Fat Tree walks slowly through the mansion, he's become accustomed to the winding and twisting layout that only a mad Undead Queen and a raving legion of workers that can't even think the word no might possibly build. He cuts across a hallway full of living armor. They're wrestling and wrangling each other, dents are all over. They snap to a quick but unsuccessful attention as they notice the presence of the 3 stalking towards them. An especially battered full suit of knight armor is slightly unbalanced and let's their helm fall to the floor.
CLANG, SRRRRRRNGGGGG, WONGWONGWONGWONGWONG
It rolls on the floor in a beautifully obnoxious circle, seeming to never stop. A slight breath of air puffs from Mother Death's nose allowing Fat Tree and Swiftblade to pick up on her amusement. So nobody will die today, they both think.
Swiftblade takes the place of the angry authority figure and begins to bark commands and howl reprimands before Fat Tree finally pulls her away loudly reminding her of the importance of Mother Death's time and how they can come back here at their own leisure to enforce any code violations. They both proudly puff out their chests and hold their chins high feeling proud of another job well done. This evokes a silent chuckle from Mother Death.
Fat Tree ascends up onto the roof of the manor. The rain pours down upon him and Swiftblade but Mother Death extends a large umbrella upward keeping herself completely dry with additional uses of magic barriers to ensure even her shoes remain entirely dry.
Thunder rumbles in the distance and lightning flickers across the horizon, the bulk of the storm having already passed by the manor.
Mother Death calls over the rain and wind, "What exactly are we doing up here Fat Tree? What does this have to do with activating the orb?"
Billowed by the rain, Fat Tree wipes a hand across his face clearing it off the dripping water for a moment to reply, "An old family secret. We passed down for generations. We were the village's inspectors and trinket figure outers."
Mother Death just raises an eyebrow in question before replying with little energy, "Hmph. Ok, sure. Show us then."
Fat Tree nods. He takes a stance of power, lowering his knees and his shoulders, holding the orb now delicately in a single palm. He takes a deep breath in and then finally out. A calm presence of strength overtakes him. In a single moment a flurry of action overtakes Fat Tree, leaving the other 2 stunned. He takes a massive step forward, while doing so raising the orb in his palm up to his shoulder. Fat Tree contorts his body loading all the power in his entire body into his palm; his knee bending inward, body twisting, head tucking inward. The orb goes fucking flying. Fat Tree absolutely launches the straight piss out of it.
Mother Death and Swiftblade watch in a stunned silence before Mother Death facepalms. She mutters, "Oh dammit, fucking hell, I should've figured."
They then continue to watch in silence as the silver orb—able to be seen easily due to the lightning hammering in the distance illuminating the orb with a sinister glow—flies off, shooting into the distance, far past the edge of the roof, over the trough with the undead gators. The orb is a dense heavy object, the wind is fully unable to propel it. Yet it nearly looks magical, which Mother Death fully confirmed is impossible, the way the orb sails through the air. Fat Tree turns to the two and puts up and arm flexing his bicep muscle before patting it, "Takes years to get that down, hehe."
Mother Death just rolls her eyes and continues to bitterly watch the orb fly. Swiftblade walks up to Fat Tree patting him on the back, "You sure did throw it bud. I hope you know you're gonna be the one having to retrieve it." Fat Tree just shrugs before saying, "Yeah that's a part of the inspection. We were also taught how to climb real good. There was actually a large gorge by my village that we would chuck the stuff down. We had to clamber up and down it all the time. Had to work out the forearms... a lot."
The orb finally clatter to the ground but it's journey is still not over, most of the force that Fat Tree put on it was horizontal and as it slams into the ground it manages to bounce leaving a crater of upturned mud and grass spraying through the air. It bounces and second and then a third time before finally, at the cost of a large boulder that the orb decimates upon impact, the silver orb rolling out of it's wake—a large pile of freshly formed rubble—and stops.
Mother Death, unamused, "It's finally over." She begins to step toward the exit of the roof before halting entirely.
Swiftblade asks, "What is it Mother?"
"I can't believe my eyes. How the actual fuck?"
Swiftblade looks down, down, down to where the orb finally came to rest.
It glows. Not due to the lightning, it can't be. It glows a green glow. On it's fucking own.
Green stripes of light extend across the orb in a number that must be in the thousands, in both vertical and horizontal strips, dividing the orb into small squares of silvery sheen.
Mother Death screams, "Quick!!" She immediately actives a Fly spell on the 3 of them, racing towards the orb. They descend upon it with a second, Fat Tree feels nauseous due to the intense movement. Mother Death's long heel steps down onto the air before she drops the other 2 on the ground. She approaches the orb grasping it. The orb continues to emit the light, unchanged. The orb is also emitting a sound, or possibly some type of language. It repeats the string of sounds—which last about 5 seconds in duration–every 10 seconds.
Mother Death picks up the orb. It continues to it's changed behavior.
She grins, "Well, it's something new. I'm going to my lab." She flies off into the distance immediately, leaving her subordinates soaking in the rain. All they can do is share a laugh.
Swiftblade and Fat Tree have been called into Mother Death's lab. As they enter they see unfathomable tools splayed all over the room. Beakers, faucets, extremely precise gadgets of unknown effect. In the middle is Mother Death with the orb nestled in her hands. She is rapidly pressing different places on the orb. The orb has the same appearance but is no longer emitting the string of language and instead merely makes differently toned beep with each press of Mother Death's fingers.
She looks up from her work, "Well I figured it out." She beams at Fat Tree, "I decoded what it was saying, it was some type of Hellspeak so I had to rely on texts found throughout the world depicting various encounters with demons. This was the most difficult part. I finally managed to translate what it was saying: A device reset has been performed due to percussive maintenance." Fat Tree wears his confusion bare on his face. Mother Death quickly follows, her excitement bare, "You were fucking right Fat Tree. Which is difficult to believe. But I have to imagine your tribe was possibly used to handling demonic artifacts or something. Maybe they all have this percussive failsafe to them."
Fat Tree just extends his arms into the air, forming his hands into fists, "YEA!!"
Swiftblade casually asks, "Did you figure out how to work it?"
Mother Death just smiles before rapidly pressing on the orb. Behind her a portal opens, exactly the same in appearance to the portal that would appear during the ritual, only much smaller. Mother Death waves her hand toward the portal. Swiftblade and Fat Tree step through it.
The surroundings shift in an instant, a sweltering heat pounds into them from all directions, beneath their feet a deep red rock, pillars of flame and lava constantly rise and fall all over. The wings of large red dragons beat overhead, the scaly beasts pulling large flying ships across the, well there is no sky. Instead of a sky there is only a deeper red ceiling, so deep in hue it's nearly purple. Pools and rivers of lava are covering the land, without a droplet of water in sight. The two stagger backwards retreating through the portal, falling back onto their asses in the middle of Mother Death's laboratory. The portal succinctly closes.
Swiftblade turns to Mother Death, "Where the fucking hells was that?"
Mother Death give a big toothy grin, "The very first layer.. of Hell."
"Now, I know you're wondering exactly how this is possible. No records of beings from our lands have ever shown that traveling to the hells was possible outside of intervention of a demon. And we all know how that always ends. It was a near universal law of magic, transportation between the realms is impossible. Even demons themselves don't open portals or initiate travel here. They simply exit through the same hole they entered. That's why those slippery bastards are so fickle with the time they spend here. They're tweaking about their way home closing up on 'em. Knowing if it does they'll be at the mercy of their own kind or forced to live here forever." She spins the the orb on her finger, it appears to be weightless now, "We finally have it. I'm one step closer, we can get to Hell. And in the meantime, this thing will prove especially useful on this land. As you may or may not know, the difficulty with teleportation magic is the vast amount of magical energy it requires. The complexities of teleporting involve: distance and mass and volume of what you're teleporting. No longer for us will that be an issue." She grins wildly, "Imagine this." Then waves her hand in front of her, painting a horrible violent picture, "Vast hordes of undead invading in the dead of night, no warnings, no signs of where they came from, right in the heart of the Darkathi Kingdom. Or really wherever else I desire." Mother Death clasps her hands, rasping her fingers together, thinking of truly despicable and evil plans.
Swiftblade is quick to respond, "Mother, with an artifact of this power we will need to be careful to not allow other's to figure out what we've gained. I propose that through small and decisive victories, we could gain much and lose little."
Mother Death snarls, "Not my style. No, in fact. Swiftblade, I need you to send a request to meet with... ugh, what's his name, Prince... Leon. That's what it is. Prince Leon."
Prince Leon's brow is covered in sweat and wrenched in a undeniably stressed crinkle. His best sword was beaten down in front of their entire army by a startup wizard who joined his fucking opposition. And now this?!?
He knew his wizard was only here because he smelled opportunity. As if The Wizard of Ames would be second, no his ego was thoroughly stroked by the idea of being the direct wizard to the new King. Serve a few years, raise up a successor to do most of the work, kick back and fuck off. That's exactly what Prince Leon had in mind when it came to his ruling. Sure this Kingdom was in dire straights currently, but his oaf of a father knew nothing but brute force. What's a few years of work, when it came to a lifetime of leisure. In this regard he and the wizard saw eye to eye. How they got there is where the disagreements came.
He bounced up off his chair and begin to stride towards the wizard's camp. As he passed the knights quickly made way before saluting and crying out, "His Highness!". How he relished the idea of those cries becomes His Majesty. Leon believed his father called for this 'Ascension' due his lack of faith in his first son, his heart desperately wanted to believe that it was also due to an unspoken faith in Leon himself. But his rational mind told him it was more likely that his father saw two unworthy heirs and one despicable one and through brutish logic thought that by making them all fight he might turn failures to a golden successor.
He completely discredits all my work as an ambassador in favor for that fool's swordplay. As if that shit matters, Prince Leon bitterly thinks as he pushed his way into The Wizard of Ames' tent.
"We must meet with the Queen of the Undead, Mother Death."
The Wizard of Ames is calmly making various potions with wild smelling powders and liquids, his reading glasses low on his nose, an old tome open on his side desk. Without glancing up from his work he dismisses the Prince, "Why would we do that? Aren't our hands quite busy with enemies on both our flanks?"
Prince Leon frowns and pulls up a stool, "The Witch and I have a history."
The wizard's eyebrow arches upward, "Please do go on."
On the hills that Prince Leon is encamped upon, a miles wide portal opens, appearing to swallow the sky. The soldier, the wizards, and even Prince Leon himself are stunned stupid. They had all been briefed to prepare transportation, the tents having been packed as well as all supplies, yet nearly a minute is spent staring in horror at the portal.
The Wizard of Ames, the first to recover from the sight of the Queen of Death having the ability to cast such a horrendous portal, quickly tugs at Prince Leon's cape, "Give your command to move forward or this Witch will seize every advantage."
Prince Leon screams, "MOVE FORWARD!"
The troops stumble and struggle, their bodies resisting the prince's command, but their loyal minds driving them forward into the portal.
Here we fucking go, Prince Leon thinks to himself marching into the portal.
Sweat drips from my face, my back is a wet mess, my shirt clinging to my skin. Ruby the Red Mage is a bitch of a teacher. My river runs dry again before a pathetic sputtering undamns my magical flow.
The ground around me is a mess of craters and pools of acidic liquid, all my own doing. In the short time of my new apprenticeship, I've learned to speak with the elements, unlocking a nearly limitless variance to my spells. When I asked if other wizard learn in this way Ruby the Red Mage just laughed at me, telling me that other wizards wish to lick the ground beneath her feet. It was unbearably painful, to communicate with the fire elements, I was burned at the stake. For water, I was drowned. Earth, buried alive. And so on and so on. Each time I was revived by Ruby the Bitch Mage before my soul could blissfully pass on. Most time it wouldn't even fucking work on the first try.
She also taught me to shortspeak which is essentially a way to imbue a long string of language into a single utterance, vastly improving my ability to amp up my spells under dire straights.
Apparently the way I've been using my innate talent was lacking too. Ruby the Red Mage was especially angry about that. Cursing me for having such a blessed talent and damning me for being such an ape and wasting it so far. I've now learned that my innate talent is something that can and should feed from my river. There's no reason I should ever be fighting in real time. She scoffed at MM's advice telling me that only pathetic losers with worthless talents try to preserve their magic for casting. When I asked her to explain she begrudgingly explained that casting has a natural loss in magic conversion due to human imperfection creating a natural efficiency gap between innate talents like my Time Slow. Basically Time Slow has been etched by the universe into my bones creating a perfect casting of it that constantly exudes from my being, making it the the most efficient possible usage of my magic, always. Makes sense I guess. She did relent a little saying that MM was most likely concerned about my pathetic river of magic and knew that I was run dry after casting a single master level spell.
So here we are, working on my final flaw, the vastness of my river. What does this involve? Painfully emptying myself of magic by throwing it all into a spell that I then cancel out to reabsorb. Naturally, there's loss due to the conversion but it trains my river to be able to carry more water at an outrageous speed and it's something I can keep up all day. Yippee for me! Within the 3 days of training, Ruby the Red Mage has made my river increase by tenfold. She says I'm already on par with The Wizard of Ames, in terms of magical quantity. When I asked her, isn't that enough? She just looked at me like I was stupid and said not for a @#& like me. I'm quite glad that censor exists or I'm certain I would've heard my teacher call me a slur. Which she said is ok, because she's trans.
I just don't know that I agree with that train of logic.
All in all, I'm happy I've been able to survive. I can't wait to see my Ruby again. Even MM.
As the sun sets, Ruby the Red Mage has a scowl on her face, "I guess that'll do." She then breaks into a fake smile, "I've decided that you'll get a day off tomorrow."
My face drops, "They're attacking tomorrow? But how? I thought that it wouldn't be another week and there hasn't been a single report of enemy move-"
"Silence."
The sounds from my vocal chords vanish as if they had never existed.
"Hmph, I don't know exactly how. But they are. It's my gift. Premonition." She taps the side of her head, her right eye twinkling before a bright star appears in place of her normal iris. "I don't get to choose what I see so unfortunately it's a boring image of green flags rushing up to the castle walls."
"Alright, I'll tell Captain Salem. He's level headed enough to at least make the news beneficial. Other than that I'm just gonna sleep like a baby."
I awake next morning to a massive surge in magical energy coming just outside the walls of the castle. My first thought is The Wizard of Ames. But no it can't be. This energy. It's necrotic.