by Jason Alan
When Syndreck’s laughter ceased, he spoke, his lips disintegrating beneath the weight of his words. “Through eons of agony I have waited for this day to come. Finally, I may undo that which has been so wrongly done!” He glared at the shadow demon. “Bring me to Ulith Urn!”
Drekklor’s voice emitted like a vicious hiss. “No.”
With bile continuing to pour from his mouth, Syndreck said, “What? There is no…no! I am your salvation, demon, I command you!”
“Is that so, slave of dark space? Well, Nenockra Rool commands that your soul must first be stored in a more durable body, then I may take you to Ulith Urn.”
“My soul—”
Syndreck could no longer speak. A sputtering gasp came from his ruined mouth and his chin fell apart. Then he fell unconscious.
Good.
Drekklor hadn’t particularly enjoyed bantering with the mortal, and he needed to leave this place before Syndreck decomposed in his arms. The demon stretched some of his own substance about the necromancer, protecting him in his own cocoon of shadow, then moved from the center of the black hole.
It was quite a struggle, squeezing through the inconceivably thick matter, but eventually he managed to break free of the black hole’s gravitational influence. Starlight streaked by him and for a second he swore he heard the muffled screams of a billion dying souls. He paid them no mind and soared into the serene nothingness of space, again somehow knowing exactly where he needed to go. With Syndreck in his arms, he flew back to the other side of the galaxy, and came upon the world of Phate.
And with that, we go to another kind of space, another place where the planted seeds of our story will begin to sprout. You will see, though, that Drekklor and Syndreck’s destinies were tied to this new place.
Come, my reader, I will show you what happens…
Now events take us back to Phate, far beneath the tumultuous surface of the Raging Sea, down, down, down to the capital city of the deep elves, which spread some twenty square miles across the abyssal plains.
This was the Kingdom of Krykoss.
The whole realm was essentially a multilevel metropolis of moonstone grottos, coral keeps, and jadestone castles, all interwoven beneath the ruling Emperor’s swirling ring of black pearl palaces. Dreadship destroyers patrolled the surrounding waters, and titan crabs crept around the outskirts, for the deep elves were as guarded a race as Phate had ever seen. Steeped in dark history, Krykoss was mighty and mysterious, its further descriptions and tales worthy of many volumes themselves.
But for now, our story concerns itself with a single chamber located deep within the heart of the kingdom, in the sublevels of the sorcerers’ Mystic Trident Tower. Until tonight, it had been a thousand years since anyone had occupied this chamber. Now, a lone figure stood still and silent in its center. A green glow lamp hanging from the ceiling dimly illuminated the figure’s face, whose violet eyes burned with the inner fires of betrayal.
Can you guess to whom these eyes belonged?
I’ll give you a hint—the figure was paralyzed.
And now he was forced to stare into the recesses of a mirror that was sorcerously suspended before him. It was ornate, this magical mirror, its frame decorated with carved likenesses of many-tentacled demons of the deep. But the figure saw nothing within, not even his own glowing eyes, for the mirror’s face was not silvery, but dark, and thus gave no reflection.
Reflection was not its purpose.
The mirror was a portal door.
As the paralyzed figure watched, a shadowy form substantiated in the void that existed within the frame. The form moved closer to the mirror’s surface, and behold, it was Drekklor, cradling the broken body of Syndreck the Brooding!
Ah, yes, he was doing as the Devil King bid…
With Drekklor’s arrival, six deep elf sorcerers, who were arranged in a semicircle around the immobile captive, dispelled their invisibility. Scintillating lines of magic coursed down from their heads to their feet, revealing their physical forms. Unbeknownst to the paralyzed figure, they had been there all along.
The most decrepit among them stepped forward and spoke, his words babbling like a brook over the sound of his sloshing seawater robes. “We have done as Nenockra Rool commanded. The Gauntlets of Loathing Light have been delivered to he who would thieve the Sunsword. Now give us this mortal.”
“Will you do with him as the master has bidden?” Retrieving the necromancer had been no easy task, and Drekklor was somewhat hesitant to extend Syndreck’s bile-lathered body out to these strange sorcerers. “Will you place his soul in a fresh body? That is what our master wishes, is it not?”
The deep elf stepped closer to the mirror, and yelled, “Foolish slave! Do as Nenockra Rool commands! Give us the deliverer!”
The sorcerously tinged words helped convince Drekklor to extend his arms out of the mirror. The deep elf took Syndreck from him, careful not to pull off any of the necromancer’s extremities. This was a critical time. They needed to keep Syndreck alive, for if he died, his soul could be lost to the Dark Forever, where it would be useless. They needed to act quickly, for Syndreck’s body was falling apart.
“Yes, the seed of our ascension!” the deep elf hissed as he gently laid the wasted body at the feet of the paralyzed figure. He looked back into the mirror, said, “We will make him strong again. Go now, dark servant, prepare the Dead Towers of Ulith Urn for his return.”
Drekklor was curious to watch what was to happen, but he remembered what his curiosity had garnered him before. He silently disappeared back into the mirror’s void.
The elf turned to his brethren, commanded: “Exchange souls.”
A single tear dripped from the paralyzed figure’s eye, and he struggled to move, to scream, to do anything, for the horror of what was about to happen took residence in his mind. But he was helpless, still afflicted with a certain uncle’s ironically cruel spell…
The lead elf retook his place in the semicircle and the six sorcerers of the sea raised their arms. Gurgling chants ensued, and their voices soon deepened and lengthened into a mystical song. Minutes went by. The chamber shuddered. Green smoke arose from the floor, and the light issued by the glow lamp shone through it like the stray ray of some alien sun. An hour went by, and still the sorcerers sang. Both Syndreck and the paralyzed figure trembled. Their eyes rolled to white, and they simultaneously loosed a heaving sigh as blue mists seeped from their chests. Syndreck’s mist flew into the paralyzed figure, and the figure’s mist flew down into Syndreck. They both cried out…then went silent. And so did the elves. Their singing ceased, their arms lowered, and the green smoke subsided.
It was done.
Souls had been exchanged.
Syndreck the Brooding, Dark Mage of the Lost Age, Master of Necromancy and Ripper of Dimensions, now occupied the body of Tatoc of the Black Claw.
Tatoc now occupied the body of Syndreck.
Tatoc, feeling the pain of a wasted body that had endured a thousand-year exposure to deep space, let out a horrific wail. The deep elves cringed with annoyance. They summarily teleported him just outside the chamber, where he instantly imploded under the crushing weight of a hundred miles of seawater, thus ridding our tale of Tatoc.
An unfortunate end, indeed!
Syndreck was jubilant.
He looked down at his new self, and his brightening eyes were greeted with rippling muscle and smooth, dark skin. “I’m beautiful!” he shouted to the mildly disturbed deep elves. He found himself so beautiful, in fact, he had to contain himself just to keep from tearing off a piece of his own flesh and savoring it between his gleaming new teeth. He threw back his head and belted out with diabolical laughter, laughter that perfectly suited one of his devilish, necromantic kind.
It was glorious.
He would bring the Dark Forever back into the primary universe. He cried out, “To Ulith Urn, oh shadow demon! Return! Yes, return and bring me to Ulith Urn!”
No more difficult roads do we t
read than the ones we walk alone.
Soviuss
Philosopher Wizard of Inkone Two
Back on the surface of Phate, we find our man Herard entranced by the dead trees of Corpsewood. Oh, he was morbidly fascinated by them! Their grey trunks were thin, spindly, spotted with sickly white blotches, and yet their leafless branches swayed hypnotically through an air that was as still and stale as a tomb’s. Despite the rather unsettling effect the sight was having on his psyche, he just continued to stare at them. He did not understand this, for there was little left in the world that could bewitch him so.
You can imagine how surprised he was when the trees suddenly went still.
Herard flinched, held his breath. “Are the trees toying with me?”
Never mind, he didn’t want to know.
He exhaled, slunk back from the nearest tree…and was enfolded in arms of mist. A damp fog rolled in and refilled the space Zraz had made when she’d impacted the ground. As the fog thickened in front of Herard’s face, Zraz became obscured, like she was fading away, fading into the cloudy realm of the Seven Glories. Herard reached out and whispered, “Goodbye, my dear friend…I will take your memory into eternity...I will mourn you forever…”
And then he could hold his wellspring of tears no longer.
He bowed his head and let his sorrow flow.
But just moments later he suppressed his tears and composed himself. Now was not the time to mourn Zraz, for he knew that his enemies could be upon him at any second. He needed to flee. He looked one last time in Zraz’s direction, then turned away and blindly plunged into the thickening mist.
He soon discovered that he was in no shape for such a frantic flight. His legs were sore with myriad cuts and burns, and the fog was thicker than he had first thought. He didn’t quite make it fifty feet before stumbling face-first into a tree. The collision caused him to cry out (more in frustration than in pain), and he temporarily halted his haphazard dash through this eerie forest. Some warrior I am, defeated by some scrawny trees! Well, maybe not defeated, but a trifle unnerved, certainly.
“Perhaps I should just find somewhere to hide,” he mused to the fog.
If the fog held any opinion on the matter, it didn’t share it with Herard.
Exasperated, he tilted his head back and sighed.
His gaze now drawn upward, he noticed that the layer of mist didn’t rise much higher than his head, and above that the sky was nearly indiscernible, a veritable void of blurry black. But then a passing break in the fog revealed a starry circle of space in the center of the darkness high above him.
“What—? Ah, I see…” The strangeness of his surroundings suddenly made sense.
All his life he’d flown over the Volcanoes of Volcar, but never had he been stranded inside of one. He wasn’t particularly fond of the feeling. It was suffocating, like being at the bottom of a great well, and he remembered that many of the old, dead volcanoes were alleged to be haunted. What a wonderfully timed thought, Herard!
His heart racing, he patted his chest. “Calm yourself, old man.” His head still tilted back, he looked about, tried to see if there was anywhere he could climb—
Suddenly the mouth of the volcano disappeared, and a shadow further darkened a sky that was already black with stormy midnight.
Herard’s racing heart skipped a beat. “Perhaps I should have died in the fall…”
Oh Gods, the enemies were here!
Warloove’s demonic beast angled down, flew the perimeter of the forest, and Herard once again felt the dreadful onset of dragonfear. The creature did a full circle, then swept inward, passing directly over him, issuing a stream of hisses that flowed over the treetops like a swarm of invisible snakes. Its whipping wings swirled the fog, and exposed the cowering Herard.
Heedless of his earlier flight’s failure, he launched into a panicked run.
The dragon descended, landing right next to Zraz’s body, trees bending and snapping as it crunched to the ground. When it brought its massive wings in, a tremendous rush of air knocked Herard from his feet. He immediately picked himself up and continued running until the tumult of the dragon’s landing ceased. Then he ducked behind a tree. He had to snicker at himself, for his trepidation with the trees was instantly vanquished by the more terrifying visage of the demonic dragon. But the brief moment of levity evaporated when the dragon let loose its awful cry. The volcano’s interior amplified the shriek, and the echoing sound was so deafening, Herard had to cover his ears. The shriek sustained for many seconds, and then, after it faded, the dragon launched back into the air. Herard poked his head out from behind the tree and watched it fly away. It blotted the mouth of the volcano, then disappeared into the storms, the winged wraith of this most cursed night.
Had his enemies given up the hunt? Perhaps some more urgent dealings had drawn them away.
Herard exhaled with some modicum of relief.
But then came the voice…
“Herard.”
So much for relief.
Herard felt the heat of breath upon the back of his neck, and he instinctively whirled about.
Nothing. No one. Just the fog, the trees.
The whisper came from behind again. “Herard…”
Herard unsheathed his sword and swung it around, the blue-flame blade slashing in a wide arc. But still there was nothing. His sword had sliced through thin air. He knew someone was close by, though, for he felt a chill like a spider creeping up his spine and his instincts screamed of an unwelcome presence.
“Warloove…?”
His suspicion was confirmed when again came that unmistakable voice.
“Herard!”
This time the voice boomed through the trees, and Herard thought he saw his enemy’s dark form slinking toward him…or was that just some stray shadow? He couldn’t be certain, for his senses had been dulled by exhaustion, and hopelessness tugged hard at his soul. He knew at least some of his disorientation was brought on by his enemy, for Warloove could press him just as hard from within as he could from without.
He had to make a choice: Would he fold or would he fight?
He decided—if this was to be a game, then he might as well play. The more time the Fallen Angel had to hide the gauntlets, the better. Let him throw aside his fear and lead his enemy on.
Summoning his courage, Herard called through the trees, “Come, Warloove, I have the Gauntlets of Loathing Light! Catch me and I will give them to you!”
“You are already caught,” Warloove returned, his voice a distorted, raspy song of oddly intonated syllables.
Herard’s courage waned upon hearing those words, and I cannot blame him, for deep down he knew they foretold of an inescapable fate.
And then the assault on his senses went from subtle to dramatic.
Suddenly, the dead Forest of Corpsewood came alive.
The sickly trees shed their illusion of ills, darkening and widening to many times their previous size. Thick branches bristling with long black leaves bloomed from their barren trunks, and Herard was ensnared as if within some leafy cage. He ducked and sidestepped, tripped over tangles of roots that broke the ground in knobby bunches. An underbrush sprang out of the dirt, its dense vines twining about his legs like coils of thorny rope. He unsheathed his sword and hacked himself free, swearing he heard painful cries as he tore through the bramble. When he looked up from his hacking, slits of yellow eyes ignited in the underbrush like a thousand pairs of candles, and the fog separated into hundreds of spirits whose cloudy fingers reached for his throat. He gasped, chopped through the brush, and scampered away, periodically peeking through the forest for his enemy.
Warloove was nowhere to be seen.
Herard called out, his tone unintentionally meek. “You…you play games, but really you want the gauntlets. Come, I say, take them from me!”
Warloove’s gloating voice flitted through the trees. “I have a game for you, it is called, ‘Time to Suffer.’”
“I know thi
s game, we’ve played it before.”
“Not this one…” The voice trailed off, then struck from some other indeterminable place. “For so long I have waited, for so long I have thirsted—for freedom, for blood…”
Herard stopped running and looked all about, but still couldn’t spot his assailant. He could feel the presence of his enemy closing in on him, though. Warloove emitted a cold fear, an elusive fear that twined sneakily about the soul.
“Come for me, damn you!” Herard challenged. “I have the gauntlets!” His enchanted sword glowed like a wintery blue flame and he snarled like a creature of the night himself. The eyes closest to him shrunk back and the foul foliage receded from his feet.
Good! Let the forest fear him! Here he would stand, here he would fight!
“I will have the gauntlets,” Warloove swore, “and I will have you.”
Herard readied his sword.
But nothing came.
No claws lashed out at him, no fireballs came wailing through the trees to incinerate him, and no wicked weapons came slicing for his head.
No, the attack came quietly.
A sorcerous song arose from somewhere in the trees, and twinkling blue specks of soft light fell from the sky like a storm of tiny stars, blanketing all the forest. It was remarkably…beautiful? Herard was aware of the subtleties of magic enough to know that whatever had just happened was most certainly not as benign as it had appeared. But what was this new devilry?
He awaited the imminent explosion.
It never came, but nonetheless, the attack had begun. Herard was a victim of the Spell of Time Destruction.
The Forest of Corpsewood was trapped within a moment…and so was Herard.
Seconds stretched into hours.
Hours stretched into days.
But there were no days for the Emperor of the Sky; now he languished in one, seemingly endless night…
Our poor Herard. He was always hungry, but never starving, always thirsty, but never completely parched. He was exhausted, but never slept. He crept all throughout the forest, but somehow could never reach the volcano’s walls. Sometimes he’d cry out, “Warloove! Warloove!” but he could never garner any response. And always he felt that hot breath upon his neck, the chill of ghostly fingers touching his skin.