Into the Dark

[Shang Tsung]

The group had made it a few hours further when the first fissures started to appear. It began as quick yet fierce glimpses from one soldier to another. Those glances started to linger as the hold of the orange light tightened its grip on the individual’s minds. The sorcerer should have seen the indicators and reacted accordingly, but he didn’t expect the pot to boil over so quickly and so thunderously. Unfortunately, the attack prevented him from responding to the developments occurring within his group of soldiers.

From the sides, the shambling corpses came roaring out from the darkness. Their decomposing fingers grabbed at throats as their yellowed teeth gnashed together in anticipation of an easy meal.

Faced by the ambush, the eight soldiers reacted quickly and harshly to the undead assailants. Shang watched in silence as they fell back into a tight circle and laid into the closing ring of zombies with a wonderful brutality. Lancing bursts of hard light roared out from the cluster of Darkshire soldiers. The zombies groaned woefully as their limbs were blown apart by the sparkling orange columns of condensed energy. Decayed appendages and clumps of coagulated blood spattered wetly against the barren earth. Although the horde initially seemed to number in the dozens, the onslaught of machinegun-like hard light blasts quickly tore it to shreds.

The last zombie stumbled backwards as two beams of hard light tore through its chest and left thigh. It collapsed against the ground and held up a quavering arm for a brief moment before a third blast split open its skull like an overripe fruit.

Shang Tsung grinned from his horse and slowly started to clap his hands as the soldiers stepped out from their tight, circular formation and looked at the havoc they had wrought. For so long, they had heard stories of the monsters of the Pale Moors. Hordes of zombies that would overwhelm travelers and eat them alive. They heard tales of predators that would stalk you for hours before pouncing and tearing out your throat. Many of the soldiers had seen firsthand assaults on the walls and watched as friends had been yanked down and ripped open by eldritch creatures pulled from the nightmares of young children.

In a reversal of their fears, these men stood victorious against odds that would have resulted in the near annihilation of a normal squad of soldiers. Shang knew that to be true as well, for his first experiences as a member of the Darkshire garrison had involved an ambush. In that incident, all of his fellow soldiers had been slain, and it was only the experience of himself and the Spartan Atelos that allowed them to defeat their assailants and return to the city intact.

“It feels good to lay low the boogeymen, doesn’t it?” Shang Tsung inquired, yet despite his rhetorical question, he noted that the men weren’t listening to him. They weren’t even focused on him—their eyes had turned to their peers.

“Why is his ring better than mine?” One of them demanded, thrusting a finger at another soldier as he glanced at his peers. “All of yours are superior to mine! Why was I given an inferior ring? What is this treachery!”

Shang opened his mouth to address the situation, for he knew that any perceived difference in ring strength was based not on the innate potential of the ring but on its user. This poor soldier, clearly stressed by the recent ambush, was not seeing things as clearly as he should. Before the sorcerer could act to dispel the situation, another of his charges interjected with angry words as well.

“You lie! You hide your ring’s might to keep us from finding the truth, but you are revealed as a fraud! Give me your ring, you don’t deserve it!”