CHAPTER 65 – PORT OF DESCENT
The rains stopped painting the fallen city black, but the dark clouds remained. The dark lord Malinor stood before his putrid clouds and surveyed the rubble of Port Caliber. He was holding a black metal staff that contained glowing red-yellow wood. The wood inside looked as though it was not on fire but the very fire itself. Malinor waved it through the air in a circle. Some of the dark clouds above him began to churn at the same pace.
It twisted down into the cyclone and then funneled into a circle around Vestige Tower. The ring of darkcloud landed on the ground and any fire inside the circle immediately went out. By the time the fires finished burning, Vestige Tower would be the only building left standing beside Seaport Village. This was exactly what the Dark Lord intended.
Broken helms of the fallen soldiers still washed ashore. The black and amethyst sails were pulled down and used to set up a battle station. The Dragon Kingdom was sinking its claws into Port Caliber before the next step... The inevitable purge of the entire Pride. From inside the city of Caliber, the Necrogallion was quickly switching over from a nautical assault to fully outfitted armies. Worse than that, the horrid Berserkers of the Southlands had given up on tailing Mitakahn and his company across the epitaph and were now assembling at the corrupted port.
Malinor was furious. He did not expect prince Axion to return so quickly, this would draw things out. Instead of the two princes returning to a ruined kingdom, they clung to the idea of preserving it. Nevertheless, Malinor was here as the harbinger of death, the god of entropy. He would consume the north and gain the power to topple all of MagnaThora. It started here and it ended here. Not only did Casterosi best him in the field, Axion’s return galvanized the retreat, saving most of the civilians. But not all the civilians. A gross smirk wiped across Malinor’s face, just about the only thing you could see behind the mask, as its only opening.
There were many citizens and soldiers of the Pride captured during the battle. Malinor had Admiral Zorrowfold present them to him. There were few worth mentioning. Old men, wounded soldiers, a hopeless lady here and there. The boy who saved Jericho, was one of the prisoners lined up in front of Malinor. Denison was still holding Jericho’s sword. The pommel caught the attention of the Dark Lord. He knew the smithcraft of Metuchen royalty when he saw it. Malinor was in a particularly bad mood. They chose the poor boy to make an example out of and corrupt. The Mad Genius Spangalore joined Zorrowfold and the Dark Lord before the gathered darksiders and their city prisoners. The Emissary unfurled a dark min-clothe with weapons and torture devices inside of them.
He took a small knife with a sleek blade and dipped it into the glowing gemstone chained across his chest and handed it to Spangalore. Spangalore cut the boy’s skin open and drained from him his red life. The Emissary then slit his own dark wrist open and poured his black blood over Denison. It mixed with the boy’s tears and seeped into his cuts, infecting him. They let him writhe in pain. On the sandy shore his body began to mutate, turning Denison from boy to beast.
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Denison felt the cold slide through his veins. It was after the light of his heart. Fear swept the child one last time as the infection hit his core. Fear turned into painful exhilaration. Pure power restarted his heart in the shadow of life. The reverberation was instantaneous throughout his body. He gurgled and cringed in the transformation of his body.
His bones stretched out and his muscles formed abnormal tumors. His face grew beyond years into deformity. His hands twisted into claws that grasped the floor as his nose cracked and retracted, his fangs grew out, and his eyes widened and strained. His skin blistered and burnt from the toxic reaction to the transformation and left him darkened. Blisters swelled over and surrounded his eyeball.
The pain subsided, but never left. His purity was reversed in essence. His bravery turned to ruthlessness. Denison now thirsted for the blood of man to feast upon and ease his pain. All humanity was lost inside, the child was no more. He was a warrior of the Dragon Kingdom and part of the Necrogallion now.
He was an abomination. The Emissary laughed as he anointed Denison. The Necrogallion would use many forms of warfare but turning the Lion Kingdom’s youth against them was a direct assault against the Pride’s spirit. The Dark Lord Malinor applauded the work of Spangalore and the Emissary, a feat not easy to come by for any of his council. Whether they admitted it or not they all feared the Dark Lord and he in turn gave them reason to, religiously. He was a force to be reckoned with, something not entirely of nature.
The Dark Lord watched all of his minions ran their own maneuvers for the assault. It all looked very promising to him, but he would not clue them in on that. Spangalore took the prisoners away, their fate would be the same as Denison. The Berserkers were harnessed by Admiral Zorrowfold’s elite; a squadron of acolyte riders, raised in the fury of shadow. The Acolytes followed the dark arts and the old way of the dragon tribe; they were devout zealots, and the admiral came from a very old branch of their bloodline. The black cavalry mobilized, as the armada evolved into an army, and set out early to reap the first acts of havoc on the rest of the Pride.
Behind them, the Emissary oversaw giant primordial eggs being cracked open. Upon the shell breaking and the ooze spilling, the bird-like creatures inside broke out and devoured the sailors up whole. They moaned in painful pleasure as their bones cracked out and expanded. The monsters stumbled into the ruined city, working through their demonic growing pains. In not much time at all, they would grow large enough to fly, and as soon as they could fly, they would start eating people. Well, they always eat people, these beasts can just eat more people once they can fly.