07-02-2017, 08:34 AM
Snow cascaded down from the heavens, the ever-falling frozen flakes cascading down from the shrouded heavens. They landed upon a set of broad shoulders, hidden beneath marble-white hide, freshly torn from an arctic wolf. A spyglass emerged from beneath the snow and ragged cloak, the brass tube wrapped in simple sackcloth to hide the gleam of metal. A brace of knives was sheathed across the figure’s chest, while an axe accompanied by a hook and chain hung from his hips. As he focused his apparatus towards the sable spire of stone rising from the frozen wastes, a quill scratched and scraped across a piece of vellum laid across his knee, inscribing it with ink in the distinctive flow of the Elvish script.
Vulre’s chosen profession had a distinct advantage: You never questioned what you were doing. Every moment was with purpose, a preparation for the final confrontation between hunter and prey.
In this case, the prey in question was Tharsis, a necromancer who had stumbled across a cache of ancient lore within the ruined fortress before them, and had begun accumulating enough hostages and rare reagents to warrant a bounty being placed atop their head. While most nobles were loathe to pay interest to anything outside of their immediate attention, even they were able to recognize the inception of a lich. For the past three days, Vulre had maintained his vigil, his observations scrawled down upon the sheet of treated leather. The deliveries of various alchemical ingredients by black-clad men, the sacrifices hauled in from the nearest villages by skeletal minions, and the meagre amount of food required to sustain both sorcerer and slaves.
The feather rapped against his leather-clad thumb as he thought, gnawing on a scarred lip as he considered his options. For decades, he’d hunted down warlocks, bandits, and worse. One aspiring lich was hardly a new experience, but overconfidence was as sure a killer as any blade. Necromancers had a tendency towards organization and control issues: Many an undead horde marched in perfect lockstep, each movement perfectly orchestrated by a monstrous master. That meant frequent patrols and traps designed to exploit any missed step. If a would-be assassin could bypass the intricate arrangement of autonomous defenses, they’d face the necromancer himself. Despite popular perception, necromancers were more versatile than simple reanimation. The manipulation of life and death lends itself to stealing souls and vitality alike, leaving many an aspiring crusader left unable to even move within their heavy armour as their body betrayed them. Of course, their time bartering with dark spirits often stripped them of their own constitution, leaving them as frail as one would expect an aging scholar living alone in a frozen wasteland to be.
Unless they bought that life back with other lives, that is. Vulre murmured under breath, discrete clouds of fog slipping out from beneath his helm in the cold as he consulted the tally of newly arrived slaves and supplies. A scowl spread across his scarred visage, swearing as he confirmed the numbers. Assuming the slaves were being starved to keep them weak and compliant, there were at least three being killed off each day. That left thirty souls to offer up for whatever ritual they had planned, and three each day to bolster his power.
Another fact was circled and underlined upon his sheet of secrets: Alchemy. Vulre was most decidedly inexperienced when it comes to such matters, but his brief foray into the world of potions confirmed one fact: it had a tendency to combust when handled improperly, and he had the burns to prove it. An act of arson brought about by alchemy would be more than sufficient to raze the ruins down to ashes, burn the rightfully forbidden lore the warlock unearthed, and…
The Slaves.
Damn, cursed the bounty hunter, snow falling from his form as he began to rise up, concealing his equipment within a set of leather pouches. Frozen feet forced their way through the drifts, craving a path through the seemingly infinite expanse of cold white death. Flakes slowly slid down the steel of his helmet, leaving quickly freezing trails of condensation upon the dull surface. Through the blizzard buffeting him, dull green eyes saw the first line of defence: A pair of patchwork skeletons stood guard by the gateway, a variety of discoloured bones creating colossuses of calcified death. Mage-light burnt in empty eye sockets, the arcane gaze seeking out souls, rather than attempting to penetrate the all-obfuscating storm.
Polearms clutched in many-fingered hands didn’t even twitch as Vulre strolled between them, the balefire seeking to scorch his soul finding nothing, his aura entirely non-existent to their ‘enhanced’ perception. The stone slabs parted with a scraping screech, the undead ignoring the sound, as it lay outside the commands of the dark script scrawled across the inside of their skull, the warped words which gave their false lives purpose and power.
The hunter’s boots silently slid over the stone, leaving a trail of half-melted snow as he did so, eyes carefully watching the stones beneath him: Which were scuffed with the constant motion of the skeletal horde? Which were entirely untouched, save the dried blood staining their surface? It was a delicate dance, each step a reminder that one wrong move could end him, leaving him impaled, decapitated, or eviscerated; his legend left to die in this frozen ruin.
That was, of course, unacceptable.
After several minutes of carefully traipsing over the tracks, they diverged: Down one passage, there were drag marks, indicative of the lost souls carried away into this forsaken fortress. As for the other, a set of stairs ascended further up into the spire, leaving the all-too mortal slaves behind to suffer. The captives were a problem: Vulre had scarcely enough supplies to sustain himself, and it was doubtful they would survive a trek through the tundra unaided. They’d be the neighbouring villages’ concern: The undoubtedly explosive confrontation should send scouts running soon enough.
There was no last-minute readying of gear, desperate prayers, or steeling of resolve. The hunter hefted his axe and hook over his iron-clad shoulders, his oiled gambeson silent as he began his ascent. There were no traps; a single patch of ice in this environment could send an absent-minded necromancer sprawling into spikes of their own design. No, the journey to the oaken door was short and simple, the iron lock sealing him off from the bubbling of alchemical beakers, the weeping of lost souls, and the ethereal chanting he had grown to expect from aspiring immortals.
He raised a boot, the iron embedded in the sole crashing against the wood, sending fragments flying off as he crashed forward into-
Nothingness.
“My name is Omni. This is not the world you know.”
Vulre gasped as he awoke, pressing himself upwards from the empty plane beneath him, gloved hands patting himself down as he inspected his armour and body. There were no cuts, no bruises, no broken bones, no arrows impaling him.
He was alive.
He rose a hand to the dull metal of his helm, scratching his head through the hardened material.
But where in Dis’s bowels was he?
Vulre’s chosen profession had a distinct advantage: You never questioned what you were doing. Every moment was with purpose, a preparation for the final confrontation between hunter and prey.
In this case, the prey in question was Tharsis, a necromancer who had stumbled across a cache of ancient lore within the ruined fortress before them, and had begun accumulating enough hostages and rare reagents to warrant a bounty being placed atop their head. While most nobles were loathe to pay interest to anything outside of their immediate attention, even they were able to recognize the inception of a lich. For the past three days, Vulre had maintained his vigil, his observations scrawled down upon the sheet of treated leather. The deliveries of various alchemical ingredients by black-clad men, the sacrifices hauled in from the nearest villages by skeletal minions, and the meagre amount of food required to sustain both sorcerer and slaves.
The feather rapped against his leather-clad thumb as he thought, gnawing on a scarred lip as he considered his options. For decades, he’d hunted down warlocks, bandits, and worse. One aspiring lich was hardly a new experience, but overconfidence was as sure a killer as any blade. Necromancers had a tendency towards organization and control issues: Many an undead horde marched in perfect lockstep, each movement perfectly orchestrated by a monstrous master. That meant frequent patrols and traps designed to exploit any missed step. If a would-be assassin could bypass the intricate arrangement of autonomous defenses, they’d face the necromancer himself. Despite popular perception, necromancers were more versatile than simple reanimation. The manipulation of life and death lends itself to stealing souls and vitality alike, leaving many an aspiring crusader left unable to even move within their heavy armour as their body betrayed them. Of course, their time bartering with dark spirits often stripped them of their own constitution, leaving them as frail as one would expect an aging scholar living alone in a frozen wasteland to be.
Unless they bought that life back with other lives, that is. Vulre murmured under breath, discrete clouds of fog slipping out from beneath his helm in the cold as he consulted the tally of newly arrived slaves and supplies. A scowl spread across his scarred visage, swearing as he confirmed the numbers. Assuming the slaves were being starved to keep them weak and compliant, there were at least three being killed off each day. That left thirty souls to offer up for whatever ritual they had planned, and three each day to bolster his power.
Another fact was circled and underlined upon his sheet of secrets: Alchemy. Vulre was most decidedly inexperienced when it comes to such matters, but his brief foray into the world of potions confirmed one fact: it had a tendency to combust when handled improperly, and he had the burns to prove it. An act of arson brought about by alchemy would be more than sufficient to raze the ruins down to ashes, burn the rightfully forbidden lore the warlock unearthed, and…
The Slaves.
Damn, cursed the bounty hunter, snow falling from his form as he began to rise up, concealing his equipment within a set of leather pouches. Frozen feet forced their way through the drifts, craving a path through the seemingly infinite expanse of cold white death. Flakes slowly slid down the steel of his helmet, leaving quickly freezing trails of condensation upon the dull surface. Through the blizzard buffeting him, dull green eyes saw the first line of defence: A pair of patchwork skeletons stood guard by the gateway, a variety of discoloured bones creating colossuses of calcified death. Mage-light burnt in empty eye sockets, the arcane gaze seeking out souls, rather than attempting to penetrate the all-obfuscating storm.
Polearms clutched in many-fingered hands didn’t even twitch as Vulre strolled between them, the balefire seeking to scorch his soul finding nothing, his aura entirely non-existent to their ‘enhanced’ perception. The stone slabs parted with a scraping screech, the undead ignoring the sound, as it lay outside the commands of the dark script scrawled across the inside of their skull, the warped words which gave their false lives purpose and power.
The hunter’s boots silently slid over the stone, leaving a trail of half-melted snow as he did so, eyes carefully watching the stones beneath him: Which were scuffed with the constant motion of the skeletal horde? Which were entirely untouched, save the dried blood staining their surface? It was a delicate dance, each step a reminder that one wrong move could end him, leaving him impaled, decapitated, or eviscerated; his legend left to die in this frozen ruin.
That was, of course, unacceptable.
After several minutes of carefully traipsing over the tracks, they diverged: Down one passage, there were drag marks, indicative of the lost souls carried away into this forsaken fortress. As for the other, a set of stairs ascended further up into the spire, leaving the all-too mortal slaves behind to suffer. The captives were a problem: Vulre had scarcely enough supplies to sustain himself, and it was doubtful they would survive a trek through the tundra unaided. They’d be the neighbouring villages’ concern: The undoubtedly explosive confrontation should send scouts running soon enough.
There was no last-minute readying of gear, desperate prayers, or steeling of resolve. The hunter hefted his axe and hook over his iron-clad shoulders, his oiled gambeson silent as he began his ascent. There were no traps; a single patch of ice in this environment could send an absent-minded necromancer sprawling into spikes of their own design. No, the journey to the oaken door was short and simple, the iron lock sealing him off from the bubbling of alchemical beakers, the weeping of lost souls, and the ethereal chanting he had grown to expect from aspiring immortals.
He raised a boot, the iron embedded in the sole crashing against the wood, sending fragments flying off as he crashed forward into-
Nothingness.
“My name is Omni. This is not the world you know.”
Vulre gasped as he awoke, pressing himself upwards from the empty plane beneath him, gloved hands patting himself down as he inspected his armour and body. There were no cuts, no bruises, no broken bones, no arrows impaling him.
He was alive.
He rose a hand to the dull metal of his helm, scratching his head through the hardened material.
But where in Dis’s bowels was he?
Torcher of tomes, slayer of sorcerers, taker of ears, and flayer of men. Reasonable rates.