Return - Prologue

[Revenant]

SoloTwo pinpricks of candlelight burned steadily atop the ancient writing desk which had been unceremoniously shoved into the corner of the makeshift study. William’s smoldering gaze watched the shadows dance a slow, loping dance under the caress of the flickering flame, lost in the profound silence of turbulent thoughts. Finally, after several long minutes, the revenant sighed, a soft sound which nevertheless broke the darkened room’s stifling stillness like roaring thunder, and then turned to the open book on the desk in front of him. Human hands plucked a feather quill from the inkwell just behind the room, but the man to whom they belonged was anything but human. Hesitating only slightly, William set the quill and began to write.


My name is William Arcus. I’ve never been one to waste my time writing down my thoughts or experiences. In my early life, my human life, I never really had the need to do any more writing than to scratch out the supplies I needed from Mason Grey’s store or to tell Heirich Shue what he owed me for replacing the rotted deck railing that his dog had torn out when he had started chasing whichever unlucky squirrel had caught his rheumy eye. I wasn’t exactly the most book-smarts educated fellow back then, and even those times were rare, since I mostly traded services for what my wife and I needed to survive. Milk and oats? I’d build Farmer Gerudo a new set of stalls for his barn. New clothes? I shaped out a loom frame for the Maye Jelli. I suppose it was a far simpler life than this one, though in all honesty it is a life that I can barely remember, and one that I would not return to even if I could.

There have been times, too many times, that I’ve been a monster. Not that that’s too far-fetched a notion given my damned existence. More surprising perhaps is that there have been times that I’ve been called a hero, a far rarer an occurrence to be sure but still something that has happened. I certainly don’t see myself as a hero, and while I used to see myself as a monster it’s no longer something that’s quite so black-and-white for me. After all, it wasn’t my choice to be turned into a living weapon. I never wanted to be a tool of destruction and fear, and I’ve fought that existence for as long as I’ve been able to.

Even now I find my eyes wandering to the book of ancient magic that I have carried since the end of the war. The raised filigree and arcane symbols are as familiar to me as my own flesh and blood, though I have no understanding of their meaning. It’s odd, that I should be so clueless about this thing despite having carried it with me for years and even more odd given its importance in my creation. Sure I have a handful of papers that I’ve managed to scrounge up throughout my years with the book, papers which explain some of the simpler arcane symbols. But even with these papers the translations of the tome are woefully incomplete. To think of the hours that I have spent in futile research summons a dark cloud over me. It wasn’t all useless, I suppose, since all that work has given me the knowledge that even now allows me to pen this. Still, I’ve always held out hope that I would one day be able to unravel the mysteries of the forbidden magic which created me.

I’m rambling, I know. But then I suppose that’s one of the reasons for writing down my thoughts. The scent of my blood sodden clothes has roused my baser desires and the news that the corpse in the corner told me before his death has my head swimming. My hand shakes each time I move it from the inkpot to the page, so I think a little difficulty in grasping the fullness of my thoughts is forgivable. I said that I’ve never been one to waste my time with this writing business, and I’m almost entirely certain that the desire to do so will fade once the shock wears off. But before that happens, I want to write down everything that’s just happened to me. Everything that I’ve learned.

The sorcerer who created me is still alive.

Kal’Necroth is alive.

[Revenant]

“Ugh,” William grumbled as the life slowly returned to his body. His mind had been alert for some time now, a raging torrent of emotions trapped inside a motionless husk. It was fortunate really, since he’d found that he’d had plenty of time to vent his angry frustrations while locked within the prison shell that his body had become. He’d roared and cursed and made a wide variety of threat to against whatever forces were holding him until his rage had been spent. So it was that when the buzzing pinpricks in his limbs informed him of his body’s awakening, William was able to remain calm and take assessment of his surroundings rather than lose himself in the red tide of his rage.

Sadly, trapped as he was in his lightless prison, there weren’t many options available to his calmer state of mind. The cell itself was dark enough that the blackness clung to him like a physical presence, which told him that he had either been extremely carefully shrouded. His prison, at the least, had been masterfully crafted. Not that it was terribly surprising to him to have found it so. After all, if someone was going to go to all the trouble of containing him, they were going to want to keep him bound tightly and in a secure spot.

So while the darkness was annoying, it wasn’t as if it was a real problem for William. Sure it made it impossible for him to see anything about his surroundings, but that was the only thing it did against him. He wondered if whoever had captured him had hoped to use the darkness to frighten and disorient him, a thought which brought a grating chuckle to William’s chapped lips. People were afraid of the dark because of the terrors that lurked within it, and William had long ago lost that fear. After all, there weren’t many things worse than him lurking out there.

More worrisome than the darkness, William found, was that he was unable to loose his war form. Sliding into his demonic skin was almost second nature for him by now, especially when in an unknown and dangerous situation. But for some reason, William found that no matter how hard he pulled on the stings of his molten power, he just couldn’t entice it from its home deep within the core of his being. Certainly he could feel it, a comforting thought since it was part of the fabric of his soul, but though his power was flowing within him there was something holding it back, a block which kept it just out of reach.

But even with his war form sealed away there was power within William’s corded muscles, far more power than a human could hope for without some form of magic enhancement. Having become intimately familiar with a wide variety of prison cells, William was confident that, given enough time, he would be able to free himself. This too, it seemed, his captor had foreseen. The cell that William had been locked in seemed specially designed to counter his strengths, binding him in a standing position with metallic walls built so close that they were almost squeezing him. It was more of a coffin than a prison, William mused as he pushed against the cell’s walls to no avail. And given that William wasn’t exactly the most loved member of the Ixian Knights it was entirely possible that that’s just what it was.

[Revenant]

Without a frame of reference it was impossible for William to tell how long he had been inside the cell. It seemed like he had spent hours inside the cage since regaining full consciousness, but then time did funny things when one was stranded in the darkness. With nothing but his drumming heartbeat and own ragged breath to keep him company William knew that it was possible, if unlikely, that he could have been standing in the darkness for only a handful of minutes. Not that the placement of time meant anything given how he didn’t even know how long he had been unconscious before waking in the cell. The one thing that he did know was that his captor, whoever it was, hadn’t bothered to offer him any sort of food or drink to sate his burning appetite. If his captor had hoped to starve William to death then he was going to be sorely disappointed. Not that starvation was really a worry for William, since his regenerative properties would keep him alive whether he ate or not.

That sparked a thought. Either his captor intended this prison to be his tomb or he knew about William’s supernatural nature. There was a time when William would have leaned towards the first option, as he had spent many years trying his best to keep his condition hidden from the general populace. More recently however, since joining the Ixian Knghts, William had been more lax in hiding his demonic side. Being a general in Sei’s personal army wasn’t exactly the most prestigious thing in Althanas, but it did afford him some certain liberties. So while he didn’t flaunt his demonic nature, neither did he take great pains to hide it. So it was entirely possible that his captor was in the know of his supernatural abilities.

But who, the question begged. Who had the knowledge and power to keep him not only physically locked up, but to keep his demonic essence trapped away as well? The first to come to mind, of course, was Sei. But though the Mystic had the power to put William in this position, he had never shown himself to have the ability to completely nullify Willliam’s power. Besides, since he had joined the Ixian Knights Sei had shown nothing but support for his demonic side, and if Sei did have a problem with William, subduing him and locking him away wasn’t the Mystic’s style. Sei had always said that it was his belief that anyone could be redeemed and had worked diligently towards that goal with William. He still hadn’t decided whether to be thankful for Sei’s effort or to pity the Mystic because of it. No, he decided, this wasn’t Sei’s doing. The Mystic was definitely more the ‘sit down and try to reason’ type than the ‘lock him up and throw away the key’ type.

Who then was his captor?

[Revenant]

Pondering his predicament, William’s thoughts next turned to his most vocal opponent within the Ixian Knights. Jensen Ambrose. But even as the possibility entered his mind, William dismissed it. Jensen was a spiteful asshole, to be sure, but he wasn’t the type to do something like this. Like Sei, the Knight of Apocalypse was a more direct personality. But unlike Sei, Jensen’s directness was more physical in nature. He wasn’t the type to sit and talk his problems out, but he was equally as unlikely to lock someone up as he was to talk to them. His was the way of fists and foul language. And then there was the fact that while Jensen’s fighting abilities were great, he was barely able to tie his shoes let on his own let alone capture and contain the Revenant. In fact, when things were boiled to their more distilled essence, the only thing Jensen was good at was dying. No, Jensen certainly wasn’t his captor.

William cursed, his frustration rising once again. His entire body itched with the pent up power throbbing within him, but still he remained bound and unable to access it. There were only a handful of people in the Ixian Knights who had the ability, and the gumption, to capture and contain him. Adoph, he supposed, might have the ability if he called upon the chaplain corps and the remnants of his contacts from the Knights of Apocalypse. Cassandra Remi was the most likely, but William knew what her needs were and she knew that he didn’t fear pain, making him less than an optimal subject. The more he pondered the options, the less he thought that it was anyone in the Ixian Knights who had bound him.

Continuing on, William desperately searched his mind for anyone that he knew who could be the reason for his incarceration. Inevitably, his thoughts returned to the encounter that he’d had with the sadist who called himself the Trap Master. He had to admit that the thought had merit, as the Trap Master had also managed to overcome and bind him in their previous encounter. But, as it turned out, the Trap Master’s entire ordeal had merely taken place in the Citadel, and something told William that this time was different. Besides, living up to his namesake the Trap Master had toyed with William, both taunting him and subjecting him to a grueling series of painful and deadly traps. Finding himself both without taunting and without traps, William ruled out the Trap Master as well.

The Ixian Knights has many enemies, and William himself had many more. He was the strongest of the Ixian generals, save maybe Sei himself, so it would make sense that to confine him should an unknown enemy wish to strike out against the organization. But the more William thought about it, the less it made sense. In the end, it was a curious conundrum, but one that he would be unable to solve without further knowledge of his situation. Fortunately, William was able to force the thoughts out of his mind when a grinding clank issued from the darkness before him and a shaft of light appeared, splitting the darkness wide open.

[Revenant]

The sudden glare blinded William, and he recoiled as if he had been slapped.

“I didn’t think you’d be awake by now,” a voice chuckled from inside the bright glow. “You must be stronger than I thought.” The silhouette shrugged. “No matter. Your strength means nothing in there.”

The silhouette chuckled as he rapped on the box in which William was confined. It was a cold, hollow metallic sound, giving William the impression that his prison was at the very least made of thick steel. But the silhouetted man seemed too sure of himself to have simply put William in a metal box and left it at that. Even a fraction of knowledge about the Revenant’s prowess would be enough to know that a metal tomb would only hold him for so long.

“Who are you?” William finally growled, his voice rough from lack of use, another sign of his long captivity. He tried to shield his eyes from the harsh glow in order to catch a glimpse of his captor but it was useless.

“A question?” The silhouette sounded confused, “I was expecting curses and threats from you, creature. I was certainly not expecting questions.”

“Then I must cheerfully disappoint,” William sneered. “Though make no mistakes, there’s no force on Althanas that’s going to stop me from killing you.”

“Althanas?” the silhouette questioned, wavering slightly in the light. “Oh yes, the moniker that the people of this backwater slums uses to refer to existence.” A sniff. “How droll and uninspired. Still, you at least prove to be a curiosity. And while your threats are far more appropriate to what I expected of you, they aren’t quite true, are they?”

William’s captor squealed lightly in delight, as if reveling in his own person piece of joy. “After all, Revenant, haven’t I captured and bound you? That in and of itself strikes me as a force which is stopping you from killing me. Your demon’s power is locked away, isn’t it? And if I were to reseal your prison here and walk away for good then the wards that I’ve placed would most certainly keep you sealed away until all that you know of the outside world is forgotten dust on the wind, myself included. I do believe that also counts as a force which would stop you from killing me.” A low rumble issued from within William’s gut, a deep violence which had heralded the deaths of so many others but which now sounded hollow to the Revenant’s ears.

“But while I could seal you away and leave you, that would entirely defeat the purpose for while I went through the troubles of following your trail and capturing you in the first place. No, no, no,” the voice tittered, “That just wouldn’t do. Of course, once I complete the ritual there will be little that a failed prototype like you could actually do to harm me, which is yet another force that can stop you from killing me, I suppose. All in good time, my precious, all in good time. I had merely come to check up on you, and to make sure that my wards have been keeping properly, which they most certainly have as you can well attest to given your continued helplessness.”

William cried out as the silhouette stepped aside and the grinding began anew, his tomb resealing itself into perfect darkness.

“I shall see you again, monster,” his captor’s voice cut through the closing gap in front of William. “Do try to enjoy your alone time.”

Outside the resealed tomb there were no sounds that could be heard, but in his mind, William’s captor could hear the Revenant’s screams of rage and frustration. He smiled.

[Revenant]

William raged within his prison, screaming and thrashing until he was hoarse. He then hung limply, panting with exhaustion until his regenerative properties had done their work and then he raged again. It wasn’t until he’d spent himself a second time that William paused to think about what had occurred. His regenerative powers, it seemed, had not been constrained by his captor’s runic warding. William mulled it over, his mind a whirl. Others, his peers in the Ixian Knights and his foes, often thought of William as nothing more than a brute but it was far from the truth. Despite the fact that he relied on physical force to solve his problems more often than not, William was far from a stupid man. In fact, when all was considered, William was probably one of the smarter members of the Ixian Knights, having spent so much of his time reading and learning in an attempt to find a method of curing his condition. Thinking his way through issues wasn’t a skill he used often, but it was one that he was able to call upon when the situation had no physical alternative.

Think, William cursed himself.

The first thing that came to mind was the odd way his captor had wavered between intelligent, disdainful, giddy, and almost childlike behavior. William had met many people with a waning sanity in his travels, and the man who had captured him certainly gave William that impression. Still, there were many types of mania in the world and some were far more dangerous than others. But any weaknesses that William found to be exploitable were something with which the Revenant could hopefully use.

There was also something about the man’s odd unfamiliarity with Althanas that struck William. That, coupled with the man’s reference to him as a failed prototype, left William with a nagging suspicion which wormed through his brain like a deep splinter. He’d spent so many years in and around Corone that referring to the world as Althanas has become second nature to him. There had been a time, however, when that term had been as unfamiliar to William as it had been to his captor.

“Amra,” William whispered hesitantly, the word sounding far louder in the enclosed darkness than its utterance would suggest. The thought that someone had followed him from his homeland was strange and discomforting, but it certainly made sense. While taboo and extremely forbidden, the soul magic that had fashioned William was a product of Amra and it was not inconceivable that a way of binding him would be found there. But from what he remembered of that time, Kal’Necroth was the only remaining person who knew the secrets of the ancient Amran soul mages. Though with the foul sorcerer’s downfall, there was certainly a knowledge gap that could be filled by those left behind. And what would be the goal of any self-respecting soul mage in training but to capture and study the late Kal’Necroth’s final experiment.

Yes, the idea that someone had followed him from Amra had far more credence than anything else he could come up with. It also meant that his captor was potentially far more dangerous than he had first thought. It was also far more interesting.

[Revenant]

Though it was impossible to measure time in the prison box, William’s best approximation was that it had been at least two days since his captor’s initial visit. Two days of darkness and solitude in which he had wavered between furious rage and inhuman calm, seconds ticking silently past both unnoticed and unheeded. And then, breaking through the darkness of his enclosure, the grinding returned, and the blinding burst of light from the opened vision slot with it.

“I trust you’ve had a comfortable stay,” the captor’s voice cut in on William. The Revenant knew that he was being baited, and though every violent desire in his mind cried out for him to snap at his captor, to verbally rend him asunder as he wished he could physically do, William forced himself into restraint. Eyes locked firmly upon his captor’s silhouette, William waited in silence, forcing himself to concentrate on anything that would aide him in an escape.

“Nothing to say, eh?” the silhouette laughed, but the laugh faded slightly as his tone rose. “Nothing? Nothing?!” By the third time he repeated the word he was screaming, his face pressed against the prison box’s vision slot. Flecks of spittle flew from his frantic lips to strike William but the Revenant held himself still. Close as he currently was, William could finally see his captor’s features. Discolored teeth and thick, matted hair made most any other features recognizable. But what William could see was the madness in his captor’s eyes. He’d gotten that part correctly.

“It is of no matter,” the man relented suddenly, backing away from the prison. “I merely wished to inform you that there have been some … complications with my completion of the ritual. I thought you might like to know that it will be quite some time before we meet again, creature.”

“Still nothing to say?” he rounded and thrust himself at the prison cage once again. “You surprise me. I would have thought you more … passionate than this. Perhaps you’re not quite the destructive force that we thought you were.” Sneering, the man closed the vision slot, returning William once more to darkness.

Within the inky shroud a new sound emerged, one as unlike the furious screaming that had filled the box as the silence which had followed. It was the harsh sound of William’s laughter, rough and hysterical. Humor was not a typical reaction of the Revenant’s, but this was a special occasion for him. Silence, it seemed, had served him well, as his captor’s momentary departure from his place aside the prison had afforded William just enough clarity to catch a glimpse of the inside of his prison, including what passed as the door.

And possibly a way out.

[Revenant]

William reveled in his moment of joy, allowing his frustration at being bound and captured to flow out of him with through his laughter. The moment passed quickly, William’s normally stoic demeanor falling back into place, a comfortable mask to keep the monster at bay. As refreshing as it was to allow himself to vent, William wasn’t about to let his giddiness go to his head.

Such a momentary glance would have shown nothing to the untrained, unenhanced eye save that the door appeared to be a single unbroken sheet of flawless metal. To be sure it was a strange metal, foreign to William’s knowledge, but its special properties seemed less geared towards strength and more of a type that enhanced magical properties. This strange metal had been molded so perfectly that the entire room had the appearance of being hollowed from a single massive block of the stuff. Even the vision slit seemed to meld perfectly into the door’s frame when closed, leaving a seam that was all but undetectable, though William assumed that having a source of light within the prison would have aided such a search.

But despite the seemingly solid appearance that the metal prison presented, William knew better. One look, as momentary as it was, had been enough to reveal numerous weak points in the strange metal. The cursed vision granted to William by the Thayne Jomil instinctively an object’s imperfections and weaknesses, like knots within a spider’s web. Despite his newfound knowledge of the door’s weaknesses however, William still found himself stuck with the problem of the wards which had been placed upon his prison.

The wards prevented William from summoning his war form or the other physical aspects of his transformation, that much he knew. He certainly had spent enough time trying to force his way through the wards’ power over the last several days to know that it was a futile gesture. But though he had struggled to surge his war form to the front, to unleash the full brunt of his power, William had yet to test some of the more subtle aspects of his power, aspects which existed within him even in his human form. Certainly he retained his strength and regenerative capabilities, what other of his supernatural abilities did he still retain.

“Only one way to find out,” he gravelly whispered to the darkness.

Wasting no time, William brought his wrist to his teeth and bit down. The skin was tough, made hard as leather by his supernatural physique, but even without his demonic fangs William found his teeth more than up to the task of tearing through his own flesh. A quick pinch of the jaws and thick blood poured from a savage wound, the ragged edges sending a lance of pain flashing through William’s mind. William reveled in the pain, embracing it as an old friend, finding macabre pleasure in the sharpness of it all. But even that sensation was washed away by the thrill of the molten heat pulsing between his jaws and into his mouth.

Tasting one’s own blood was always a thrilling sensation, though William supposed that many wound not find it so. He could feel it throb and pulse in time with his heartbeat, strong and vigorous. The metallic tang was spicy and unique, as unique as he himself was. It conjured images of eating still burning coals from below the dripping roast on the spit at the campfire. Quite the thrill.

William savored the blood for one more delicious moment before spitting it onto the cell door in front of him. If he was delighted by how his blood had tasted, then he was positively ecstatic about the light hiss that the burning liquid made against the strange metal. But what brought.

Now, he thought, all he needed was time.

[Revenant]

Created to be a living weapon, William had always possessed an intense aura of heat. When he spoke of the molten power flowing through his veins it was not as a metaphor, his blood itself transformed by his rebirth to a fuel for the fiery rage which burned as hot as any mage’s fire. It was this consuming heat which allowed for his metamorphosis into his war form, burned his flesh from the inside out with its intensity. It was also the reason that it had been necessary to bind the creation spirit to his soul alongside the destructive spirit during his creation. His regeneration was therefore a necessary means to repair the damage that his own power did to him. All of this meant that it was a raging inferno beating through and around his heart, an all-consuming fire.

But with as powerful as the furnace within him was, it had taken a long, long time for his potency to do anything more than burn him to ashes from the inside out. Recently however, his power had increased to the point where he found his blood able to do damage to external objects. It would have been entirely too fortuitous for it to be able to simply burn a hole in his current entrapment, but he wasn’t that lucky. What he hoped for was for repeated applications of his heated sanguine fluid to be able to destabilize the weaknesses in the prison door. Not that it was an unthinkable option, as there was little for William to do within the darkness of his cramped cell save gouge himself, heal, and repeat.

Not that William was always alone. Time and again the crazed mage visited William, each separated by days of time and each consisting of an increasingly incoherent rant about the mysterious ritual that the mage was seeking to master. Seeking to give the crazed mage no reason to check his containment vessel any further, William remained silent through each of the encounters. Without any way to measure time in the darkness he wasn’t even sure how long he had been confined. His hunger and thirst were almost overwhelming but his regenerative powers always kept him just over the limit of starvation and dying of thirst.

The visits grew more and more frequent as time wore on, each time leaving William with a growing sense of urgency as the madman’s supposed ritual came closer and closer to being complete. From what little he could determine, William knew that his captor had come from Amra, the distant land where William himself had come from, and that the man had more than a passing familiarity with the dark magic that had created him. How this was so, he was unsure, as he had not known Kal’Necroth to willingly share the secrets of his magic with anyone.

Each visit also had the effect of giving William a chance to observe the growing weakness in the door to his cell. In time he added physical blows to his repeated applications of molten blood, further testing the strange metal’s integrity through heavy blows from his fists, feet, and knees. He told himself time and again that he would have to thank Ta’Gaz and Hotouri for the discipline they had drilled into his limbs throughout their training sessions, discipline which allowed him to continue to beat on his cage well after his bones had given up.

All of the pain was well worth it though, as the ever expanding web of weakness in the metal grew to encompass the entire section of wall in from of William.

[Revenant]

It came together the last time that the shadowy figure came to taunt William. As always there was nothing that announced the clang that echoed through the cell as the vision slit opened and flooded William’s chamber with light. Even before his captor had time to taunt him William could tell that something had fundamentally changed in the cell’s composition. It was as if the very air inside his room had been altered and a weight had lifted off his shoulders.

William knew instinctively what it was, what change had overcome him. The work that he had done to weaken the metal door had also weakened the wards which his captor had placed on him. All of his blood and violence had diffracted the magical lines which held his power in check, bending them until they strained to contain his fiery rage. By opening the vision slot his captor had hammered the final nail into the coffin of the very wards which he had placed on the chamber, shattering whatever hold they had over William.

The man’s opening taunt was cut short and twisted into a gasping cry of shock as William loosed the power within him, letting it run free and wild as he had never done before. Gone were all of the mental blocks and subconscious constraints he placed upon himself whenever the transformation was upon him, replaced with vengeful urgings and forceful coercion. The very air of his cell rippled like water as the full force of his rage manifested as an aura of fire the likes of which had never touched William before..

“That’s impossible!” the shadowy figure cried in fright, backing away from the cell door. “You can’t have broken my wards. I’m the inheritor and you … you’re nothing!” The only reply he received was a primal scream from the Revenant; a scream more akin to something that came from the mouth of a beast than out of human.

Still screaming, William called upon another trait that he had learned in his training, William channeled all of his energy, all of his hate and rage, funneling it into a single fiery explosive burst. Typically channeled as a burst of fire projected from his hands, William instead loosed all of his pent up rage as a single, all-around burst. The explosive force compressed the air within the metallic prison, detonating the prison and hurling the weakened door from the cage with a bang like a shot from an Aleran pistol, the strange meral dragging a trail of smoke and whipping flame behind it.

Free for the first time in what must have been at least a month, William stumbled out of his cell, his eyes instinctively seeking the source of his imprisonment through the blinding light that dug into his eyes. All he saw, however, was a dark blurry blob who was retreating from him at high speed. Unleashing a predatory growl and willed his feet after the fleeing shape, but couldn’t even manage to take two steps before collapsing into a heap, drained by his long incarceration and violent escape. Fury spent, William could only watch the blurred form disappear as he lay in a naked heap on the floor, human once again.

[Revenant]

As much as William wanted to just lie on the cold stone floor and rest, he knew that he couldn’t afford to give his captor any leeway. He picked himself up off the ground with a reluctant groan, feeling the weight of his long imprisonment over every portion of his body. He forced the fatigue into the back of his mind, knowing that his power would come back to him if he gave it enough time. Still, the feeling was akin to dragging his limbs through a thick, soupy bog and chasing the shadowy figure down a twisted maze of corridors was not a prospect that the exhausted man relished.

Each slap of his bare feet made against the cold stone floor of the tunnel echoed like the beating of a drum in William’s sensation starved mind. The rapid staccato picked up intestisty as he moved, each step seeming more and more sure of itself. While stumblingly hesitant at first, the rhythm of William’s pounding pace soon guided him along the path, urging him after his prey like a savage call for war. Even the bland colors and rough textures of the walls around him faded into a hazy gray mist, lost in time as the beating of the drums drove William forward.

“Enough!” a voice screamed at him, snapping William out of the mesmerized haze in which he ran. The high pitched whine came from a ragged figure which stood wavering at the end of the tunnel, just inside a flaring space which William knew must be another hollowed out chamber. It was a voice that William had become all too familiar with over the course of his recent incarceration. “I don’t know how you escaped monster, but this is as far as you’ll come.”

Able to see his captor for the first time, William was thoroughly unimpressed. The manner of the man’s speech during each of their encounters had left William with the distinct impression that the man behind the voice was deranged, an impression that the man’s hunched, ragged appearance did little to dispel. The tattered tunic that he wore was stained head to toe with a plethora of unmentionable substances, and it was belted at the waist only by a threadbare, fraying piece of rope. Encrusted dirt and other chemicals tinted the man’s hands a nauseous grey, and his scraggily, knotted beard hung as unkempt as his similarly maintained hair. But the thing that told William the most about the man’s neurosis was how his squinting, fear-filled eyes instinctively sought the shadows and scanned them furtively. William would almost have felt pity for the man if he hadn’t subjected the Revenant to countless hours of cramped confinement and starvation.

Almost.

Ignoring the madman’s protests, William advanced again, his fingers already twitching uncontrollably with a returning sense of murderous purpose. “I said no more!” the man shrieked hysterically, thrusting a single stained finger to point quiveringly at William. William halted once again, more out of humor than obedience.

“Would you like to tell me how you plan to stop me?” he asked, his voice a low growl that rumbled through the undercurrents of the tunnel.

“Like this!” the man replied in a similar hiss, and produced a large clay urn from beneath his tattered robes.

[Revenant]

Before William could even question what the urn was intended for the crazed man had the lid off and was throwing handfuls of ash onto the ground in front of him.

“Leuvis, Ranthor, Sigfried,” he called out as he pitched the ash, “attend to me.” His words spoken, William could only watch with curious fascination as the ash separated into three distinct piles. More ash flowed from the urn, heedless of the man’s actions, and swirled like a rising tornado over each distinct pile. No stranger to the ways of magic even if he was incapable of it himself, William knew that the ashes held some sort of animating enchantment. It was likely that were he in a fresh and undrained state, William could have reached his captor before the animating magic had time to construct whatever was rising from the ashen piles. As he was however, he felt that it was more prudent to let the man’s magic run its course and judge what he faced before leaping forward.

Three figures emerged from the piles of ash, shadowy conjurations of charred bone fragments that pulled themselves up from the swirling maelstrom as if clawing their way out of the blackest pits of the Abyss. William’s fascination turned to amazement as the three figures became more solid and distinct, looking nothing so much as the charred skeletons of creatures such as he himself was, complete with fanged maws and thick boney claws protruding from the end of their appendages. Of course he was far more advanced than there automatons, but the similarity was there all the same. Watching the three forms struggle into existence, there was no doubt left in William’s mind of his captor’s association with Amran soul magic.

“Kill him,” the soul mage shrieked with delight, casting his hands out wide, “rend his flesh, my puppets, and leave nothing behind.” The Revenant skeletons nodded silently, lacking the capacity to reply, and moved forward with surprisingly fluid motions. The trailing clouds of swirling ash followed just behind them, still coalescing over the three figures like a dispersed skin, adding an imposing aura of hideousness to the lurching guardians.

William cursed the necessity of draining his demonic power to free himself from his imprisonment, knowing all too well the deadly potency of the razor-sharp claws that the Revenant’s possessed. But even though his power hadn’t returned enough to enact his own transformation, William was not the sort of creature who backed down from a fight. Snarling his own charge, in defiance of the silent momentum of the approaching Revenants, William leapt forward to meet his foes.

He muttered a prayer of thanks to the Thayne Goddess Jomil as he approached, for showing him his own weaknesses at Icehenge. He had faced a demonic version of himself there in his human form, an incident which had driven him to learn how to fight without having to rely on his demonic power. All of the lessons that he had absorbed from Ta’Gaz, Hotouri, Steppenwolf, and Sei coursed through his mind as he ran, ensuring that there was no hesitation in his stride.

And no thoughts in his mind other than the thoughts of victory.

[Revenant]

William’s bestial snarl turned mounted into a furious roar as his charge met the first lumbering Revenant. Though only a construct of charred bone and swirling ash, the creature’s swiping lunge was nonetheless swift and precise. With no orders to spare its victim, the lead skeleton’s claws tore savagely at William’s throat, the latent spiritual rage which animated the creature eager to feel its prey’s hot blood wash out over it. William understood the creature’s thoughts, a portion of his own mind frustrated at his foe’s bloodless nature. There was something raw and primal about reveling in the gushing pure life force that blood represented. But if there were any thoughts swirling around in whatever mind the skeleton had left, it must have been disappointed as its attack met nothing but empty air.

William, at the last second, had sidestepped the opening lunge, choosing instead to leap against the tunnel’s rough hewn wall. Perched safely out of harm’s way, William enjoyed the split second of weightlessness as his full momentum carried him high up the tunnel’s wall. The moment only lasted for the blink of an eye however, and then William was kicking off, using his vertical perch as leverage to drive him down into the first Revenant.

Even in human form William still possessed more strength than any normal human could hope to have. Adding the full weight of his plummeting force to his supernatural strength ensured that his hammering blow not only struck the Revenant with enough force to drive it back, but that his fist detonated the creature’s magically animated form into a scattered cloud of bone shrapnel and swirling ash. A moment of hesitance gripped William’s mind as his gaze shot through the creature’s scattered form, meeting the glazed stare of his shrieking captor through the suspended cloud of fragments and dust. He wondered, perhaps too late, if the animating force of the soul mage’s magic was enough to reconstitute the creature’s skeletal body, if he would be forced to perpetually break the creatures apart again and again until he was exhausted and overwhelmed. The clattering of bones answered his question as the creature’s form dispersed for the final time, the last remnants of its power scattered through the cavernous tunnel along with its body.

“No, no, no!” the wild eyed mage shrieked with a bloodcurdling wail. “Kill him. Kill him!” The ash around the remaining two skeletons ceased to swirl, as if the creatures showed some reluctance after seeing their associate destroyed. But then their master’s overriding command drove them forward, side-by-side, back on the offensive.

William swiped the first attack away with him forearm, but even his quick reflexes and martial training wasn’t enough to stop the razor like claws from drawing a trio of lines through his flesh. The creature’s claws hissed with steam as the hot blood coated them, but the wound was little more than a deep scratch. Still, the sight of even the tiniest amount of blood sent the crazed mage into peals of insane laughter.

Cursing his own ineptitude, William concentrated fully on his defense, dodging and parrying the skeletons’ attacks with all of the strength and speed that his supernatural physique could muster. To one unfamiliar with the martial arts, it would appear that William was outmatched, tottering on the edge of losing it and being completely overwhelmed. But a seasoned veteran would be able to see how William was maneuvering himself into a position of advantage.

When the shift came, it was so swift that it was over before the tittering maniac could make sense of what had happened. William leaned away from one of the advancing Revenant’s attacks and dodged under a second. But this time, instead of skittering backwards, William shot up inside the skeleton’s reach, driving forward with a lunging knee strike. The blow caught the skeleton in the ribcage and drove the creature stumbling back into its sole remaining companion. The mesh of ash and bone caught together, entangling the two of them. The twined creatures quickly stumbled backwards, but William was faster, pouncing forward with a spinning heel kick which rent the two of them apart and scattered them to their final rest.

[Revenant]

Ashen bones clattered loudly to the ground all around William, the close confines of the rough hewn tunnel amplifying the noise until it sounded like an entire army had just fallen apart at William’s feet. But as amplified and chaotic as the clattering bones were, they were nothing compared to the wild, hysterical shriek of defeat that tore free from the throat of the howling mage at the other end of the tunnel. Madness lay in that inarticulate cry which, amplified by the tunnel the same as the bones had been, reminded William more of the death throes of some monstrous creature which he had slain than it did of any living human. It was a pained, doomed wail, one which spoke volumes on how confidence in victory could change as quickly as the tide of battle.

But even though the mage no longer held the upper hand, there were still cards left that he had yet to play. Wildly spinning, like one of the fabled dervishes of the desert wastes of Fallien, the mage dashed out of the tunnel, his threadbare robes trailing him like a blowing wind hurrying him on his way. The man’s terror filled flight brought a savage taste of predatory pleasure to William’s worn and battered soul, which had lain, languishing, for far too long. He felt alive again for the first time since waking up in that confining cage, once more the hunter in a game which his captor had created. William released himself, giving in to the hunter’s pleasure, and threw himself into pursuit of the fleeing mage, grinning a foul, feral grin as he did so.

Hesitant, pattering steps turned into a full-length, loping gait as William pursued the shrieking mage down the closed tunnel corridor. Each slap of his unshod, naked feet echoed before him like a heralding drum beat, a rapid staccato that proclaimed the fate of William’s prey. The hurried sprint down the corridor made William less than human, and more so at the same time. Cognitive detail and rational thought fled his mind and yet he could smell the mage’s fear, could taste its sour tinge on the wafting tunnel air. The frightened little maggot had made the worst mistake of his life when he had tried to subdue William, and the Revenant was determined to ensure that the man knew it.

William’s rage, his strength, returned to his limbs with each slapping footstep that he took towards his prey. There was no uselessness whatsoever left in his limbs, and the mounting rage within his breast drove away the final remaining gremlins of exhaustion and fatigue which always plagued him following the explosive release of his molten power. It wouldn’t be long, he knew, before all of his power was once again at his beckoning call.

The remaining ghosts of the mad mage’s shrieks faded as soon as William burst into the adjoining room. His heart beat a steady, throbbing beat in his ears like the savage beating of primal war drums rousing warriors into a murderous fury, and it kindled within William’s chest a howling, bestial cry which could not be contained. He was a living weapon, a warrior built for death and destruction, and it was with a warrior’s readiness that the tunnel birthed him into the mage’s waiting room. The Revenant thought himself active and alert, ready for whatever trickery the mage could throw his way, but no amount of preparation, no warrior’s instinct or fury could have prepared William for what awaited him.

[Revenant]

William processed the room the instant he entered, his eyes flickering quickly to draw in every single detail. The room which had housed his prison had been chiseled, sanded, and cleaned to exacting specifications. Housing the energies required to bind William’s power had required the most upmost and precise requirements, for it would have been an utter failure if even the tiniest thing was out of order. William had expected the same care and precision of the mage throughout the entirety of whatever forgotten location that he had used. His captor’s increasingly disheveled appearance should have whisked such thoughts away from the Revenant but, his expectations hadn’t been dashed until he entered the ritual chamber itself. It was then that the true depth of the mage’s half-hazard approach made itself known.

This room was almost the complete opposite of the chamber which housed his prison cell. Where the walls, floor, and ceiling of the prison room had been exactingly hollowed out this room was nothing more than a raw crack in the earthen ground, worn and hollowed by the passage of time and the tromping of adventurous feet. A variety of bones, decayed equipment, and decrepit tufts of mangy fur had been kicked and shoved around to fill every rubble strewn corner of the ritual room, giving William the impression that this chamber had once been the sight of some disastrous battle from which none of the participants had escaped.

The only clear space in the room was the six foot circle which had been meticulously cleared and smoothed at the edge of the rough path leading across it. Another circle had been carved out of the stone floor within that circle, though this one was as intricately detailed and diligently carved at the prison room had been. Thick silver sludge filled the carved circle, as if glue had been added to ground silver dust and then poured into the sigils before it had congealed into a semi-hardened mass. Though William wasn’t sure of the circle’s exact purpose, he knew that it was for whatever ritual that his captor had been planning.

As if to emphasize the point, William saw that the mage had turned once again to face him, though wisely on the far side of the room with a full ten feet of rough terrain and debris between the mage and his pursuer. Surprisingly, given all that had transpired over the previous handful of minutes, there was a glow of excitement and triumph where moments before there had only been fear.

“This is as far as you go, creature,” the man shrieked, raising his arms and gesturing dramatically. “You think you have made a fool of me but I’m finished with paltry tricks and petty bindings. Now I will show you the true extent of my power.”

Mocking the sudden steel in the mage’s backbone, William replied with a savage howl, and leapt forward, eager to get finally have his captor beneath his claws hands. But the mage’s magic had other plans and it was at that moment that the ritual circle flared to furious life.

[Revenant]

A powerful surge of energy burst from the ritual circle, bathing the cavern in a bright light. Tendrils of energy snaked from the circle faster than mortal eyes could follow, latching onto the leaping figure of William Arcus and binding him with chains of eldritch might. A deep throbbing pulse of sound beat steadily from the flaring ritual, echoing through the cavern and blanketing everything save the brittle crack of bones that crumbled under the weight of the Revenant as the magic chains tore him from the air and plunged him into the cavern’s refuse.

“Yes!” the mage shrieked, leaping into the air on stick-thin legs, his filthy limbs waggling back and forth in time with his pseudo excited dance of victory. Flecks of spittle and gibberish words poured from him in a maddened stream, a mocking cavalcade directed more towards some unseen presence than towards the scrambling figure of William on the floor. “You see how wrong you were to toss me aside, to claim that I was mad?” Below, William’s claws dug deep grooves in the cavern’s stone floor, gouges of resistance left grudgingly behind as the energies of the binding circle slowly drew William towards its glowing surface.

“Struggle all you want monster,” the mage giggled. “I’ve taken everything about you into account. I might have been a little overconfident about my previous incarceration, yes I might, but this time I spared no expense. I, in my great wisdom, have checked and rechecked every tiny detail of this ritual. I’ve accounted for all of your soul bindings and just like my master before me, I will soon control you. But unlike him, I will command you fully. You will be my herald of returning victory, in a way that you never were for the master.”

A weight crashed upon Williams legs as the energy dragged his lower half, struggling, across the edge of the circle. He could feel the ritual’s magic gnawing at him, seeking to pry through his essence and merge with the core of his very being. He understood then, at that moment, exactly what the ritual was intended to do. A long time ago, when the body of the woodsman he used to be had been transformed into the Revenant, Kal’Necroth had bound his merged essence through an object, an ornately carved glass orb, with which he could command William’s essence and therefore the Revenant himself. This was much the same, though the situation was certainly different. Where Kal’Necroth had bound his essence into an object with which he could control William, this crazed mage had crafted a ritual that would bind the Revenant’s soul to the mage’s own.

In that moment, William experienced the most stark moment of terror that he had ever felt. Since his creation he had added several different souls to his own twisted amalgamation, his essence now housing not only himself and the spirits of creation and destruction, but also the ancient soul of an magic hating Innari shaman and a renowned scholar. Each added a new voice inside his head, new urges and desires twining with his own until he couldn’t distinguish between himself and them. Was this then to be his fate? Merged to a madman with no power over his own existence? Powerlessness, the lack of control over himself and his life was William’s greatest fear and now it was staring him in the face, the ultimate expression of it a set of slavering jaws gnawing hungrily upon him as he was dragged inch by inch into the ritual circle.

His strength was useless, the fire in his veins was useless, both products of the spirits bound within him and both calculated into the mage’s ritual. But what the mage didn’t know, what he couldn’t possibly have calculated, was that the power that had come to him with the binding of the later spirits with him. Even as the ritual circle drew him bodily into its confines, William could feel the magical repulsion within him growing, reacting to this new, eldritch prison. Sudden magic, quick magic, things like combat spells and summonings, those things were over too fast for his anti-magic aura to take any effect, but this was nothing quick or sudden. It was a drawn out, extensively wrought field. It was a place of permanence in the magical aura and that was something solid onto which William’s aura could attach and begin its corruption. It hadn’t even occurred to William that this would occur but as it did so he saw a spark of hope lighting up the end of the tunnel of his despair.

Perhaps he would make it out of the perfectly constructed trap afterall.

[Revenant]

William could feel his anti-magic aura as it actively began to twist the magical energies of the ritual circle. It wasn’t something that he could consciously control, at least he’d never tried to, and this was the first time where he’d consciously been aware of its occurrence. A part of his being, the part that was the ancient Inari shaman, oozed loathing for the predicament that he was in in a way that was completely different from the fear and rage that the rest of William’s consciousness felt. Focusing on that hatred, William mentally reached out against the ritual. He knew that he wouldn’t have the strength or the practice to completely nullify such a potent and well-planned casting, but he refused to just accept his bondage like the servant beast that the mage thought he was. If all else failed, at least he could spend the rest of his miserable existence knowing that he had fought to the bitter end.

It wasn’t exactly the most comforting of thoughts but it would have to do.

Fighting against the magic binding seemed akin to trying to push a heavy log upriver in a heavy current. Every time the Revenant thought that he had achieved a stable course, an eddy in the flow of the magic would unbalance his efforts and send him scrambling for control once again. But despite the effort, he was surprised to find that he was actually making headway. Solid lines of focused energy became nebulous and warped and slowly, like ants consuming a caterpillar, William found his task getting easier and easier.

On the other side of the room, oblivious to William’s efforts in his maddened state, the mage fell into the second portion of his ritual. He’d completed the snare portion of the ritual, allowing the specialized soul magic to bind and contain the Revenant, and now it was time to execute the second portion, where he would deconstruct the Revenant’s bound soul and merge it with his own. Driving the madness back with a moment of clarity, the mage focused his will into a sharp point and drove it towards the trapped beast within the binding circle.

There was a still moment between the two beings, a connected point when the mage’s focused will met the distorted energies coursing throughout William’s body and soul. In that moment, both minds were open to one another and each made a startling discovery. The mage saw William’s intent and the effort that he had succeeded in putting into that intent. He saw that he had underestimated the creature, had failed in his ritual by not understanding that the Revenant had evolved beyond the siege minion which he had been created as. What William saw was the source of the mage’s power, the unmistakable figure of his creator, Kal’Necroth, whom he had thought slain by his own claws in that fateful meeting following the failed Battle for Illium. Kal’Necroth, alive and whole, spreading his tainted knowledge through a gathering of disciples in an attempt to accomplish through subversion and stealth what he had failed to do through intimidation and brute force.

Realization dawning, the mage wept with the knowledge that he had failed, that his ritual was incomplete. William, on the other hand, felt a surge of rage and hatred which surged his power far beyond the level where it had ever been. Distorted chains of magic snapped under this new, powerful assault and a sharp retort rebounded off the chamber walls time and again as the very stone foundation of the ritual circle cracked.

“No!” the mage cried out in terror, left with no more tricks or traps with which to stall the burning aspect of destruction that turned its merciless gaze upon him with an inhuman hunger which loosened his bowels. William burned bright, a ghostly trail of fire and ash trailing behind him like the cloaked feathers of the legendary phoenix, and his bestial roar drowned out even the horrified screams of the man whom he descended upon.

[Revenant]

William sighed, holding the quill still long enough for a blob of ink to fall upon the smooth page beneath it, partially obscuring the text that he had just finished writing. The rage had faded, as it always did, leaving behind that cold, familiar sense of loss which was its mate. It had been a long time since he had lost control like that, his conscious mind drowned beneath the red tide of his rage for as long as it took the beast to vent itself. There had been nothing left of the mage but tattered scraps of cloth and flesh by the time that he had finished with the man. Strangely he found himself pondering how annoyed he was that the man was dead at all. Certainly he would have killed the man, of that there was no doubt, but the way that the mage had perished, violently under the claws of the mindless beast, meant that he had in all likelihood died almost instantly. One brief flash of torment and then nothingness. The beast, he knew, wasn’t one to play with his kills.

And then there was the little matter of the information which he had lost. He’d thought briefly about gathering up what little of the mage’s corpse that remained and seeking out a practitioner of the dark art of necromancy only to dismiss the notion. Finding a necromancer who was both willing and able to conjure the mage’s spirit from the scant remnants would be hard enough, but facing the man’s spirit without losing himself to his rage again would probably be more difficult and the last thing William needed was the spirit of a death mage after him because he’d gone berserk in the middle of the séance and killed him.

Plus there was the small gathering of research notes, magical texts, and journals which William had discovered tucked away in one of the cavern’s shadowy recesses. From what little perusing that he had already done he knew that he would have a lot of work ahead of him to decipher the madman’s rambled sketches and scribbled notes. There were two major things about the notes which leapt out at him. The first, much to his pleasure, was that the notes contained enough information for him to finally piece the last bit of the puzzle together in translating the tome which he had so diligently carried with him through the long years.

The second thing that he discovered was a bit more pressing. Not only was Kal’Necroth alive but he was still very much active in Amra’s underbelly. He knew that he would have to abandon the life that he had built in Corone and return to that distant land to play his strength against the infernal sorcerer’s. It wasn’t for Amra that he did this, as William held little love for the nation where his name was still used to frighten disobedient children but the beleaguered nation gaining some measure of good from his deeds wouldn’t exactly be something that he found disdain in. As soon as he returned to his residence in Ixian Castle he would begin preparations and would likely depart within the month. Sei might not understand how he could abandon the Mystic’s crusade and his role as monster hunting general, but then Sei never really saw value in anything that didn’t directly benefit the Mystic himself. Yet another force who sought to control William’s destiny, a point that William would ponder when there weren’t other pressing matters to attend to certainly.

William set the quill down, still heedless of the blot of ink which now smeared further across the page. Quietly, solemnly, he closed the journal, the leather binding enfolding all of the thoughts, conjectures, and memories which he had so diligently poured into it. Hefting the journal, he held the book outstretched for a moment, feeling the weight of it pull down upon his outstretched arm. Then, with a thought, William conjured his molten power and reduced the journal to cinders, not even watching as the ashes drifted slowly to the ground.

His return to Amra had begun.

[Mordelain]

Thread Title: Return - Prologue
Judgement Type: Condensed
Participants: Revenant

Plot ~ 21/30

Story ~ 8/10 – excellent. A gripping development of someone’s past that had, until now, just been a monster in my eyes. It felt somewhat short, and though it’s a prologue clearly stated, it might serve to write longer pieces, and have this serve as a true prologue in the traditional sense to a longer narrative.

Setting ~ 7/10 – it’s very hard to use the same symbology well, especially when fire has become such a huge part of Arcus’ personality and presence. You do it here very well, without repetition and without hammer blows to the reader’s senses. You may wish to consider more options about how the scenery interacts with that heat beyond steam and devastation, however. You don’t need to knock down the door to show someone’s strong, after all.

Pacing ~ 6/10 – strong basal rhythm to the thread, jarred only by the transition between diary and ‘current’ events. I appreciate this is a prologue, and the development of the story over the course of the thread lends itself well to the telling of the story, consider equal division of revelation over crescendo.

Character ~ 20/30

Communication ~ 7/10 – great communication through talking to the reader, less so between characters. Internal thought and diary entry threads are never easy to make coherent or readable, but you achieve it hear with a strong voice.

Action ~ 5/10 – a score more to do with the format of the thread than a lack of talent therein.

Persona ~ 8/10 – oozing a burning persona with a dark secret.

Prose ~ 20/30

Mechanics ~ 6/10 – appropriately written as far as spelling, structure, and formatting are concerned. Very consistent run on and long sentences that could be better divided for the reader’s sake, and for clarity’s. This occurred throughout, right from the get go in paragraph one, to the ultimate conflict and the ‘mad shrieks’ of the environment.

Clarity~ 6/10 –

Technique ~ 8/10 -

Wildcard: 6/10 – A demon with a past, and one that was engaging to hear about. Perhaps you might wish to go for this style more with Revenant, and show us more of this new talent you’ve uncovered?

I would be happy to develop on the points above, or provide more in depth examples based on those notes if requested. cydneyoliver@gmail.com, or my Mordelain inbox are both appropriate avenues to do.

If you have any concerns, doubts, and worries, and don’t wish to speak to me directly for whatever reason, then I am sure another member of staff will resolve the matter on your behalf. I am perfectly amenable and open to feedback, as the judge has to develop, as much as the writer put under the scrutiny of the rubric!

Total ~ 67/100


Revenant receives 2865 experience, and 300 gold.

[Letho]

EXP/GP added.