NOVEL NEXT 25 - A Short Story
Before the advent of Kazor Nict, the Sovereign Cities were prosperous indeed.
Busying himself with humanity’s waning relations with the Elves and Dwarves, Ricta III and his second wife were granted the joyous revelation by Urubas--sixth of the Sixteen Sages--that they were soon to welcome a pair of twins into the world. It’s said that the festivities of that night could be heard from Saptra. But such happiness was not to last.
As the two royal children grew in the Queen’s womb, she was bedridden with a terrible illness. The King parted with an inordinate amount of gold to gather the greatest physicians and sorcerers in the world--even lowering himself to requesting the aid of Akhzem’s shamans, but not even they could cure the ailing mother’s sickness.
As was predicted by most who dared to make such statements, the Queen shortly passed. But Ricta refused to accept her death. Demanding that his wife be revived immediately, a Dragon Cardinal soon arrived to prepare a spell of resurrection. The light of hope in Ricta’s eyes was said to be extinguished immediately upon witnessing the Queen return to life, only to succumb to her immortal illness again mere minutes later.
“Again.” Ricta demanded, “As many times as it takes.”
The King, driven to the edge of madness, refused to abandon either his wife or his two unborn children. Though she begged for release, the Queen was forced to cross the line separating life and death thousands of times while the royal twins matured within her. Tonberg Castle was once filled with antiques and jewellery representing the country’s rich history, but many of these priceless treasures were offered as tribute to the hideous Blackbriar in exchange for its power.
Urubas was witness to this tragedy. The truth of his words in private to the King was nearly enough to send the pitiful man over the edge.
“Your son and daughter will be born. Pulled from a writhing corpse like maggots.” He detailed, “But they, too, shall be afflicted with her ill. And they, too, will die.”
“Tell me! Tell me how to save them!” His Majesty pleaded, “You are a Sage! I know you have the answer!”
Urubas did, in fact, have the answer. One the King was not pleased to hear.
“I will cast a spell.” He began, “A spell which will purge the illness from your children. This spell--it will curse but one of the twins. They will be born deformed. Inhuman, but intelligent. Would you still love such a child?”
Ricta III did not hesitate to answer. Of course he would. He could never be repulsed by his own blood, no matter how grotesque.
Urubas did not question the monarch’s conviction further. With a mere whisper from his lips, he ensured that the twins would survive. Shortly after, he departed from the city, and much like his peers, would never be seen again.
The Queen’s torment continued. Her sanity was soon gone, and the woman who Ricta had come to love was transformed into little else but a catatonic vessel for her children. On the night of the twins’ birth, she died for the final time. It’s said that rather than succumbing to the illness, the sight of her deformed daughter caused the Queen to die of fright.
No steward nor midwife nor physician could bear to look upon the cursed child. Even the King, despite his claims to the contrary, couldn’t hide his disgust at the terrible creature which had accompanied his son out of the womb. But even so, he felt a terrible responsibility to ensure his daughter’s survival, knowing full-well the Church of the Golden Dragon would demand her execution as a corruption of nature.
“The dungeon…” On the verge of tears, he cradled the screeching beast in his arms, “I will keep you safe there. Nobody shall come to harm you.”
And so it was. The birth of his daughter was kept a secret by those involved. Town criers spoke of the tragic miscarriage leaving only a single twin alive, while the King’s unnamed daughter was confined to a chamber deep within the royal castle. Young Ricta IV was never told of his sister’s survival--only that the dungeon beneath the castle he would one day inherit was host to a terrible beast who could never be allowed to escape.
To this day, it’s said that quiet nights in the castle are plagued with the wails of something inhuman lurking within its depths.
This is the origin of the so-called ‘Devil’s Castle’.
Drayya’s voice bounced from the walls of the circular chamber. As the last remnants of her tale disappeared into the darkness, Lieze looked upon the great silhouette resting motionless in the centre of the room with a complicated expression.
“...How did you come to hear that?” She asked.
“Legends have a certain way of spreading, don’t they? Even to outcasts such as us.” Drayya answered, “...My father had the tale written in his journals. Long after he’d passed.”
“Did he believe it?”
“I’m not sure.” She replied, “I certainly didn’t. Until now.”
“That’s one more story that I ever learned from my father.” Lieze muttered.
“But you still have one.”
“No. I don’t.” She denied, “Not anymore.”
Sokalar had disowned her. The old Lich had told Lieze in no uncertain terms that she was more than welcome to die if she wanted to. He never saw her as his own blood--not even once. She was an experiment. The offspring of a corpse. If she had died that day, during the siege, no tears would have been shed for her passing.
“Don’t tell me you’re abandoning the Order.” Drayya’s voice was mocking, “There’s no stopping Master Sokalar’s crusade. The future of this world is already set in stone.”
“What would you do if I did?”
“What do you think?” She narrowed her eyes, “I can’t allow the Order’s plans to be disrupted when we’ve come this far. Get a hold of yourself, Lieze.”
“All this time, preparing for my father’s next assault has been my top priority…” She muttered, “What do I want? To please him? I know he’ll never look upon me as his daughter.”
“Our ideals matter more than your petty detachment.”
“Is this the path I want to walk?” Lieze thought, “Making an enemy of everyone? Taking on the entire world?”
It was true. Her resentment for life stretched further than a mere crystallisation of ‘ideals’. With the power of the scale in hand, she could glimpse a far darker future for herself. But the question remained as to whether she was truly capable of donning that mantle.
“You need to put a stop to these ambitious thoughts immediately.” Drayya warned, “Many have tried to oust Master Sokalar--all of them have failed. He’s simply too powerful.”
“Does that mean you’ve had some ambitious thoughts of your own?”
“Watch your tongue.” She turned her back, “...It’s not possible. Cast those dreams aside before they spell your end.”
Where did Drayya’s hate stem from? The question had hounded Lieze’s mind ever since the two fell apart at a young age. Her words were laced with a stout viciousness, and yet every so often, she dared to show off an exquisitely vulnerable side of her personality. Lieze wondered if the two of them were really so different, and whether her unashamed hatred of the girl’s lording about was preventing her from seeing the truth.
“...It’s about time we left.” Lieze resolved, “There’s nothing for us here.”
“How will we leverage this against Ricta?” Drayya wondered.
“We can’t.” She admitted, “If this terrible beast truly was his sister, then the most we can do is torment him about it--before he sics his guards on us, that is.”
“We shouldn’t have killed it.”
“That’s not true.” Lieze lowered her head, “As necromancers, it’s our duty to alleviate the suffering of life from those still clinging to the mortal coil. Perhaps this pitiful cursebearer can now find some semblance of peace in the afterlife.”
“I don’t want this to have been a waste of time.”
For Lieze, it hadn’t been. She had been pushed up a whole 2 levels for completing a single quest.
Lieze Sokalar
Level 12 Necromancer
HP: 120 / 120 XP: 370 / 1,500 MP: 385 / 385
Skills & Features
Necromancy (lvl. 1) / Necromantic Alchemy (lvl. 2)
Somehow, she knew that her constitution would always be dismal. But her mana was on the rise, and it had been firmly established that she’d be receiving a boon to her necromancy every 5 levels, including a few more thralls to create. For a moment, she found herself wondering after the specifics of how anyone else gained levels, considering they didn’t have scales of their own.
“Well, he must be aware of it.” She concluded, “But it’s a card worth concealing. If we try to expose what we know too early, it’ll do more harm than good.”
“I suppose we’re far from planning an all-out attack on the castle.” Drayya resigned, “Corpses were always so plentiful back in the Deadlands! Here, we have trouble sourcing just a few dozen!”
“If it wasn’t for Baccharum, we’d have none at all.”
“Numbers are what we need at the moment. That, and a more defensible hideout. Regretfully, you’ve already spent a fortune securing the help of those Dwarves, so we may as well stay there for the time being.”
“So close to the city?” Lieze wondered, “Eventually, the Blackbriar’s residual influence will begin to have an effect on the surrounding terrain. We won’t be very capable of hiding ourselves then.”
“By that point, I hope we’ll be ready to start fending off attacks from the priesthood.”
“That’s a risky proposition.”
“Not to say we won’t attempt to hide low until then, of course.” Drayya crossed her arms, “We only have two problems to address--our lack of thralls, and our lack of necromancers.”
Three sorcerers wouldn’t be conquering Tonberg anytime soon, no matter how powerful they were. If Lieze’s efforts were to bear fruit, she needed to find a better way to recruit more allies.
“There has to be a cult somewhere in the city.” She rationalised, “Think back to the beginning of our crusade. Necromancers practically leaped into our arms following the sieges of Bascoroch, Dolore and Saptra.”
“-Some awfully talented ones, too.” Drayya finished, “It’s only natural that Tonberg, the largest of them all, would harbour some undesirables of its own. But the question remains as to where they might be.”
“Perhaps it’s time we made an effort to reveal ourselves.”
“Tempting, but how do you propose we do so without being discovered?”
“A dog-whistle.” Lieze suggested, “Some sort of call-to-arms that could only be understood by necromancers. They would trample over one-another at a chance to join the Order’s ranks.”
“Easier said than done. I don’t suppose you have an idea of what this ‘dog-whistle’ could be, do you?”
Something invisible to all but the Order and those affiliated with it.
Lieze’s mind exploded with activity. A riddle? A hidden message? To start with, they would need a way to declare that the Order’s influence had reached Tonberg. Something so gratuitous and grand that the priesthood wouldn’t be able to cover it up.
“I may have a few.” She answered cryptically, “But for now, I’d like to climb out of this cursed hole.”
“No… truly?” Drayya joked, “I was starting to get used to the pitch-black and the dampness and the stink of month-old shit.”
“A shame we can’t raise this poor beast as a thrall.” Lieze reluctantly stared in the direction of the bird-thing, “It’s too large to leave the chamber, to say nothing of sneaking it all the way back to the hideout.”
“Best to leave it here anyway.” Drayya recommended, “I imagine Ricta will be quite affected if he witnesses the corpse of his sister first-hand.”
Relinquishing control of her thralls, Lieze’s Skeletons clattered into mundane heaps of bone on the ground. They wouldn’t be able to sneak them through the castle, so there was little point in trying. As Drayya followed suit, the two of them shortly departed from the circular chamber, beginning the long walk back to the surface.