I looked out on my territory.

The battle in the goblin tribehold was already over. The invaders had been driven out from the unsealed city.

The storm had passed.

The damage done by my absence left huge blindspots in the weave of Mana, places where I could not see or go. Abyssal energies filled the air like a foul scent, and I could only assume the Black Wolf’s creatures had entered my domain while I slept in the Beyond; those minions were now hoiding in the blind spots and preventing them from healing, like infections festering in a wound.

Despite this I was excited. These holdouts had nowhere to run. Up until now, Arak had avoided feeding me by letting his creatures wander into my territory. Now this failed ambush left his troops exposed. They were all but captive prey for my creations to hunt.

Already, a small group of four mist-wolves had tried to assault the Sunshower Lake, needing water.

On the far shore, my golden serpent heaved up from the water as they lowered their skinless red heads to drink, scales glittering. It struck with the speed and silent grace of death itself. A waterblade spat from its mouth, a long thin jet of blindingly bright spray that whistled through the air to cut a wolf head’s from its shoulders in one stroke.

The others scattered in alarm, dissolving and reforming some distance away. The snake had already vanished back down in the lake.

They came forward, searching for the cause of their kin’s death, gristle-wet noses sniffing the air. As a paw touched the water the serpent burst up again; its jaws yawned open, fangs bared, waterblade forming as it lunged for the first wolf’s throat. The beast vanished in time to evade the bite, but leapt squarely back into the spray of pressurized, sharpened water. A fatal mistake. The cutting edge cleaved away its front left leg and much of its throat before dissolving into mist.

Of the two remaining, one leapt forward, snapping its jaws down against the snake’s throat. The golden scales I’d forged held fast. The last wolf hesitated, kept at bay by the snake throwing out clumsy blasts - it couldn’t aim with the wolf’s jaws ripping its head this way and that, but it could hold off the enemy with a constant barrage that forced the last beast onto the defensive.

At the same time, the snake was coiling around its attacker, crushing bones and pulverizing muscle. The beast could have escaped at any time, but instinct told it never to release its jaws, that even in death it could weigh down its opponent enough for its pack to finish the kill. It was wrong. Forced to constantly evade or be cut apart, the last wolf lost its nerve, turned tail, and retreated into the desert.

Realizing now the battle was lost, the constricted wolf turned to smoke to escape, but it was too late. With broken ribs it could only manage a few stumbling steps before it was decapitated.

Pursuing the one escapee from its rampage, the serpent found its prey at the far lake, twitching on the ground, hypnotized. The horned rabbit sat proudly atop its conquest as the serpent finished the job with a poison bite. While the beast died I finally took the chance to Observe, now that I’d caught one within my territory.

Lesser Barghest

[ Abyssal ]

Kingdom Infernia

Age - 49 Years

Physique - Bronze

Arcana - Bronze

Psyche - Unranked

Diet - Carnivore

Biome - Battlefields

Cycle - Null

The spirits of fear and dishonorable death born from wars, the barghests were once sent to hunt deserters under the Lord of Valor's command. When Arak fell, so did these creatures, a starving hatred for all humanity growing in their bellies. Now they hunt endlessly, seeing not with their eyes but by sensing fear in the air - sometimes tracking especially cowardly souls over countless miles. Gifted with dark magic, they can turn to smoke.

Tainted by the Black Wolf.

Notable Traits - Name-Eater.

And that was that.

Already, I’d mobilized my troupe of gazelles towards a patch of resistance near the Redmouth. Lazarus was happily feasting on the slimes created on the oasis shores by errant Mana.

Leaving all this in the hands of my creations, I turned towards the city below. The ancient ruins the lemur had uncovered in the depths. The battle there had been swift but brutal, and I drew enough Mana from devouring the corpses of barghests and other minor servants of Arak to feel my limits reached, my reservoir overflowing.

Best of all, two of Arak’s Silvers had been caught out by the divine protection descending, dying before they could escape. One was the serpent-bodied construct of bone, torn apart by the stone women, but another was a steelclad rhinoceros that had fallen afoul of the undead.

Each of them had left behind a glowing shard of soul that was worth thousands of creatures from the desert. The flickering, weak souls of animals had long since ceased to properly fuel my leveling. These would.

As for the dead themselves, the majority of them were harmless. Sad and stumbling, they oozed a black glass that seemed like a manifestation of their curse; its qualities were akin to Mana but distinct, an energy I couldn’t absorb, only dissolve away by forcing it into contact with my own powers. The sensation of doing so was unpleasant, and ate away my Mana in the process. Killing them via Mana dissolution would take ages and be too costly to consider.

It was when that black substance - I’d name it Ichor - bound them together into conglomerate entities that they became dangerous. When too many collided and were fused together, beasts of black glass and captive bodies drowning within were formed. A network of bells and salt seemed to repel the lesser dead, keeping them separated and unable to merge. That had worked until Arak’s servants broke through.

I examined one of the beasts, an enormous jungle cat. The most surprising thing to me was how its skin was patterned with spirals and twisting, knotted tribal designs. It looked like a deity carved into being - a created thing.

Vulgar Memoria

[ Silver ]

Kingdom Infernia

Age - 20 Years

Physique - Silver

Arcana - Null

Psyche - Unranked

Diet - Lifeforce

Biome - Necropolis

Cycle - Null

Born when hungry souls bind together, this beast bears the burden of memory. Drowned within its body are those that lost their minds to the fog of undeath, and it seeks the brightness of living things, hoping to restore some fragments of that past. Harmed by both sunlight and hallowed ground, it must lurk in the depths of the earth. Sometimes strange and seemingly insignificant things will cause them to fall into a stupor, having remember something that was lost.

Notable Traits - Arcane resistance, lifesight, unliving, regeneration.

The whole situation was fascinating. Undead, the gods, Abyssals - each represented a distinct form of energy that disobeyed how Mana ‘should’ behave. They were powers that had succeeded in forming their own rules.

Someday, I hoped to do the same. To beat Arak I would need to. Victory was won by the side who set the terms of engagement.

For now - I needed to consolidate control of the city.

At the core was the ziggurat temple, a hollow shell of stone traced with intricate spellwork. Almost all the runes were damaged, the spell within degraded to a bare, spluttering thing on the verge of collapse, but-

Inside was a garden of strange warped trees, each containing a sleeping elven body. Old, young, beautiful and ugly, well-muscled and even slightly fat despite what must have been decades in hibernatio. Their life was sustained by slender golden feelers within the tree’s inner cavity that pierced into their skin, filling their veins and providing a constant low murmur of life energy. It was a form of healing so subtle I was unsure if I could do it myself; they were sustained at the very edge of death.

And they weren’t waking up.

The stone golems who guarded this place were in disarray, struggling to fix their wounds with rune-covered chisels and hammers. Their bodies were struck by cracks and breaks, their weapons broken by the battle - after decades of standing vigil they’d clearly been shocked by the outbreak of real violence.

They seemed to have three leaders; a tower of interlocking bodies that formed a small temple and acted with one mind, a broken golem dressed in a shawl of patterned red to cover her damaged right half, and the leader of the guard, a huge amazonian with a burnished bronze helm and a lionshead pauldron slung across her shoulder to anchor a dress of dull gold silk.

'Antiope'

Stone Golem - Triumphant Muse

[ Silver ]

Kingdom Automata

Age - 58 Years

Physique - Silver

Arcana - Null

Psyche - Bronze

Diet - Duty

Biome - City

Cycle - Null

Gifted with a vision of the heavens of a day his city would be lost to a dread army's march, the master artisan Bek labored for seven years to give form to a set of thirty nine divine warriors, each so beautiful and lifelike they were whispered to come alive in the moon's light. His heart failed in the comission of the final piece, and so the set remained broken; many years later they would be animated by a runecarver and set to defend the walls of the city as Bek intended.

A rare variant of the stone golem, they possess many of its usual strengths, but with a more graceful, agile form.

Notable Traits - Strong arcane resistance, divine bond (broken).

I lifted an avatar of roots and stones from the garden’s soil, climbing upwards into human form where the three met in conversation. “Greetings. I am the spirit of the oasis, and I’ve come to restore this city.”

The guard lifted her spear, but the broken one pushed it aside. “Then come in peace. We have need of help.”

The tower spoke next, all its voices mingling into a resonating chorus, soft and beautiful. “Our duty was to guard the Arkborn until the city could be unsealed. We were… not told perhaps, but led to believe… they would then awaken. That our civilization would be reborn. They were the best of us, in combat and art, study and prayer. The ideals of our world made flesh.”

It was strange that Arkborn weren’t awake. I could sense their souls, their Mana-flame, the components of life within them.

“We could try to sever their bond with the trees, but-”

The guard finally spoke. “We will not be allowed to do so. There’s too much chance the shock would kill them. We cannot risk their lives, by the rules inscribed into our bodies when we were made.”

“I see. And you trust me?”

“We have been convinced. Of your ability to help, if not your good intentions.” The broken golem nodded to Kahlin, who lay in the shade of a tree, recovering from his wounds. His mask hung in blackened ruins around his neck, his massive body clawed by burns. “We will allow you a chance to prove both.”

The task wasn’t too bad. Studying the magic of the city was already a priority, and earning the loyalty of twenty-some Silver-ranks was beyond tempting. “I’ll need to learn everything you know about the enchantments here. Who made them, and how. And…”

For a moment I paused. I had every reason to suspect they wouldn’t like this next question.

“What does the enchantment keeping them alive have to do with the undead?” I’d already seen something like this before. The snow-covered mountains where the frost stole from everything it touched, turning the people buried below into shambling husks.

Was there another buried enclave somewhere below?

They two full-bodied golems turned inwards, towards the tower. The voice of the chorus spoke again. “Long ago, the Magus Akil designed these trees, after perfecting the incantations that would sink the city below. His notes and his tools remain in a sealed chamber we’ve been unable to open."

“As for the death of the city… It was an accident. The wards preserving the Arkborn were only meant to drain a little life from the earth, to feed on the veins of the world. Only- the world itself was sickened by the war above. There was a need for another source. We didn’t have the knowledge to stop it from happening.”

“The enchantments fed on the people in the outer city. The caretakers and guardians meant to protect the sleepers. They sickened, and turned hollow.”

Grim. And worse, I wasn’t sure I could say it was really an accident. If there was a second city in the mountains, the same thing had happened there, possibly worse. Either the enchantments were incredibly sloppy in their design and doomed to break - or they were doing precisely what they were supposed to. Feeding on the many to shelter a few in eternal life.

“I’ll do what I can to unlock this chamber and learn how to break the enchantments without killing those within. For now, I have other business.”

I allowed the construct of root and stone to dissolve as I turned my attention away.

Those two Silver souls were priceless.

Arak had held the siege to deny me the chance to reap souls from his minions, and the desert’s pickings were thin. For days I’d been unable to make any progress. Now? I had finally pushed through to the next level.