Liam glanced around the town, counting at least one hundred of the undead guards and another hundred undead working. He could defeat most of them, but not without collateral damage to the town and potentially his paladins. So he faced the revenant, wondering if this was some demagogue of Pandora.
Only one way to find out. Thought Liam, leaning into his ceremonial role as a Lightning Lord.
“I’ve never seen undead in this land, as one of Taloc’s Lightning Lords, it is my duty to protect his faithful. By what claim do you disturb the dead?” Asked Liam, wondering if he could strike the undead woman with lightning, or if electricity would even work on an undead.
Her eyebrow raised a millimeter, an almost imperceptible amount, though the motion was visible on her otherwise stoney face.
“Claim? Ha! None at all! I was tossed into one of your stupid portals. Send me home, there is a whore I need to crucify. She’s a demon, wears the skin of my friend Lorelai, just like you’re wearing that elven skin.” Said the woman.
“You dare call our Lord a demon!” Shouted Owen, drawing his sword and leaping from the wagon.
Karnak rose to his full height and grasped the rock on a stick with both hands. While Velena pranced away from the wagon, summoning her flaming swords. But the revenant was not some lost vagrant, she was a horseman of the end, a destroying angel risen from death to attain revenge. Dark energies collected around her, visible only to Liam. A dozen spears forged from human suffering, black shafted evils, aimed at human hearts.
Liam activated mana domination and tried to disperse a spear, finding it made up of a power entirely separate from his own. This was not a fight he could win, and likely not one he should even attempt. Whatever magic she wielded was unique to her. A curious and horrifying prospect.
“Enough!” He shouted, “Owen, sheath your sword, you as well Velena.” Ordered Liam.
They grudgingly complied, and the woman cocked her head slightly, waiting for Liam to elaborate. Her spears lingering in the air just a foot away from two paladin throats. They hadn’t noticed, but the woman now followed Liam’s eyes to her own spears.
“My name is Tufan Biliam Alhusam. My body is my own, and has been mine since before I was born–” Said Liam.
Spears hardened into bolts of hellfire, narrower than a steel needle yet burning with Satan’s own fury. As if they'd fallen out of heaven only yesterday.
“Did you steal that body? Or harm the native soul within?” Asked the woman, her hair beginning to float.
What did I say to piss her off? Thought Liam.
Magic slammed into him, compelling the truth from him. He felt the urge to fight it, then paused. He had done no wrong. Taloc had made this choice, not him.
“Uhm, no. This body and my mother’s were slain, well, died in the desert. A suicide of shame. Then I was stuffed into this unborn body by Therun Perun Taloc himself.”
The woman’s silver eye flicked over his face once, then twice. As if perceiving something no one else could. Then she opened her second eye, revealing not an eye, but a black orb. It sat poorly within her skull, clearly a foreign body grafted into her head post mortem. The sight of it made him want to gag, to vomit the memory from his ears and weep blood. Or for his very soul to leap from his body to avoid looking into the orb of darkness.
Quetzalcoatl reared up from his napping post atop the wagon. Gold feathers flared as he launched a lightning bolt at the woman. A full powered smite from the god of serpents. What should have been divine wrath vanished into the black orb, wholly consumed faster than Liam could blink.
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Then her eye shut, the spears faded and everything seemed to return to normal. Except for Owen and Velena kneeling on the ground, vomiting. Karnak alone was able to withstand whatever spell the woman had cast, though he looked as if his fur was about to fall out, and the half of it facing the woman was now a sickly gray hue, as if her eye leeched the color out of it.
“What in the seven hells are you?” Gasped Liam, finding his heart thundering against his ribs.
“I see now… hmmm.” Said the woman, her face emotionless, like a bronze statue’s. “Oh, my name is Ashera Thorne. You are not a demon.” She said, tapping the silver eye with a fingernail that was more a claw than cartilage. “I can read souls with this eye of mine. William Wilson, you have my apologies, I mistook you for a skinstealer, but it seems you are as I once was. This world is not my own, nor is my quarry here.”
“Just like that? You nearly killed us and just like that everything is fine?!” Shouted Liam, realizing his knees were shaking, not from fear, but because the horses attached to his wagon were trembling. Sending shivers through their yokes.
“I exist to kill one demon. Killing you does not aid that purpose, so you are forgiven. And, this silver eye can see things as they truly are. You are driven by the one thing no demon can withstand, love. Once I was like you, but no longer.” Said Ashera, entirely monotone.
Owen’s jaw hit the floor, baffled by the woman’s decision. His head zipped from Liam to Ashera. “What in bloody heaven’s name?” He said, spitting a bit of post-puke bile from his lips.
“Lady Thorne, we’d hoped to collect church tithes and resupply in town.” Said Liam.
If looks could communicate pant-shitting, then Owen’s eyes would have lobbed a dozen road apples at Liam’s head.
“Yeah, do whatever you would have in peaceful times. Don’t make it a problem for me. You’ve given me the key to going home, all it will take is power. Ha, I’ll be back to my world soon enough.” Said Ashera, walking back into town. Only Liam’s elven ears picked up her final, whispered, sentence. “Wait for me Lorelai, I’ll crucify you just like you did to me. Bonfire included.”
“Thank you!” Called Liam, allowing her to gain quite the head start before settling into town.
“What the fuck just happened?” Gasped Velena, wrapping her arms around herself and clinging, as if she were standing nude in the arctic circle.
“I have no idea. Stay away from her! Don’t piss her off, but ask around, get the story from the locals. Gently. Did either of you see her spears?” Said Liam, shivering despite the sun’s warmth.
“What spears?” Asked Velena.
Liam swallowed. “She could have slain us all in a second.” He whispered.
Like most things in town, the fulminonimbus’ clergy was undead, as were the innkeeper and pretty much two thirds of the population. Food and board prices were deep into the bargain barrel, but when a town of a few hundred suddenly had the past ten generations of residents farming the fields and patrolling, well, this was suddenly an oasis in the tempest of portal plagues. A beacon of hope that made Liam want to vomit.
Is this the price of peace? Can we dig up the previous generations and have them work, farm, and fight? Ew, no! That wouldn’t be a life worth living. Thought Liam, watching as a girl walked between her two undead parents, hanging onto their fingers and asking them to swing her. They obliged, but in the unenthusiastic motions of servile corpses. Barely moving the girl.
“This town… My lord, we shouldn’t sleep here.” Said Owen.
Liam shook his head, “Owen, if Ashera wanted us dead, we would all be corpses by now. I’ve never seen such power, well… Unless you count when Lord Liam slew Pandora.” Said Liam, getting wide eyed stares from the nearby paladins.
“Are you certain?” Hissed Velena, nervously taking in the surrounding townsfolk.
“Absolutely. Have the earth magi build her a wall, then we’ll depart and leave her to work whatever magicks she pleases. I can see magic, it’s something of a gift, but what I saw when we first met her… She had a blade to all our necks, but look, even the children are protected and cared for. I, I think Ashera lost her child, and the violation was so deep it brought her back from the dead.”
“Working with a lich doesn’t sit right with me.” Muttered Velena.
“If you endanger all of us, I'll kill you myself.” Warned Liam, giving her a glare to communicate he might not be joking.
“Understood sir.” Said Velena, saluting in the fulminonimbus fashion and dismissing herself.
Owen watched her leave with a leer, “Twas awfully harsh my lord.”
“There can be no mercy for those who would throw away my life as well as theirs. Maybe one day Velena will find someone to love, until then, we must keep her bloodlust in check.”
A chortle escaped Owen’s lips. “Velena fall in love? Ha! Fat chance. I’ll be a monkey's uncle, and the king’s granduncle before Velena lets a man into her bed.”