The wards came tumbling down.
Once they were gone, Savas' spell made short work of the rest of Blueraven's defensive setup. All it took was patience and forethought, and he had both in excess when he set his mind to something.
It began to rain again as the last defensive magicks collapsed, each one sparking out on the hill top. Flowers and grass alike burned an unnatural mix of blue and green, violet between them, and the flames reached high into the wet, muggy night. There was no going back now. Not that Savas had ever intended to do so in the first place.
"And now the hard part," he Said to himself, and to anyone else who might have been listening in at the time. Savas took a deep breath, inhaling power in the process. He forced it down, settling the energy somewhere between his belly and his lungs, and then he grabbed the very first blade he could get his hands on.
Slipping and sliding in suddenly muddied ground, the necromancer still got a running start. He dove onto the hill and immediately began tearing it apart with his bare hands, using nothing more than the blade's pommel and grip as a hammer or wedge to get rocks out of the way. It was rough work. His hands ran bloody long before he was done. But he didn't need to be precise.
The locals had seen how Kholia was buried. Seen and remembered. They knew exactly how he was oriented, which way his head pointed and everything. And that was all Savas needed.
Stones went flying as he ripped the burial mound apart. None of them were bigger than a softball; Blueraven had been a weak geomancer in those days. There was no coffin. That was probably intentional. It meant a revived Blightcrow would have trouble moving even his mouth to incant for a spell, nevermind being able to breathe. The burial mound and all its magicks had been designed as much to hold Blightcrow in as they had been to keep anyone else out.
And for good reason. Savas knew little of Blightcrow, but he knew of the Dark Wizard's type. They were necromancers, all of them, well prepared for the day after someone got lucky enough to stick a knife in them. Given sufficient time and motive, it wasn't a question of if they might come back, but when and in what capacity. The only answer was to take precautions and hope against hope that nobody would ever come along to undo them.
Savas always loved being contrary about things like that.
"I'M COMING, BLIGHTCROW!" he cackled into the night, Voice carrying clear to the other side of mortality. Even with the empty void of energy his own spell had caused around the burial mound, Savas could feel the unquiet dead shuffling away. He could feel them making a path.
Kholia was already on his way back.
By the time he got the dead Wizard's head, Savas was gasping for breath. Exhaustion was nipping at his heels and his hands were an unsteady wreck of trembling and shuddering and-
Something screamed.
Someone screamed.
And eventually, their scream became laughter became an expression of undescribable rage and contempt. Blightcrow's soul had come back, and the only thing keeping it at bay now was Savas' spell. It was only a matter of time before the dead Wizard disarmed it; destroyed it from the other side. Time didn't work the same for the dead as it did for the living. And once Kholia was done with Savas' spell, the rookie necromancer had no doubts as to what his elder would do to him.
Focusing through fear and exhaustion, Savas finally released some of the power he had inhaled. He focused it into his arms, stilling the trembles and steadying his hands.
Then he cut off Kholia Horren's barely decayed head and ripped it from his grave. Savas could hear the spirit screaming from the other side, loud and furious beyond reckoning. He ignored it, even as his ears began to bleed. Savas quickly tore off the metal plates that had been fixed to Blightcrow's skull during his service to Xem'zund. Bone chipped as the bolts holding them in place gave out, and leathery, worm-chewed flesh tore as binding magicks collapsed in the energy void.
What remained was a severed, dessicated head. The eyes were nothing but empty sockets. Kholia had paid dearly for every ounce of power he got. He hadn't needed eyes to see. Much of the nose was gone too, with the mask-plate shaped to replace it without damaging the leftovers. There wasn't a hair in sight anywhere on it.
"Ugly," Savas noted.
Then he raked the blade over the skull and, in a few swift motions, stripped it of all the outer skin. Blightcrow shrieked rage, and even an ordinary person would've seen the yellowy silhouette forming just outside the void-spell's barriers.
Savas held the blade tightly now, as he notched in the first few runes for a containment spell.
"I'll have your head! I'LL MAKE YOU PAY!"
"No you won't," Wormaxe replied with a sick little grin. He notched in the another containment spell. He was starting on the third when the void finally shattered.
Blightcrow stormed in, now semi-realized as a ghostly humanoid in robes and armor, wielding the powers of undeath-
And then his form collapsed, shrieking again, into the mouth of his own skull. The sockets immediately lit up, burning like tiny dead stars.
"You're mine now," Wormaxe declared.
The dead Wizard said nothing to contradict him.
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Originally Posted by Savas Tigh's Logs
