Briarheart, Ascended - Part 1

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

http://pre13.deviantart.net/2693/th/pre/i/2014/089/f/9/ashlands_by_abigbat-d7ca8jj.jpg




"There will come a time where we five will fall. Our strength will wane, and the world will rise up against us once more.
On that day, they will be victorious. They will defeat us, and they will begin rebuilding their world.
But, from our ashes will rise a force like none other. She will learn from our many successes and failures.
She will follow us down the path we walked ages ago. She will uncover the lost secrets of our power.
She will do great and terrible things to this world that betrayed us so long ago.
Through us, she will quench her insatiable thirst for forbidden knowledge.
Through her, we will achieve true immortality."

- The Forgotten One Podë, to Xem'Zund

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

It started as these sort of things tend to do--me sitting cross-legged on the ground, a semicircle of roughly a dozen books arranged before me, their secrets laid bare.

Each of these books had been a special... acquisition, shall we say. Every tome was unique, the knowledge contained within their pages not repeated elsewhere. They whispered to me secrets that their previous owners were content to ignore or simply protect, evident by how much effort I had to go through to obtain each and every single one of them. Some were held under lock and key within the more neglected corners of the Radasanth Grand Library. Others were heavily guarded by Raiaeran nobility, placed under protective wards that took quite an effort to dispel. More still were kept in remote reaches of Alerar and Salvar, and it took every contact I could tap and favor I could call in in order to track them down.

But in the end, it was worth it.

It was worth every little bit of the price I paid, every single coin and drop of blood. These books contained everything I would need in order to further my research in necromancy. First-hand accounts from survivors of the Corpse War that ravaged Raiaera years ago. Tales of how a small band of legendary warriors overcome great odds to defeat and seal away the Forgotten One Xem'Zund. More accounts of how his power had remained within the necromancer's Death Lords, who somehow managed to keep their grip on his fractured undead hordes after his demise.

They also contained various bits of research and observations made by those who were brave or foolish enough to venture into the blighted plains, ruins, and forests. Lands that were once peaceful and beautiful, but were corrupted by the filth and magic that Xem'Zund spread during his conquest of the high elves' homeland.

His dark magic not only raised the dead, but caused what many considered to be irreversible damage to Raiaera. While Podë merely amplified and slightly altered the nature of Lindequalmë, Xem'Zund's power warped it completely.

There were stories of roaming packs of zombies lurking around the outskirts of the blight, of formerly harmless beasts mutated into vicious, desperate hunters that will tear your flesh from bone in seconds, of the plants becoming sentient and mutating themselves into underground traps that consumed those unlucky enough to get close.

While every one of those accounts interested me greatly; what truly got my attention was the actual plague itself. I could find very little useful information on it, aside from its effects. The corruption left behind by the Forgotten One was most effective in zombifying its victims after several minutes of intense pain and nausea. It was simple and elegant in its design, serving a singular purpose and doing so extremely well. However, it wasn't that alone that interested me. I mean, shit; I have access to unlimited cordyceps spores that zombify the living and the dead, and they do so with the same ruthless efficiency.

What interested me the most was how the necromancer's plague granted him absolute control over his corpse horde; control that was seemingly passed down to his Death Lords after he was killed. Even the control granted by my Nemo's Marionette could be interrupted, should the person overriding it have access to powerful enough spells--an unfortunate discovery made at a very inconvenient moment during my recent campaigns in Salvar and Berevar.

What could it be about this plague that granted its creator such power over those it resurrected? Much like how the magic of the Crimson Witch gave her command over the physical nature of all within the Red Forest, was it all a part of Xem'Zund's design? Did he infuse the disease with his own tainted access to the Eternal Tap before it was shattered? Or, perhaps he managed to figure out the perfect formula in order to create his blight, a method of trial and error and luck akin to what I myself had done to create Hyperion and her Briarbane brothers and sisters?

No matter what method he used, I will learn what he learned, and experiment with his findings even further.

I will unlock the darkest secrets of the greatest necromancer this world has ever known, and make his work my own.

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

As I delved deeper and deeper into the Corpse War, Xem'Zund's methods of spreading the plague that gripped Raiaera, his surviving lieutenants, and their continued efforts to hold their dead master's territory, I uncovered quite a few different things that caught my scientific eye. In particular, one of the books had detailed sketches and notes on a series of artifacts that the Death Lords employed to spread their necromantic blight.

I tried not to think of the price paid by the unlucky bastards who managed to obtain and dismantle one of these things.

The artifacts in question were very intricate pieces of work that were thorough in their design and incredibly efficient in their execution. Inside its huge spherical body, it had the components required in order to continuously manufacture the miasma that spread throughout the country by tapping into a Tap Spring and drawing on what little energy remained--energy enough to absolutely destroy an area and leave it a zombified, mutated wasteland, mind you.

The spheres would process the magical energy it leeched from the Spring, corrupt it into the substance that Xem'Zund employed, and through a complicated series of injection tubes and vents, spread it throughout Raiaera. The substance, enhanced by its Tap infusion, would quickly take hold of its victims and warp them into the horrifying creatures that claimed the lives of many elves and outsiders over the years.

You can see how incredibly effective the Forgotten One's work had been, and how much it helped him nearly achieve his goals.

When I was in Eiskalt, I had designed a similar device to distribute the plague that I developed to further the Crimson Hand's goals. However, even with my ill-gotten artificing knowledge, my designs were costly and inefficient in comparison. Those particular creations were gigantic and clunky, and could be disabled relatively easily by just banging on it hard enough with a closed fist. They were nothing like the death machines that the necromancer designed. The higher-ups at the time within the Hands decided against using my contraptions, and gave me a pile of rats instead.

While I was insulted at the time, I do have to admit that the rodents were... incredibly effective. Eiskalt has yet to eradicate the disease, and thousands upon thousands of its citizens continue to suffer from infection.

Ever since then, I have become more fascinated with more natural ways of spreading disease, which in turn developed into a desire explore bioengineering. I've experimented on various life-forms and created all sorts of nasty plagues. I've invented new species altogether--like Hyperion, and her vine-and-rot Briarbane siblings. My adventures down that road have been extremely rewarding, and it made me forget about artificing altogether.

And yet... Even though my interest waned, I always found myself curious. My desire to learn and to know had always been insatiable. The necromancer had been incredibly successful, even after death; and I had to know why and how.

A thousand questions floating around in my head, each one in desperate search of an answer.

Answers that waited for me within the Deep Plaguelands of Raiaera, protected by the Death Lords and their endless hordes of horrors. Answers that could be more trouble than they're worth--but answers that I must have, at any cost.

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

And so there I was, cross-legged on the ground, a semicircle of roughly a dozen books arranged before me. My Archivist's Notebook sat open in my lap. Words and sketches formed on its yellowed pages and then swirled away into its ethereal archive as it greedily drank from the wealth of knowledge before me. Just having the thing was a matter of convenience: It would copy everything penned in those valuable tomes and store it away for when I would need it in hostile territory. One book is certainly easier to carry around than twelve.

I looked up from the tomes and took in my surroundings. A temporary camp was set up on top a small mountain, where at its peak you could see for several dozens of miles. I squinted my eyes, trying to make out some of the further features of the Raiaeran countryside. Even with the afternoon sun at my back, I could only see so much. Past the rolling foothills and stubborn villages that hadn't packed up and moved away, I could barely make out the natural green of the earth giving way to the dead shades of brown, black, and purple as the Forgotten One Xem'Zund's blight threatened to take more and more of the elves' homeland away from them with each passing moment.

A deep breath, and a long sigh. Deep down, I knew what I was about to embark on was nothing more than a fool's errand.

Go after one of the machines that keep pumping poison into the earth, irreversibly corrupting everything that it touches? Encounter hordes of zombies, mutations, horrors, and maybe even a Death Lord or two? Face the off chance that perhaps you aren't as immune as you think you are to the blight, only to have your last thought be "well, I really fucked that one up" as you turn into one of them?

Hey, who knows? Maybe your information is horribly out-of-date and the plague machine that you've tagged as the one to acquire has already been destroyed or otherwise relocated!

So much could go wrong as soon as I stepped foot past the proverbial "here be monsters" sign at the edge of the blight. But, at this point I didn't have much of a choice. I had already gone through all the preparations for this journey, all of the acquisitions and research and organization. I couldn't turn back now.

I had my questions, I had my desire to learn Xem'Zund's secrets. I could not let anything stop me from getting my answers.

The leather-bound notebook in my lap ceased its humming, and its pages went quiet. The mystical tome had gleaned every letter and sketch from within the dozen of books arrayed on the short grass around me. Picking it up, I made sure it had collected every last secret it could find. I pictured in my mind the first-hand account of how quickly a regiment of the Rangers had succumbed to the illness that the necromancer infected Raiaera with. The Archivist's Notebook immediately responded by filling several of its blank pages with the recorded names, ranks, time of death and turning, and other information of those within the band who sought to learn about what was happening to their homeland. The notebook also offered me reference on the symptoms that manifested themselves in the Rangers, and how quickly the infliction progressed.

I wiped those thoughts from my mind, and the pages followed in kind. With a new command, they brought up the diagrams of the machines the Death Lords employ to produce and spread the corruption. The drawings were a little on the unfinished side, but they showed most of the key components and their construction. Almost indecipherable scribbles next to the cross-sections detailed how the entire machine worked as a whole, toiling constantly to do its creator's dark work. However, these drawings and notes were incomplete and inconsistent, despite the range of tomes that the magical notebook consumed and filled its pages with. That was something that I planned on fixing.

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

I could feel Hyperion's inquisitive presence as she sat down in the field next to me. From behind her ceremonial mask, she gazed upon the rolling fields of death that were before us. She tilted her head slightly, signaling that she was very unsure about the task ahead. "Are you sure you still want to do this?"

"Yes," I said with a curt nod, "but at the same time? No, absolutely not." Which was true. The trepidation, the foreboding sense of dread sitting in my gut like dead weight that always popped up whenever I was about to embark on a new adventure. There were so many variables that could go wrong. So many things that could not be accounted for. Even with the extensive power I had at my gnarled fingertips, I knew deep down that there were times that it would be of no use to me.

All I could do was hope that this wasn't going to be one of those times.

Hype, sensing my thoughts, moved quickly to distract me. She unrolled a big cloth map of Raiaera, elegantly drawn, that had various parts of the country marked off. The Plaguelands in the east, Lindequalmë in the south, and the mountainous regions of the west and north that kept the land of the high elves relatively safe from its enemies in Alerar. Scattered like breadcrumbs across the surface were marked locations of ruins and encampments, remnants of the horrible battles that almost overran the entire country with countless undead hordes. One of these ruins had been the old city of Trenycë--a bastion of wealth and greed in happier times, where humans from Salvar and Corone pooled together their resources and introduced the construct of the horrifying and terrible casino to Elven culture. I'm sure that there were some elves who made it out of there that consider the city better off as it stood right now.

However, Trenycë was also the reported stronghold of the last surviving member of the Forgotten One Xem'Zund's inner circle: Maeril Thyrrian. The books I had in my possession didn't have much to say on him, but whispers from survivors of the war said that he was trying to reign in the remaining forces of the necromancer he served and begin his master's work anew. However, he wasn't exactly having the best luck with it. The High Bard Council and the Bladesingers have sent wave after wave of mercenaries and specialists into the infected areas and are working quick to beat back the scattered undead legions and find a cure to the plague that gripped their country. Inch by inch, they were winning back their country.

Which is why I had to act fast. I had to go right into the area that I dreaded the most; the remaining stronghold of Xem'Zund's old army. My notes told me that this was the place I was most likely to find a working plague boiler, and one in good-enough condition to properly research.

I just had to make sure I didn't catch the eye of the Dread Lord and his minions while doing so.

Hyperion leaned back after setting a book on a corner of the map, making sure that it would not blow away in the breeze. "So, what's your plan?"

I shifted my weight forward and tapped Trenycë with a bone pen. "I'm headed there. I'll be blinking in, sneaking into the city, finding what I need, finish the notes and diagrams I have, collect several samples of plague, and then lying low until I can blink back."

"Isn't that a risky proposition? The ruins are several hundred miles away, and it takes hours for you to blink that far."

"You're absolutely right," I said with a sigh. I traced my finger along the line that denoted where Raiaera thrived and where it was slowly, continuously dying. "All these settlements and surviving cities would be in the way if we trekked north. As far as I am aware, I'm still a wanted war criminal. I still have that bounty on my head in Eiskalt. While I don't know if the elves would honor that contract, I don't want to take the risk of being seen."

The plant monster cocked her head to the side. "Did you not aid them in their campaign against Podë?"

A quick pang of loss and regret struck me in the heart at the mention of the Lindqualmë campaign. The vision of a bloodied Nell dying in my arms, refusing my desperate attempts to save her flashed in my eyes. "I did so under an alias and a disguise," I replied, waving the horrible memories of those long two weeks away. "Besides, the Council is so far up the ass of that halfling Illara that she may as well have been the only one who killed Podë."

My confidant nodded, understanding everything. That was the one thing I didn't like about Hype; she accepted any and every argument that was tossed her way. It was not by intentional design on my behalf. I figured that it was just a personality trait that she absorbed when the parasite that would become her consumed the host body. She was a smart girl... plant... horror... thing, but she was a little too passive in discussions and tended to not put up a fight in arguments. Hype began to roll up the map when I stopped her with a touch on her shoulder.

"Watch over me while I meditate. Make sure that I'm not disturbed until I blink away."

"Yes, of course."

"Once I'm gone, I'll need you to return to Tirel. I've left behind a list of projects that need your attention."

"Something to keep me out of trouble, I suppose?"

I winked at her. "You could say that, yes. When I am done, I will blink back to Salvar and join you there. Let's just hope that this information is correct and my findings are worth the trouble."

Hype nodded and began collecting the things that we had scattered on the grass all around us. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and exhaled. For the next several hours, I could not allow anything other than thoughts and visions of the front gates of Trenycë fill my mind.