[MUSIC]
After the arduous journey to create and
deliver the artifact,
I was eager to begin a more direct
confrontation with The Awakened.
As Grand Inquisitor, I
waged my wars from the shadows,
collecting information
and influencing events,
but as a vampire, I had a
chance to face my enemy directly,
a chance which came all too soon.
From Keeva, I learned that some small
pockets of resistance against The Awakened
still survived in the
ruins of the Thacean Empire.
She had approached one of them and given
a premonition to an Ashen Priest.
That priest, along with his followers,
was sailing for the ruins of Ustilia.
They would be allowed to land, and I
would track them to make
sure they found their way to us.
I waited by the shores of the Silent Sea,
concealed in darkness,
until at last I saw a lone and battered
vessel on the horizon.
She'd seen battle recently.
Her sails were ragged so that the phoenix
upon them hung in tatters.
Her hull was frayed.
I'm not sure what could have caused such
damage, perhaps collision with rocks,
but she was still just barely seaworthy.
Then she ran violently aground,
and a haggard crew of legionnaires
scrambled across the deck,
some working to lower a landing bridge.
"We're taking on water! That
landing breached the hull!"
"Leave it! There's no time!"
A centurion shouted back.
At his shoulder was clasped a grey cloak,
and along its back was
marked the Thacean Phoenix.
"Did they follow us?"
"Not with their ships burned."
"Maybe they can swim."
"Maybe. We'd better move it fast."
The centurion said as he nodded to a
large crate that was
fastened with several chains.
Four men hoisted the
crate by its handles,
while the centurion and two others
descended the ramp ahead of them.
In the rear, a pair of men followed,
one helping to shoulder another whose
armor was punctured
and stained with blood.
When all had disembarked, the
centurion withdrew a compass.
"Due east, but that sulphurous fog.
Can you shield it from us?"
He turned to a hunkered
man in priestly raiment,
who nodded and held aloft a censer-flail
that smoldered with sacred ash.
As the band of survivors
moved into the yellow fog,
he parted around them, held
at bay by the power of the ash.
A dull thud sounded
from within the crate,
and a muffled murmur.
But the men kept their
eyes ahead as they moved.
"It's quieter now."
"It knows there aren't
any others like it nearby."
"It wouldn't be quiet if there were."
"Does it know where we're going?"
"Does it know it's dead?"
"Is it?
You saw what it did at Stawarden.
There's no telling what else it can do."
"It can't stop an army."
"You don't know that.
We should have dropped it
at the bottom of the lake."
"Fire doesn't work.
Why would water?"
"Why would the dead?"
"And even if they can
kill it, what happens to us?"
"Keep it down.
We're close.
There..."
A shrouded figure loomed silently ahead,
pitch black against the yellow fog.
They stood watching it, saying nothing.
And the figure remained
motionless, indiscernible
within the shadows of its hood.
At last, the centurion spoke.
"We seek an audience with The Black Hand."
The shrouded figure's head
slowly turned to face him.
"The drowned woman has guided us here.
She said we would be given passage."
The mysterious figure
began to drift closer
with no sound other than
softly clinking chains.
"Centurion, that does not seem friendly."
One of the legionnaires whispered.
The centurion said nothing, and the
figure drew ever closer.
"Centurion!"
The centurion drew his
sword, and the two men at his side
immediately mirrored him.
The light of the
blades stabbed into my eyes,
even from the great
distance from which I watched them.
"These blades are silver!"
The centurion called out,
and the figure slowed to a halt
a few feet away.
At this distance, its
shroud seemed an impossible blend
of fabric and vapor,
neither fully one nor the other.
Its hooded head moved towards the box
and then back to the Thaceans.
Slowly, a shrouded arm
raised dangling chains,
and the shadowy hand
pointed deeper into the fog.
The men passed verily,
giving the figure a wide berth,
but it remained unmoving,
simply pointing the way.
The wounded legionnaire
began to cough up blood.
"We can't keep up this pace.
He won't make it much farther."
"Like hell, I won't."
The centurion nodded to one of his men,
who sheathed his sword and
stepped around to shoulder
the other side of his wounded comrade.
A low, rasping voice
sounded from the fog.
"Indeed, he will not."
The men halted, and the
centurion poised his blade
towards the sound.
A stooped figure pulled
itself along the ground
on all fours.
Its emaciated frame was
parked and marred with decay,
and its sunken face stared
up at the men with fleshy pits
where I should have been.
I knew this ghoul.
Though of why he had come
crawling out here, I cannot say,
perhaps merely to vex me.
"He is ripe with
death, ready for plucking.
Yes."
The creature clambered slowly closer
to the wounded legionnaire.
"We can make it quick, almost painless."
"Mind your tongue, ghoul.
There's silver in these blades."
Falk ghoul grimaced and
made a displeased rattle
in its throat.
"Friends, do not bring silver.
No."
"Nor do they eat one another."
"Not yet."
"What's in the box?"
"This box and our
message is for The Black Hand."
The centurion answered,
keeping his blade between himself
and the slinking creature.
It craned its skeletal
neck towards the crate,
frantically sniffing the air.
"Smells fresh, like you, but sweeter."
"Take us to the Black Hand, and you can
see it for yourself."
Falk ghoul made its
displeased rattle once more,
sizing the Thaceans up for a moment,
glancing verily at their blades.
"Follow."
It said begrudgingly and
clamored away into the mist.
Encumbered, the men followed
the ghoul as best they could,
often losing it in the fog ahead.
But it would always return to
guide them, sometimes pausing
as if considering
approaching, but always thinking better
of it and moving on.
By its guidance, they came at
last to the ruins of Ustilia
and saw their ancient
heritage taken by decay.
The great corroded gates slid apart, and
the Thaceans entered,
moving within their protective bubble,
brandishing their swords
like blinding torches.
The dead, like the fog,
parted around the Thaceans,
giving them a wide berth.
All except the occasional revenant,
who simply stood staring in silence,
no matter how close the Thaceans came.
And so they chose to move
around the revenants instead.
High upon the withered tower top,
the circle of liches
smoked their sulfurous hookah
and gave no notice to
any of the commotion below.
Led by Falk Ghoul,
the Thaceans came closer
to the ruins of the imperial palace.
Outside its gates, they
saw a swarm of ghouls tearing
into the ground with
their rake-like claws,
displacing great mounds
of dirt far more quickly
than a team of men with shovels could.
"They're making a tunnel."
"Perhaps."
"To where?"
"You did not share your secrets.
We will not share ours."
Closer to the palace,
a formation of vampires
drilled into clearing, mirroring the
steps and fencing movements
of their commander.
Their preternatural
movements flickered in and out
of perception, sometimes
visible, sometimes blurred
to the naked eye of men.
Sensing humans, they turned all at once
to leer at the wounded soldier.
The men gripped their hilts tightly,
moving as quickly as
they could under the gaze
of so many dead eyes.
Falk ghoul led them to the palace itself,
and the centurion gazed
up at its full height.
Perched atop the ruined parapets,
a shrouded figure like
the one from the outer fog,
perhaps even the same figure, peered down
at the humans, unmoving.
And though he could not see its face,
the centurion could feel the
chill of its gaze upon him.
The inner darkness of the palace was
lit by incandescent
shades, which drifted away
from the terrible silver and sacred ash.
The men followed the
ghoul until at last they
came to the throne room, which was
empty of the honor guard
as per Keeva's premonition.
The two soldiers
carrying their wounded comrade
laid him against one
of the walls to rest,
and those carrying the
crate set it down with a thud.
I entered behind them soundlessly.
They never knew I was following them.
Amarax was there too,
clutching the small black cage that
held the wisp.
There, at the base of the great pillar,
N'Gaztak sat on his throne, expectantly.
At one side of the pentarch stood Keeva,
and on the other, the
bestial vampire in bladed armor
who I had come to know
as Zorin von Sigstrand.
Then Falk Ghoul clammered forward,
addressing N'Gaztak.
"We have brought the humans, yes.
May we taste of them?"
"You may not," said N'Gaztak, his voice
emanating from his fiery head,
reverberating with deep power.
"May we see inside the box?"
"You may stay under silence."
N'Gaztak answered, and
the ghoul slinked over
to the wounded soldier, who
sat slumped against the wall,
sidling up to him, and
placing a finger over its own mouth
in a shushing gesture.
The box gave a quiet
thump and a muffled murmur.
"What's happening?
I can't see anything."
A severed head tied by its
hair to Lord Zorin's belt
said to the vampire.
"There is a box."
Lord Zorin answered, gazing intently
at the object in question.
"You really have a way with words."
"We are in danger."
"Oh, please, please let it be the end."
N'Gaztak leaned forward on his throne.
"Do you think that
silver will protect you here?"
"The silver was to see us here.
Your... soldiers might not
have granted us an audience
without it."
The centurion said, eyeing the ghoul.
"Very well.
You have your audience."
N'Gaztak answered,
leaning back on his throne.
"I am Espen Rostad,
centurion of the 12th Legion.
These men are under my command."
"Oh, what news of the mighty legions?"
"They have fallen.
We have held against
the dead from the south,
but we could not hold
against the enemy from within...
The crimson sign has won."
"Has it?
You would not have come all this way only
to tell me of your failure."
"You stood among the living once.
You know what it is to swear
an oath to defend your people
and to fail."
The centurion spoke cautiously,
and N'Gaztak regarded him in silence.
"Your failure and mine
share the same cause.
I have brought that cause with me."
Rostad motioned to his men, who heaved
the crate once more,
moving it forward and
setting it closer to the revenant.
"This is what happens to those
touched by the crimson sign."
The soldiers unfasten
the chains around the box
and quickly retreated.
"Behold, the new face of the Empire."
The wooden lid slowly creaked open.
For a moment, nothing
stirred, and the whole room
gazed into the inner black of the box.
Then a choking, gurgling
voice rose from within.
"Crimson dreams,
unconscious screams, the Leper King
is crowned.
It said, in a massive bulbous hand
grasped the edge of the box,
mottled with discoloration.
"Crimson dreams, unconscious screams,
the fate of man is bound.
Crimson dreams,
unconscious beams, a white knight
fade to black."
Twisted aberration of nature pulled
itself up from the box.
Its once human form now
warped beyond recognition.
Vaguely human flesh, threaded
with a web of crimson veins,
stretched tightly over a mound of
watermelon-shaped nodules,
each adorned with its own sleeping face.
This bloated mass was
its entire upper body,
save for a pair of spindly arms,
unbefitting their enormous
hands.
The creature rose
higher from its resting place
until it towered above
the humans and the dead,
on top of legs that had
fused into a flesh-toned stock.
A sleeping face on
one of the frontal lobes
opened its toothless mouth.
The gurgling voice poured out of it
without moving its lips.
"Crimson dreams, unconscious screams,
the wall begins to crack."
Nagastak's powerful voice came hushed.
"What are you?"
The head that had spoken jerk
to face him as well as it could
from within its fleshy restraints.
"Ah, I see the corpse of Lucian Armin.
But where has the corpse of his wife?"
The fires of Nagastak's head flared
brighter for a moment,
but he remained seated.
"You will know in time."
"A mighty house is built on hatred.
But you can't threaten me,
corpse. I speak with the voice
of one one greater than us
all."
Keeva started at this, but said nothing,
gazing intently with white eyes.
"The Age of Seven Suns is in twilight.
The Black stars of Islirith awaken.
And with them, the Crimson Dream."
All at once, every face across the
aberrations bloated form
opened its eyes, all
milk white with blindness.
Every mouth spread wide in unison,
emanating a deep
chittering that reverberated
throughout the chamber.
A field of crimson light
exploded from the aberrations,
painting the room in
red, and vain as tendrils
began to grow from the
box, snaking over it and onto
the floor, radiating outward.
As the light washed over
me, the terrible chittering
bore into my mind, driving
out all coherent thoughts,
stabbing into my
consciousness like barbed hooks.
Though I tried to release my form as
mist, I could not change.
I could see the other dead recoiling
under the psychic
assault, but they were each still
able to control themselves.
High alone was utterly paralyzed.
While the dead
recoiled in the crimson light,
the humans fell to the
floor, clasping their own heads
in agony.
Then Keeva leaped
forward, rising into the air
and shrieking in an ancient
voice that was not her own.
[SCREAMING]
From her, a
countervailing field of distortion
pushed the crimson light
back, making the throne and floor
waver as if underwater.
The chittering and the shriek crashed
against one another.
For a moment, the
chamber stood as if torn
across two different worlds.
But Keeva's power
waned, and the crimson light
drove the watery distortions back.
Slowly at first, and then all at once
drenching the throne
in red, causing the banshee to dissolve
into wisps of scarlet smoke.
"False power.
False prophecies, now
basking the glory of--"
"I've heard quite enough of that."
Lord Zorin bolted forward
in a blur too fast for eyes
to follow, whirling past the aberration
and appearing on the far side of the room
in a fraction of a second,
his blade drawn and coated
in blood.
The eyes of the head that
was speaking rolled back
as its face slid off its
nodule, severed in a single stroke.
"Useless, your feeble powers are..."
Lord Zorin flickered again, appearing
on another side of the room.
Once more, the speaking
head's eyes rolled back,
and its face slid off.
This time, the tendrils that were
spreading across the floor
ensnared the vampire lord.
Snaking up his legs with alarming speed,
dragging him to the floor.
"Yes, crush him!
Kill the vampire scum!"
The head on Lord Zorin's
belt cheered the tendrils on.
Lord Zorin thrashed in
his binding so quickly
that he became a blur,
but could not lose himself.
"This light, I can't change."
He said through gritted fangs as he was
completely entangled.
"Those who do not dream
have no place in this world."
Amarax drifted forward, the green shell
of necrotic energy crackling around him.
He opened the blackened
cage, freeing the wisp.
But before it could
flee, he clutched the air
with his skeletal hand,
and it was frozen in place.
Then, with a twisting
gesture of his other hand,
he pulled a shade from nearby and forced
it towards the wisp.
The two spirits
spiraled around each other,
resisting proximity by
some fundamental law of magic.
But Amarax bent this law.
The spirits converged,
merging in a burst of light
that birthed a massive ball of blue flame
inset with an
agonized face of pale green.
Amarax rotated his skeletal
palm to face the aberration,
and the fused spirits
rocketed forward, howling in anguish
and crashing against its
swollen body, setting it ablaze.
Many voices shrieked
in pain as the creature
thrashed in the flames.
Many of its eyes boiled
and burst in the heat.
Then the flames began to recede.
From top to bottom,
they were extinguished,
moving down the
aberration and into its tendrils
so that the spreading web of veins
cascaded with blue light,
driving it away from the center.
Amarax raised his hand
again, but quickly found himself
snared and dragged down, no longer
able to command his spells.
Now the entirety of the chamber was
threaded in a web of veins, and the roof
appeared as if open
to an otherworldly sky,
streaked with twisting red vapors,
and flecked with blackened stars.
N'Gaztak's armored body
sat bound by the tendrils
to his throne.
"Do you see?" the aberration said,
sweeping its spindly
arms towards the alien sky.
"Yes, I see,
Your ilk sent this in motion, your god,
scheming in secret since ages long past."
"Truth at last!"
"The betrayal."
The fires of his head brightened.
"The brutal degradation."
The burning spread
downward, consuming his armor.
"Pain eternal."
"It reforged me."
He strained against his bindings.
It burned away the impurities.
He rose, snapping through the tendrils,
and the aberration gurgled in disbelief.
Still facing his
opponent, the N'Gaztak reached down
and gripped the handle
of a massive war maw.
As he hefted it over his shoulder,
I saw at last the
purpose of my long quest,
for the head of the maw
was the three-eyed face
of the Hollow Maw.
Though its long mouth was
open, the N'Gaztak lifted it
as if it were weightless.
The revenant ascended
the steps to his throne,
consumed in fires that
pushed through the crimson field.
"Impossible!
What are you?"
The many faces shrieked.
A hundred tendrils darted up to coil
around N'Gaztak's
arms and legs, but he tore through them,
moving steadily forward.
"I am the Black Hand of God."
The revenant declared,
swinging his maw in an arc
that collided with the
deformed flesh of its target
and sunk into it as if
it were made of jelly.
The many faces howled,
and the spindly limbs
flailed as the
massive form of the creature
began to distort, bending
like light through heat.
From the head of the maw, the
distortions rippled outward,
until at last the
entirety of the aberrations
swirled as a vortex,
spiraling into the weapon.
With it, the crimson field receded.
The tendrils were torn from the chamber,
and the chittering faded
away with the echoes of so many
screams until N'Gaztak stood alone.
Slowly, his fires receded.
Keeva reformed herself then, stepping over
the floor of the throne room as if slowly
bounding along the sea floor.
Two of them looked at the
head of the hammer for a time,
in silence.
"It can't escape.
Gwyneth has it now."
"Then with this, we can
strike down their leaders."
"To silence the Crimson
Herald is a great feat."
"The Corpus Artificum
will inscribe your weapon.
It will be made stronger."
"And what inscription is
earned from striking down
this creature?"
The voice of Amarax
echoed in all our thoughts.
"The Sonata Of Shattered Dreams.
It can lend you the voice
of his Islirith for a time."
Just then, Rostad
stirred feebly on the ground
among the bodies of his
men, who lay scattered
about the fallen censer-flail, which
still held the sulfur
at bay but could not protect
them against the crimson light.
Each of the Thaceans
was dead, their faces
frozen in horrified screams.
But Rostad yet lived, for he
had clawed out his own eyes.
Whatever horrors The Herald
had visited upon the Thaceans,
Rostad had spared himself from them.
N'Gastak approached the crumpled
Centurion, his armored boots
stomping across the throne room.
"I thank you, Centurion, for showing me
the cause of my failure.
Though you are a wretched Thacean,
you may leave with your life."
He turned away from Rostad
and approached his throne.
"No."
Rostad's voice, hoarse
and wavering, rose up,
and the revenant stopped.
"No?"
Nagastak's fires flared.
"Let-- let me serve."
"To what end?
Your empire is beyond redemption."
"It can't be saved, but it can be avenged."
"You know not what you ask of me, mortal.
The path of vengeance is
one of eternal suffering.
I will not set you on it."
"Let him!"
I spoke up at last, and the revenant
turned to me in surprise.
"He will serve you
loyally, as he did his nation."
"You vouch for this man?"
"I do.
I owe his grandfather a great debt."
"So be it.
If you do not have the sense to flee,
then you will have your vengeance.
If you can endure it..."
"Am I to be turned?"
"I have little use for a blind mortal.
We will remake you."
The revenant sat back on his throne.
"Into what?"
"Hmm...
Do you have any magical talent?"
"He does not."
"Then you are denied
Lichdom, and I cannot fabricate
the kind of injustice needed
to bring you back as a revenant."
"We could feed him.
He looks quite hungry.
Yes."
"Is that what you want, Centurion?
To be made into a ghoul?
You're already missing your eyes."
"No, don't do that to him."
"What is wrong with ghouls?"
"Everything?"
"A wraith, then.
You are strong enough
to endure the ritual."
"What ritual?"
"You don't want to do that.
Trust me."
"You asked for this man to serve us, and
yet you refute every service."
"There is always need in the Shambling
Hordes for more reanimated."
"You will not strip him of his mind, nor
will you torture him or reduce him
to a gibbering ghoul.
Surely there must be some other way."
N'Gaztak leaned forward on his throne.
"Very well, then, Thacean
You will turn him."
"Me?
But I don't know how."
"You will be instructed.
He is your responsibility now."
I turned to look upon the
eyeless face of the Centurion.
Could I lay my curse upon him?
Could I give to him thirst without end?
He would ask me to, for Thacea's sake.
I know it, but he would not
know what it was he asked.
N'Garstak was right.
Still, I would try to explain, to warn
him of what lay ahead.
If still he chose this path, then no.
I cannot evade the truth of this.
I would say that such an act would damn
me, except for the fact
that I am damned already.
Alaric the Damned.