The Umbral Messiah Pt. 01

Still.

The basics she had been slurred at was that there were Nine Dragons, and each had made a part of the world, and those parts were what people tapped for magic. There were colors little sing song tones like nursery rhymes that helped the prospective apprentice learn...but, at the end of the day, Hecate had been more interested in the view down the witchling's robes than what she was actually saying. But, floating out of the depths of her memories, was something about how there were two kinds of magic that were separate from the Dragons. Demon magic and...

"Is it cause you're a necromancer?" Hecate asked, curiously.

"Silence!" The Corpser hissed.

Hecate was about to shrug and drop it when the entire tower shuddered. It was like an earthquake, but shorter and accompanied with a distant roar. Hecate, more used to battlefields than earthquakes, recognized it instantly. "Blasting powder!" she growled.

"What!?" The Corpser squealed as two Black Walkers - Janik and Horl - came sprinting in, panting.

"Sir!" Janik said. "The camp blew - the whole half of the tower's collapsed! We're trapped in here."

"We're not trapped," Hecate said, her voice steely and confident, knowing that a commanders sureness was all that would keep panic from infecting her troops. And panicking troops were dead ones. "Get the squads together, check for wounded, and throw up defenses at the entrances to this chamber." She waved her hand, and the two men started to hurry off. She turned to the Corpser, to see that his palms were touched together, his eyes closed.

He scowled. "There's a magician in this building. They're...strange, though..." He said. "My Sight can't quite pin down what they are..."

"Great," Hecate said. "How many men do they have with them?" It was a truism as deep in her bones as secure water supplies and dig a trench.

"I can't tell," the Corpser said. "but I know what surprise to throw at them."

He rubbed his palms together. Black fire began to glow there.

Hecate frowned. "Is that a good idea?" she asked.

"Silence!" he snapped, then knelt down. His palms pressed into the floor and a wave of magic, unlike any that Hecate had seen on any battlefield she'd ever been on swept outwards. The ground shook...and then the dirt that filled half of this long buried chamber started to shiver and hump. Some of the dirt exploded outwards as a skeletal palm shoved out, fingers caked in dirt and long dried skin. The Corpser grinned like the very skeleton he had summoned as it began to claw from the dirt, joined by another, and another. Hecate had known that the tower had corpses in it - it was obvious once you reached the lower levels that whatever had happened here had been quite terminal.

But she hadn't realized quite how many skeletons. Four, then five, then six of them were emerging from the ground, shambling towards the corpser in a straight line.

"Any attack here will face quite an urk."

Hecate, who had risked a glance away to make sure her men were at their posts, jerked her head back. The choked sound of a man drowning on blood was too familiar for her to be entirely surprised when she saw the Corpser's palms flailing at the rusty sword that emerged from between his ribs. The skeleton's eyes glowed with an eldrich green fire.

Hecate sighed, slowly. Well. There goes the bonus flashed through her mind as she bellowed: "Black Walkers! TO ME!"

The skeletons were on her first.

***

Sari groaned. Her eyes fluttered open and she saw that at least one thing was going for her on this little quest: The magelights of the Chanti tower were now glowing again, at their full illumination.

At least, those that hadn't been shattered and crushed. She craned her head around and saw that her legs were half buried by rubble and scree, the corridor behind her completely caved in. She manged to drag herself free, crawling on hands and knees, and coughed as smoke and dust poured into the corridor. She stumbled to her feet, feeling aches and pains in her shins and ankles - but not so much that she wouldn't be able to walk. She brushed dust from her body, coughed again, and then saw another thing had gone her way.

The sword she had snatched from the Black Walkers was right there, unmarked and unmarred. She picked it up, hefted it, then whispered. "Okay." Then she froze and swung her head around. Her backpack was still there - and it wasn't soaked with potion. She laughed. "All things considered, that is the best possible way that that could have gone!"

The end of the corridor was still open and uncluttered, and the magelight that was glowing along the walls provided enough illumination that Sari was able to advance relatively confidently, only wincing slightly with every footstep. She didn't know how many Black Walkers were in the tower, and what their goal was...but the two she had fought had mentioned that they had been hired to protect a Corpser. That was a slang term for a Necromancer. Sari frowned. Necromancers didn't have to be evil. The histories were full of heroic and bold necromancers who had provided for the world its most remarkable, amazing innovations. There was the Lich Queen of Atzlan and the Pharanese dynasty and-

Sari realized she was distracting herself from how scared she was when she came around the corner and found that she was not alone. A Black Walker was standing at the end of the corridor back to her, facing what looked like...a catastrophic example of damage to the tower. From outside, the Chanti Tower had looked mostly intact, but...now, she could tell that something big had happened here, because the corridor she was in just stopped after a few paces and dropped into a ruined chamber, like the whole ceiling had fallen in.

There were ropes and ladders thrown up around the edge, clearly there to let people descend deeper into the tower. Sari opened her mouth, about to call out, but then closed her mouth.

The Black Walker...

She narrowed her eyes.

The Black Walker had a stone jutting out of his head. He hadn't been wearing his helmet, and the chunk of rock had smashed through his skull and into his brain. Blood dripped along the side of his head. Soaked his steel pauldron and his black mail shirt. Beaded on his fingers. Pattered onto the ground. But it was moving slower now, because his heart had stopped. Sari's throat went dry. When animated by the dark energies of a necromancer, pulled from the Void itself, a corpse...literally could not die. Well, it was already dead.

But it wouldn't stop moving, not unless you severed that knot of energies. The necromancer had to place it somewhere...

Sari narrowed her eyes, trying to spot the faint glow of magical energies in the zombie. Some necromancers put it in the chest, or the head or-

The zombie turned, slowly, to face her, sightless eyes focusing on her. Sari yelped, then sprinted forward. She leaped up, kicked out with both legs, and sent the zombie whipping off the edge of the ruined corridor. She landed on her back with a grunt, air rushing from her, then sat up, and scrambled onto the nearest rope ladder, swinging herself down as the zombie hit the floor and skidded, groaning. It was a truism that skeletons can't swim and zombies can't climb, but it had a kernel of truth. The void energies puppeting the body were working through muscle and tissue that was dead, it couldn't possibly react as quickly as a living body.

So, by the time her boots crunched into the dirt and the stone of the shadowed lower levels of the ruin, the zombie was barely even starting to get its bearings. Sari sprinted over, holding her sword in both hands, looking frantically...and there! She saw the faint shimmer of purple light, glowing through the flesh.

Sari brought the blade down and impaled the zombie. It twitched once, and the void energies sustaining it unraveled the corpse with a blaze of black lightning. Once the crackling display was done, the body, the armor, the clothing underneath, all of it was gone and left behind nothing but the faint scent of ozone. Sari twirled her sword around and saw, ahead of her, that there was the sound of clamoring combat. Battle. Swords crashing, shields cracking. Shouts.

She crept forward and saw, immediately, a scene that...

Well.

It had to have happened at least several times in history. But rarely. There were about six Black Walkers standing in a half circle at the corner of the room, with shields interlocked. Most of them had swords, but they were sheathed - instead, they had switched to short spears with broad blades and fanning T-shaped guards underneath the blades. Boar spears, designed to...well, stop a rampaging boar from killing you after you killed it. These spears were at work trying to shove back skeletons that were throwing themselves at the Black Walkers again and again. Several skeletons lay shattered on the floor - but as she watched, one skeleton was smashed apart by the cracking blow of a shield. It flew backwards, hit the floor, scattered its bones, and then the bones began to draw back together until the skeleton had reformed.

Void energy.

Sari saw that the chamber had a massive door made of interlocked, etched stone pieces - and she recognized that design! It was a Chanti lock, it could only be awakened by the right fusion of magical energies. Before it, laying in a puddle of his own blood, was a necromancer. It looked like someone had stabbed him in the back - maybe one of the Black Walkers, upon seeing the dead raise from the ground, had panicked?

Either way...Sari bit her lip. The Black Walkers were going to be worn down, unless they started aiming for the knots of energies that they were supposed to hit to stop undead. She had a straight shot towards the door.

But...

Sari hissed. "Damn it."

She reached into her pack, then yanked out her potion bottle. There was another way to unweave knots of void energies - the exact opposite was the light of the Ninth Dragon, the healer and restorer and bringer of life. After the other dragons had made earth, water, the rest, the Ninth had placed the peoples of the world on it. He was the Dragon most opposed to the void energies necromancers trucked with. So, Sari yanked leather gloves from her pack, tugged them on, then stood and thew her healing potion directly at the skeletons surrounding the Black Walkers. The bottle struck, shattered, and the red liquid within exploded out in a fine spray. The skeletons hit by it hissed, withdrew, and exploded into crackling lightning as the void energy within them unwove explosively. The Black Walkers showed that they were a bit too used to things exploding like that - they locked shields and hunkered down as the three surviving skeletons turned their gaze to Sari.

They advanced towards her.

Sari reversed the grip on her sword, her leather gloves gripping the blade as she held up the cross-guard.

"Lets do this," she whispered.

"Men! Support the-" A female voice boomed out.

But then Sari caught a skeleton's claw swipe on her blade, twisted, and smashed the pommel into their ribcage, aiming directly at the knot of purple light she saw flickering there. The skeleton exploded into fragments as she sprang above a sweep at her legs by another skeleton using a half broken, rusted sword. Her feet hit the ground and she brought the cross-guard into the skull, shattering it and the knot of energy in the same motion. Her elbow caught the other skeleton in the ribs - knocking it over. She kicked its dagger out of its hand, then slammed her cross-guard down in a whistling arc that smashed in its pelvis, destroying the bone and the knot at once.

She stepped back, puffing softly, as the Black Walkers lowered their shields.

"...by the Nine..."

Sari brushed her hair back behind her ear and lifted her head - grinning slightly as she saw that the leader of the Black Walker was walking out of the knot of shields, taking off their crude, dented, scored helmet and-

Sari's entire face turned to scarlet flames as she saw the other woman in the glinting of magelight. Where Sari was svelte and short, the Black Walker commander was tall and broad. Her muscular frame was quite visible, even through her mail and steel plate, and she wore the armor incredibly well. Her features were rough cut and she had a set of three parallel scars that ran along her brow, over her left eye, and down along her cheek, turning her lip into a permanent smirk. She wore an eye-patch over the ruined mass that had been her eye, and it gave her the same daring features as a fabled sky-pirate.

"I was told you were a mage," she said, her voice a raspy husk that made Sari's heart race.

Sari's throat was dry. Her tongue was tied. She stammered. "W-Well, I...Sari Foundson, er, Foundotier." She stammered. "I, that is, my name. I...Apprentice Sari. I am..." She bowed her head, blushing even more - and then she froze as she saw a rough leather glove reach out. A knuckle caught under her chin, lifting her head uo.

"Sari, huh?" the commander murmured. "Free City name. You from the Free Cities?"

Sari wanted to melt. Or was melting. She wasn't sure which.

"Kinda," she whispered.

"The name's Hecate," the Black Walker murmured. "Hecate Stone Eye."

"Commander," one of the other Black Walkers said. "Should we..." He was touching the hilt of his sword - his spear having broken during the final moments of the battle.

Sari tensed.

But Hecate Stone Eye chuckled. "We were paid to keep the Corpser safe. Instead...this mission was a complete cockup. The Corpser got himself killed, we barely survived, and the whole ruin's a bust." She shrugged one shoulder. "Shit happens during war. The Old Man knows that."

Sari gulped.

"So, we're leaving," Hecate said.

The others nodded.

Sari didn't so much as breathe.

"After all," Hecate said, glancing from her to the door. "Not like we'd get through that without blasting powder, eh?"

Sari shook her head. She didn't trust herself to even speak.

"All right then," Hecate said. She looked back at Sari. "Thanks." She reached up, slowly. "But remember, kid..." She flipped her eyepatch back, revealing that rather than a mass of scar tissue or an empty socket, her missing eye...had been replaced by a small, smooth stone, white in color, etched with small, fine, glowing blue lines. The lines flared as Sari froze, feeling a chill wash over her. "I got my eye on you. Come on. We have some rubble to dig."

Then she flipped the patch back and started off. Her men followed after, leaving Sari alone in the chamber.

Sari frowned, slowly. She hadn't recognized that artifact but she knew that if she had a chance, Phenrig's books would have some clue. She shook her head. She had a mission here. And she'd have to find a way out, once she had done it. Sari stepped towards the door, placed her palm on it, closed her eyes...and frowned. She felt the magical energies flowing through her...

When the door opened, Sari was swearing under her breath. Furious beyond her capacity to rationally express it.

The magical password had been to channel fire, then earth, then water, then stars, then moon, then time, then fate, and finally...lordship and life itself. In short, the password had been one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and nine.

The kind of password a simpleton would use on a clockwork safe.

The door finished settling open - and the pale light of pure magic flowed out from the chamber. Sari shaded her eyes, then started to walk forward, her voice soft. "By the Nine..." She stepped out again a second later, holding the narrow, needle-sharp crystal. It buzzed in her palm, and felt light, easy to transport. Sari looked down at it and marveled at what was in the palm of her hand.

This was a Chanti crystal.

It was the source of the magical energies that had made Chanti cities fly and their magician kings live forever. It was power and might, a solidified mass of the raw creation of the world itself. It was a droplet of blood from the Dragons themselves.

"I think Master will be happy about this," Sari whispered.

And in the privacy of the ruin, she started to squeal and do a little dance.

TO BE CONTINUED