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CHAPTER 21: BAD GUYS DOING BAD GUYS THINGS
❝ Na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na... NARRATOR!! ❞
In the abyssal darkness of a baleful and bleak stone fortress, carved deeply into the face of a gargantuan cliff, in a land where roamed the dead and decayed, beyond tortuous corridors adorned with senescent frescos depicting gory, disturbing, and indescribable scenes of barbarous carnage and scabrous copulations which would have left the bravest of warrior bilious, beyond armies of ghastly moving corpses, poor souls crippled and shackled into servility at the whims of a madman, beyond black doors of cursed metal holding captive in endless torment the spirits of the fools who had defied the master of this sepulchral subterranean palace, in a squalid throne room filled with the repugnant stench of fester, three figures were conversing and a fourth was helplessly hearkening.
One of the figures was short, pudgy and hunched, with a long hairy nose sporting quivering whiskers and supporting a pair of small but thick round glasses through which squinted shrewd and insidious beady black eyes. Often, one of two shovel-like palms, heavy with numerous rings, bracelets and long osseous nails, would rise to push back up the slipping spectacles. The mole man seemed to be clad exclusively in pockets and tool belts, the content of which was better left unsaid and moreso unseen.
Another was a much plainer, yet far more ominous being. A long, black hooded cloak fell to the cracked floor, with large dangling sleeves joint in front, and displayed not even a sliver of skin—or whatever ghoulish appearance was hidden in the folds of this black garment. Even the figure’s face underneath their raised hood was shrouded in unnatural shadows. However, their total immobility, aberrant for the living, betrayed their abject chthonian nature.
Above their heads, hanging forlornly from the high vaulted ceiling and tied in metal chains, at the edge of the isle of light provided by the unique candelabrum of the room, an improbable skeletal frame was forced to act as a silent witness to this macabre conclave. Once regal tatters draped miserably the cadaverous creature, and a twisted, crumpled and woeful crown was haphazardly nailed askew on its disproportionately large skull. A simple black ring encircled its vertebrae. Dim red fires burned hot with hatred in the empty sockets of the lich.
That hatred was directed at the last and most abhorrent presence in this sombre room, a monster at his own image, another lich, who was discoursing raspingly, his broad back turned to the other two. While much similar to the bound skeleton in appearance, this lich’s sockets, however, burned a perfidious purple, his sallow bones differed from the unsettling whiteness of his chained counterpart, and a much wider ribcage made him appear as if morbidly obese. A stained and slatternly robe of vestigial grandeur, perhaps white once upon a time, hung loosely on his fleshless form, pooling on the floor in a viscous trail.
As he spoke, the nefarious necromancer otiosely picked victuals off a long table creaking under the weight of an odious mouldering feast. Long, skeletal fingers wrapped around a crinkled and blackened apple, which would surely have been maggoty if not for the death arcane saturating the air, killing off even the most resistant of vermin. The rotten fruit erupted in putrid juices when the jaundiced teeth of the lich cleft it in twain, the tainted sap trickling down the creature’s jaw and marring his robes further. The severed half fell through the wide collar of the garment, disappearing into the distended ribcage, followed by a nauseating wet splatter amidst the clatter of naked metatarsi on stone.
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At the centre of the table, standing in an elaborate chandelier of wrought iron, seven black candles topped with vacillating purple flames cast a deranged, changeful and flickering glow upon this scene of grisly and grotesque debauchery.
“…you said Markus’ descendant is finally within reach?” The lich’s voice was like a stentorian whisper, bellowing yet wheezy to the extreme, and it lacked all the inflexions and shift in volume a mouth of flesh and blood would have imparted it, deepening the impression of malaise emanating from the creature.
“Yes… the princess… has left… the barrier… Our… seers… were able to… locate… her…” Like a dying man croaking from across a vast cavern, the shadowy figure’s raucous words had a reverberating aspect to them.
“Excellent! Take ten—No, twenty of my [Death Knights] and use the lesser undead in the area to lure the descendant towards Cali. Make sure she remains unharmed until she obtains the key, then bring both back to me.”
The third member intervened, “Your Enlightened Magnificence, we do not know the extent of the descendant’s powers.” The aged mole-man spoke softly, with a refined elegance incongruous in this place of decrepit decadence. He reached up to readjust his misbehaving spectacles. “Perhaps I should go instead—”
“Do NOT contest my orders, Hazred!” The lich squashed a putrefied pear in his grip. His burning sockets glared at the hunched beastkin then moved to his own soiled phalanges.
As if summoned by his intentions, from the shadows beside the empty throne emerged a scantily clad woman. Tiny medallions covered her nipples, tied with golden strings pained to restrain her large bust, squishing it like a pair of overripe cantaloupes. A sheer breechcloth concealed her genitalia, looking little more than a vertical sash compared to the wideness of her round hips.
Despite the overflowing expenses of pale adipose flesh, however, the firmness of her body forbade any bounce to an unsettling degree, like an animated wax statue. The unnatural evenness of her step, the blandness of her facies, the vapidity of her blue eyes, all called out to a deep sense of wrongness in any onlooker, yet they would not be able to pinpoint the origin of that sense until she came within close range, bringing forth a stench of putrefaction which nearly overpowered the horrid banquet.
With flowing, inhumanly smooth mannerism foreign to the living, the female corpse used her own loincloth to wipe the grime viscid juice maculating her master’s bare bones, revealing her hairless sex without any look of embarrassment, or acknowledgement of her own actions, or any emotion whatsoever.
The lich roughly cupped one of her hanging breasts, molesting it for a while with no care for the three spectators, then pivoted back to the mole-man, while the undead slave once again returned to the shadows.
“Faceless will retrieve the descendant, and the key. Hazred, you return to deciphering the documents describing the artefact. I want to be ready to use it as soon as it is in our grasp. The solstice is soon approaching. We cannot delay.”
The beastkin’s face twitched, and he rubbed one of his rings pensively. He clearly had many more things he wished to bring up, but the finality and unveiled threat in the lich’s tone persuaded him to keep his misgivings to himself. He nodded lightly, signifying his surrender to obedience.
“Master… the… princess is… accompanied… by a semi… orc… What are… your… instructions?”
“We only need the descendant. Kill anyone else with her.”
“It will be… done… My Master…” With an obsequious bow, the faceless being sunk into the floor, leaving behind but an imperceptible ripple in the shadows.
“I will then go back to my quarters, Your Exuberant Brilliance.” With a much stiffer dip of his head, the anthropomorphic soricomorph walked away, soon swallowed by the shadows as well.
In the vast throne room teeming with darkness and unseen horrors, in the capricious purplish light of the black candles, the lorn lich continued to indulge endlessly in his pointless voracious gluttony, unfeeling, unfilling, undying, forever starving for life, all the thoughts in his wretched and turbid mind swirling like rapacious vultures around the prospect of at last attaining the supreme power he aspired at, now within grasp.
Soon, no one would be able to stand in his way. All would bow before him. And at long last, he would cleanse the world of the chaotic corruption that filled it.
Lost in his dark gleeful musings, he missed the whisper floating down from the captive undead lord above.
“Fool.”
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