"Sir Luckwig?" A hand waved across his face. "...Hello?" The hand waved again, a bit closer to his face this time, and when that didn't work, the person in question snapped their fingers in front of his eyes, managing to drag him out of his reverie. Luckwig blinked, his attention sharpening back to the world around him. "Sorry," he muttered, dragging a hand down his face. "I spaced out," he said with a weak laugh.
"Yeah, no kidding," she said, dropping her arm and cocking an eyebrow. "Are you thinking about our son?" Luckwig's laugh faded. He hesitated, then nodded in confirmation. "Among other things," he admitted, his gaze drifting past her shoulder, unfocused for a moment, but this time he caught himself and looked back. "I just can't believe that I'm really having this…"
Luckwig exhaled through his nose, a breath that sounded almost like a laugh, but carried a bit of an undertone that suggested it was anything but. "A family," he said, pointing at her swollen belly. "A son. Someone who's going to look at me and depend on me and stuff." He shook his head. "It's terrifying, you know?"
He looked at his graying claws, a sad smile plastered on his face. He flexed his fingers, then curled them back in as if embarrassed by the gesture.
He's alive and happy. Yet it didn't feel that way.
None of it did.
His lovely wife gave him a confused look, the crease between her brows deepening as she studied his face. She said something to him, but he couldn't hear it.
"LU—!!" He heard a dull thud as it impacted the floor, but before he could register that it was he who had fallen, his consciousness had already slipped from his body.
There were the feelings of hands around him shaking his body incessantly, but he didn't want to wake up from the wonderful dream he was having right now.
He wanted it to last forever. He wished it could last forever.
But reality was cruel.
_____
?????
6
_____
It was... Cold.
Not the numbing feeling of winter, but the suffocating chill that seeped into his bones, causing the rotted tunnel of his lungs to hitch slightly as the faint feeling of awareness clawed its way back into him, dragged forward by an ache that had begun to subtly settle behind his eyes. Well, not eyes anymore, he supposed, as the flames that made up his ethereal sight lit up in his skull, giving him a wide view of the vast castle he had long ago taken control of, along with the denizens of monsters that roamed about, all of them wearing the sickly taint of his soul, as their eyes glowed a reddish color. In another life, he might have felt sorry for what he had done to these creatures.
But here, in this life, he didn't. The regret that should have followed that thought never came to him. It hovered there somewhere distant in the deep recesses of his mind, where his humanity was still intact, muffled and rendered irrelevant by the years of bloodshed that had come about from his actions, yet the memory itself lacked any substance of his former humanity. It didn't matter now that he had robbed these beings of their future, and it wouldn't matter for ages to come until their corpses ceased functioning and fused with the rest of his might. What mattered now was that he had been awakened from his slumber.
And he was having quite the dream before he had been disturbed. He was so close to remembering what his life used to be before all of this happened. Someone had obviously triggered the alarms, awakening his pale guardians and promptly killing them, which, in turn, had awakened him. The ache behind his perception throbbed, then faded into a dull pressure as the castle responded to him. Lifting a hand upward, he directed the energy in the surroundings into a single point, a crystalline object materializing into existence, the surface of the object shimmering, its faceted planes knitting themselves together as an image began to take shape in its form.
The image stabilized with a soft chime, and the crystal's interior clouded before clearing into motion. Three figures moved through the outer halls, their forms outlined in a pale blue light to differentiate them from his puppets by the castle's wards. They were all different from each other, and it was pretty obvious that they were heroes who had been summoned to put an end to him. To say he was disappointed would be an understatement. He could have sworn that 200 years ago, a similar group of heroes came to attack his castle while he was sleeping.
Maybe the mages were going crazy. Regardless of that, he noted each of the heroes one by one while assessing their danger. One of them was an ordinary mage, while the other looked like a brawler of sorts, with a shield etched with a myriad of sunburst sigils that burned faintly against the taint of the walls, though he couldn't exactly tell what that one represented in the group. Another walked lightly and carefully, with their blades hanging low beside them, which was a clear indicator that they were a rogue of some kind. To which school of thought he didn't really know.
It was an impressive group; he had to admit. They had a relatively large amount of mana, although it wasn't anything near his level to make him feel any real threat. He would kill them and make sure it was painful in the process, then hang their bodies right outside the border of whichever kingdom they came from. Alternatively, killing off that kingdom and its people would be good, since letting an enemy live on to potentially rise against him again after their previous attempt to take him down had failed would be ideal. But he had an image to uphold among the mortals of this world.
The crystal chimed again as they advanced, their movements slow and very skittish, obviously flustered and wary of any sudden sounds or movements at the corners of their eyes or the periphery of their vision while they made their way deeper into his castle. To mess with them a bit, he manipulated the corridors as they went, reshaping the halls while they weren't looking, causing the floors to subtly slant and the walls to exude a cloud of bacteria and fungal spores like a dead corpse, making the heroes more cautious and fearful of the sudden change in what was happening around them.
He even started making the undead act a little weird just to reinforce the fact that something was very wrong. He did this first by using some of the souls that he hadn't had any use for yet, puppeteering them to perform the last actions they had taken in life prior to meeting him. To that end, illusions worked perfectly too to fill in the gaps with their own terror. The human mind was gullible enough for such manipulation, so he didn't hesitate to use that to his advantage. A corpse ahead of them lurched, vomiting out its own organs as it fell to its knees, and when they turned the corner and looked into another room, an undead shuffled past them, dragging an emaciated child behind it.
Each image went past the heroes, yet despite how much he increased the horror of each encounter, the heroes' resolve never wavered. It got to the point where even he began to doubt his own power, as the heroes showed absolutely no signs of stopping or any signs of hesitation at any of the illusions he created. 'Maybe they aren't mere mortals after all.' The thought slithered through him, an unfamiliar flicker of unease brushing against the edges of his consciousness. Usually, fear and terror were easy prey to fetch out of a mortal, but these heroes seemed completely impervious to his mind games, and just kept moving.
He watched belatedly as the heroes pressed on, killing whatever undead got in their way and moving deeper into the next floor whenever an undead ignored them. Their sole focus was on him, and they were not going to stop regardless of the circumstances. They would keep fighting and killing his minions wherever they popped up to try to stop them, and they would ignore the ones who wisely chose not to interfere in the battle that was sure to come. It was almost admirable in some ways, yet he didn't see it.
All he saw was the mages who had summoned them all for the purpose of killing their escaped toy that had become a recent problem for them. And that stirred up an emotion that he hadn't felt in ages within him.
An emotion that he thought was completely buried away with the rest of the others from the moment he ascended. An emotion he thought he had completely gotten rid of during his years of violence and bloodshed.
Pure, molten, unimaginable rage.
Luckwig's fists clenched, his claws digging into the crystalline surface of the viewing crystal. The light from the crystal flickered under his grip, warping the images of the intruders as though the castle itself trembled in anticipation of his fury. His flames of perception pulsed brighter, igniting the skeletal forms of his minions in waves of crimson that bled into the shadows of the halls and seeped into the seams of reality, causing the space around him to physically vibrate as if he were in water, the ground underneath him cracking under the pressure of his own might as he stood up.
"Enough."
The corridors screamed as the stone folded in on itself while the distant clash of steel was abruptly drowned beneath a thunderous groan as the entire wing of the castle shifted. The walls buckled. Arches twisted inward, stone screaming as it was crushed and remade at his will. The heroes staggered as the floor lurched violently beneath their feet, the carefully laid geometry of the halls rotting away as if it were a living organism, a disgusting smell emanating in their surroundings as the space around them began to warp.
He had had enough. It was time to kill them, now.
He didn't bother with any pleasantries or vanity by flaunting his wealth at the intruders. He simply did the practical thing by beckoning one of his servants to come forth, before plunging his hands into the creature. The servant did not scream; its ribcage simply parted away like parchment beneath his claws, soulfire spilling from the wound in languid ribbons as Luckwig seized the thing's core and pulled.
It convulsed once, its limbs jerking sharply, before going completely still and collapsing inward on itself, flesh sloughing away as its animating force was ripped free. The pooled blood slowly began to morph into the shape of a sword, but impatient as he was, he simply grabbed it by the hilt as the door of his throne room burst open while the Intruders ran inside to greet him.
His sword was ready, and his minions were too.
He was going to win for sure.
_____
Ashford
3
_____
"That's him." Elias said, his voice trembling slightly
Ashford followed the line of his gaze, and for a brief instant, he forgot how to breathe. The throne room was vast, far larger than the castle's exterior had any right to allow; its ceiling lost somewhere in a haze of drifting ash and glowing embers. Pillars of blackened stone twisted upward like the ribs of some colossal beast, and between them burned braziers fed by dark bluish flames, and at its center stood him. Two other monsters flanked his side, but in comparison to their creator, they were like a grasshopper standing next to a giant, as that giant looked down upon them with a face that was devoid of emotions.
He was taller than any man could physically allow, his frame wrapped in a beautiful white silken robe that was lined with a myriad of runes, his hands and the rest of his body as black as charcoal, while his flaming eyes stared from above the throne at them. In his hand rested a sword that was entirely made out of mana, although the way the blood and veins around said object moved made it seem almost alive, which, considering everything they had seen so far, made the insinuation of the weapon's origin a little disturbing.
Ashford tightened his grip on his shield, pushing back the pressure that weighed on him and the rest of his group as they stared down the demon in question, which was staring at them for a long moment before finally deciding to speak. When it opened its mouth, the creature produced possibly the most horrific noise he had ever heard, one that he never imagined any living organism could produce, or was even capable of, as the thing tried to speak to them.
"己回," it said, the sound reverberating through the throne room, each syllable of its words a bit out of sync with one another as though several mouths were speaking at once. "と回凵 乍工几丹ししと 丹尺尺工レヨ." The others covered their ears or coated them with mana, but the words of the demon still went through to them regardless of their resistance, which only intensified his doubt about this entire mission.
Was it English, or some form of Hispanic, or maybe a mixture of the two? Whatever it was, the translation magic of this world couldn't even understand it. "Keep your head in the game, guys; he's just messing with us." Elias snapped out of his daze at once, staff coming up as the light of the gods crawled along its length, blessing him in the other groups as the effect of the noise slowly went away from their minds.
"My apologies, I didn't realize the communication barrier between us," the demon said. "It has been a really long time since I've spoken to anything or anyone that is alive." It was clear English, confirming the stories about him. "You have come very far," the creature continued, tilting his head just slightly. "Which is a little expected considering your 'heroes,'" the demon drawled, creating quotation marks at the title with his clawed fingers, the runes along his sleeves dimming and flaring as he moved about on his throne.
..that came here to decapitate me. but I'm going to give you one last chance to leave here and never return."
"We aren't—"
"I know." Luckwig interrupted before Ketta could speak, a bony finger lifted in the air and silenced her words before they could spew out of her mouth. "I just wanted a reason to justify why I killed you when you attacked." Silence took over the room after that. What else was there to say? Both sides understood why the other was there, and neither side was going to let the other leave. One way or another, one of them was going to die. The dark Lord was powerful. They felt his presence the moment they entered the badlands, but still.
They chose this fate, and there was no turning back. "Now, gentlemen, if we're done with pleasantries?" he said, raising his sword high above his head. The motion looked almost languid, yet the pressure in the room spiked so violently that the braziers guttered and flared, their blue flames bowing away from him as if in submission.
Luckwig vanished. One moment he stood before the throne, and the next, he was right next to them, his blade descending in a downward arc toward his head, the air itself screaming like a living being as the sword grew ever closer to pulverizing his skull. Ashford brought the shield up by sheer reflex, which was the only thing that managed to save him in the end, from certain death.
The impact detonated.
Light and force exploded outward as the divine sigils in his shield met the demonic sword, yet despite the pressure, the shield held. For half a second, at least. Then Ashford was driven backward like a kicked pebble, skidding across the floor and slamming into a pillar hard enough to splinter the stone behind him. He hit the ground, coughing blood, his ears ringing as his vision swam.
"One down." Light detonated from the mage's staff as Elias slammed its butt into the floor, the holy sigils lining the staff erupting outward in a blinding ring. The blast tore through the throne room, vaporizing the lesser undead where they stood, and for a moment, the pressure lifted, allowing the others to breathe. Luckwig, however, didn't even seem affected by the hero's effort.
"Did your masters not teach you anything? Holy magic doesn't work on me." Ketta's twin blades flashed as she darted forward. Her instincts screamed at her to strike before Luckwig could reposition, but even as she lunged, the space around him seemed to bend at an odd angle, blocking her attack.
He moved like a shadow, sidestepping her first strike effortlessly and leaving a trail of fire in his wake, laughing as he beckoned her to continue, kicking her whenever her footing got out of place. "Predictable," he said, his voice calm as he shifted again. His hand flicked outward, and the floor beneath Ketta rippled. She barely leapt clear in time, her momentum throwing her into a spinning strike aimed at his midsection.
"Very predictable." Luckwig's blackened claws shot out faster than she could perceive, wrapping around Ketta's wrist mid-spin. The sudden grip stopped her cold, spinning her off balance as her blade clattered against the stone floor. "I'll definitely be keeping you around," was the last thing she heard as the world blackened and she was thrown into a portal. "Now, with the others."
"Ketta!" Ashford barely had time to process what had just happened before the world itself seemed to shudder around him. He felt a tug before his body was violently pulled sideways, just in time as a long gash carved deep into the stone of the place where he was, Elias locked in a battle with the demon as he tried to simultaneously protect him. And it was only at that moment that He realized.
They were going to die. This whole expedition was fruitless from the beginning. They should have just left the castle when they had the chance. Now they were going to die.
"Inexperienced, arrogant twerps. I wonder if your masters just threw you at me so I could get rid of you for them."
He had to run.
He had to get out of here.