“Wait. A god from another world?”

“Yes. You heard about how some powerful beings have become gods?”

“Yes. Valur, the Giant.”

“The God of Undeath, Etriad was a primordial power in their native world. Death and Decay made manifest on a world that was little more than an ever-churning sea of elemental expression and magical eruptions. Never mean to have a name, never meant to exist outside its world. Yet the queen herself reached through the fabric of the cosmos itself to find power that could beat back Death herself. And found it, hungry and accepting of her terms.”

“She planned to achieve true immortality as this god wrestles control over the domain of death and then what? She assumed it would just reward her?”

“Yes. Only the creature was not a fully formed god yet and needed immense power to draw upon for its upcoming fight. In its unfished, unformed state, it would fare poorly against a divine being like Lady Death. Especially when she is within her own realm.”

“It feeds of death. Any death?”

“The gray sleep became an undying nightmare. thousands of entombed elves, waking up as one, screaming as their souls, drenched in magic, were devoured. By the time the Queen realized her dream of immortality for her and her people was but a false bill of goods, it was far too late. Her very own son, who embraced Gray sleep earlier than most, now stood in a soulless, warped husk. An undying. “

“I think I get the picture. Bleak and awful as it is. And the message. You cannot truly cheat death and magic always comes with risks and dangers.”

“Indeed. By the time she came to her senses, her grand metropolis, her shining capital was being devoured as it was where all of her people returned to before going into the gray sleep.”

“It didn’t stop at the city, I take it.” Saga said as the story

“It did not. Even as she closed the gates to the city, sealing it magically with all of her considerable power to make it so it could never be broken from the inside, the god of undeath could simply bide its time.” Indrada knelt and opened the hatch on the floor. Looking down the hatch, Saga could see a tunnel seemingly built-in thick, a magical glass of some kind. A latter led down into a large room made of stone and more of the glasslike material.

“ It simply waited for elves on the outside to go into gray sleep, unaware it was now his absolute domain. Once it had enough servants with enough magical talents and power, they cracked that barrier from the outside.”

“And out came an entire flood of the undead.”

“Of such numbers nad such power as never seen before or after. It devoured the northern part of the continent within months” Indrada walked up to the map of her home continent. ANd placed a finger on the west side of the border between undead and living territories. It read Melans Tear.

“On that day, over a hundred years ago, The last of the living Gray Elves and all of the fighting able Humans, Hobgoblins, Centaurs, and other folks of the western parts of the Eternal Continent stood at the Witch Queens back, along with her seven scions. At the walls of Melanas Grace.”

“Only after that day. It became Melena's tears?”

“The undead was a tidal wave of dead flesh and uncaring, relentless hunger. The sacred border you see on the map there? It was formed and held up by a triumvirate of powerful, desperate mortal powers. To the west, Melans army consisted of survivors who fled into her kingdom ahead of the hordes.” She pointed to the mountains. “The Operathian Dwarves and humans of the Operath Mountain Queens domain held the center, a place far easier to defend due to the rocky terrain." Her finger traced to the east, where the marked border between the undead and living lands ran mostly parallel with a pair of large rivers.

”And to the East, the Riverlands were held by the Nar’Sadas many merchant kings, who had already lost one of their most important port-cities to the undead and pooled all their wealth to form a mercenary army of gargantuan proportion as. All the small baronies and earldoms to the south sent their finest to either Nar’Sada or Melan as well.”

“The terrain looks to be mostly flat plains around Melan tear.”

“Indeed. So it was here the hordes were concentrated in earnest. Melan's Tears held out for 3 years of endless, nonstop undead hordes. For three years, Witchqueen Melan held the undead god back.”Until she had no blood to shed. Her entire lineage, each of her beloved children, her cousins, her brother, her beloved King, all were dead.”

”But she stood there, in defiance. She exerted every bit of power, great and terrible in scale to push back the undying again and again. As others rallied to her. As the other frontlines were shored up and their attackers trickled. I saw her tear a liches phylactery out of its pocket dimension through sheer arcane power. She was every bit the equal to the Gray Elves, and she was never immortal. ”

“You were at Melans tear.”

“My Name is Indrada Baranni Kandessess. The Baranni was my Husbands house. They were the Witch Queens' Royal Guard. Kandessess was my Mothers clan of pyromancers.”

“Was?”

“Queen Melan was not the only one to lose her family during those 3 hard years. Out of House Baranni, it was only my husband who survived. And of the Kandessen I am afraid only I and my sons remain. In that regard, they are also the last of the Baranni.”

Saga stared at her in disbelief. The woman before her looked suddenly ancient and weary as she looked at the spot where Melans Tear was marked on the map. The weight of her words sank in as Saga tried to understand how someone carried on after such a terrifying loss.

“I was but a child. Only 17 years of age when the war broke up. My father died in the first year of the war. My mother is the second. I had an older brother by the name of Zamir. One of the finest pyromancers of our generation. A one-of-a-kind talent. He stood by the Queen's side when our father fell. He could breathe fire from his lungs like a dragon” She exhaled a plume of smoke that ignited into a small ball of fire as if to demonstrate the very skill.“He did it for so long that his lungs turned into scorched cinders. Then he flung himself like a human fireball at the undead hordes. He made himself detonate into a sea of fire that swept through the undead frontlines, buying us precious minutes to recover. The walls of Melan's Tear have more stories to tell than any place in this world. ”

“Holy fucking shit..” Saga was at a loss for words at this point. Wars were a fact back in their old world, but those were between humans. The thought of a tireless, unyielding sea of dead bodies assaulting your city for years. It was the stuff of nightmares just thinking about it.

“My husband was 18 at the time. His father and mother lived to the very end of the siege. They took care of us both until the very end and treated me as one of their own when all I had was consumed by fire and death. But that was only until Melan took all those that we were able to fight and sallied forth into the weakened horde, seizing on the fact that they had finally broken against the walls. They needed to link up with the Operath Dwarves and Nar’Sada mercenaries who moved to attack them from the rear, finally reaching Melans Tear.

“They didn’t come back.”

“No. Half the party never came back, including the Witch queen. They succeeded in destroying the last of the undead armies general and liches, dispersing the hordes back north. IT was the last real battle of the war.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“There is nothing you can say that I have not heard before. What I need from you, is that you listen.” She said as she fixed Saga's eyes with her own gaze.

“Your mix of Affinities is one I haven’t seen in nearly a century..”

“I know one is Death. But I am still uncertain about the other one.”

“We believe you're developing the Rebirth Affinity”

“You said you also possessed that one, back at the feast. It is supposedly rare.”

“You have to pass through the death's domain and be brought back to life. Can you guess who else holds it?”

Saga's eyes widened. The mental image of someone who was steeped in death while clinging onto life for a second chance came to mind. “Oh.”

“Aurvenasil Greybourne. High Sorceress, Queen of the Gray Death.” She said, her eyes hard. “When people figure out what your combination is. They are going to be extremely interested in you. You will need to prepare yourself for when that happens.”