The flicker of the torches dances in the draft, casting wavering shadows across the walls and the decrepit bookshelves filled with mainly old tomes blackened by the flames of inevitability, of the dim chamber. The only sound is the faint footsteps and the low moan of wind entering through the windows allowing the cold, gentle lights of the Upper Stratum, carrying the mixed scent of decay and earth with it. The white and dark eerie, slender figure of the Nameless walks slowly to one of the window facing the vast distance, carrying one of the few tomes that managed to escape the gruesome fate of the all devouring flames of the Deadfire, its pages filled with scribbles and runes not of the material world of the mortals, depictions of various procedures of sewing body and soul portrayed in stomach churning detail precisely on every second page of the tome.
“Apa.” For a slight moment, his hands shake and he drops the book, he speaks a single word from his mouth surrounded by skin as dark as the starless night, dim and suffocating, with the high voice of a child. His previously emotionless androgynous face plastered with the fear of being lost, taken from home and starts crying as he collapses to the ground. Tear and snot combine as he starts to wail while curling up on the floor, tightly embracing himself on the cold, unfamiliar floor.
Then as suddenly as it started, he stops crying and gets up from the floor with a motionless look on his face once again. He swipes his dark robes and wipes the snot and tear, disintegrating them with a bit of negative matter before he crouches down to pick up the tome and continues reading it while continuing his way towards the window. He leans out as he rests his elbows on it, for a short moment he stares out into the distance, witnessing a large horde of undead leaving the city and heading north east on the road paved by the dark elves previously occupying the city, marching autonomously towards a nearby deep dwarven ruin currently occupied by a group of Dhau-Íssz necromancers, cultists of the Deadfire.
“Some changes to this are needed.” A raspy voice comes out of his mouth, carrying a sense of experience, longevity as he speaks with a slight distortion. He lifts his dark, scale covered clawed right hand over the book, shadowy tendrils appearing out of thin air with a hint of bluish aura to them, slowly creeping towards the old, yellowish paper filled with magical dark elven runes and long description. The shadowy tendrils’ ends sharpen until they resemble a pencil and imitate the motion of writing, the dried tint in the book fading and shifting as a new text is written while the Nameless walks out from the chamber.
**
“You should have waited. Now that some of them escaped, they know our location.” Cacmieh voice echoes within the closed chamber, filled with an unnatural calmness as he sits in his throne quite stiffly while staring daggers with Zoklaeth.
“They’re probably already aware of the haven. We’re alive because that damn overgrown lizard doesn’t give too much shit about us.” He lifts his head that stared down at the floor while resting on his claymore, his veins that were popped out on his temples, disappearing, yet his voice still carries the unending anger that tears him within perpetually. He hardens his hands around his claymore’s grip, the ground softly quakes, while the sound of it entering into the floor with quite the force reverberates within the chamber, Cacmieh and Acniss watching him with bored looks on their faces as they are fully used to his temper while the two guards outside the chamber, shake as they hear and feel it.
“I think so too.” Cacmieh and Zoklaeth expressions change to a stunned one as Acniss speaks, agreeing with Zoklaeth. She slowly takes a sip from her glass, her exceedingly long hair with seven braided pony tails bound with swirling shadows each rustling between her back and the throne’s cold and hard splat while her menacing, captivating eyes shift to the two with a slight contempt. “Nonetheless, it was still reckless of you to just barge out the gate.” She turns her head towards the flabbergasted Zoklaeth, calming him down as he’s mesmerized by the ruby like eyes, carefully watching as her supple lips move as she forms her words. Then his suppressed anger rises within him, first mixing then diminishing the warm, fuzzy feeling within himself.
“Now was that all you wanted to talk about?” Before he could speak, Acniss raises her slender arm and stopping him from uttering any word as she looks at Cacmieh and asks. “Still no word about her.” Cacmieh’s cold motionless voice says as he stares back at her. “Seems like we cannot count on the alliance of that necromancer.” He rises up from his throna elegantly, and quite eerily, sending a faint feeling of shivers done his two contemporaries spines.
“What about the dwarves?” Zoklaeth’s face contorts ever so slightly as he contemplates, pushing his anger away then speaks with a bit of hesitation. The dwarves of Mount Dhaugrúz otherwise known as the Dhaugrians named after their home, differ from their southern cousins in many ways. One of the major difference that is visible is their skin tones ranging from dark blue to as dark as the mountain itself, a result of their century long residing in the mountain, the dormant negative matter seeping into their anima, similarly to the dark elves of Elysium. Their mortality rate is also much lower than their southern kin, also a result of the constant exposure to the negative matter, not so much of the local fauna, even though that also claims their warriors. The other major difference, one that is just as visible, is their fervent worship of death entities and aberrations lurking between the planes. Just like their neighbors, the Dhaugrians also teach necromancy amongst their mages, and in the past raised whole armies that they terrorized the surface world.
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The two races while warred at the very beginning, after heavy losses, and an invasion from the now fallen kingdom of Virdr, led to the two races sit down, and establish a somewhat better relationship, not outright alliance. Zoklaeth himself and most of the warrior caste of the dark elves a result of that, hybrid children of both races, excelling at both martial arts while also retaining the elves magical prowess. Even though before the arrival of the Deadfire, the leaders of the warrior caste were still pure dark elves.
“That is an option, even though I have my own doubts about them.” She licks the dark liquid off from her lips while slowly turning towards Zoklaeth. “They would have already sought us, my guess they already bow down to the dragon.” Cacmieh speaks with his emotionless deep voice while a blank disgust settles on his handsome elven face. Zoklaeth’s anger rises once more and grabs his stuck sword, lifts it out from the ground with ease and almost readies to chop off Cacmieh’s head, but before he could a knock sounds on the door, then another and final third, signaling that a messenger arrived with important information, Acniss looking quite saddened as Zoklaeth calms himself down and puts his sword over his back.
“Come in.” He yells, his voice sending shivers down the messenger and the two guards on the other side. “Undead!” The door slowly creaks open revealing a dark elven scout in light weight armor made of the harvested and magically processed slimy web of large spiders, hardened by magical procedures honed and perfected through the centuries by the dark elves themselves, resulting in a sleek, hard almost metallic resembling leather appearance that can stop a magically empowered strike from a blunt or edged weapon, and weaker or mid-level enchantments woven into it to protect the wearer from mages of the average kind found in all armed forces of Elysium.
Ending the meeting abruptly, Zoklaeth rushes out from the chamber with his claymore haphazardly flinging left to right on his back, the young appearing scout managing to quickly step out of his way before he would get knocked over by the seemingly enraged general. Cacmieh looks back at Acniss who seemingly uninterested, continues consuming the ominous beverage within her exquisite glass, taking a single short glance at him before standing up and leaving without a word.
Cacmieh lets out a sigh before he too leaves their meeting chamber, the scout awkwardly following after the Arch-Magus with a puzzled look, somehow thinking that he may have made a mistake, even though he did not.
Standing atop the walls overlooking the remains of the battlefield littered with the remains of undead and some dark elves of the warrior caste, Zoklaeth grinds his teeth while his armored hands crack the obsidian lower frame of the window as he stares down at lone tall figure of draped in swirling, shifting shadows and contrasting white bone like armor that almost seems like it is its body. “What is that?” Cacmieh who managed to catch up with him whispers under his breath while staring down at the Arnyak, his inscriptions set off trying to gauge their power and their nature. As he gleams the stiff figure standing in place, almost resembling an eerie statue, for the first time in a long while he feels an unnatural coldness filling him with fear. The primal fear of death, even as parts of him are sure of themselves that in a one on one battle he could probably win.
“Stop.” He instinctively grabs the shoulders of Zoklaeth who was about to storm out to face the single Arnyak, feeling a familiar presence nearby beyond the hills. “Why?” Zoklaeth asks with an annoyed look, then Cacmieh points down where the Arnyak starts moving. It raises its arms slowly, the shadows gradually harden on the dark ground, swallowing the hard surface lit by vivid, cold lights. The darkness slowly progresses towards the bordering rocky hill, devouring the corpses. The dislocated, partially shattered bones slowly reassemble and the white or yellowish bones start to darken as the pitch blackness fills them, lighting their empty eyes up, the rotting carcasses of the dark elven warriors clad in mismatched menacing armors turning them into demonic knights from the Abyss Below itself rise up, shadowy mist pouring out from the openings between their jagged plates. Similarly the zombies that were cut down by Zoklaeth and his warriors get up in a slow pace, reattaching their severed parts where the decaying flesh regrows partially, sewn together by the hazy dark necrotic energies of the Nameless.
The darkness quickly dissipates as the last one gets up and in line with the rest, watching the walls hidden behind illusion with a foreboding silence with the Arnyak turned back a few steps away from the hidden bridge itself. Then like waves parting, the middle of the small army of freshly risen undead make way for the small feminine figure clad in the scout armor of the dark elves fitted for her slender, athletic body with her white hair contrasting the dark scenery, her eyes gleaming with joy as she seemingly sees through the illusion and pierces into the eyes of her teacher, Cacmieh.