Asherons Call: Throne of Dark Destiny by Storyteller - Chapter 1

Chapter 1 Part A

[font color="#800000"]"Because I could not stop for Death,

"If man were immortal he could be perfectly sure of seeing the day when everything in which he had trusted should betray his trust, and, in short, of coming eventually to hopeless misery. He would break down, at last, as every good fortune, as every dynasty, as every civilization does. In place of this we have death."
~Charles Sanders Peirce [/font]

"You are not as I remember you," she whispered softly to him.

"Time changes who we are," he replied, "and who we will become."

"Your heart has no love in it anymore. Instead it is filled with hatred and vengeance," came the voice, as calm and gentle as the murmur of a ladybug.

"At last I am free," said Ilumini to the darkness. A darkness in which he could hear the voice of his love, but never find her. He had searched for a road to death for hundreds of years, and now he found that in death, his own death, there was only a bitter darkness. A darkness in which he would wander lost for all time. A punishment without solace, the penalty of a lifetime of atrocities.

For the armies of the monarchies had risen against him in those final days, and with righteous conviction had descended upon his dark armies in Holtburg in time to stop the ritual of the Seven Degrees of Judgement. A ritual which, if completed, would have wrought certain destruction upon our world.

From the north of Holtburg came the armies of archers whose bows rained death of all varieties upon Ilumini's defenses within the city. These brave men, led by General NCF-Poozer, waged a war of annihilation against the forces of Spidros, Ilumini's dreaded first lieutenant. Spidros, who had taken defense of the north with the imperative to fight until destroyed.

Arrows of every variety sizzled, frosted, or sliced through the night sky with lethal accuracy, and together were even more numerous than the stars in the night sky. At last, after grievous losses on both sides, a single chorizite arrow from Poozer himself found its mark in the throat of Spidros, sending him sprawling to the ground one final time.

From the south came the legions of the Nomads and Stinky Toes, barbarians from the harshest regions of the wilds. As they rushed to battle their cries rang out for some distance like the roars of wild beasts, and their spears, daggers, clubs, and axes flailed mercilessly at the ancient armor clad troops of Ridix, Ilumini's most trusted General, whom the dark prince regarded as a brother of sorts.

The sound of the barbarous legions meeting Ilumini's soldiers was such that all those who would fight that day would remember it the rest of their lives, and liken it to a terrible storm that always remained just beyond the horizon.

From the east and the west came the largest of the monarchy armies: Striderlongshanks and his rangers, Lucretia and her band of merry men, the shambling remains of the once great Exempt, the shining paladins of the Astral Dragons, and even the small, but dedicated band of Rexob's militia.

These were but a few of the monarchies which banded together that day to put an end, once and for all, to the unrelenting evil of the dead knight Ilumini. So vast was their number in the moonlight as they headed towards the city, that upon seeing them Zero Night, who had positioned his forces at the roads leading into Holtburg, fainted completely away and was mistaken for dead for the duration of the battle.

No army would ever again be assembled that would match these brave men and women in number or nobility of purpose.

It is not my duty to recount the battle of that fateful day, which will forever tarnish the pages of history with its bloody and desecrated story. It is enough to know that the suffering endured by the Isparian soldiers was the price paid to cast out an unspeakable darkness from our world. A sacrifice paid with countless lives to insure that our children, and our children's children would never have to endure the existence of Ilumini.

Ilumini died that day, a final death, as he always wished. The result of the release of cosmic energies I cannot hope to understand or describe, which resulted from the disruption of his ritual of the Seven Degrees of Judgement. A disruption brought about by Dest to save Starli Kali's life, and unweave the world changing energy that the immortal Ilumini was taking into his flesh.

In the end Ilumini's body crumbled to nothing more than handfuls of ash, leaving behind only his bloody and rusted armor, and nightmares that would forever dominate the nights of those who had met him in life.

Ilumini's villa, devoid of its corrupt master, was burned to its very foundations, the destruction marking the symbolic end to the worst monster that Dereth had ever known. The breathtaking treasures inside, plundered from centuries of victims, were melted down and buried with the ashes of the dark lord, forming an utterly worthless cacoon of salvage that would decay in the foulest part of the Obsidian Plains.

Even the Queen's Envoys celebrated his destruction, and their General assured the kingdom of peace, for as he put it, "This world has no place for villains such as Ilumini. Evil is a role that can never endure."

But not all the remnants of Ilumini's rule disappeared into darkness. Zero Night was eventually captured in Bashai, drunk and asleep beside the madman. He was put to trial before the council of monarchs, but was found to be nothing more than a harmless incompetent, and unable to cause further grief. He was released shortly thereafter into the custody of Elgar Lightfoot, who has employed him since as an impromtu gardener.

Ridix himself escaped death that day quite by accident when, in the midst of the great war to end Ilumini, he was hurled rather uncerimoniously through a Cragstone portal by a screaming, and panicked Mujuro who was fleeing battle.

He resurfaced only briefly in Tou-Tou where in disguise he was able to steal Ilumini's armor before it joined the blazing funeral pyre that had liquified the rest of the dark lord's treasures. He then disappeared into the wilds once more and has been hunted for months since, until only three weeks ago when the effort to find him was abandoned. The rumor, of course, is that he avoided capture with the help of Mogana's magicks. Mogana herself having lost her immortal soul in Ilumini's service years ago.

So that is how the immortal knight Ilumini finally died. I'm sorry, how dreadful of me! Here I am telling this story and I haven't even introduced myself. My name is Sauzei, D.K. Sauzei; master tinkerer and alchemist. I also consider myself somewhat of a storyteller and a historian, which explains why you are so politely listening to the beginning of the story I'm telling. That's right, the beginning of the story.

Chapter One Part B

"War does not determine who is right - only who is left."

~German Proverb

You see, something happened that day when the great war at Holtburg took place. Ilumini had prepared a great ritual known as the Seven Degrees of Judgement. A ritual that would shatter the barriers between worlds: A process he had hoped would destroy Dereth and with it himself. Though the great destruction never occured thanks to the disruption of the exact ritual, it did indeed slightly weaken barriers throughout Dereth.

A weakening which would eventually allow a war-like, blue skinned people to break free of their imprisonment on a secluded island to wage war against us all. The death of Ilumini in Holtburg did not put an end to war. Instead it gave it a beginning.

I won't go into too much detail regarding the Viamontian invasion. It is known far and wide what is happening in this land of ours. Instead I seek to document that which is not generally known. For instance, the story of Ridix, a sorceress named Myst, and the ashes of a demon encased in melted treasure and buried in the pitch black soil of the Obsidian Plains.

For it was through the strength and loyalty of Ridix, and the magical expertise of Myst that Ilumini would live again.

-CLANK!-

Seventeen feet. That was the depth at which the charred and worthless mound that contained soiled copper, rusted steel, burnt mahogany, tarnished gold, stained brass, and mutilated pack dolls had been buried. It was a solid lump now, like the diseased brain child of some insane metallurgist, having been fused together in the intense head of the funeral pyre used to destroy Ilumini's griefed loot. The wealth of years of Isparian sorrows melted down, spit in, cooled, broken up; and melted down again. Inside the center the bleak ashes of Ilumini were encased in a hard chorizite vase.

-CLUNK!-

Dark Apocalypse had insisted that a basket of live ursuins be hurled into the fires as the loot melted. He had read somewhere that doing so would insure a witch remained dead. Since ursuins small enough to fit in a basket were not readily available, and since Burning Hierophant had explained to him that they were burying Ilumini and not Lucretia, Dark instead settled for tossing in a few cloves of garlic into the bubbling metal.

-CLANK!-

Not feeling entirely satisfied that a few cloves of garlic were sufficient to keep the prince of darkness dead, he set out at once in order to aquire a stake; the surefire weapon against the undead. Of course, only one creature he knew of was in possession of a tender T-bone, and so he made his way at once to a final battle with the Holtburg cow. He was never seen again.

-TINK!-

Ridix leaned over the edge and cupped his hounds to his mouth as he shouted down into the depths, "We can't allow you to risk your life for our sakes Zero, you're far to valuable to this fellowship!" Ridix took another sip of his tea and turned to face the only other individual present; a raven haired sorceress by the name of Myst. Myst was kneeling, her back to the pit, paging slowly through a great leatherbound tome some three feet in length on the ground.

"You're absolutely sure you can bring Ilumini's original soul back from the other side and reconstitute his body?" asked Ridix.

"Positive if, of course, you remembered to bring his armor." She answered without even looking up. She loathed working with murderers and griefers, but it was the only way to strike at the heart of the Viamontian king. Like it or not, the only way to destroy the Viamontian evil was with another kind evil.

There was no guarantee that Ilumini's soul would return, or even if his one immortal body would reform after having been dead for so many months. She had practiced the incantation on dead rats, and after all, how far removed from the rat species could Ilumini possibly be?