As I have come to expect from my dreams, this story has no beginning. I was simply a part of an elite squadron of assassins.
We had infiltrated the castle of Carriel and were looking
for the Queen. Numerous moles from all nations had reported that the queen of
this land was killing her citizens in profane rituals and amassing a dreadful
necromantic power. If left unchecked any longer there was no telling what the
consequences would be. A spell of mass killing? Potentially. An insurrection of
undead soldiers and the subjugation of all living beings? Perhaps.
The bottom line was that her foul work could continue no
longer.
One in our squadron, Rhizo, was particularly attuned to the
residues and the voices of the departed and was able to shift the energy of the
next world into physical form in this. He had asked the spirits lingering in
the castle to tell us the way to the queen and had created a 3D map of the
hallways and interior of the castle, which we were now following.
Soon we came to an outdoor walkway with two other paths
running directly above and below. We detected another party approaching our
location on the lower tier so we climbed up and hid in the highest, being
careful to mask our presence by lowering our heart rates. There existed ears
sensitive enough to hear even heartbeats, especially when powerful magic is
involved. The owner of such a pair of ears was also in our group; her name was
Borda.
Borda listened to the group on the lowest pathway from whom
we were hiding. She told us that they were spies from one of the other nations.
They had intel that the King and the Prince would be passing along the walkway
we jumped up from.
Both our party and theirs in our respective hidings
witnessed the King and Prince walk out into the sun. The prince was grimly
trailing along a person in unusual purple robes by a chain fastened around their
waist.
Borda, our ears, notified us when the King and prince, and the
other spies had moved on. We dropped down and followed the path back into the
castle that the King, prince and article of sacrifice had walked along.
Slowly, and carefully we proceeded, the essences told Rhizo
that the queen was before us on the path we walked. We perceived once more a
bright, natural light spilling in at the end of the hallway and our map told us
we were approaching a large outdoor colosseum. She was in that colosseum. We
interrogated our map further as a direct attack was our least favourable
option. There were numerous subterranean passageways, presumably where the
champions of the past would have come up from their chambers to fight in that
arena. Three of our unit stole away to secure those routes, leaving myself and
the strongest, most capable fighters to deal with the possibility of a head-on
fight. Rhizo stayed with our group and told us that the spirits of the departed
were howling that the queen was ahead of us and was draining the life of more
people to fuel her profane magic. There was no longer any doubt.
Our mark was ahead of us.
We waited the amount of time the others told us to wait for
them to secure the secret passageways, and when that time expired, we surged
forth into the light.
Sure enough we found ourselves in a vast, stone-built, empty
colosseum in bright, midday sunlight. The queen stood ahead of us in the centre
of the colosseum and at her feet lay desiccated, withered once-human forms.
Rhizo was at once overwhelmed by the foul, relentless, churning of the spirits
of the furious dead. Their rage was his, their insatiable thirst for vengeance
against the fell queen was being channelled directly into his human frame. As
Rhizo was imbibing this ancient hatred, the rest of the group and I launched a
rapid attack against the queen hoping we could land fatal blows before she was
able to put up her guard.
Fools that we were.
When one such as the queen stands in the threshold between
life and death, they exist immortally. In shattering their union with the world
of the living they are no longer bound by its rules and escape the cycle of
life and death. She was not playing by our rules.
The queen’s mouth. One dreadful, boiling, rasping word that
pulsated and filled our bodies with fire and torment. Such was the queen’s
power that she could manipulate the fabric of reality with one contemptible
word.
We fell to the ground, wracked in pain. All I could do was
watch the queen laugh hideously, but all at once a green, healing light
emanated from somewhere.
It was Rhizo. He had stilled the fury of the restless
lifeforce perverted by the queen and beseeched it to aid him. Our bodies became
our own again, but the Queen was not without response. She recited an
incantation and become wrapped in a shroud of horrible purple light. It lifted
her up high, high into the air and assumed the immense shape of a spider around
her waist. Once again her voice filled our every sense: “You fools cannot hope
to defeat me. I possess more power than can be contained in this universe!” her
gargantuan spider-self lurched destructively towards Rhizo:
Another flash of green light. Rhizo now sat atop a colossal,
green boar. The boar reared forward and locked tusks against the spider’s legs
in some desperate struggle of the millennia-oppressed vs the millennium
oppressor. The two vied back and forth but Rhizo the boar broke free and pushed
the spider back. With a titanic, primal force that shook the Earth, Rhizo
roared:
“We!” the boar sank its dreadful tusks into the spider,
purple blood spilled freely from the puncture sites. The boar pulled back.
“Will!” again the boar struck, deeper into the same wounds.
“Never!” terrible blow after terrible goring blow did the
boar skewer the spider
“Be silent” the spider was limp from these heinous wounds
but the boar did not let up
And then the final words. A constellation of the spirits of the countless killed emanated around the boar, lending their rage, their strength and twisted glee to this ultimate blow:
“To you!”
The boar reared back, scraping its behemoth hooves
across the ground in anticipation for the apocalypse strike that would end it.
With a tremendous howl the boar surged forward and struck the spider with
enough force to dissipate its form. The queen fell, defeated, to the ground.
Without missing a beat Rhizo masterfully shifted the boar
into an enormous sarcophagus and sent it crashing down on top of the Queen,
encapsulating her. But she was not to be defeated so easily. Once more she
assumed her spider-form inside the sarcophagus and thrust her 8 needle-legs out,
barring her tomb from trapping her completely. This second struggle lasted for
what seemed like an eternity but her power ultimately waned. She could not
indefinitely resist the weight of her sins and was sealed away by the powerful
magic she had unwittingly created.
But as an immortal she was not killed. The sarcophagus
churned and twisted and shrank into an ornate, jewelled container that might
reasonably be compared to a Faberge egg. Her essence was trapped in this
form by Rhizo’s powerful magic. But her voice emanated from it
“You fools, you have not defeated me. The moment this egg is
opened, your sealing spell will break and I will be freed. The curiosity of
your wretched kind will be your rightful downfall!” and she laughed a maniacal
laugh. “Did you not think that I would not have guards in every corner of this
colosseum for precisely this situation?! Guards! Kill these insurgents and free
me from this form!”
The gates of the colosseum opened but the members of our
troupe stepped out. They had easily despatched the guards and cast their
unconscious forms in front of them.
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