Kulrod, Beastkeeper of the Eastlands, Wielder of Feather, the Sword in the Sky, First in the Council of Ten, flew toward Nargathrum. He could have flown with the wings his sword granted him but he didn’t. Instead he flew atop his greatest creation, a monster stitched together from the blood and bone and flesh of many animals. A creation big enough to carry his many legions of beasts and birds. A creation that bore down toward Nargathrum.
He had been flying across the Hallowed Realm, investigating the various bits and pieces of chaos and anarchy left after the war and the falling stars when he’d seen the storms gathering over the city. He knew they weren’t natural storms, in fact he recognised his fellow council member’s work. He had been curious but perfectly happy to leave her to her own endeavors until he’d seen the great pillars of flame and huge explosions bursting through the raging storms. He’d grown curious and so he’d flown back to his home and gathered his beasts before returning. He did not know whether he came to help or hinder his fellow sorcerer but he came all the same. There was something happening in Nargathrum and he would find out what.
Wegrel walked back into Nargathrum slowly. He had been out searching for tracks for a long time and he wanted to take his time coming back. Pick his way through the wreckage and flooding one step at a time. There wasn’t much of a city left now. What part of it hadn’t been swept out to sea had been blown to pieces by the great battle between Bara and the Phoenix. Wegrel knew what had happened, Jencer had told him the details, but most of the city had no idea and so rumors had spread. Most people thought it was a Phoenix although few realised it was the legendary Phoenix of Fort Sundrick. The most popular theory was that the Phoenix was a punishment for all the looting and pillaging in the aftermath of the war. Not that this had stopped the looting and pillaging at all.
The greatest display of anarchy had been the tearing down of the last great Guildspires and piling them all up in a great heap in the middle of the city. That heap was the centre of the town now and on it lived the top looters and pillagers the city had to offer. Salara, the once great criminal scourge of the city. The remnants of the town guard, now a corrupt protection racket. Some leftover pirates who had made it through the whole ordeal.
But ruling them all was Jencer, the Man of a Thousand Shadows. That was who Wegrel reported to now. Already feared and reviled throughout the city he had emerged from the carnage looking healthy as ever save for his scars and claimed his spot atop the pile. They all answered to him, every criminal and every guard and every pirate. Even lowly old Wegrel answered to him now, and so he’d been sent off to track down the little boy who had so angered Jencer.
He reached the great pile of rubble and began clambering up it. Various people milled about in what was a wasteland of dust and debris. Great lakes and puddles of water from the flooding spread throughout various holes in the pile and probably eroded it away from beneath. Wegrel didn’t mind though, he likely wouldn’t be here for long. Not now that he’d found the tracks. Jencer would want to move out to follow them soon enough.
He reached the top of the pile and there was Jencer sitting there drinking some of the finest wine looted from the fallen Guildspires. Drinking and surveying his new domain. Beneath his shirt was the little shape where all the shadows came from. Wegrel knew what it was now, he’d seen it up close, an amulet, the Amulet of the Dead.
But that wasn’t all Jencer hid on his person. On a second necklace, visible through the shirt was the glowing Eye of the Phoenix. The great orb that had saved him from the poisons of the Black Spider. That mysterious gang had disappeared completely as the city crumbled and Wegrel was glad it had, he didn’t want people that powerful under the thumb of Jencer like everyone else was.
He reached the minstrel who hadn’t even noticed him yet, so absorbed as he was in his wine and his view. So Wegrel spoke first.
“Why do you want this boy? How could he be important to someone like you?”
Jencer looked up from his view and grinned his crooked grin. The Eye of the Phoenix could heal many things it seemed but it could not heal those ugly black scars across his face.
“The boy is unimportant.” Jencer replied. “But I promised him I’d kill him and the promise is important. When you deal in magical artefacts as I do Wegrel you learn just how important promises are. Now, did you find anything?”
Wegrel paused and sighed softly. He wished he could lie, send Jencer off in some random direction. Maybe into the ocean. But he couldn’t lie, shadows couldn’t lie. “He went south, someone else went with him. They took horses.”
Jencer laughed again and went back to looking at his view. Wegrel looked with him. “Excellent, we’ll leave in the morning.”
Together they gazed out at the city. A huge city, a ruined city. A city of shadows.
Sered stood atop the cliff and looked out across the ocean. He was used to the stench of rotting flesh and decay but even he was struggling to breathe. Yet he looked all the same. For at the bottom of the cliff was not an ocean of water, but one of dead bodies, floating in the sea. It was a fair distance out before he could even see water again and out there some stray corpses floating still.
The people of Nargathrum, all dead and tossed into the oceans to rot. Sered was not a particularly religious man, nor, he supposed, a particularly honourable one. But he stood at that cliff all the same and paid the dead their respects. He poured a pitcher of wine that they’d stolen over the cliff and said a few final words, fighting back tears from the stench.
He was about to turn to go, to leave that awful place when he saw something down the coast, something that was very much alive. A great shape floated in the water, a slowly twisting shape that swam idly among the corpses. Atop the shape were legions of animals, beasts and birds all standing still and rigid and alert. He recognised the animals but he barely paid them any mind, instead he watched the figure ahead of them. The winged figure who floated above the corpses with his arms cut open, dripping his blood into their mouths. Kulrod, just gifted with a whole host of corpses to raise from the dead.
Kulrod hadn’t seen him and it seemed the animals hadn’t either. He could leave. Leave this horrible place behind. That had been the plan, after the old woman had told them what had happened at Nargathrum the plan had been to say a few words for the dead and then flee. But Sered didn’t flee. He was not afraid of his old ally.
“Kulrod!” he shouted down the cliff after walking along it toward the sorcerer.
Kulrod looked about for the voice before finally squinting up into the sun and seeing him standing there.
“Who’re...?” Kulrod asked, squinting further. “Sered?! What are you doing in this corner of the world?”
“Saying a prayer for the dead,” he replied. “Tad more respectful than what you’re doing.”
Kulrod looked back down at the bloody ritual he was performing. “These bodies will only waste away to rot and ruin here. They will destroy the coastline. I merely take what is offered.”
Sered shrugged. “Where are you taking them?”
“Nargathrum. Strange things are happening there and I plan to investigate.” He looked back up. “Best to be prepared.”
“I coulda told you what happened in Nargathrum,” Sered replied, turning to face the ruined city. “An old woman, an apothecary type, escaped from it and she told us everything.”
Kulrod paused in his ritual. Sered grinned, he clearly didn’t like being at a loss toward his old ally. “What did she tell you?”
Sered considered telling him nothing. Kulrod had abandoned him long ago and he’d lost everything because of it. But he didn’t, because there was something in that city that needed to be stopped and maybe a sorcerer with an army of corpses could do it. “What do you know of Bara, Sorceress of the Deep?”
The man of a thousand shadows slept, resting for the morning when he and his legions of the dead would march out to hunt down the boy who had so wronged him. When he went to sleep he had been content, legions of shadows at his beck and call, the Eye of the Phoenix warming him and healing any of his wounds, and the buzz of the copious amounts of wine he had drunk to celebrate his victory.
But in his dreams he had none of those. In his dreams he was naked and alone in the Forest of Topaz. The warmth from the Eye had turned into a choking heatwave, the buzz from the alcohol had turned into a hazy fugue that slowed his thoughts, and the shadows. There were no shadows in the blazing forest, only whispers. And the whispers asked him to make a deal.
Jencer didn’t like birds. That was something Wegrel had learned early when traveling with him. While at sea whenever a sea bird would fly past he’d go belowdecks. On land he’d hide indoors whenever he saw them or regularly send his shadows after them to amuse himself. Now that he was completely in control of the city there were whole legions of shadows tasked with keeping them out. Initially, Wegrel had learned, he’d been afraid to use the Amulet to its full potential. But now, protected by the Eye of the Phoenix Jencer was raising as many ghosts as possible, willing to slaughter an entire city. Now, there were no birds for miles around, only shadows.
Wegrel looked up at the sky and saw some strange shapes passing high above them. Strange in that they looked very much like birds. Jencer didn’t notice, he was asleep and reeking of alcohol in the most comfortable bed they’d been able to find and restore in the ruined city.
Wegrel had been instructed to defend Jencer from anything dangerous but he had no such instructions regarding chasing away birds and so he merely watched. He watched as the shapes grew closer and closer, circling high above the city. He watched as tiny shapes seemed to split off from the birds, to leap from their backs almost. But no, surely that couldn’t make sense. What kind of birds-?
Wegrel stopped thinking as the shapes crashed into the city and exploded into great billowing fumes of something. He instinctively held his breath but then realised that he didn’t need to breathe so he just floated there in shock. He couldn’t see anything, he had no idea what those shapes had been or what was going on. This was obviously some sort of attack but he had no idea what to do, he was blind in the black fog.
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Then he heard the skittering.
Jencer awoke to the burning eye of the Phoenix struggling to purge the deadly toxic fumes from his lungs. He hacked and coughed and his mouth and eyes burned as whatever it was ate away at him. He couldn’t see anything, he couldn’t breathe, he could barely think. But he could still command his shadows mentally.
He brought them all around him and made them spin, flying and whirling around him in a deadly swirl that drove away the fumes. Coughing and gagging he stood up, the burning in his chest and face slowly subsiding as the burning eye at his chest healed him. Then he saw the spiders.
Before he could command his hordes of shadows to stop them they leapt onto him and began tearing into his newly healed flesh. He staggered back and almost fell into the swirling mass of shadows keeping the fumes at bay, but he didn’t. Instead he battered away the spiders and commanded some of the spirits to help him in prying them off and killing them. The pain was intense, the swarm was unending and the fear that he’d been in this position before and barely lived rattled him to the bone. This time though he had the Eye of the Phoenix, he couldn’t die while he had that, and he had far more spirits.
He commanded them to tell him what was going on and of course Wegrel knew what was going on, when didn’t he? There were shapes in the sky, shapes that were dropping out of the sky and filling his city with spiders and poison fumes. He didn’t need all his spirits down here, some of them he sent up to kill whatever it was attacking him in the sky. He just hoped it wasn’t the same monstrous bird that had given him his scars in the first place.
Kulrod watched his many hundreds of corpses leap into the city, each one of them packed with both deadly toxic fumes and hordes of spiders made from the small bones and tendons those corpses no longer needed. He hoped that it would be enough to kill Jencer but he wasn’t expecting it to work, and sure enough only minutes after the attack had begun the deadly shadows began billowing out of the clouds of poison. Kulrod leapt from his floating flesh fortress and dived toward them. He had no idea if this would work but there wasn’t much else to try. If he couldn’t kill the shadows he’d never reach Jencer and if he couldn’t reach Jencer he may as well give up now. So he dove, because while it was perhaps unlikely he could kill the shadows with Feather it was even less likely that they could kill him. He was a sorcerer, and they were already dead.
It was a long way down to the city, he’d purposely flown as high as he possibly could to keep his birds and animals away from the hordes of shadows and so it took him a long time to fall. He could see the world spread out before him, the great coast that he’d recently picked clean of corpses, the hill and cave where Sered and his men now hid, awaiting the outcome of the battle, and the great fume choked city below him, out of which flew a horde of shadows. He fell so fast they barely saw him and none of them were expecting someone like him.
Feather, an artifact made by a sky god, tore through shadows made by an artifact of a war god. The sky god won. All around Kulrod shadows shattered into ethereal dust and dissipated. He summoned the great wings his sword granted him and flung himself out of the way of the shadows before they could realise what happened. A few of their ethereal weapons swung at places he’d been but he was far too fast for them. He came around for another pass and they wilted before him. The sword seemingly moving the air and wind itself to drive his foes toward it.
Even though most of the shadows were down in the city keeping the fumes and spiders at bay there were still a sizeable number of them and Kulrod received many wounds and scars as he dispatched them all. But dispatch them all he did and he hovered high above the poison choked city, his wounds slowly healing in the midst of an empty battlefield. He looked down at the swirling horde of shadows, now very visible in the hole they made in the fumes. He shifted his body around, ensuring nothing important was yet to heal, then dived into the city.
Jencer staggered through his city, his protective circle of spirits moving with him. They were doing well at keeping the spiders at bay now but the fog was starting to grow so thick it had begun to leak through the wall and he was struggling to breathe again. But he had enough breath left to think, to plan. There was a tower, mostly destroyed, but partially intact and hopefully tall enough to reach out of these choking clouds.
So he ran that way, his shadows mowing down hordes of spiders beyond the little protective circle they made for him and the terrible black fog mostly kept at bay. Yet he was coughing and choking on it anyway and he was staggering and slipping through the ruins of the city. He was tired, it had been a long time since he’d had to run like this, since he’d had to run for his life. The fog choked him, the ruins bucked up and down beneath him and his magical necklaces hung heavy on his neck, the Eye of the Phoenix burning hot as it burned the poison away. Too hot.
He reached the tower and began to climb, some of the stairs crumbling away beneath him until he was crawling. He was sweating now too, the Eye burning away at his chest, his hands slippery with sweat as he struggled to climb through the crumbling tower.
Then he was back in the Forest of Topaz and the heat was unbearable as Raqos, the demon lord of fire himself gazed down upon him, offering him a deal, offering him a way out.
He reached the top of the tower and it was choked in poison and spiders too. But there were less of them and he began to breathe more easily, he began to calm himself, the forest began to fade.
Then something impossibly fast landed on the tower next to his swarm of shadows. He flinched away from it, still on his hands and knees like the helpless creature he was. He fought down his panic, whatever was out there couldn’t get to him through his wall of shadows, he was safe, he was-
A blade sliced through the swarm of shadows and they dissipated before it. A great gaping hole opened up in the impenetrable swirling wall as the wind itself seemed to drive the shadows into the blade. Beyond the hole stood a terrifying figure, great wings and blade all dripping with the poisonous fumes and staring down at him with rageful golden eyes.
The poison and spiders all plunged through the gap in the barrier and swarmed him, covering his body, his face, his lungs. All thoughts, all plans, all hope was gone and even the forest began to flicker away.
Sobbing, utterly defeated he reached up and touched the blazing topaz. He accepted a deal with Raqos.
Demons are free to alter the bodies and possessions of those who have entered deals with them but they may only perform a certain number of great and powerful acts upon the greater world when hidden away in their realms. Usually they save these acts for situations of great emergency but Raqos, having dealt with Venesstrifect, the Plague Elemental, is dying. He has no qualms about using as much power as possible in these times.
Naya the old apothecary stood atop weary old legs atop a weary old hill and watched the city in the distance. It was choked with a fog she’d help make, a fog that should kill everything in it almost immediately. But Kulrod still hadn’t returned to them victorious. She’d suspected as much, there was something more to Jencer than his shadows. Something that had let him survive the poison her student had administered to him. Freyan had thought she’d hidden her secret activities from Naya but Naya was far more aware than she realised. She knew many things about what happened in the city. At least, until now.
Sered stood beside her watching as well, once a would be conqueror, now a lowly vagabond with naught to show for his brush with greatness but an undead horse that was unlikely to last much longer before it rotted away.
“He’s learned a few new tricks since he was with me,” Sered said, looking up at the great undead beasts cobbled together from many corpses circling high above the city. “Makes you wonder how that scarred man’s still alive.”
“Mmm,” Naya replied. “There’s something wrong with Jencer, something keeping him alive. Something-”
They had to both shield their eyes as the city was swept by a huge blast of flame. It was over as quickly as it came and they stood blinking in the darkness. The fog had all burned away leaving the city clear and visible again.
“That poison is water-based,” Naya said. “It shouldn’t be flammable.”
Sered grimaced. “The fog may not be flammable but Kulrod is.”
Jencer leapt to his feet as all the fog and spiders were burnt away. Before him the sorcerer stood wreathed in flames, his wings, his clothes, his hair, all alight. But he didn’t seem to mind.
Before the first swing of that deadly blade could come Jencer sent every spirit he had to swarm the burning figure before him. They heaped atop him, a flood of shadows and death and the burning sorcerer met them. Packed as closely as they were each of his swings took huge swathes out of the shadowy army. Tens of them, hundreds, dissipated before him. But there were still hundreds left.
They tore into him, plunging their shadowy weapons and blades into his flesh, spraying burning sorcerer blood across the tower. Yet still he swung and with each swing he chopped their numbers in half. For he was a sorcerer and by themselves the shadows couldn’t kill him, but Jencer knew what needed to be done.
Keeping back from the sprays of acidic blood he commanded his spirits to close in on the arm that held the devastating blade. To chip away at it and take the hand from the arm and the sword from the hand. But the sorcerer was fast, each time the shadows congealed on the arm he would rip it free from their blades and drive them back with another great swing. There were a mere twenty spirits left now, then ten, then five.
Then a great towering shadow, one Jencer had never seen before, loomed behind the sorcerer, drew an axe from somewhere and hacked through the sorcerer’s wrist. The hand fell away to the side, the blade shearing through another shadow and then a different spirit caught it.
Wegrel bought Jencer the blade and before the burning, bleeding, amputated sorcerer could flee he drove it through his chest, the cut impossibly clean. The sorcerer looked up at him, somehow those angry golden eyes had survived the whole assault from the shadows.
“The... the...” he spluttered.
All his injuries healed by the Eye and Raqos Jencer responded quietly. “I am an amalgamation of two people stitched together by the magic of Auriomauch, I am a magic creature.” He smiled an ugly smile twisted by his black scars.
“The... council will stop you...” the sorcerer spluttered as he died. “The council will kill you...”
Jencer stood up as his foe slumped to the ground and died. Around him hovered a mere four shadows, Wegrel, the tall mysterious one, and two others. He had gained a magic blade and slain a sorcerer with it but still he was afraid. He had made a deal with Raqos, one of the most temperamental of demons, and now there was a mysterious council he had to worry about. He looked at the four shadows remaining. Perhaps it was time to lay low for a while.
Naya, Sered and the rest of his band watched the great monstrous birds Kulrod had built tumble away into the ocean. He’d decided that they would have been too easy for the spirits to kill and so had left them in reserve. They fell for a long time.
Behind them Sered’s horse slumped away and came apart as it did, dying along with all of Kulrod’s other creations.
“We should leave,” Sered said and Naya nodded.
As they saddled other horses Naya found the one man who was still watching the city. Sengrid Tull, the man she’d only recently cured from the nefarious poisons of his brother.
“If we leave will she ever find me again?” he asked.
Naya wasn’t the best at comforting patients, that skill had never been in high demand when she’d trained as a ninja. “If you stay, you’ll likely die and then she’ll never find you again.”
Sengrid nodded sadly and then stood up slowly to join the others. The poison had left him slow and weak. She looked down at her old body, just like her. Poisons or no poisons roaming the wartorn world alone would be dangerous for people like them. She didn’t trust Sered but right now he was the best hope they had of staying safe. So they climbed into her cart filled with all her supplies and rode off with him and his band. Fleeing from a city they thought to be full of shadows.
Wegrel waited in the Amulet as Jencer found his own way without shadows to help him. There were only four of them now and he was scared, even when he’d been worried about the contract Wegrel had never seen him this scared. So they all hid inside the Amulet to lessen the chances of him being recognised.
Wegrel knew two of the shadows who remained. One was Keya, a washerwoman from some village Jencer had visited when he’d been plagued by birds. He knew rather a lot about her in fact as she was all too happy to talk. The other was Faros, one of the thugs from Salara’s gang who Wegrel had known while they’d both been alive.
But the last shadow he had never seen before, even Keya had never seen him before. That shadow had cut the hand from the sorcerer in that great battle. He was a powerful warrior, even more so now that he was a shadow. So far he hadn’t spoken to the other three but Wegrel was determined to speak with him at some point. Because while Jencer seemed unstoppable with his Eye of the Phoenix and whatever trick he’d pulled to burn away the sorcerer’s attack, he was afraid of a great many things. And one of the things he was afraid of was that shadow. Wegrel was determined to find out why.