Sphera had not been having a good week, all things considered. There’d been a few ups early on, besting the pretender Silenos had been fun- seeing the limits of her undead had been positively thrilling, and corrupting Castle Edmari through its Hero master may well have been the highlight of her service to the Dark Lord. Things had deteriorated, she decided, around the time of her being tricked, overpowered and hauled off as a captive. Such events as that did tend to have a marked impact on one’s happiness.
At the moment she was seated by the rebel group’s campsite, if it could even be called that when they lacked the means to make fire. She was tied up, of course, fingers forcibly splayed and held out apart from one another by the special cuffs made by that damned Necromancer, body kept still and stiff as she lay face down, with nothing to do but glare, bask in the growing aches of her unnaturally sustained position and, of course, glare some more.
Today, the subject of her glaring was the King. It was he who by chance had ended up within her line of sight, and so it was he who absorbed the unrelenting barrage of her fury. Sphera did not make the rules, she only obeyed them.
“Stop looking at me.” The giant said, without even glancing up. His voice was so deep it sounded more like something that would exit a bear’s throat than a man’s, Sphera had to keep her surprise from showing.
“I have nothing else to do.” She replied, and glared even harder. If he was bothered by the fact, it didn’t show on his face. But Sphera felt the breath leave her as his eyes turned to hers.
King Galukar’s power was not something truly felt from any perspective save the one that was seeing it focused upon itself. She almost soiled herself then and there at the sight of his withering gaze.
“I am going to turn you to face another direction now.” The King told her. “Attempt to move against me in any way and I will rip your head off, doing so will take me no more effort than uncorking a bottle would you. Perhaps less.”
Sphera believed him, and so she stayed very still while the man moved her. He turned her quite roughly so that her eyes were falling upon the pretender and his student, then moved away without another word. Sphera wondered for a moment whether he’d done it on purpose, then stopped her wondering. Of course he had, the hateful bastard.
“-The abyss,” She heard Silenos Shaiagrazni continue, “It is the source of Necromancy, and death itself.”
Her breath caught in her throat, and despite herself, Sphera leaned in. He was speaking about the metaphysics of their art, that, Sphera knew, would be worth listening to.
“Do all magics have a source?” The student asked, and his master frowned.
“We are not certain, entirely. My people know much more of phys- natural philosophy than yours. Yet the more we learn, the more discrepancies we find in how the world behaves normally, and how it behaves when magic is considered. It is possible that the very requirement of sources and beginnings, of time and causality itself, does not apply to the force.”
Falls frowned in the way little boys or puppy dogs might, then nodded.
“That makes sense.” He breathed. “We’re made of mundane matter, it’d be too convenient if we could intuit magic as well as natural law.”
His teacher was expressionless, but nodded.
“Now,” Silenos Shaiagrazni pressed, “The abyss. It is best explained through a philosophy of life held by some people within my land, likening the world to one great ocean. Individual lives, in such a universe, are waves. Born of forces acting on water, shaping it, moving it, giving it momentum and velocity, conducting its substance into a pattern that will never quite be replicated entirely again. Then the wave exhausts its energy, falls back down into the ocean, and is assimilated into the mass of water. In this scenario, the vital sparks that animate our bodies are the waves. The ocean is the abyss.”
Falls nodded along as he listened, waiting patiently with a question. Sphera had to admit, he was a good student.
“So what is that shadestuff substance you conjure? Soul energy?”
Shaiagrazni did not look impressed.
“Shadestuff is raw abyssal substance, and it varies in nature. Much as the pressure of the ocean…Ah, you don’t know about that, nevermind. Within the abyss everything is shadestuff, except for the vital sparks, the “souls' ' as you put it, which exist within. Different parts of the abyss house different grades of shadestuff. It is always destructive and unrelenting in its interaction with physical matter, but can be more so if you extract it from a deeper part. Observe.”
He held out two fingers, and two identical spheres of shadestuff formed from each. The man’s face was instantly seized in concentration, as was proper. Only an idiot could ever be relaxed while handling the deadliest force magic had to offer.
Without warning, Shaiagrazni dropped both the globules of shadestuff and let them fall into the dirt. Their reactions were instantaneous, eating through the matter like boiling water dropped onto ice. Within a second both had vanished, and in their place a pair of hemispherical craters rested in the ground. One was as wide as a man’s finger, the other almost as wide as a fist.
“Neither of those reached the limits of shadestuff I am capable of conjuring, but the second would have been equal to, perhaps, the Dark Lord’s Necromancer officer we fought the other day.”
Neither of them glanced over to meet Sphera’s glare, which somehow made being used as a measuring stick even worse. Fury bubbled in her breast as she watched the smug bastard explain what he’d done and how to replicate it.
He talked of the methods through which shadestuff was conjured, the way one might extend their consciousness to touching the abyss, the sensations of plunging a head underwater and holding one’s breath. The dangers, the risks, the rewards. Sphera searched his words for any faults, and found none. Her irritation only grew.
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Clearly this one was skilled when it came to teaching the fundamentals, that was a mark to his credit at least. Perhaps he could have become one of her lieutenants, or a bodyguard, more likely, given the potency of his other magic. Sphera reminded herself to try and uncover how he’d broken his bonds in the Castle. More even than the skyship collision, that had been when things began to turn sour.
Sphera found herself suddenly sick of the sight, grunting and snarling with effort as she forcibly turned her body again. The pained sensation of hard dirt scraping against the underside of her body was worth not having to watch any more of that smug bastard’s teaching.
For all the tedious, punishing effort, Sphera soon found her decision a stroke of luck. Just as she’d started settling into her position staring out into the distance, something caught her eye. It was subtle, quick, but all too familiar. Orcs.
Just two of them, moving along the ground faster than most humans could run, eying their surroundings as they shuffled ahead with wind under their feet and fire in their legs.
Scouts. Venka’s scouts, surely, because Venka was the only human General on the continent to use orcs in such a way, and certainly the only one who trained his orcs to move like that. As she looked harder, Sphera made out the bulk of armour about them, and not the kind that orc barbarians produced around the Steppes.
There was a lot for Sphera to consider, but one of the few, perhaps only, advantages to being held hostage was that she had nothing but time on her hands, and so she put it to good use. Considering the implications.
If Venka’s orcs were nearby, then so was Venka. He had never trusted the creatures to act outside of his immediate supervision before, not without a tight line of communication which was only sustainable over smaller distances. If Venka was nearby, then…
Then he was near because of her, searching for her. Sphera’s heart fluttered with triumph, and she checked her reasoning, all too weary of the trap that was false hope and wishful thinking. Venka was an offensive General, an attacker, he did not hold ground as often as take it. Moreover, they now stood within one of the more loyal and secure regions of the Dark Lord’s territory.
Sphera thought, trying to recall any local regions that might be contested in the Dark Lord’s conquest. There weren’t any close by, but one or two could be reached by only taking a minor detour. Would Venka send himself off course in such a way to retrieve her if he thought she was missing?
Without question, yes. He was ambitious above all else, convinced he was the greatest genius to ever live, and rescuing one of his peers would be an undeniable mark in his favour.
And a mark against the peer being rescued, she realised, but that was a concern she didn’t have the luxury of considering.
Her suspicions were confirmed soon enough, the scouts were followed by marching columns. Humanoid and bipedal, but broad in the way only orcs could be. The figures were clad in thick, dark metal that Sphera knew from experience was the armour of heavy infantry- particularly brave and violent specimens Venka had singled out as shock troops and turned into certifiable siege engines by covering them in half an inch of wrought iron.
They were not as subtle as the scouts, which were in turn less subtle still than well trained human ones. Sooner rather than later, they’d be spotted. Sphera strained harder, faster, more painfully even than before to quickly turn herself, this time trying to keep the entire group of her captors within sight at once.
She’d not get another stroke of luck as big as this one, that much was certain. Sphera would be damned if she let it go to waste. Figuratively, and very literally. She needed a distraction from the approaching army.
“I wasn’t there when your sons were killed.” Sphera began, addressing her words to the King. “But I was there when they were…Worked on.”
He stiffened, then, slowly, lifted his gaze to eye her. It was a hell of a thing, lying in the midst of that stare. Like facing down ten armies at once. Like staring into the mouth of a volcano. Casters had magic running through their nerves, if not their muscle and bone. Sphera was confident she would see the King moving if he went for her. She was more confident still that those plate-sized hands could close around her head so powerfully as to liquefy it before she’d even felt the sensation of her own death.
It was the sort of observation that dried a tongue and tightened a throat, but she made herself speak in spite of it.
“Necromantically, you understand.” She continued, forcing a smile. “They were very, very powerful. Really, each one had the strength of several Knights, you must’ve been proud to call them your blood. I can only imagine how impressive they are, now that they’ve been further infused with the strength of the abyss.”
She did not, in the end, fail to see King Galukar move. But she failed to react to it. One moment she was mid word, then a hand was around her neck, and her body was suddenly straining the soft tendons with its own weight as she dangled in his grip. Sphera choked, legs kicking in instinctual search of ground that was a yard too low for them to reach. The King’s eyes were harder than ever.
“You will not speak of my sons.” He told her, as if she were a subject to be commanded. No challenge, no rage, just a single, simple statement of fact. Sphera had to admit, she was awfully tempted to let it be so. The King dropped her with no great measure of care, leaving her to land knee-first in the dirt.
The King took his steps away, and Sphera waited, catching her breath, hardening her nerves. Readying herself.
“It was odd,” She gasped, through her half-crushed throat, “How much they moved. Most corpses are still while being reanimated, but your sons danced like puppets.”
King Galukar’s sword was moving for Sphera like a bolt of lightning, and it took just long enough for her to realise her error before it was upon her.
She’d gone too far.
The Goblade swept past Sphera, missing her shoulder by mere inches as a strong wind struck her in its proximity. The dark iron dug itself feet deep into the ground by her feet, and only once it had done so did she realise that Falls had knocked the swing aside with a blast of wind.
It wasn’t buried for more than a second before rising again, but by then the Necromancer, Silenos, had stepped in to place a hand on the King’s arm and wedge himself between him and Sphera. The two stared at one another, separated by mere inches in height and distance, yet seeming to her the picture of a man facing down a giant.
“Do you think your strength will resist mine?” The King growled. “That even your abominably-remade flesh can even press hard enough for me to notice any difference between it and that of an infant?”
“I have no doubt at all that it cannot.” The caster replied. “But I do not care.” His hand was instantly filled by the abyssal black of shadestuff. “This is not a fight you can afford to start over a few hurled barbs.”
The King’s eyes narrowed.
“I’m an ally.” He growled. “You’re stupid enough to wound me?”
“If you kill a hostage with valuable information because you decided to tantrum after hearing your pathetic children insulted, then you will have proven yourself too unstable and unpredictable to be of use. Better to kill a mad dog like that before it can turn on me.”
The Necromancer’s voice did not quiver in the slightest as he spoke, and Sphera found herself struggling not to drown in his bottomless, empty eyes. It was like staring into the depths of a sea, and the vertigo it induced forced her to look away.
Which was why she heard the King’s concession, rather than seeing it.
“Watch yourself, abomination.” Galukar grumbled, striding away. Sphera didn’t notice much beyond that, subtly turning herself one last time.
As she glanced over at the settlement, this time, she caught no sight of orcs, soldiers or anything hopeful at all. A grin split her lips.
That meant the enemy wouldn’t either.