Wild Era 2, Ch 26: Lord of Shadowfall

“Focus on one undead at a time,” Kelin said quickly, “take them down. I’ll deal with the lich and try to keep them all distracted.”

As he spoke, he pulled out a handful of shielding talismans and began to rapidly burn through them, stacking more on everyone. The rot would destroy them, but the thicker they were, the longer it would take. 

He’d still have to be quick.

Mystic echoes of the talismans added small bonuses to the shields as they surrounded his allies, but it was only a small advantage to the defense, and after the first stack of talismans was done, he didn’t have time to add more. 

The holes in his ward spread wider until they swallowed the entire structure, which collapsed into strands of decaying mana. 

The undead adventurers had recovered as well. 

Dark arrows hissing with corrosion rained down on them, striking Maro’s axe and Galin’s shield as the two leapt forward.

The undead warrior slammed into the fighters, sending Galin staggering backward as he tried to block.

Serai’s staff spun in her hands as she sent a storm of ice toward the warrior and a few bolts toward the archer and the mage in the distance. Her casting was much faster than before her Evolution.

Kelin pushed their battle to the edge of his mind as he let a wave of Soul Paralysis tear through the area, which gave his allies a chance to get the advantage.

Then he sent the two Blaze-enhanced soul arrows on his staff at the lich, followed immediately by the Soulfire Bolts at the mage and priest in the distance.

The lich raised its hand and tried to block the arrows with a necrotic shield. It was able to slow them down a bit, but they tore through and sank into its soul, where they erupted into an inferno.

The lich hissed as the enchantments on the hall rose up in decaying threads that surged toward it. The energy converged on its body and sank in, seeking out the source of the spells. 

The soul flames began to weaken as flecks of rot appeared inside them.

The Soulfire Bolts arrived at the same time, tearing a hole straight through the heads of the mage and the priest.

It should have been enough to kill them, but when the undead staggered backward, threads of dark energy from the hall snaked up through their bodies and reformed their skulls. 

The bone began to swiftly fill back in where the bolts had torn through.

Kelin ignored it as he hurled another Soulfire Inferno at the casters, where it exploded at their feet. This one was intensified to triple strength and cost 82 mana. 

At the same time, he reached out to the flickers of soulfire left from the bolts and intensified them, making the wounds blaze with a line of golden flame that fought back against the repair.

The lich ignored its minions as it pointed a bony finger at Kelin. A line of dark necrotic energy shot forward, tearing through the remains of his ward and striking his mana shield.

Sections of his shield disintegrated under the force, falling away like black sand as they decayed in the air.

Kelin reinforced the shield with a surge of mana and activated Blaze, but even as the denser mana raged through his meridians, the lich was already turning to the others.

A ray of dark and cold energy seared through the distance and struck Galin, sending him flying through the air as dark ice formed around his body. His talisman shield held, but two layers shattered.

Another ray of energy struck Maro, this one shimmering like prismatic darkness. 

Maro tried to dodge, but the ray was too quick and a hole appeared on the shield near his shoulder, its edges releasing dark smoke. 

The lich didn’t stop there. Its other hand rose at the same time and a cloud of dark vapor swelled through the air, filling it with a corrupting poison cloud.

It covered the entire hall in seconds, swamping all of them as it blocked their vision and ate away at their shields.

The cloud hissed around Kelin as it attacked his mana shield, joining the Law of Decay as it accelerated the collapse of his defenses. 

His eyesight was hindered by the darkness, but his other senses were clear and he saw the talisman shields on the others shattering one by one.

Blaze was surging through his meridians and he sent two more soul arrows flying toward the lich, where they tore through its defenses and sank into its soul to join the others.

The decay was still happening there and combined with the lich’s resistances as an Elite, the flames were suffering, but the infusion of two new arrows sent them flaring upward.

The lich let out another hiss and its eyes blazed with a fierce blue light as it turned its attention inward to deal with the flames. 

The energy that fueled them began to decay, but Kelin poured more energy into the Soul Ignition and fought back against it.

At the same time, he cut out at the threads from the castle that were burrowing into the lich’s soul and supplying it with strength, trying to sever them one after another. 

Each of them was thin, but it was like cutting through a tar-covered rope. They were hard and dense.

The others were struggling as they faced the archer, thief, and warrior. 

The lich’s attack had thrown Maro and Galin onto their back feet and Serai was trying to shield them with walls of ice as they recovered, but the undead were tearing through the wards.

Galin went flying across the hall as the warrior kicked him in the chest. The impact was so powerful that the dwarf’s breastplate tore under the force and the sound of cracking ribs echoed out.

Three dark arrows from the archer tore through Maro’s last talisman shield at the same time, stabbing into his arm, chest, and leg. The berserker tumbled across the floor, his attention broken as he tried to rip them out.

The thief appeared beside Serai, its blades flashing as they headed for her neck, but at the critical moment, a dark blue flame appeared around the Winter Sylph.

A lantern appeared in her hand, where it had been hidden until now. A flare of chill blue light swelled from the interior, covering her in a protective barrier.

The thief’s blade stabbed into the barrier and glanced off, and then it spun away as it faded into the darkness again. The poison cloud all over the room was making it nearly impossible to track.

Serai looked like a ghost of ice and winter as she raised the lantern high. Its light covered her completely. All around her, ice crackled as small shards of it formed in the air and fell to the floor. The artifact was a poor weapon against the undead, but it still had defensive properties that she could use. Unfortunately, she couldn’t share them with her allies, since the ice energy from it would harm them at the same time.

She could only use it now that they’d been separated.

The archer released more arrows at Maro and the warrior was chasing Galin across the floor, but a rumble of stone from below their feet came to their aid. 

A stone wall arched over Maro, blocking the arrows as they rained down, and then stone spikes rose up in a wave beneath the two undead, hurling them away.  

Then a massive fist of stone formed out of the rubble and slammed down on the warrior, while another hand swept up around the archer and squeezed, before it swung across the area and slammed him into a wall.

Even as Gaius helped, however, the decay spell in the area was still there. Flecks of dark rot appeared through the stone and chunks began to fall away like mold.

The elemental had enough material that his control could last for a while, but time was limited.

If he’d been a loose elemental, he might have suffered under the decay directly, but his spirit was shielded in by the soul chamber Kelin had created for him. Only his external mana was affected.

Serai was partially shielded by her lantern, which was powerful enough to slow down the decay and poison, but the same couldn’t be said for Maro and Galin.

Their talisman shields had broken and flecks of dark rot began to appear on their armor, as well as on their faces and hands. 

Only Gaius’s help gave them a chance to recover.

Flames poured out of Maro’s body as he fought against the decay and the patches of rot burned as he staggered to his feet, but it wasn’t clear how long he could last.

Galin coughed out a mouthful of blood and slammed his shield into the ground, using it to lever himself to his feet. 

Then he reached out toward the fallen warrior and a massive slab of stone nearby broke into pieces, swiftly reassembling itself into a giant axe. It was a dozen feet long and its edge shimmered with force.

The axe rose into the air and slammed down on top of the warrior, trying to chop it in half from head to foot. The blade stabbed into the undead’s chest, but it froze part of the way through.

The warriors’ hands were gripped around the sides, holding it back with pure brute strength. Fragments of bone and rotten flesh disintegrated under the force as cracks ran through its arms, but it ignored them as it pushed the axe back up and hurled it to the side.

Kelin’s attention was focused on the battle with the lich and casters, so he couldn’t help them for the moment. 

He grabbed a couple of infusion talismans from his ring and hurled them at the inferno that was burning around the mage and priest, and then a wave of Soul Paralysis froze the two in place as a wave of dense mana sent the inferno blazing upward.

The casters were staggering as their bones charred and cracked under the force, and they had no ability to fight back.

At that moment, however, the lich hissed as it got the upper hand in the fight over the flames in its soul. The decay spread through it, making its entire soul look mottled and vile, and the flames began to die.

No matter how much mana Kelin poured into them, the decay was eating them away even faster. 

He knew how to break the stalemate and kill the thing, but his current Laws weren’t able to keep up, even with the Blaze and Ignite runes.

This palace had been impressive once and this lich was in full command of its power.

He sent two pairs of Soulfire Bolts at the lich, knocking it backward and distracting it, and then he sent a pulse of intent to Gaius.

The elemental responded by tearing apart the floor and then it began to shatter the pillars and the stones, tearing sections of them out one by one.

The building was already ruined and as seconds passed, more areas began to collapse. Gaius hurled the stone away from the center, and the grey light of the dungeon slowly filled the place.

Within seconds, half of the hall was falling inward.

The decay enchantments hissed as their foundations broke, but instead of disappearing, they floated in the air, twisting like strands of smoke.

Then they began to converge on the lich.

Strand after strand of energy twisted around its body and sank into it. With each one, the soul flames died more quickly. The lich’s arms were raised, gathering the strands like they were children returning to their source.

“Decay cannot be destroyed or broken. It erodes and all else fails beneath it.” Its jaw clacked as it spoke.

Then it looked up, its eyes fixed on Kelin. It ignored the others. 

“Soul mage, your power comes from the source of undeath. Your place is beneath my command. You will serve me honorably as a lesser lich.”

As it finished speaking, it raised its arms toward the sky. 

Each limb was covered in decaying threads, which formed together like a massive tattered shroud that stretched out behind it for dozens of feet. 

The strands floated in the air, drifting among the poisonous fog, and hissed like vipers, releasing black flecks of mold.

“This palace holds no hope for the living,” the lich intoned, its voice crackling like broken bones as the enchantment’s power swelled around it. 

“Descent of Decay.”

The lich’s shroud flared upward and the tattered ends of the strands stretched out to cover the sky. Then they drifted downward, bringing with them a sense of rot and death.

Talisman shields decayed away in an instant, the Soulfire Inferno that Kelin had been working on guttered out, and Maro and Galin’s armor began to fall off in pieces, which swiftly rusted and turned to sludge on the stones.

Kelin stepped backward as his mana shield buckled under the force. Sections of it disappeared, rotting away under the descending threads.

He didn’t try to keep the shield intact, since it was a waste of mana. Instead, he drew on his affinity with Gaius and chunks of stone levitated into the air around him.

The stones met the descending threads and hissed as they rotted away, but he kept calling up more, creating a layer that blocked the threads.

The lich took the opportunity to attack again. Its fingers glowed with dark light as a dark rainbow of light shot toward Kelin.

His mana shield was down and the ray split through the stones, but as the spell closed it, it was deflected off to the side. 

Kelin’s Bracer of Spell Warding glowed with power. 

A normal bracer wouldn’t have managed to block that spell, but his managed, even though it took ten percent of the artifact’s stored energy.

The others were not so lucky.

Maro was hurled to the floor under the impact of the threads and they stabbed through his body, creating swiftly spreading patches of rot. His blood splattered across the stones as he rolled. His flaming aura was fighting back, but it couldn’t get an advantage over the decaying threads. 

When he stood up again, his axe disappeared from his hand and was replaced by a book. 

It was the Codex of Silence that he’d just obtained.

He raised it into the air and said something, but only his lips moved. His voice was silent. The codex was covered in a crackling blue light that surged across Maro, and he staggered again as his skin turned pale.

The codex floated up from its hands and its pages began to flip. They were a blur at first, but then they slowed down as the book settled on a single page.

“Surface of Shadows,” the voice was a quiet rasp that whispered from the book, but it was Maro’s voice.

A layer of dark light swelled out from Maro’s body, sweeping away the threads that had torn through him, and a darkly protective shield glowed in their place.

Across the hall, the threads fell on Galin at the same time. They struck him at an angle as he tried to stand up, and his attempt to knock them away with his shield sent him flying backwards across the hall.

He slammed into the wall as more threads descended, stabbing through his body. They pinned him there as patches of rot spread.

Serai was slightly luckier as her lantern’s shield blocked some of the threads from striking her, but she was sent rolling from the impact.

Unlike them, the undead team benefited from the threads. As they dug into their bodies, their wounds began to heal and waves of dark energy surged through them.

Kelin shook his head, but time was limited, so he had to make the most of it. Saving them would be the easiest if everything was dead.

That meant bringing an end to this.

He gathered his soul energy and raised his hand. Energy blasted out of him in a shock wave as an enhanced and Blaze-powered Soul Paralysis covered the area.

Everything froze, including the lich, and even the threads of decaying energy hung in the air, shaking under the force. They still moved slowly, but only at a fraction of what they had been before.

It took 203 points of soul energy and his reserves dropped to almost nothing with only 11% left, but for that moment, everything was still.

His current Laws might not be enough to take out the old wards of this place on a one-to-one level, but he could still overwhelm them with pure force.

For an instant.

At the edge of his senses, he felt the power of Ascending Flame burn in the paralysis, scorching the undead’s souls at the same time as it froze them. Even this spell had a touch of fire when it was this strong.

It was a small effect, but it was progress.

“Gaius,” he sent calmly, pointing at the five lesser undead. “Rip them apart.”

At his order, Gaius surged up out of the stone. His body was a massive, humanoid mountain of stone and his hands closed around the archer and thief in an instant.

He raised them up and slammed them into the ground again, sending bones flying. His movements were swift and earthshaking, and the undead exploded under his touch.

As soon as those were destroyed, he moved on to the warrior.

As he worked, Kelin walked toward the lich.

The Lord of Shadowfall was struggling against the suppression. It wasn’t able to move, but it still had some control of the wards, perhaps on an instinctive level. 

The threads of decay intensified as they whistled down toward Kelin, but he ignored his defense as he continued walking forward.

His new robe tried to defend him, creating a shield of glowing golden runes just above his skin, but it only had fifty stored mana. 

It lasted for five hits before the shield faded away.

Then the threads stabbed through his body, sending lines of painful cold tearing at his shoulders, chest, leg, and arms, but he kept walking and the grip on his staff didn’t waver.

There was no point in having his advanced constitution and healing if he didn’t put it to use sometimes.

Reactive sigils exploded from his aura as Soulfire Bolts struck at the threads, but it wasn’t very effective.

More threads of decaying energy broke through the stone shield above his head and stabbed through his body, sending an unsettling cold discomfort everywhere

But then he reached the dais and stopped in front of the lich.

The skeleton was still frozen in place, but he was already beginning to move. His limbs twitched as he tried to reach for Kelin.

Instead of allowing that, Kelin reached for the lich instead, placing his hand directly on top of its skull. 

A Soulfire Inferno ignited in the lich’s head, blazing from its empty eye sockets. It was a fierce and brilliant gold that nearly drowned out the glowing blue flames of the lich’s eyes.

He poured a torrent of mana into the inferno as he intensified it and made it explode with power.

At the same time, he sent a soul arrow searing into the lich’s soul, where it erupted and created a different inferno. 

He didn’t have much soul energy left, so it was just a normal one, but the decay energy was frozen still for a moment, so under his influence, the flames spread swiftly.

Then he pulled a handful of Soulfire Infusion talismans from his storage and began to activate them one after another, switching between infusing the paralysis spell on the lich and the soul arrow.

They weren’t pure soul energy talismans, but soulfire had a touch of that energy, so they worked a little. And they were still a source of flame. Their mana added to the Soulfire Inferno, combining with Kelin’s own that he continued to pour in.

His mana dropped under 20%, so he waited until it almost bottomed out, which only took a handful of seconds. His head ached with the mana loss as he grabbed a major mana potion and drank it. 

200 gold disappeared in an instant, but his mana surged back to full and then some. He could only hold 737 mana, and the potion was able to restore over a thousand. 

He spent the excess mana as fast as it could tear through his meridians, dumping it into the inferno on the lich.

The threads of decay continued to rain down on him, stabbing through his body in slow motion, and he diverted a fraction of his mana toward healing. 

Soulfire raged as it ripped away at the sources of decay.

It was enough to hold him in a temporary stasis, but blood poured down his body from the wounds and it was covered in dark trails of corruption.

Behind him, Gaius picked up the mage and priest and tore them to pieces as he smashed their bones apart and ground them to dust.

Then he swept up Maro, Galin, and Serai from where they’d fallen and pulled them to the center of the room, where a stone shield swiftly hardened above them. 

The wards on the hall weren’t responding to the lich’s control, but they continued to provide its spell with force and the threads fell on the shield, slowly burrowing into it. 

The stone eroded under the force, but Gaius replaced it as quickly as it did.

At the same time, the poisonous fog and flecks of decay continued to eat away at the stone, but Gaius did his best to drive them out of the area he was protecting.

Kelin’s hand remained on the lich’s skull, pouring more mana into the inferno inside, even as the effect of the Soul Paralysis began to fade.

“You will...serve...” the lich hissed as its jaw clattered beneath Kelin’s hand. 

A wave of mental energy sharpened into a spike and pierced outward, stabbing into Kelin’s head, but he ignored it.

The old banshee bane amulet on his chest glowed with power as it deflected some of the force, and the rest shattered to pieces on his inner wards.

The lich’s skull was charred black and disintegrating, and as Kelin’s hand tightened, his fingers dug straight into the bone.

An instant later, it shattered in his hand.

The lich’s energy exploded outward, making Kelin stagger backward, but it came with a sense of dissipating ashes.

No notification came from the Path, but Kelin was expecting that. He brushed the dust off his hand as he scanned the ancient hall.

A faint pulse of soul energy from the side, buried at the center of one of the old pillars. 

His body was barely responding to his demands, but he let out a hiss of breath as he forced the pain from his mind. A lacework of mana surrounded his limbs and moved him forward.

It was a jerky and shuffling walk, but he moved fast enough.

Trails of the lich’s soul energy were gathering like a blue haze, swirling around the pillar as they burrowed toward something inside.

He hardened his hand with earth energy and drove it straight through the pillar, wrapped his fist around the object inside, and ripped it out.

When his fingers opened, there was a bright blue gem carved with a thousand facets glowing on his palm.

He sent a spike of soul energy stabbing into the phylactery and he heard a howl of mental anguish as the lich’s consciousness began to dissipate.

He did it again, and then again.

On the fourth spike, the lich’s soul exploded into burning fragments. The phylactery shattered at the same time, turning to shards on his palm.

A layer of stone covered Kelin’s hand and he clenched it, crushing the remaining shards into dust. Then he ground them together until  there was nothing left that could hold a rune. 

A rain of sapphire dust fell from his hand, scattering across the floor of the hall.

He turned slowly back to his allies and made himself walk forward again, heading for them.

Grey light fell through the sky of the ruined hall as the threads of decay slowly dissipated in the air.

Notifications from the Path began to ring in his mind, but he ignored them for now.

He was moving with difficulty, so a wave of stone formed around his feet and picked him up, carrying him across the floor to the others.

With the lich dead, nothing was influencing the wards and they were gradually dissipating into the air, so the stone shell Gaius had created was no longer needed to block the lich’s spell..

The wall crumbled away, revealing Maro, Galin, and Serai at the center.

The three of them were conscious, but in bad shape. 

Serai was the best off, but her lantern had failed her eventually and she had still been lacerated by the threads. Lines of open wounds ran across her arms and shoulders, all of them covered in rotten skin and dark traceries of poison, and her robe was tattered.

Maro was sitting up and his aura was surging with flame, but his eyes were half closed as he struggled to stay awake. Blood poured down his body from two dozen wounds, all of them trailing pus and dark rot.

Since he’d used the codex, he couldn’t speak for an hour, but it didn’t look like he was in the shape to try.

As bad as the berserker looked, Galin was even worse. He was barely aware of things and his injuries were layered on top of one another. 

His chest was half caved in and threads had torn through all of his limbs, his torso, and parts of his face, leaving gaping holes in his cheeks where rot-afflicted teeth showed.

Kelin slumped down next to them and began to pull out healing potions and Soul’s Rest healing talismans. 

He didn’t spare potions, starting with a greater one for each of them to drink, followed by intermediate ones for the surface wounds. 

Maro and Galin had solid constitutions and from the strength of their souls, he was confident they wouldn’t die yet, but he had to work quickly.

Even with the lich dead, the wounds left by its spells and the Law of Decay were dangerous. They couldn’t be left to heal on their own. 

The rot had to be dealt with directly and overwhelmed.

He alternated between pouring potions over their wounds and activating talismans, focusing on the areas that were most afflicted.

After a moment, Serai started to help him, working on Maro while he focused on Galin.

In between, he activated healing talismans for himself as well, slapping them onto his body like bandages, where they adhered and began to close his wounds.

He wasn’t much better off than the rest of them. He had just been ignoring it.

Dozens of threads had stabbed through his body, piercing most of his organs and even his heart. There were trails of rotted blood all over his body, leaving trails of pus and dark fluids down his limbs. 

Only a web of mana and soulfire ensured that he was still alive.

His robe’s resistance to First Evolution damage and afflictions had helped, but it was his body refinement that had let him keep going. 

Inside his wounds, his mana was raging strongly, igniting golden flames that warred against the poison and decay. It was slow progress, but it was driving out the remaining energy of the laws here.

This was one reason people hated fighting undead.

Even if you won, the bastards could still kill you. An affliction that you thought was almost healed could turn deadly overnight. Then a greater tragedy would follow, since you would rise as an undead and kill everyone around you.

The law of Undeath was pervasive. Anything not eradicated was likely to rise again.

“That wasn’t a normal dungeon boss,” Serai said as she tended to Galin. Her voice was soft and pained, and she was moving slowly.

“I think this was a True Remnant,” Kelin replied. His own voice was hoarse and crackling. 

He turned his head to the side as he coughed to clear his throat, spitting away something that was stuck there. 

It felt like a tooth.

“A True Remnant?” Serai was still for a moment. “I’ve only heard of them. An actual part of a battlefield?”

“Yes,” Kelin agreed. “It’s the only thing that explains it. True Remnants can sometimes sit like this, until the right condition triggers them to remember what they were. I think that’s what we found. 

“That lich was the Lord of Shadowfall, the old master of this place. He was too powerful to be a regular dungeon encounter.”

He paused as he looked around the ruined hall, studying the enchantments that were fading away. The dark lines that had been everywhere were slowly evaporating.

The grey sunlight above was brighter than before, as if a veil had been lifted.

“Then there’s the Law of Decay that was in the wards,” he said. “That’s not something the Path is going to duplicate for every dungeon run at the First Evolution. It’s disappearing now that the lich is dead and I doubt it will reform. I don’t know if this castle will even be here in the future. Maybe it will just be a ruined hall.”

He paused for a moment and then added what was on his mind.

“What I’m curious about is why that lich appeared now,” he added as his eyes settled on the corpses of the five Sarathians, who were dead for real now, “and why those Sarathians are here.”

His words hung in the silence as Serai joined him in studying the fallen hall.