Private Tales In Searching

[The Wight Knight]

The Wight Knight had left Elbion approximately a month ago. He wanted to search for any means of understanding magic, but his appearance aided him in talking to no one. He'd tried a library, but couldn't make sense of any of the letters. How long had he been asleep if the alphabet had changed so tremendously?

The crowds of Elbion had begun to threaten him. To choke him. He was reminded so much of what he used to have. The streets packed with people, bustling about in hopes of finding success or gold. In his home, the people balanced water carriers atop their heads and stuffed their packs full with fresh food. The people of his home were generous and caring. They watched each other's backs. They never let one another starve. His home was perfection. Not a single soul was out of place. There was a comfortable order to the way they lived out their lives.

In Elbion, the water carriers were replaced with armfuls of books and scrolls. The fresh food was swapped for touristy knick-knacks. People didn't pay attention to one another. They were preoccupied with education. With gaining knowledge. Knowledge was the new power in Elbion. While the bustling was familiar, the obsessions were strange.

Now, the Wight Knight scoured the open dessert, desperate to pick up the tracks of any sort of recognizable establishment. The few towns he had come across were new and odd. The architecture was all wrong. The clothing was out of place. Everything was so unfathomably different.

In his travels in Elbion, the knight had come across one promising piece of information. He'd overheard a conversation of two college students on something they called The Eternum. A mass of undead and necromancers. A wall of terror and death. It sounded exactly like something a witch with a calling for undead curses would follow. Perhaps the witch was still alive and traveling with them, bestowing the same fate among all those she encountered.

His new goal was to find this Eternum. It was the only hope he had.

Sitting in the desert by a fire he'd barely been able to conjure, the Wight Knight adjusted his rusted helmet. His horse stood by, awaiting command, as if it were an unmovable force. There was no wind. There was hardly any sun. For the first time since he'd awoken, he felt alone. So, horribly alone. His anger had subsided and his situation was completely dawned on him.

If he still had eyes in his sockets, he would shed a few tears. One for his kingdom, his home, that sat buried in dust, awaiting its inhabitants to fill its streets once more. Another for his father, who taught him how to smith, who'd taught him to pursue whatever dream he felt was his destiny. The last would be for Serah. Beautiful, honorable Serah. Courageous Serah who'd given him a chance. Who'd given him life. Who'd given him love.

In his loneliness, the Wight Knight wished for her most. He sat by the fire, legs crossed, and ran his armored hands over his helmet, hoping and praying to one day be able to touch her again.

 

[Urdresh the Abhorrent]

In the depths of the desert, where the air was still and the setting of the sun had cast a vast, desolate chill over the same dunes which burned like fire in the day, a fell and fetid breeze arbitrarily stirred the sands. It peeled and roared, growing in strength with every second until it was a tremulous and seething sandstorm, but of a most uncanny nature; it remained rooted to a single spot, transfixed there, like a dread disaster isolated to a mere twenty feet of space. Nothing could be seen of what transpired within the eye of the storm, for the wailing curtain of sand was impenetrable by the naked eye.


And then, just as swiftly as it had begun, the storm abated, and the wall of sand cascaded with a hiss back to the desert floor. There, crumpled in a hideous heap upon the dunes, lay a decrepit figure where before there had been only desert. It was an unclothed shape, like that of a man, but divested not just of garment but of flesh. Skeletal and withered, it resembled nothing more than an ancient cadaver, its yellowed, eroded bones tethered together only by the thinnest film of papery, mummified tissue. Upon its person the only attire it wore were two articles of jewelry: a ring set with a faintly gleaming oval ruby of stark beauty, and a golden amulet bearing


It lay there in a fetal position, completely still, for a very long time until at last, beyond all reason, it displayed the faintest signs of motion. Its bony talons flexed, clenching and unclenching, and with a shuddering gasp like the vehement breath of a surfacing diver or the first terrifying gulp of air of a newborn infant, it coughed a fetid cloud of dust from its grinning maw and began to shift. Twin points of pale green light arose in the cavernous depths of its hollow eye sockets, glowing dimly, weakly.


For what seemed in the eerie stillness to be an eternity, this horrific apparition sat there, consolidating its strength, waiting patiently. It had sensed the pair of mortal eyes hidden behind the tall dunes which had observed the phenomenon of its appearance with palpable terror, sensed even now the halting, hesitant steps of the camel-driver and his beast tentatively approaching to investigate the unearthly scene.


Urdresh, the Black Vizier, the ancient usurper of Najakhet, observed the traveler curiously. He heard the man call out in a language which he only dimly recognized as one of the dialects of the nomadic traders of this part of the desert, though his manner of speech was vastly different from its counterpart of antiquity. Perhaps he had slept too long this time.


“...hello? My friend, are you well...? What has happened t–” Slowly, the lich rose to his full height, revealing his monstrous visage. The traveler's eyes bulged with disbelieving fear, and a madness overtook his camel, sending it braying and galloping away mindlessly into the desert. “Gods, no!”


But Urdresh had already extended a desiccated hand, his dry claws unfurled, the crackling green arcs of dark magic coursing through the air to connect with their victim...



Many Days Later...



Who was this intriguing stranger? Since he had satiated his weakness upon that camel-driver's soul, this lone figure looming broodily by his fire had been the only sign of life upon the sands the lich had thus far observed. Perhaps 'life' was the improper terminology... this being was dead. Even weakened as his powers were, Urdresh could sense as much. The touch of undeath was unmistakable to one who knew its familiar reek and odious vapors. Could this be providence from Bel-Ayya, that slithering reliquary of dark secrets?


“Do you send me a gift, O mistress?” mused the lich, shielded from view by dark magic, observing the subject of his fascination from aloft a rocky tongue of red stone some distance away. “Or yet another irksome obstacle?” The lich paused, weighing his options. He was not yet strong enough to repel a powerful foe. If he gambled foolishly and lost, he could be banished back to his long slumber, wasting yet more time, leaving his secrets and his treasures vulnerable to generations of hapless looters.


The lapping flames of the meager fire flickered uncertainly from a sudden and unnatural breath of foul wind, and there suddenly stood at the foot of the camp the momentous silhouette of a figure clad in ancient and opulent garb. The succulent vitality drained from his first victim had returned a modicum of power to the lich, and Urdresh wasted no time using his profane sorcery to adorn himself in the gilt and debaucherous trappings of the Black Vizier.


The robed figure held up a diplomatic hand immediately, seeking to assuage any volatile reaction from the deathless warrior.


“Hail, wanderer,” the lich intoned, sanguine, sibilant. “I wonder, why bother to spark a fire at all...?”

 

[The Wight Knight]

He wasn't sure how long he'd been sitting by the fire, watching the remaining flames dance among the sad excuse of a camp. The Wight Knight was entranced by the way they flickered into each other, only to separate seconds later. One large flame became two, then four, then merged back together into one mass. The knight was empty. Hollow. All thought from the hours past had left him. Now he was nothing but a shell.

At the peak of night when the moon rose to its highest, surrounded by a league of shimmering stars, a figure revealed itself. What seemed to be an illusion of a man, no, a demon, rose before him in a flurry of green light. He was dead, that much the knight could sense. There was no other way to define such a being other than monstrous.

The Wight Knight made no noise as it spoke to him, raising a hand in a manner he could not read. The being was questioning him. Questioning his fire. He was right to, of course. No fire, no matter how ferocious, could warm him. The knight supposed that such an action was merely an attempt at feeling human again.

Slowly, the knight rose from his position in the sand. His mind had clicked back on, truly taking in the intimidating appearance of the being in front of him. His robes. His adornments. His bones. He oozed of magic. After the Wight Knight woke, he'd been able to feel it. It was the only thing he could feel anymore. Magic burned through his rotted flesh and raked up his spine. The magic of the being before him was nearly unbearable, but the knight stood his ground and appeared unfazed.

He gazed into the glowing eyes of the lich, "Are you a witch?"

 

[Urdresh the Abhorrent]

"A witch?" the abomination mused, gliding slowly over the sand with such eldritch grace that it was easy to imagine his curled, decrepit feet, invisible beneath the hem of his robes, having no contact with the ground at all. "Not quite. Some might have called much as much once, long ago, when my dalliances with the Dark Arts were a mere curiosity to my young mind. But I am old beyond your reckoning now. I am Urdresh, Lord of Long-Forgotten Najakhet."

He circled around the fire, keeping his gaze trained upon the undead warrior, the long, tattered tail of his robes slithering behind him. "You sense my magic, don't you? You sense it because you yourself are animated by the same substance, the same stuff of darkness. My mere presence galvanizes you."

He uncurled the withered talons of his dead hands and from each palm a pale green flame erupted, dancing fiercely and taking strange and feral shapes. "I wield great command over the powers that chain you to this world, warrior. I could give you purpose beyond these empty rituals of survival."

 

[The Wight Knight]

With each lap around the dying fire, the magic of Urdresh, Lord of Long-Forgotten Najakhet, seeped deeper and deeper into the Wight Knight's soul. As the flickering green flames danced across the lich's rotten fingers, the knight's fire finally gave out, a puff of smoke the only sign that there ever was a camp to begin with. The magic suffocated the Wight Knight's nonexistent lungs. It wrapped its claws around every fiber left in his body, squeezing. The knight feigned control, sliding his broadsword from its sheath in an attempt to focus his attention away from the burning sensation in his body. He'd felt nothing like it before in his life or his undeath.

Urdresh had offered him relief from his confusion with the evolved world around him. The Wight Knight was stuck. He hadn't a clue where to begin searching for his witch and the Eternum was not going to reveal itself to him from a simple prayer. If he took the hand of the undead being before him, a seemingly powerful mage with experience and knowledge of the undead world.

Purpose. Purpose sounded wonderful. It filled the knight's sizzling soul with hope. With promise of revenge. He would gladly accept.

The Wight Knight lowered his sword, "What purpose do you offer?"

 

[Urdresh the Abhorrent]

The lich pondered this inquiry a moment. Though to most it would have seemed a simple question with a simple response, Urdresh knew it was laced with danger. His attempts to manipulate this undead being were a double-edged sword; on the one hand, it would make a useful ally, as he could sense its physical might and the vacuous expanse of its rage and anguish, but on the other, this same power and fury could easily be turned against him if he worded his offer poorly. His magic was only now just beginning to blossom back into its former majesty.

Urdresh's glowing eyes flashed a brilliant, brighter shade of green as he contemplated the Wight Knight, his penetrative, unblinking sorcerous stare boring past the Knight's own vacant countenance, slithering and clawing and grasping through his mind seeking any purchase, any inkling of thought or emotion. But what he discovered there filled the lich with sudden fear. The Knight was like an empty shell, occupied only by a red mist of vengeful, unfeeling intent. His entire identity was molded around a singular quest... but what was it?

What was the key to enslaving this creature? An enemy that had wronged him? A mortal power that had betrayed him? A love lost?

Hesitant, the lich stalled for time, needling an answer to the Wight Knight's question from the Knight himself with an insidious cunning and solicitous words.

“The purpose which you seek, of course,” Urdresh mused with a sibilant whisper, and with a languid gesture of his hand, transformed one of the emerald flames into a quivering mirror of green light, suspended in the air like an arcane aperture, a portal into the Knight's innermost thoughts. “Gaze within and see that which you desire, and I promise you that it is well within my power to reward you with it for your fealty.”

Urdresh watched the Knight carefully, intently, for this was very much an experimental gesture. He could sense only the vaguest notion of what motivated this creature. The mirror would reflect his purpose to the lich as much as it would to the Knight.

 

[The Wight Knight]

The Wight Knight hesitated to look into the glowing green light. He was afraid to reveal his weaknesses to a being he couldn't yet trust. He was afraid to reveal his weaknesses to anyone. The light remained, though, powerful and tempting, drawing the knight's hollow eyes to gaze into that which plagued his mind endlessly.

The first vision that stared back at him from the mirror was his kingdom. The sun illuminating every stone in the streets and highlighting the smiles of those who lived comfortably. It was a fleeting vision, for the Wight Knight had given up hope of ever setting foot there again. The place was demolished, buried under the sand.

The second vision was of the Eternum. A row of undead beings adorned in chainmail and bloodstained blades. There was a wretched stench about them. A stench of death. The knight envisioned himself marching along the trail of rotten beings. He saw the endless march of lost souls as his fate.

Quickly, though, the visions morphed. The flames danced into the form of an ominous, black silhouette, feathers sprouting from its shoulders and tattered robes dangling off its dirtied flesh. The tangled hair revealed itself from underneath a black hood. The shadow transformed into a woman, once beautiful, but now twisted into greed and power.

Her lips were stained red and her veins had turned grey. She held her bony fingers out to him, reaching for his neck.

"You've come back to me," the witch cackled, "as handsome as ever."

The knight stood still, locked onto the vision in the mirror. He wanted to remind himself this was not a reality, but the witch's hold tightened, her magic seeping into his bones. The Wight Knight felt the burning turn into a pain so horrid he almost felt numb. In a blind rage, he gripped the witch's wrists and ripped them from his neck, throwing her out of reach. Taking up his sword, the knight charged at her, the witch writhing on the ground in frustration.

His sword sank into her chest. She let out a shriek that echoed through the night. She was dead. Her body shriveled and curled. The Wight Knight no longer had lips, but in his soul, he was smiling. He cut through her neck and tugged at her hair, releasing the witch's head from her shoulders.

He held it up to the sky and roared.

Looking into the green mirror, blade gripped tight in his hand, he came to. Not having moved a step, the knight felt defeated. He fell to his knees, the burning of the lich's magic fading back into existence.

 

[Urdresh the Abhorrent]

Urdresh reeled from the intensity of the vision, snapping his bony claws together into a clenched fist and abjuring the unearthly mirror back to the void. For a moment he loomed there, glaring down in astonishment upon the earth where the witch had once lay, as real to him as she was to the Knight, flexing his fingers as the exhilarating power of the spell spent its last residual sparks of energy from his fingertips to fizzle into nothing on the sands. “Remarkable...” he breathed.

The lich slithered cautiously to the Wight Knight's side, coiling a slender, gnarled hand over his shoulder in a most uninvitedly paternal manner, and yet there was an unmistakable fork of lightning that passed between them which to the forlorn warrior may have dimly resembled the now-forgotten sensation of warmth. “For many, Undeath evacuates all passion and meaning from the soul,” the lich drawled as he circled around, now beside the Knight, now behind. “Most are left as empty as a shattered chalice, their contents spilled and forgotten. But not you, my friend.”

The lich settled at last a short distance to the warrior's left, lingering in the corner of his vision, casting a long shadow over the Knight – a shadow which grew longer with every passing moment. “Vengeance colors the pallor of your doom. Rightly so, for it is a powerful force.”

Urdresh paused a moment, his gaze drifting listlessly off toward the barren horizon where a grim and mirthless gale was beginning to whip up the farthest dunes, issuing the low roar of a nascent storm across the desert. “You saw a place where the dead march in an endless phalanx. What do you know of it?”

 

[The Wight Knight]

The Wight Knight took a moment to calm himself, his bones rattling in terror and rage. He stood from his kneeling position and glared into the eyes of the lich. An endless void of green, swirling mist, Urdresh's eyes were calling to the knight. Calling for him to spill his wonderings of the march of the dead.

"The Eternum, you mean," the Wight Knight whispered.

The name on its own sent a shiver down his spine. He thought back to his one-sided, threatening conversation with the Elbion college student.

"I've been told of those who were revived after death in a beastly form. They joined together in an indestructible line of warriors, marching forward in an eternal search for power. Their goal in the tundra, a place I wasn't aware even existed, and they take what they want as they pass through it."

The Eternum was where the Wight Knight wanted to be. Not only was there a chance of discovering his destined enemy, but it was where he hoped to finally end. A parade of power. It would make the knight feel honorable once more.

"I do not know where it is currently located," the knight said, "but I have a indescribable feeling they might be near the Spine."

 

[Urdresh the Abhorrent]

Eternum... an extravagant name indeed, but the lich in his inordinate opulence knew much of extravagance and had no grounds upon which to criticize a touch of theatricality. Indeed, what better moniker could there be for a kingdom of the ever-lasting, those who have conquered death itself? An empire of the eternal! The Black Vizier had always dreamed of such a glorious black dawn... but his dreams had entailed a future altogether different. One in which he, and he alone, ruled supreme from his dread ziggurat over a desert-world enshrined in eternal dusk, its dark sands teaming with the bones of his silent subjects.

Many minds had Urdresh sensed upon the other side of this unhallowed vision, working in tandem, communicating and cooperating, operating under a hierarchy not unlike that of a functioning mortal society. Already the thought of this, of meticulously interweaving his designs amongst others, offering false words to ingratiate himself, feigning deference, playing the role of the dutiful courtier once again as he constructed his base of power and strung his schemes together like the great Orb-Weaver herself, made his mind reel with an agonizing, impotent rage. Too often had he now played this game before with mortals, but to do so amongst the undead was almost unthinkably humiliating.

But what choice was there? Having awakened to a new world, greatly changed, he knew now as he had in times past that caution was an indispensable necessity. From his victim, the camel-riding traveler in the dunes, he had discerned a disturbing fact. Documents on his person had born the regnal seal of a new great threat to the Black Vizier's centurial plans: an empire of vast proportions, spread far and wide across the formerly divided and dissident tribes and kingdoms of Amol Kalit.

There could be no resisting or defying a mortal power so great and organized without the assistance of a vast, undead army. An army which, presently, Urdresh did not possess.

Beside this, perhaps at last he may find company worthy of retaining his attention. How long had he been without stimulating conversation? Had he not imprisoned that elf of the east simply to prod seething words of challenge from him? What magnificent debates they had conducted long into the silent hours of dusk. But apply enough pain and despair, and even the nigh-deathless elves eventually wither and disappear...

“It is most wise,” he began at last in a languid drawl, “To insinuate themselves in the north, where the cold drives off the frailty of mortal flesh, but can have no ill effect upon the dead.” The lich regarded the Wight Knight with a lurid, insane intensity for a moment, his strange thoughts unreadable. Then, at length, he continued. “Come with me, vengeful one,” he hissed, extending his hand in a beckoning motion, gliding away from the useless fire which could not ever offer them a reprieve from the numbness of death, away into the far, cold, freezing depths of their destiny. “You bear your fate like a curse, but you have been given a gift. Fulfill your purpose, or you will become entombed by the sand like all mortal things before you.”

The lich's hand splayed out like a beacon in the desert night, like a mother's to her infant child, urging its first steps.