As the first rays of morning light began to creep in through red-and-black stained-glass windows, Lagrath took a moment to admire his own reflection in the steel head of his halberd. Or would have, if he’d had one. Instead he was left appreciating the fine shine in the heavy metal, excellent craftsmanship enhanced by the tell-tale glimmer of a magic weapon. He couldn’t exactly remember where he’d gotten this particular pole-arm. It was probably stolen—the best kind of magic halberd. Every time he sunk one of these into somebody’s head, he liked to imagine it was being used to cave in the original owner…even when he’d completely forgotten who that was.
From across the room, a cacophony of timed explosions suddenly erupted at the heavy steel double-doors guarding the first floor entrance of the Dreadspire. Somebody had the gall to summon HIM to the entrance of his own tower, and for once all his servants were elsewhere. What’s worse, he’d even left explicit instructions to all Ravenfel residents not to disturb him this morning unless either there was a fire or someone had a death wish. Gritting his teeth, he stormed over past the tables holding his armor collection to confront the intruder. He carried the immense weight of the halberd lightly with one hand, clenching the weapon tightly while trying to envision the most satisfying way of welcoming his house guest.
He threw open the massive double-doors with exaggerated flair…and suddenly found himself staring straight into a massive skeletal ribcage filled and crisscrossed with a chaotic assortment of armor, heraldry, and unidentifiable glyphs. He craned his neck up, only to stare straight into the glowing and red empty eye sockets of a leering ivory skull.
“Oh good, my favorite neighbor.” Lagrath sounded like one of his servants had just served him up a sewer rat on a plate for dinner. Few things or people really got to him, and most that did didn’t remain around to annoy him for very long. For what must have been the hundredth time in just a matter of months, Lagrath found himself silently cursing the lack of usual options with this particular grievance. He couldn’t stand Gharik Darkmoor. They were complete opposites in every way and disagreed about almost everything. Gharik was on an eternal and hell-born mission to eradicate every last living human in Britannia, while Lagrath most definitely aimed to keep his favorite meal from going extinct. Gharik was deeply pious and droned on endless about the Guardians. Lagrath worshipped only himself and lost interest in almost any other subject after about thirty seconds. Gharik saw it as his sacred duty to protect and guide his own kind, while Lagrath had spent the last few centuries doing his damn best to eliminate most of his. Lagrath liked to quip and seize every possible opportunity for a glib remark. Gharik had all the sense of humor of a coffin.
“Greetings to you as well.” Lagrath could never tell from the deep bass and dull monotone if Gharik failed to register his sarcasm entirely or simply chose to ignore it. “It is time for us to depart. Several of the necromancers and skeletons have already arrived to minister to the cemetery residents. It would not be meet to leave the flock without its shepherds for too long.”
Lagrath honestly couldn’t give a bat in hell for their “flock”, but for once Gharik was right. The orc invasion was still a few hours off, but with them one never knew if they were going to feel particularly bloodthirsty and jump their own schedule.
He simply nodded and turned to walk over the row of bookshelves behind him, leaving Gharik to slouch awkwardly to fit through even Lagrath’s expanded doorway. Gharik’s mount, an enormous white steed of equally ridiculous proportions, quietly filed into the building in an obedient trail behind its master. The doors closed automatically, a feat that typically greatly unnerved any visitors. Even if Gharik had had facial expressions, he probably wouldn’t have given off the least sign of noticing. Lagrath spoke a few words of power, and suddenly his own pale mare appeared in a puff of gray smoke to stand beside the wooden shelves. He drew himself to the top of his mount with one quick motion and promptly picked out a single golden runebook from among the countless rows. Lagrath flipped to about halfway through, put his hand on a page, and closed his eyes.
“Vas Rel Por”
The two unlikely companions emerged out of the blinding blue gate to stand in the crypts below the Vesper cemetery where Lagrath had marked the rune. They trotted their mounts up the stairs and stood suddenly in the freezing morning air of a frigid graveyard. One of the UWL necromancers, Brymstone, had his back to them and was preaching piously from some dark book to the local residents, who continued to shamble past him aimlessly without paying him the least mind whatsoever. Finally the gaunt man noticed that his superiors had arrived, and he closed his book and eyes to end his sermon by muttering some words of no doubt an extremely unholy nature. His work done, Brymstone promptly walked over to where Lagrath and Gharik waited for him and took a deep bow in front of them.
“My liege Lords, as you can see, I have been busy ministering to our poor and confused brethren, to better prepare them for the coming battle.”
Brymstone might have been as insufferably pious as Gharik, but he manifested due reverence and even outright awe when faced with his superiors—qualities that always greatly endeared people to Lagrath. With his constant prattling about the Guardians he had quickly gotten on Gharik’s good side as well, and it had been his privileged position as one of the few Undead Warlords that both Lagrath and Gharik could agree on that had led him being hand-picked for the small raiding force.
“They don’t seem to be particularly receptive to your…lessons”, Lagrath remarked dryly.
“Ah, yes, that. As my Lord surely knows better than this humble worm, the newly dead take some time to awaken to full awareness. Hearing the words of the Guardians will no doubt help to guide these lost souls back to full sentience all the faster.” The necromancer bobbed his head enthusiastically up and down, as if agreeing with himself.
“Yes, no doubt.” Lagrath turned his mare and began gazing towards the cemetery entrance to the town across the river, Gharik following suit to form up next to him. Brymstone promptly returned to his duties, wandering around the graveyard while muttering to himself and randomly attempting to lay-on-hands any skeleton or zombie that filed past him. Behind Vesper, the sun was beginning to rise slowly in the east. Without looking at him, Lagrath muttered quietly to his silent viewing partner.
“Well, I guess it’s about time.”
If the liches back in Ravenfel were late with the spell, he was going to have them all impaled on spikes scattered throughout the town. Even right up to yesterday, they’d whined incessantly about the impossibility of casting such a powerful spell on such short notice, until finally he’d snapped and threatened to just burn down their damn tower…with them still in it. When one of the senior lich lords had shown the bravado to claim that Kel’Thuzad would never allow it, Lagrath had promptly reminded him that the Ancient Horror was still oh-so-far away on his quest, and would just have to accept it if he returned home only to find his residence incinerated by what looked by all appearances like a routine alchemical accident…after that, Lagrath had never seen anything quite so dead move quite so fast.
Without warning, Lagrath’s stomach suddenly lurched as the entire graveyard felt like it instantly dropped a thousand feet. The rising sun on the horizon turned black, the morning mew droplets forming on the hem of his ebon robe froze solid, and the air in the graveyard suddenly felt dense and heavy. Lagrath turned with alarm to his left to see Gharik saying something, but all sound in the cemetery had been completely muted. After half a heartbeat, Lagrath heard the Lord of Bones say “-warning” and felt his ears pop from an instant release of pressure.
All around them, tall black rifts in reality ripped open, shadow pockets pushing out like nightmares forcing their way into the daytime. Out of the darkness poured a veritable army of powerful undead abominations, mossy rotting corpses and wizened lich lords stepping down from their unholy doorways to the gravel and mud below.
Gharik raised his double-headed axe high into the air and thundered, “Rise, minions!” "They’re already here, you idiot: thought Lagrath, but he kept the comment to himself. At least he wasn’t going to have to burn any of his painstakingly-acquired real estate today. Brymstone fell to his knees and began praying in awe about the gloriousness of the Guardians.
The Lord of Bones turned to Lagrath, axe still held aloft, and proudly intoned, “That which has left life behind can never truly die.”
“Yes, so you’ve told me…Many times.” After the commotion finally settled down, Lagrath turned back to Vesper and waited for the orc invasion to begin.
And waited.
And waited.
…and waited.
Finally, after almost two hours, the vampire began to experience that distinct and unsettling feeling he only got when things took a turn for a worse and it was time for him to make a quick and rapid exit. Although his sixth sense and gift for leaving unpleasant locales post-haste had kept him from being burned alive by angry townspeople like so many of his peers, it was a most unwelcome sensation on a day when the trap was supposed to be sprung on OTHERS.
Lagrath sighed, closed his eyes, and concentrated. Kharnn, where in the seven hells are those lice-infested troglodytes?!
Across the river, across the city, far out on the opposite side to the sea, a man standing at the prow of a wooden longship smiled warmly. Clad all in black and intricately-wrought platemail except for a head of turquoise-green hair, he continued to scan the northern part of Vesper through his telescope.
“Why, my Lord, the orcs have already arrived…and left. The humans routed them thoroughly almost as soon as they tried to begin their invasion. It appears that they tucked tail and ran back home in quite a hurry. I’m surprised you haven’t seen some yellow, shaggy bodies floating past you downriver by now.”
Deep inside his head, Kharnn heard his master curse. The first signs of the orcs’ overwhelming defeat were probably drifting into view along the graveyard coast as soon as he’d said that.
“In fact, there are probably quite a lot of humans around with their blood up, surprised by sudden victory and spoiling for an enemy somewhere close by…and I’m sure by now a few of them are starting to wander down to the graveyard, curious about those interesting lights and sounds from earlier this morning…”
Kharnn felt a popping sensation as the vampire suddenly cut off contact. The revenant collapsed the telescope and gave the crew the sign to turn return south. He whistled happily as the stepped down from the prow and walked past the skeletal oarsmen. Any day where his master’s plans went awry was a good day in Kharnn’s book.
Back in the graveyard, Lagrath and Gharik were practically shouting at each other, Brymstone kept frantically trying to interpose himself between his superiors until one of them almost cut him in half. Apparently servants of the Guardians never retreat. Lagrath was arguing that it wasn’t a retreat, merely a tactical advance in the opposite direction.
A rancorous shout near the cemetery entrance finally interrupted their argument. The two members of the Shadow Council turned to look and saw the vanguard of a huge human host barreling down the road from the north, several dragons in tow. Further up, the entire town was baring down on them! Lagrath was about to open a portal to withdraw back to Ravenfel when Gharik shouted a war cry and charged his steed forward, swinging his axe wildly in the air. Lagrath started cursing passionately in a dead language, thinking bizarrely in the back of his mind somewhere that at least he was in the right place for it.
Now there was no choice but to fight as two humongous red and brown dragons crashed through the cemetery gates with an awful noise. Before Lagrath had the chance to call out any orders, two magic-wielders rode straight at him, completely ignoring the slow lich lords and rotting corpses littering the graveyard. He rode like hell through the cemetery, weaving past tombstones and leaping his mount over open graves. Lagrath ducked as an enormous headstone he’d just put between himself and his pursuers exploded with a loud CRACK of lightning. It was all he could do to keep throwing up magic-reflect shields from the rain of spells pouring down at him from all angles. Normally he’d happily fight humans two-to-one or more—it was better sport that way—but he knew that that particular ones had the more cowardly of their guildmates hiding beyond the cemetery fence, throwing heals and energy bolts into the melee. Even without the little weasels hiding in the bushes or being outnumbered four-to-one (and rapidly rising), staying around to slug it out with humans bringing dragons through the entrance was a fool’s errand. Dragons will see your super-human strength and agility and raise you a burned village. Vampires and fire didn’t mix well.
He’d circled back to the center of the graveyard and risked a quick glance at the other undead. A skeleton named Leinad the Tormented doing an admirable job of chasing down the mounted dragon-tamer with obsessed bloodlust on foot, the bleeding man squealing from his gaping wounds like a panicked maiden in her marriage bed. Unfortunately, magical healing continued to pour through from beyond the graveyard gates, rescuing the noisy man every time death seemed inevitable. Everything else looked even worse. Gharik was now on foot and surrounded an all sides, two knights beating on his enormous frame from the left and right while lizards Red and Brown attacked him from the front and back, respectively. Lagrath saw him knock the wind out of the knight to his left with the flat of his axe while simultaneously landing a haymaker square in Red’s face with a giant bony right fist, bellowing the whole time like an eastern elephant forcibly injected with green vials of Dragon’s Blood. Red went down, but so did Gharik—Brown jumped on his back from behind, knocking the giant skeleton flat forward. Now he had a dragon underneath him, a dragon on top of him, and lots of humans sticking him with the pointy end of sharp objects from every angle. Goodbye Gharik.
Lagrath swore one last time, rearing his mount up on its back legs so he could twist better in saddle. He stretched to his left and thrust out both palms, screaming the words of power to knock one of his pursuers straight off his mount and into a stone wall with blinding bolt of energy. Lagrath took a lightning bolt straight in the shoulder from the other mage in reply, and whipped his mare into a run as soon as it came back down from the air. He galloped straight for the back of the southern building where they’d first arrived, pulling a sharp corner to narrowly miss a crossbow bolt no doubt aimed at his heart by some enterprising fellow in the trees. Without slowing down his mount, Lagrath reached deep into the pockets of his robe, grasped the runestone to the Dreadspire, and called out—
—and landed in front of his tower with a lurch, the mare almost crashing into the stone steps leading up to the doors. He dismounted and dispelled his ride, the ghostly horse disappearing as quickly as it had originally appeared. The massive steel doors opened and closed automatically as Lagrath entered and made a line straight for the bookshelves. The lightning wound on his shoulder was already healing, but it stung—and the injury to his enormous pride grieved him far worse. He reached for one of the countless blood vials lining the selves, decisively taking out a particular specimen. Yew abbey monk—his favorite vintage. Lagrath walked over to the large wooden table he kept in the entrance hall, pouring himself the beverage into an ornate rosy-red champagne glass. He calmed his nerves. The day hadn’t been a total waste…at least Gharik was finally out of the way. That took care of one the biggest obstacles to consolidating his control over the undead alliance and elevating himself to a dominate position within the Shadow Council, and the bony cretin’s demise couldn’t even be traced back to him. Soon he’d be able to use the concentrated forces of the other undead races to eliminate both the power of the human city-states as well as finally eradicate those of his own kin who’d managed to stay out of his reach until now. Everything was going as planned…and best of all, no more sanctimonious lectures about the meaning of Unlife from Gharik. Lagrath finally began to relax, holding the glass to his nose and taking a moment to appreciate the exquisite scent. He prepared himself for the taste with anticipation, and raised the glass to his lips—
—and almost choked when an orchestra of noise erupted at his front door for the second time that day. Still sputtering, Lagrath whirled and reached for his halberd. Had the humans traced him back here somehow? Impossible. There wasn’t a mage alive good enough to trace his Recall spells—he’d seen to that personally. The banging continued, and suddenly he wasn’t so sure. His eyes turned an even darker red than usual, and he hissed as all the teeth in his mouth suddenly doubled in size. He’d teach the humans what it meant to confront him in the Dreadspire. He raced over, threw open both doors—
—only to face a mountain of bone. The ivory was scorched black in a number of places, and the trademark axe was missing, but unless there were TWO skeletons in Britannia the size of a horse-drawn carriage, he knew this one.
“…That which has left life behind can never—“
Lagrath slammed the door in Gharik’s face.
