The wailing of the wind slowly picks up in the seemingly endless stairs heading down into the depths under the Spiral Tower of fallen city the Nameless took the day he arrived down to the Upper Stratum of the Bottom Layer of Mount Dhaugrúz. The stomach churning vile stench gradually increases as the mockingly radiating figure of Ferthur slowly descends towards the bottom, hovering in the air in a meditating pose, his halo parting the dim shadows around him with its grayish white light.
Ferthur stops at front of a large obsidian gate, strange yet intricate skeletons hewn into its black as the void surface, each holding its arms into the air reaching towards a dark sun radiating an abyss of lightlessness. He unfolds his ivory hooved legs, sending a soft echo through the long stairs upwards with no end to be seen, then his radiating form rapidly changes to his infernal one.
He confidently raises his arms and aims at the seal in the middle. The seal was hauntingly beautiful masterpiece crafted by a dark elven magesmith, its intricate design included an ever grinning skull with its unnaturally long tongue held out. The end of it rolled around the handle of hourglass half-full, with the sands of mortality, the other half filled with particles of necrotic kind.
One click follows after another, Ferthur slowly stepping backwards as the series of clicking stops after which a gap appeared carrying a warm light absent of any tenderness, accompanied by the vile stench that his nose already picked up on while traversing the stairs. Through the fully opened gate, the sight of a great hall entered his sight. The ceiling seemingly designed for giants of the deep towering at six meters or above, enormous thick columns with hard edges keeping it from falling onto the hundred if not almost thousands of marble platforms filled with naked corpses of withered elves, both high and dark kind, dwarves with skin tones ranging from gray to outright black as the night, humans who range from young, in their early twenties up to their late fifties or even sixties, a rare age in the north or even in the deep below of Mount Dhaugrúz.
Not so distant memories flood the infernal mind of Ferthur, walking between the rows of stone platforms until the sight of the lich draped in tattered robes, with a presence that seemed to drain the air of all warmth and joy, leaving only a cold suffocating void. Both his ears once sharp and long now crumbled to rot, only the snail like twist remaining at the sides. Eye sockets empty, gleaming with the malice of undeath, and a cold light blue light evoking what the devil tried to pin point as pity, a thing he remembered from the distant past of his.
“I want you to keep silent about this place, not even those three learn about this place.” As they reach the far end, Griggorn turns around with a sour look on his face, speaking with a cold whisper, like the winter’s wind carrying the chills of passing.
“Thou will be my command.” Ferthur responds, bowing while his mocking radiant aura casts its light onto two corpses belonging to an androgynous looking young dark elven male with strange infernal tattoos covering his body below the neck. The other a moon elven woman with similar tattoos etched into her wrist and ankles in a chain like formation. Griggorn passes beside the devil, his eyes showing clear signs of distrust as he peeks upon the devil for one last time before sending him back to its Abyssal Layer.
“I had done as ye commanded!” After coming back from reliving the memory, Ferthur arrives at the far end of the hall, where the Nameless stands in the middle of a circle with intricate etching mimicking bones conjoined in a dance around him, tendril like empty, slim canals spreading in the direction of the entrance, connecting to the platforms. A strange liquid with the same light bluish color as necrotic energies possess flow into the platforms, endlessly from a hole hidden under the robes of the Nameless.
The devil calls out to its new master, confirming that he has finished imbuing the Spider Undead Construct with its own infernal essence, granting it the powers and gifts of the Abyss. The Nameless turns around slightly, staring into the brimming with hellfire eyes of Ferthur blankly, expressing his thanks in a soft voice, carrying echoes of at least a child, an old man’s and a guttural beast’s that has to muster all of its braincells to utter more than a bestial growl.
“Now onto our agreement, what has he sought from all this?” The Nameless spoke as he turned around, not to look at Ferthur, but to take in the eerily silent scenery, his voices echoing through the vast hall that seemed impossible to be built by mortal hands. Made from the very stones that dote the accursed Layers of the Abyss twisting at the bottom of the World Tree of the Maker, digging into the endless sea of the Void. Most often referred to as the brimstone by mortals, an imitation of the hard natural object known as stone, the hardened carcass of spirits of the earth as some would refer to it in a poetic manner. While the truth is close to it, brimstone on the other hand is just demons and devils mingling the forbidden aspect of Disorder with the minor aspect of the Earth and Fire, creating a material that is constantly emanating the heat of the Hells, corrupting the air with malice while also creating a sort of safe space where they can manifest most if not all of their glory.
Ferthur continues with his explanation, telling the Nameless about how this place served not just a safe haven to him, but to Griggorn too where he could stave off the influence of the Triumvirate of Abyssal Overlords of the dark elves, but also reducing the negative effects that accumulated over the years, decades since the fall of the King. Each corpse laid out on the cold stone contains their soul to this day, shackled by necrotic magic Griggorn learnt through tomes hidden even to the magus caste of his kin, deep in the catacombs.
“The more one spends their existence shackled to us, the more their soul is slowly tainted by the essence of the Abyss that we carry.” The devil continues. “If one knows to harness it, it can lead to ascension, but even he and his predecessors were unaware of this secret.” Ferthur says, his voice slowing down, a strange grin curves onto his deer like head as if he is reminiscing. Just like the Kings and Queens of the dark elves before, Griggorn slowly headed for annihilation as Ferthur continues with his explanation.
“But then in the same tome ye conjured me to this plane, he found a way to slow it down.” He adds while pointing at the corpses with their tainted souls still lingering inside them, their silent screams unheard by the two. Out of volition. “He managed to shave off tumors, for lack of better word, abyssal kind and force them onto the souls of these.” He walks besides the Nameless who stares right into the closed eyes of the moon elven slave, his cold hands touching her soft face.
As he reaches his back, he freezes then retreats back like a little pup scared by the aggressive step of its owner, the cold dreadful feeling assaulting his being once more, wishing once more for the end of their bargain to come to an end, a thought he never believed would ever grace his mind.
A primal darkness seeps out from the Nameless icy, ivory palm with claws as black as the endless void, quickly shaping into thin veins with a mind of their own as they spread out and enter the doll like corpse’s orifices like worms crawling on a decomposing body under the cruel warmth of the sun.
The dissonance of the wailing dead loses one of its key components, going silent as the veins trickle their way into her skin, penetrating through flesh and bone like the simple blade of an overeager adventurer through the form of a wraith. Reaching the end of their journey, the vein shaped primal darkness bites into the soul bound to the body, filling her mind and soul with an eerie calmness, the cold embrace of not death itself, but something that existed before it, but also not. This primal darkness forms into a link, in which through a sweet symphony soothes her soul, telling her to embrace it, so that it can grant her freedom in which she was placed upon the birth of her existence, offering the kinship of thousands without segregation.
Ferthur witnesses the whole event, reflexively changing back to his mockingly radiant form to mask his dread behind the façade of holy calmness. He watches as an unmoving wind blows the torches offering their light to the hall, the darkness hardening beyond the natural while he starts shaking uncontrollably without knowing. He senses a something exerting itself into the world, something that even to him feels unnatural, alien. He weirds out the moment he looks upon the Nameless standing staring into the nothingness surrounding them, seemingly speaking without words. Then as quickly as the event unfolded before them, it halts to an end.
“Finally showed himself.” He turns around and with an eerie smile speaks in the tongue raspy and guttural undeserving to his androgynous pale as the snow complexion, as it has been damaged by decades of dabbling in the dark arts that drained the natural span of the body and soul. And then like nothing happened, continues his work, spreading the seeds of void into the corpses while Ferthur watches, afraid to utter any word.
**
The distorted growls, groans of the undead slowly disappear in the abyssal distance of the split earth while the rest stop their mindless march towards the other side where the Dhau-Íssz let out a collective sigh while the ones at the back rest, waiting for their fatigue to pass by as a few of the mages accompanying Griggorn rejuvenate them slowly.
A strange silence falls upon the city as the two sides stare daggers at each other. The first line of Dhau-Íssz warriors keep their eyes locked on the undead. The undead emptily stares right back at them, some measuring the distance while making movements similar to one trying to jump across a chasm. Minutes pass, feeling like hours to the living as they wait for Griggorn to give an order or just cast the next spell, but the dark elven Chosen of the Nightscale remains motionless, staring at the Skeletal Undead Construct standing out in the horde of dead with its three skulls grinning mockingly at him.
His robe starts to flicker, an unnatural wind grabbing his body up while he slowly tilts his staff into position with the metallic dragon head staring down at the hordes of undead below them. Its gem eyes lit up with a fiery light as flames appear in its long jaws with each razor sharp teeth carefully crafted. A long cone of fire burning with the heat of a sun bombards the undead. Without a single reaction, the undead remains still before crumbling into dust, their armor melting into a puddle of hot liquid metal steaming and mixing with the ash that remains. The Noble District erupts in a cacophony of joyful cheers as the Dhau-Íssz watches him reduce the numbers. Then as quickly as it started, the cheers stop as Griggorn disappears while a lightless lightning strikes at where he floated, destroying the edge of the undead’s side, earth swallowed by the abyss below.
Menacing black clouds gather above the side of the Spiral Tower, each Dhau-Íssz preparing for their end as the Vampiric Mage on the wall raises its arms and staff in the air, channelling and shaping his mana into the spell. The image of their families and friends, moments of joy and trial flashing in their minds, making peace before the end. Then in the next instant, the Vampiric Mage bursts into flames like a phoenix during its rebirth cycle, leaving behind his staff behind the pile of ash that was once its decaying body bound into eternal service.
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The top section of the wall disappears into nothingness, a gigantic mass of negative matter engulfing the whole including where the Vampiric Mage had fallen, and the point where Griggorn floated in the air. Like a locust of mites, the negative matter devours and corrodes stone, ash and wood without a care in the world, leaving behind the void of space and its eerie coldness. Its sender grins as Its empty eye holes stare at the destruction it caused while lowering its right ivory arm with negative matter steaming off of it.
A force created from the violent engagement of a flame element spell of chaotic swirling shapes and the black ward of negative matter, sending a good chunk of the nearby undead into their kin, destroying whatever order they had amongst their ranks. Spare bones, moulded into small spears sprout from Its arms, locking onto to the soul wave of Griggorn. The former Arch-Magus continuously blips out of existence, in one moment he hovers above the ravenous undead clawing and or swinging at the air. Then the next moment appears slightly above the wall as he evades the oncoming ivory spears with a mind of their own, changing their trajectory.
Then spells of different elements hurl towards him from the outer districts, former Dhau-Íssz mages and necromancers raised to serve their new master aiming to take down their former superior. He clicks his tongue between spells as he returns fire and ice at them, burning their moving corpses to cinders or freezing them before they shatter to millions of pieces that slowly melt in the heat burning besides.
As he shifts to use less teleportation, Griggorn collects the fading mana of his former servants quickly shaping them into wards as the bone spears pick up on their pace and the undead wyverns change their direction towards him while spitting necrotic flames at his way. In retaliation, two of the five raised wyverns explode, their burning bits and pieces falling on top of the undead slowly marching towards the Noble District. The wild flames, a mixture of the forbidden aspect of Disorder and the minor aspect of Fire, starts spreading from the chunks of rotten meat and bones onto the walking dead, burning them to flaming ashes before continuing their way from one undead to another. The flames create a weirdly mesmerising scenery as they spread across the street like a fiery orange serpent slithering through a tunnel missing its ceiling, devouring uncaringly everything and anything in its path.
Then before it could enter into the Noble District, the flames of chaos snuff out as an unnatural coldness spread over the streets filled with nothing but the burnt, ruined buildings that once served as homes to the Warrior Caste in the capital. The cause being the at least five to six meters tall construct of bones, emitting darkness from Its crevasses possessing a coldness capable of calming even the abyssal fire of Griggorn.
Griggorn conjures three swirling flames of the abyssal kind, solidifying them with adding the minor aspect of earth to the unseen runes making up the spells. Then one after the other, each disappears into thin air. An explosion shakes the Martial District, with a few undead using their bodies to protect their grafted together sibling, their bodies exploding into thousand putrid pieces while hunks of blazing rocks fly in all direction, burning their way through obsidian and bone as they puncture a hole through the left arm of the Skeletal Undead Construct.
Feeling as if victory is in his hands, Griggorn floats closer to the Skeletal Undead Construct slowly getting up from its knees, the cracking of bones echoing through the streets, reaching up to the ears of his. His echoing voice starts to chant, concentrating mana into the shape and intent of destruction, an enormous fiery sphere that’s ready to swallow the world.
Then it disappears as he quickly changes the note of his chanting, the flames turning into a much more serene blue ward that stops the incoming bone shards penetrating through its transparent surface, creating cracks that slowly expand until the wards shatter, prompting Griggorn to place himself into a visible distance away. His relief is short lived as he feels something cold and sharp puncturing through his robes and flesh.
Pain, he hasn’t felt in decades if not almost a century surge through his body, distracting his mind enough to revoke the spell that kept him floating in the air. Maddening whispers pierce his mind, beckoning him to give up, to join the unity. But through his raged filled will, manages to tear the shard out from his sides and back, quickly dampening the landing by conjuring up a few layers of wards, making it feel like more when someone jumps onto their soft bed, bouncing once or twice before spreading his limb out.
He takes his mask off while biting onto his tongue as the flesh of his grows back, the wounds previously ornamenting his body no longer visible. The same couldn’t be said for his black and red robe riddled with three holes large enough to fit his slender arm’s fist through it. While the sensation of pain slowly decreases, he formulates a plan to quickly take care of the Skeletal Construct, the image of its mockingly grinning heads evoking slight anger that he pushes back before grabbing onto his staff, using it to assist himself standing back onto his two feet.
The scenery of the obsidian ruined home of dark elven kind changes to the streets, the seemingly gigantic Skeletal Construct standing with Its back to him. Bones grind against bone, a darkness oozing from Its crevasses that so thick it seems to swallow reality, as It slowly turns around. It started walking slowly towards Griggorn, each step accompanied by a deafening clatter of bones on stone, while its movements were like a giant marionette’s.
The silence between them was heavy and charged with tension like a thick fog that refused to dissipate, the noises of the battle that just restarted in the Noble District completely mute to the two. The six empty eye holes of the Skeletal Construct met with Griggorn’s two and for a moment it seemed like they were communicating with words, throwing insults at each other, to rile up their opposition, tempting them to make the first move that may prove fatal.
The empty streets with dark, decrepit buildings on each side felt more like a stage than the remains of a once well populated city teeming with life, the two of them only actors in this tense, silent drama trying to recreate a duel of fates. Then Griggorn feeling something close to anxiety, makes the first move as he condenses the invisible mana floating around them, tainted by the necrotic energies of the mountain.
The air gradually cools down, a feeling reminiscent of someone sucking the vitality out of him rises within Griggorn. He quickly notices the negative matter condensing into a swirling spherical shape right in front of the Skeletal Construct, with a clear aim at him. The echoes of his chanting fill the streets once more, the earth shatters in a straight line breaking the balance of the Skeletal Construct, while a second spell of the fire element made into a large square form that is sliced into a hundred pieces. Each cubicle of flame possessing a pseudo mind filled with a rage that prompts them to explode, swallowing and devouring everything they latch onto, or in this case a wrathful hunger towards the Skeletal Construct.
They tore through the air, like burning meteors on a collision course with their target. On impact the thunderous roars of dragons reverberate through the streets, flames submerging the nearby ruined buildings somewhat taller than the Skeletal Construct. Whom erects a ward in front of its hulking, ivory puzzled together body, the heat of the flames burning small patches onto its rough ivory texture, resembling tree bark that had been worn by time and weather.
While the flames continue their rage, It sends Its retaliation like one noble accepting the other’s invitation to duel. Negative matter forms around Its three skulls, masking the whole of each before carefully separating, keeping the shapes of each grinning skull. Flying through the ward and flames snuffing them out with their otherworldly cold presence, each of the nine skulls mockingly crackle as they fly through the air heading straight towards Griggorn. As they tear through the air, muscles and skin of negative matter forms around them, taking on the facial appearance they possessed in life, a withered looking dark elf with long, smooth hair, a crude orc with tusks sprouting from his large lips, and a dwarf with a thick long knotted beard.
Who instead of opting to erect a ward, disappears into thin air while the skulls of negative matter continue on their merry way.
From high above the air, Griggorn barrages the Skeletal Construct with pellets of abyssal fire, most bouncing and dissipating into nothingness as they impact on the transparent surface of Its wards while some find their way, sneaking through holes while it forms, exploding when meeting their targets, the joints of the hulking bone colossus. One of the pellets even manages to enter the right skull’s eye holes, exploding in a swirl of flames, changing its colour from a darker tone to a lighter, bright as the flames of golden dragons.
Its left arm raises up slowly while swirling negative matter condenses into it, then holds it up towards the cavernous ceiling, blindly aiming at Griggorn while the barrage continues. A lightless beam shoots towards the ceiling, even reaching the spires of maugrite hanging from that at first glance swallow the deathly energies, followed by the part gluing them to the ceiling seemingly break apart sending it down onto the heads of numerous Dhau-Íssz and undead of the Nameless fighting under it, crushing them instantly.
Even Griggorn did not evaded it in time, his right shoulder got grazed by it resulting a good chunk of it eroding into nothingness. As the former Arch-Magus, a gifted sorcerer of his kin, he extracts the lingering negative matter while ignoring the accompanying whispers of unknown source.
As he extracts the last bit of negative matter clinging to his wound, with a seemingly insatiable hunger for not just flesh, but even for his soul, the shock of it ends, the pain assaulting him in instant, his cry mixed of the pain and anger echoing through the inner districts of the city, almost sounding like a signal of some beast calling for the aid of its brethren.
Without even noticing, a smile curls on his lips, with a crazed complexion stares at the Skeletal Construct, the adrenalin he hasn’t felt in ages rushes through his body. For the first time in a long time, maybe centuries, Griggorn is enjoying something.
But his mood is quickly ruined, the timeless heavy presence reminds him this is not the time for one to enjoy themselves. He reminds Griggorn that their deal is nullified in case of his death, which could either happen by the Skeletal Construct’s hands or by His. If he dies, his soul is damned to be claimed by those three, a sentence he would like to avoid no matter the cost after witnessing the fate of Kings and Queens that foolishly bargained with them.
He takes deep breaths to calm himself down while keeping his eyes on the Skeletal Construct preparing to strike once again. The last one as Griggorn concludes within himself. He expands his senses, gathers the nearby floating deathly mana purifying it while adding a the essence of flames to it. The spell slowly becomes visible, a bright fiery sphere, with precise edges making it resemble the sun on the sky, something Griggorn had seen in the books from which he studied magic. The sphere gradually amassed a burning mass, scorching the air and even the body of his, with no sweat under his robes.
The Skeletal Construct changed the spell he prepared to send towards Griggorn, turning into multiple layers of lightless wards around his gigantic ivory damaged body. A futile effort, Griggorn thinks as he takes one last look at the Skeletal Construct basking in the intense light.
Then in the next moment, the enormous fiery sphere casting its light all over the city from high up the air, disappears. Then in a blink of an eye, it appears where the bone colossus of an undead construct stood, engulfing the whole area then silently, disappearing once again, now for the last time. It leaves behind a charred crater spanning dozens if not almost hundreds of meters in a perfect circle.
The remaining undead sensing the extermination of their superior begin to retreat in an instant, becoming vulnerable to the surviving Dhau-Íssz members following after them, cutting them down with flaming weapons, shooting them in the back with spells and enchanted arrows that burn them to piles of ashes. Meanwhile in the air, Griggorn finishes off the remaining two wyverns raised to serve the Nameless.
“What do we do now Griggorn?” After making sure that the last of the undead has been exterminated in the city, leaving only a few to escape back to their master, not knowing that Griggorn is tracking them, even though he is aware where the Nameless is. “I’ll send you to the nearby fortresses, in two days we march against the enemy.” Griggorn speaks well aware that the sooner he takes care of this incursion, the calmer his Master will be. And no one wants to disturb the peace of the Deadfire, not even the Gods.