|
|
| |
|
| ||
|
|
The right of Sean McKeown to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of these documents may be used, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical including photocopying, scanning and recording, for any purpose, without the express written consent of Sean McKeown.
|
|
I climb my way up the Mountain of Freedom, and my dark powers slowly bleed from
me as I enter deeper into the mystic wards laid against me. My connection with
Aku, just recently reaffirmed in a conjunction most dark, evaporates as the
white mana struggling to survive in the wasteland becomes suffused in the
crackling air around me.
Strength is slowly drawn from me, as the abhorrent pureness burns and flays at
my dark gift. But I press on with terrible rage, rage that these parlor
magicians would seek to survive when I had willed them dead. Simmering to
coolness in the pain, I collect my anger and step through it to the darkness
beyond, the darkness that is Aku.
The chant on the pillar tombs that I have made my home comes to me:
"Aku, City of Hidden Graves Aku, City of Lost Kings Aku, welcome me."
All that once was flesh has dried to dust; all brightness that was life has in
time dulled to the darkness of the tomb. Darkness is eternal, the ways of the
flesh is fleeting. Necromancy, the Dark Gift that fuels my life on that of
others, gives me life eternal, at the sacrifice of my own flesh.
The man I am known as, whom some call Sith, was a mage of the Order of Leitbur
whom I seduced with a siren’s call of Darkness to G’nra’I, to turn into a Lich
for my own uses. In many ways, I am now my own minion, for I wear the face of
Sith gar Kan. He gave his life to me so that he could have power, so he could be
like a candle burning on both ends. For my aid, in a devil’s bargain, he sold
me his body and soul for eternity to keep, to use as my own. The original body
of Kaervek Blood-Seeker was destroyed decades ago in battle with one of my own
kind. My spirit was left crippled and disembodied, to die a slow and wasting
death without the touch of the mana to sustain me.
Lim-Dûl, the lord Necromancer, did this to me, and I shall never forget it. I
shall enjoy the day that I may visit upon him the same pain that he gave to me.
The Greater Realm, penetrating my senses, has distracted me.....distracted me
far too long!
I climb Henneth Ammuth, feeling sinew and bone scrape off as I use my own
enhanced strength to carry me to the top of the mountain. The mountain calls to
me with the seductive song of red mana, tempting me to use fire and chaos to
rain down destruction all around me, to overwhelm the Greater Realm's magics
with a sheer torrent of lava and force. As one hand leaves the mountain to
reach a new crevice, so that I can continue the climb, the mountain sings to me
even louder to use its force in the ways of destruction. And yet, I resist,
knowing the best way to finish these mages.
Only Henneth Ammuth was not brought low by my forbidden rituals and
world-altering spells. As I scrabble up the rocky ledges with ungodly swiftness
brought about by both my dark and manipulative mana, I see the terrain that was
once a living plane brought low and extinguished of all life by my conquering
grip. The swamps are beginning to grow in their new beds, and the old life is
being used to feed the bogs and moors with rich, potent death mana. The
barriers between G’nra’I and Tekeb-Harai, distant even to my trained and
enhanced vision, shimmer brightly with the death mana supporting its twisted
task.
I grip Aku with my dark gift, and call its wrath upon the land. The wasted
terrain becomes doubled in its destruction, and the circle is now complete. The
Greater Realm is weakening, as I pull away the lifeforces of all upon the
Mountain, including myself. I speed my climb, and with unholy strength and
speed I take myself up the Mountain of Freedom towards the apex of the bright
power there. The Mountain still calls my name with its power, but it is not yet
time.
With a detachment unrivaled among planeswalkers, I allow myself to believe that
I might be killed at the hands of these wizards if I am not careful as well as
overpowering. Death is a strong and elemental force, but purity can overcome
it, as the Greater Realm of Preservation spread upon the henneth gives
testament. I give my frame the last thrust up to the peak, and like an eagle I
soar to the top.
My hold on the mana fails, and I fall to the rocky slopes of the Mountain of
Freedom. Waves of pain rack my body as well as my mind, pain that is
retribution for the taking of life. Karma assaults me as I have never felt it
before, as I wish never to feel it again. In the agony I cannot decide how best
to end it; I unthinkingly, almost reflexively connect my spirit with a Zuran orb
and empty my death mana into it, gaining back life for sacrificing the power of
death. The agony subsides to a tolerable level, and I know what I must do to
bring the wizards to my disadvantage.
My body is strong, although deceptively so. To many, I am merely a caricature
of life, my appearance near to human but withered past the point of death. A
shrunken and tanned skeleton, covered with a dry, parchment-like skin; a
grinning death’s head upon a desiccated corpse. But the strength these bones
posses, animated by the Dark Trick of the Lich, is enough to crush the skull of
a Rangoon war mammoth; strong enough to fell a mighty giant or a Earth
Elemental. As an extension of my mind, it is sharpened with not just the
ability to fight and kill, but the finely-honed will to do so, and a passionate
bloodlust unmatched by any berserker. If I have to best these mages and their
magical creatures without the aid of all my spellcasting abilities, it shall be
so. Let the battle begin.
I feel Henneth Amuuth’s stony assurances beneath my feet, and I grasp its mana
like a thirsting man to water. If the mana of Black cannot be used, then I
shall use the very land they stand upon to defeat them.
The mages have surely sensed my coming, as I had sensed their presence upon the
henneth before. Now I sense only dull shapes and movements with vision
enhanced by mana, and the summonings begin to appear, and to flock towards me.
Surely the mages are weak and tired from their ordeal, keeping the Greater Realm
of Preservation suffused with protective mana, as well as from the slow, gnawing
death mana lifting in a choking mist from the forsaken wastes below. For the
creatures they send towards me are small, although swift. Lions uprooted from
their savannah homes, as well as knights trained by Leitbur rushing unheralded
upon their war horses.
The creatures rush at me unfearing, both through animal stupidity and through
the protection of natural wards. The lions are not intelligent enough to treat
me as anything other than their pray, and the knights are warded against evil by
the training of Leitbur, nothing that I can undo. Ever closer they approach,
charging me from all sides.
I teach these young mages something about battle with other wizards... a wave of
Pyroclasm expands around me, energy generated by the forces deep below the
mountain. The cries of the knights as they burn; the guttural howls and shrieks
of roasting lions... I drink up the death around me, gloating with the Reaper’s
rewards.
The mages summon again hastily, pulling spells from their grimoires as well as
from remembrance to battle me. Knights of the Thorn, once believed a fallen and
abandoned order, spring into existence upon the killing fields. Abbey gargoyles
and Death Speakers alike, all warded with natural protective charms. One mage,
hurried too much by his fellows, casts the spell of armageddon which cuts my
ties with the land lines, but theirs as well. The Dark Gift inside of me grows
stronger, and I become one with the abyss. I forfeit my soul, once again, to do
what must be done.
I attack the Knights of Thorn, brushing aside their javelins and lances to claw
at their eyes and throats. The first knight I reach loses his helmet swiftly to
my preternaturally swift blows, and one mighty punch to his head caves the
skull. I do not even see the rest of the Knights, but I know they are there,
dying at my hands. I move through them, drinking deeply of the scent of animal
fear mingling with human blood and the presence of the death-mana. And then
they are no more than the blood and gore dripping off of my animal-hide armor
and withered frame; nothing but casualties of war. The death mana inundates me,
and I absorb the strength of the fallen as a new attack begins upon me; this
time from the air.
Before I have even a chance to react, I am caught in the talons of a Gargoyle in
flight. The stone bird pecks at my skull, hoping to land a deathblow, but it is
not to be. I unleash the death mana of the fallen knights in a wave of
pestilence, felling the Gargoyle that holds me, and all the others in the air as
well. Vertigo sets in temporarily, but I wash it from my mind like so much
blood from my hands.
My fall goes unbroken, while my body does not. Bones jut from beneath the skin,
black blood oozes from a dozen wounds. My body gives off a foul stench of
decay, and I try quickly to use my Dark Gift to heal myself. I grasp
desperately at every magical artifact and spell that I know, and in a flash of
blinding insight I reap to myself the spoils of evil, bringing continued life
from the death around me, completing the circle once again.
I risk mana burn, and again I touch the power of chaos surging beneath my feet
to unleash an ungodly ball of fire from the ethers. The death speakers, warded
against my brutal strength, die pitifully as charred and bloated forms along
with a pair of unlucky mages who ventured too close to the battlefields.
I rise on mending bones, the oozing fluid slowly stopping in a flow of
solidifying amber. Restored once again to a state reminiscent of health, I walk
the blooded fields to the incinerated mages. The magical senses of a
necromancer return to my mind again, and I divine with the black mana the part
of the corpse I can use to lay bondage upon the lost soul. I rifle through the
ashes, and I scoop up a pile of ash and charred bone from the first mage.
I swallow the ash, as ritual from before the beginning of Time dictate, and
claim him as mine...or was this thing even male?...in the afterlife, as my
servant.
The second ritual is soon completed as well.
I return my attentions to the mages yet alive, to the brood of magicians once
schooled by Asmira in their powers. The battle is not over...the best parts
have yet to begin!