I sat on the throne in my cathedral, sore from the last altercation with the Dragonknights.
The cathedral was huge, with six pillars of marble flanking a red carpet that led from the large double doors to the throne of skulls. It was incredibly uncomfortable but the intimidation factor was not to be underestimated when working with mindless drones.
Two drained priests laid next to my throne, the cost to heal my wounds of the latest battle with the Dragonknights. They still had their ceremonial robes on and a serene expression on their face, having died in blissful ignorance.
Orthan rested curled around my throne with his head resting in my lap, still trying to shield me from the outside world.
It had been ages since he had been a regular dragon, his once pristine coat of black scales had turned a sickly grey with time. Time and Necromancy showed its toll not only at the deterioration of the scales, as his left horn had broken off one evening and his wings had tattered.
The amble availability of ready sacrifices had spared him the skeletal fate that would have plagued us both had we ventured alone. His form, though bearing the scars of countless battles, remained muscular.
In the face of Uldru’s immense stature, I found reassurance in the fact that Orthan’s resilience transcended mere physicality. We might not match the titanic scale of Uldru, but the sheer power granted to us by Necromancy allowed us to rival it.
I traced the contours of of Orthan’s weathered scales, memories of the days when his coat gleamed like onyx under the sun flooded my mind. There was a quiet ache for those times, now eclipsed by the harsh passage of time. I let him enjoy the little rest he could as he had taken the brunt of the damage of the last combat.
A dozen more priests knelt around the room in prayer to Zephyra, clutching their holy symbols in their hands, and four Devoured flanked my throne.
“My lord,” said one priest as she approached my throne to kneel at my feet, “we have received word that the Dragonknight is pursuing your trail.”
I stopped myself from readjusting on my throne and nodded my assent, dismissing her with a wave of my hand.
Miss Interita would probably need some time to catch up before-
The heavy double doors flew from their hinges and impacted the pillars, caving into the pristine marble and staying there.
Oh…
A magnificent soul entered the throneroom, an irregularity of a being who defied the natural order of magic.
It was difficult to put the function of a soul into words, even for someone as versed in necromancy as me, but approximations can be made. While regular souls accumulated mana like a balloon, limited by their size and fortitude, Interita accumulated it like a magnet, creating a cloud of mana surrounding her soul.
It was aberrant, a stark departure from the natural order, but she had never mentioned anything that could have explained it.
I zoned back into reality and looked at her with a grin spreading on my face. “Took you long enough.”
She was marching into the throne room like she owned it, wearing her signature platemail. Her helmet was off for once, showing her beautiful face twisted in rage and her brown braided hair falling onto her shoulder, struggling against its confines.
Enchantments wafted off of her, especially her greatsword. I had broken her greatsword during our last battle so this must have been a quick replacement with cheap enchantments that valued mass over refinement. Something she might have enchanted.
Uldru loomed just outside the door, swiping away dozens of Devoured with each strike to keep them away from Nadia.
“Al’kaar,” she growled, marching past the first pillars and priests.
Oh, she sounded pissed.
My grin threatened to split open my face as I stood up, gently lifting Orthans head and giving him a mental command to deal with Uldru. “Miss Interita, to what do I owe the pleasure?”
Orthan stood up and reluctantly made his way out, diving out through the mosaic window of Zephyra to engage Uldru. He always hated leaving my alone.
Now I’ll have to get someone to replace it.
“Shut the fuck up.”
I blinked in surprise. That was the first time I had heard her curse.
I kept my daggers on my belt as I approached. “I feel like you are mad at me,” I said, waving off the priests trying to swarm her, “why did you come here?”
She pulled her greatsword off of her back and swung at me the second I was in range.
I ducked under the swing as she snarled at me “to watch you bleed.”
“You could have just bombarded this temple from the air like you always used to,” I offered, pulling a dagger from the sheath. She loved to abuse her mana reservers to kill enemies before they got anywhere close enough to hurt her crew.
Her swings were wild, unfocused. She didn’t have the presence of mind to think of magic or some fancy techniques to trap me.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
She just wanted to watch me suffer.
A grin spread on my face as she kept swinging, pure malice and joy filling me at her frenzied strikes. To see the mighty Destroyer reduced to a flailing shadow of herself had never been something I wished to see but the way she had meddled in my plans and forced me to abandon my original goal made this all worth it.
“No quips?” I asked, sitting on her sword. She had made a particularly brutal attack that left her wide open, but where she expected me to step in and stab at her, I took my time to sit on the flat side of the blade as it zoomed past me.
The sword positively reeked of Necromancy, something I knew she would never use. Someone must have enchanted it in a hurry, but Prometheus was way too hurt and prideful to use Necromancy responsibly.
Her silence was starting to unnerve me.
“No,” she snapped, twisting her sword to try and cut me up.
I pushed my dagger between myself and her blade, getting launched up as she pivots, trying to cut through my dagger.
This was getting boring.
I continued to dodge her strikes but they felt uninspired, lacking any sense of herself.
Sure, every single one of her strikes reeked of the bloodlust and had her entire body supporting it with raw mana emanating from it which left me plenty of openings, but she never bothered with spells.
This wasn’t right.
That monster wasn’t the proud Destroyer that had taught me how to fight.
This wasn’t at all how this was supposed to go!
I started retaliating, shallow cuts at the joints and stabs at the cracks in her armour being the only real damage I could inflict through her thick armour.
They were enough, my poison would take care of the rest and slowly wear her down until she was forced to kneel in front of me.
“Fuck off,” she snarled after she received another cut to the shoulder.
She shouldn’t be that angry from the last battle, something must have happened.
I recoiled as she swung once again, finally noticing the lines of mana lingering in the air in thick clouds.
“What are you planning?” I asked, retreating to my throne.
She took another step forward but stayed well outside striking range. “Why don’t you find out?”
Three of the priests stood up and abandoned their prayers, turning to Nadia with obvious malice.
They started approaching her, drawing their ceremonial daggers and ignoring my earlier orders.
“How dare you talk with the mighty Al’kaar like this?” one growled, rushing towards her with his dagger raised high.
None of them were able to take another step before they collapsed to the ground like puppets with their strings cut.
I turned to the other priests with a glare. “If any of you try to interfere, you die like they did.”
I grabbed their souls and used them to cast a spell.
If she didn’t want to cast spells, I’d force her to.
A tempest of necrotic energy erupted around me, tendrils at darkness lapping at anything remotely alive in an insatiable hunter to strengthen itself by weaving the lifeforce of its victims into the tapestry that was its formula.
This, my magnum opus, was a storm of devouring necromatic energy born of my mastery of darkness. Each wisp, an ethereal battery to power the unending tide, hoarding souls in its grasp. An elegy to the vanquished as their energy joined the phantom dance, fortifying me and draining the strength of any adversaries daring to stand in my way.
It was an unhurried symphony of death and empowerement, kickstarting my army of Devoured if I were ever caught without.
She’d have to defend with spells or attack me from a range to get through this spell.
She sighed, idly swapping the grip on her greatsword. “You always were an annoyance. Your little tricks are nothing but that, tricks.”
She held her greatsword like a spear, pointing it towards me and bracing herself before exploding into movement, launching it straight at me.
I dodged the throw only for her to teleport after it, striking down and cutting through my arm before I could react.
A dull pain pinged me like a late letter, notifying me of the pain well after I ducked away.
“Got you,” she grinned, showing her teeth. Her soul had taken some abuse from my spell and two Priests fell to the ground like puppets with their strings cut.
I took another step back only for the lines of mana to flare to life, a grand spell awakening beneath me.
I took out my second dagger and held them at the ready, prepared to shield myself with a full blown aegis before-
----------------------------------------
“I am so sorry,” Miss Interita cried as she knelt over me, angling her greatsword just above my head, seconds away from ending my life. Tears were rolling down her cheeks and impacting my chest as she continued “I never wanted this.”
My soul was fucked, whatever she had done completely obliterated any defenses I had constructed before I could even realise it. Orthan was dead, well and truly dead, his soul lingering just outside of the temple.
I was beaten.
“Fuck off,” I replied, the bitterness of the past years starting to bubble up as I had nothing else to distract myself, no jokes or petty tricks to fall behind. “You did nothing, stood by as the Allfather fucked us all over! He- He is a fucking manipulative asshole that cares for nothing but his supposed order!” I yelled, struggling against her grasp.
“That is-”
I interrupted her feeble attempt at discussion “He stands idly by as innocents die just so he can feel good about following his despondent gods ignorant doctrine!”
“Shut up!” she yelled back. “You had no right! Why could you have not talked with anyone?! You plotted with only Orthan to betray everyone you have ever known. For what?”
She calmed down as she repeated her question, huffing in anger. “For what?”
“Freedom,” I simply replied. It was the only thing I could choke up as I was forced to look into her disappointed face.
“What about the lives you took?” she asked, lowering her sword until the tip cut into my nose. “Did they not deserve to live like you did? Were they worth less?”
The cut might not have hurt but my heart burned in anger and disappointment. A flame of anger grew from the seeds of disappointment, clouding my judgement.
“Since when have you cared about collateral?!” I snapped back, trying to shove the sword aside to no avail. I couldn’t even move my remaining arm.
She was famed for her destruction. How dare she ask something like this of me when I had been nothing but careful?!
She raised her sword high, preparing to plunge it into my skull. “You have no idea what you are talking about. Do not dare talk about collateral when you took Prometheus from me! You have no right!”
“I took… Prometheus?” I asked, terror creeping into my voice. I never wanted to kill him. “I am sorry.”
“Shut up!” she screamed, accompanied by the wall crashing down as Uldru entered, having killed the last devoured. “You had everything and lost it all. Any last words?”
I clutched the dagger in my hand, the one Prometheus had handcrafted for me when I started, but couldn’t get myself to raise it against her nor activate any of the enchantments. “I am not sorry for what I did, only that I let it be something I had to do.”
She stabbed down, piercing through my skull and ending my life in nought but a moment, a shadowy claw reaching out toward me being the only reassuring fact in my end.