Wild Era 3, Ch 30: Ancient Curse

As Kelin landed on the dock, the pirates and workers scattered around the area, hiding in the ruins and other places.

He didn’t bother to chase them, since the problem would resolve itself one way or another. Shortly, they wouldn’t have a ship, and so no way to escape this island easily.

They would either die to the monsters that lived here or to the villagers on other islands if they managed to get there. The inhabitants of the Isles of Azure Sand were not hospitable to criminals, nor to anyone they didn’t know.

If necessary, he could catch a few and read their memories, but he had learned enough from the necromancer to understand most of what was going on here.

One strange thing he noticed was that the pirates had oddly pale features and some of them were thinner than he would have expected, with their bones pressing tight against their skin.

There was also a strange, slightly violet flush to their skin, which was most obvious over where the bones pressed out, and their souls were not as bright as they should have been.

It looked like some of their vitality had fled.

Kelin’s eyes narrowed when he saw it. If he wasn’t mistaken, that was some type of curse energy clinging to them.

With a necromancer nearby, that wasn’t too strange, but it was potentially dangerous. He would have to investigate it.

Instead of going after them, he scanned the island for immediate threats. There were several that stood out. 

Massive concentrations of mana and necrotic energy marked out a handful of points on the island, not to mention the enormous flows of energy that were part of the ritual.

There was also a glaring well of necrotic energy that marked the entrance to a dungeon at the center of everything, the one that the necromancer had been tapping into.

Beyond that, there were three assistants that had been helping the necromancer. One of them was trying to escape in the crowd, while two others were hiding near the dungeon entrance.

They’d seen the fight, but he wouldn’t put it past them to try something. All three of them were in the middle of the Second Evolution and they might have the confidence to attack him.

There were also a large number of undead guardians, necrotic wards, and some artifacts that had threatening mana signatures scattered around. 

It would take a little while to clear out this place.

Wildfire would have been a good solution, but he was sure there were a few hostages somewhere and he didn’t want to be indiscriminate.

Most of the regular people had already been sacrificed to the ritual here, but there were some that had been kept as leverage, like Taren’s family would have been.

For now, he turned to examine the ship that was nearby. 

It was very similar to the pirate ship that he’d just come from, so it should be a decent replacement. With a few quick warding spells, he sealed key areas onboard, including the rudder, main sail, and wheel, locking it down so that the pirates couldn’t take it away.

He’d have to transfer everyone to it soon, or at least bring the other ship to shore, since his elemental out there wouldn’t last forever, but first he needed to secure the area.

When he was done, he headed down the dock for the shore.

This was one of the outer Isles of Azure Sand and it was fairly distant from the others. It was set near the end of the arc that they made on the northeastern coast of Ocean of Storms. 

They resembled a peninsula that extended into the ocean, but one that had been broken apart by the waves. There was a large main island, several medium-sized islands, and then dozens or perhaps even a hundred smaller ones.

In other circumstances, it would have been a pleasant place since the temperature here was warm and tropical and the island was filled with flowers, greenery, and trees heavy with fruit. 

Circumstances aside, Kelin rather liked it.

Despite the view, however, the islands were dangerous due to the monsters and dungeons that often appeared on them, as well as the ferocity of the few villagers who managed to eke out a living.

The ruins that the necromancer had been working on started about three hundred feet past the shoreline. They were a series of low and tumbled stone walls and some broken buildings, some so weathered they looked like boulders.

Ancient runes of a strange style were faintly visible along the surface of the stones, their lines spidery and reminiscent of skeletal limbs and blades. 

They were also glowing with a dull white energy, the same Bone elemental essence that the necromancer had favored. Without that, it would have been hard to make out any designs on them at all.

Now that he was standing here, the flows of vital energy were incredible in his sight. They were a mixture of life force and necrotic power that wove between the stones, channeled by the runes that were on the ruins.

The necromancer had activated a formation that had once been used to fortify the city that these stones were part of, but the entire thing was very old.

It was unusual for the Path to place an entire foreign city on a human world, but Kelin had a feeling he knew what had happened.

Perhaps a thousand or two thousand years ago, in the early days of Lareth and of dungeons, some civilization that predated both Celadon and Sarathia had created this place. 

Most likely, they had taken these stones from a dungeon and used them to build a city. It wasn’t an uncommon habit, but the fact that nothing remained suggested it hadn’t gone well for them.

Whatever dungeon had once been here, it was probably similar to the one that had appeared again, a place related to the Lord of Bones, but by using these stones, they’d unintentionally welcomed an enemy into their homes. 

After that, they hadn’t survived for long.

He gathered together the information on everything he could see and that he’d obtained from the necromancer, and then he shared it with the Path, asking it for more details.

What happened here?

It was one of the privileges of being a Knight and now a Knight Commander. He had a direct line to a small part of the Path’s attention.

It wasn’t what he’d had as an Archduke, but it was enough for this.

There was a pause for a moment as the Path’s presence swept through Kelin’s mind, flowing through all of the information. A crackling pressure like burning starlight descended on the world around him and gathered more details.

Then it spoke.

1,842 years ago, a small village was formed around a Chaos Remnant on this island called the City of Bones. The villagers extracted materials and experience from the remnant and used it to build a flourishing location for themselves.

Even I was not aware of the danger that hid in the materials they discovered.

The remnant was a ruin from the Chaos War and filled with the energy of the Lord of Bones. The city inside once belonged to him, but due to the interference of the Sovereign of Undeath, his presence was hidden. He was waiting for the right moment.

The villagers spent years building their home and turning this area into a thriving small port and fishing village. Then some of them began to fall ill. Their features turned pale and a violet color appeared on their skin. They began to struggle with a cough that would not go away.

At the same time, the runes on these stones began to gain strength and slowly revealed themselves. The brighter they became, the more villagers fell ill.

One after another passed away and was buried here.

This went on for over a year. Then in the span of a single night, every single villager that remained on the island died in their sleep as their lifeforce drained away, in what was later called the Curse of Violet Bones.

They rose again the following morning as undead, a mix of wraiths and skeletons, and those who had perished earlier rose from their graves to join them. All of them had a similar violet color somewhere in their bones or aura.

Those undead wreaked havoc on the local area for months and killed almost all of their neighbors until a team of guild adventurers was tasked with to deal with them.

In those early years, it required an incredible effort and the team had to be teleported in from off-world, but eventually every undead here was slain and their bodies destroyed, while the city itself was shattered into rubble, the remains of which are still visible here.

The city was lost to time and the Curse of Violet Bones was thought to have perished with it, but from the look of these ruins and the inhabitants you saw, it has returned again.

The ruins appear to have recovered some of their structure and the enchantments on them have also reappeared. There is undoubtedly a Chaos Remnant here driving the spells, but it is veiled from my sight.

As the closest local authority, you are tasked to deal with this problem.

Quest Assigned: Eliminate all traces of the Curse of Violet Bones and shatter the source of energy behind it.

Rewards: Variable, including a Mark of Favor.

With that, the voice of the Path faded away.

Kelin frowned as he looked out at the city. With the added information, more details sprang into his eyes. He understood what was happening now.

He also knew more than the Path had said.

The necromancer had come here on orders from Sarathia and performed a ritual with living sacrifices to create a necrotic nexus. Somehow, they had known where to send him.

That ritual had given rise to a dungeon, but instead of just opening a new one it seemed like they had somehow reopened one closed ages before.

It should have been destroyed, but clearly it hadn’t been.

Some vestige had remained and returned.

That was the nature of Undeath.

As for where it was, that was the easy part. The dungeon’s location might be hidden from the Path, but it wasn’t from him. He already knew where it was.

He glanced around the area and then headed toward the center of the city. 

On the way, he saw a few more people with the visible marks of the curse, but he left them alone. If they rose as undead, he’d deal with it, but there was a chance that if he destroyed the source, the curse would fade as well.

Killing the pirates was one thing, but he was holding out hope that at least some of the people here were innocent.

He continued studying the mana flows and the details of the enchantment as he walked through the ruins, taking notes and putting the information together with what he’d gathered from the necromancer.

It didn’t take long before he closed in on a building near the center of things. It had once been an ancient town hall designed with an exterior portico for people to gather beneath, with pillars and an overarching roof.

The town hall behind it had once been a beautiful building with three stories and an elegantly domed roof, as well as arched windows that looked out onto gardens and fountains below.

Now it was little more than weathered fragments scattered across the plaza and there were no gardens in sight, only thriving pale green and white creeping vines that covered the stones.

The ancient builders had been gifted stone masons and they had believed their village would be the center of a great civilization, so they had built this place with pride as a symbol of what was to come.

Then they had faded beneath the sands of time.

The vines here were different from the rest of the plants on the island. They were touched with mana and necrotic energy from the inside of the building.

From out here, there was no other sign that a dungeon was inside, but a careful study of the mana flows and the outline of the village would show that this was the exact center of the ruins.

Three stone altars had been set up across the plaza outside, each of them holding down one corner of an equilateral triangle. They were placed directly on top of nodes in the central spell formation.

Stains of old blood and viscera decorated them, all of it aged to a pale white hue that barely looked human. 

This was where the necromancer and his followers sacrificed the people they kidnapped.

The color of the blood was the same pale white as the Bone energy that the necromancer had used and that was glowing from the ruins, and there were scattered fragments of bone on top of the altars, but only slivers the size of toothpicks. 

It was less than Kelin had imagined. Everything else must have been absorbed by the altars…or put to another purpose.

With necromancers, there was always the most obvious possibility.

A wave of his hand released a wave of soulfire that covered the plaza, incinerating everything down to the stones. He managed to burn away the remnants, but the spell hissed as it fought against the energy radiating from the wards and dissipated.

He wasn’t going to be able to break the altars so easily, but at least the seared lines he’d left behind looked better than it had before.

He blocked out the sight as he walked into the old town hall. The entrance was an arch twenty feet tall, made to deliver a grand and majestic feeling to those approaching, but the upper half was shattered and a large chunk of the building was open to the sky.

He stepped past some stones that had fallen around the arch and caught sight of two figures, one male and one female, arguing farther in.

“I’m telling you, Master Tobara will succeed!” the man shouted, clenching his fists. “He cannot fail. That man is a hundred levels below him. How dare you question his power!”

“He’s already failed!” the woman hissed back. “Have you ever seen him take so long in a fight? The fact that he can’t kill that man is proof enough! What was that massive cloud of ash anyway? Do you think he survived that?”

“Just because he disappeared, it doesn’t mean he’s dead!” the man replied angrily. “If we fail in our orders to maintain this formation, you know what he’ll do to us. We’ll be the next on those altars! Is that what you want?”

“You’re frightened of a dead man, you coward!” the woman shouted back. “We need to take control of this place and make it our own. You know the rewards he was promised. Those could be ours! Even if he did fail, it doesn’t mean that we have to!”

“You think we can do what he couldn’t? Don’t make me laugh! You could barely keep control of the mana of the ones you sacrificed, much less the entire dungeon!”

“Like you were any better!” she hissed. “You pissed yourself the first time you killed one of them. I saw your hands shaking and how pale you were. You barely got it done. Master Tobara’s opinion of you sank to the bottom after that, but you’re still slavishly following him.”

“You witch!” the man raged. “All you have is a sharp tongue and no brains! You enjoyed killing those people!”

“They were trash!” she snapped back. “Who cares if they died! At least they served some purpose in their useless lives. Better than you!”

“Enough of this!” the man said, cursing at her. “It doesn’t matter anyway! You know this altar is fueled by the dungeon, but which of us is going to go in there to take control of it now? Master Tobara only managed it by a blessing from the Lord of Bones himself. It was why he was sent here!”

“If he could do it, so can I!” the girl snapped. “He wasn’t that special. Don’t you know what family I’m from? My bloodline has a Legacy of Bones in it! You only have a useless Wraith bloodline. Even if you’re scared of it, I’m not. I’m going inside, so get out of the way! ”

“You are not!” the man growled as he moved to step in front of her. He held out his hand and a staff appeared in it, blocking her way. “Even if Master Tobara is dead, I won’t let you wreck what we’re doing here. My Wraith bloodline is nobler than yours, at least. I have the ability to follow orders!”

Mana flooded around him, filling the remains of the town hall with dark grey light. It was different from the necromancer’s Bone energy, full of shadows and hidden things.

The woman was holding onto a wand, which she raised in response, and a feeling like a sharp bone blade swept through the air, ready to cut down and slice apart an enemy.

As the mana between them clashed and threw sparks into the air, Kelin let out a dry cough and walked forward. His expression was calm, but there was no hiding the intense anger in his eyes.

He’d heard enough of what they’d done. 

“Am I interrupting?” he asked sarcastically. “I can wait if you’d like to fight first.”

The two spun toward him, their mana fields filling the air, and Kelin took the opportunity to analyze them.

Halstek Brengez. Shadowborn Necromancer-Wraith Caller. Level 227.

Mirai Strigan. Darkmind Necromancer-Boneblade Summoner. Level 231. 

The man’s abilities were related to shadows and wraiths, as well as summoning and controlling spirits, while the woman’s were more about mental attacks and creating skeletal servants.

Both of them had a number of direct damage and disabling abilities as well, in line with the nature of their class.

At around Level 230, they were a considerable force to reckon with, but compared to the first necromancer, they didn’t count for much.

They had been so caught up in their argument that they hadn’t even noticed his arrival, but they recovered swiftly.

Vicious attacks swept across the hall toward him.

A crackling wave of dark mana from the man formed into a massive wraith-like hand. Talons shimmering with grey energy stabbed toward Kelin’s heart, while behind that a sound like a whistling call of the dead filled the hall, tugging at his mind and trying to drain his will and life force.

A series of white needles pierced the air from the woman, each of them shaped from mana and summoned bone. They were as hard as steel and deadly sharp and they crossed the air with a hiss of acidic white poison that smoked from their surface.

Kelin hardened his mana shield and the attacks exploded against it. The wraith hand shattered into fragments of dark mist that swirled in chaotic patterns, while the bone needles simply exploded into fragments and dissolved into the air.

A wave of Soul Paralysis rolled out from him, freezing the two assistants in their places.

Then he walked forward slowly.

“I got some information from your master,” he said, his voice calm, “but a little more never hurt. And it seems like you know quite a bit.”

He shattered their mana fields with a blade of Spell Disruption and crossed the short distance to them. Then he reached out, placing one hand on each of them.

A massive force of mana and pure physical force crushed down on them, slamming them into the ground on their knees.

A halo of radiant soul energy sprang up around him as he placed a hand on each of their heads, and his fingers tightened.

“Show me what you know. Soul Search.”