After some time, as he was still surrounded by water, Ignis began to worry. Not because of the water changing colour to red every now and then when some unfortunate fish accidentally crossed paths with him, but because the spell was about to run out, and he was still under water.
'Eh, I had a good life.', he contemplated as the winds around him started to become slower, though he did not completely give up just yet, as he had one more spell that could aid him. Just as the sphere around him was about to burst, he slammed down his staff while casting the spell
'Huh, that actually worked. And it looks like I'm heading for land as well.', he thought, as he hurtled towards a beastkin man fishing at the river's shore. The fisherman, a grey-furred lykan, or werewolf, as some humans would call them, barely managed to jump out of the way, before the wizard slammed into the folding chain in which he had just sat.
As his robe was quite shock absorbent, the fall itself did nothing to Ignis but cover him in dust, which he freed himself off as he rose to his feet. Looking around, he saw the fisherman look at him in shock, as the situation he found himself in was far out of the ordinary.
"What, never saw a man in a dress go out for a swim on such a lovely day?", he asked the werewolf, who just shook his head.
"Hm? Did you understand what I said? Finally, someone I can hold a conversation with! Would you kindly tell me where I am?"
"This be the river Érimosekeí ", the fisherman answered, examining the old man before him.
"...I know that. Where exactly?", he added annoyed.
"Short ways off Potami, the gateway to Sidenýchi... Say, who are you, human, to go for a swim in these treacherous waters? Do you not fear death?", the werewolf continued.
"...No?", Ignis answered.
"Oh Smaragdina, watch over this fool. Follow me, human, I will guide you to my village. The fish refused to bite today anyway.", the werewolf explained while packing his things.
"Who are you anyway? And what brought you to dive into the most dangerous of rivers?", the werewolf asked, as they moved towards Potami.
"Are you a guard?", the wizard asked, clinging to his staff in case he did not like the answer.
"Does it matter? And put that thing away! This might be a small village, but most of us are veterans of the war. We may have laid down our arms long ago, but if you try anything funny, we won't just sit idly by.", the werewolf growled his warning at the wizard, his face growing hostile.
"My apologies. It is just that I had some bad experiences in the last few days, is all. I am known as Ignis.", Ignis apologized quickly, not wanting to incite a fight before he had some rest.
"Hrm... Nkríkyr Próta Paláti.", the fisherman answered with his name, returning to his neutral expression.
"Alright, Mister... Come again?", the wizard asked unsure of the pronunciation, inciting a sigh to escape the werewolf.
"Just call me Kree, everyone does."
"Very well, Kree. Is there a way for me to hide... I mean, might there be an inn of sorts in your village for me to spend a few days?", the wizard asked, causing the werewolf to look at him with a strange expression.
"...If you got the coin, we got accommodation. 15 Kérma a night at the inn.", he replied.
"Kérma? What's that in real money?", Ignis asked confused, as he was not familiar with this currency. The werewolf furrowed his brows, his mood souring at the choice of Ignis' words.
"Continue your mockeries and see where you end up, old man!", Kree started to growl again.
"Geez, no sense of humour, eh? My apologies.", the wizard exclaimed with an apologetic bow.
"Making a mockery of our ways is no mere humour for those who got to live through Domitor's tyranny. Take care to remember that! If you got no money, you may still stay, as long as you do not bother anyone, but without roof above your head.", Kree continued.
"What else is new?", the wizard sighed in defeat.
The rest of the way is filled with awkward silence, which neither of the two knew how to break, as Ignis believed himself to already be treading on thin ice, and Kree chose to ignore the old man to not further become enraged by his ignorance. Thus, they parted ways upon arriving at the village without another word, with Kree heading home to cool his head, and the wizard wandering around to pass the time.
Potami, though described by the werewolf as being a small village, was quite sizeable, as it served as last step before one started one's journey up the mountain known as Sidenýchi, the first mountain of the Xifidio mountain-range. The mountains were rich in iron, which served as the main source of income for the region.
To fight the increasing crime rates near the mines, the villages near them and especially Potami became home to veterans of the Edenian War, who, for various reasons, were no longer able to serve in the military, but still wanted to aid their newly liberated nation of Chóratonippotón, which was known before becoming a vassal state of Domitor as Selinófoto, in its recovery.
Despite the populace being mostly comprised of former soldiers, the village was no different from others Ignis had visited over the years, with the only exception being how it was structured. As the population of Chóratonippotón mostly consisted of beastkin, the buildings were built with their preferences in mind. The houses themselves where snow-white in colour and were constructed in a way that made it look like they were carved out of a single stone, and their roofs were covered with scarlet red shingles. A fountain had been placed in the centre, with the beautifully carved statue of a female lykan on a pedestal pouring an endless stream of water out of an amphora into the basin the pedestal has been placed in.
Ignis could not help himself but smile as he saw the children of the locals play in and around the fountain, a scene that calmed his heart and filled him with peace. He continued his way through the village, ignoring the wary stares of the locals, as he was used to being looked at in a funny way, until he reached a female werewolf with dark-grey fur wearing leather armour, who waved him over to her. He could not tell the age of beastkin, as he had only ever met a handful of them, but he knew that she had to be at least above what would be considered middle-aged due to her being slightly hunched over and a few silver strands of hair peeking through the frazzled hair on her head.
"Oi, old man! Yer a spellcaster, aren'tcha?", she barked at him in an uncouth tone, which caught him off guard.
Her elderly voice made him assume she was born at least more than two hundred years ago, as beastkin tended to outlive humans 3 times over. He pondered these things, as he believed that a beastkin should have learned manners at her age.
"...Yes?", Ignis answered, confused as to why she would just wave over a stranger without greeting just to ask him of his profession.
"Heard from Kree you ain't got money. I got a job for ya!", she said while licking her teeth like a hungry dog.
Ignis looked her up from top to bottom, then looked back at her face.
"...Sorry, I don't do stuff like that.", he answered nonchalantly, causing the werewolf to hit him on the head, knocking his hat off.
"Ow, why?", he yelped, rubbing his bald dome while picking up his hat.
"The fuck's your problem you pervert? I meant actual work.", she growled at him angrily, a common occurrence in his conversations with werewolves, he noted.
"There's been some undead sightings near the foot of the mountain. It wouldn't be a problem, if people didn't start going missing as well. An old friend of mine wanted to see what was going on, haven't heard from him since.", she explained.
"Don't you have guards for that very reason?", Ignis asked while righting the hat on his head.
"Smart ass, don't make me whack you again. Those lazy bastards won't do shit because they don't move on rumours, and they just keep yapping on about how people may have just started moving out or some crap."
"What about you, lady? You pack quite the punch, you know?", Ignis remarked after stepping out of reach in anticipation, but the elderly werewolf seemed to have taken this as a compliment.
"If I was in my prime, I'd have dealt with this long ago, but years of peace and growing old made me go mellow, ya feel me? I just don't have that boiling blood in me anymore that gets ya in the mood for violence.", she snarled.
"Yeah, right. That and still in your twenties.", the wizard whispered, but the ears of the werewolf were still working fine, earning him another smack.
"Truth is, I'm just sick of dealing with undeads. Their stench has burnt itself into my nostrils back in the war, and I hope to never have to smell it again. However, since a penniless beggar like you isn't really in a situation where he can refuse any work given to him, I don't have to deal with this annoyance myself anymore. I know for a fact that you spellcasters are always looking for trouble, so an easy job like this should be just up your alley, no? If you can find some leads or manage to get rid of those undead and bring back proof, I'll give ya some money for food. How'sat sound?", she continued.
"Money? Sure, just point the way. I've dealt with undead of all kinds, no problem.", he assured her full of pride, while feeling for the bump that started to form on his forehead from the werewolf's assault.
"Don't get too full of yerself now. If ya had seen half the shit I've been through you'd weep yer eyes out. Now bugger off, I hope ya'll find the way to the mountain's roots on yer own, considering how big they are.", she snarled at him, before walking off.
"Right...", Ignis stated to no one in particular, before heading towards the mountains.
'Hmm, it's a few hours until nightfall, I reckon, they're probably hiding in a cave somewhere ', Ignis contemplated on the way, trying to figure out a strategy.
'Maybe Mira can track them.', he thought, as he started to search his pocket for his pet. Snatching the rat from her zero-gravity nap seemed to have displeased his furry companion, causing her to sink her teeth into his hand. Ignis ignored her protest, and still pulled her out.
"I know, I know, I only called out to you in the last few days if there was work to do, and this is no exception. BUT! There is some fresh food in it for us if we do it! Now, what say you?", he asked Mira, who looked at him tiredly. After yawning and stretching, she gave off a squeak, causing Ignis to lower her to the ground.
"Hah, I knew you couldn't say no to that! Now, we are to find some undead! The old hag from before said they should be skeletons, but there might be some of her kind as well!", he explained, and the rat started to sniff the air.
After a minute, she started to squeak again, and started running towards the mountain.
"Lead the way!", Ignis called out and followed after her.
Mira ran away from the path that led up the mountains and towards a forest north of it. After a while, the foot of the mountain became a sheer cliff, and the rat approached a large fissure in the rock, which was about big enough for two humans to fit through comfortably together.
"In there? You sure about that?", Ignis asked her, to which she replied with a squeak.
"Only undead or something else as well?", he continued, as he had hoped to just close the cave off and be done with it.
Another squeak, followed by a deep sigh of Ignis.
"Well, can't go the easy route every time now, can we? Get back in the pocket, I'll handle this.", he remarked while kneeling down to make it easier for her to just jump in, which she did.
As the cave he entered was, as expected, devoid of light, he had cast the
'Eugh, no light, unsafe structure, I hate undead. Why can't they all make some fancy tomb like Ragnar, or whatever he was called, that guy had style.', he grumbled in his mind as the wizard moved forward, careful not to bump into the walls and accidentally cause a collapse.
'How about you expand it? I have the perfect spell for you, just let me back in.', the whisper returned, but he had none of it and pushed it away.
'As if I wasn't agitated enough already.'
After a while, Ignis arrived at what looked to be a dead end. Trusting the judgement of his furry companion completely, he knew that there had to be some hidden entrance or something similar that would lead further into the mountain, the place where the undead had brought their victims and waited during the day.
'Hm...I wonder if?', he thought, before knocking on the wall in front of him with the tip of his staff.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
To his surprise, the stone gave in without any resistance whatsoever, though it did not change in any way.
'An illusion? Huh. Guess they have a conjurer among them? I don't think I'm getting paid enough for this, no matter how much the old hag is going to fork out.', Ignis contemplated, as he stepped through the illusion.
Upon his foot making contact with the floor, he regretted his decision, as it was not earth or stone that laid before him, but ice. As his foot slipped forward at an alarming speed, he barely managed to ram his staff into the ground, which, as it shattered the ice and lodged itself into it, prevented him from falling, or worse, a full-on split.
"What the hell is going on here?", he grunted, as he carefully tried to stand upright on the ice.
Around him, Ignis could see an enormous cave partially covered in ice, with icicles hanging like stalactites from the ceiling and growing like stalagmites from the floor. As the light of his staff was reflected by various ice-covered surfaces, the entire cave looked dimly lit, and he noticed a staircase leading to a platform of sorts which was about a yard above the ground floor. The cave was a beautiful place to behold, and Ignis would have like nothing more to take in the scenery but considering that there were undead hiding somewhere around him, he let out a deep sigh and carried on. He carefully moved away from the ice-patch he was standing on and approached the stairs.
'Yep, this is definitely a trap.', he thought, as he carefully ascended the stairs, which were partially covered in ice as well. And right he was, as someone had already awaited his arrival at the other end of the platform, he saw himself on.
Upon a beautifully carved throne made entirely of ice, a female humanoid being with trans-lucid, crystalline blue skin and sparkly, pure white hair was watching the wizard struggling up the last few stairs, amusement clear on her face. She was clothed in a featureless dress of pure white, and atop her head a fancy crown of ice was set, which seemed to Ignis like something an empress would wear, as it was the gaudiest piece of jewelry he had ever seen.
The path towards her was covered in snow, giving off the illusion of a carpet, with pillars of intricately carved ice to its left and right. Beneath her, aligned to the left and right of the snow carpet in a kneeling stance before the throne, Ignis could see 9 werewolves, all frozen in place, though still alive, as their eyes were moving between him and the being sitting on the throne.
The creature in front of Ignis was a Chioni, also known as ice-monarch, as their appearance always seemed to resemble a king or queen. They are ice-elementals who reign over mountain-tops and arctic regions, as their nature forces them to protect the environment they were born from. However, they were not known to kidnap people, especially not beastkin, due to their close relation to Arasil, the Titan of Nature.
Ignis looked around, then fixed his gaze on the frozen lykans.
'Eh, I wouldn't call those guys alive, Mira. More like barely hanging on.', he chuckled in his mind, not moved at all by the ice-elemental he saw himself confronted with.
His grin quickly wiped away the amused expression of the chioni and caused her to rise from her throne in rage.
"A mere human dares to disrespect us in our own hall? Kneel and beg for forgiveness for your insolence, and your death shall be quick and painless!", the chioni demanded, surprisingly, in Common, as most elementals not only tended to be incapable of speech, but if they did, usually conversed in the Language of Beasts, as it was the language of nature itself. Her voice reminded Ignis of glass clinking together, a melodic, otherworldly sound.
"You're pretty old, eh? A talking elemental...around 500 years, give or take?", the wizard asked intrigued, as he had remembered from a book, he read that elementals grew more intelligent the older they got.
"We shall not tolerate this rudeness any longer! Guards! Deal with this pest immediately!", she demanded, causing several skeleton knights to appear from behind the pillar.
"You do now that those pillars are made of ice? I saw your little skeleton friends as soon as I got up here!", Ignis lied full of confidence, despite being too focused on the chioni to have noticed them.
Nevertheless, he had a spell prepared as soon as he had seen what he was dealing with and decided to use it on the skeletons instead.
"ORU!"
Multiple balls of fire formed around his staff, before forming into arrows, each aimed at a different skeleton knight as they shot forward as if released from a bow. The skeletons, though made of bone quickly caught fire upon being hit with the arrows, which struck each of them in the torso, as necrotic energy acted like fuel for elemental flames. Their bodies were knocked against the pillars from the impact of the spell, which started to melt from the heat. The chioni, which looked at the scene in horror, now fixated the wizard again, his smile having turned more wicked than curious.
"Lady, I'm the worst opponent you could have wished for. Now, I know you haven't lived for 5 centuries to die here for nothing, but today is your lucky day! As you probably already know, skeletons usually don't just appear out of nowhere, they aren't zombies after all, they have to be made, or at least possessed by some spectre, which these guys clearly aren't. If you tell me how you got these walking bones to follow you, you get to live a while longer.", he said and chuckled menacingly at the end of his demand, causing the chioni to fall on the floor and kneel before him, as she realised what his words implicated.
Though she considered herself a powerful being, she did not want to risk angering someone who commanded over the element that served as her natural enemy.
"Of course, oh great Pyromancer. Please spare this one's life, and we will disclose all information we were given."
"Carry on...and no lies now!", Ignis demanded, charging a single fireball in front of his staff to serve as a threat.
"We would not dare! We were given these minions to fulfil a task in exchange for our life. You were not the first to challenge us and show us just how lacking we are in power, oh great Pyromancer. We were to gather and imprison the Children of Nature and present them to her, but we were not given a word as to why."
"Hm... I see. And why do you know the Common Language? I thought spirits only spoke the Language of Nature?", he pressed on to satisfy his curiosity.
"Is that its name? Knowledge of it was imparted on us by the spellcaster that came before you, as they were incapable of giving us orders otherwise."
"Makes sense. Now to my last question: How do I get the werewolves out of the ice without killing them?"
"We were given the command to not take their lives under any circumstance, so they will return upon slowly being thawed with heat of any kind."
"Alright. Thank you for your cooperation.", Ignis exclaimed with a satisfied smile, as the fireball, which until now just lingered idly in the air, started to grow and spin violently, causing the elemental before him to cower in fear.
"PLEASE! You said-"
"I said you get to live longer, as in, as long as you kept talking. You weren't going to let me leave unharmed if I apologized either now, would you? Or how am I to take the expression, 'You will die quick and painlessly instead', hmm?", he inquired in a sinister tone, his smile now replaced by a expression of disapproval as he kept feeding the
"No! NO! NOT LIKE THIS!", the elemental started to shriek in a panic, as she tried to scramble away from Ignis, but it was too late.
"This is for making me do all this work! EGREDI!", he yelled, as the fireball hurtled after the chioni.
As it exploded behind her, she screamed in pain as her legs splintered from the impact and melted to water, causing her to fall to the floor.
"Please...have mercy!", she whimpered, but the wizard had none of it.
"EGREDI!", he yelled again, his voice devoid of emotion as another fireball made its way towards her.
"I just wanted to live...", she whispered in grief as she closed her eyes before the spell connected, completely vaporizing her.
Though his actions left a bitter aftertaste in his mouth, Ignis knew he did the right thing in vanquishing the chioni, as she would have continued her misdeeds to preserve her own life after he had left, or at least warned her mistress, whoever that might be. A deep sigh left him as he approached the werewolves, as he knew that what came next would be just as annoying as getting to this point.
"Let's just get this over with, shall we?", he asked the frozen werewolves, who could nothing but stare, as his staff began to exude a large flame similar to that of a large torch, and started to thaw them up with it.
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"OUCH! Watch it, human! You are singing my fur!", the last of the werewolves yelled out, as Ignis continued absentmindedly waving the flame up and down his body, more than bored about the whole ordeal.
"If you want, I can freeze you again, you thankless furball. Permanently.", Ignis hissed through his teeth in anger, causing all of the werewolves standing around him to shiver even stronger, no longer because of the cold but out of fear.
"Please no! Oh, mighty spellcaster, we will even reward you for your bravery, is that not right?", he hastily apologized and looked at the others, who all hastily nodded in agreement to his statement.
"Now THAT is music to my ears.", the wizard chuckled, his mood immediately improving.
After the last one was freed, the small procession left the cave. The sun was already beginning to set, but it was not yet too dark to see where one was going, making their return to the village easier. Though they did not do so before Ignis closed off the cave by collapsing it in on itself.
'No matter how beautiful this cave is, we can't have other undead make their nest in their now, can we? '
At the outskirts of the village, the old werewolf who had sent him out was already waiting for them on a bench facing outside of the village, on which she had lain down while throwing grapes into the air and catching them with her mouth.
As they approached, one of her ears perked up, and she jumped off the bench to greet them.
"Hah, knew you were the right guy for the job, ya old fart. Now what the hell was going on out there?", she barked at the lykans in the group in an annoyed tone while crossing her arms.
"Lady Sklirós! Are you the one who sent this brave hero to save us?", one of the werewolves asked her in a revering tone, as if talking to royalty.
"I told ya to call me Ophelia, didn't I? Calling me by my last name makes me remember stuff I'd rather leave behind me. And who you calling a hero? That old human over there is probably just some crazy homeless guy."
"Hey, I might be crazy, but I'm not homeless! I even have an entire village all to myself!"
"See what I mean?", Ophelia continued, pointing at the wizard who now angrily averted his gaze, grumbling about how she dared to call him homeless.
"Well, I don't know about that, but there aren't many people who can fight an elder-chioni and live to tell the tale!", another one of the saved werewolves chimed in.
"WHAT? I thought it was just some low ranked undead. And why would an elder elemental just go out and assault people out of nowhere?", Ophelia burst out in shock.
"Apparently, the spirit was tasked to kidnap an unspecified amount of people by some unknown spellcaster...not this one, though, as the spirit seemed to not know of him.", he added, because Ophelia's gaze immediately wandered towards the still pouting Ignis as the word 'spellcaster' fell.
"Tch, what a shit-show. I'm gonna smack some sense into the higher-ups in the barracks about this, no way they're going to get away with letting things escalate this far without consequences. And you! No matter how much you annoy me, you earned your keep, that's for sure. Take this, there's got to be enough in this to get ya whatever ya want from the market and then some.", she told Ignis while begrudgingly handing him a leather-pouch filled with local currency.
The wizard, who mistook her lightning-fast action of retrieving the pouch as her winding up another punch, was startled into throwing up his hands in front of his face in defence. However, realising that he was, in fact, handed money, quickly returned his composure.
"A pleasure doing business with you.", he replied with a smirk as he quickly snatched the pouch out of her claws, his mouth already watering at the thought of what he could buy with it.
"Tata!", he exclaimed with a curtsy before heading off to the market with a pep in his step, leaving the others to silently watch him, bewildered by the strange man's mannerisms.
"Are all humans this... eccentric?", one of the werewolves asked.
"You don't even know the half of it.", Ophelia growled, before heading off to the barracks.
To Ignis' luck, some stores at the market were still open when he arrived. After emptying the money pouch given to him on all sorts of fruits and vegetables, as well as some assortments of cooked meat and water, Ignis decided to settle down on a bench near the villages fountain to have his meal. Every now and then, some locals would throw intrigued looks his way. Not because he was the only human currently in the village, though that certainly was a factor in this, but because he shared his meal with a rat.
Most just considered it to be some weird custom and moved on with their day, while others contemplated if they should inform the guards about an apparent rodent infestation, but the wizard just did what he did best: Ignoring what others thought and continue doing what he wanted to.
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Upon her throne inside of the abandoned watchtower atop the highest mountain of Chóratonippotón sat the self-appointed Queen of Undeath, a husk of her former self, and not only because she had traded her life in exchange for longevity. Nay, she would argue that it had changed her for the better.
The reason she sat defeated in her domicile, alone and brooding, was that the pressure on her placed by her master had never been greater. Decades worth of planning, all overthrown by a single individual, as the voice of her master would confirm to her. An outlier, a man who himself received the Call of the Void, though unlike she herself had received it, the origin of the wizard's powers was not the Yellow-Clad Seer, but the Archon of Sacrifice, a being even her master seemed to be wary of, despite them both originating from the Aether. However, this wizard managed to fight the corruption of the Archon instead of subjecting himself to it, only taking without giving back in turn. His actions made a mockery of the Void itself, and thus of her own master as well.
The thought frustrated her, but all she could do right now was to wait, as the Yellow-Clad Seer assured her that their paths were to cross again sooner than she might have thought, and this time, it would be the last, as only one of them would make it out of this encounter alive.
The Queen of Undeath twirled her staff, which was adorned with the skull of her former teacher in the necromantic arts, absent-mindedly between two fingers, causing the skull to spin as if looking around the room, while contemplating how to deal with this unpredictable spellcaster. After a while, she decided on her strategy, and rose from her throne.
"Liam confirmed that the Gaolithes had begun preparations for the eclipse. However, the All-Seeing have met with problems due to the failure of the Sword of Truth having caused an increased military presence near their base of operations, making them unable to send their assassins for that damned wizard. So, shall I try to deal with him myself?", she thought aloud, before snapping the fingers of her left hand. Her shadow started to extend forward, as if opening a hole in the ground beneath her. And from the hole, 5 undead creatures emerged, the strongest she had ever created:
The former war-heroes of Chóratonippotón, the Liontarí brothers Castor and Pollux, a gift from her apprentice, who had retrieved their lifeless corpses during the Edenian War;
two segadors, the strongest among all of which she had ever created;
and lastly, her apprentice, Liam Faex, which she herself had turned into a lich and thus bound to her soul.
They were the last remaining individuals of her collection, as she had absorbed the necrotic energy of the rest to store them in the vessel that prolonged her life, a gemstone known as a phylactery, forged from the remnants of her own soul, embedded into a compatible gemstone.
The five prostrated themselves to their mistress and greeted her in unison.
"Thy will shall be done, oh Queen of Undeath."
"Seeing as the Gaolithe and the Chimeras are now focusing on the ritual, and the All-Seeing cleaning up the mess the Sword of Truth has left behind, we will have to find the wizard who took the pages of the Forbidden Tome on our own. Find the human wizard known as Ignis, and bring me his head, as well as the page he has on his body. Meet up with our liaison with the council in Apomónosi and tell them that he is likely to make his way there. They are to immediately send notice upon coming into contact with him!"
"As you wish.", they answered in unison, before taking their leave.
'Now that this is taken care off, I should check up on the ice-elemental I tasked with capturing those beastkin. One can never have enough sacrifices, and they will make a fine addition to the ritual', she thought, opening a gate made of darkness with another snap of her fingers, which would transport her to the cave which had been carved by her minions into the foot of the mountain.
'And if she failed, I might as well use her as material for experiments', the lich mused with a smirk as she stepped through the portal.