Dreadlords A Life Etched In Blood

[HRavielle]

Ryan continued to fight through the creatures as they came at her. She was lost in her own little world of slicing and blasting energy when she heard Edric scream. The sound was like nothing she had ever heard before and she immediately felt sick.

Edric didn't scream. Edric was stoic and scary and serious. Edric was the best Initiate in their class.

They were all going to die.

The moment of distraction from his scream caused one of the creatures to slash forward with its huge tendril and it crashed into her side. She felt her flesh rip and several of her ribs crack as her own cry escaped her lips. She let the energy she had absorbed out on the creature causing it to ram into a wall.

She was angry and that lent her even more power of her own to add to the absorbed power.

 

[Edric]

The struggling, waif of a man upon the throne let out a strained groan. The pain of Drastus' magic lancing through his form.

He was a shamble of himself.

An echo of the title that he wore.

A decade ago this creature could have wiped them all away. Five years ago he could have snapped his fingers and seen the Initiates as little more than corpses. Now? Now he was a shadow of what he had once been.

Skin clung to him, muscles thinned to little more than crisps. What this man had once been had long ago faded away. His dignity torn away by the machinations of others. Archon Davis, had been his name, and yet now he was a shambling corpse upon a throne.

His fingers curled. Those tendrils dug deeper and deeper into Edric's flesh. They tore and ripped away at the energy within the reserve. Desperately stripping the Initiates of his magic.

It would have been his end.

It should have been his end.

The Archon dragged away his life, pulled at all the magic he had stolen and stored away. Ripping and tearing in utter desperation. Yet the jolt of Drastus' magic, the sudden flow of Ryan's power. It ran through Edric's veins, coursing and pouring into the reserve.

His fingers formed into a fist, latching around the tendrils within his veins. A roar echoed from his throat, and with a sudden jerk he pulled himself forward. A crack echoed outward, mixing with the screams of haunted beasts. Bone shattered, flesh pierced, and fingers curled.

"Yo-You could have been so much mo-"​

A sickening crunch lurched out, Edric's fist crushing the Archon's heart.

 

[Drastus Tal'deneshaar]

Drast hit the earth hard, the pain lancing up his arm to remind him he was still alive in the most painful way possible. Getting up slowly, his magick would swirl around him to protect him. But there was no point. No immediate threat.

Whatever they had done was enough to help Edric kill the Archon. Or at the very least work his chest cavity like a puppet. It was a relief.

Drast would drop to his knees as the adrenaline burned through his system and the magick bond to Rupert faded some. Rupert would step over to the Archon, his hunger growing with every step. "You belong to me for eternity.." For the first time ever, the voice that Drast had heard in the back of his mind.. would flash loud enough for the others to hear. Rupert would extend a bony hand to the Archon and the ethereal wisps would snake their way out to where the broken Davis sat, encircling him and several bright pulses would pull further screams from Davis and his spawns before the wisps returned to Rupert.

 

[Edric]

The husk in front of him crumbled.

Whether by Edric's hand, the leeching of Drastus' undeath, or simply the crushing weight of his own existence Archon Davis fell to pieces. His body slipped to little more than dust, crumbling in upon itself as the man who had once been the very signal of power fell apart.

Within seconds he was little more than ash, laying upon the throne. His creatures screeching, twisting in horror in death as they too found the same fate. The magic that had fed them and kept them alive slipping away as the master who had carved off slivers from himself faded away.

A voice echoed out, and Edric turned.

The wild, predatory look in his eyes washed over the room, but he found only Drastus and Ryan. His lips thinned, his fingers covered in an ichor of black tar that had once been blood. "It's done."

He said simply, a finality.

They had killed an Archon. A wasted, husk of what had once been an Archon anyway.

Edric knew that.

What they had accomplished here was impressive, there was no doubt, but Davis had not been himself. His strength had faded, or been long ago taken by those whom he'd thought allies. It had not been an Archon they fought today, not truly.

What they had found here in this tower was a madman, trapped in his own labyrinth of horror. "Let's get out of here."

Edric said quietly, the tar like blood dripping from his hand as he walked towards the others.