With one last triumphant lunge, I buried my sword into its fated foe. I felt only a slight attempt at resistance from the rune-inlayed cuirass this time, before the blade found its way into the emperor’s rotten, undead heart, beyond layers of magical wards and steel.
Where the sword had pierced the undead behemoth’s gleaming white armour, a swirling mass of black threads began to rise, carrying the waning powers of the armour’s occupant into the world. The ever thickening tendrils of energy were accompanied by an unnatural, disquieting roar of pain; or whatever the equivalent of pain was for an immortal, undead demigod.
The lines of deep black power grew in intensity and snaked their way around me, into the rest of the ruined throne room, drawing in the light around me and gradually casting the world into an all consuming darkness.
The emperor, clearly unwilling to accept his defeat, gathered all of the power left within him, and with an outraged, unnatural roar, ear splitting in volume, flung a lance of dark energy straight at my chest. I was still holding onto my weapon, the blade stuck in a mountain of flesh and steel, and so I failed to evade the emperor’s attack.
The impact quickly strained the weakened protection runes holding together the scraps of my armour. My body was flung back with unnerving speed – the sword meanwhile remaining stuck in the emperor’s chest – and crashed onto the polished marble floor. The sharp ends of the deformed and scorched pieces of armour hanging off me produced an ear splitting screeching sound during my uncontrolled slide across the floor.
Upon hitting the throne room’s side wall, the last remaining runic wards on my armour violently shattered in a desperate bid to keep me alive. When the back of my head impacted the wall, the cracking sound and searing pain quickly informed me that the elven runes had failed at last.
Stolen story; please report.
Debris and dust shattered loose by my sudden impact with the wall settled in a heap around me, and from the centre of the hall, where the emperor must still have been standing, an unnerving silence emanated now. With agonizing slowness, I held out my arm and focused my will into the ward I had painstakingly prepared days ago to summon the last of the elven crystals into my shaking hand.
The crystal was a tiny rock, not much bigger than a child’s marble, covered in jagged swirls of blue and teal. Luckily, it was brittle and I still found enough energy in me to crush it in my hand. The shards of crystal quickly disintegrated, and before the powder could be carried away by a passing gust of air, I brought my gauntleted hand to my nose and mouth, quickly inhaling the mass of blue and teal. Within less than a second, the pain fled from my body, replaced by a comfortable numbness of mind and body.
Only then did I look up to where the emperor still stood. The black swirls around him had grown into a tangible mass of darkness. The massive creature itself stood swaying dangerously.
Then, almost as if the sword had only been waiting for me to bear witness, it started drawing in the surrounding dark clouds. The gloomy atmosphere was replaced by an almost blinding light.
Another pulse from the sword, and without so much as another sound, the sword turned into a cloud of dust, dark energy and all. The most powerful sword in known history was gone, just like that; I would have a strong opinion on that fact later. In its wake stood only the remains of the emperor, deprived of life for the second and last time.
The massive figure clad in bright, glimmering steel, sunk unceremoniously to the ground. Before the emperor fell, however, I managed a single glimpse of the face that had previously been nothing but a window into a dark, disquieting abyss: now, the creature bore the disfigured, pale features of what once might have been a humanoid face.
At the precise moment the shining armour of my enemy clattered to the ground – carrying with it a hulking lifeless body – something else clattered into the forefront of my mind with equal force. It was a rather simple thought, but all the implications it carried with it were far from it: “The emperor is dead.”