Edge of Extinction war story/Chapter 9

All that remained of him was pain, agonizing pain that dulled all thought and all other senses.

For ages, neither sight nor sound penetrated through that blistering red wall of agony. Ultimately, the necrotic processes that kept him alive even in spite of such damage, and that had kept him alive for close to a millennium, made a desperate attempt at repair of his severely compromised physiology.

Unlike a therianthrope, however, he did not possess the faculty of regeneration, and most of his skeletal structure had been seriously compromised, with some of the bones taking considerable damage in the process. Consequently, the most that these natural processes managed to accomplish was the return of his other mental processes: vision came first; then the sense of sound; olfaction and its related gustatory senses, which had been somewhat dulled to begin with, returned last.

With the integration of these sensory pathways came the integration of higher reasoning and the return of memory and cognition, and so the blistering pain that still filled his very being gave way slightly to admit identity and to thought.

"I am the Commander," he said, confused, before realizing that he was parroting one of his more recent experiences.

He tried to move his head to change his field of vision and sound, but found himself totally unable to do so.

"I am still alive. Sloppy. Sloppy. Alive. Sloppy...."

The mishmash of conflicting thoughts and sensory input finally sorted itself enough that he could ascertain from the various perceptions what his current state was. He has been literally disassembled. No two of the approximately 210 bones that made up his skeletal structure were still joined, and several of the individual larger bones had been shattered, including some considerable damage to his jaw and skull.

'Why leave me alive?' Cagliari wondered.

"You were not left alive. You were saved from annihilation, a favor which you will now return."

Cagliari could hear the voice but not focus on it until a cloaked figure took his skull from the pile and glanced directly into his face.

"Alas, poor Yorick," the figure stated to the skull. "I knew him well, Horatio."

'Who are Yorick or Horatio?' Cagliari thought, distinctly disturbed by the appearance of this figure, which filled him with far darker memories than even his recent disassembly.

"Iwithnot serve Odauf Mantle," Cagliari tried to speak, but no longer possessing his lower mandible made articulating these noises next to impossible.

"You should not speak too soon, Cagliari Lux," the necromancer responded. Cagliari had the distinct impression that he intended this as a double entendre. Yet he completed the idea then, solidifying which of the two possible interpretations he meant. "You have been severely compromised. Until repair and healing are effected, such only risks more pain and damage. I am somewhat proficient in more mental communication with my undead. It is an area of my people's specialty, in fact."

'You are a Brilhado,' Cagliari thought. 'You are using the Cold. Do you intend to try to forcibly make me join you? You may succeed, but in the end, that path will lead to your destruction. You should mark me well.'

"I am not an idiot, Lux. I know who you are by name. Which means I know WHAT you are. So no... I will not compel you using the Cold."

'I was of the impression Diviara Celegra was the only member of the Order of Mysterious Necromancers among your people.'

"Oh no," the Brilhado said. "My father, in fact, very directly rose to the traitor's place, an act which he was aided in by Father Dhows himself.

"My father, however, chose to keep the guise of a Brilhado, as, generally, have I.

"I am a wearer of the Mantle and not merely a Mysterious Brilhado Necromancer precisely because I choose to remain unidentified. You, however, can call me Grimveil. I came all the way from the fighting on Deren. Imagine my surprise to see THE Cagliari Lux, being killed by supposed adherents of his own faith."

"Young," Cagliari said, and then, remembering himself, switched to thought. 'You are very young... not even an adult...'

"What does my age have to do with my capability to heal you?" Grimveil asked the undead pointedly.

'I had heard that the warring was just as bad on Deren. Why would you come here, in light of that fact?'

"I was summoned by the Order of Mysterious Necromancers. Naturally, I am a member, so I came. Though I am also the leader of the Brilhado, so I had to hide the fact that I did so, lest it be perceived incorrectly as abandoning my own people for this front."

'If you do not intend to force my service, what do you intend? You cannot convince me to join this war.'

"Again with the too-soon speaking. On the way to this place, I stopped at the City of Deren and looked upon the building site of the new temple. I remained hidden, but I overhead the architect, a fellow called Myr, talking to the Derenian king."

'And?'

"The architect said that he had heard word of some sort of damage, to what I could not ascertain. I did, however, hear him say that he believed, given what he was being told, that it was quite possible that the Lords of Light and Dark would not only allow this damage to occur, but that they might turn their backs on the situation entirely, likely permanently."

'They do not support your war.'

"No. I gather rather strongly that they do not. That does not matter, however, as neither my people nor necromancers in general are any longer beholden to them. Given what I have seen happening in Battleon and what the architect said, I think they have already abandoned us."

Cagliari did not respond to this.

"It is not as if they can even harm us, save by them stripping each one of us individually of our powers, and we number far too many for that to be practical. But those who harm their servitors. They will likely see the worst of what is coming. Presently, it seems to me as if the paladin Xander and his order are in serious trouble. Had I not chased them off from you, you would be no longer with us at all.

"While there is nothing that the Elemental Lords can do to harm us as a whole, there is something they can do individually, and there are likewise things they can do to aid us individually. We have discord among my people. At the end of this war, I wish the Lady to look kindly upon me among her creation and keep me as the leader of the Brilhado..."

'And so you intend to use my injuries to your advantage.'

"Yes."

'You will heal me, but only if I use my station as a communicant to try to advance your position.'

"Excellent deductive reasoning. I am glad to see your higher functions were not more permanently damaged by the paladins. Lesser undead may have lost sentience permanently from being damaged as severely as you have been..."

'Typical necromancer, you may not be compelling me via force, but you are compelling me nonetheless. You are a coward just as the paladin who struck me down was. You are no better than he...'

"WATCH YOUR TONGUE, UNDEAD. OR I SHALL WATCH IT FOR YOU..."

'Hit too close to home?' Cagliari though deliberately. 'You are a coward. You fear the change that you know is coming.'

"Call it what you will, Lux."

'And now you threaten to harm me. What happened to not wanting to get on the Lady's bad side?'

"The Elemental Lords are irrelevant in this conflict. This is not a battle between the Lady and the Lord, nor even between their churches. This is a battle between the mages known as necromancers and the Paladin Order. You remain neutral as well. So why choose sides at all? I am only seeking security..."

'When you seek security via manipulation, what you get instead is stuck in the swampy morass you have created. Will you harm me?'

"No..." Grimveil said; his words were calm, but his tone was the petulance of a teenager who had been denied something that they really wanted. "But if you will not aid me, nor will I aid you."

'So be it.'

"I must return to Deren. Good luck.... getting out of your current predicament...."

With that, he lobbed Cagliari's skull hard into an opposite copse of trees. Nothing that would do any damage, but it certainly made his rescue and reassembly all that more difficult and all the more unlikely...