A man’s lament: It’s so hard to find competent help these days. That’s why I do everything myselves.
[http://i.imgur.com/ygc5lTJ.jpg]
This chapter is so short I barely noticed it was there.
Also, this quote:
“NOOO! Stop! Cease! Desist! Do not continue with your ramblings, for my ramblings are the ramblings to be obeyed, for I am the king, supreme leader, and all-around dictator! Don't you see? All you monkeys are my plan, so your plans are my plans, because you made plans and my plan was to make you. My plan to rule the planet, not to have my plan's plan to stop ME! I am your creator! I am your king! I am MOJO JOJO! OBEY ME!”
– Mojo Jojo, The Powerpuff Girls
I was roaming the internet aimlessly some time ago and stumbled on this. Oh nostalgia. Plus it does fit both Elric and Nutrek, in a sense. (Link to the video below the image)
[https://i.ytimg.com/vi/CHcKJZErfnI/hqdefault.jpg]
https://youtu.be/tPFYAd96WqE
Btw… I proofread this listening to a compilation of love songs. It was… odd.
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SIDE STORY: NUTREK ODYSSEUS
~ RECRUITMENT ISSUES ~
❝ Mysterious Narrator ❞
From the horrid abysses of death, he had risen anew, a Ruler of Darkness still oblivious to his legacy, and therefore embracing without remorse the vilest aspects of his art. Whilst dramatic events of the poisonous persuasion were unfolding in the mysterious hidden hamlet of Kansas, a once gone sacrilegious Evil was at work under less than auspicious skies.
In this cursed kingdom forsaken by its gods, in ancient woods turned putrid marshes, the necromancer had come back to the place of his most humiliating demise… after erring in the area for some time, because nothing looks more like a tree than another tree.
The traces of the battle were still there, taunting him. Gnashing his teeth, he forced the memory back in the recesses of his tortuous mind and focused on his current gruesome task.
“Soon,” he swore to himself. Soon he would have his revenge. His wrath would strike the man who had slighted him, ridiculed him, stolen from him. It would strike akin to the furry of a god of death, pain and pestilence. His nemesis’ fall wouldn’t be a quiet one. Oh no. The knight would suffer! Suffer a thousand deaths for the shame the Overlord had endured.
However those ignominious plans would have to wait. Right this instant, on the morrow of his resurrection, the wrathful mage was still too weak. It infuriated him, but he couldn’t deny the sordid truth.
Thus he had come back, to this most hated clearing, to this once sacred grove, in order to conduct the abject, nauseating ceremony which would drag back from their eternal rest the undead army of his enslaved minions.
The sky above was one of sombre thunderclouds. The morning, one of wails of despair. The air reeked with the putrid, nefarious and foul stench of death and decay. Old corpses and rotten debris littered the ground, half sunken in the disgusting horrid sludge the forest floor had become after the torrential rains of the day pas.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
A faint drizzle still subsisted, robbing the land of its colours and draping all in a cloak of depressing and humid greyness. It was as if the world itself was turning its back on Life and donning instead the shades of limbo.
Like wisps of smoke darting across the air, gaseous dark spectres wriggled in agony as they were hauled forcefully, fighting and struggling, into this mortal plane of existence. Torn off the peaceful stretches of the netherworld by a selfish master, they wailed their heart-wrenching despair, attempting to resist, to flee, to escape their tormentor, but all in vain. No matter the depth of their misery, each new immaterial arrival was heartlessly pierced and held by swarms of translucent dark chains continuously springing from the muck.
The conjurer of this hellish spectacle overlooked his grisly oeuvre, two empty sockets burning brightly in ghoulish satisfaction. With another cackle, he raised his short fleshless arms. A screeching command cracked thought the rain, words of power so corrupt even the gods of Light themselves shuddered at their utterance. Hearing and obeying, like puppets on jerky strings, innumerable tattered corpses laboriously began to rise from the sludge, while others came crawling from the surroundings mucky woods.
In a matter of minutes, the once dead clearing was teeming with a multitude of bodies.
Yet, dead, the glade still was. No matter how many empty husks filled it, no matter how crowed it became with moving soulless shells, nothing but putrefaction was in the heinous future of these regurgitated satires of the living.
No matter. The mage didn’t care. All the depraved ingredients had been gathered. The ceremony could now proceeded into its final phase.
With a flick of the necromancer’s bony wrist, the ghastly chains holding the spectres brutally snapped and recoiled, yanking the mutilated souls mercilessly towards the broken bodies that were to become their eternal prisons. Some tortured ghosts made a last, hopeless effort to free themselves. All failed miserably.
One after another, every single one of them was shackled, sealed into a cage of dead flesh, condemned by dark magic to an eternity of servitude, of painful and mindless obedience, bound to the whims of the undead warlock who was now rubbing his bony paws in glee…
…or so it should have been.
As soon as the immaterial restraints vanished into puffs of smoke, their dark purpose accomplished and their former captives now ensnared in rotten flesh and bones, a wave of restlessness rippled through the newly conscripted undead legions.
“Good. Good. Good.”
Unaware of the oddity in his summons’ behaviour, be it by overconfidence or oversight, the small lich felt elated at his apparent success. He stepped upon a broken boulder and addressed the assembly of decayed critters now tentatively standing before him.
“Greetings, my loyal and faithful subjects!”
Oh, the presumptuousness! Or was it delusion? Either way, the diminutive mage was metaphorically putting his metatarsi in his maw.
A roar of acknowledgement echoed his declaration, rising from hundreds of mangled throats.
However, as for what this bestial chorus was acknowledging exactly, only the gods and the monsters themselves truly knew. In any case, anger and resentment permeated through the cries of the supposedly mindless creatures.
Still oblivious to the tensed atmosphere, the clueless Dark Lord continued his squeaky tirade, further digging his metaphorical and ironic grave.
“Rejoice, miserable ones, from these mine salutations! For you, insignificant, unworthy, lowly beings have been chosen by m-m-m-MEEEEE, the grrrreat, the mighty, the revered, the MA-MA-MAGNIFICENT, THE… the… the what else? Errr… *cuigh* Feel free to had other adjectives describing my gloriousness. BUT I SHALL SAY NO MORE!! For this one is perfect enough to be modest…”
Even the undead crickets were consternated and remained silent at that declaration.
“Ahem. Nevertheless I, Nutrek Acornazieth the Fourth, in my grand magnanimity, allow you to praise my humbleness.” Pretending to cough into his balled paw, the little lich casted his audience a sheepish look. Had the tiny evil critter not been made only of bone, he would have been blushing. “But do not praise me all at the same time. Someone as unpretentious as my unparalleled humbleness would be embarrassed when showered with too much complim–”
“““RRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOAAAAARRRRRR!!!”””
And then the army of dead beasts, reptiles, birds, insects, fishes and other mutated crustaceans, all of them as one… charged at their self-designated master, murder in their glazed eyes.
Stunned by this turn of event, the squirrel of death stared blankly at the incoming horde.
“…Oh zounds.”
On those glorious words full of wisdom, the dark mage of “unparalleled” humbleness, the self-proclaimed genius, Nutrek Acornazieth the Fourth, spun around and began to run for his unlife.
“Moooooooooooooooooooommy!!”
“““RRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAARRRRRR!!!”””
“Squaeeeeeeeeek!!!”
In this cursed kingdom forsaken by its gods, in ancient woods turned putrid marshes, the necromancer fled from his own creation, crying for his mommy.
Sadly, Mommy never responded.
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