Suggested Listening

"One century," Kalla muttered. She looked out at the decimated, desecrated, landscape. "You were given over a century to consolidate, to grow your power, to become a god, and you squandered it indulging your cowardice and perversion."

"I am a god, demon!" He shouted at the sky, but did not try to seek out her position. With the complex series of sarite defenses on his sedan chair, he was insulated against all forms of magic save the small amount of communication magic needed to command his deathless army, and enough light to see out. It was more expensive than a small castle, but when coupled with his own personal sarite that eliminated his need to eat, breathe, or sleep, not even the power of a god could reach him.

At the necromancer's behest, armies began to converge upon her. "I have slain the mightiest of dragons and enslaved them to my will! I am legion, and you are but one woman!" From within his personal fortress, he could command his armies forever, until the entire world stood in obedience to him.

Twelve hundred and thirty nine arrows rained from the heavens, as she counted each one. No passion, no fury, just the lifeless actions of those who had died but could not rest, riding upon griffin steeds as dead as they were.

Kalla looked upon the creatures, her heart moved to pity. They were victims of this coward who thought he could command her element better than she. He who imagined himself a god of the undead while hiding behind them and treating them as nothing but tools. "How many have you slain, to fight me? So many lives taken, so many futures extinguished, for the sake of one man's kingdom."

"You of all beasts would lecture me on morality?" He kept working his power, gesturing with his hands as he selected each of his swarm and set them upon the necessary path. The plague-bearers were useless in such a battle, but he had archers and siege weapons and griffin riders to harry her until the dragons could be wrested from their slumber. Even dead, they proved difficult to control, but they were amongst the strongest forces he possessed.

"I will lecture you as much as I desire." She respected his tactical mind and control, but otherwise despised this degenerate. "Do you know how many griffins remain in this world? Before you, there were seven hundred. Now there are less than seventeen. Their species will soon be extinct, and their deaths are on your hands. I, for one, have never been responsible for ending a species."

"For a self-proclaimed goddess of death, you care far too much about life. That is your weakness, and through it you shall die."

"Heh!" For a moment, she felt genuine humor. "You remind me of a younger me. A much younger me." With a single act of power, she carved a hole through his sarite barricades, and split his miniature fortress-prison open to the light. Before he could react, she was standing before him, and had her hand around his throat.

With his windpipe blocked off, he couldn't shout while he struggled, but struggle he did. With a gesture of his fingers, as pulling on puppet strings, he used his Control Revelation to beckon his soldiers. Unquestioning, and swifter than any human, they struck her from behind with their swords and axes. Magic weapons infused with temporary power by the man before him, they had power enough to scratch her gown.

"Which is a problem for you." With her wings, she batted them away. Weapons forged of dragon bone scattered to the four corners of the world, while their less-sturdy wielders exploded into a cloud of dust. "I don't like myself very much." She squeezed harder, cut off the blood flow to his brain.

Soon he would die a dog's death, and then she would have to decide what to do about his army. On one hand, the swarm of the walking dead had its uses for future projects, and she could do so while circumventing the taint of her soul. On the other hand, it was a walking fountain of the highest order of taint, far too unstable to control for any length of time. This was a resource that would need to be used soon, or destroyed.

Distracted she was by her thoughts, she did not recognize the upsurge of necromantic power within the swarms of the dead. A single child, flesh covered in scars, charged at her exposed back.

She noticed the movement, her senses were far too good to be surprised by such an obvious weakness as not paying attention, but she did not recognize the power beyond that movement before one of her smoke wings was torn open by claws able to carve through the spiritual.

For the first time in centuries, she felt pain. Unprepared for the sharp agony and all that came with it, she cried out and dropped the necromancer she had been strangling rather than slaying outright like she should have.

Moments later, another slash of claws removed a second of her flailing wings, then the child zombie was upon her, each slash carving through her enchanted clothes and taking her blood with them on the way through.

Panicked, she used her teleportation magic to take her and her alone into the upper atmosphere, well above the height where griffins could fly. Covered in enough blood to hide her nudity, she gasped and shuddered. These wounds were deep, and resistant to what little healing magic was available to a negation-aspect being such as herself.

She had never been so close to death as she came today, not since she faced her current master and lost. Once again, she was reminded that for all she claimed she wanted death, she feared what lay beyond. She observed the army below, rallying around its commander, the corpse-child. Kalla had damaged it during the fight, but it was the focus for all the power of an army of the dead, the locus of the taint.

It was a clever ploy, what this necromancer had done in creating a sapient battery of undeath and then using it to power his army, rather than chaining an army to himself as so many other fools had done. It had not been enough of a divorce to protect his soul from the taint, which then reduced him to this deranged dead soul residing in a living body, and thus rendered him worthless to the world, but it was enough to spare his flesh from the price paid for the birthing of undeath.

He might even have achieved the immortality he so desired, if not for one small miscalculation. Still reeling from his near-death experience, the necromancer had no chance to react before his own creation ripped his heart from his chest, with the merciless efficiency Kalla knew she should have exercised the moment the madman crossed the line.

"Still haven't overcome your suicidal streak, I see," a voice said from nowhere and everywhere. "That one got closer than any in a long, long time."

"Still haven't done me the favor of being swallowed by the pit, I see." Kalla glanced at the purple cloak billowing in magical wind that kept its user afloat.

"It found long ago that I am not to its liking." In spite of the insults, the two were the closest thing to friends of anyone in this conspiracy. The others shared a mission, and little else. "Give me a moment."

Void magic had a special influence upon the world, for it was the magic that defied reason and sanity. Little in the options of a void mage showed that difference quite like their healing spells. Paradox warped Kalla, twisted through her, and in a moment the events of the past were erased and replaced. Her blood returned to her insides, her organs restored, her wings, adrenaline, even her clothes no longer bore a single clue that she had been wounded. Where causality was concerned, the injuries never occurred, although she would remember them for a long, long time.

"Is it safe for you to use that spell so casually?"

"Here? On you? Yes." The purple clad figure looked down at the army of the dead mulling like a termite nest that had been kicked over. "What do we have here?"

"Another failure," Kalla spat. "He thought himself a god, but in truth all he accomplished was creating a god, then controlling it for a short time. If our task were so simple, we would have been done long ago." She continued to observe the 'queen' of this hive, a single once-human mind unable to make sense of the thousands of eyes which it controlled. "Still, the birth of an artificial god is an interesting phenomena. Now, what brings you here?"

"Your project at Chiron's Citadel has reached a surprising conclusion. While the subject had been using native undead for some time, or relying upon an allied ghost to carry the taint from one victim to the next, she recently constructed a fresh zombie with her own power."

"Another?" Kalla spared a glance at the void mage. "Why didn't you destroy her? Do you have something else in mind?"

"She purified it at the same moment. It was made from love, a true desire to save another from an unjust fate, with the consent of the victim. The soul remained whole, and the taint has been harnessed. The construct even retains its ability to use magic and sarite."

"What?" Kalla's heart jumped in her chest. She long ago learned the word 'impossible' was spoken only by fools who lacked understanding, but this was beyond her own understanding. The critical difference between her and the fools was her ability to admit she was imperfect. "I had not realized such a thing could be done. Undeath without degradation."

"This has happened a number of times, though I'm not sure you were with us last time. The years run together. No, the taint remains, and if nothing shatters their bond beforehand, the zombie's purification will last so long as the necromancer herself survives, then it will return to the usual pattern."

"Fascinating." Kalla kept her focus on studying the young god below. "How are things progressing?"

"They're not. Your project ended, the necromancer and her allies were victorious." She held out the glowing magical sphere that was called the Eye of Enge not long ago. "It contains much for you to study. But we need a backup plan, soon."

Kalla accepted the trinket. "You know, I think I have just the plan. How long do you think it will take to build a portal that can transport fifty thousand walking corpses halfway across the world?"

"Ask no small favors. I'd say I should be ready in two hours."

"I'll be done in half that time." Kalla dropped to the ground. With a thought, she ensnared the undead, crippled them. Now that she understood the nature of the tiny god and the single once-mortal brain which served as its core grip in the world, she had nothing to fear.

It still tried, oh how it tried, but the dead child was no match for her in power, and certainly no match in skill, experience, or strength of will. With the tainted hive enslaved, Kalla approached the dead man who thought himself immortal. It wouldn't take long before he stood again, another mindless drone within the swarm, serving the very thing he once enslaved.

However, that would not serve Kalla's purposes quite so well as he could if he retained intelligence.

Kalla dipped into the magical recording of the memory sphere, and sampled that of the child called Elruin, and her purified zombie. The technique was sloppy, and the process contained many emotional and spiritual requirements which Kalla could not meet under this or, she suspected, any other circumstance. How could she cast a spell that required love and innocence? Still, she cobbled together something resembling an equivalent.

First, she insulated the corpse from the hive, then granted some small amount of strength to the slain necromancer. His own will to live, his fear of death, and his hatred of her in particular, did the rest. The fragmented remnants of his soul dug their way into his corpse, reclaimed his damaged mind, and revived the dead flesh.

Meanwhile, she reprogrammed it, edited its thoughts, and gave it something else to hate. A child of twelve who had accomplished in her scant years more than he had in over a century.

Unable to speak, but no longer having reason to, the new horror began to gesture to the god that it had birthed, and had turned around and birthed it in turn. An ouroboros of death.

Kalla rose into the sky, unnoticed as the hive began to reorganize itself, and stabilize what remained of its sanity. "Now, let us see how she fairs against a god."