07: Birth of War
Commandment One: No matter the sacrifice, you are to fill it with enough souls in hope for its awakening.
Commandment Two: if it did not awaken in your time, you are to pass these commandments to next keeper.
Commandment Three: you are not to leave the sanctuary as long as it stays dormant.
Commandment Four: when it awakens, you are to work from the shadows, Hades would not treat whoever stole one of his toys kindly.
Commandment Five: when it awakens, whatever the cost, you will never open it.
Commandment Six: When it awakens, your life, our lives, is finally complete.
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His thin, old fingers folded the ancient paper and placed it back into the folds of some old dusty books. He read the paper every day to remind himself of what was passed for hundreds of generations.
The leader of the Koravh’a cult, an ancient covenant that its founder was able to venture to the underworld and boldly steal from its king, some dark wind entered his room, where he kept the pillar of which his forefather’s lives were spent guarding it, the book of souls, the Necronomicon.
Air entered his large ears and whispered of an intruder, a small demon that was probably the result of a failed summoning ritual, the old man didn’t care, he was strong enough even to take on an adult demon.
He summoned the [Eye of the watcher] a basic necromancy skill that temporarily shut off one of his eyes, sending it a few hundred meters for scouting purposes. He saw his students, his acolytes murdered one by one, the demon was as stealthy as a rat, snuffing the lives of the unsuspecting cultists like fire from candles.
The small demon was finally here, naked as the day whatever hell spew him out, except for a pouch he wore as a necklace. He looked exactly like a human child, but the horns and tail gave him away, it made the old necromancer wonder if he was a hybrid or even a new form of infiltration demons.
His old lips parted to speak to the demon, but the demon kept quiet, so the man just moved on the undo the abomination that killed all his fellows.
A simple [Dark binding] did the trick and the demon was bound, decay moving slowly but surely from his feet on to his heart. The man just moved to his and snatched the pouch from his neck only to find some ash of which he threw like it’s nothing, having no idea what it represented to the small demon.
And then, the gates of hell opened.
The boy’s torso split open, revealing a cross of teeth the size of small swords, decorating a bottomless maw leading into an endless void.
The demon’s mouth opened wide, screaming like the old man just murdered his parents, and the maw inside did the same, letting out a long, ear piercing roar that shook the entire cave system.
Beatings started pounding in the man’s chest as fear started to crawl into him, the scene was enough to stop a grown man’s heart, but the old necromancer wasn’t just any man, he was the leader of the thousand years Koravh’a cult, a lineage of powerful necromancers.
His bad legs gave up, bending him to his knees, but his experience stood strong. With one hand, he poured more mana into the [Dark binding], and the hands grabbing the demon bulked up, tightening its grip on his legs, the rot went on faster as well.
“Bone Javelin” the man muttered raising his other hand, and his mana started forming into a large bone the size of demon itself, but in an instant, he stopped casting as heard it, his mind went from intense focus into shock then pure ecstasy as the voices echoed. He totally forgot about the demon roaring before him and turned to his life’s work.
“Marvelous”
“Truly marvelous”
“What a beautiful smell”
“Yes, this mana smells so nice”
“Shut up you all, let me enjoy”
“Come here, boy...”
“You shut up!”
“I’m thirsty.”
“Look! the boy is cutting his own legs”
“Hahaha, what a funny boy”
“Who’s that boy?”
“He looks exactly like...”
“F-finally” the man whispered in extreme joy, tears forming in the corners of his eyes, not even thinking about the bone grinding sounds coming from behind him.
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He didn’t feel a thing, he didn’t care about a thing, other than the man sobbing in joy, looking at an old book made from human skin and emitting noises, like a crowd of people speaking at the same time inside it.
His legs finally came off, he mustered the little remaining power he had and stepped at the bare bone that used to be his shin, launching himself at the man who just killed his love for the second time.
The boy latched into the old man in a piggyback, looking at him with eyes full of pure hatred, the necromancer finally came to his senses, his head turning slowly to the growing duo on his back, but the boy wouldn’t allow him the look.
“Eat”
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*Crunch*
And the man screamed as teeth dug into his back.
*Crunch*
The man fell on his belly, turning around like he was on fire, trying to shake off the boy, but the boy clung on like a tick on an old dog.
*Crunch*
And the man screams were no more.
The boy’s vision started to dim, he lost too much blood to his madness, the last he saw was the bloody ashes, the last he heard was the bones grinding inside him, the last he spoke was a command he strictly spat.
“Leave the head” he wanted to vent some anger later, or maybe wanted to hand it like a trophy.
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boy’s eyes slowly opened, the burning sensation in his feet but gone. He found himself in a pool of blood, both his and the man which head is the only thing that remained.
He looked down to see his feet whole again, but there was no time to wonder as his anger flared again as he remembered the lost ashes. He got up, walked to the head and kicked it as hard as he can.
The head hit the cave’s wall with a splat, the kick was hard enough to shatter it into little pieces.
“GOAAAAAAAL!”
“Hahaha”
“So, funny”
“Hey boy, do a cartwheel”
“Impressive regeneration kiddo”
“...”
His attention was caught, the boy turned to the annoying piece of skin, held it and slammed it into the wall, whoever resided in the book, they picked a bad time to let go of their thoughts.
“Ouch!”
“Owww!”
“Argh!”
“Aaaah! my head!”
“Ooooh! So rough”
“Hehe, just kidding”
“SILENCE, ALL OF YOU” the voice of an elderly man stood above all others as large mustached mouth appeared on the book’s cover, replacing the hundreds of shifting faces that littered the book.
“I’m sorry child, these ashes must’ve been precious to you” the voice called out in a sympathetic manner, clearing some of the anger boiling inside the boy and allowing the voice to continue.
“Please excuse them, they’ve been trapped here for more than ten thousand years after all”
The boy held the book and put it back on the pedestal, tilting his head in question, as if asking for more information, and the elder in the book perfectly understood.
“We are the resident of the Necronomicon, a relic forged way before the world itself was created. It’s a book that stores souls and uses them as a fuel for the strongest of animations, but there’s a catch”
The boy tilted his head the other way, he knew there’s always a catch.
“If you open the book, which awakens every few hundred thousand years, all the souls stored inside would be free to leave to where it belongs. But you’ll be able to learn about what’s inside. And what’s inside, my dear boy is the origin of necromancy, created by an unknown being even the gods himself wouldn’t dare to even look at”
The old voice kept explaining to the boy what the book way, giving him a choice between keeping the book and using it as undead fuel from the souls stored inside, or open it and gain the knowledge long lost to the world, written by a being even greater than the gods themselves.
“Now, your choice my child. Boy, where are you going? Boy? ...BOY?” the voice kept calling the boy walking out of the room, but he paid no mind, he had to do something more fundamental to him than thinking about what to do with the book.
For two days, the room was in complete silence, except the meat grinding sounds and the occasional burping. I a mere two days, the entire cave system was scraped clean, the only thing was left was the corpse of the young red haired young woman of which the maw did not want to eat for some reason.
He devoured everything, even the rotten corpses, and for that, the boy was rewarded.
“And he wasted not. he, Who knew the value of even the rot”
[Minor decay resistance]
The door to the book room creaked, indicating that the boy’s hunger subsided, along with his anger over the ashes. The boy entered the room and walked up to the book with steady steps.
“Child, you’re back, what are you do-, AHHH!. Thank you, my child, may you be blessed for eternity”
The boy opened the cover, revealing a number carved in blood on a piece of skin, a number beyond the boy’s comprehension.
9999999999999999999999999999…….99999999999
9999999999999999999999999999…….99999999998
9999999999999999999999999999…….99999999997
9999999999999999999999999999…….99999999984
9999999999999999999999999999…….9999999940
The number kept rapidly decreasing as wisps of light bursted out of the book into the world. Laughs, giggles, sighs of relief, thanks, men, women, children, elders, humans, non-humans immense amount of souls shot forth into wherever they belonged, some even twirled around the boy in joy, hugging him for releasing them from their eternal prison.
A few hours have passed and the last of the souls left, the boy looked at the page, expecting a zero, but he actually found a positive number.
Two
Two souls willingly refused to leave the book, feeling comfortable where they are, or maybe, maybe, they just wanted to stay with the book’s new owner.
The boy held the book, raising it to his eye level.
“Why?” he asked, but no answers were given, so he paid no mind, his seed of happiness sown, a new home, a plethora of books, and a forest for a food source.
Under the dancing fire of a wooden torch, the boy opened up the Necronomicon once more, and to his surprise, other than a single spell, the pages were blank.
The spell was nothing like a spell, it was more of a ritual, a chant and a good chunk of mana, the catch was that the caster had to sacrifice a part of his soul to be able to reanimate an immensely powerful undead with a soul to serve its master for eternity.
[Absolute Reanimation], a spell this world probably never seen before.
He looked at the place where the ashes were, a hint of sadness on his face, he closed the book and asked again.
“Why?”
And as he predicted, nothing.
The next morning the boy left his new home on the hunt for food, even creatures twice his size proved to be a somewhat easy prey, and the boy was full, at dawn, he was back under the torch, learning more about [Absolute animation]
The scent of rot entered his nostrils once more, coming from the room where he left the corpse of the woman, so the boy closed the boy and stood up to leave the room, he wanted to at least bury the body.
A face formed on the cover as soon as he closed the book, a pair of red eyes peering at him, so the boy tried asking for a final time.
“Why?”
And the face spoke.
“Unfinished business” a cold, lifeless voice of a woman echoed out from the book.
“Name?” the boy asked the face he recognized, the face of the corpse rotting at the end of the hall.
“Was Zyona Redmane, now nothing”
“Tell me more”
“I used to be the eldest daughter of the main Redmane family, a large family of adventurers that owns large patches of land in the Arud Kingdom, we were on a job to finish a necromancer abducting lone travelers in the Maoa forest, but we were ambushed and brought here, I was killed by you as an act of mercy”
The boy looked down to the maw, the one who actually was merciful with her and patted it, a woof of happiness came out as an answer.
“What do you want?” the boy went to the point; the unfinished business part didn’t make sense to him.
“To Serve”
The boy put the Necronomicon back on its pedestal, drowning in his thoughts. It took some time, but he finally made up his mind.
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In the room where the boy left the corpse, he stood holding the book in one hand and drawing symbols with his blood with the other. He drew a circle under the woman’s swollen corpse.
He started chanting, and the blood started glowing.
The boy finished the chant, and the body started to twist and turn, the muscles started repairing, the tissues became stronger, the red hair became twice as long, the only thing left to do is to allow the soul to leave the book.
He commanded, and opened the book to find the number turn into a one, he turned his head as the woman rose up, black smoke emitting from every pore of it.
“Master” The woman kneeled and bowed her head.
The boy felt pride in his own creation and decided to give his new servant a name, a name that he intended to do to find a single inquisitor.
“I name you, War”