DESCENT: SUBSTANCE

PROLOGUE

King Uthur Pendragon VIII sat on his elegant gilded dragon shaped golden throne, and stared down at his assembled advisers. Although he tried to project an image of strength and power, and from the looks on the faces of his nobles and advisers, he could see that they were all properly cowed.

But he could not hide from himself the anxiety that twisted his gut in knots.

Everywhere he looked, all he saw were threats. In a kingdom filled with sorcerers, there were very few that could be trusted. Only his iron grip maintained order and stability.

As the king he was naturally the most powerful sorcerer and warrior in the kingdom, holding contracts with four powerful entities that represented the four primary essence types.

And yet he was all but powerless in the face of several mounting threats to his rule. He looked into the eyes of his squirming nobles. Traitors and potential traitors, vultures just waiting for the slightest chance to swoop in and take his crown, end his dynasty.

To all sides, enemies pressed close with covetous gazes, greedily lusting over what was his.

To the south, the sand dwellers raided his kingdom for plunder and slave fodder. Farther south, the thrice cursed dark blooded Hamadian Pharoah continued to grow in power as the cult of Amun Ra sought to forcefully unify that accursed region. The ocean of sand would barely be a hindrance to his army of three million, and soon the dark skin monster would turn his greedy gaze in his direction.

To the north, lay the so-called unified greco-roman republic. Technically they were allies as the king had sold/married his eldest daughter to one of their more influential princes to strengthen the bond between the their two powers but that house of jackals was waiting for the slightest show of weakness in order to switch allegiances to one of his many enemies and plunder his Kingdom.

Far in the east, the now unified imperial Hun diarchy sends missives, demanding tribute from their "lesser neighbours" in exchange for their protection. Those cultivation monsters were infinitely worse than the sand dwelling raiders or the Hamada. They've claimed ownership of the entire first pillar under the banner of their dragon gods and after nearly three hundred years of civil war, both sides of the diarchy have decided to sue for peace and merge the two kingdoms through marriage.

This news caused no small amount of agitation for the already stressed out king. The Hun were not known for their peaceful disposition, as evidenced by the well written missive that was clearly but a shakedown tactic.

To the West, lay the unclaimed forest, where many a number of his scout team and much of his army has been lost in the past century. The worst part of it all was that almost all his problems could be easily solved if he could gain access to the resources in that ancient location. But all attempts to suppress the creatures and monsters living in the forest had been met with disaster.

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Somewhere deep within the unclaimed forest lay the kingdom of the fae, it is the proximity of his kingdom to the forest and his partial control over access to it that had allowed his kingdom to produce the most powerful sorcerers in the world. After all the best magical creatures to forge contracts with were the fae in those woods

But the true resources of the faerie kingdom and the more powerful fae; who will amplify his power and allow him to crush all his enemies, were deeper within the forest and his hunters couldn't trap them in order to make forced contracts.

If he contracted a fae with not only primary but secondary essence types, it might even put him at the level of great powers like the imperials or the Hamada .

But only parties with small groups had been able to infiltrate a small part of the dense forest with it's wild dungeons,strange ghosts and spirits, and monstrous beasts.

And even with small groups, the death rate was still astronomical, and only the extremely brave or extremely foolish entered the forest in search of wealth, ancient knowledge and cultivation resources.

But the true prize lay beyond the unclaimed forest, to somewhere no scout had been able to traverse in over three thousand years. Not since the Greater sidhe raised the unclaimed forest in a single day and blocked access to their kingdom. A place where his ancient ancestors preserved their knowledge and power. A place with resources that might finally push him to the peak of compression rank and into the ascension of magehood.

In the face of all these threats to his divine rule, the untrustworthy visions of the great matriarch as she was known by some, was an irritating inconvenience that set his teeth on edge with their vague implications.

The old lady had woken up two nights ago, babbling about the end and some strange man that would bring about it.

What nonsense, first the old bat tried to mislead him with false visions and prophecies and now this?

He would have done away with her a long time if he had another diviner with half her skill and talent.

But so far his search for another powerful diviner had failed to show results and the haggard bitch refused to use her power to find another powerful diviner for him.

It rankled him that as king he still had to bow his head to a bedridden old bag in matters of divination. How he loathed her and her unique powers. Shouldn't she use her God given gifts to fully serve the interest of the kingdom, to fully serve him?

He turned his mind away from his troubles to stare at his worried nobles, his cold hard gaze pinning each and everyone of them all the while exuding an aura of power and might.

The kingdom was between a rock and a hard place and to make matters worse the children of the night have been spotted taking his subjects as slaves and disappearing to parts unknown. All investigations into how they moved freely through the kingdom lead to nowhere, even to the few sensitives under the royal employ.

While most of the nobles were not opposed to slavery, where they drew the line was when slaves were exchanged without some consideration for their own pockets.

Even as the king was focused on all the threats to his throne, the nobles were angry about the loss of revenue from missing slaves and serfs.

And while they were all afraid of the king's might and power, they disdained him and those with strong claims were already preparing to stake their claims, just waiting in the wings for the proper moment.

This was the reason for the king's cold demeanor, he knew that like carrion feeders, they were all waiting for all the threats surrounding him to finally bring him low.

But he had a plan, a plan that would not only fill his coffers, but would also be a means to solve most of his problems and take care of the scheming nobles in his court with one fell swoop.

Soon there would be no one to dispute his power if all goes according to plan. Not even the mysterious unknown divined by the great matriarch would matter.