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The Night Is Always Darkest Before The Dawn

Timestamp
Era XXVI - Autumn
Location
The Sherian
Content Warnings
Necromancy, Language, Gore
Again, Vree marveled at the engineering required in constructing this spire. It made a mockery of the natural order, a space inside much too big for the outward appearance. Where did Agar find the wherewithal to make this, especially with haphazard construction? Vree thought of the dust that was once the Champion, and sighed. Whatever secrets he held were lost now. What a waste.

Her death knights clomped along behind her, enslaved to her will and not targeted by her spell. Vireylda's curiosity grew with each passing floor. Upon finding a window the shadow elf crossed quickly too it. She glanced outside. What of the Vortex now suspiciously silent? The griffins enslaved to Agar's will, circling the storm? Was the Zilant still in one piece? She'd summon it up around to the window.

Did her attempted archmagus spell work, or was it a failure?
 
Outside? Everything was quiet.

The vortex of green lights and the souls of the fallen souls within the Sherian was now nowhere to be seen - the magic holding it together had unravelled entirely without the former Champion of Jalat to maintain its integrity. The timing in which Vireylda had arrived ensuring that the token maintenance to continue the work had been pulled apart with her own destructive assassination method.

Above, the Arcane Contamination storm remained in place - the Entropy if anything now that much stronger than the Elemental components that had been unleashed all those years ago during the siege of Narim. Between Vireylda and Agar? The two Archmagi Necromancers really had been pouring gasoline on a burning building - even with their respective Staffs of Arcana.

Below? Vireylda could see the splattered remains of ancient corpses upon the ground. Bodies of animated Undead, be they Human or Monster were inanimate. Only the Zilant and her own enslaved Death Knights remained - empowered by Vree’s own will.

Narim, by and large, was now truly a dead city rather than one filled with the Undead.
 
So her spell was a success, at least in part.

In part.

Bodies remained - although more than a few were splattered across the ground, obviously the loser in their fight against gravity. She imagined the griffins dropping from the sky like a marionette whose strings were cut. For the first time in eras, the skies around Narim were clear of corpses flying about.

But they aren't gone. Vireylda realized the problem ahead of her. She intended to wipe out Agar's army. Thousands of undead, hundreds of thousands of bodies all turned to dust in an instant. A neat, clean end to Agar's reign.

Except it didn't end like that. Agar was gone, turned to dust by the potency of her magic. The original goal fulfilled. Before, Vireylda would merely walk away from this situation. She completed her part of the bargain, did she not? Now, with Nev-yn's words bouncing about in her head the necromancer knew she could not. Other Master Necromancers. The Demon of Jalat had said, though in the context of them being enthralled.

So far Vireylda found nobody else. Agar's spire was empty, save the ghouls no doubt skittering somewhere to safety. Perhaps those hypothetical necromancers weren't here, but it lent credence to the possibility that, at some point in the future, another would come upon this mass grave. Agar's reach extended wide and far. She remembered the bodies in the beached corpses of ships. Were those Agar's?

Visions of another undead army marching across Narim, through the Sherian and out into the Empire at large tormented her mind. She couldn't let it come to pass. Vireylda turned away from the window, a plan formulating in her mind. It would require Amplification without a doubt, which meant she'd need rest.

First, Agar's spire. Time to search it. As an Archmage the orc surely had a laboratory. Notes she might take? Treasures to find? With all the time that passed since Agar took Narim, what did he secret away into this tower?

Time to find it, and keep an eye out for any other denizens while she did so. Thorough search of the tower!
 
Bodies aplenty, for all that they were long since rotten and would be subjected to natural decay now that a Necromancer wasn’t about to keep the flesh about in part. But even the skeletons left behind could be reanimated by another - and given Narim’s population from before the Sherian War (the Third…), there was probably about some fifty thousand corpses located within the city limits. Potentially far more though if Agar had drawn bodies in from the countryside too rather than leaving them to wander and harass the north of the Sherian.

It was a mess, but it was also hardly the only such mess within the Imperium that had been caused by decades of civil war and unrest. Even Narim was hardly the biggest graveyard within the Imperium - not even amongst the top five if one was aware of the various tragedies that had struck the Medonian Continent.

Upside? There really weren’t a whole lot of Master Necromancers about let alone Archmages. The perks of the sphere being illegal within the Imperium, it did rather cull the learning opportunities to be had within the Sphere.

The spire for all intents and purposes seemed empty, the city without likewise. The Banshee remained, but it wasn’t as if it was particularly intact - and in its own manner, had served its purpose. A Mortal that would have heard the scream and died - Agar - even if it hadn’t been the intended. It sufficed enough to prevent the creature from tearing free and continuing its particular rampage.

In the meantime?

Onwards! Searching and ransacking the place!

Next level up? A sitting room, nothing too impressive in itself furnishing wise, but the views were much more open and Vireylda could confirm all compass points that the situation was much the same outside. Could even see beyond the city limits of Narim and that yes, there were bodies lying outside too - motionless and inert as the corpses of the Undead that weren’t Sentient had all had their spell effectively cut by Vireylda.

The floor above? A library of sorts, the wall constructed in wooden shelving not unlike a bees honeycombing. Within each was a papyrus scroll and the text within written in the Orcish script. A good hundred ‘books’.
 
Right. First things first. Vree couldn't read this, but perhaps she could find someone who could at a later time. Stuff as many scrolls as she could carry in her pack- whichever looked particularly useful, if she could even divine that. Oh, and the death knights could hold on to some of them as well.

Once she'd taken what she could from this room, onto the next.
 
Scrolls! A good six she could carry, and each Death Knight managing a good deal more - probably up to a dozen really so long as they weren’t expected to fight. Arms outstretched, load them up and away one went!

Nothing so convenient as a backpack or satchel to be seen for carrying the loot that VIreylda found.

Usefulness? Not a whole lot to be garnered, not when it all looked much the same. That as far as Vireylda could tell, they were as likely to be writings upon Necromancy, or could just as likely have been sordid romances of the second Sherian War prior to the Black Wind at the time wiping out most of the Orc population.

It was all very hit or miss.

Onto the next!

Kitchen area! Only like one of the lower levels, this one looked to be far larger on the inside than it had any right to be. It was also currently occupied by a half dozen Ghouls that were dismembering bodies looted from graveyards that, odds dictated, couldn’t possibly have come from the Sherian. Far too fresh for starters, and one of the corpses looked to be a Quel’anthasan Elf at that - all kinds of rare on the Medonian Continent.

None had noticed Vireylda’s entry.
 
Thankfully she had a pack of her own on her back. The necromancer made sure to come prepared. The Death Knights not so much, but they weren't really a problem. After all, what did the dead worry about fatigue? Not at all, that was what.

Onward!

Kitchen? Oh, ghouls? Her side still ached from the encounter, and Vireylda had no wish to start that again. Moving on please, leave them be!
 
Ignore!

Ghouls? Not noticing Vireylda and left to their own culinary efforts. Making rotting corpses taste appealing? Well, it was definitely an acquired taste for sure. Upside? Anyone really could become a Ghoul if they put their mind to it and gave in to the other other white meat.

And their appearance if nothing else proving to be a constant - namely, where the Ghouls were, Agar’s Spire defied the laws of physics and ended up having far more interior and space than there should have been. The properties of ‘bigger on the inside’ appearing linked to the Ghouls’ presence rather than anything the former Champion of Jalat had been directly responsible for.

Onwards! Upwards!

Into what looked to be another library of sorts, only this one also contained a large working desk covered in more scrolls - though here the scroll was attached to a femur rather than a wooden stick. Set to one corner of the room was a number of shelves, lots of jars containing odds and ends that had the look at least of alchemic ingredients or perhaps reagents.
 
Shame. She'd love to investigate the whole 'bigger on the inside' thing, but the language barrier between the ghouls and herself - not to mention her dusting of their former master - rather eliminated that possibility. Vireylda moved onward.

Oh, a library! She glanced through the scrolls. Bones instead of sticks? Were these also written in Orcish? Maybe these were the necromancy scrolls? Perhaps she could replace these scrolls with the ones already present. Swap!

She'd peer at the shelves too. Anything particular catch her eye, maybe something she recognized? Alchemy not so much, but rare reagents were useful!
 
A quick inspection of the grisly scrolls? The dialect looked different from the Orcish script. Language at present unknown, beyond that it wasn’t to be one within the standard languages taught at Schola or any of the known Barbari languages that Vireylda had thus far encountered in her travels.

Swap! Out with one lot of scrolls and in with the new!

Lots within the jars that Vireylda recognised, though whether its properties were of use was another matter entirely. Jars filled with various eyeballs, others that contained hair and nail clippings. Jars of feathers and seashells. It was a whole lot of odds and ends, leaning towards the notion that this was more about alchemy rather than magic per-say.

Potentially useful, potentially not - some of the components might still be useful for Grafting, but Necromancy? Unlikely upon closer inspection.
 
Onward!

Wardrobe room, for all that it was just a whole lot of mix and match. Robes and breeches, old tunics and garments that were crude in design and not really designed for someone of Vireylda’s height and build. Orcish - though some might have been looted from various Humans over the years where it was serviceable. Agar the Undying (a title that was going to need revising…) really hadn’t paid all that much heed to one’s appearance and evidently - not a whole lot to cleanliness. The room reeked of body odour.

The floor above really wasn’t any better. Agar’s bedroom. Sheets that had never been changed, a bed that while large - a four poster even! Was battered, too big for the room and Vireylda could see bedbugs even from a distance crawling upon the mattress. Soiled and used bandages bundled in a corner, insects scurrying about and plates with long forgotten meals on the floor.

And for all intents and purposes? Vireylda was at the very top of the spire, no more ladders heading upwards. There was a window looking out, a small balcony though that contained the final ladder upwards - a thin, dangerous looking thing of iron that would lead towards the Spires rooftop itself.
 
Orc! Throw in Necromancer, and there not being a living soul outside the Ghouls for miles - Agar the ‘Undying’ really had let himself go over the last decade since the Third Sherian War. Short of the Greenskins of the Horde of WAAAAAAAGH descending upon Narim? There really hadn’t been all that much of a threat in the nearby countryside. Largely leaving the Orc Necromancer to instead plod and prepare for the threat that appeared to belong to the ruins of Taralon and the old Imperial Capital of the Sherian.

Out onto the balcony and up the ladder!

Rusty, rattling as Vireylda climbed and while the storm above had largely gone quiet - the Arcane Contamination remaining even if the Vortex of Souls had dissipated. Hands soon caked with flaking rust, this wasn’t a ladder anyone had climbed in quite some time nor was it even remotely maintained. Brackets in the stonework that were loose, rattling away and eventually? Vireylda was able to find herself on the very, very top of the spire.

An old weathervane shaped like a rooster spun aimlessly, but other than that? There was nothing to be found beyond acid and hail damage upon the roof itself. An amazing view though! Vireylda could see for miles in all directions now.
 
To the top, and thus her eradication - and original mission - of Agar was complete. She'd overcome one of the most powerful Necromancers in the Imperium. Shouldn't that be enough? Vireylda gripped the edge of the tower, staring down at the city below. Questions bloomed like a field of flowers, most which she'd have no answer to. Why did Agar do this? What prompted his rebellion against Jalat? She thought back to the dust in the container on her person. Vireylda sighed. An opportunity lost.

She stared out into the lifeless city. Buildings rose as makeshift graves for the fallen, nameless and forgotten amidst so much death. First things first. Death Knights, go take those sheets and use it as a makeshift sack for all the scrolls. One of them could carry it and thereby leave the rest open. Second, summon the Zilant. No saddle for her to ride, but Vree had the benefit of it being dead. No sudden, odd movements. Calcify to restore any disintegration caused by the vortex. Mind carrying her back to the spot where Colette was captured? Time to retrieve that little bauble.

Then, assuming no issues arose it was time to return to the top of Agar's Spire for the next phase.
 
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To the very top, that was decidedly roof-like and not a realm in which Agar had evidently ventured all that often. Once at the rooftop, Vireylda could see stonework where gargoyles had once also held roost atop the spire - only now they were empty. Long since abandoned and with the gargoyle perches overgrown with moss and lichen, belying that none had returned to the Spire for quite some time indeed.

About Narim, the city was well and truly dead. A pale shadow of the life that had once filled the formerly vibrant port-side city where the great Gryphon riders had served the Imperium and the majestic Imperial Fleet docked when scouring the Sea of Diana between there, Port Alyxandrya and Medonia alike.

Death Knights making with the very, very gross loot-sack. Agar really had never washed the bedding and linens.

Zilant? One of the few Undead still animated within Narim, and entirely under Vireylda’s control. Rising at her command and a Calcify thrown on the top to bring it that little bit closer to its original state rather than the decaying ruin that Entropy would eventually lead it to be. Vireylda could push back death and decay, but it would always be an inevitability - like pushing a boulder uphill.

Colette’s Soul-Gem? Very, very angry. Very much claimed and returned to Vree’s possession too as she laid her claim once more to the Champion of Ainlar. Then to the rooftop of Agar (now Vireylda’s!) Spire!
 
Yes, well, Colette's anger was no longer her problem. She'd look into that at a later time. Right now it was time to fix the mess she caused. Legions of corpses now left to rot amongst the Sherian. Ripe for the picking of anybody who fancied themselves an upstart conqueror. Could she leave, now that her original intent was secured? Absolutely. The bargain with Phedos was fulfilled.

But the prospect of leaving all those bodies, and allowing any other budding necromancer to accost the Sherian with another legion of undead - as Agar did - left her ill at ease. First step? Rest. Much as she detested the smell, Vireylda needed to recharge her magics.

Death Knights, guard the door while she rested please? Did not need any ghouls coming in to mess with her.

Sleep.

Once rested, assuming nothing else bothered her. Time for the next phase.

Could the Zilant grab one of the dead bodies in the city please, one with flesh. Bring it up to the roof top. Lay Agar's Staff of Arcana out along with her own. An extra level of focus for her very, very specific spell.

It would be the biggest one she'd cast in her entire magical career. If successful, no necromancer would plague the Sherian with a mindless undead horde again. First, she'd begin the ritual of Amplification, drawing whatever symbols she could think of to bolster her connection with Entropy, alongside her own personal touches that she'd used the first amplify before entering. Once done, she'd attempt to craft an Archmage spell with every iota of her power behind it.

Vireylda would take as long as she needed in crafting it. She couldn't afford mistakes. It was a slow thing, utilizing the aura of death that lived in the city, reaching out toward the Sherian as a whole. So much devastation, death without measure. The poor citizens trapped, paralyzed by the spell enforced Peace that befell them. She remembered the lost souls of the Sherian, piling on board the barge of death.

Vree drew symbols on the body as well, because they too were utilized in this ritual. A way to designate exactly what she wanted. The type of creature. She grasped a Staff of Arcana in each hand. Thus, she'd begin to methodically extend her magical senses across the Sherian. Through the city of Narim, across the blasted wastes, beyond. She didn't want to raise any dead body she found, though the ability of a necromancer to find said bodies was utilized, using the dead body as a guide. Instead decay them into so much dust. Remains buried in the ground, bodies snipped from Agar's strings, mindless undead walking about still? Gone. It was the culmination of everything she learned, all precision focused experimentation released in a incandescent display of magical prowess.

The only thing spared would be anything living, sentient undead and her current minions. The necropolis of Taralon - with it's citizens trapped in undeath but seeming none too concerned by it - would be ignored. Val's description of Z'kron's revelation regarding that wasn't forgotten. Her intent wasn't to destroy them.

And as he was the one who prompted it in the first place the spell newly christened as Agar's Bane, was released into the air.
 
Sleep was had, for all that Vireylda really didn’t feel at all that rested for it. Constantly awakening through the night, the itch of bedbugs crawling over her and the erratic bursts of light from the window where the Arcane Contamination storm continued to rage away unchecked. But there were no unwelcome Ghoul events, nor anything untoward that impacted Vireylda beyond the token unpleasantries.

Bites and itching, scratches and rashes that would follow Vireylda home from Narim as a parting gift for her stay within Casa de Agar Spire.

But her Vis was restored, even if the mind was feeling worse for wear after sleeping in such a place.

The Zilant playing fetch, and Vireylda making her own preparations for the magical rite. Amplifying, the very state in which Vree had assassinated Agar only the day prior - though, no Ghouls to interrupt and make history repeat itself this fine day. Maximum strength, reinforcing her status as an Archmage as she drew upon all that the Esh’lahier could muster in the moment.

Power flowed, spreading throughout the lands of the Sherian… it was a lot, and as Vireylda had seen with Agar’s own use of Undead? There really was a limit into how fine one’s power could be spread. Great reach made for a much, much weaker spell over all.

Bodies crumbling into nothingness about Narim and the western coastline without incident. The midlands of the north? Bereft of corpses too. But there were pockets where Vireylda’s magic simply wasn’t strong enough - places of resistance such as in Orckon where the graves remained. The ancient necropolis around the outskirts of Taralon too were problematic. But by and large? Cemeteries of the Imperium had their inhabitants turned to dust, the bodies of the brain-dead citizens of the Imperium that had been functionally not-quite killed during the Sherian Wars along with those of the Guardsmen and Rebels alike.

It wasn’t a complete success, but it was mostly one as Vireylda spent the last dredges of her power…

And now Orckon and Taralon were aware of ‘Agar’ and his spell, and the notion that after that? He’d be weak - powerless now…Vireylda had done the deed, and painted a target on her back.

Colette’s Gemstone radiating rage, a glow of heat surrounding the prison that bound the Champion of Ainlar...

...Narim was in no way, shape or form a safe place to remain for the living after Vireylda's spell.
 
She...did it?

Vireylda had to wonder if she'd ever feel less surprised when her magic was effective. But that didn't matter. Her power was gone, but the Zilant and Death Knights remained. Time to leave.

One last matter. Vireylda rode down on the Zilant. Searching houses for linen or other such stuff to make a makeshift bag. Enough for four!

And once she gathered that. Vireylda would stuff as many of those femur scrolls, and the original ones written in orckish in those bags as possible.

That done, it was time to wave goodbye to Narim. Forever. She would not return here.

Onto the Zilant everyone. Death Knights too! Staves of Arcana grabbed also. Everything Vree took from Narim into those bags.

Then it was time to cling onto the Zilant - Death Knights also ordered to do so - and head back home across the sky.

With a stop to Temperance of course, for the imbuements she promised to deliver. Then home.
 
Success - a few pockets of resistance, the side effects of such a weave being quite so wide-spread as to cover the better part of the Province. Corpses, bereft of any other Necromancer animating them were no more a challenge to weave than an Elementalist working with sand or water - and what Vireylda had done was akin to triggering a sandstorm to blanket the entire Arakmatian Frontier. Achievable, but also far from subtle and had drawn the attention of the few Magi that remained within the Sherian.

Stuffing the sheets with loot in her makeshift bags, the prospective plague of bedbugs to accompany the Elf at that as Vree made her farewells to the wretched ruins of Narim. The region better than it’d been prior to her arrival, for all that there was still so much work yet to be done with the Arcane Contamination before the city might once more become truly liveable.

Never mind the whole, this territory was about to become contested for sure between the Orcs and those that yet remained. The side effects of removing someone of power? Others soon moved in now that there was no opposition in their way.

Four Death Knights chambering onto the back of the Zilant, it struggling to carry all of their weight - but it managed, even if it was an awkward sight indeed. Far over maximum carrying capacity and barely able to get more than fifty metres off the ground before the Zilant sound start to drift once more to the ground - more measured glides than genuine flight.

Off and away!

OOC:
Archmage Necromancy Approved, 2 Experience Awarded.
Vireylda’s Vis is stable. She has yet to learn the core Techniques - though the scrolls that Vree ‘liberated’ might yet prove an insight into some of the weaves.

Colette, Champion of Ainlar has been trapped in a Soulgem. Her free will is retained and is 100% a prisoner.

Vireylda has four Death Knights (lvl2/Veteran in their core weapon and lvl1/Basic in unarmed.
Vireylda has an Undead Zilant. This will require constant maintenance, but can potentially be stabilised and restored to an 'in life' intelligence as 'sentient Undead' equivalent.
 
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