Know thy Enemy
Micro Conto e Cenário — NQ 14
Esta matéria faz parte do evento Recent Battles. Composta pelo ato Know tht Enemy e The Hunter Hunted
One of the heavily armored blighted Nyss stepped forward and swung his great blade in a perfect arc that cut the last surviving Praetorian nearly in twain. A futile victory as the nearest ancestral guardian moved forward swiftly and captured the skorne’s soul before it could flicker away to the oblivion of the Void. The obsidian statue chopped its stone halberd straight through the armored helmet of the Nyss, who collapsed in a clattering heap to mingle his blood with that of his enemy.
Supreme Aptimus Zaal hissed a breath through tightly clenched teeth and reached out with his will. The crystal oculus which had replaced his eye gleamed with a silver light as Zaal clutched the immortal spirit of the last remaining Nyss, gathered wisps of his soul-essence at a distance, and rent them apart. The extoller watched with satisfaction as the creature gasped in surprised agony and collapsed, dead in an instant, although his armor remained unblemished and his flesh showed no wounds. Zaal leaned for a moment against the nearby stone and collected his breath, looking around in the sudden and unexpected reprieve from the carnage.
The extoller felt unsettled and stunned, still recovering from the sights of the titanic clash of tremendous powers visible to his oculus alone. Corpses littered the courtyard of the Castle of the Keys. The sounds of the dying carried over the clash of arms and the crunch of bones. Battle continued elsewhere, but Zaal and his small bodyguard had found a corner distant from the main fracas. Enemies would return quickly enough, he knew, but Zaal still felt half-blinded from the after-images of what he had seen.
The dragon had risen in all its tremendous glory to breath fire and destruction upon those below. Blazing hotter and brighter to Zaal’s vision than the dragon-fire had been the blinding essence of its alien and immortal soul compressed and concentrated in a stone deep within its body. In that moment of clarity, Zaal understood what had drawn him to these ruins and the scope of what he had hoped to unearth: not an ancestral stone of singular power, but the essence of the dragon, visible to his spiritual sight even from miles away.
He also started to understand the enigmatic, gleaming shards of spiritual power he had glimpsed within some few of the Nyss. He had heard the name of their species in captured wisps of thought from the spectral dead who drifted throughout the ruins in the wake of the recent slaughter. Some among the living Nyss carried within them a flickering echo of a foreign and potent spirit, each pattern signature exactly identical. He had seen intangible bonds connecting them together like a lattice of spiritual energy that he believed must represent the mind of another, singularly potent entity. Zaal had seen the dragon fall, its body torn to ribbons, and watched its blazing essence consumed and absorbed by a being at once mortal and eternal. The after-images of that metaphysical process lingered as blind spots on his retinas.
Zaal did not pretend to fully understand everything he had seen, but the pieces of an intricate puzzle had begun to slide together in his mind, aided by the whispering voices of the great ancestors who clustered around him like an invisible chorus and with whom he alone communicated. Even as he began to sort through what had happened here, he felt a growing rage born of the realization that he may have missed a singular opportunity. Part of him blamed the lord tyrant for not bringing enough soldiers in time. If they could have held the ruins, the prize would have fallen to his hands. The thought of it slipping through his grasp angered Zaal nearly enough to murder every living creature in sight. A colder and more calculating portion of his mind knew Hexeris was not solely to blame. Zaal knew the Skorne Empire did not have soldiers enough in this region to have stopped the force that had besieged them, and he found that thought humbling.
Several of Zaal’s surviving retinue accompanied him, most significantly a trio of ancestral guardians standing protectively around him. A pair of well-tamed basilisks, a male and a blinded female kept in heel primarily to fuel his power, waited behind him. A group of paingivers ascended a set of crumbling stairs nearby and spotted the extoller. They rushed to his side, anxiety evident in their postures despite the masks of station hiding their faces. Their leader spoke urgently, “Supreme aptimus! Tyrant Xerxis has broken through the outer ring of attackers. We should hurry to join him. Our soldiers have been forced to withdraw. This position is not secure.”
Zaal remained caught up in his thoughts, but the paingiver’s tone annoyed him. “Do you presume to give me orders, tormentor?”
The paingiver faltered and respectfully bowed his head. “Of course not, supreme aptimus. I seek to warn you of the danger here. We are overrun.”
Zaal turned away from him to look back toward the central courtyard, where the sound of fighting could be heard. The dragon had fallen there. Even now he could sense the lingering after-effects of its tremendous power as flames burned across many of the ramparts earlier licked by its breath. Energy arose from the creature’s very blood, flesh, and scales, even with its immortal essence gone. No mortitheurge or extoller had ever studied this type of power, which did not resemble the normal energies of death. It was as though the creature’s flesh had never been alive, and therefore now was not precisely dead. Some other energy suffused its tissues.
Zaal heard the voice of Dominar Aarakis, a great lord and mortitheurge who had participated in the War of the Exalted and whose sacral stone resided within the supreme aptimus’ staff. “I witnessed a dragon once, soaring north of the Shroudwall. I too sensed its power.” The mental voice tapered off, and for a moment Zaal thought the exalted lost to reminiscence, as sometimes happened, but it spoke again more clearly as if the ancestor fought to focus on the present. “We must gather its flesh and blood. There will never come a chance like this again. It may teach us something important, and it will give you leverage over Lord Tyrant Hexeris. He would give much to study such a prize.”
The supreme aptimus hesitated but the suggestion had undeniable appeal. As always after listening to advice from Aarakis, Zaal reminded himself that the dominar’s own insatiable curiosity had ultimately destroyed him. His was an example Zaal was not eager to emulate, but he found truth in the advice.
“I must know more of this creature,” Zaal spoke aloud.
The paingivers looked at him. “Sir?” the tormentor asked.
“Come with me, there is no time to explain.” Without seeing if they would follow, Zaal stepped quickly back toward the central courtyard, avoiding the bodies of several slain Praetorians. The ancestral guardians marched in step with him, responding to his will without instruction. The basilisks hissed and came as well, leaving the paingivers no choice but to follow.
“Tyrant Xerxis is the other direction.”
“The tyrant can wait. There is something we must do here. Question me again, and your life is forfeit.”
As they neared, Zaal gained an even greater awareness of the accumulated power of the dragon’s corpse. Warped energies flowed from its blood and tainted the very stones beneath their feet. An assortment of armed and howling savages moved through the open space ahead, their minds twisted by the perverse energies of the great fallen creature. Zaal could feel an echo of that perversion, the blight. The basilisks behind him keened, a strange sound he had not heard before. They too sensed the power of this blood. Zaal gritted his teeth against the sensation and marched on, ignoring the hundreds of charred and hacked corpses littering the surrounding stones, to approach the tremendous head of the fallen serpentine creature.
BACKGROUND
Not long after Grim Angus managed his narrow escape, the massive army comprising the bulk of the Legion of Everblight converged on the Castle of the Keys. The escalating battle between three different armies that followed marked the bloodiest and most protracted conflict seen in this region for thousands of years. Skorne soldiers and mystics initially occupied the sprawling ruins of the Castle of the Keys. Some explored its depths while others worked to restore and reinforce the upper battlements. Led by Supreme Aptimus Zaal and Lord Tyrant Hexeris, these skorne had no idea that they probed the lair of a dormant dragon and were equally ignorant of Everblight’s swiftly approaching army.
Complicating the battle, a hastily assembled attack force of the Circle Orboros had gathered in the wilds surrounding the Castle of the Keys. While previously attempting to forestall and divert the approaching Legion, the Circle had resigned itself to the inevitable conflict. Rather than hurling themselves headlong against the Legion’s larger army, however, they decided to lay in wait and allow Everblight’s warlocks to weaken themselves besieging the skorne before springing to attack from the rear.
The ensuing three-way battle inflicted tremendous losses on every side and no combatant found a powerful advantage. The only true victor of this battle was Everblight. While the Legion suffered severe losses in this engagement, they slew the dragon Pyromalfic and Thagrosh absorbed its athanc. Everblight had achieved His goal, and to the dragon, nothing else mattered.
In the confusing aftermath of routed forces, scrambling searches amid the dead, and dozens of isolated skirmishes, the Castle of the Keys fell into tumult. To at least one skorne mystic, this turmoil suggested an opportunity. Supreme Aptimus Zaal, having survived the battle intact, determined he must take advantage of the opportunity to study the corpse of a dragon.
DESCRIPTION
Supreme Aptimus Zaal is intrigued by reports of Pyromalfic’s demise and seeks to unearth the mysteries of the mighty dragon. Unfortunately for the Skorne forces, wild beasts and savage Tharn have also been drawn to the site of the grizzly battle. Zaal must obtain samples of the dragon’s corpse for further study while fending off the beasts and their savage companions.
