Snap back to the present day…

Excerpted from Elena’s report for the Eye of Elicia, Her Excellency Lady Nhaka Mezalune…

The abbey’s dark and shadowy to all hell, place is a complete mess with corpses and blood all over. You know, the usual. Don’t know why I expected anything else, really.

What I didn’t expect, however, was a princess of the Alyssian Empire of old. At least, she would’ve been if they were still around. Even on his descendants, Abaddon’s aura is unmistakable. If this was three centuries back, I would’ve knelt before her without a second thought as the Countess of Eldia.

Not anymore, though. Still, just thought I’d mention it.

The elven princess, she was bloody all over. Her purple eyes were like yours except that they looked hollowed out, for lack of a better choice of words. She looked listless, looked like she’d fall over at any moment as she shuffled around the altar like something or someone out there was swaying her around like a puppet. And despite all that blood upon her robes, I recognised the colours of the Central Church. She had a jewelled sceptre in her hands, and its silver glow reeked of eldritch sorcery, of Hellbourne taint with a potency that gave me pause as we stared each other down.

Yes, my Lady. The ‘Witch’ the villagers spoke of is a devata. An elven devata, like the ones back in Eldia taking up residence in my ancestral home. And a princess, too. Definitely didn’t see all of that coming together, I’ll say. That, as well as what looked like a circle of fire beneath her feet with lines of inscriptions and runes in Eldritch that was slowly expanding out from where she stood while it glowed orange and red.

“Help… me…” she said to me, trembling and quaking as she brandished that jewelled sceptre. “Please…”

I stepped forward, with dust in my eyes and my sigil glowing nice and strong upon my hands. The Hellbourne hiding nearby made themselves known, a pack of imps that screeched and charged forward with claws and fangs eager to get a good piece of me before their fellows could. A Nisroch as well, wielding an eldritch claymore with an edge that looked far deadlier than the stuff Claire’s been practicing with in her free time. And then, having heard the dinner bell of their fellow imps, even more of the little bastards emerging from their hiding spots in the ceiling and the cloister beyond.

As they came for me, I stopped in my tracks. Bringing my hands forward as stylishly as a master of the arcane ever could, I had the magic in my sigils channelled into an arcane shock that shot forth and arced through the incoming horde of imps like a chain lightning. It reduced them to little more than ash and charred flesh, all well and good before a single one of the damned wretches could get their cloven hooves anywhere close, let alone scratch me with their nasty little claws.

The Nisroch on the other hand, it was still going strong. Intentionally or not, the damned bug had used the horde of imps as a living shield to get up close for the sole purpose of cleaving me in two. But before it could, I ducked out of the way and leapt forward, my sigils turning into conjured blades of fire that I used to slash through the side of its armoured carapace as I moved past it. It left enough of a mark to make the wretched insect drop its massive blade as it recoiled and chittered in pain, and it was enough for me to loop back around to its front to finish it off with a flourish of my fiery blades, leaving it dead alongside its fellow Hellbourne.

With a satisfied smile, I flicked the dust out of my eyes and set my sights upon the elven devata. There were tears in her eyes, and they were fixated upon my golden earrings. The light of the summoning circle had fully formed upon the floor around her, encompassing the entirety of the altar meant for Elicia as well as the first row of broken pews. From the look she gave me when I noticed this, it was anything but good for the both of us.

“Don’t worry,” I said to her, my voice as steady as I could make it. “No idea what’s happening, but I’ll help you. Just tell me what’s going on!”

“Stay away…!” she shouted, ignoring me like my words had just sailed right over her head. “It’s too late… I’m so sorry…”

Before I had even a moment to consider a reply to that, she fled into the cloister. I would’ve caught up to her then and there, but before I could take another step forward, the ground covered by the summoning circle ruptured, erupting with a fiery blaze. It was an explosion, a wave of force that sent me flying across the prayer hall, directly against the big door at the entrance with an impact that might’ve shattered a mortal’s spine.

Of course, that was no skin off my back. You know, being an undead Lich and all. But that’s beside the point. What was much more pressing back there was the damned thing that had sent me flying by simply showing up. That thing, the sole reason why the Hellbourne that had sacked the village had fallen back to the abbey. In fact, just thinking of it right now makes me want to puke all over this perfectly good parchment. At least, if my dried up organs still could.

Yes, my Lady. It was unlike any kind of Hellbourne I had ever seen, and I say that as someone who knows you. The damned thing was as wide and large as half of the entire prayer hall, and tall enough to reach the ceiling if it wanted to. An eight-headed, writhing mass of grey and dark green serpent heads stemming from a burning crater leading into whatever nightmarish portion of Chaos it had been drawn from, where the rest of its nightmarish form possibly remained down below. And it glared at me with eight sets of red, lidless, orb-like eyes made fresh from the stuff of nightmares.

“Damn…” I said out loud to it, as tears of dust instinctively formed in my eyes. “Whatever you are… there’s a first time for everything.”

Of course, this Hellbourne serpent-thing didn’t grace me with a reply. Or maybe it did in its own little way when all of its eight heads reared up and opened their maws wide to bathe me in a storm of fire and acid that my arcane barrier barely withstood while everything else around me melted down into boiling sludge.

“Really, that’s all ya got?” I asked it rhetorically, considering that it was more of a taunt than an actual question. “If you’re finished, I’ll need ya to get out of my way.”

Looking back as I write this, I don’t even know why I tried to taunt a giant mass of eldritch snake heads. But then again, the damned creature seemed smart enough to understand what I was saying. Which isn’t good, obviously. Or at least, it could sense my intentions, and how I was going to go about fulfilling them. I say that, because its eight heads collectively let out a roaring hiss that stunk of venom, that shook the very ground around me as I stood tall (as tall as I try to be, at least) before its overbearing presence.

And as my sigils formed once more upon my hands, I thought of the elven devata and the fear in her eyes before she fled. That there was only one way to get to her.