Teiming, second son to the king of Antalia looked upon the destruction the two dragons caused. The larger beast had arrived first, ripped the giant six hundred meter high watchtower appart and flew a big circle around the city breathing fire everywhere. At first the giant tower that throned over the city had not fallen. The magical construction held even a the few remaining bricks together, but with the breath of fire that followed even that little magic broke.

A shower of stone had crushed hundreds of houses and the marketplace was in shambles. Luckily evacuation was ordered prior to the attack and a lot of casualties were avoided. After a quick show of dominance the large beast took off to the north east, feasting upon the kettle and sheep herds on the plains.

The signal the guards of the tower gave earlier allowed the barracks to put together a strong taskforce and the second dragon was taken down after a rather short battle. Two and a half hours later the beast was bleeding out in the streets, a wingspan of ten to fifteen meters made it half the size but no less deadly.

Over four hundred men laid down their lives today and more would follow soon. If the larger dragon decided to stay, it could even mean total annihilation. His brothers, leading the taskforce in their shining armor decided to just let the beast bleed out and headed for the next battle. Teiming hoped they would win decisively, but in the back of his head he also longed for their deaths. He had always wanted to be the heir to his father's kingdom.

Teiming used the situation to his advantage and approached the beast. He grabbed a magic stone from his pocket and drew some runes into the air with his fingers. Quickly the dead flesh departed and laid the ribcage open. “Ardan, go take some men and cut out his heart. Then bring it to my chambers and wait there. Protect it with your life.” Teiming glared at his guard deeply. “If you fail you will regret it.” - ”Yes, your grace.” Teiming raised his hands again to severe the tendons of the beast. As it was dead he was able to manipulate the body and he was just overly cautious. He had no knowledge what a dragon could achieve beyond death as no book he had seen, had covered this topic before. Then he left for the second battle. Maybe a few undead would be able to draw some attention off the troops?

Just a few minutes after he had gotten on his horse, the giant beast flew over him into the city center again. Apparently it was searching for something. The dragon landed before the smaller corpse and let out an earth shattering roar. My god… Was this his mother? Teiming had a really bad feeling. The giant beast was crying. Or at least it felt that way, it was just a screeching and painful sound and even though he had seen the destruction it was able to cause, he felt for it.

Then it took off, flying straight upwards above the city, never stopping once. For hours everyone around the city was able to hear screams of pain from above, like a angel of death threatening to crush them all at a whim.

Luckily the feared attack never happened, and the kingdom soon started rebuilding its capital. Unrest spread on the borders and it was a generally unfavourable position to be in, but at least the dragon disaster was survived. Teiming was determined to go forward with his initial plan. Now he had obtained a dragonheart. Completely by chance and with incredible luck, but still it was in his possession.

Intensely studying the heart and various books on dungeon core creation and how to bind a dungeon to oneself as well. There were hundreds of designs, various different rituals and Teiming was drawing parallels to only follow the general direction of things. He would not set all his faith in just one fixed result and hope for the best.

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Days, maybe even weeks passed. Judging from his beard and the growing impatience of the messengers his father sent it could easily have been a couple of months as well. But his incantation was nearly finished. The walls, floor and ceiling of his former laboratory was covered in different runes, incantations and magical stones. A expensive set up, costing him easily all that he owned. But as the son of the king various nobels granted him loans and so he was even able to obtain the final, and most crucial ingredient for a necromancer: human lives.

Morally it was definitely a pitch black area. But while Teiming knew it was wrong to just go about buying and sacrificing random slaves to forward his power, he hid behind many justifications. They were empty sayings that barely made him feel better about it. Freeing them from their miserable existence, exchanging a few lives for the many, furthering the kingdoms growth and doing all this just for his father out of loyalty. But behind all these reasons, he knew that it was a selfish and extreme thing to do.

Sixtytwo slaves he had prepared, the amount of money this had cost, already exceeded his allowance twentyfold. Hopefully nobody would look into his spendings before he paid everything back. His father loathed those in debt, even more so if it was of his own blood. Teiming’s uncle had paid a high price for owing money to the crown. “Ardan!”. The huge soldier entered the ritual room. “Yes, your grace?” - “It is time. Give each of the chosen ones some elixir and bring them down here.

The process of creating the dungeon stone was generally a very gruesome thing. In order to activate and form the dragon heart to a suitable vessel for a divine dungeon being, one had to sacrifice human souls and use the energy to transform it. However, a dungeon stone was a much more dangerous thing than a dragon if left unbound. A personal sacrifice had to be made. Teiming had chosen to sacrifice his eye, no small price and hopefully sufficient to the ritual.

Half an hour later all slaves had found themselves in the chamber, tightly packed together and stunned by the elixir. Some sitting, some standing, all looking into the distance, through any object, to a far away happy place. At least that’s what Teiming hoped. Looking at all these people it was frightening to go through with the ritual.

It was not like he had never killed before, four people had fallen to his spells in the battlefield but killing over sixty humans just because it suited his cause? For a few moments he hesitated, then he placed the dragonheart on the tiny table and started chanting his incantations. Soon the runes glowed, all spells fell into place and activated the magical stones along the drawn lines. The air became almost electric, even someone without magical talent was bound to feel all of this. Then the necromancer grabbed a knife and skillfully cut out his right eyeball. The pain was numbed by another spell he had cast earlier and soon he spoke the last incantation and pressed the bloody eye towards the dragonheart.

Then everything went wrong. The eye transformed into pure energy, purple light that slowly crept up his fingers. Was the spell numbing his senses? His fingers felt as if he had sat on them for hours. When the strange flickering light had crept up past his wrists he realised his mistake. The spell tried to sacrifice everything biologically connected to his former eye! Quickly he wove another spell to rip off his arm below his shoulder and jumped back.

Again Teiming felt no pain. The ritual was in progress, and he hoped that he really did everything right. Energy and light lances penetrated slaves, evaporated them and sucked their essence in, while others just burst impulsively to meet the same fate. It took merely a couple minutes, but to the young necromancer it could have been an eternity or a few seconds, he would never be able to tell.

He had done it. At high cost to himself and under harsh sacrifices, yes. But he had done it.

In front of him lied a yellow to orange stone. Inside: a small, tiny insect.

Then Teiming passed out. And IT awoke.