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The outside world was indeed changing. Merchants and Travelers now crossed the plains in great convoys. The odd curious onlooker still fell into my traps, lured in by scattered gold. But these were the exception to the rule, and these long convoys of traders came equipped to shelter against storms. My wight army was not being replaced faster than the oldest models could decay.
I kept what was left of Yona in the throne room. This old friend was all-skeleton now, with only the faintest bits of identifiable fleshy bits left. When her spine gave out, I knew exactly the maximum limits of how long a wight was expected to last. Simply put, my undead legion had an expiration date.
Everything felt suddenly vulnerable for the first time in untold years. I sat back upon my throne and began the slow process of sinking the throne room down one more level. One more layer between me and the surface.
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It was during this excavation that the sinking throne room revealed a small side chamber already carved into the mound. It was a laboratory filled with rudimentary alchemical materials.
My predecessor had spent her ample free time attempting to perfect the art of necromancy. Wights had proven inefficient for her as well. And so she set her sites on something different.
Compelling the minds of the still-living to do her bidding had been considered. It proved even more inefficient. The compelled had the same limitations with motor control and critical thinking as the undead.
So, having reached the limits of reanimation and finding a dead end with bewitching those that yet live, the she-lich had moved on to magic even more eldritch and heretical. I found a ‘journal’ – a series of paintings and symbols against the wall, for the she-lich had no written language – that took a year or two to decode.
The former occupant of the barrow had belonged to a clan or tribe that predated even the decadent stone cutters. She’d pulled out every form of magic and ritual her people had known in order to attempt to produce the ultimate in allegiance-swaying corruption. The technique had been developed slowly over thousands of years - far longer than I had served as the dungeon’s master. The old lich’s secret weapon had almost been ready. It was just missing some ingredients. Ingredients – rare in the valley – that were not readily available in the coffers of various reanimated merchants I’d repurposed over the years.
She’d been hoping to test out this new soul-thralling technique against my own party, way back when. Well, suddenly I was glad that we’d killed her when we did. Even if I suffered under this loathesome fate, it was surely better to rule as a lich than fall victim to what I was now prepared to unleash.
Now it was time to watch and wait…
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The next group to approach my barrow had come for war. A team of ten, larger than any dungeon raiders I’d yet encountered, came with their steel weapons and heavy plate mail. A war cheiftainess led them in a tight helmet that covered her eyes. She held a two-handed axe, and on her breastplate was a symbol of that falling star once again.
She didn’t look like a member of my old clan.
I would learn through hours of interrogation that Starfall had been conquered by steelworkers. While before the village ruled undisputed over the valley, it was now a vassal of powers from far beyond the mountains. I would never see this far-off land, bound to the dungeon such that I was. Still, it was important to know that the new management did not necessarily know the legends or origins of this domain.
This war chieftainess marched her horses directly to the old, weathered ruins in front of my barrow. The group of ten entered, weapons drawn.
They walked methodically, disarming tripwires as they went. They threw stones in front of their path to trigger some pitfall traps. I sent forth my first group of wights against them as a probing maneuver. They hacked them down without hesitation – the chieftainess personally dispatched ten wights by her own hand.
I grimaced from my throne. This would be a costly battle of endurance, even if I managed to fell and reanimate the full group of ten.
One member of the party did fail to notice a tripwire. Poison darts broke through weak points in his mighty armor. Rather than retreat to heal their poisoned brethren, the war chieftainess ordered the man’s body be dismembered before he was even dead. They chopped him up with their axes. Prevented me from raising him again.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
This group knew what they were doing. Perhaps my reputation preceded me. I still had two floors of devious traps between me and them. And if they breached the throne room, there was always that secret weapon…
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The remaining group of nine forwent all treasure chests. Nobody who’d made it to a chest had ever made it out of the barrow alive. There was no way they could’ve heard the tale of booby trapped chests. Perhaps they were professional dungeon raiders?
Nevertheless, I held my forces back. Better to have them fall upon the group all at once near the throne room than to squander the horde fighting such a well-prepared party in groups of a dozen.
No further casualties were encountered on floor two or three. One hapless rookie nearly fell down a pitfall near the stairs down to floor three. The chieftainess berated him deeply, but on they continued – with the clumsy member taking point.
I put my desiccated knuckles up against my bony chin. Best to look brooding when the party arrived. I had guards in the wings, and a full horde crawling around in the walls and ceiling ready to pop out as soon as they approached.
Now, sinking the throne room down two stories resulted in a great deal of wide open space dead center in the barrow. The first floor I filled in with tunnels same as everywhere else. On the second floor, I kept a wide-open sub-tomb of sorts, with divots and columns the wights could control.
I also found, again through my predecessor’s notes and lab, that I could manifest myself on the floor above me, in an area corresponding directly above the throne. It was translucent and ephemeral, but it allowed me to introduce myself, should the occasion call for it.
The war chieftainess arrived in the veranda with a mighty shout.
“Die, foul beast!” she cried. “You are slain by the hand of Helgetha of Fireforge!”
The warrioress swung her axe at my shade before I could even say a word of greeting. How rude!
Her axe hit nothing but air, leaving the mighty axewoman confused. The party had never seen a manifestation before. The idea that you could see some projection that was not truly there was still alien to them.
This reaction was exactly what I was planning for.
Dispensing with all pleasantries, I held out my bony hands. Fell magic from a previous age gathered, hungry, homing in on life.
Shadows rushed at my would-be attacker from every tomb and around every column. She swung again, but shadows proved as furtive as my shade.
The proud warrior was ensconced in a web of living shadow. A shout was muffled as the cocoon solidified around her.
The other eight fighters were shouting and rushing at me and trying to cut the webbing free. With a snap of my fingers, the chrysalis was sent chugging at top speeds down to the depths of the third floor, twisting and turning around every corner until it arrived at the throne room.
Living shadow waited before my throne, spanning between the floor and ceiling. A pulsating chrysalis, waiting for transformation. The shell shuddered, some resistance still present in its host.
Quickly, I manifested on the second floor once more.
“Come rescue your war chief, if you dare!” I bellowed, decaying vocal chords causing my taunt to come off hoarse and shrill.
Overwrought, perhaps. I was already bored after a century or two down here. What can I say?
I disipated the manifestation. They would storm through my maze to rescue Helgatha. Or they would flee with their commander claimed, leaving her to her fate. Either way, I had already won.
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The party lost three more members in their mad rush to the throne room. Two to poison traps and one to a pit. I threw up a great deal of poison on the third floor. Better to wick away health and vitality from anyone who made it that far. Not enough time to resurrect them with the party knocking at my throne room, but it would help recoup my losses elsewhere.
Still, they’d cut their way through my wight garrison well enough. I held most of them back for this one final battle.
“Face me if you dare,” I said, still hamming it up.
The chrysalis remained beside my throne. The party moved – half of them to intercept me, half to try and reach the cocoon. They were met by an army of wights rising from out of the floor. Most were no more than skeletons. But I prioritized the best weapons and armor for this last line of defense.
Battle ensued. I sat upon my throne, watching proceedings.
A member of the living rushed at me, knives drawn. A group of six wights blocked him, their own knives stabbing and hacking at weak points in his vastly superior armor. Another six ran up from the back and soon this living warrior was well on his way to being otherwise.
The second in command of this group barked orders in some foreign tongue. He ordered the party to focus on the cocoon where their commander yet slumbered.
I held my hand aloft and made a slicing motion. A paltry few archers had braved the barrow at some point. A few with a stealthy approach made it a fair way into the dungeon before inevitably succumbing to wight-based disembowelment. Their remains now served me, and one sent an arrow through the eye of the living’s second in command.
One more particularly brave fighter bum-rushed me. I drew my axe and, with my first proper blow in some centuries, I embedded it deep into his skull.
Two remaining warriors – weaker and among the novices in the group – turned to flee. I felt that familiar hunger manifesting in my hand. The magic was ravenously hungry for more victims; it had a mind of its own!. No sooner did I raise it towards the entrance than were this pair consumed by the shadows as well. They were rolled up into two more bulbous cocoons on either end of the doorway.
These new cocoons shuddered once… then twice… then sagged as they went deathly still.
I held my decayed hand up to the first, largest cocoon. It shuddered again, weaker this time. There was fight in there yet still. But like all things, the chrysalis soon went quiet.
Five viable wights. They’d killed at least twenty on the way in, but these were fresh and with superior armor. And then three more of their number were… taken. If the old lich’s experiments bore out, these cocoons could become something far more valuable than a reanimated puppet corpse.
It was only a matter of time before the experiment, at long last, neared completion.
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