Calefact, the thaw, 15th day, 221 years A.D. When last I wrote, a hole had opened in Malorum, in reality itself, and I was swallowed by darkness, or so I thought. For no sooner had I passed through the Conflux than I noticed I was falling toward a circular opening that held a substance I had seen before. Strange gray waters rushed up to meet me, the same that covered the surfaces of the Way Stones when they opened.
They were undisturbed as I plunged into them, and though ice and snow give me no cold in death, I felt the strange chill of these waters seep into me just as they had in life, a preternatural cold. Then all sense of orientation and movement was lost, for where the strange waters of the Way Stones hung as thin curtains that could be traversed in a single step, those beneath the Conflux flowed as an endless sea.
The waters themselves were permeated with soft light, illuminating them to their depths. There I beheld a violent plane of roiling vapor, spreading in all directions, to the limits of my sight. Above, another vaporous plane, this one flowing in parallel bands, but where was the hole through which I had fallen? Indeed, this upper plane was seemed as far from me as the lower, as if I had simply materialized between them, a mere speck of dust in an ocean of gray.
I heard a shout of fear, not realizing it was mine, and thrashed my arms, emitting blasts of energy that rippled the strange waters where my body did not. “Calm yourself, Grand Inquisitor,” the voice of Amarax echoed from behind my eyes. “Where am I!? What is this!?” “We are adrift in the Etheric Sea.” Though I was enveloped in the gray, I was utterly dry, nor did my coat, nor hair, nor any part of me move as if submerged in water.
I did not float, yet felt no sense of falling, and when I grasped at the waters around me, my hand passed through them as easily as air. “It isn’t water as you know it, and be grateful for that. It is ether, magick without aspect, unbounded, pure.” I looked out across the endless expanse of gray, perceiving it now as an intangible medium that filled the unguessable distance between the vaporous planes.
I have never beheld so vast and open a space in life or death, a place without physical forms or boundaries, ever flowing, an unbroken ring of horizon on all sides. In the distance, streaks of energy arced between the upper and lower planes, flickering like chromatic lightning. “Why have you taken us to this, this forsaken realm?” “The Etheric Sea is not a realm; it is the firmament between realms.
Ideally, we would have entered through the Way Stones, but given that the Darklight Enclave is watching, we had to improvise. Now, if you would be so kind as to retrieve the objects I entrusted to your care.” I realized then that I had dropped both the cage and the prism in my panic, but felt Amarax urging me to look below and saw them drifting slowly toward the lower plane. I reached for them, reflexively, but was far too distant to grasp them.
As I stretched my arm, straining in vain, I felt a surge of power pass through my blood, a distortion rippled through the ether, and both objects flew to me, as if commanded. “Was that me, or…” “Yes, telekinesis, a simple reversal of the blasts you so enjoy.” I inspected the items closely. The Soul Prism no longer shone as it had when inserted into the Conflux, but returned to a deep jade. The wisp bobbed energetically in its cage, and I saw that the ether was disturbed by its movements.
“What do we seek here, liche?” “Before anything may be sought, we shall require a more adequate vessel than yourself.” “I am not your damned vessel.” “Not my only vessel, thankfully. I have sent for another.” For a moment I contemplated whether striking myself in the head would cause any discomfort to the liche. “It would not.” I sighed and gripped cage and prism tighter. Not long after, a forlorn wail echoed through the ether, and a dull form emerged from the translucent gray of the horizon.
As it drifted slowly into view, it was revealed to be something like a galleon, though none like I had ever witnessed. Its hull was not wrought of wood, but an intermingling of bone and stone. The bones themselves were massive; each side of the hull was flanked by what appeared to be ribs that ran from gunwale to keel. The masts, too, were skeletal in construction, but stranger still was that they seemed to have fallen to either side of the vessel, so that its tattered sails spread as wings.
And the prow… that is when I realized what I was looking at. From the prow of the dread galleon, an enormous skull yawned wide in perpetual torment, bristling with fangs like a hundred longswords. I had seen a skull like this once in a shared nightmare, a dragon’s skull. A dragon’s bones formed the skeleton of this ship; its wings spread wide as sails, and blackened stone filled out the rest.
This monstrous vessel would sink straight to the bottom of Malorum’s seas, but here it glided to me, its wings sweeping the ether aside in swirling eddies, until its blackened deck rose up to meet my feet. “Welcome aboard the Atanite,” Amarax echoed from within. “My god… what is this thing?” “This is my personal Ark. Deadhaus uses these vessels to traverse the Etheric Sea.” “They build them from dragon bones?” “For those that can procure them.”
“How?” “I no longer remember.” “You don’t remember killing a dragon?” “It’s in a Lore Stone somewhere. I needn’t carry it with me.” “But… why would you do this?” “A dragon’s body is both a conduit and reservoir of tremendous magickal energy. This is a most desirable trait in Ark components.” “And the stone? Aevitanium?” “That would be prohibitively expensive for an Ark of this size.” “The dead trade in gold?” “We trade
in tithes.” “You mean human beings…” “Not always, but we must make haste, Alaric. Below, you will find a storage deck. Take us there.” I strode in silence across the blackened deck of the terrible Ark, wondering by what means Amarax had slain the creature to which these bones belonged. I thought back to each time the liche displayed his powers. It was always something subtle, watching and whispering from afar.
I had seen him command the wisp and strike terror into the furious spirits beneath Thacea. He had paralyzed me as a mortal man, poured a piece of his soul into me, and siphoned my magick as a vampire. Always some form of control, his power, some form of manipulation, whether of minds or magick. So too had he told me that true power came from planning, not destruction. He was a cunning creature, no doubt, but how cunning alone could fell a dragon, I could not imagine.
Nearer to the stern, I found a stairwell carved into the stone. Once below, the Ark appeared even less like a mortal galleon. It seemed as if I stood inside a strange stone temple whose arcing walls were inlaid with massive bones. Within these macabre walls, all manner of occult devices whirred and flickered, various stations whose purposes I could not guess, much like those in the liche’s circle, back on Malorum.
I felt the liche urging me further down the stairs, and so I continued my descent in a blur of speed until the stairs ended. I stood then in a deck where many chains and manacles dangled above stones soaked deep, dark red. The scent of the dead blood curdled my own. “This is the Tithe Hold. You’ve gone too far.” Just as I was turning to ascend the stairwell, a streak of sickly green light flitted from the corner.
With no reaction from my blood, I did not flinch or flee, but stood and watched as a strange glowing creature floated toward me and began to orbit my left hand. It was not much larger than my fist and appeared as a luminous veil of pale green. Within the translucent veil, a strange impression of a visage stared blankly, a pair of large, empty eyes above a warped mouth that emitted a small sigh.
“Should I be concerned about this… thing?” I asked, moving my left hand here and there and watching the creature follow. “It’s just a shade, a lesser manifestation of the necrotic aspect.” “Well, what does it want?” “It’s drawn to magick of its aspect, the Soul Prism.” “Oh? I opened my left hand, presenting the prism. “Do you want this, little shade?” The shade gave no answer, but continued to orbit the dark green gem. “Don’t talk to it. It’s a mindless expression of magick.”
“Why does it want this then?” “It doesn’t want in the way that you do. It reacts. Regardless, we have no use for it, so leave it be.” I began to ascend the stairwell once more, but the shade trailed quickly behind, its empty eyes wide and mouth agape. “It’s following me.” “Irrelevant,” Amarax echoed impatiently. Above the Tithe Hold I came upon a long deck that was lined with many ornate sarcophagi.
Their metallic lids bore cryptic symbols and skeletal reliefs with sinister grins beneath black headdresses. Their hollow eyes were inset with emeralds. One such sarcophagus lay in the center of the deck, and Amarax urged me toward it. “Place your hand on the cover.” I set down the cage and did as I was asked; a crackle of green energy flowed through my fingers and into the lid, tracing the cryptic etchings upon it.
Then the lid lifted itself and glided away, crashing to the deck and revealing a desiccated corpse in sorcerer’s raiment. “The setting in the headdress, place the Soul Prism there.” I followed the liche’s instructions, pressing the jade crystal into a setting that seemed at first to small for it, then watching as the gem’s dimensions were warped into a proper fit, as if for a moment it was liquid. The shade, unable to properly orbit the prism any longer, began to hover slightly above it.
“Now, with two fingers, touch the vessel's eyes.” “But it has no eyes.” A brief sigh echoed in my thoughts. “Touch where its eyes once were.” Once more, I did as instructed, and a vision came suddenly upon me. For a moment I was looking up at myself as if through the eyes of the desiccated corpse… what I saw… was a monster. I shall not speak of it. When my own vision returned to me, the corpse began to stir.
It rose from its sarcophagus like a marionette pulled by invisible strings, limbs dangling, head lulling to one side. The shade orbited the headdress, a sickly green halo, until the blackened hollows of the corpse’s eyes burst with green fire, and the little creature darted out of sight. “Very good, Alaric.” The voice of the liche echoed in my thoughts as always it had, and yet I could not help but feel a slight hope in that moment.
“Then… you have no more need of my body now?” “On the contrary, you are a most useful phylactery.” “But you have your own body! You have a dozen bodies on this deck alone!” “Indeed, but there is no reason for me to sever our bond.” “No reason!?” Rage erupted in my blood, flowing up and out my outstretched hand as a blast of telekinetic force.
The shockwave collided with an unseen barrier around the liche, illuminating if briefly in a flicker of green, a spherical shell that faded no sooner than it had appeared. Amarax was unharmed. “Come now, Alaric, surely you do not think to overcome an archliche with such paltry magick.” I howled in fury, rushing at my enemy with all my preternatural speed and seizing his raiment. The blood surged into my hands, and I felt his moldering bones cracking beneath my grip.
Then I heard his voice echoing from within, not as words, but as laughter. His bones crumbled beneath his raiment; his face sunk and frayed, and then at once every part of the liche burst into a swarm of flies, and his laughter echoed a thousandfold with the droning of innumerable wings. The swarm darkened the deck in its furious mass, and many voices spoke into my thoughts. “Alaric the Damned… your power is a drop in the sea of what it will be… in time.”
“Stand and face me, you bastard!” The flies stormed about the deck, some crawling across my flesh, rippling my blood by the force of magick in them. “You cannot face me. You are blind to my true form, as you are blind to your true destiny.” “I will not aid you! A curse upon your plans!” “Then you will be devoured by the Gold when the Messenger returns, reduced to ashes… black.” Amarax did not need to inhabit my mind to see the shock upon my face.
“I thought you could not see those memories!” “I am as death. No magick may deny me forever.” The flies swirled together, a cyclone of brittle, black bodies, spiraling into a central mass. Then Amarax took form within this mass, a desiccated corpse thickly covered in flies. His body rose to hang above the deck, and the many flies streamed into the hollows of his eyes and gaping mouth, unveiling him as they did.
When the last of them had vanished into his skull, its eyeless hollows burst into green flame once more, but I could still hear a faint buzzing from within his rotted form. “I could help you, Alaric.” “You wish me to believe you could stop the Messenger?” “That would require more preparation and resources than I have the time to acquire… but I know one who could protect you.” “Who?” “You will know in time… if you cease this mindless squabble.” “Mindless squabble? You invade my mind by force!
You take from me my very soul!” “I am protecting my investment.” “Do not think to tell me that you are my benefactor again!” “Do you wish to face the Messenger alone? Do you even know when it’s coming?” “When the Serpent swallows the Seed, when the Fountain swallows the sun.” “And what does that mean?” “I… I don’t know…
some kind of prophecy.” “So what is your plan, to roam about Malorum, evading the Darklight Enclave until the Messenger returns at some point?” “I don’t know yet…” “Do you even know how to find your way back to Malorum from the Etheric Sea? Either way, I assure you, it can find you here.” I said nothing. It was clear that the liche had the upper hand. “You must swear a Pale Oath.” “What?” “It will bind you to your word. It is ritual.”
“What word?” “That you will serve me by granting shelter to a piece of my soul and speak no more of severing this binding. You will do this because, without my aid, your existence is forfeit.” “For how long must I grant you this?” “For as long as I deem necessary, or… give yourself to the Gold. Burn one monster out of the world instead of thousands as you could if you would serve me.” “The Awakened…” “You once swore that you would bear any price for Thacea.
I would think my company a small price to pay for its vengeance.” I knew the liche was manipulating me, using my words against me, bending my wants to serve his own. Maybe he did talk the dragon into giving up its bones after all. “And how do I give this Pale Oath?” The words began to scrawl across my vision as if emblazoned in green fire. “You need only say the words.” Though I loathed the liche from the depths of my dead heart, my hatred of the Awakened was ever so slightly greater.
I could not destroy them if I were burned to ash, nor could I hope to defy the Messenger when my blood obeyed it, even above its own thirst. I began to read aloud. “May words to will be by the Weaver bound. My troth avowed upon my blackened soul. May justice swift for oath transgressed be found. And bear me to the Weaver as my toll.
I, Alaric the Damned, swear that I shall serve as vessel for the archeliche Amarax, and seek no means by which to sever this binding until such time as he sees fit to release me.” As I spoke the last of the oath, a sensation like cold and burning spread across the back of my left hand, and when I looked down I saw the mark of Allalmawt upon it in pale green light. “It is done.” I lowered my hand, saying nothing. The words of the Pale Oath echoed in my mind.
Now two of the gods had a claim to me, one because I had prayed, another because I had made an oath. Perhaps the greatest wisdom was to keep one’s damned mouth shut. “Now, when the Serpent swallows the Seed, when the Fountain swallows the sun. This is an astrological timetable.” “The Fountain and the Seed are of the zodiac, but the Serpent?” “Another name for Coluber.” “Then…” “The sun passes through the sign of the Fountain in the month of Hiem.
On the 15th night, Coluber will darken the sign of the Seed, and the Messenger will return.” Of course, I remembered it then. My astrology was rusty, but the symbol for Coluber looked like a serpent. “And what then?” “Leave that to me. For now, we must make haste to the main deck. Leave the wisp below.” I followed as the liche drifted up the stairs at an excruciatingly slow pace until we emerged onto the main deck, surrounded by the boundless gray of the Etheric Sea.
Amarax led us toward the stern, to a raised platform with an arcane mechanism protruding from its center. It looked like a black obelisk of perhaps two thirds a man’s height, and it was scrawled with runes. Amarax took his place behind the obelisk and motioned for me to stand near.
The liche raised his left hand, or rather it was raised for him by unseen strings, and from it a torrent of green energy burst forth, streaking across the deck and forking in half so that each stream struck the wings of the Ark, filling them like the wind fills sails. The Ark lurched forward, but my blood compensated instantaneously, keeping my footing on the deck.
Amarax brought his right hand above the obelisk, spreading skeletal fingers downward, and soon green energy crackled from them, lashing to the obelisk like cords of jade lightning. I saw then the wings of the Ark tilt, and our course was altered. As we sailed through the gray, I beheld again the distant flickers of chromatic lightning between the upper and lower planes. “What are they?” “The Etheric Sea is without aspect, but currents of aspectual magick do flow through it.”
Before long, the luminous currents began to streak across the planes much closer to the Atanite, close enough that I could hear the strange sounds that accompanied them. “We seem to be headed toward them.” “Indeed.” Suddenly, Amarax shifted his hand above the obelisk, and the Atanite veered to one side. “Celestial.” A column of gold fire thrust down from the upper plane, narrowly missing us. “My God!” “True.” “Shouldn’t you avoid them?” “I just did.”
“I mean, shouldn’t you--” “Psychic.” Again he shifted his hand and the Atanite lurched to the side just as a massive arc of crimson leapt from the lower plane, nearly striking the hull. “We’re going to be destroyed!” “On the contrary…” A bolt of pale green light fell upon us, completely enveloping the Atanite in a wailing blast, but nothing was so much as scratched by it. “The dead are immune to necrotic energies.”
“You know which color will fall?” “Which aspect, yes. I am attuned to the flows of magick, as you are to the scent of blood.” Then, in the distance ahead, a strange shape emerged from the boundless gray, the sheer size of which struck me silent with awe.
A funnel the size of a mountain descended from the upper plane, narrowing toward the center of the sea, then spreading as it descended to the lower plane, an hourglass of swirling energies, a mirrored storm so vast that it could swallow Thacea, and we were headed directly for it. Amarax jerked his skeletal hand erratically, and the Atanite dipped and weaved, threading between explosive strikes of magick from above and below.
They grew more frequent and more violent as we neared the storm, and I began to hear the droning of its mighty winds, spiraling bands of color, each as wide as a raging river. Amarax directed our course upward, and soon the swirling storm of magick filled the entirety of my sight. Then the liche’s head snapped up, and the fires in his eyes flashed brighter for a moment.
“A cascade!” “What?” “You must take the helm stone!” The voice of Amarax resonated from within, barely audible over the rising drone of the storm. “What!? I don’t know how to steer this thing!” “Just keep it straight!” And with that, the liche moved his hand from the obelisk, severing the crackling cords between them and drifted toward the bow. In a blind panic, I rushed to the stone and stretched my fingers as best I could in imitation of the lich.
Forking jade tethers whipped out of the stone, lashing around my fingers, and a flood of sensation washed through me. I will write it as I felt it. It was as if I held the Atanite in the palm of my hand, but at the same time, I held myself. Its bones were my bones, its stone, my flesh, and Alaric the Damned was but an ornament upon my mighty back.
Given my experiences with the liche thus far, this sensation was not entirely foreign to me, and through it I began to feel some small sense of understanding about Amarax. Whatever he was, it was like water. It had no form of its own, but merely took the shape of whatever it was poured into, just as I was now. I focused as best I could on sailing straight. My wings, long dead, creaked to divert the currents of raw magic around them.
I could feel the ether beneath them, no longer cold, but buzzing with energy, like the forming and bursting of a hundred thousand bubbles. Amarax floated above the bow, utterly diminished before the cataclysmic cyclone before him. A bolt of crimson split off from the vortex, chittering in its wrath, longer and wider than a road, arcing toward my yawning mouth, but Amarax held up his hand and called the crimson to him.
It struck his skeletal palm, thrashing his raiment and quaking his bones as it streamed into him. Then, as if lifting a tremendous weight, his other arm trembled out to his side, and the crimson flowed through him and out of it, arcing away from me. No sooner had the crimson bolt been deflected than a black stream came snaking toward us. It would have struck where Alaric stood, but Amarax held a hand aloft and bade the black to him.
It had no sound, this stream of black, but dampened the roar of the storm as it came. Amarax wracked with convulsion; the fires of his eyes were extinguished; his skeletal arm clattered as if caught in a terrible wind, but slowly the other arm trembled upright and redirected the flow of magick back out into the sea. We were bearing into the storm then, into a band of green, as I had held our course steady.
But just before we pierced the green, a ray of light of many colors, as if passed through a prism, broke free of the storm and fell upon us. Amarax raised his hands to meet it, but as it struck him, the thrashing of his raiment was made still, and so was I. Bathed in the light of many colors, we were unmoving; even the thoughts within me could not move. I could only watch.
But then the eyes of the archeliche flared alight once more, and out from his hands, cracks began to spread through the light, as if it were made of glass, until the whole of its shaft was riven and scored, and then it burst, falling away from us as fragments, and we dove into the swirling stream of green. For a time, there was only green. It buffeted my wings, pitching me along with it, but I knew our destination lay within in the storm. I had taken the master here before.
The roar of the winds consumed all thought, but it was the voice of the force that bound me forever to silent service, and then it too was silent, for we had passed into the eye of the storm. Amarax drifted toward Alaric, and removed his hand… my hand from the helm stone, for I was Alaric once more. “I must say, Alaric. That was most unexpected.” "I have no idea what just happened.” “I thought that might have been the end of our journey. You are an exceptional helmsman.” “No idea.”
“You have some sort of affinity toward… I wonder…” “Please, never again.” “No, no, I should think not. Here, allow me.” Amarax took my place at the helm stone, reconnecting to it, and with his other hand projected a forking current of green that filled the wings of the Atanite, which I was no longer. He took us down, through the now silent bands of the swirling storm, toward its narrowing center. There I saw an object hanging in perfect stillness.
At first, I thought it a pyramid as we descended, but as we became level with it, I saw that it was mirrored like the storm, an octahedron. It was nearly featureless, except for its shape, and the blackest material I’ve ever witnessed, reflecting no color whatsoever from the luminous bands that swirled around it. “This is the temple of Anu Maht, a waystation between realms. There is an artifact here we will need on our quest.”
“How did Deadhaus build such a thing… and how did they build it here?” “Whoever built the Way Stones built this temple. It has always been here.” Amarax stopped streaming the currents into the Atanite’s sails and began to gesticulate.
I suspect he was tracing a symbol into the air in front of him, a spiraling symbol, but the final gesture was to bring his hand down, palm wide and skeletal fingers splayed, and as he did this a shroud of darkness fell upon the Atanite, and no longer could I hear the rattle of his bones. “Better that we go unnoticed.” As we approached the absolute black of the temple faces, I saw that other Arks came and went from it.
I could not distinguish their features from afar, but always they exited and entered the storm through the green band. Each triangular surface of Anu Maht was massive, making the entire temple perhaps as tall as the World Gate appears from the surface of Malorum, Though it is difficult to say for certain. Still, the alien structure was made minuscule by the narrowest bands of the storm, in which it hung in silent stillness.
It came to a halt, nearly touching the surface, and Amaru ceased the streams. “I must stay aboard to conceal the Atanite. You will have to enter alone. I will guide you.” So saying, he reached a skeletal hand toward the temple, and many bolts of green leapt from it.
When they struck the blackened surface they dispersed, briefly illuminating an extremely fine and intricate engraving of strange geometric patterns that may have covered the entire structure, but was invisible when untouched by magick. A triangular passage opened in the temple, the exact size and shape of those that opened in the Way Stones, and I leapt from the deck of the Atanite to cross through. On the other side, I found a sight not unlike what I had seen through the Way Stones.
The inner structure of the temple was exceedingly large. Its halls and passages rose higher than any man could ever require, and all were wrought as if from a single stone of blackest aevitanium. “You should move as mist, Alaric. It will cloak you from notice.” “But I can’t make it happen on purpose.” “Remember how I did it when you were my only vessel.” I closed my eyes and drew a deep gulp of air into lungs that had no need of it, then let it out in a slow sigh.
I felt my eyes widen as the mist poured from my mouth, and then I felt them dissolve with the rest of me as it enwreathed my body. I flowed through the massive halls, seeing no indication of life or unlife. Amarax guided me from my thoughts, telling me which passages to take, and which to avoid. It was a lightless place, and yet undarkened to my eyes. In shades of gray, I saw at length a place I’d seen before. On either side of me rose immense rectangular pillars of blackened stone.
They were engraved with symbols that stretched up the full length of their massive forms, this time unobscured. And in the spaces between them stood more pillars, and more beyond them, and more, and more, and indeed they spread on ever further, a forest of silent stone, silent stories in the gray. For now I knew them to be Lore Stones, each one containing a piece of history, of Deadhaus, of Malorum, of the universe itself.
This was a hall of history, a silent crypt of secrets, and I knew one of them. If he noticed, Amarax said nothing of my surroundings. He guided me onward, up wide halls that sloped without stairs, ever upward, until I came upon a room of horror. I smelled them before I saw them, the sickly sweet heat of their blood. How many there were, I know not, perhaps fifty. Men and women had been fashioned into gruesome ornaments along the temple wall.
Flayed and broken, the tangled mass of trespassers struggled in vain against the aevitanium to which they had been interwoven. And so it seemed as if the walls were alive with writhing agony and that they sang softly with the subdued moans of the mutilated. “Deadhaus, the Awakened… they may serve different gods, but... they are all monsters.” “Wraiths too must feed.” “No… not anymore.” I stepped toward the mural, ascending a stone dais, scrawled with runes.
Upon this dais stood a great table whose surface was marked with the territories of Isoth, each holding several carven figures. My mists enshrouded them, blanketing the Northern and Southern Provinces in gray, and dampening the Beltlands between. “We are trying to avoid attention!” Ignoring the liche, I inhaled sharply, pulling the mist into what would become my mouth, until I stood upon the table in physical form.
Then I reached forward, straining as I had in the Etheric Sea when I reached for the lantern and prism. My blood roiled, surging with a power that rushed out of me. I could feel the bodies in the wall, feel them pulling toward me, but there were so many; they were so heavy. My arm trembled as I struggled; more power welled up from within; I could see their limbs pulled toward me! And then I realized, in a moment of inescapable horror, that it wasn’t their bodies that I was pulling free.
Streams of blood burst from their exposed muscles, from their eyes, from mouths whose screams were strangled. The blood flowed as winding rivers, racing toward me, past my outstretched hand. I opened my mouth to shout, to scream, to refuse what I was seeing, and the blood rushed into it. There was no stopping it. It flowed into me, not like the blood of animals upon which I had fed thus far, but something beyond words to capture.
It was everything I had ever wanted, everything I ever could want, for all other wants were made meaningless in the depths of its burning ecstasy. In an instant, my agony and horror were abolished. I forgot the terrible mural. I forgot the Pale Oath that bound me to my tormenter. I forgot even Thacea herself. I knew only that my singular purpose was to drink, and drink, and never stop… to drown in blood.
The blood within me stormed and swirled in the violence of its intermingling with mortal blood. I fell to my knees, arm still outstretched, until the last crimson droplets came to me and were devoured. As I fell forward, catching myself on the table with an oath-marked hand, blood spilled from my mouth upon the Beltlands, upon Beller. And there, crumpled in the temple of Anu Maht, lost in a storm of magick, in a sea of boundless gray, I felt a part of who I was slip away.
From that emptiness of being, something else came forth, something greater than that which was… something far darker. -Alaric the Damned