Necromancy, one of the more criminally underused pillars of magic. Out of the seven pillars considered “good” – whatever that may mean – it is by far the least popular. In some cultures this is because the remains of the dead are considered sacred, and without the dead necromancy is useless. In other cultures it can be explained simply because there are not as many practical uses for the type of magic. There is only one sect that is known for their highly skilled necromancers; the Church of Alen. Indeed, the church necromancers were at one point considered to be some of the most powerful wizards of the continent – surpassed only by the High Council of Evorel. Their ability to raise and command the dead was incredible. A weak necromancer could summon the dead, but only as husks. An average necromancer could usually turn the dead into servants, very little personality but an acceptable degree of autonomy. The Church managed to create a small army of necromancers that could use their magic to turn corpses into any sort of necrotic creature imaginable. They could completely resurrect anyone if their bodies had not yet begun to decompose. They could warp large quantities of bones and flesh into whatever kind of creature they wanted. They even began to specialise amongst themselves. There was a wizard who focused solely on creating giant flesh golems made by combining the body parts of different corpses, and another who had actually managed to resurrect someone by retroactively turning them into a vampire. It cannot be understated how incredibly skilled this select group of wizards was.

  What also cannot be understated, is how awfully the whole ordeal ended.

  The High Council of Evorel – the one I mentioned before – they also noticed the might of the church necromancers. And they did not like seeing magical research slip from their hands. At the time, the High Sorcerer of the council decided that they needed to be dealt with. The Church needed to be taken down a peg, back to where they needed the Archmages to help them with the more complicated magic, not the other way around.

  There was a small battle, and it didn’t last long. Even the most powerful of necromancers couldn’t stand against masters of the more combat-oriented pillars of magic such as elemental control or enhancement. The necromancers that remained either hid within the Church or chose to roam the world as hermits.

  One of them, just so happened to end up in a small village, where he became the town’s official priest and healer. When the abyss started to corrupt his beloved town, he first tried to heal the sick. However, the few sick turned into the many, and soon after the first dead started to fall. However, instead of actually dying, the infected became something else. Their lifeless bodies started to twitch, and eventually stood up. Tanor – for that was his name – tried to save as many people as he could. He hid them in the catacombs, assuming the infected would not be able to follow them underground if he locked the doors. Some of the infected that got close to the catacombs he tried to resurrect – hoping that if their consciousness returned the infected would stop their relentless assault. Instead, the combination of Celestial and Abyssal energy only resulted in more powerful infected. The resurrected broke down the catacomb doors with ease, and chased the remaining townsmen through the catacombs until all lay dead.

  Tanor was the only one who survived. With all the dead who surrounded him, one could almost say this was his perfect battleground. Wave after wave of the infected tried to get to him, but the wall of undead he had created to protect himself did their jobs very well. Eventually, he reached the deepest part of the catacombs.

  The Panopticon, a large cylindrical room with a viewing platform in the middle. The walls went up far enough that even he couldn’t see the ceiling, and they were lined with graves of some of the most powerful and prominent figures known to Hegrines. For centuries, this small and insignificant town had been the final resting place of great and powerful Hegrineans.

  Now, the heroes of Hegrines would be his weaponry. As Tanor prepared to make his final stand against the infected, he heard a whisper reach out to him. He turned around, but could not find the origin of the strange whispers. What he did find was a small black sapling, growing out of one of the corpses towards the base of the wall. As he inspected the tree more closely, he realised it was where the whispers were coming from. They whispered to him of salvation, of glory. They promised him power, and he reached out to get it.

  As soon as the dark, slimy bark touched his skin a branch shot out and into his arm. The roots spread throughout his body, piercing his heart and lungs. He could feel his eyes threatening to pop out of his head as the canopy of the tree expanded within his skull. The roots threatened to nail him to the floor, and the rest of the tree threatened to expand so far that it would fully consume him. He refused to let it. Tanor resisted the tree’s physical growth, keeping it contained within his body. He was no longer alive, he knew that much. All of his internal organs were shot, he would be dead if not for the tree’s power keeping him alive. He realised his magic had gotten an upgrade, being able to sense all the dead and undead creatures within a far greater radius than ever before. If he wanted to, he could resurrect the entirety of the catacombs without leaving the Panopticon.

  On top of that, the infected had apparently lost interest in him. They retreated back into the church, the entrance to the catacombs still wide open but no one left alive to close them. Tanor decided to leave it. He was far too busy exploring the extents of his new power.

  While he had successfully stopped the Abyssal tree from taking over his body, he could not stop it from corrupting his mind and soul. Slowly but surely, he became trapped in a way far worse than being bolted to the ground. His thoughts were no longer his own. He could now only think thoughts of anger and frustration, and fear. A fear so powerful it could only be described as pure terror. When he felt a new group of people arrive in the town, he noticed one of them was different from the others. One of them had a spark inside of him. A spark that both infuriated and terrified the power that had taken over his mind. He reached out to another of his group, and tried to kill this source of fear and hatred. But alas, his power of mind control were far from strong enough to fully corrupt the living and conscious. They soon subdued their friend, and left him behind as they explored the town. His beloved town, the town he had failed. They started killing off the infected, his former friends. By the time that two of them arrived in the catacombs, he felt so afraid that he decided to lash out at the boy with the spark. He tried to dissuade him by filling his mind with fear, but it barely slowed them down. Then he decided.

  It was time to arm the dead.

  ???

  Elion and Aerean continued through the narrow winding halls of the catacombs. After the first undead they encountered there had been no others, but the sounds of cracking bones and clanking metal reverberated endlessly throughout the subterranean labyrinth. They knew something was waiting for them. Elion could feel something call out to him – lashing out even – from deep within the catacombs. He could feel his own powers growing stronger as they went on, feeling the tethers that surrounded him grow more tangible by the step. He could touch them without concentrating on a single one now. In fact, he had to concentrate to pass through them without accidentally pulling the ceiling down towards the floor.

  A sound came from behind them. Elion had been walking in front of Aerean ever since their first encounter, so now she found herself standing face-to-face with what could have been the biggest man she’d ever seen – had it not been for the fact that he was dead.

  The skeleton loomed over here, easily over twice her size. Even Tallioth would have felt small standing next to this guy, although the fact that he had lost all of his soft-tissue – including any muscles he once had – diminished his intimidation factor. Still, Aerean reacted quickly.

  Dodging away just in time to avoid the large rock the looming figure slammed down, Aerean narrowly avoided getting crushed. She then felt herself floating backwards, almost as if gravity had turned sideways and she was now falling towards Elion. She flew past him, but felt herself land steadily on her feet while he lunged forwards. Aerean grabbed her staff, ready to strike and help Elion when needed, but the fight was already over.

  Elion had – as if entirely by instinct – thrown himself towards the much larger figure and catapulted over him, taking the large rock with him. Carefully manipulating the different tethers connecting the active elements to the floor, ceiling, and walls, Elion had managed to smash the large skeleton’s head between the floor and the rock, instantly incapacitating it. At that moment, Aerean felt overwhelmed by awe and admiration. Soon after another emotion came to the surface; fear.

  She could see it in his eyes, a darkness he had never shown before. In the slight darkness of the catacombs, she could almost swear his eyes were radiating a soft light – bright purple from his one eye and a softer green from the other. Beneath that radiant beauty was an unmistakable darkness.

  “Let’s go,” he said cheerfully, no trace of that darkness left. He walked past Aerean, who was still slightly too shocked to speak or move.

  “Elion, wait up.” Aerean jogged after him after standing still for slightly too long to catch up by just walking.

  Elion turned around, seemingly surprised but pleasantly so.

  “How are you?” Aerean asked. Elion raised an eyebrow in response. “It’s just, you’ve changed so suddenly. A minute ago you were… well I don’t know how to describe it but you weren’t like this.”

  Elion laughed, “I guess so. What can I say? I’m feeling pretty good.” He thought it over for a second. “I feel… powerful,” he continued.

  “Right, right… and that’s good?” Elion nodded.

  “It’s great. Now stay close, we’re going deeper.” Elion turned around and started walking again. Every few steps he picked up the pace until they were running. Aerean only noticed the first few undead they encountered, after that Elion started breaking them before they even made it around a corner. This went on for a few more minutes. Elion started going left or right without even thinking about it, running around frantically pulverising any undead unlucky enough to get in their way. Aerean felt like she was floating half the time, which could have been because they were running so fast, but she reasoned that Elion was probably dragging her after him – maybe even pushing himself forward, making both of them run unnaturally fast. The walls started to blur, all the graves coming together to form one grey blob with the occasionally white streak inside or smashed apart on the floor.

  Elion started laughing, running faster and faster as they continued. Then, just as sudden as Elion’s change in mood, they stood still again.

  They had escaped the unending corridors of the catacombs, and now found themselves in a large, tube-shaped room with graves of great heroes lining the walls. In front of them, stood a man with skin like bark and eyes darker than the darkest night Aerean could remember. Silently, he stood as Elion approached him.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  “So, what are you? The source of all this infection?” Elion asked. His voice was oozing with misplaced pride and premature satisfaction as he thought about how to obliterate this puny necromancer.

  Then, a rumble came from deep below them. The floor crumbled and a dark pit was revealed. A pit lined with far larger graves than any of the ones they had seen before. A pit that had once served as the burial site for creatures from a time forgotten. Weapons left over from a war waged long ago.

  From the dark, the corpse of the great serpent leaped into the air and swallowed all three of them whole before continuing upwards and breaking through the ceiling above them.

  Barrelling upwards, Elion and Aerean managed to grab and hold on to one of the beast’s many ribs. Once they reached the village, Elion pulled on the rapidly dissipating tethers to get them to safety. They landed in the dirt, almost crashing into one of the houses that were on the edge of the village.

  The terrain was perfect for a battle, perfect for a snake that is. On this side of the village were some grassy hills and sparse vegetation, far more advantageous for a slithering undead predator than the forest that lay on the other side. Sure, they would be able to see the serpent coming, but what did that matter? The beast’s giant fangs had almost skewered them the first time they were swallowed. If not for the fact that its hide had long since withered away they would have been dead already. Fortunately, this resurrected version was nothing compared to the true Great Serpent. If it had been, even a fully powered Elion would have been in grave trouble. Fully powered however, he was not.

  Elion had noticed it as soon as they were picked up by the serpent – the tethers slipping away into intangibility. He looked around to find the necromancer himself, but the Abyssal tree of a man was nowhere to be seen. Somehow he must have hidden himself away, or perhaps fled. Elion imagined the man burrowing into the ground just like the snake he had summoned and hiding away somewhere. The mental image of that wooden man digging a small tunnel almost made him laugh.

  Aerean noticed this of course, although she was slightly more shaken by the whole serpent part of the equation. She was however delighted to see the darkness vanish from Elion’s eyes.

  She didn’t have a long time to dwell on it however. Soon after they landed, the snake realised it had not managed to swallow and contain its prey – dumb and unaware of its own condition as this particular serpent happened to be, it decided to try again.

  Elion tried to reach for the tethers that were hanging around him like whisps, but he failed to actually grab onto any of them. Instead, the threads passed right through his fingers like they were nothing more than a mere figment of his imagination. As the snake came barrelling towards them, he thought for a moment that he would die. Fortunately for him, Aerean knew better than to blindly trust magic.

  Elion felt the blow of her staff hit him in the side, hard enough to push him but spread across a great enough area not to punch straight through his ribcage. After knocking him out of the way, she jammed her staff into the ground, using it as a lever to launch herself into the air. She landed gracefully on the top of the serpent’s skull.

  This is bad, she thought. She approximated they were no more than a few hundred metres away from where they’d hidden Tallioth. If he woke up and was unable to control himself, that would result in horrible destruction of a far greater scale than anything this serpent could cause. She needed to keep him out of the fight.

  You see, Tallioth had been the result of a great many experiments. He fled from where he came from with good reason. Being the chosen one is not always a good thing, especially not when being the chosen one means having to sacrifice your soul and offer your body to the ancient god of your people. Tallioth only completed half of the ritual before escaping. He offered his body, but forewent the sacrifice of his soul. This resulted in a… frightening combination. You’ll find out soon enough.

  Aerean kept slamming her staff into the sides of the serpent’s skull. This appeared to annoy it, perhaps even harm it, but nevertheless it did not have the desired effect of redirecting it. The snake continued to chase after Elion relentlessly, paying Aerean nor the village any more mind than it had to. Aerean had not been the only one to notice this, as upon looking to where Elion had been standing on his own mere moments ago, she now saw two Elions.

  Two of them, one would have confused them for identical twins had it not been for their completely different accents.

  “What are you doing here?” asked Elion.

  “Well mate, apparently I’m saying yer ass from a bloody skeleton snake. It’s after you, but maybe it won’t know the difference and we can confuse it,” Randan stated. As the snake continued its relentless approach, Aerean still furiously hitting its empty eye-sockets with the reinforced end of her staff, Randan and Elion each ran into a completely different direction.

  Behind her, Aly emerged from the shadow Aerean casted onto the serpent’s skull.

  “What’s the plan?” Aly asked.

  “Hold on, since when can you do that? And also, why am I meant to have a plan?”

  “Firstly, it’s a very draining ability of mine, I tend not to use it too liberally. As for the plan, you’re the one that jumped onto this thing’s head – that kinda means you’re the one in charge for this one,” Aly explained.

  After a big sigh and another hit to the serpent’s skull, Aerean started to think of an actual plan.

  “I think we have to find the necromancer. It resurrected this thing, it must somehow be responsible for directing it. Due to Elion’s powerlessness, I suspect he is hidden somewhere quite far away. Search the houses, maybe the trees. He has to be somewhere he can see us though – otherwise he wouldn’t be able to control the serpent so precisely.”

  “Sounds easy enough. Distract the snake, cut the necromancer’s throat.”

  “In concept it sounds easy I suppose, something tells me it’ll turn out to be a lot more difficult though. The necromancer, he looked… strange. As if his skin had turned into the bark of some black tree. His eyes had turned completely black. Now I don’t know about you, but I haven’t met many species that naturally have all-black eyes.” Aly shook her hand.

  “Sounds like something I’ve heard of before. The Abyss – I’d assumed those tales to be stories, nothing more. But if the Tendrils of the Abyss are truly taking root…”

  “I suggest we leave the theorising for later,” Aerean interjected. Aly nodded and sank back into Aerean’s shadow.

  That’s so cool, she thought as she noticed Aly emerge from the ground by the edge of the forest. Useful too.

  Meanwhile, Randan and Elion were running for their lives. Randan had managed to successfully distract the serpent long enough for Elion to take a breath, but it had soon begun to chase after both of them. It gargantuan form allowed it to switch from one to the other in the blink of an eye, crossing the entirety of the field in no more than a few seconds. It was only because there were two of them that they stood a chance. That and the fact that if it did indeed manage to swallow one of them they could simply get back out again. It did get harder and harder to avoid the fangs though, and the serpent seemed to have figured out that simply swallowing its prey wouldn’t be enough.

  After chasing Elion and Randan around for another minute or so, the snake stopped. Aerean could feel it rear up its malformed skull of a head and braced herself. She tried to hold on while it started violently trying to shake her off of its head, but the wild movement was too much for Aerean to bear. She was flung away, heading right for the trees when she ripped her necklace off in mid-air and transformed into a bird. Her staff was absorbed into her avian form, disappearing without a trace, whereas the necklace was clutched between her talons. Aerean could take a few different avian forms, depending on what was absorbed within her as she transformed. Cursed from birth, the scientists of her people had devised many strategies to make her life more bearable. The greatest of these was the necklace that allowed her to take a humanoid form like others of her kind, but there had been other things that had granted her some reprieve. The only one she had left besides the necklace was her staff – or more accurately, the gem embedded into the top. The staff was a later addition. The gem had been infused with her life energy, which allowed it to be absorbed when coming into contact with her avian form. The staff gave her the form she had called: the transformation of might.

  Many times larger than her normal defenceless bird shape, the great sky-blue owl spread its wings and dove down towards Elion. She let go of her necklace, which he caught with a slight look of bewilderment on his face. Aerean turned back around to face the serpent, who was now staring at her with its missing eyes. It raised its tail high into the air and started rattling it around, sending soundwaves their way that shook the very ground they stood on.

  Randan was unmoved, having presumably changed the anatomy of his ears just in time to defend himself from the sonic blast; Elion and Aerean however were both thrown against the ground. In Aerean’s might form, she could resist a lot more damage than usual, but it did usually take a while for this resistance to kick in when faced with a new kind of attack. When it did, the soundwaves felt like nothing more than slight nudges of wind trying its very best to ruffle her feathers.

  With renewed vigour, Aerean shot into the sky and came straight for that horrible rattle on the serpent’s tail. With her talons, harder than steel, she began to claw at the segments of bone that made up the rattle. For the first time since the beginning of their fight, the serpent actually appeared visibly distressed by her attacks. It writhed furiously, trying to hit her with its tail and eventually even trying to snap at her with its giant jaws. It was here, where two things happened simultaneously – one dreaded, the other unexpected.

  From the side of the village, Aerean could hear something come flying her way. She turned and noticed the piece of rock just in time to dodge out of the way. At the same time, the snake’s rattle started to shift and transform into a second skull. The bones remodelled themselves, forming a single shape with two eye slits and another large mouth underscored with giant fangs. It then split its large body in two.

  One of the snakes continued fighting Aerean, while the other slithered away to attack Elion again. While the realisation of this dawned on her, Aerean heard a wild roar that stopped her right in her tracks. Distracted, she got hit by the serpent’s tail and thrown on the ground. One of her wings caught the full brunt of the blow, but the pain would go away soon as long as nothing had been broken.

  From the ground, she saw it. From the fire that they hadn’t even noticed arose a large horned figure. His horns now over twice their usual size, his clothes burned from his body revealing the symbols on his chest and back. Two symbols, one for the father and one for the mother of the man his people had tried to resurrect.

  Morgorath, son of Naros and Ignis, known throughout history as the worst demigod that ever lived. Born from an unholy combination of the Lady of Destruction and the Daemon Archmage of Puros.

  Tallioth had lost control again.