The door creaked shut with a desolate groan, sealing Griggorn inside his chamber as he is silently seething with anger after one of the Dhau-Íssz necromancers attending to him reported about one of their fortresses taken by the enemy, he still did not posses any meaningful information about other than strong enough to take control over his undead. And possibly be the one who took something important from him, but no matter how hard he racks his brain, he can’t remember what has been taken from him. But the strange phantom pain remains within his being.

He turns back to the mirror and slowly calms down as he basks in his beauty, his hands slowly smoothening over his body. He moans as his cold palms slowly caress his sides, abdomen and then head up to end this daily procedure of his with smoothing his hair to the back. Then the cold claws of his Master’s reminding tear into his mind as he restarts the whole procedure, this time feeling the touch of cold dryness belonging to corpses, the harshness of bones, the malnourished edges of his face and the lack of shimmering white hair. His eyes unconsciously remain closed, then after gathering enough willpower, he opens them. The sight of his fresh, warm body welcomes him in the mirror, prompting him a sigh of relief. But no air caresses his lips that would exit his dark cavern of nostrils.

“Better to end this incursion myself.” He whispers to himself before he walks to the ornate, cold stone of a cabinet filled with various robes ranging from somewhat bland in material but still sewn to ones shimmering even in the dark, made of the best materials processed through magical means, worn only by highest of the dark elven echelons. Even a ceremonial attire hangs in there, adorned with silvery decorations and frame.

Without taking time to consider which one to dress up in, his right arm reaches for the one that possesses a bland, black matte texture with burgundy red frames reminiscing him of his former Abyssal Masters he made contract a century or two ago, the act he made with haste at the time, elevating him to the highest ranks of the dark elven maguses, which through the years he started gradually regretting.

As he starts dressing up in the robe, the memories of vile stench that makes him want to throw up, even though he is no longer capable of that, the indescribable burning pain that assaulted not just his body, but his soul too and the creeping feeling of being left behind, abandoned by those he once cared for, to some extent, assault him in unison. But he steels his will and continues. The boiling hatred of those three and all those who forced him to be a slave of those keeps him going.

Just as he finishes two rotting undead wearing torn attires that still retain their gaudiness enter the room, silently answering the call of their master as they carry dark silverish metal plates inside. They carefully place it upon his robe clad body, their stench filling the previously odorless chamber, but even this rotting stench is nothing compared to what he had to endure during his years as the Arch-Magus of the Ahl-Dhaugrúz.

“Get out!” After they finish putting the few, lighter plates on him, he orders them out, his voice imbued with the necromancy spell keeping them bound to his will. He straightens the robe while pushing the plates attached to his body through magnetic enchantments. Then after feeling satisfied with his looks, he covers his head in the large hood while putting his former Arch-Magus mask made of magically enhanced metal, with no decoration or detail of a face besides the eye and the bulging hill of a nose. He turns back one last time as he gets his staff from the right side of the door’s frame, taking one last look at him, looking at his past before leaving through the door.

**

A sight enough to chill the blood of any living who would witness it, a vast army of skeletal warriors unequally clad in refined, jagged armor pieces, their empty eye sockets gleaming with the hungering emptiness. Ghouls crawling on all fours, their putrid eyeless faces glaring into the distance while growling like rabid dogs, no longer resembling the intelligent races they once belonged to. Ghasts marching in similarly mismatched armors as their skeleton brethren, their rotten stench permeating the jagged surroundings of the Upper Stratum of the Bottom Layer, seemingly barely holding onto their weapons, an old trick of the undead.

Wights, a more refined form of zombies, or in this case zombies who accumulated negative matter to point where the decomposition stopped, mutating their once presentable forms into a grotesque skeletal visage that sends shivers down the spine of even the most brave. Their unnatural physical strength is also improved on, capable of using weapons without the need for tricks, like their lesser brethren. They are also equipped with better armors and weapons crafted by the undead craftsmen in the city sitting at the entrance, leading up to the Upper Layer’s Bottom Stratum.

On the front hordes of different undead beasts march in an abnormal unison. The forefront are mostly made up of bestial undead on all fours like the Tainted Beasts of the Deadfire, various large insects with dry, cracked chitinous skin, feline beasts with patches of fur fallen off, muscle and bone exposed. Undead Vaurdr, who don’t look any different than in life with how their skin still as dark as the ground and stones of the Upper Stratum. Lupine beasts native to the mountain that hunt in pacts and share some traits with basilisks, mainly the deadly gaze and while also possessing the ability to turn to a shade like state, making them one of the deadliest threats in the Upper Stratum.

A few decaying undead ogres of the deep march among the beasts, rotten shepherds to the rotten flock. Three raised undead deep giants towering over the rest, walking at the sides, creating small tremors with each step while their bodies are still clad in their fur like crude attire, their flesh still in the first stages of decomposition while the darkness eerily emanates from their empty eye sockets.

Some could even spot undead basilisk marching amongst the fore vanguard of this decaying army, their quadrupedal reptilian body with dark scales riddled with punctured scars, caused by spears and swords of the Wights.

And in the middle of this army of the dead, at first look a mage draped in dark as the shadows robes of the woven kind with a few light armor plates walks besides the towering puzzled together bone colossus of a construct with three skulls grinning in east, west and north eternally. The all swallowing darkness oozing between the bones weirdly resembling various body parts of a giant, an abdomen with lines of ivory muscles, two large bulky arms and legs. A dark light filling the empty eye sockets, with cat shaped pupils, the middle head staring with them at the towering walls of the city appearing in the distance, reaching at least seven meters.

“DRAW!” A high elven Dhau-Íssz shouts, appearing from the shadows of the tower’s entrance over the gates, his long faded gray hair swaying under his black hood, in the breeze carrying the foul stench of the Nameless’s army. His complexion sharp, bony and angular, filled with wrinkles, the once smooth fair skin of his now dry and wrinkled. His scaled helmet with four uneven horns sprouting from the sides into the backwards tucked under his armpits, shimmering like the rest of his armor under the cavernous lights of the Upper Stratum.

His voice reaches the ears of those positioned on the far end towers. At first a certain strange calmness came over him as his faded blue eyes took notice of the undead beasts marching towards, thinking that one of the patrols returned with a few extra undead.

But then the walking colossus of bones and the vampiric mage with an army of undead behind them erased any hope of that. A ting of dread filled his heart as he noticed the darkness permeating from the undead, different from Griggorn’s or theirs, swallowing the cavernous lights of the Upper Stratum around the undead.

“RELEASE!” Uraion’s last shred of naïve hope got trampled on as the vanguard of the Nameless’s army picked up on their pace, rushing like mad beasts hungering for the sweet taste of death towards the enormous walls of the fallen city. While he focused on the dim scenery of the raised beast rushing towards the wall, showered in a hail fire of arrows from the walls, some lit up with magical flames, or ice that froze them in place so the mages of the Dhau-Íssz could take them down easily, ashen clouds formed over the tower.

Uraion and his fellow clan members atop the tower noticed the air crackling with magical energies above them, the last thing they have seen is the flash if lightning bathing the world in white as it speared down from the clouds, illuminating the top and even into the decrepit city beyond the wall. The lightning struck their bodies like a viper, their flesh sizzled under their armors and robes, their bodies hitting the cold black stone with heavy thud.

Their bodies remained motionless for several seconds, their souls feeling the call of the Valkyries descending to carry them to their respective afterlives, but the graceful light fades into a cold darkness tearing into their psyche and anima, filling them with hopelessness and rage then into an eerie calmness while their corpses slowly raise from the ground, groaning.

They disperse in all directions, starting their feast on their former clansmen with an insatiable hunger, their gaping maws filled with the darkness of the void tearing at flesh and bone like a tempest tearing through a village while they spew the negative matter of the Nameless into them. Within minutes the screaming sending shivers down the living stops, replaced by the distorted groans and bellowing of the undead who threw themselves off the walls into the city.

Meanwhile the bestial undead start crawling onto the walls like a host of spiders while the Skeletal Undead Construct rushes towards the gate towering over him in size. It threw itself at the gate, empowering the force by condensing its nearly bottomless negative matter hardening its bones. The sound of splintering wood and shattering metal fills the air, debris flying in all directions hitting the nearby Dhau-Íssz clashing with the recently raised undead of the Nameless receiving it likewise.

The ever grinning mouths of It’s skull open and vomits out a miasma of darkness that quickly spreads out, towards the living like a locust swarming towards the crop. Miasma enters through the orifices of those who have not noticed it in time, erecting invisible wards around their bodies to shield themselves from the cursed mist. Many starts convulsing and fall dead before rising up to turn on their former fellow kin, attacking them like wild beasts while the Skeletal Undead Construct watches from the gate, an eerie satisfaction on its heads to the onlooker while more and more undead pour into the fallen dark elven city.

The screaming pervading the outer district of the city gradually lessens, slowly replaced by the dismaying sounds of the undead sniffing for their next meal before their next mental command arrives from the Skeletal Construct of the Nameless. They move as neonates with newfound fervor towards the next wall separating the inner districts from the outer. Connecting the ground and the ceiling in the center of the city, the spiral tower’s top half riddled with holes and even darker than its previous state after the flames of the Nightscale engulfed it offers a strange, eerie sight.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

The now necropolis, formerly the capital of dark elves of Mount Dhaugrúz, Asyhneaeas is located in the center of the Upper Stratum of the Bottom Layer, its Spiral Tower once the home of the dark elven ruling council. While the dark elves have their kings and queens, or had in their case, they serve more of a religious role than one of governmental. Rulers are chosen by the demonic gods of the dark elves, in the case of Mount Dhaugrúz the Elder Demon of Gluttony, the Meridian of Wrath, and the Derelict Devil being the ones granting their taint upon the next ruler when the previous dies in either a raid in the world above, or when the slowly acting poison of a blessing consumes the mind and life of the ruler.

For these reasons the ruling council usually takes the role of government, making laws, upholding them and even having total control over the military. With the arrival of the Deadfire, the dark elves like their kin on the world above, lost their king that ruled them for almost a century now, prompting the Arch-Magus to take the responsibility of upholding the contract of the Abyssal Triumvirate at all costs.

Even their ruling council got lost during the rampage of the dragon, Acniss being the sole survivor leading her people to the labyrinthian catacombs that serves as the final resting place of their greatest. Then later Griggorn, the previous Arch-Magus on the brink of collapse a decade ago, decided to betray his kind for a cure to the negative effects that consumed his being from the Nightscale.

The Skeletal Construct seemingly watches the Spiral Tower from the distance, sensing the cold necrotic residue oozing within the tower. While in the past it was a place where boring paperwork was done by the officials of the dark elven kingdom, the place since the takeover of the Dhau-Íssz is now a lair of undead and necromancers who constantly hoard the corpses of scouts of both dark elves and deep dwarves who haven’t swear fealty to their scaled overlord, constantly raised to serve him in eternity, bolstering his army for the coming war.

While the rest of the dead move towards the walls, crawling while showered in spells and arrows, the Skeletal Construct’s attention remains on the Spiral Tower, its empty eyes noticing the shadowy outlines of avian creatures, slowly revealing their scaled forms as the light of the ceiling shines upon their forms. Wyverns, former bird like monsters that were tainted by the Deadfire, resulting in obsidian gleaming scales, somewhat reminiscent of the starless night sky, two wings that serve as their arms too with three claws extending from it and two legs at the back with long tail reaching far into the darkness of the tower’s interior.

They release a soul shaking scream from their transformed beaked heads as they swoop down from the holes, falling for several seconds before they rapidly change their trajectory, flying over the walls, grabbing onto the few undead making it to the top, then releasing them over the outer district, their distorted screams gradually increasing to the nonexistent ears of It.

It holds its skeletal arms out, channeling negative matter through them to its ivory palms, shaping it into spheres before hurling them towards the Wyverns flying way above in the air, striking at the undead climbing to the top. They manage to evade most of them, from one moment they fly with an average speed, then as they notice the dark spheres flying towards them, they hasten up unnaturally as if they teleport dozens of meters ahead.

While the Skeletal Construct continues its vain attempt to take down the Wyverns, the Vampiric Mage continues taking down the Dhau-Íssz mages and archers atop the wall while protecting the undead assaulting the gate, arrows aimed at the undead bounce off, spells dissipate on impact as wards constantly appear over the dead. Their weapons slowly pick the gate apart until splintered holes appear on its rough wooden surface, large enough for the dead to crawls through it, seemingly expand them with their mass.

The first few dozen undead fell victim to the spears and arrows of those on the street level, while the rest coming through the now mostly destroyed gate use the fallen kin of theirs as shields, even flinging them at the enemy, with some losing their balance as the heavy carcasses hit them. With most of the archers and mages taken care of, the Vampiric Mage continues its way following after its lesser brethren, imbuing the moving with the aspect of air, hastening their movements, while the unmoving thrown ones emit crackles of lightning with some proving deadly enough to create holes in the long line of shield wall of the Dhau-Íssz.

The grizzly cacophony of battle rings through the streets as the horde of dead and the living clash. Blood and chunks of flesh, both rotten and fresh painting the ruined buildings once filled with the warmth of life and family. Spells and arrows fly in all direction, hitting friend and foe all the same.

The dead rise on both sides, Dhau-Íssz necromancers raising their own to continue the fight. The darkness of the Nameless raising others, turning them against their former friends and family in a grizzly fashion, while also turning some of the Dhau-Íssz’s to their side. A river of blood flows in the streets under their feet, flowing straight out into the outer districts and beyond the boundaries of the wall, while the few who lost their moral, the terror of death and eternal service under the unknown instigating them to abandon their fellow comrades to run, carrying the stench of death through the streets while creating a trail of bloody footsteps through the twisting maze like streets.

And just like the blood that flood the opposite, the undead of the Nameless spread after them, following the combined stench of death and the fear of the living, their weapons cutting through the few fearless while the more primal held their claws out in a grotesque way to embrace, trying to beckon them to join in their abhorrent unity.

With slow footsteps the Vampiric Mage continues following after its more primal kin while the Skeletal Construct slowly catches up after giving up on the Wyverns, only managing to take one down, who fell on one of the buildings, crashing through it and flattening the few covering Dhau-Íssz inside, destroying their sense of security in their last moments, at least for those who died quickly, the unlucky ones still wailing as life slowly slips from them envying them.

The Vampiric Mage stops in its tracks, slightly turnings back as if to wait for its big brother to join in the fun that is about the happen. Its empty batlike eyes stare at the three grinning skulls slowly getting closer, while also keeping an eye to the skies, measuring the velocity and trajectory of the wyverns flying above them like vultures waiting for the right moment to strike. A larger cloud veils the city in complete darkness, so thick that the Dhau-Íssz mages, necromancers start floating magical lights in the air to lessen the panic of the warriors fleeing or fighting to hold back the undead, waiting for reinforcements to tip the scales of their losing side.

Then the dimly lit scenery of the city lit up at multiple points in tandem as the negative matter infused lightning strikes at the fast-flying wyverns, hitting three out of the seven. Their crackling, smoking corpses dive towards the ruined buildings, but before they would land violently, they instantly start flying once more, a distorted scream leaving their beaked shape mouths with darkness condensing in them into a breath imitating their Father’s.

A cone shaped dark miasma vomited by them engulfs the still living arches and mages atop the walls, corroding their bodies, tainting their souls as they are brought into the fold of the Nameless, readjusting their aim from their former foes to their former fellows. The moment the last on the wall is turned, the undead wyverns turn towards their siblings, taking their focus from the ground.

Each district fell one by one, its protectors retreating both slow and rapidly as the number of the Namelesses grew. First the former market district that once teemed with life and the never-ending sounds of the crowd and shopkeepers. Then the former temple district overwhelmed by ravenous undead beasts, dark ichor dripping and tainting the ash and debris covered floors of the large temple, once housing the abyssal clergy of the dark elves, offering sacrifice to their demonic gods for various boons and or to replenish their forces with the enslaved arachnids and various other monsters created through these infernal blood rituals. After that the Martial District followed, previously housing members of the warrior caste, the hybrid children of dark elves and deep dwarves bred to be the police force upholding the law in the city, and to bring slaves down from the kingdom of the north that befell the same fate.

Thousands of Dhau-Íssz fell in hours as the number of the dead tied to the Nameless swarm through the streets like a hungering locust, even the black wyverns fell as the last is torn to shreds by the claws and teeth of its cursed sibling. Shouts ordering the closing of the gates ring through the streets, while archers and mages release spells, their echoing voices joining in a dissonant cacophony on the walls. Yells and death wails turn to groans as the last who never reached the gates scream for their fellow clansmen to open the gates, followed by the noise of undead once again crawling upwards the wall, a sound similar to someone scraping their nails across a stone tablet so hard they start coming off while also penetrating the hard and cold surface of it.

The gates give in within seconds, seconds that still proved enough for the Dhau-Íssz inside the Noble District to rally their ranks, warriors form into shield walls, behind them archers raising their ivory bows while drawing arrows, mages and necromancers chanting spells that both empower the warriors, relieving the accumulated fatigue of retreating and erasing any shred of dread, while others channel their mana and infuse them with the various elemental aspects.

The exact same moment the gate shatters to splinters, followed by the undead rushing in like wild beasts, the enormous ornate entrance of the Spiral Tower opens, revealing the tall slender figure clad in black and red robes with a hood over his head, his face hidden behind a faceless mask, Griggorn the Chosen of the Nightscale walks out slowly, his staff with an intricate deathly design with the Mythrinite skull of a dragon laying on top, two dark jewels embedded into its eye holes, invisible magical energies moving in them perpetually.

His head slowly tilts around, almost artifice like as he takes in the view of the battle, a minor headache assaulting him resulted from the sounds of the battle unfolding front of him several meters. Spheres of flames and ice flew overhead the shield wall, hitting the larger or more grouped up undead, lightning some on fire, others turn into motionless rotten statues encased in ice. Arrows enchanted by mages who run low on their mana reserves hit their decaying targets, some bounces off the strangely well-crafted armor. At certain points along the line of shield wall forming around the Spiral Tower in a circle, holes created as the seemingly endless number of undead breakthroughs, feasting on the unlucky warriors whose bloody screams diminish the moral of the nearby Dhau-Íssz.

The gentle, warm feeling of his mana flowing inside his soul like a river in a serene forest slowly changes to one similar to swallowing the small roasted wings of a chicken resulting in the somewhat painful feeling of the soft bones scraping the insides of your throat as it slides down with a bit of help. His arms and legs invisible under the clothing gains the rough texture of the dark earth beneath his feet as he steps down from the stairs leading down.

The whispers of the spirits attuned to the element of earth fill his mind, unpleasant to the ears as they sound like the grinding of stones. Thanks to decades of practice, Griggorn manages to drown those whispers out, focusing his will to shape the earth aspect spell to its intended form while also smother the cinders of anger burning his nerves thanks to the whispers.

Then his mana infused with the minor aspect of earth escapes his body while tethered to his will, gradually turning visible, first as a bluish mass of energy that rapidly takes on a dark grayish brown color while also gaining the texture of hard stone shaped into javelin like forms floating in the air above the Dhau-Íssz holding the army of the dead at bay.

Griggorn goes through the same process quickly, this time the earth infused mana of his spreading out under his feet, then for a millisecond disappears into nothingness, reappearing several meters beyond the shield wall circling around the Spiral Tower. The yowling of the earth shakes everyone, living and dead without discrimination, while the walls slowly crumble upon the undead, statues of bat like demons fell on a few Dhau-Íssz as the ground opens like a hungering maw, about to satiate its hunger…