The Ghosts of Wars Long Past

[Flames of Hyperion]

With many thanks to Dawnmorrow for the artwork.
Recommended BGM: The War of the Last Wolves

[Flames of Hyperion]

In fire and in flame it rose, two years to the day after the defeat of the Dread Necromancer Xem’zund. No living man, elf, or dwarf bore witness to its ascension, no swaying mallorn or blade of golden grass. If the stars sprinkled in the crystal night overhead took any note, they gave it no overt sign.

From rotting earth and putrid cesspool it rose, born of the residual necromantic energies that strangled the high elven homeland of Raiaera. Unlike those monstrosities that came before, it peered at its surroundings with more than just ravaging hunger. Empty void still clawed at the hollow where its soul might once have lain. But something - something pure, something unyielding - granted it the strength to resist the call of the dark.

Where...

Before the thought had time to form, it knew the answer. Two years ago it had crawled here to die, body battered and mind shredded by the spells of the most exalted of the Lords of Death. It had no idea how it had travelled the long leagues to Timbrethinil in the hours before its passing. But it could not mistake the blackened boughs of the dead forest, any more than it could mistake its own features in the foetid pools at its feet.

What...

Lifting its hand to its face, it felt the passage of stale air through skin, flesh, tendon, sinew, and bone. It saw through the gaunt, emaciated appendage, all the way to the muddy pools beneath its likewise translucent knees. A low moan escaped its cold lips.

Who...

The sad, solitary sound rolled across the desecrated moors, until a hundred more soulless wraiths echoed it in the distance. Like moths to the flame they congregated, will’o’wisps to the lonely bonfire in the night. It felt their hunger as they clawed at its disembodied limbs, frostfyre burning in their bellies. It felt their pain as they gouged and rent incorporeal flesh from ethereal bones, boils and blisters bubbling from its skin. It cried out as it endured, fighting for the answer to the one question that mattered the most. Until it could endure no more.

Its soul pulsated: powerful, puissant. Bright white flame flowered from its spectral form, blossoming in perfect concentric petals about its person. Where the petals overlapped they resonated with the dead land below, cascading and rippling into ever more intricate patterns of arcane command.

“Who...”

Like mist before the rising sun, like darkness before the dawn, the veil of dark necromancy lifted beneath the light. Milling wraiths vanished beneath the fireflower’s touch, exorcised from their tortured existence in sighs of long-sought relief. In a blinding heartbeat of eternity, a hundred elven souls found blessed release into the arms of their deities overhead.

“... am...”

In the years before the Corpse War the Timbrethinil had bloomed as verdant as none other, before the rituals of the Lords of Death had defeated its ancient guardians and corrupted it with their foul taint. Their necromantic touch had sundered all life, but now the forest soil glowed with renewed, revitalised hope. Beneath the bright flame that seared the last of Xem’zund’s influence from this tiny sanctified corner of Raiaera, hibernating seeds and deep-reaching roots at last dared to dream again of their glory of old.

“...I?”

In fire and in flame it rose, one foot before the other upon the soil of revived Timbrethinil. Empty eyes beseeched the heavens above for a reply to its desperate plea, any reply. But the renewed silence left it no closer to the answer it sought. Alone on the empty moors it paused to taste a passing zephyr, its lucent wisps of hair unruffled, its battered spectacles untouched by the cleansing breath.

The same wind parted the clouds on the western horizon, revealing to it the luminous moon in waxing glory.

Without word, without hesitation, it stumbled forth.

[Flames of Hyperion]

Behind it stretched dune upon dune of pale grey sand, shaped over long centuries by wind and by wave. It could remember treacherous suppurations, clutching at its feet in wet greed. It could remember the taste of the salty sea breeze kissing the nape of its neck, soaked in sweat and in spray. But in this renewed existence its ghostly feet glided across the sand without resistance. The breeze passed through its form without ever touching skin.

Before it soared the forbidding ramparts of a city long abandoned to the plague of undeath. In another life it might have marvelled at the unique amalgamation of human and elven architectural styles: slender watch-spires fused with solid foundations in a manner both elegant and functional. In another life it might have spent long hours admiring the intricate colonnades, the beautiful carved friezes, the entwined lion and dragon that served as the town’s crest. But in this renewed existence neither the wonder of unity nor the study of ancient history brought pleasure to its empty heart.

From somewhere deep in its mind a memory surfaced: a young man, so much younger than it, making landfall upon the shores of Raiaera, not far from the ancient city of Anebrilith. How the waves had sung that day, how the ramparts had cheered! As fleeting as a petal caught in a spring storm, the thought slipped from its grasp, lost among the turbulent eddies of its tortured existence.

Only one question smouldered in the frozen void where once its soul had burnt bright.

“Who...”

It knew not why this city called out to it so, the song of a siren destined to dash its victims upon the broken rocks of their fragmented reminiscences. It knew no other than to obey. Longing hunger had eroded any semblance of resistance.

“... am...”

Like the forests of Timbrethinil from whence it had walked, the rituals of the Lords of Death had wrought their havoc here. What little sign of life it could sense within the city walls had either retreated deep beneath the corrupted earth, or had fused so wholly with the necromantic energies as to have become a mockery of undeath like itself. At least here the morality of the breathing needed not tether its cries of pain.

“... I?”

It closed its blank irises to the morning sky, drawing deep of the rotting reek into its empty lungs. The gatehouse to the city loomed overhead. The undead guardians on the walls paid little heed to yet another wandering shade. The capstone to the arched doors, watching over its heavy iron charges, bore a single inscription in calligraphic elven runes. Trenyce.

Its eyes fluttered open. Its breath exhaled as mist. Its fists clenched, paused, then released pent-up power as a battering ram of focused firestorm.

The gatehouses imploded, engulfing thirty feet of wall to either side in a typhoon of stone and metal shards.

[Flames of Hyperion]

It stepped across the ember-strewn threshold, into a mural painted from the seventh circle of abyssal Haide.

Gritty ash swept through the gateyard, stirred into life by white-hot fires feeding on pockets of necromantic residue. Its magic had punched through the strongest arcane wards that the necromancers of this blighted city could muster. Only a faint shimmer to the air, and the occasional lost crackle of black lightning, remained of the warding glyphs. Body parts in various states of decay lay buried beneath piles of rubble and ruin. Some still clutched rusty serrated longswords, or wore the armour of long-dead bladesingers.

It stepped through the ruined gateyard, into the killing field that separated the walls from the buildings proper. And as it did so, the defences of the undead city uncoiled and unleashed.

Disembodied hands burst from the mud, scarred by the mottled bruising characteristic of the Dread Necromancer’s afflictions. One after another these plagued corpses, interred in those early days of the war when the residents of Trenyce had time for such niceties, clawed their way from the mass graves that lay beneath the open ground. Baying howls resounded over their low groans: dire barghests summoned and let loose to savage those caught within the shambling horde.

So it called forth sacred fire from beneath its booted feet. Racing through mindless throngs along long-dormant leylines, the flames bathed the corpses in paralytic warmth. Mere proximity burnt away the symptoms of the plague; the skies wept to see the men and elves they had once been, until these too crumbled into fine ash. The barghests recoiled, attempted to leap the spell, and perished in firefalls of charred flesh and fur when the wards flared up to intercept them.

It stepped into a main thoroughfare. Here the Lords of Death had fortified the buildings and barricaded the streets, in expectation of prolonged siege. Cadres of elite wights, clad in heavy plate and armed with boltthrowers and sickle-like blades of cold iron, waited with all the patience of their long-lost lives as bladesingers in service of the nation they now defiled.

In groups of five and ten they sallied forth, distracting it with shield and with blade while their comrades took aim from the safety of the barricades. Animated siege engines flung javelins of bone with preternatural accuracy. Arcane traps activated underfoot, unleashing upon it pits of quicksand and explosions of necrotic fire. Flights of spectral apparitions descended from dark-bellied clouds, raking at it with keen shrieks and clawed talons. Black lightning coruscated about its person. Poisonous miasma rose from the tiled pavements and sizzled upon its tattered robes.

So it met them as they charged, with furious flame and with biting wind. Never once did it slow its advance. Their weapons tore through its unresisting form, trailing spectral blood as they clove flesh from bone; in turn, it smote them into ash with fist-sized balls of fire. Arcane sigils bloomed in the rancid air, summoning forth even greater fireballs with which it pummelled the barricades and siege engines, reducing them to no more than smouldering wreckage. A wave of its gaunt arm brought forth a dozen blades crafted from keen air, which clove the thunderclouds in twain and drove back the apparitions in wailing flight.

It stepped towards the fortress in the centre of the town. There the ground quaked, twin gargantuan constructs of animated bone bursting from the castle towers in avalanches of cascading rock and stone. One after another they lurched forth, reaching out with bony fingers to tear its head from its ethereal shoulders, to crush its intangible body beneath their mighty grip.

So with outspread arms it commanded pillars of wind-encased flame to blossom, from the ground below to the heavens above. Then it clapped its palms together before it, forcing the pillars closed upon their hapless victims. The bone giants ground to a halt, flailing their lanky limbs, recoiling from the scything air and searing heat. Shards of molten bone scattered across the dilapidated rooftops, landing as far away as the waters of the harbour a league distant. No fragment larger than its index finger survived the destruction.

“NO!” a shrill voice screamed from the battlements, watching its favourite pets disintegrate in heartbeats. The necromancer glared down at the intruder, baleful fury overcoming reason and cowardice.

In the blink of an eye, the spectre leapt the distance between them.

[Flames of Hyperion]

The dying pillars of white flame cast an eerie illumination upon the desecrated fortifications. Floating above the battlements, framed in the haze, the spectre studied the man’s pudgy features through the shifting penumbra. Had it seen him before? Did it recognise this one faint spark of life amidst all this death? Was this why it had travelled so far?

“NO!” the necromancer wailed again, lightning crackling in his left hand, bolts of mortiferous energy pulsating in his right. “You were meant to be gone! You were meant to be dead!”

His lightning played across its spells of shielding, coruscant with blinding radiance. His lancing bolts the spectre struck aside with its searing flame, gouging the wall they faced each other over. Sparks of ozone flared where spell met spell, where arcane wills duelled for supremacy. Stone shivered beneath concussive force. His foe advanced unfazed through the relentless barrage.

The necromancer’s rheumy eyes widened. A rasping whisper reverberated in the marrow of his bones, welling from the depths of the spectre’s blank irises, flayed by the necrotic scar visible through its tattered tunic.

“Who...”

Entropic energy coalesced in his hands. A cry of unintelligible gibberish escaped his foaming lips. He lunged at the implacable ghost, wielding the spell as a novice might wield a heavy shield, moving with surprising sprightliness for a man of such size and age. It countered his charge with a flaming aegis of its own, and for an eternal heartbeat necromancer meet spectre, eye to eye behind their respective magic.

“... am...”

One step back. Another. Breath by laboured breath the necromancer lost ground. His feet met the unyielding stone of the parapet behind him, and the shield of focused entropy slipped from his grasp. Like the wind the spectre struck, pinning him to the battlements with invisible arcane force, nullifying his contingency spell with but a word and a look.

“...I?”

The necromancer refused to focus on its visage, drunk on power, manic with madness. He sneered, arrogant to his last gasping breath.

“Pitiful wretch. I am Ar’zhanekkar the Defiler, lord of undeath, master of daemons, sculptor of flesh and bone. I answer to nobody, much less a broken spirit like you.”

Ar’zhanekkar...

Ar’zhanekkar...

Once again the memories swelled unbidden, this time of breaking the Second Siege of Anebrilith and routing the Coven of Six. During the desperate tunnel raid upon the undead encampment, the spectre remembered duelling a necromancer as obese as the one who now stood before it. One who had declared himself with equal bombast, one who had matched it spell for spell but not with quite such skill...

Entropic energy spiralled into its belly. Tendrils of solid shadow tightened about the spectre’s arm, tearing it from its feet and tossing it against the crenellations overlooking the castle courtyard. With a resounding crack of empty air, the obese necromancer apparated to safety, far beyond its sight.

It inhaled of the sudden silence. Exhaled into the pain that pulsed through its translucent form.

Once upon a time it might have punished itself for allowing Ar’zhanekkar the Defiler to escape with such ease. Or it might have felt relief for having survived a confrontation with such a skilled opponent, for having taken one step further along the long path to Raiaera’s recovery. For in this renewed existence it could only recognise the logic behind attacking the necromancer. Not the emotion.

But as it hung from the castle walls, pinned by shadowy tendrils, it had yet to answer its most pressing question.

[Flames of Hyperion]

“Interesting,” a melodic voice intoned, from nowhere and from everywhere at once. “A ghost, of wars long past.”

Liquid gloom gathered in the lee of the tower. In measured grace a pitch-black pool rose from the stone, coalescing into the shape of a dark-haired, pale-skinned elf clad in ceremonial robes of flowing amethyst.

“If it is unfinished business you seek, spectre, then you have come too late.”

The cruel perfection of his features resonated somewhere within the fog of its memories. Had it seen this elf before? For what reason did he now stand before it? For what reason did he speak to it with such intent? Did he know the answer to its question?

“The wightlord Kratos already carries Lord Maeril’s phylactery to the far north, to safety beyond mortal retribution.”

Flecks of smouldering ember swirled past on a silent breeze. The elf’s mouth curled in a mocking half-smile.

“Or is it redemption that you ask for? A chance to atone for your sins?”

A low moan escaped the spectre’s icy lips. White flame flared upon the shackles of black shadow that bound it to the wall, shattering them like so much fragile glass. On unseen wings it floated down to confront the elf, its irises polished pearls set within a visage of grim marble.

“I met her in the north, you know. She looked happy again, freed of your shadow.”

Fury swelled within its chest, manifesting in reality as a globe of blazing arcane light. Stonework cratered beneath its weight, splinters of ancient marble spearing into the balmy sea air. Piercing pain drove the spell outwards, fracturing the wall in every direction.

The elf met the unbridled magic with his own sphere of protection, amethyst-tinged black contrasting the blinding white, woven from the stark shadows cast by the spectre’s presence. His eyes, fathomless orbs of jet, absorbed and imprisoned any light attempting to shine upon the soul that might have dwelled within. Every word he spoke carried the weight of a thousand years of study and practice.

“Who. Am. I?”

The spectre recoiled, its arcane globe shrinking beneath the elf’s assault. And as it did so, at last its mind penetrated the fog that obscured its memories. The Battle of Nenaebreth. The shadowmancer that had confronted it in the dying stages of the battle, only for the tides of war to separate them before he could deal it the finishing blow. The one who had asked why it persisted in its selfish fear of striking a killing blow.

“Angelus... Eltharrion,” the spectre answered, drawing the serrated edges of its voice across frozen vocal cords.

The elf bared its teeth in the semblance of a triumphant grin.

“Who. Are. You?”

The question shattered the spectre’s composure. Its blazing globe collapsed as if dispelled. A thousand vectored arrows of pure darkness angled into the void left behind, a multi-faceted symphony of doom orchestrated by the shadowmancer’s will. It screamed in soundless pain as the blighted shafts struck home, spearing its translucent form from every possible direction. Then the sphere of shadow engulfed it and strangled its cry, again crushing it against the tower wall as masonry crumbled and fell about it.

“Who am... I...?” it managed to gasp, wracked by agony. “Who... am I? Who am... I? Who am I? WhoamI? WHO AM I!?”

[Flames of Hyperion]

Laughter spilled from the dark-haired elf, cruel and capricious. Louder than any thundercrack the sound sundered the spectre’s madness, shocking it into silence.

“Is this how far the mighty Ingwe Helyanwe has fallen?” Angelus gloated, victory writ clear upon his face, “that he cannot recognise his own self? That he would perish on the walls of a bastion of necromantic evil, hostage to his own ignorance, trophy to the least of his enemies?”

Arcing tendrils of shadow pinned the spectre in place, adopting the form of makeshift manacles. Dislodged by the impacts, an avalanche of stony debris spilled from the broken tower, deflected by the elf’s wards towards the courtyard far below. He leant close to his unresponsive prisoner, paying no heed to the danger.

“Are these the final throes of his spirit, oh-so-noble? So dedicated to the salvation of Raiaera that he would overcome death itself in pursuit of purpose?”

Its empty eyes contained nothing: no argument, no resistance, no defiance. Again he smiled.

“Allow me to conjecture. The Necromancer’s defeat rendered your identity unnecessary, your mission complete. So your body cast you aside when it perished from its wounds in the cesspits of Timbrethinil, not long afterwards. When it at length rose again, determined to travel north and east on the errand of a blinkered fool, it left you behind to rot. That you now stand before me, a broken fragment of spirit reborn in necromancy as the very undead abomination you fought so hard to eradicate, is a sign of how mistaken it could be.”

Another bark of triumph, rolling across the wrecked battlements in contrary mirth.

“So you wander, clinging like the lowliest of zombies to your last shred of purpose - to root out and destroy all taint from these ‘hallowed’ lands! Of all the strongholds you could have chosen to assault, you knock down the gates of the one Lord of Death in all Raieara who might yet possess the strength...”

Inspiration hit. The shadows beneath his spell trembled in excitement.

“But of course! For here she spent most of her time in Raiaera. Thus here the touch of her spirit remains strongest. And thus you are drawn here.”

In the space of a heartbeat the exhilaration left his sallow features, turned to ash by the poisoned chalice of what he now knew. His voice, melodic and lilting, took on a sombre note that scattered the dusty embers like so much chaff.

“You ask, who are you?”

The barest flicker of life in the spectre’s eyes, the faintest of twitches upon its pinioned limbs, assured Angelus that his words did not go unheard.

“I respond, you seek the pinnacle of the central spire of this keep.”

The shadows retracted from their prey, cocooning their master in layer upon layer of amethyst-tinged black. But though the spectre now floated free of its restraints, still it did not move, did not react, did not resist.

“Only then will you understand.”

The elf’s final phrase went almost unheard into the mid-morning stillness, swallowed whole by the gloom in the lee of the tower. Only the merest slip of a murmur amidst the clouds, echoing from all around, remained to torment his enemy.

“How very interesting...”

[Flames of Hyperion]

From sundered gatehouse to teetering castle tower, a trail of white flame smouldered. Singed blades of dead grass in the castle courtyard marked where the apparition had fought onwards from its humiliation.

Of the heavy iron portcullis and its accompanying gates that had barred its path, only molten slag remained. Here too, remnants of sacred fire fed upon the residual necromantic magic that infused their metal corpses, purifying them of the Dread Necromancer’s corruption.

Within the keep, vaulted ceilings soared from walls of dwarf-crafted marble. Large windows set among the intricate web of frescos overhead had once bathed the rooms in bright light. Now they admitted only the faintest trickle of sun through layers of accumulated ash. Grime, thick and slick like oil, coated the suits of antique bladesinger armour ensconced within their sheltered alcoves. Arched passageways led to heavy doors crafted of Coronian oak, long since jammed closed from corrupting mould and from general disuse. Its only path lay straight ahead, into the audience chamber where the lords of the city had once entertained visiting dignitaries and merchants of great repute.

There, awaiting the spectre’s arrival upon the dais once reserved for the High Lord himself, sat Maeril Thyrrian, Death Lord of Trenyce.

His gnarled throne gleamed as black as ebony; he leaned forth, either in anticipation or in contemplation, amidst likenesses of broken skulls and anguished faces. Crimson eyes pierced the shadows from beneath hair so fine and white as to approach translucence, his features a fine balance between martial strength and scholarly insight. The inlaid onyx inscriptions upon his heavy plate, itself wrought of ancient iron, glowed and glimmered in the fickle half-light. One gauntleted hand clasped the hilt of a curved greatsword, mythril encrusted in rubies, as tall as he. The other rested upon a visored helm fashioned in the visage of a roaring dragon.

With languid grace, he raised his sword to salute the invader. But his voice, when he deigned to speak, struck down motes of swirling dust with absolute authority. It halted the spectre in its tracks, resonating from vaulted stone.

“Greetings, Tella’karythar. I bid you welcome as brother, as kin.”

The echoes took long heartbeats to subside. Into the silence that followed, the spectre could only whisper a weak reply. Ghostly blood carved trails upon its ruined chest where Angelus’s spears had pierced its form. One arm hung limp at its side, dangling in the balmy tension.

“Who am... I?” it asked, blank irises searching crimson for the answer they sought.

The death knight gave a gentle laugh, surprising the spectre with its melodious timbre. “Do not be so crass - did that meddling elf not conjecture the truth? You are Ingwe Helyanwe, the Last Crusader, the legend that must not be lost. But to answer your question myself, you are nothing. And you are everything. As am I.”

Lithe fingers drummed upon the curvature of his helm. Settling his temple upon a silk-shrouded rest built into his throne, Maeril allowed his sword to fall point-first towards the spectre. A trick of the light exposed every line of weary toil upon his parchment-thin features. “To some I am their general, the last voice of victory in a land given to anarchy.”

His face turned birdlike and weathered, his hair slicked back and streaked with grey, a trimmed goatee upon his strong jaw. “To some I bear the mantle of a demi-god defeated, a mantle that my shoulders can no longer endure.”

His eyes flickered black and contemptuous, his pate bald and pale and glistening in the gloom. “To some I am a mentor in matters of the soul, a madman bent on draining all life from the high elven homeland.”

A small smile played about his lips as he reverted to his original form, the one that seemed to suit his current role the best. “But to you, I am a ghost. A ghost, as the elf said before me, of wars long past.”

[Flames of Hyperion]

The spectre had yet to move since entering the room, as if the death knight’s speech paralysed or petrified it. But now its eyes fell from Maeril. Its fists clenched at its side, the dust at its feet dancing with unseen power. For at last it remembered the oath it had sworn upon taking up the legend in its name.

To unite all against the darkness. To burn as bright as hope in the night.

Maeril witnessed the spectre’s demeanour shift. The point of his blade rose, aimed now at its face.

“Yes. We are more alike than you know, if you would believe me. We both were once heroes, striving to save the world from great evil. We both were used by the High Council, both betrayed and tossed aside as soon as our purposes were served. Like the Forgotten Ones of this land, like so many who have come before and will come after, we were no longer needed.

“But then, you already know all this, do you not? After all, is not the Tella’karythar, the Last Crusader, only a myth made up by Ecthelion Seregon to grant you legitimacy in the eyes of the High Bard Council? Was he not as swift to bury all mention of your name after the Dread Necromancer’s defeat and your death?”

Now he too rose, ponderous and majestic as he stepped from his throne, as deliberate as the titans of old. With his left hand he fitted his helm upon his head, until his crimson gaze shone from its depths as a pair of malevolent orbs. With his sword hand he saluted the spectre once more, the salute of a bladesinger to a worthy foe.

“Zundalon the Cantor fought for justice for his murdered kin. Pode, the Red Witch, fought for love of her fallen friend. I, Ecthelion Golan, High Bard at the Leaguer of Caradin and First Archmage of the Ivory Tower, harbour no such lofty motivations. I merely fight to topple the council of small-minded blinkered bigots who now rule my homeland. I fight in the name of the nation that I once knew: a nation that would not have left a wound such as I to fester for years, a nation that would not have countenanced invasion or civil war, a nation that would not have needed to summon common adventurers to deal with her ills. A nation that would never have abandoned its heroes to rot in ignominious squalor.”

In a swirl of blood-hued cloak he sheathed his blade.

“I, Ecthelion Golan, fight for Raiaera.”

Although in undeath the spectre lacked the ability to alter its facial expression, any child might have read the confusion that flitted through its faded features. Maeril Thyrrian, the last of Xem’zund’s Death Lords, was High Bard Golan, hero of the Wars of the Tap? The very same High Bard Golan who had collaborated with three of the Forgotten Ones to banish the most powerful of their number into the abyssal void, his sacrifice stemming the flow of the Font such that Aesphestos would never return? It made no sense! It was impossible! And yet...

Never impossible. Improbable. But never...

... how else could he know so much about Xem'zund and Pode?

“Do... you... truly?”

Ornate onyx inscriptions catching the half-light, the death knight paused to consider the question. After a moment he shrugged his sculpted pauldrons. “Indeed,” he laughed again. “Perhaps I only wish to watch the world wither and burn, in what little time it has left before the Night descends.”

In that moment the spectre understood. The chill grip of its worst fears tightened upon its frozen heart.

Even if he merely pretended to aspire to the mantle of Ecthelion Golan, Maeril Thyrrian knew.

And, by abandoning Althanas to its fate, he had long since lost whatever semblances of wisdom and benevolence he had once retained.

[Flames of Hyperion]

“It is time for one last dirge. One last reminder to those fools in their forest fastnesses that Raiaera remembers. That she does not forgive.”

The far wall shattered, collapsing half of the audience chamber’s ceiling and sending tremors through the remaining structure. Dust and ash billowed through the spectre’s lucent form, their suffocating grasp extinguishing all light. Beneath the cloud roiled wisps of brackish miasma, the breath of a beast that existed in only the worst of nightmares.

An undead dragon. The dracowight, Glaurauch.

Its scales, the hue of deepest night, reeked of promised death. Open wounds, steaming in putrid decay, exposed knotted flesh forever captured in a state of advanced decomposition. Intelligent, evil eyes gleamed from the confines of its narrow reptilian face, like molten rock imprisoned in mortal form. Baring its fangs in the semblance of a grin, it crouched on all four limbs to fit into the castle gardens, tail poised and wings spread in preparation for flight.

“I will not insult you with the offer of a place at my side,” Maeril spoke. “But I will promise you this. Eventually you will become what I have become. Eventually I will bear witness as you raise arms against those you once called ally and friend. For such is the fate of those who fall beneath the spell of the elves.”

With speed and grace unimaginable in one outfitted in such cumbersome armour, the death knight vaulted upon the dragon’s back. War, and death, awaited.

“No.”

Its single word resonated with arcane power. In one swift movement the spectre thrust its palms out to the side.

“I... will not... allow it.”

His words ignited the gloom. A tidal wall of fire rolled across the tiled obsidian floors, secondary embers sparking where motes of ash and dust went down in flame. Funnelled into the narrow passageways, the overpressure blew out distant windows in explosions of shattered glass. White heat washed from the blackened silhouettes of Maeril and his dragon, but the lesser knights in their recessed alcoves fared less well. Desperate wails echoed through the cavernous chambers, soon reduced to smouldering pyres upon which the purifying flames fed.

Framed by the charred hole in the wall, the death knight regarded the spectre in a mixture of sorrow and pity.

“Well spoken, Dawnbringer,” he said at last, illuminated by the high noon clouds, steadying his dragon with the iron of his gauntlet. For now the spectre stood tall in spite of its wounds. Its blank irises flared with a quality rarely seen in the abominations of undeath. Life.

Not that Maeril seemed inclined to stall any further. “A shame.”

He spurred his steed. Mighty Glaurauch bellowed in triumph, taking to the skies with a powerful leap.

But the spectre once known as Ingwe Helyanwe had not finished with him yet.

It too strode into the heavens, incanting words of power beneath its breath, a bright phoenix ascendant. White light flared at its fingertips, conjuring fist-sized wisps of wind-bound flame that whispered through the overcast skies like a shower of streaking stars. Wings of fire spilt sacred embers upon the wilted garden, where they smouldered like luminous flowers.

A second incantation, embedded in the first. A dozen, two dozen, fifty, a hundred arcane sigils blossomed into life against the black-bellied cloud. Another stanza of power, for each sigil summoning forth a whirling globe of focused heat. One last roar launched them into the haze where Maeril hid, inexorable in their terrible wrath.

A third incantation, now working raw magic from pure instinct. Its wordless howl, terrible in righteousness, plucked upon the fabric of the Firmament. The flames upon its wings spread across its ghostly form, an aura of sanctifying fire, that it then drew into its hands. Spreading them wide before it, the spectre crafted from their grasp a barbed spear, thrice as long as its body and almost as thick. In one clean movement it hurled the pulsing weapon, into the explosive ash that now wreathed dragon and rider.

But from it they emerged unscathed. Untouched. The onyx runes inscribed upon Maeril’s armour glowed in gentle crimson.

“I would be careful, were I you,” he admonished. “I would not wish to watch you exhaust your spiritual reserves before Nalith and her Silver Citadel lie in ashes.”

Only then did the spectre notice, that the hideous cross-shaped necrosis upon its chest throbbed with searing agony. That its wounds bled with greater urgency than before, that the arm it had thought healed had almost faded into nothing. That it had powered its spectacular arcane display with the same force that bound it to the mortal plane.

That, exhausted, it now clung to precarious unlife by the thinnest of gossamer threads.

It looked to Maeril, shocked.

And the death knight batted it from the sky with a single blow of his sheathed greatsword.

The spectre fell, a shooting star wreathed in dying flame.