fight over with. Until that happened he was going to win a war of attrition by reanimating the corpses every chance he had and draining their resources. She only had to hobble his ability to hurt them, and that would be enough to give the others their chance at doing the same.

Strands of hair fluttered into her face before she softly canted the rites of battle. She was reassuring herself that she was finally upholding its truths, rather than the perverted version she had once clung to, “It is my sworn duty to fight the aberration wherever it may hide. May its disguise be unfurled and its lies unfolded. Let it hide in the weakness of magic, for one day it shall be torn from them, and their true weakness exposed. For the natural order, this must be.”

Even when she reached the end of her canting it, she said it again, reminding herself she could not fail.

[Flames of Hyperion]

It was cold. So very cold.

The air was cold. It seeped pervasively through the layers of clothing and armour he wore, an insidious stillness that cocooned him in silence and paralysis. The sounds of battle that reverberated throughout the chamber, the clash of steel on bone and the heated cries of war, didn’t even come close to reaching his ears.

The floor was cold. The exposed skin of his hands and cheek were raw with pain, as if somebody had placed his unresisting form upon a bed of ice, and even where armour and tunic protected him somewhat he could feel the chill inexorably taking over. Every now and again the ground shuddered beneath him, quaking with fear at the immense energies that were being released in the titanic struggle, and all he could do was quake helplessly along with it.

His body was cold. He could feel something sharp in his back, and the waves of power emanating from it that were desperately fighting to keep him alive, even as he was showered in dust and rubble that he could not even attempt to avoid. But stronger still was the corrupting necromantic chill that crept through his body from the wound he had sustained, cutting off synapses and sensation to his limbs before encasing his heart in an icy grip.

His mind was cold. The best way he could describe it was as a numbing, drifting sensation that slowly but surely seemed to be slipping from his grasp. From the very corner of his eyes, he could just about make out the skies overhead, but it was not left within him to tell whether they were blue or grey, cloudy or starry.

Soon, even that slipped away, and the young man’s dark irises were blank and lifeless.

***

He swam for what seemed almost an eternity, in a dark sensation-less void that was as unfathomable as it was comfortable. Slowly, however, he was drawn to a faint light in the distance, one last shattered shard of reality that his mind seemed unwilling to give up. Barely even knowing why, he clung to it like a drowning man would cling to a sliver of floating wood, stubbornly refusing to let go.

The scene shifted…

***

Ingwe found himself seated in a small stone room, its furnishings consisting of little more than a small bed, a chest of drawers opposite, and a single set of table and chairs in the far corner. The interior fittings were clearly Raiaeran in make, carefully designed and graceful even in their simplicity; the walls, however, hinted to him of a slightly older architectural style, of intricacies of construction long since lost to the relentless march of the ages. The open window behind him allowed a brisk wind to blow lightly upon the back of his head, cloudless blue skies as bright as any hope extending for great distances beyond. The moving air ruffled his hair soothingly, whispering words of comfort into his ears as it danced gently around him.

The young man’s mind barely acknowledged any of his surroundings, however, as his eyes were instinctively drawn to the figure sleeping peacefully beneath the clean white covers of the bed. The face nestled there was straight out of his memories, delicately pretty features that he had not laid eyes upon for nearly two full years now framed by fine black hair that barely reached to her slender shoulders. The expression on her face was tranquil and serene; so much so that, for a brief heart-stopping instant, Ingwe feared the worst. Then he realised that the duvet was rising and falling slowly in time with her gentle breaths, and that she was only sleeping deeply.

Yuka…

The young man allowed himself to relax, forcibly at first, and then with a great sigh as he released every last one of his worries and fears from the confines of his head. Somehow, none of them seemed to matter any more: not the long conflict-torn path that he had walked from far-off Nippon in search of her, not the constant mental and physical pressure he’d been placing himself under ever since she’d disappeared, not even the fact that vaguely, mere moments ago, he thought he’d been on the verge of death. For years of his life he’d chased after her shadow in the distance; now, at long last, he was face to face with her in person once more.

Ingwe sank to the floor with his back against the window, allowing the heated friction of the wall against his back to convince him that this was real. From his new position he could only barely see the side of her face, but somehow that seemed far more appropriate; even such a restriction was more than enough to bring a small smile to his face and to suffuse his being with sheer bliss. He hadn’t felt so happy in so long… it was like rediscovering the light once again after years of walking in the darkness.

Not once did his eyes waver from her features, peacefully composed in sleep. He knew that it was criminal for him to stare so, knew that he didn’t even deserve such a privilege, but he was unable to draw them away nonetheless. For once in his life, Ingwe Helyanwe allowed himself to fully bask in contentment of the moment, absorbing in perfect tranquillity the gentle chirp of songbirds in the courtyard, the feel of the fresh crisp air upon his face, the quiet serenity of the dream-like situation…

How quaint.

In less time than it took for Ingwe’s heart to beat once in shock, the Necromancer took control of the scenery. What had once been peacefully serene was now menacing and malevolent; the window slammed shut, the skies darkened in anger, and air that had before been light and fresh was now heavy with corruption. Xem’zund – or at least, a manifestation of his will, all gilded black robe and adamantine plate with a hole darker than any night where his face had once been – materialised in the room opposite the young man, triumphantly glaring at him over Yuka’s motionless form.

And to think you once masqueraded as a warrior, a soldier. To think that people actually looked up to you to lead your petty Legion. To think that the Elf-lords actually thought of you as the Tella’karythar and entrusted you with that relic. How pathetic.

Ingwe’s first instinct was to protect Yuka, to place himself in between his friend and the Forgotten One and to shield her with his life if necessary. To his despairing horror, however, he found that he could not order his limbs into action; it was as if his adversary had taken complete control of his body, leaving his mind a helpless prisoner confined to an immobile prison. Helplessly he was forced to look on, desperately fighting against his bonds and gnashing his teeth in frustration as he screamed a mental warning. There was no way, however, that she could hear. Xem’zund took one threatening step towards the bed, then another, never once wavering his gaze from Ingwe’s fearful eyes.

What’s more, you followed her all the way here, sticking your nose into every last bit of trouble along the way… after she willingly abandoned you? The Necromancer’s voice turned insidiously mocking, and a million dark echoes seemed to laugh at Ingwe from the background. Combined with the oppressive mental presence he exerted on the young man, the sheer hopelessness and despondency that he incurred in his victim, his words were nothing short of mental torture of the most sadistic kind. Did you not realise how much she despised you for following in her every footstep… and even after she escaped to the far side of the world to get away from you, you dared to stalk her this far? Oh, the merry foolishness of those blinded so much by their own ego that they can’t even see past the tips of their noses… she hates you, Ingwe Helyanwe, and the sooner you realise that and give up on your irrational hope, the gladder she’ll be when she’s rid of your presence.

The spirit of Ingwe’s resistance died there and then, pierced by the dark blades of Xem’zund’s tongue as the corrupting control that the Forgotten One wielded over his dream turned hidden fears into gruesome reality. But the Necromancer was not to be satisfied with mere death… his intent was to crush the young man’s very existence into dust, never to be resurrected again.

Conjuring a bone-hilted blade from thin air, suddenly he was alongside the bed, looming tall over Yuka’s still-sleeping form. Slowly, with deadly intent only exacerbated by the emotionless hollow where his face might once have been, he lowered the sword, prolonging the instant as the blade pierced her flesh for what seemed an eternity. The tortured Ingwe was forced to watch it all through the bars of the prison that was his paralysis, not even allowed the luxury of closing his eyes against his friend’s screams of agony: the look of helpless terror and pain upon her face, the necrotic plague that slowly ate away at her flesh at the fringes of the wound, the pleading look she gave him as the pure white sheets were stained with bright crimson.

At length, the Necromancer removed his sword, raising it high above his victim once more. Then, the million voices under his command laughing at the helpless young man, he repeated the process, drawing out Yuka’s cries of excruciating agony for as long as possible.

An eternity later, Xem’zund repeated the process again.

And again.

And again.

And…

***

What seemed an eternity in Ingwe’s mind was in reality only brief moments. But for all the good it did him, he may as well have suffered through every last minute of his torture over and over again. As the three remaining Dawnbringers took the battle to Xem’zund’s clones in hopes of yet salvaging something from the showdown, Ingwe’s fallen form remained an immobile silhouette upon the cavern floor, the latest nameless victim of the Forgotten One’s genocidal reign of tyranny.

[Cydnar]

When Cydnar opened his eyes, it was not Althanas he saw. This new world was unfurled before him, like a tapestry of many colours; a strange and alien landscape, devoid of the comforts and idolatry he had come accustomed to. This was an illusion, a false existence, a lie. He scanned the horizon with distant eyes that seemed to be unable to focus, trying to make out the shapes that blotted the terrain; he saw something, and almost screamed.

But no sound emerged, leaving the elf to wallow in his fear without a release, without the ability to express. His resolve in the cavern amidst the treachery and hatred had been steeled by his will and his belief in doing the right and just thing. He remembered falling, tumbling to a cold and sudden resolution, but in this strange land, was he alive, or just dreaming? The great tree that slowly grew turned his fear into terror, and he watched its uppermost branches rise and rise into the clouds far above, so that it resembled at last a king donning his regal and ethereal crown.

The tree was Yggdrasil.

Cydnar ran forward with all his might, his hand outstretched and clamouring for its salvation as he went. In the legend of his people, this tree, the source of all creation would perish at the hands of Yrene, the World Snake, at the end of time as it was known. Such was the providence of the tree, that its form was known on many worlds far beyond Althanas, by myriad names; but its purpose was immutable, its destiny concrete.

As he approached, Cydnar caught a glimpse of a shadow at its foot, taking a stance in the gnarled roots and the foliage of creation. He did not need to speak his name, and pattered out the syllables harder and faster as he closed the gap; each step brought him closer to the realisation, and each step brushed past reeds and wheat and grasses from all manner of places he nor any other soul would see again - if they did not succeed in rekindling the flame they fought for.

“All your effort for nought, rendered insane and dire by the simplest of facts.” Xem’Zund’s voice permeated the very fabric of the dream, rocking Cydnar’s mind and causing his body, even in its lifeless state to twitch and convulse with disgust.

“What facts do you possess that could strike me down, sorcerer?” His foot connected with the outer tendril of one of the roots, and he began his ascent up to the clone with nimble grace and agile perception, hoping left and right and climbing like a monkey through the densest and most primal of jungles.

“I have all the time in the world, time neither you nor any of your puppets can claim to possess,” with the goad came a long and gentle breeze, carrying a hint of cinnamon, thyme and lavender with it.

“You have taken all I care for, destroyed all those I would share my time with, no matter how short!”

“So why continue?” He raised an archaic hand as an expression of danger, and let loose a single black orb, much weaker than any other but one which still possessed the power of absolute finality. “Why waste your moments in toil with me?”

Cydnar’s eyes keened onto the orb and he ducked, dropping to a stance similar to a jaguar hunting its prey. The orb whistled other head, its path sucking the non-existent air from his lungs and sending tingles of foreboding closeness down his spine. He waited for the silence to return, and looked up.

“Because I would do no other thing with it, and I will make this moment, this hour golden!” He sprinted on, closing the gap between the two dream projections of mentality. He could see the once white centre of Xem’Zund’s eyes and began to feel sorry for the drab and lifeless creature. To think that such a thing once was mortal, once had dreams he could call his own, aspirations and culture and fears to cling to…

“So feeble, so easy to manipulate, so easy to crush!”

As Cydnar leapt onto the same branch as Xem’Zund, and drew his swords to form a cross before his advancing and nimble form, the necromancer held his right hand palm facing the elf, and punched backwards with his left. His claw like fingers slammed against the ancient bark of the World Tree, and Cydnar jumped into the air to perform a coup de grace.

The rush of air and explosive force that rocked the bark echoed in Cydnar’s chest for decades to come in a moment of simple revelation and shock. Xem’Zund shattered his own mortal body, even if false, and sent his corrupting life-force into the living embodiment of life. The mists that covered the tops of the tree rushed outwards, as if repulsed by some unseen hand, as if sickened by the mere thought or smell of the necromancer’s taint. The telekinetic force which grasped Cydnar forced the elf’s head up, so that he could behold the spectacle.

Nothing happened, and the silence grew deafening.

A single crack formed on the surface of the bark, slowly widening before rushing upwards. As if the tree had been struck by lightning, black ooze rushed out of the fissure and great cracks of thunder dropped from overhead. The death and decay tore at the heavier branches in the canopy first, rotting the wood so that the foliage simply buckled and began to fall away in a plume of autumnal regret. Then the birds nesting in the heights scattered, and the creatures in the roots scurried away like a blanket of teeming chatter.

Cydnar watched Xem’Zund’s display of power and realised that this was not the world tree’s fate, but the fate of all of Althanas if they did not bring the light to the cavern, if they did not persevere. The branches continued to fall, and the clone relinquished his grip at the same time as one great and burning plume fell into alignment with both of them.

The elf fell forwards, as if suspended momentarily and cut his blades through the figment of his imagination with a triumphant roar. He landed with a pad and breathed a long sigh of relief, thinking himself free of the torment. The echoes from above and the rush of air pulled his attention up, and through teary eyes of desperation and revulsion at the horrors he had been tormented with, the first of the falling branches fell onto the Hummel.

Crunch.

“Arghhhhh!” He awoke with a sharp and sudden rush of breath, clamouring for air through the tightness in his chest and the perspiration which lathered his skin to suffocation. As he fought to regain control of his breathing, his eyes settled and he saw the copy of the necromancer that he had injured the most standing a few feet before him, still recovering from the storm. No idea or notion of time could be worked out, but from the noise behind him he knew the battle still raged. The black threads pulling the necromancer together gave some indication that he had not succumbed too long to the horrors of Xem’Zund’s nightmare, but if he dwindled for an age, his effort, if not the effort of all the Dawnbringer’s would be for nothing.

He grabbed to his right for the hilt of Freya, and left for Altheas, before pushing his weakened and tired body upright. Slowly he vectored around the right side of the necromancer with shaking steps and perspiration plastering his long hair to his neck and brow. Cydnar bore his newly formed fangs with a defiant hiss, and charged once more into their personal war with tears streaming down his face; ignorant of Ingwe’s dwindling life force, and the emerging counter attack of the drow behind him.

Such foolishness was greeted with a bone blade and a laugh that could raise the dead…

[Caden Law]

"Oh. Hey. I'm not dead yet."

A very good sign, really.

"Can't feel my toes."

Not necessarily so good.

"...webs again." Caden sat up, poking gingerly at the dagger sticking out of the ground next to him. Red silk ribbons, the stuff of raw magic by the look and feel of it, billowed from the weapon's pommel and seeped into his skin where ever it was exposed. This was another relatively good thing, because the Wizard felt exhausted straight to the marrow of his bones. War-weariness practically defined the blood running in his veins, and he was still too numb from shock and mage's high to be afraid or worried about the battle still raging through the no-longer-roofed cavern.

The moon was out. The sky was relatively clear. It could've been worse. Caden took the small victories where he could get them, if only to blend every little win into a much bigger one.

He spent a few seconds taking inventory of himself. His magic felt like someone had doused it in novacaine. Instinct casually informed him that he wouldn't be chucking around any more Sorcery for this fight, and self-preservation noted that Necromancy wouldn't be a very good idea either. Not that Wizards are particularly well known for their survival instincts. Caden groped at his weapons, confirming the presence of everything but his Staff, and then he used his rod to stand up. He leaned on the arcane focus for a few seconds, catching his breath as the dagger finished its work and the spells bound to it finally petered out. He would have to figure out who kept doing that. They deserved a biscuit or something.

"Now then," he sighed, looking at the battlefield. Counting himself, four Dawnbringers still stood. The big guy was still standing too, but he was catatonic with whatever horrors Xem'zund was still inflicting on him. That left the other mage. Who, Caden noted, was, "...striking off on the bloody job."

The Wizard hobbled a few steps, using his rod as a make-shift cane. Then he lifted one arm and summoned his staff without even bothering to look. It erupted from the ground some thirty or forty feet outside of the crater, tumbled end over end and actually bounced off of one of the Xem'zunds before finally crashing into the Wizard's hand hard enough to spin him to the ground. A minute later, Caden determinately got back up, hooked his rod back into place, and made his way out of the crater. He stalked over to where Ingwe still stood.

The younger mage was trapped inside of a black Circle of Power. His personal Xem'zund knelt right in front of him, funneling power and purpose into the Circle through his sword. He was knelt as if in prayer, while the mage just sort of drooled on himself. And cried. A lot. Whatever was being done to him, in his mind, Caden didn't want to know. From the angle the Wizard approached, it looked like Xem'zund had found a weak spot in the upper back of the mage's armor, and necromantic power was funneling into it, blowing the cloak up out of the way in the process. Incidentally, the Necromancer was focused.

Enough that Caden was able to get to point blank unmolested. So focused, so intent on his spellwork, that the Wizard could actually hear just a little of whatever the Necromancer was inflicting on his victim. It sounded like a voice. A woman, probably young, screaming. A name, repeated over and over again, along with accusations of failure and worse.

"Ingwe," Caden heard. And then he heard the mage finally blubber out, "Yuka," as he fell to his knees and then flat on his face. He was still crying. There was nothing especially artistic, tragic, or moving about it. Real emotions rarely do more than discomfort an outside observer, especially one as detached as Caden.

"Y'know," the Wizard said as he came to a stop beside the Necromancer. "You really are an absolute bastard, Zundalon."

Focus wavered for just a fraction of an instant. The Necromancer looked at him. Acid green eyes widened by fractions of centimeters and Blueraven replied with a tired smile and the Words, "Stone Maiden Mausoleum."

Four pillars shot out of the ground around the Necromancer. Spikes erupted from each to the next, forming a solid, outhouse-sized slab of stone -- a standing tomb. The roof formed in less than a second, and then there came the sound of rock shredding leather and breaking against adamantine. There was no way a spell like that could make someone of Xem'zund's caliber itch, let alone actually hurt him. It didn't have to. The spikes cut off freedom of movement, and a little inventive subtlety put runes all over the surface to cut off the flow of magic into or out of the Mausoleum.

It bought Caden the time to catch his breath and draw in more power. Enough to move the standing tomb a few dozen feet away, taking Xem'zund with it. Again, the Wizard stopped to catch his breath.

Then he nonchalantly broke the Circle of Power with a twist of his staff and a good stomp. With its support structure broken, the spell didn't have much life (or antilife) left in it. The mage -- Ingwe -- would probably be free within a few minutes.

But the Mausoleum was already cracking and Caden had no idea if any of the others could hold out on their own. Ingwe didn't have time to recover properly, and with the Sorcerer downgraded to Wizard for the duration...

"I'm gonna regret this in the morning," Caden said to himself as he rolled Ingwe over with his boot, then fell to his knees next to him. What followed was not any kind of mouth-to-mouth, assisted respiration, dramatic revival or anything like that. It wasn't even remotely that dignified.

Caden pried Ingwe's mouth open and jammed two fingers down his throat. Then, using his knowledge of Necromancy and general magic, the Wizard literally yanked Xem'zund's spellwork out of the mage's body. All that vile power congealed into Ingwe's stomach, then bubbled up into Caden's fingertips, and finally emerged as raw, black ectoplasm. It was probably accompanied by a fair share of vomit and gagging and maybe some blood too. Bad aftertaste at a minimum since Caden's hands were filthy, covered in blood and dirt, and the added effects of necromancy always tasted like frigid peppermint on top of that.

"So, yeah," Caden said as the younger mage probably hacked his lungs out and wanted to die all over the place. "Ingwe, right? Guessing you're Ingwe. My name is Caden, and you're welcome. It was extremely uncomfortable for me too. Please vent all rage, hatred, personal desecration and feelings of oral defilement in that direction, yes." Caden pointed at the cracked, crumbling Mausoleum. Xem'zund already had an arm free. "I recommend not getting suckerpunched this time. Don't worry, that Yuka girl is still alive. Yes, it was an illusion. Now try to knock his mask off. I'll help as best I can."

The Wizard stood up on wobbling legs, leaning against his staff for support. A flick of his wrist and the rod again flipped off of his belt and into his hand. He aimed for the Necromancer and gave it another flick, adding stone to the makeshift prison.

"You might want to hurry, by the way. I don't think that's going to hold him much longer."

Caden just triggered Ingwe's supernatural gag reflex as a Dispel Curse mechanism. Hilarity and awkwardness ensued.

[Ataraxis]

Lillian was relieved to see that her gambit had proved successful: Cydnar’s vast storm of crystal shards and dust had struck all four remaining clones with devastating force, tearing away at their skin and the leather of their armor like a swarm of locusts. The hundred scales of adamantine fell away, each intact but no longer bound together, leaving most of their form vulnerable to physical attacks. Moreover, the drow woman had begun to siphon away the magic within the foul creatures, stripping them of their arcane defenses and offensive power with each and every enfeebling second. Lastly, while Ingwe had not exactly been woken by either her healing or wave of life force, the other wizard had once more returned to the world of the living to finish the job, albeit crudely.

‘I need to act,’ she told herself, gripping at the tearing pain across her chest with trembling hands. Her necromantic infusion of life in her comrades had left her struggling to keep conscious, but she knew there was still more within her – that in the end, what she had transferred them was only the excess within her little body. There was so much more she could do… so much more she had to do. With one glance at the outer walls of the cavern, she saw that Ingwe’s columns of flame still burned brightly despite the critical state of their conjurer. “Perfect,” she muttered lowly, her breathing a worrying staccato as she shuffled a few feet closer to the fight. Those inert flames… she could use them.

The void of energy left by the transfer was slowly vanishing, her own power pooling into it until her legs stopped wobbling with each step, and she no longer saw double. At once, the closest necromancer came toward her, and his bone-blade met the edge of the Delyn rapier she had drawn in the blink of an eye. Her glass dirk remained in her offhand, serving as parrying dagger with every crushing blow she caught, deflected and redirected behind.

Her huffing and panting was painfully audible now, and little of her borrowed strength remained; yet, she fought on, cutting away at his bare arms and exposed midriff twice. Unbeknownst to him, black threads had begun festering within the wounds, spreading outward and out of sight to enclose as much of his body as they could. Without wasting any more time, she dashed away from her current opponent to engage the next closest, managing to catch the latter by surprise: her rapier slid across his shoulder blades, and that was it.

Lillian ran like the devil was on her tail, and in certain ways the comparison held much truth. Two of the necromancers were now hot on her trail, limited to the blow of their blades due to the drow’s empowered siphoning of hostile magic. The girl knew there would be no way to engage three, let alone four necromancers in a sword fight without losing her life; so harried, the girl had no choice but to change tactics and go for broke. Still running, she swung both her blades and hundreds of thin, black, spidery webs shot outward. They sped across the air like filamentous clouds until they caught the remaining two, one of which had only just clambered halfway out of the hatted wizard’s stone mausoleum. They hacked away at the clouds, but the webs were as weak as she could make them so as to dramatically increase their numbers: even as the threads were easily severed, nothing stopped them from catching onto their skin like the most annoying of adhesives.

Now that all four were infested with her webs, Lillian turned her gaze toward the walls of searing flame. Just as her two pursuers were about to charge and bring their swords down upon her, she threw her glass dirk away, watching it tumble upon itself through the air until it crossed the flaming barriers. The sound of breaking stone reached her ears, and she knew the blade’s tip had embedded into the rock walls behind.

A loud boom came from the point of impact. Now following the dirks’ wake in reverse was a fiery arrow from Ingwe’s burning spires, and it devoured the thread that connected her dirk’s pommel to the blade of her rapier, all of it encased in a sheath of webs. When the magical flames reached the tip, her rapier became a blazing lance: it caught the downward arcs of both her opponents’ bone-blades, and she used the last few ounces of her gargantuan strength to steel herself. Their blades bounced off hers, and in that split second she saw a crucial opening. In one swift motion, she slashed across both their chests, igniting the webs that had festered within.

The cavern floor shook as two immense deflagrations occurred in unison, the two necromancers engulfed in cocoons of ravenous flame, their skin charred and devoured as they screamed: without their magical defenses, they were as vulnerable to fire as any other creature of bone and flesh. Lillian, however, knew this was only the beginning. She saw the same spark of fire travel across an inconspicuous web that connected her burning foes to the remaining two. It came at them like a speeding arrow, and there was no time to sever that link. In the blink of an eye, so were they engulfed, the hundreds of spreading webs that stuck to their skin combusting and exploding at once.

Lillian fell to the ground, knees striking harsh stone, her whole weight carried by the rapier she held onto with both hands. She panted and coughed; her lips felt sticky as the air thickened, filling itself with burnt fat. Moreover, the smell was curdling her stomach, and the sight of bubbling flesh was enough to ruin her rising appetite. Still, the girl was happy. Though the sight and smell and texture of burning men repulsed her… she found an odd delight in hearing the screams of the immolated.


Summary



Triple Combo achieved: with the clones made physically and magically defenseless by Cydnar's Crystal Storm and Drusilia's Magic Syphon, Lillian covered them in her magic-reactive webs by engaging two in a sword fight and shooting webs at the remaining two.
She used Ingwe's columns of fire to ignite a thread connecting her dirk to her rapier, and another thread connecting all four clones.
Four big-ass explosions.

[Mage Hunter]

Mana accumulated quickly, as she worked towards cleansing the area of the tainted foul magic of the necromancer. Sweat was dripping off her body as she clung to the strands, tearing them apart and stuffing them inside her, trying to contain the tainted mana as long as possible. The result was such that with her ripping apart the spells, even the corpses began to lose their cohesion. However, every interaction with mana for a Mage Hunter had a price.

Hers required she lived through this battle to actually care about.

Touching necromancy meant she had to inevitably fuel it. It was a tough decision to make, as something had to slowly start dying. The more mana she took upon herself, the faster it went from being harmed, to actually dying and ceasing all function. Drusilia knew something inside her had died, she knew this. She, had to wait till later to figure out what, and knew it wasn't anything vital, not yet. She merely continued her chosen task, sacrificing her life to keep the necromancer's spells from gaining any potency.

Lilian destroyed the bodies; bruning and razing the corpses, making it difficult to even cobble them back together. Yet she felt it, strong, powerful, subtle, and deadly. In taking the mana within her, she felt its resonance throughout the cavern in places. It told her of the bristling energy that coursed through the area. A leyline of magic was held here, and perhaps this was why it had been chosen for this final confrontation. For now, the resonance told her the one thing she needed to know most as well...

The bodies were now saturated in Necromancy, slowly yet surely they were regenerating.

Rage filled her mind as she gripped the strands of magic on the corpses, focusing the intent of siphoning off the mana. It seemed this wasn't enough anymore. She couldn't focus the funnel near them and hope that it would siphon it off fast enough. The result was what she had feared from the start. The more she pulled off the bodies, the more seemed to cling to them. It was a cascading effect and she couldn't keep up if it continued.

So, she changed the rules.

No longer was she merely placing the funnel. The surge of life she had taken from Lilian was now affording her a level of control unsurpassed by anyone she had seen. Now, the funnel was within one of the bodies, tearing apart the mana before it lay there dormant. The body’s shrieks went silent, as a feral grin crossed her lips. Muttering softly her litanies of hate, she let the cold rage filled her frame, as she moved the funnel to the next body, stripping the mana quickly.

This process continued, until the crackle of flames and the burning stench of fat. She panted, reaching behind her to grab the null stone one last time. Her body felt so tired, so drained of the vigor it once held. She sank to a knee, never losing the feral smile letting Xem'zund know what she felt of him. He was her prey, and she would do almost anything to take him down.

You sacrifice much to hurt me, but are you even striking into me? Are you really as smart as you claim, or have you fallen for the same trap that your friends have?

She ignored the voice, gripping the stone tightly, her face never losing the grin, even as the leather thong finally fell from her hair. Gripping the stone she focused her will, and shattered the mana she had collected. The pulse went out, stretching almost to the edges of the room, yet it didn't seem to affect anyone else. Spells still fired off, enchantments remained firmly in place. To the casual onlooker, she had failed in properly using the stone. Her null stone had for the first time failed.

When she stood up, she felt herself brimming once again with energy. The lethargy was gone, as was the sense of death she felt about her body. Grabbing the blade from the ground beside her she casually flipped it up. Grasping the hilt, she quickly pocketed the nullstone in her other hand, before drawing the other blade, looking about the area. Her eyes prowled, seeming to tear apart the enemy with their harsh gaze.

She finally responded to the voice that had whispered in her head, "If you're quite done playing, perhaps you'd like to actually give us a threat."

[Flames of Hyperion]

Wan moonlight filtered down to the underground chamber from above, drowned out by the sheer intensity of the battle below. A ferocious storm of flying crystal was devoured by an even greater whirlwind of swirling dark energy, and then by the staccato thunder of chain explosions that engulfed Xem’zund’s bodies: first the two on the far side of the cavern, then the remaining two on the near side, arcane fire racing along invisible web-lines like living flame through the darkness. Caden’s spell of shifting stone literally seemed to implode as it barely contained the force of the deflagration, Ingwe’s – his own – sacred flame, siphoned from the spell that he had nearly forgotten about now, devouring the necrotic flesh whole.

Even the Wizard seemed to be summarily impressed by the fireworks, whatever words he had been trying to utter next cut off in mid-syllable. And, for a brief moment or two, there was respite for the embattled Dawnbringers.

Slowly, Ingwe urged his battered frame to a seated position, trying to drive the last dredges of necromantic chill from his body with a pained shake of his head. The intense light of the flames in the background having dimmed a little, he was now aware through his wavering tunnel vision of the steady glow building up behind his golden armour. It seemed to be emanating from the pendant on his chest, a growing light seeping along the contours of his slim frame until for all intents and purposes it felt like he was on fire. On the other hand, it was not yet bright enough to attract any undue attention, and it did a good job of disguising the fact that his skin was the colour of bleached parchment, lifeless, clammy, and cold with the effects of what he had just been through.

It also did a good job of camouflaging the mauling he had received at the Necromancer’s hands, like the wounds of most of those present enough to debilitate or even kill a lesser warrior outright. His mind swam in tidal waves of overwhelming agony, but perhaps if he could concentrate on the task at hand, there was a chance that he could fight off the beckoning darkness. There was a neatly drilled hole through his shoulder, but perhaps if he didn’t allow his thoughts to dwell upon it, there was a chance that he could convince his battered body otherwise. The Wizard Blueraven hadn’t seemed to notice the latter, or if he had, he was doing a grand job of not allowing Ingwe to focus on the pain. In any case, there was little time for reflection; he had to get to his feet before the Forgotten One returned with vengeance.

“Thank you, Caden,” the warrior-mage spoke for perhaps the first time to his allies, his weak voice sounding hauntingly in the sudden eerie silence, his mind barely making sense of the more experienced wizard’s babble but latching onto the words like a lifeline nonetheless. For all his powers, for all the situation, Ingwe was at heart a shy and withdrawn young man, and although he hadn’t allowed himself to even admit it, at heart he had been quite intimidated by the gathering of the greatest warriors in the land, It had quite literally taken long minutes of heated battle and a disturbingly brusque act of resuscitation for the ice between them to crack. “I owe you one… and I’ll owe you another if you promise me never to speak of it again. That… was disgusting, even if necessary…”

The Wizard’s reply was lost to the blaring tinnitus that engulfed Ingwe’s mind as he next sought to regain his feet, beating back the tides of pain as he staggeringly fought to bring himself fully upright. The oversized frames of his pair of glasses, lost and abandoned amongst the shadows upon the cold stone floor, bore lonely and silent witness to his desperate struggle.

The wound through the base of his neck had not closed, and blood streamed from both it and the corner of his mouth to soak the ashen tunic he wore beneath the mythril. The glow upon his chest was quite noticeable now, a warm and comfortable sensation that was a complete contrast to the deathly chill of the Necromancer’s curse. But his grip upon the sceptre that he bore was as deathly tight as it had been before the battle had begun, and his feet slipped forwards in silent steps that were as unsteady as they were purposeful.

“We should prepare,” he addressed the others, trying to draw out what strength he could imbue in his voice and saving the apology that was what he really wanted to communicate for later. He had let them all down in a single moment of slack, and his weakness had allowed Xem’zund to keep him away from what mattered the most in their attempt to banish the Forgotten One once and for all… the fact that they had to work together as one to deal with the threat. “There’s no way that…”

Impressive, the Necromancer’s voice cut through the night, timely interruption of Ingwe’s warning that the temporary setback was not the end of the battle. A sixth and last body materialised in the darkness, the essence of the guardian construct that had been annihilated by Xem’zund’s own spell; like its fallen brethren, it was now unrecognisable from what it had once been, bearing the unmistakable face-print of the Forgotten One’s personal influence. Ingwe realised with almost grudging admiration that the Necromancer had allowed them to believe that it had been completely destroyed beyond possession, a failsafe prepared in advance for just this tactical eventuality. Xem’zund was nothing if not thorough.

However futile your resistance may be, I applaud your courage in delaying the inevitable… With a wave of black robe and cursed flesh, the Necromancer cocooned himself in a protective sphere and began to gather his powers to him for an epic spell. It was not long before the dark swirl of magic betrayed his intentions; he sought to reassemble and revive the clones that had taken the Dawnbringers so much effort to destroy.

On the other hand, it was also blindingly obvious – at least to Ingwe, even in his less-than-ideal state of mind – that Xem’zund had not expected to lose all four of his remaining bodies at once. What was more, the Necromancer now felt the need to protect his being against his foes, whereas before he had been confident if not disdainful, the entirety of his physical vessels being dedicated to their destruction. Chinks were beginning to appear in the Forgotten One’s armour, and sooner or later his hand would be forced.

And the young man was beginning to tire of the charade. His companions, unsurprisingly, shared exactly the same feelings.

A veritable storm of spell and steel reached out to batter at the Necromancer’s barrier. Fuelled by their anger and their resolution, it hammered with devastating speed through the defensive cocoon, exposing the Forgotten One to their wrath far earlier than Xem’zund would have liked. The ancient mage was forced to abandon his spell mid-incantation in an attempt to drive them back, but the Dawnbringers did not give him the time even for that. The Drow leeched away at his arcane powers; the young woman bound him with webs of magic while the Elf blinded him with a storm of crystal.

Even then it seemed as if the Necromancer might prevail, through sheer force of will alone. At least, until twin flashes of light carved limbs from torso as, for the first time in the battle, Ingwe brought the full power of the Regalia Valora to bear.

“You had no right to bring her into this,” the young man murmured beneath his breath, his eyes – not hiding any more behind the spectacles that shielded him always from the outside world – focused in forceful concentration upon his foe. His face was pale with exertion and exhaustion, his strength seeping from his wound with every passing breath, but for one of only a handful of times in his life there was true intent in his actions. “You had no right, and now you’ve given me no choice.”

The flaming glow that surrounded him suddenly flared like a miniature sun, and raw unfocused power followed explosively in its wake.

“I won’t let you harm her!”

His words amplified into a shout that quickly escalated into an unintelligible roar, Ingwe directed the energy in the direction of his foe. The sceptre amplified his power to the extent that even the Necromancer could not afford to ignore it; Lilian’s boost from earlier served to make it positively lethal, even to the Ancient One. With little choice left, Xem’zund sought to avoid the barely-controlled magic with an ungainly forward roll… but hands of mighty stone reached up from beneath the ground and held him fast.

Robe and armour, flesh and bone were incinerated where he stood. Metal and crystal literally disintegrated beneath the crude but violent onslaught; what organic components were left in the body possessed by the Forgotten One were vaporised in an instant. Only a wispy flutter of black fabric escaped the incendiary flames, and even that was soon lost amongst the dark recesses of the cavern.

The brief silence that followed was dominated by two separate events. The first was the heavy breaths of the young man decked in the golden armour, and the glances sent in his direction by those who began to suspect that there were darker costs to his sudden display of power than was apparent at first sight. The second was a stirring of the chill in the air, an ominous foreboding that warned them that the battle was not over, not quite yet.

Oh, I’m so going to make you regret that… the ethereal voice from before echoed throughout the chamber like an intangible wind, before beginning to materialise once more in the far reaches of the room. This time, it did not even threaten to coalesce, instead expanding like a black cloud of decay until it obscured the night itself in the skies above.

You will pay for making me angry, Xem’zund’s true form uttered from amongst the mist, and the sheer power in his voice caused the ears of those who heard to bleed profusely. His malevolent influence reached out across the room, and only the bravest amongst them could stand tall to face it.

[Ataraxis]

In the moments of respite that followed the cremation of the last necromantic replica, Lillian had fallen on her back, her breathing haggard as she held a clawing hand over her chest. The rapier’s tip remained firmly embedded into the stone-cold ground, the weapon rising before her supine form in a silver cross. Even now, she could feel the sticky wetness of sublimated fat on her lips, even taste some of the airborne remains of Ingwe’s burning victim. It sickened her to no end, but she was ready to endure that if it meant prolonging this rare lull in a battle that had taken everything from the girl. Of course, Lillian was no fool: she knew the Necromancer would soon return, with a new or final trick to exasperate them all. It was an overwhelming sensation to stand before an obstacle and not to know how high or steep it was. She had to wonder: how much more of his reserves would they need to waste before the end? How much longer would she even last?

A sense of danger pricked at her skin, as if the pins and needles in her legs had migrated throughout all of her body. She looked to the vastness of the underground sanctuary, where even the starlight from the hollowed ceiling could not reach. Black winds were brewing in the shadows – formless, without texture, yet very much felt to the core of their souls. What she saw there was like a growing storm as seen from a bird’s-eye view, dark clouds melding and parting and melding again as they rumbled from within. Having expected to see their enemy emerge from this eldritch darkness, Lillian was shocked to realize that he was the darkness.

The putrid mist suffused throughout the room, slowly and in waves. The caliginous matter seemed a mixture of poison gas and murky waters, all wrapped in wicked shadows and spreading outward like Death’s exhale. At once, Lillian leapt to her feet, recovering with a flick of her wrists the daggers that had carried her healing webs to both wizards, sensing she would need all of her mystical arsenal for the looming menace. In one practiced motion, she joined them together, and the black and white daggers became a single blade of blue-metal. The scholarly girl observed the dark mist, mildly glad to see that the stones were not melting under its baleful touch… but she still had to wonder if her newfound resistance to necromancy would save her from this fog of death and decay.

Lillian shook her head at that, clearing away that defeatist train of thought. Her purpose was not to survive it, but to defeat it. She need to stop wasting time, looking for ways not to die, and focus on figuring out how to kill it, once and for all. ‘But... how to kill that which has no body?’ she asked herself gravely, finding with increasing alarm that the time she had to find an answer was running through her fingers. Her first hypothesis was fire, but she was quick to discard it: it seemed unlikely that his amorphous form was constituted of real gases rather than a worldly manifestation of some deep and ancient magic. Even if it were flammable, they would most likely all die in the ensuing deflagration, with no guarantee that the Necromancer would even die with them. ‘I’m forgetting something. I have to be.’

It was too late when she noticed the strange eddies whirling inside the advancing gloom. She felt a hundred spikes of power in the vicinity before the very air seemed to blur. Blasts of invisible force stormed throughout the lair, battering them all. Each were relatively weak, crashing against stone and soil without shattering; Lillian was able to stomach each blast that had not missed her, but the intense pain broke any hope of an uninterrupted analysis in her mind. It was not difficult to guess, however, that this first wave had only been a distraction.

Globules of mist and hazy black water parted from the fog, hovering above them like spheres of stale blood. Lillian cursed, screaming for everyone to scatter and find shelter, only to realize that she was in the middle of the sanctuary, right beneath the gaping pathway to the night sky, with no broken column or pile of rubble to hide underneath. As the spheres of rot came down from their arc, Lillian thought she heard the Necromancer cackle.

The girl did as best she could to avoid the raining projectiles, sidestepping back and forth as she looked up with terror in her eyes. In her mind, she could only think of how it felt as if she were standing under the rain, trying not to get wet. Yet, somehow, she had managed to accomplish just that… until her foot sought purchase on a tract of slippery rock. While she had focused on looking up, she had not realized that each drop of rot had splashed at her feet, forming dark puddles that even now were burning holes into her boots.

The rain grazed her skin once, twice. Then, she felt the torrent upon her. It burned like hellfire, and she could smell the repulsive fumes waft up from her flesh. Without a stop to her agonizing cries, the girl stood up, her stark white form trickling with black rivulets. Her eyes were black again, vitreous and wicked as she exuded the same evil aura that had saved her before. Still, so much of her skin had been burned off, leaving her bleeding from a network of red and raw flesh.

The horrifying sight, however, was not one she let her allies witness for long. Black threads burst from her wounds, knitting the flesh closed as they formed a loose network of webs upon her body. Even now, she was healing from the raw punishment she had just suffered, just like she had healed the others before, though the process seemed much more excruciating. She panted painfully, her vision blurred by her own blood… yet she smiled.

“Why aren’t you tossing more of those at me?” she muttered with difficulty, yet with enough volume and arrogance for the Necromancer to hear. “Go on. Bring the rain.”

When he said nothing from the mists, she understood with certainty. She knew the reason why he had not continued his onslaught, and the reason why he had needed to distract them with a blasts of kinetic force in the first place. He was not made of the ravenous stuff that had been eating away at her, or at least he was only in part, but nowhere near as potent. Whatever it was he had fired at them, he needed to produce it, and this took time…

‘From these premises, I have induced your weakness.’

Before he could batter at her with a new wake of telekinetic force, Lillian acted as fast as she could. She shot her hands outward, and her threads burst out in two thick ropes that caught onto what remained of two of the immense pillars that once lined the sanctuary, invading every crevice until they were deeply embedded into the stone. She held onto the ropes, wrapping them around her forearms, and with what strength remained in her little frame, she kicked away from the ground, pedaling backwards until they were taut enough.

She jumped. Just as her feet left the ground, her body was flung across the room like a rock from a sling. The dark aura wrapped around her form, as potent as she could make it, and she vanished into the devouring mist that Xem’Zûnd had become.

Rather than striking the wall of stone behind, she had landed with force on something soft. She could barely see in the enshrouding mists, but she was relieved to notice that they had not begun devouring her like fire ants would a honey-covered corpse: the necromantic layer atop her skin was fending off the dark corrosion. With enquiring gropes, she sought to understand just what she was hanging from, and the fleshy pulse that coursed past her hand told her everything she needed to know.

‘You’ve been hiding in here from the beginning,’ she spoke in her mind, wary not to open her mouth inside the mist. She knew he could hear her. ‘But this isn’t something as typical as your ‘core’, is it? This… is what has become of your real body.’

“I have told you before, have I not?” he answered calmly, the emotion behind his astral voice of a nature she could not guess. “We can never return from our chosen paths.”

‘I know,’ was all she deigned to answer before sinking the blue-metal dagger into the lump of flesh.

The horrific bellow that followed had curdled her blood. Her blade, the Dvaita, had been her ace in the hole all along, because it was the bane of all magical beings. Humans and elves would feel numbness and pain as the enchanted dagger pumped their bodies with poisonous chaos, corrupting all magic it could find… but to beings whose very existence had become magical in nature, much like Xem’zûnd in his current form, it was out-and-out torture. She knew this very well: she had inadvertently used it on a fragmented personification of the Ethereal Tap, so long ago, and it had killed him. If rumors of the Necromancer’s deep connection to the Tap were true, then…

The mist flickered, fading and thickening, as if whatever body inside had lost control of its emission. The poisonous chaos was affecting him: magic was prone to malfunction in its presence, even backfire. The fog that sheathed the Necromancer’s body had finally receded enough for them to see him, in all his unholy glory.

It was a creature neither man nor beast, a colossus of twisted flesh and sickly tendrils that stood the height of seven men. Immense black eyes, much like Lillian’s under his darkly influence, covered his back and torso. His upper body was a grayish-red, skeletal in its gauntness, and a coat of flesh-like vines wreathed his neck like the billowing crown of a colossal anemone. His arms were bare and long, taut with corded muscles but devoid of any horrendous excrescence; they were slender and noble in their powerful simplicity. His ungodly weight was supported by a body reminiscent of a centaur’s in shape, but there was neither brown coat nor hoofed feet to carry the comparison any further: he stood on six gnarly legs, crooked and wrinkled, each broader than some of the largest oaks in the world, winding and loosening with his every rancid breath.

His bald head was featureless: a clean slate of ashen red, veined like crimson marble. Only a gaping slit could be seen, a distorted mouth that he held open to pant as the chaotic venom continued to course in his monstrous body. Lillian stood in awestruck silence atop his forehead… and she never saw it coming.

He swept a hand across his face, swatting her away like a mosquito. It was a long fall, and the bone-splitting crash was followed only by silence. He plucked the dagger from his forehead, his humongous mouth set in a hateful scowl. He tossed it away, and it clanged in the distance with the sound of a falling needle.

“I…” the monster began, his voice a slow, resounding boom across the sanctuary. “Am weary.”

Convenient Summary

Considering the current circumstances... yeah. Godhand, I think your fists can touch this guy, now.


Xem-Mist shot hundreds of relatively weak balls of telekinetic force as a distraction.
Xem-Mist made balls of decay rain on everyone, and Lillian screamed for everyone to take cover right before it started.
Being completely exposed, she dodged until she got pelted, but protected herself just enough not to die with her necromantic aura.
She induced that Xem-Mist stopped his battery to produce more of his decay, and she slingshot herself with her webs into him before he could do it again.
Poisoned him with the Dvaita, her 'magebane' dagger. Weakened him substantially enough to make the ensuing battle one notch below a massacre. Made his mist-emission malfunction.
Xem's form is revealed to be, basically, a six-legged giant centaur mix of Lovecraftian Gods, the huge creature from The Mist, and that arguably eyeless monster from Pan's Labyrinth.
Swatted Lillian away from his forehead, and removed the dagger. She crashed and is dying.

[Godhand]

The monstrous creature inhaled deeply, the entire cavern seeming to shudder with his every breath. There was a brief moment where none of the Dawnbringers said a word, blinked or even breathed. They had finally come face to face with the throbbing black heart of the necromantic blight on Raiaera, and by god it had lived up to all their expectations. A hulking engine of terror, pulsating with every forbidden magic there was and cursed with his nightmare visage after clawing at the brow of a god.

The first one to overcome his apprehension, his innate evolutionary fear of such a monstrosity was Caden, perhaps because his knowledge of the arcane had already afforded him a brief glance at the true nature of Xem'Zund. He drew symbols in the air with his hand, his staff crackling with electricity before he thrust it forward and a massive arc of lightning surged out of his prevalida staff-head. Some forked harmlessly against the walls of the cavern, but the brunt of the energy converged on the beast's upper body and empowered as it was by Lillian's lifeforce, managed to stun the creature.

For his part, Ingwe wasn't far behind. Enjoying the twin boons of the Regalia Valora and the dark seamstress' lifeforce, he was quite possibly the most powerful being in the cavern, Xem'Zund himself excluded. And he was determined to take the rare, brief window of opportunity both Lillian and Caden had afforded him to smite the abomination with the full force of all his powers. He traced symbols in the air with the tip of his staff as Caden had, but also loudly chanted the True Names of fire and wind itself, and all of their creations.

A massive conflagration of fire began to form, swirling into existence from nothing and pulsing with the heart of flame. A red star of energy. Then Cydnar, the envoy of the world eater Yrene, though his own reserves of power were dangerously taxed, joined Ingwe in his chanting. He twisted his body and blade, danced, summoning shards of crystal and quartz from the stones of the cavern and added the essence of earth itself to Ingwe's masterwork. Caden, though he knew it was extremely perilous to divide his attention between two spells when facing an enemy such as Xem'Zund, saw an opportunity to end the beast once and for all. He wielded his staff with one hand, shooting lightning at Xem'Zund's many eyes, occasionally scalding some of them shut, and with the other he added what elements he commanded into Ingwe's spell. Gravity, Death and Lightning.

The red star changed and pulsed with each new element, crackling and shifting different colors before finally setting on a purple-black hue as shards of charged quartz floated around it, making rings and refracting the light of the different elements into a negative rainbow. It had started with the Pyroclasm, bolstered by the Regalia Valora and Lillian, focused by Cydnar's crystals and finally energized with the most complicated elements by Caden; a freezing hot, dark white sphere of energy that tore at the edges of reality itself. It was contained only by their will, and only barely at that. Occasionally strands, mere tendrils of its essence about as thick and ethereal as a single hair managed to escape it's gravity and brush against the stone walls of the cavern. Where the stones did not freeze, they melted; where they did not melt, they crumbled; and where they did not crumble, they burst. The mage hunter, for her part, had already stepped forward and with what remained of her magic-soaked soul's integrity, began tearing at the magical shield Xem'Zund had raised as an afterthought once his mist had been dissipated.

And then, when the sphere of energy had reached its nuclear peak, Ingwe launched it towards the necromancer.

Setting the sphere into motion seemed to have slowed down time itself and all the colors drained out of the cavern as it slowly floated towards Xem'Zund. Nearly frozen in place, he knew he'd never be able to dodge it. He also knew that not even he would survive a direct hit. So instead, he did the unthinkable. A gaunt hand reached into his chest, ripping into the flesh and producing a small dark vial where his heart should have been. His phylactery.

He held the recipient of his immortality before him, which cast a seething light throughout the dark sanctuary. So full was it charged with the very essence of the Eternal Tap that the power it exuded seemed infinite, and the Necromancer coerced every drop of it out in an all-consuming flood of destruction. Time and space lay broken in its wake, and the singularity of power detonated at once, punching a hole through the very fabric of existence: it stretched open like the maw of a chthonian beast, a Hellmouth, swallowing the eldritch bomb the Dawnbringers had meshed from their will and lifeblood. The two entities threshed to a standstill, arcs of primal energies lashing out as one sought to overpower the other... until the eternal void clamped down like thunder, devouring whole the light of their last hope.

Yet even with its purpose met, the rift did not vanish. The hundred eyes of Xem'zund were fixed on the pulsing black hole in dead space. The singularity was becoming unstable, crackling terribly as it diffused the power it had consumed in excess. Spectral bolts arced around it, flickering in and out of sight as the very air burned in their backwash. The necromancer's monstrous hand was now seething with red smoke, sublimated blood from his veins as the vial flared up in his grip. The monster let loose a hellacious bellow as the phylactery began to overload. He had miscalculated: the onslaught of the Dawnbringers had been too powerful for the artifact to endure. And then, as his harrowing roars reached an ungodly apex, the black hole collapsed and vanished with an explosive swoop of wind. The vial in his hand shattered, bursting into a dark nova with him only barely managing to rear his monstrous form back and avoid being sucked into the singularity.

The sight of his shattered immortality had left the Beast in a stunned silence. His dark eyes were wide in disbelief, hundreds quavering but unblinking. And then, the bewilderment was gone from their glare, replaced by the seething fury of a hundred wronged gods. He hefted his hands high overhead, dark blots forming about his palms as he summoned his weapons. There was a sizzle in his hands, however, and he felt something had gone awry: within the blink of an eye, the shadows of his armament had detonated, and the beast reeled back in a cry of rage bolstered by frustration. The poison that was coursing through his body remained even now, and the summons had backfired, shattering the wicked bone-blade that had formed in his left hand, while sundering in half the great sword of obsidian in his right. He cursed the name of the feeble girl that had infected him with her dagger, his hatred of every soul within this lair reaching new heights.

He cleaved the very earth with his broken sword, the displacement of stone and soil caused by the sheer shock-wave many times greater than any of the hatted wizard's antics with geomancy. He had buried them under a rain of massive stones and choking dirt, and even now their hacking and coughs, wet with blood, reached his delighted ears. His head twisted monstrously behind, and his lower body followed suit: he saw the girl, lying unconscious and defenseless. She had mocked him and foiled him long enough. He lifted one of his six legs, its bones creaking as would uprooted trees. He readied his aim, seeking to make her nothing more but a smear of blood and pulp on his foot.

And then there was a hand on his shoulder.

And a blade through his chest.

[Godhand]

Another roar, and this time the very foundation of the cavern shook. The mercenary was perched on the beast's back, smiling wickedly with his right hand gripping the handle of his muramasa, twisting the blade and his left hand draped casually over Xem'Zund's shoulder. He rested against the creature's broad shoulders, his smile turning from wicked to dazed as though he was thinking of something distant and unimportant. The sweat pasted his hair to his forehead as he seemed to tune out Xem'Zund's screaming. The once and future king.

The once and future thing.

He'd managed to trap Godhand inside his own brain for nearly the entire battle; at first he'd attempted to conjure up his worst fears but he soon discovered what appeared to be a critical part of the brain/soul missing. Godhand had no fears; he was just a big dumb animal. Conversely, however, this meant his will was extremely weak. The necromancer had easily managed to sublimate the mercenary's consciousness with only a fraction of his own gargantuan psyche, keeping him bound in chains inside a cage with the lights off by merely keeping that fact in the back of his mind. The swordsman had been gagged and blinded, swimming in ink, alone, for one thousand years.

But once he'd been stunned by Lillian's magic poisoning, his concentration had been broken without him even realizing it. The mercenary had been such a non-entity during the fight that he hadn't even considered he was still there until the adamantine sword burst out of his chest.

The necromancer's long, corded arms finally managed to reach the mercenary, and so drained and dazed was he that he didn't even resist. Xem'Zund slammed him into the wall, then wrapped his oversized hands around his neck. Godhand didn't react. He was gone.

He saw purple spots everywhere as the monster choked the life out of him, all the while a stupid smile plastered over his face. He didn't understand what was happening. He didn't understand anything anymore. But his body still functioned on a gut, evolutionary level. The body resists even as the mind begs for death. He twisted his body forward and managed to swing his leg over one of the abomination's arms, then positioned himself. He couldn't lock it in just right; the arm was too long. But it was good enough. He scissored both legs and pulled on the arm until the tendons snapped.

All of Xem'Zund's eyes shut at once and he let out a single, wordless scream. He forgot about the Dawnbringers, about Lillian. About everything. Between that and the sword, this was the first time Xem'Zund had felt pain in centuries. He was totally unprepared. He frenzied, whipping his arm against the wall, finding columns of stone and smashing them to pieces with Godhand back-first. Both the mercenary's lungs collapsed, but he hung on like a pitbull with lockjaw. Both his eardrums had burst from being so close to the monster's screaming. Blood poured out. It was warm. His brain couldn't even process the feeling.

There is no pain
you are receding

Snatches of a song he'd never heard bounced off his mind's empty halls. All the while Xem'Zund was half-mad trying to tear the tenacious little tick of a man off, and when he smashed the last support in his blind fury, he realized his mistake. The cavern began to shake and rumble. The battle had been too much for the rough-hewn warzone. The walls were caving in, and with his phylactery destroyed and his magical reserves tainted there was nothing he could do. The Dawnbringers each used their own means to escape through the large hole Caden had blown open, either by flying, floating or levitating on stone. Caden had the decency to spare the warrior one last glance before hoisting Lillian on his shoulder and taking her with him. He knew enough about Xem'Zund's methods to know there was nothing left of Godhand to save.

The necromancer rushed forward like a mad centaur, his one good arm blindly grasping at the retreating Dawnbringers even as he raced toward them. Just then, however, a huge chunk of stone broke off from the ceiling, pinning the mad sorcerer under it. The arm Godhand had clung to was free, but as the mercenary uncoiled and his dumb reptile subconscious attempted to save itself, it found his legs would not move. His lower spine had been shattered. He was an invalid.

There was a flash of awareness. He'd been clawing his way to the hole in a desperate attempt to climb out, but he just gave up. He pushed himself unto his back and instinctively reached inside his coat for a cigarette. He placed it against his lips but couldn't find anything to light it with. Glazed eyes watched as enormous shards of stone fell from the ceiling, before a boulder similar in size to the one that had crushed Xem'Zund flinched and began to separate from the top of the cavern. And he laid there like he was basking in the sun, the hunk of stone hurtling down towards him. And he had one final, coherent thought. The last will and testament of Godhand Striker.

"Fuck Raiaera."

And the cavern collapsed in on itself.

[Cydnar]

Cydnar’s feet touched the ground at last, and the hum of the radix of the world faded into nothing. What he had witnessed in a small space of time had torn all expectation from his eyes, and replaced it with a new world order. One moment he had been locked in conflict with the clone, the next he’d witnessed darkness incarnate, and drawn on a power deep within he did not know he possessed; how marvellous their combined opus had been, their unified force.

Catching the dawn’s rays in their glory, he watched the others in turn land around him, levitating by whatever means he could not decipher. The fragments of crystal he had used to propel himself out of the collapsing cavern still floated in the air around him, shimmering in the approaching daylight. They were battered and bruised and brought to their knees, but they had survived to live and tell their tale…

The scent of distant blossoms, morning dew and rubble clogged his nostrils, but as he purged his muscles of their fatigue, the Hummel drew on the last of his strength to remain upright, panting slowly with a resounding sense of relief. He had felt the same sense of being at the end of the battle in the marshes not days before, and the same sense of pride he’d called upon in the council chambers beneath Donnalaich, when he’d been elected as the emissary of the Crystal Kin to take a stand in the chamber alongside the others that Raiaera had birthed in her defence.

He thought for a moment, and counted their number, checked hat and staff and woman and dagger. “But…” he began, spiralling around and recounting. “Where is the warrior?” He recalled the chaos as they’d fled, and saw the stone churning in the abyssal hold of the earth. He flicked his hair back and tied it into a ponytail, adjusted his sleeves, and crept to the gaping hole that the Wizard Blueraven had carved in the ceiling for their escape.

Nothing emerged after a moment long enough for old friends to arrive through the mist.

In the shadows beneath the earthen tomb of the Necromancer and the Martyr, Yrene churned the earth and rose from the shadows once more; his crystalline and phantasmal form rising to the immobile Xem’Zund to feed on a paralysed and weakened prey, like a spider in the shadows of his web, or an owl swooping onto a field mouse in the dead of night.

“Where is our saviour?”

[Caden Law]

"Hells if I know," said the ragged Wizard, who had just run several hundred yards with the staff in one hand and Jailbait slung over the opposite shoulder. He hadn't been so sore in...

Days, actually. Maybe a month, tops.

But everything seemed to be over and now he could collapse, which he promptly did. Knees first, like a good Wizard should, and then he had the decency and tenacity to balance against his staff while laying the half-dead Lillian on the ground. Then he flopped onto his backside and slumped forward, breathing raggedly as he told them, "But I don't think we will see his kind again any time soon. And perhaps the world will be a better place for it."

"Who?" Cydnar asked. "Our saviour or our foe?"

Caden never did answer him. Instead he heaved in a deep breath and exhaled magic, then repeated the process two or three times. He focused. Thought about what he knew of magic; how Thermal and Arcane resembled Necromancy, and how Necromancy was basically just the movements and divination of death. Life and death, Caden considered, were simply two sides of the same coin, except it wasn't a coin at all. "The faces of coins never meet," he said to himself. "But Life meets Death every single day. And Death is always with us, so..."

He stuck out a hand over the girl. Very deliberately, he tried not to think about what he was doing in any sensical manner. Applying solid logic and reason would've completely stopped it in its tracks. The Wizard thought about his clothes, and how he'd have to wash them clean at some point. He thought about the girl, and how she'd have to be washed clean at some point. He'd have to use alchemy and magic to fix the holes in his coat. He'd have to use alchemy and magic to fix-

"Knowledge: Sorcery. Concept Bypass. Vivourgia en Media Resurgo de Terra Raiaera," Spoke the Sorcerer Blueraven, closing his eyes and focusing with an awful force of will.

Power shot up out of the ground in a bright violet pillar, full of blue feathers and ghostly ravens. It surged through the girl like she wasn't even there at first, and then slowly began to lift her up off of the ground. Bit by bit, the visible wounds healed and the worst aspects of the taint were purified to some extent. Internal bleeding stopped, bruises faded away, a tooth or two might've replaced themselves, and even grains of dirt and stains of blood went missing from the girl's blody and clothes. By the time the Sorcerer finished, you'd be hard-pressed to tell she was in more than a juvenile dust-up at the worst.

When he was done, the pillar simply stopped. It narrowed in on itself and blinked out, gone as quickly as it had appeared. The girl dropped a few inches back down to the ground, and the Wizard drew his hand back in. Veins were standing out pitch black on his skin, and the Mark on his face was actually steaming hot to the touch. His eyes looked darker, as if someone had turned the whites gray and a little green. He said nothing for several long seconds, then pointed at Ingwe. "You've got the honors of tempting fate. I dare you. 'Cos I am not saying it. Not this time."

At that, the Wizard coughed blood. And he kept coughing it, even through the tightly clasped fingers held over his mouth. When the fit subsided, he settled back down. But the arm used to heal the girl never stopped trembling for a second, and his voice wavered at every word. The Wizard was running on a deficit of everything at this point. He had tapped Sorcery far too much, far too quickly, and it was showing in a bad way.

For the next poster or two: Tempting Fate = "Did we win?" or "Is it over?" or any other question or statement along those lines.

Caden is not a healer by nature and has no proper training at it. He was literally winging it just now. Whether or not the spell works for more than five seconds, let alone how well it works or whether or not it has staying power regarding the necrotic taint or any serious scars/injuries/etc, is entirely up to Lillian. At the least, she'll wind up dying and going undead demon while wearing clean clothes.

[Mage Hunter]

At the edge of the hole, Drusilia looked down upon the wreckage. She stood there, dumbly staring down into the hole that had housed the fight. She shook her head slowly, almost disbelieving it. She stood there in silence, even as the rabble about her continued to talk. She was more than certain mana had flowed through the area, she had felt it flow past her. Someone had cast a spell, yet she couldn't bear to tear her gaze from the hole.

Godhand Striker, was dead?

Her hands went to her pack, and tossed it upon the ground, before she began to undo the straps on her leather armor. Soon her sword belt and her quiver followed suit, a few feet from the edge. Her eyes held a look of fiery anger, even when she turned back to the pit. She began to climb down as she muttered under her breath, "Oh no you don't you bastard. You don't get away from me that easily!"

Landing upon the pile of dirt and rocks she immediately began moving the largest of the rocks, tossing it aside. Another rock followed suit while she continued to dig back into the collapsed chamber of the necromancer. Her ire raising to the point she began to curse and yell, "Don't tell me you died on me Striker. I refuse to believe the man that wrestled Warson to the ground, died like that!"

She began to claw at the dirt with her bare hands, digging trenches in the loose dirt, trying desperately to reach Godhand. He had to be alive, she had seen him come out of far worse sit than this smelling like roses. Drusilia shook her head as she cursed loudly in Drow, continuing her tunneling descent back into the dark chamber that had to be filled with debris. She continued to burrow, even as scrapes and scratches began to form on her hands and arms.

"Vith!" She screamed as she tunneled deeper, her chest heaving with the effort, even as she barely got more than a foot down. The pit was vast, she'd probably have to dig another twenty or thirty feet just to reach the ground of the chamber. Realizing the futility of her act she knelt there on the ground, staring blankly at the hole she had created. Her gaze remained vacant, unseeing anything in the world about her. She didn't care what the others thought of her, she was never concerned with what a mage had thought of her.

Godhand, now that was the opinion that mattered to her.

She remained there, silently and statuesque, even as a tear began to roll down her cheek. It was surely not the first one, nor would it be the last in the long chain of events that marked the incursion of the Necromancer. She was certain hundred of people had experienced similar loses, and she had criticized them all for giving into their grief.

It's easy to be strong, when you aren't the one losing something.

Her rage spent, her grief fresh she remained still, unmoving anymore as her breathing steadied to the point one could almost consider her a still life. She remained in the hole for a few more minutes before she said softly, "Had to be a big damn hero didn't you Striker?" She snorted softly at the humor of the statement, knowing the mercenary had desired the exact opposite, even when he had a chance to abuse that title like no other. Godhand was a simple man, free of emotions, and concerned only with his bottom line. There was no altruism in his death, at least as far as she knew.

That didn't mean she couldn't miss the lug...

[Flames of Hyperion]

The world around him changed in shape, from shadow-bound cavern to wanly moonlit nightscape. Why and how, however, were both questions far beyond Ingwe's ken; all the young man could think of was the fact that the Dawnbringers had numbered six before the battle had commenced, and now that it had ended, they were only five. Memories coiled like virulent miasma as he tried to piece together the half-complete puzzle that was the climactic showdown, all the while hampered by the lancing agony through the base of his neck and the spreading chill that sapped all semblance of thought except pain and nothingness from his mind.

Of all the great warriors who had heeded the beacon’s call, Ingwe had been the most unassuming, the least imposing. Even during times of war he was a slight and bookish young man, barely out of his schooling and used to quashing emotion and hiding his thoughts behind his glasses. Even at a second glance he certainly wasn’t a soldier, much less a leader or a legend. But the meekest amongst the Dawnbringers did not falter at Xem'zund's true form... to his tired and fading eyes, it was simply the latest incarnation of the abomination that had threatened the one thing it shouldn't have. Deep within the young man's soul, beyond all reason or restraint, something primeval and primitive roared in extreme anger.

He didn't remember how he'd managed to stay standing for so long. Perhaps it had been blind fury, or perhaps it had been tactical nous. Perhaps he had strayed too far beyond reason to even care about what happened to him any more. Perhaps it had been all of that, and more, that had driven the badly wounded Ingwe back into the fray.

The claustrophobic atmosphere shimmered with lesser incantations in an attempt to keep the Forgotten One off balance, even as Ingwe fought to craft the mightiest spell of his fledgling career. He could feel Caden and the other mages struggling to augment his magic with their own, the combined powers of the Regalia Valora and the young woman’s amplification helping to swell this single spell beyond all his prior comprehension. He was only going to get one chance at making this count, and so he battled even harder through the becalming haze that deadened his senses. But the length of the battle, the intensity of what he had been through already, and the wounds that he had suffered meant that he was beyond all sensible means of powering his magic. There was a dark side to the bright flames that formulated his spell, and that was the fact that Ingwe was drawing on his own life force to feed them now…

He didn't remember how he'd managed to find the inner strength to cast that last spell. Perhaps it had been desperation, or perhaps it had been a strong sense of duty. Perhaps his mind had been stripped to its bare core, revealing the most fundamental of determinations to do what he had to do while he could still do it. Perhaps it had been all of that, and more, that had given him the courage to tenaciously hold on beyond the limits of his frail human soul.

Even that, however, had not been enough. The Forgotten One had been able to absorb their last-ditch effort into some form of artefact, creating a dark rift in the fabric of reality that had swallowed whole their final hopes. Xem’zund’s furiously bellowed counter-spell buried them all beneath rock and rubble, leaving them gasping and hacking as they futilely searched for the strength to further defy the monstrosity. The Necromancer moved to annihilate the first of them, the unconscious young woman whose powers had been the key to their victory, even as Ingwe tried and failed to urge his battered body into one final stand to try to protect her.

And then Godhand had appeared.

And had stabbed Xem’zund through the chest.

And, before the beast’s dying wails had ceased to resound, his death throes caused the entire cavern to collapse in upon them.

He didn't remember how he'd managed to escape to safety. Perhaps it had been instinct, or perhaps it had been fear finally overwhelming his senses. Perhaps it had been a subconscious desire to live on, one that had over-ruled the cold resolution in the depths of his stomach to lay his life on the line for the defeat of Xem’zund. Perhaps it had been all of that and more that had seen him shamelessly abandon a comrade to death in the rockfall below, even as he himself fled mindlessly to the night sky above.

On the other hand, the vision of the vaunted mercenary trying to crawl his way clear, only to give up and fall back in resignation onto the ground beneath him, would haunt Ingwe’s guilt-ridden ghtmares for years to come.

***

The sudden silence was loudly accusatory, thunderous almost in reproachful condemnation, but also strangely nostalgic after the long minutes of desperate battle. Monstruck grassland shivered beneath the whispers of the wind and the tide of the night; through Ingwe’s patchy tunnel vision, the entirety of the rolling hillscape seemed to be dyed in a muddled dull crimson. Blood trickled from the edge of his lips and from the wound on his chest, and the only reason why he hadn’t joined Caden in coughing it up was that he had already lost too much to do so.

Still, the fresh air did just about enough to clear his mind of the worst of the deadening fog, bringing with it a clarity of thought that had been somewhat missing from his single-minded dedication of earlier. With it also came the full realisation of their current situation: of the price in his life that he had personally paid to defy the Forgotten One, of the individual prices they were each and all paying now that the battle was over, and of the price in Godhand’s life that the Dawnbringers had been forced to forfeit in order to defeat their foe.

It was perhaps for this final reason that he could not immediately and directly answer Caden’s dare, managing only a wan smile at the legendary Wizard’s forced bravado. When at last the young man found the strength within him to speak, his voice was weak and barely audible, and there was a tangible sadness to it that completely and obtusely shattered any semblance of relief at their survival.

“I dare not,” Ingwe whispered, his words almost carried away by a sudden breath of breeze that whipped forlornly at his bloodstained hair. “I think… all we can do now, is hope.”

Slowly he picked himself up from where he knelt upon the parched earth, his movements slow and pained. With agonising care, the young man stepped towards the collapsed hole in the earth from where they had escaped, the remains of the underground fortress that had once been Xem’zund’s final refuge. Once he arrived there, he stood motionless at the edge of the sunken precipice, leaning heavily upon the sceptre he bore as the moonlight danced from his golden armour and the twin swords sheathed to his back. His gentle gaze, sheltered once again behind his oversized spectacles, peered soulfully into the distant morass that had not so long ago been a desperate battlefield, searching there for answers that were not forthcoming.

“If we’re needed again…” he began, then cut himself off as he realised nobody wanted to think of such an eventuality, his voice trailing harmlessly off into the night. The words that he left unsaid resounded noisily in his mind… Doubtless the powers-that-be will find a way to place us in the way.

The majority of the past hour had at last coalesced into one large blur, but the final moments of the confrontation remained particularly foggy in his mind. One moment he had been on the cavern floor screaming defiance at the Necromancer, the next he had found himself safe on the surface with the Forgotten One’s lair a desecrated ruin behind him. He didn’t remember the flaming wings that had brought him there, and perhaps it was better for him if he didn’t, given the sacrifices to his future that he had unwittingly made to create them. Somehow he’d been able to retrieve his spectacles from where he’d left them upon the cavern floor, though, which struck him as completely out of place and yet was somehow strangely reassuring at the same time.

He knew, however, that now he was fading, and fast. There was a forbidding chill to the depths of his spine that simply would not go away, a hard sensation-less rock in his stomach that grew with every passing heartbeat. Already he could not feel anything in his extremities, willpower alone dictating that they move according to his mind’s demands. But he was determined not to cause any more trouble to any of his comrades, and most especially to Godhand, who had already made the ultimate sacrifice that any of them could ever have made.

“I was the one who should’ve died down there…”

The words were a mere murmur, barely more than a thought, but they rang loud and heavy in his tortured and guilt-ridden soul. Ingwe closed his eyes and offered a silent prayer to the stars above; it was all he could do besides curse his own weakness and ineptitude.

The ancient Raiaeran prophecies had spoken of the Tella’karythar, the legend of the Last Crusader. They had described his appearance and his background with almost uncanny accuracy, such that when he had unwittingly begun to fulfil them by rallying the Legion of Light to the aid of the realm, the Elf-lords themselves had acknowledged his status and granted him the use of the powerful Regalia Valora. Even the Forgotten One Xem’zund had known of the legend, though he had justly belittled Ingwe’s achievements and had flung the title in his face with unbridled scorn.

The same prophecies had foretold that he should have been the one to give himself up to banish the Necromancer; after all, they were the tales of the last crusader. Now, however, they had unravelled like so many strands of fine mist in the morning breeze. What was left was little more than hopeless desolation.

I tried so hard to defy them. I swore to myself before I came that we would all make it back alive. Now…

Now…

He had failed.

“Thank you, everybody. For everything.”

Somehow, he managed to keep his final words steady, wringing out the last shreds of his strength and his composure into maintaining a façade of discipline, possession, and control. The hot tears streaming down his cheeks, mingling with the fresh blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, told a completely different story from the one he was projecting… but it was doubtful that anybody could notice them in the darkness.

There was so much more that he wanted to say, so much more that he wanted to do. But he was also keenly aware of the fact that, for him at least, there was no time left to accomplish any of it. The last of his energy began to ebb away into the night, and he turned away before his companions could remark on the deathly pallor of his skin or the complete lack of life in his eyes. He doubted that his magic could ignite a spark now even if he wanted it to; the icy grip that was gradually consuming his body clenched tight around his neck as his vocal cords joined the growing list of functions that had abandoned him.

Slowly and with what little stubborn willpower he had left, Ingwe bade his companions farewell and began to walk off into the distance. It would not be long before what was left of his physical being failed him entirely, but until it did he had to try… he had to cling to the one thing in the entire world that he had remaining to him. To the north, the floating spires of Winyaurient beckoned, the breezy chambers of his final vision…

Yuka…

[Ataraxis]

The last moments of the battle were as a dream from which there was no waking. She lay broken on the ground, bleeding from within and without, not knowing whether her bones had been ground to dust, whether neck had been severed clean. Lillian remembered a long and silent fall, remembered darkness pooling over her like spilt blood as the monster’s foot hung balefully above her. Then a blade tore through the necromancer’s chest, and blood did indeed spill and pool over her dying form.

When she saw Godhand, Lillian wanted to smile, but none of her muscles would answer the emotion. When she saw the lifeless glow in his crimson eyes, saw the mindless expression into which his face had been carved, the girl found herself incapable of crying out to him. And when the wizard had carried her away, escaping the collapse as boulders rained down upon the necromancer and the mercenary, Lillian was unable to shed a single tear.

The girl was outwardly no more alive than a broken doll, powerless to evince the slightest sign of grief as her old friend vanished underneath the crushing rubble. She was on the ground again, for the blue-garbed sorcerer had carefully put her down before collapsing himself. She could feel every drop of it, every drop of her life slipping from her. The rough earth against her body felt warmer, but she knew it was because her body was growing colder and colder.

But just as she began to wonder whether this was the end of the line for her, she felt the flow of life within herself again, but it was not hers. It felt of crows and blue feathers, and she was blinded by the pillar of amethyst light that had encapsulated her, lifting her off from the ground as time seemed to flow in reverse. Her bones melded back together, her hemorrhaging organs sucked in the bad blood and purged it clean. The raw scars left by the necromancer’s spell were fading away, and even the dirt and blood that had been spilled over her dress melted off like ice in the sun.

When the pillar vanished, she had found the strength to land on her knees and hands, struggling with this alien vitality of which the sorcerer had been the donor. The pain was still fresh and burning, and she was still grievously injured, but her condition was no longer worsening. Her body… she felt it was becoming hers again. Her soul and her body were no longer separate entities.

And so she screamed. From the raging agony in her chest came a terribly cry, laced with the breaking of hundreds of bones, with the wounds whose pain she had pushed away until this very moment. The ache of her body resisting decay twice over, of her flayed skin and ruptured organs, of her torn muscles and of the white-hot pressure in her skull, threatening to burst at any moment… all of it had come back at once.

Her stomach turned, and she purged it as well. The girl hacked and coughed dark bile and dark blood, stopping in terror at the color before she resumed hurling with bloodshot eyes. It was a long time before her stifled screams and whimpers finally faded into the silence of the dawning plains. It was even longer before she managed to crane her feeble neck up, to watch the crater in the earth where dust rose like columns of smoke.

She never had the time to say hello, and the fates had robbed her of the time to say goodbye. That big oaf had saved her time and time again, but this had been the last… and she had said not even a word. And now, he was dead. Godhand was dead.

The pain that realization brought was somehow worse than anything she had just felt. Lillian fell to the side, her limbs siphoned of their strength. Her mind could no longer take all the pent-up grief she had accumulated over the years, all the bereavement she never could forget. Too many had died while she lived on; too many had died, leaving her behind. Her heart could simply take no more…

And in the light of this new dawn, Lillian cried the last tears she would ever shed.

Conclusion, I guess?

Spoils, as they were used in this thread (blood-boosted healing, lifeforce transfer, necro hijack).

+ Stygian Arcana – The fourth power produced by the Welkin Body. By drinking the astral blood of a Forgotten One, the Necromancer Xem Zûndalon, Lillian has gained her darkest power yet. When activated, her newfound knowledge of Necromancy allows her to understand the ebb and flow of life, and thus to alter its path and direction in certain spells of her own that deal with this cycle, or to bolster it with the sacrifice of her or a willing donor’s lifeblood. Moreover, this power provides her with a heightened resistance to magics of rot and decay or the draining of life, though in no way is it even close to an immunity. When in this state, her eyes are overwhelmed by a vitreous black, and those attuned to sorcery may notice a dark aura exuding from her skin.


Queen’s Aegis – Using this magnified form of her resistance to the black arts, Lillian is capable of commandeering a spell pertaining to life cast in close proximity, such as necromancy and certain forms of healing. Once the hijack is performed, she can either dispel it, counter it back, or redirect it to a tertiary target. This, however, tires her greatly, and she usually reserves it for magic that can surpass her necromantic resistance. This can only be performed once in a battle or once in a day.

Sitayamini Silk – The equivalent of 2 shirts or 1 jacket (2 spools) in her magical black-silk cloth, that is to say only half of what is stated in her ability, Seamstress of the Sinister (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?t=16278). They approach the strength of dehlar.

[Cydnar]

Cydnar smiled at the wizard Blueraven, and turned back to gaze into the abyss below. As each of the others in turn grieved for a man he did not know, he sighed in relief that he had survived the ordeal in the shadows, and had been shown a vision of a world he could one day see himself coming to love. Even on the surface, the reek of magical taint was strong enough to course through the Hummel’s nostrils like purging gout of flame, and he stepped back from its stench to concern himself with the matter now at hand; going home.

He walked to the edge of the clearing without paying attention or saying goodbye, turning at the precipice to look back across his shoulder. He felt a deep sense of foreboding, welling up like a geyser from beneath the surface of Raiaera’s glorious countryside. We will not be needed again, at least not in this lifetime, or the next…

Yrene broke into the chamber, a phantasmal snake of deep purple hue and radiant energy, with such force as to knock Cydnar’s mind into a spin. As he wrapped his form around the necromancer, able to near him now without being destroyed, he reared back his head and for a moment two fangs glared in the obsidian light like daggers in the dark. “The Order of Magic is kept, judgement,” Cydnar revealed his own fangs, newly formed and elongated incisors much like a snake’s and hissed, “is served…” His fingers clicked and Yrene drove his pincer grip down onto the behemoth.

The Hummel did not know how long such a wound would last, or if the World Eater could contain Xem’Zund at all, but as the magic welled from him, revitalising the snake, a little bit of hope broke into the radiance of the new day. They had brought the dawn back to the land of Raiaera. “Thank you…” He muttered, catching Ingwe’s gaze before two figures flanked him without noise, and they all faded into the depths of the soil, returning to the cities beneath cities and the life unsung and upraised in the service of Order.

Deep below them all, a necromancer was entombed in a Mausoleum of Quartz, sheathed from the sun and the stars for what Fate hoped would be an eternity. If ever Fate cared to fulfil it's promises...


Fangs Of The Snake:

Cydnar has developed pointed incisors, similar to a snake's but more robust. They shall form later part of his 'Serpent's Tongue' counter magic, taking on the ability to drain magical energy from someone he bites. Such a development does not come now, however. They are as hard as his normal teeth.

[Flames of Hyperion]

On the eastern fringes of the moonlit horizon, the night began to recede. Beyond the peaks of the Emyn Naug and the vastness of the Tel Moranfauglir, beyond the battlements of beautiful Belial and the spires of wise Tor Elythis, the soulless black that had reigned overhead was forced into retreat by the bright corona of a new daybreak. Relentlessly potent and yet breathtakingly ethereal, the advance of the dawn’s rays across the land seemed to represent the new lease of life it had been granted by the actions of its denizens. Together, the defiant many and the chosen few had wrought the beginning of a new age from the ashes of the old, and the battles they had fought and the legends they had inspired would echo as one throughout all eternity.

Truly, indeed, this was the Spring of Retribution Dawning.

[Zook Murnig]

Quest Judging

Modded Quest: Dawnbringers

WARNING: SPOILER ALERT

STORY ~ 20.5/30

Continuity ~ 7.5/10 I got good stories form almost everyone as to why they were there, how they got there, and what they were doing before this. I didn't get the last one from Caden, but that's alright. As well, I got a general feel for the finality of everything at the end, and the story itself carried well throughout. My only major qualm was the repeated mention of Warson by Mage Hunter, a character (I assume?) who did not get expanded upon at all. The name was tossed and I didn't find out who or what he or she or it was.
Setting ~ 6/10 This could have been done better, but as is it was done well. It seemed at times as if areas of the cavern were simply tacked on, like the workshop, and the pillars didn't seem to have any mention until the finale. However, it was all interacted with very well, so that redeemed you all in that regard.
Pacing ~ 7/10 Only a couple of slowdowns in the whole thing. I would gawk and groan as I saw how much I had to read, but it really went quickly for each of those enormous posts, and there was very little filler. Good work!

CHARACTER ~ 21/30

Dialogue ~ 4/10 A weak point for some of you, mostly with regards to the differences in how you all portrayed the speaking habits of Xem'Zund. One of you put it as if his voice resounded from the cavern itself, another put it in colored text and claimed he was using a "wizard's voice" and that it was "red on the brain" whatever that means. Consistency is key when multiple people are writing the same NPCs. Otherwise, it was good.
Action ~ 8/10 There were only a couple of places that jarred me at all, and the calling of attacks bugged me slightly. However, each stage of the fight felt completely different, and I could feel the desperation and tension building. Further, everyone described their actions very well, and interacted with the setting and each other admirably.
Persona ~ 9/10 I got a good feel for every character. Who they were, what they stood for, what they fought for, etc. As well, in the final portion, after Godhand died, each character's reaction was unique, and Lillian's heartbreak brought me to tears. High marks indeed!

WRITING STYLE ~ 20/30

Technique ~ 7/10 Most of the time you all used some interesting literary devices and sentence structure, while still mixing that with simple writing to keep it from getting over-florid. There were a couple posts from Mage Hunter that were a bit lacking in this, but they were in the beginning, and it seemed as if he warmed up rather quickly.
Mechanics ~ 6/10 Stumbles throughout, but not major ones. Most were things that would have fooled any spellchecker, but a proofread would have brought them out. Given the risks taken in Technique, you all did well here.
Clarity ~ 7/10 At the beginning, there were a couple of points where I was confused, such as when Caden was referring to (I now realize) Cydnar as "Drow?". That in particular got settled down quite a bit when you settled on "elf" for him. Otherwise, no major problems.

MISCELLANEOUS

Wild Card ~ 9/10 Great story, and a fitting end for this chapter of the Featured Quest. Bonus points for making me cry, you bastards.

TOTAL ~ 70.5

Cydnar Yrene gains 641 EXP and 300 GP
Flames of Hyperion gains 2519 EXP and 300 GP
Ataraxis gains 2773 EXP and 300 GP
Caden Law gains 2453 EXP and 220 GP
Mage Hunter gains 1605 EXP and 220 GP
Godhand gains 2034 EXP and 110 GP

Ataraxis' Stygian Arcana, Queen's Aegis, and Seamstress of the Sinister spoils approved.

Cydnar Yrene's Fangs of the Snake spoil approved, though you may mean the canines, not incisors.

If you have any questions about the judgment or how you can improve, PM me or send me a message on AIM, screen name SuperSonicMatt1.

[Zook Murnig]

exp/gp added!

Ataraxis leveled up! He is now level 9!

[Zook Murnig]

FQ Bonus EXP/GP Added!