hrough near empty rooms Ishkinil made her way, one to the next, the White Citadel a now silent mausoleum for the fallen glory of Iskor Yar and her ruler. The victorious army of the Summer Lord had left nothing of value behind as they looted it in the aftermath of their triumph. Woven tapestries and rich carpets, carved statues and furnishing, manuscripts and tomes and scrolls, coins and precious gems, silver goblets and gilded bowls and more they had carried off. Here and there in the empty rooms that Ishkinil passed through, she came across piles of ash. What had not been looted, what was not of value or could not be carried, had been burned, blackening the once gleaming white walls and ceilings.
Along corridors that weaved through the citadel had been pained lavish murals, depicting the deeds and might of the Everqueen, her power and triumphs. These, now, had been disfigured, her images defaced. Crude inscriptions had been gouged into the murals, or painted on with blood that had dried near black. The Everqueen, once so powerful, who had ruled for centuries with a grip of iron sorcery, was destined to be forgotten, her memory expunged from all but a few, of scholars and the other tyrant sorcerers who had known her and remembered her.
From empty room to empty room Ishkinil continued, own long corridors that had once overflowed with servants and the trappings of power, until she came at last to the throne room at the heart of the White Citadel, a vast chamber that was supported by lofty white marble columns that marched don the length of the room. One golden reliefs decorated the columns but she could see that they had been gouged out, taken as loot by eager soldiers.
What replaced them were corpses, of soldiers and servants who had remained with the Everqueen as her city fell and her power faded. Indignities had been heaped upon them in life and in death, tortured and slain, used as the catalyst for dark sorcery by the Summer Lord before their corpses were transfixed to the walls and columns of the room with iron spikes.
At the far end of the hall, upon a raised dais, the Everqueen's vast throne remained, and here another corpse sat, one with golden spikes driven through eyes and hands and feet to attached them to it. They had been a person of great power and influence to receive such a fate, the Everqueen's general or vizier, or, perhaps even a blood relative, one whose tortuous death could provide abundant fuel for the Summer Lord's sorcery.
The energies released by whatever sorcery the Summer Lord had performed in the hall, powered by so much death and despair, still remained, so thick, so strong that Ishkinil felt ill jut in the presence of it, her stomach knotting and a chill touching her skin. Even if she could not have felt it, she would have seen it, attuned as she was to such things as others weren't. Whispers of sickly green arcane energy still curled around the room, twisting around the columns, caressing the corpses there, or swirling around the ceiling of the hall, where a cast image of the Everqueen had once bestrode the heavens, now tarnished and blackened by the touch of fire. Even the torch she held aloft remained not untouched the presence of so thick a fog of energy, for it flickered as tendrils of it whispered and twisted by, like questing snakes, the flamed edge with green, unnaturally so and unearthly to behold. The light of it cast long and disturbing shadows down the length of the hall.
Here, then, was darkness given true form, the blackest of sorceries undertaken, fuelled by torturous death, deaths that were prolonged and most agonising using methods that only the darkest of minds could conceive. Where souls should have been released upon death into Enkurgil's embrace, to be escorted to the realms beyond, here they had been tormented and denied. Even now should hear moaned whispers at the limits of her unnatural hearing, soft sighs of lingering pain and pleads for release.
Dirgesinger crooned with a hardened edge and flashed to white-blue flame as she stalked forwards toward the throne, the white bone blade reflecting her feelings, Shadows grow thick around her as her cloak enveloped her and dark was the expression upon her face, grim as the halls of the night, eyes flashing like cold fire.
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Whatever had happened in the hall, whatever horrors unleashed, horrors she wished never to uncover, it had leached forth from the reams beyond and into the city itself. Tendrils of eldritch energies had spun off from the hall and the White Citadel, to slither forth into the city, touching the living and the dead alike, unseen but not unfelt. It had drawn life from the living, to continue to fuel the sorcerous vortex above her long after it should have ended and gave forth dark energy to the dead and dying, empowering them in ways contrary to the very fabric of nature, and to Enkurgil's designs.
Ishkinil could not believe that it had been intended to do so, could not have been devised by living minds, yet there it was, an after effect of the ritual that the Summer Lord had performed, or perhaps one that had gone awry. Such was always a hazard with sorcery, for it was hard to control and even seem to have a will of its own at times, with its own purpose and desires. Whatever had been the cause, it had to be stopped. The darkness of it might just rest on the city of Iskor Yar for now, but from there it could spread, a malevolence that would slowly creep across the land, growing hungrier yet, and ever more powerful with each life it leached into its ravenous maw. That she could not allow. That she had to end, by whatever means that she could muster.
At the throne she stopped, to look upon the corpse that had been nailed there by golden spikes. With eyes that could gaze upon the ways of death and the arcane, she could see that the sorcererous energies present within the room all seemed to swirl around the corpse. While the other corpses hung ignored upon walls and columns, the one upon the throne seemed to be touched by then, for snake like tendrils of the sickly green energies from time to time came to it, or from it, whispering through the air to mingle with the vortex above.
The corpse upon the throne was the focus of it all. They had suffered the most; close as she had come, she could sell the wounds upon it still, despite the desiccated nature of it. They had suffered indignities, in life and death, that few others had, not and live for long.
A man they had been in life, one tall and of a powerful build, broad of shoulders and chest. A warrior, though now eyeless and handless. Even as Ishkinil looked upon it, the corpse seemed to move, pushing against the golden spikes that transfixed it to the throne. Cold ran the shudder through Ishkinil at it; they could not be alive still, not after all that they had been through, not n the condition they were in and the long march of time since the fall of Iskor Yar.
There emanated from the corpse a low moaning sound, not words, though it appeared an attempt to do so. Its tongue had been cut out, leaving it unable to speak.
The realisation came upon Ishkinil that all of this had not been, as she first thought, an accident, but had been devised and planned. It was all too elaborate, too linked to be so. Only one in command of their sorcerous powers could hope to undertake such an atrocity against nature and death, only one as evil as tyrant sorcerer could have conceived of such in their depraved minds. And only one such had the means and the opportunity to do so; the Summer Lord of Mishas Surut alone could have done so. She could not conceive why he wished to see the long lingering scourge of darkness to seep from Iskor Yar, to spread across the lands, yet it was so. Death would flow in its wake, an unnatural one and not of Enkurgil's devising and embrace. There had to be a reason for it, a reason to wish to see the corpses of the dead to rise and walk the lands, unthinking unfeeling, a use to none but to spread further death and destruction. They could not be reasoned with, nor function as subjects such as all the tyrants desired. What use, then, those that a tyrant could not rule.
It mattered not to Ishkinil the intent of why, only that he had done so, an act that had to end there and then. Enkurgil's bidding had brought her her and she knew now why. Swift did Dirgesinger croon through the air as she unleashed it, the white bone blade slicing clean through the neck of the living corpse upon the throne, separating the head from the body.
Neither part fell, transfixed as they were to the throne by the golden spikes. A shuddering gurgle came from the corpse, one that echoed to an end and then it was still, to move no longer.