Deathless Reign: Ch. 04

Deathless Reign

Chapter 4

By: Noobwriter96

The Deadman felt no hate nor altruistic compulsion towards the risen dead. Although capable of thought, reason and restraint, he himself was still undead. He may have been a cut above the rest, deep down he shared one unifying trait to the ones that ambled aimlessly before him. There are instincts within each and all undead, an inherent desire. The difference between him and them was that he was able to realize it. Make coherent steps towards that end goal.

And that goal was the desire to return to life once more.

From their decaying limbs and exposed bones, there was a tethering of green light stringing the rotting corpse together, invisible to mortal eyes. Raw desire and emotion fueled them, and prevalent among these was an uncontrollable hunger.

It was a strange thing, the green light. The Deadman was compelled to devour as much as light as he could, shattering walking corpses with his supranatural strength. He crushed their feeble skulls with his open palm and tore limbs from their sockets, breathing in the frayed green energy escaping. These were meager, barely fulling meals.

The three necromancers were like an entire roasted piglet compared to these morsels of green light. The only caveat was there seemed to be a ceaseless amount of the risen dead walking these lands. He knows not how far he had strayed from that village. It didn't matter. With each breath of the green light he took, the less grey the world seemed, less cold. It was a feeling he couldn't pinpoint. He didn't know what it was but he did so anyway. Something drove the animal inside of him to consume the pool of green energy from the necromancers and their risen undead.

He was driven out of these thoughts when an ambler suddenly grab hold of him. Its legs had long since decayed as it crawled on the ground. It did not attack, simply stared at the Deadman with its hollowed-out eyes. The darkness still and unbreaking.

The rotting thing could see him.

He looked around and true enough, nearby others looked towards him, not drawn to feed but as if they had seen him the first time, as if popping suddenly into existence. And then he realized then and there what made them look as he stared deeply into his own body.

The green light he had taken from so many others, including the three necromancers, amassed into a great vessel that lit up his surroundings like a sun.

He drained the fell light from the last of the ambling undead.

And for the first time in a long, long time he felt the winds brush up against his skin. A cold feeling with an energic tinge to it. Something was changing within and without him. The Dead man was suddenly, painfully, aware of something wrong as he fell to his knees.

He felt pain.

Dead or not, not even a single necromancer could hold such FelLight within themselves. And the Deadman had exceeded way past his limit. Whatever perversion his existence as an undead was, he was still subject to the natural order of the world to some degree. That pool of power he amassed must be harnessed as his very nature sought to correct itself.

His armed squirmed, convulsing uncontrollably. Bony fingers stretched and curled and the sound of flesh boiling reached his ears as he grit his teeth at the searing pain enveloping his right arm. The amassed pool of excess energy within him sought other ways to release pressure or risk destruction. That power coursing through him unlike anything he had ever felt. Muscle grew abound. Stretching and reforming much of his flesh.

Eventually the pain subsided. He still felt cold. When he gazed at his arm, muscles trailed and sinews reformed on his boney hands. Flesh once more covers his right arm. His left hand however was still but bones.

He heaved if it were ever possible with his heart still lies quiet and blood unmoving. But that was not the only thing that changed. As he became more aware, more solid in his existence in the world, he hear things.

Whispers.

It flited about the wind and with no discernible source no matter where he looked like the clahsing of a thousand insect wings right beside his ears. They rose in tempo like the turning of the tides, loud and then soft and then loud again. They were incoherent mumblings that he barely understood but he heard them just enough.

Immaterial whispers.

His eyes cast this way and that, awareness of the world had widened as if he had not realize that a cloth had wrapped around him, muffling his senses dull.

Was it really possible to return once more as a real living man? That deep-seated instinct to devour of every undead were perhaps some ways to correct their abominable state of living death?

Distracted was he of these musings that he failed to notice that he was no longer alone.

"Lo! And behold! Did I not tell you that the Goddess' hand is at work, Blanche," said a woman's voice behind him.

He turned, surprised to see two living souls. So enamored with this sudden burst in his awareness inside of him that he failed to notice their approaching presence. The whispers strengthened in their chorus as he laid his eyes on the two women, nearly doubling on his knees.

Two women stood atop a clearing, their visage in his supranatural gaze had them enveloped in warm glow that he can only describe was enticing. The lesser dead would have flocked to them wildly, the living light of their souls like moths to the flame, but he was no such thing. Still he could sense that barest of hungers deep inside his animal brain.

Dark hair that swirled in its fall across her back framed one's freckled cheeks. There was a hard discerning look in her forest-green eyes as it locked unto him. Her hand was taut and tense, never once easing from her grip on the rusted hoe she carried. He got the impression she was the older of the two.

With her was a blonde young woman. She was pretty, a sharp aquiline jawline that pronounced her fae-like features. Her eyes are probably the bluest he had ever seen to the point of sparkling. But what use was beauty to a dead man? Still there was something trailing her being. She was talking but he couldn't hear whatever words she was saying. From the corner of his eyes, he could see a faint haze of bluish-white. He could not tell if it came out of her or into her. He was only certain that it was not of the mortal plane. She smelled...odd.

Blanche cursed herself for following the deluded fool Ayleth out of the village. She rushed out towards the mist carrying the closest thing she could find as a weapon, a rusted old hoe she used for tilling the earth. They didn't find any Risen walking about which was a blessing. It wasn't that hard to find the path the creature had taken.

They merely followed the trail of obliterated corpses.

When they did find him, Blanche steeled her resolve as the creature stood in a mass of his fallen foes. Dozens of the dead now cracking and turning to dust, lay beneath his feet. He seemed oblivious of the fact nor of the green light that glowed from him. The necrotic light glowed stronger than before.

She did not like the way his eyes looked at Ayleth, as if he could see something Blanche could not.

Something thronged amidst his ears as his gaze settled on the two living souls that laid before him. the whispers suddenly cascade and ebbed with rhythm at the sight of them. He did not like it one bit. Was it the Fell Light of the undead causing the whispers?

They MADE him feel...something.

"Savior!" rushed the other person towards him. The blonde young woman looked to him with wide eyes, falling to her knees in front of him as if he were some deity.

"We are forever grateful for the goddess for her deliverance!"

"Too long had we asked in our prayers, much of our people have turned saying we are abandoned by the gods, alone to suffer the malady that is the deathless scourge razing the realm."

"I know it is prideful for me to ask, audacious even. But pleased grant this servant's prayer. We ask for the Goddess blessings."

Blanche knows not what to make of the creature. He appears reasonable enough but who knows what these things were capable of? Nevertheless, she felt dying of shame from Ayleth's preachings and from the look of the man, he seemed not the sort to put stock into the whims of gods.

The Deadman wanted to refuse the woman. Barely even understood what it was she were saying. They must've seen him destroy the Risen dead in their village and thought of asking for his aid. His prime wish was to return once more as a living man and he would destroy a thousand more undead and their servants to achieve so. He didn't have it in him to worry for a bunch of women when he can't even help himself.

He opened his lips to answer truthfully, only to find the air holding still in his throat.

Time slowed to a halt.

The whispers pulled at him, warping his visions. It was futile to hone in what it was they were trying to convey. Overlapping words. It's seemed to be on the tip of his tongue only to be more incoherent babbling. But there was an emotion to them. He could only surmise that emotion as excitement. His lips moved on their own while he watched his own body out of his control.

"Poor child, I will grant thy request. You have my protection," said his voice, as rich as he had never heard it before and eloquent as gold itself.

Blanche's eyes grew wide at that, for the creature to easily agree.

The young woman was beyond ecstatic, tears welled at the corner of her blue eyes, hands clasped in reverent prayer as her wished was answered.

"But as we continue in this endeavor, perhaps it be more apt to know your name, glorious protector?" asked the devout woman.

The dark god had taken much from him. His life, his family and his own name. Death had such an effect on him.

The whispers suddenly silenced, all of them, save for one spoke. As it did, it spoke in unison with his voice, with his own tongue.

"Reign," he whispered. "Call me Reign."

"Praise be to the goddess! Hail the Protector, Reign!" proclaimed the poor young woman, so engulfed was she in fervent jubilation.

And as quickly as the moment had come, so too did it disappear. He was in control of himself once more, or at least he thought he was. He could not have taken back what he had said. And with this massive pool of energy made him aware of something. A greater power. It was as wide and encompassing as the sky itself. It was only for a glimpse but he saw it. Something was pulling the strings of his own fate. What the hell just happened?

He could only surmise that with the energy he had attained vanquishing his foes, he had caught the sight of something far powerful.

How much was it worth to reclaim the life he had lost? Was it even worth the prize? Whatever it may be?

Reign was grateful his flesh is dead; he'd have felt a great chill down his spine at these questions.