Manifestation: the Coming Dark/Chapter 12

The form of the necromancer was beautiful: his long jet-black hair offset his perfectly formed lavender wings, giving him a sense of royalty and grace. The wings themselves were a thing of beauty, primarily a striking lavender that deepened at the top to a darker mauve while the wing tips were edged with a bright scarlet.

His voice too was soft, melodious, his words uttered with a sincere sweetness that failed to reveal their subtle menace. "Greetings, Darin son of Liam, Governor of K'eld Ner, servant of Tralin King of Deren. On behalf of his majesty The'Galin, I welcome you to his world and to his service"

The words filled me with a sense of melancholy and at first I could not capture the import of what he was saying. He had completed a similar greeting to both Xander and Sigarin before I recognized the impact of his words. Oddly, they just looked past the stranger as if they either could not seem him or considered him beneath their notice.

"I will never serve The'Galin!" I said, annoyed. "I shall resist the Devourer with all of my strength!"

"Your strength shall be a great asset to us, Lord Darin," the Brilhado said then.

"We can use it in your current form... or we can alter your form to one that is more amenable to service." The Brilhado smiled. "You do not have Tralin servant of Lorithia to disrupt our magics here as he did with the renegade Draynor."

"Service taken by force is no service at all, it is enslavement," Sigarin snarled. The dwarf seemed somehow larger in light of the charge. Yet his distraction meant he was not tending to the portal, but was arguing with the Brilhado instead. I gave him a look to suggest the inappropriateness of this course and then turned back to hear the answer.

"True. Yet it is service nonetheless... Willing or not, it makes no difference. All that matters is control. All that matters is victory. What place have codes of ethics and morals in a world so decayed that it must be destroyed and created anew...?"

"It is not the world that is decayed, Brilhado," I said, angered. "It is you. You are the force of decay. You deal with The'Galin despite owing your very existence to the Light Lord. You betray your lord and your people. You are the worst of your breed... trafficking in undead?! What does a Brilhado know of undeath?..."

Even as the words escaped my lips, I realized that they were an error. Goading an enemy that you are confident of defeating is often an unwise decision. Goading an enemy that scares the wits out of you, while potentially a good bluff, is most often sheer madness. That the Brilhado could see and know the nature of my form, that he knew so much about me personally should have set off warning bells, but I was angered and terrified. Rational thought went out the window in the face of the unknown enemy.

"Such bile," The Brilhado said, and before a word or response could be uttered he was a matter of inches away, looking at me in the eyes, boring into my being, reading my very soul. "Such animosity and contempt you have for us, Lord Darin. How could you find service to our lord The'Galin to be so detestable? After all, he only wants to control the rabble to protect that he values from the storm of greed and incompetence. You have long served our lord The'Galin, Darin son of Liam. Your malice has long fed him in the cold and dark. It has long nurtured him while he waited. Your malice, Lord Darin, gave us the strength to summon an army of undead, your plotting and machinations the power to kill that insignificant human king, who made such poor decisions about the division of Drakel and human cultures. Your malice, Darin, marks you like a beacon, and though you pretend to have reformed, indeed, even if you truly have repented of your sins, the mark is already there... Now you have come to us... after so recently having been inside the walls of the Drakel K'eld they call Ner... You who let one of our own, the one you call Giliara enter. Well, both you and Giliara shall return to your true master's service. Of this you can be assured... for you have served us yet again... Your anger toward us... It makes your emotions readable.... It makes you weak... However, it also gives us time to surround you on all sides. We shall strip you of your venom toward The'Galin. We shall make you loathe purity and light. We shall make you enjoy the stench of your own decaying flesh and revel in the sensation of the millions of crawling maggots swimming thorough your animated corpse. Moreover, your soul shall not be freed. It shall join in the damnation and depravity, but first, between the three of you, we shall get a very accurate map right to the door of K'eld N'er... It is for this reason that we brought our vassal Myr to this place. We knew not the precise bearing. We knew not the exact defenses. Now, Lord Darin, we have its governor to share in the siege and destruction of his own city. Better, we have the dwarf Sigarin of Alorin, who knows the locations of every walled city, every domed city, every De'me'thar village, and every elemental Caster outpost. The ancient and noble Drakel race have remained hidden for centuries in defiance of their true master. They have broken the covenant they swore with Xilar and hidden in the depths... But we shall have them... and all because you have given them to us..."

"Darin!" Xander cried then, breaking my rapture, for I could not resist listening to the words. An odd sense of anticipatory pleasure had even begun to build. I shuddered at the necromancer's ability to manipulate not only the flesh with decay, but the mind and soul as well. He used just enough truth to ensure it. He knew my sins. I was laid bare.

"Darin!" Xander repeated insistently, and he grabbed and shoved me into the portal, which hung there insistently. He followed close behind. The moment of rapture broken, we were fleeing for our very lives. In the distance, I saw the stranger clear the far end of the portal. Even as I fled, I stole a glance behind me. Xander moved in close proximity. As I turned, Sigarin jumped into the portal. A small lance of green light touched him on the shoulder, but before it could induce injury, Sigarin forced that end of the portal closed. The collapsing portal expelled us violently into the grass and, for a moment, as I stood there in Vandar once again, I felt a sensation of triumph. They had made a grab for us but had failed.

"Everyone alright?" I asked, turning and knowing the answer to be negative before anyone spoke. Sigarin's flesh had already taken on an ashen pallor with a hint of green sickness matching the light that had grazed him for but a moment.

"I feel so cold," he said, and his voice was not that of a strong dwarf, a noble race, nor of a proud society that had built itself up in spite of all odds and contrary to the established order.

The stranger whirled and looked at me and Xander directly.

"Kill him NOW!" he said, more annoyed then afraid, his demeanor still distant. "Sigarin has contracted the Cold. He is done for... It will rot his very mind, body, and soul from within, while on the outside, all that is apparent is a slight pallor that fades with time. You shall think he has recovered, but he has become a servant of The'Galin. There is no escaping it. No magic of your world can resist the Cold."

"What?" Xander asked. "Like Drakath used?"

"Very much so.. Worse still.. for this Cold... this evil... is far worse then the secret power of the former Dark Dragon. This Cold is an infection and it is contagious.. it will spread to any that Sigarin touches; within hours they will serve The'Galin with total devotion... it is the most subtle and evil form of undeath I have encountered in all of my travels..."

"You must listen to him..." Sigarin pleaded. "I must not live like this... I must not become his servant. They already can find K'eld Ner, they must not have my power and my mind. They must not use me to take down Alorin. My family is there... please... Xander... Darin... Kill me..."

It was Xander who moved first. Even though he detested the thought of killing a friend, his sense of duty and honor could not let him refuse. He may also have realized that K'eld Alorin was frighteningly close to not only the dwarves in Shadowgarden, but indeed to Stone Deep as well.

"No wait.. I am ok now.. I am sorry," Sigarin said, even as Xander pulled the sword. "It was not the Cold. It was only that wet sensation from the portal. It hit me harder because of the collapse of the portal is all... What a relief..."

The blade of Xander's sword made quick work of his throat. I shuddered then; the Cold had moved fast. He could have touched either of us before we realized what had happened. We had gone seeking Myr... Nevertheless, it had been a trap.

"We need to travel as quickly as possible to Stone Deep. We can arrange magical transport there. Without Sigarin, we cannot teleport to Deren... We must tell the king as quickly as possible what happened... They need to be warned.."

"Right," Xander said.

"...are you coming..." I started, and then stopped, for the stranger that had warned us of the Brillhado's coming and of the danger of the Cold was gone.