Demon Core

~ [A Strange Village Down in a Dark Forest] ~

“You must not go that way, girl,” explains the old woman, clutching the arm of the sorceress as she steps into the carriage, stopping her. She turns her head, letting out a hacking cough. Splatters of blood coat the elbow of her sleeve that she coughs into, adding to the already dried stains there present from past episodes of the symptom.

The caster, with a very monotone expression, looks at the elderly stranger, clutching onto her bony arm. “That place is not natural, child,” she explains, her eyes going wide. “It is where… where it lives…”

Her voice falls silent.

“— Das Kreatur…” whispers a man on the side of the crowd ominously, the others nearby shying away from him as he speaks the odd phrase. A small child cries in the crowd surrounding the carriage, its hooded mother tucking the baby in below her large, bobbled shawl as if to stifle its cries with the fabric.

“I must go,” replies the sorceress without any emotion in her voice, pulling her arm free and stepping into the carriage. The gray feathered anqas tied to the front of it scratch their taloned feet into the damp dirt in an uneasy gesture as they stare around the full crowd. The birds aren’t used to such large gatherings and are uneased by the unusual behavior of the people in this village that they’ve stopped at for directions.

Before she steps inside, she looks out and over the carriage toward the castle high atop the nearby mountain. Its black silhouette contrasts with the hauntingly blue night. Crows craw in the trees all around the little shanty village.

The carriage creaks as she steps inside and pulls the door closed, sitting down next to her compatriots.

The wood creaks as it begins to move, rattling onward and upward down the mountain road, which is entirely overgrown on the sides yet kept meticulously open in the middle, as if they were all but too welcome to head that way, despite the villagers’ many warnings.

She looks down at her hands, at the slip of paper she found, and reads it again as the shadows begin to consume the carriage that rides into the night that never ends.

In the castle's haunting shade, a specter will return,

Through the corridors of grime, its presence reconfirmed.

A chilling echo of the past, its visage undeterred,

An imposter cloaked in shadows' veil, where darkness is adjourned,

The moonlight cast its sickly pall in streaks along those ancient walls,

As whispers filled the midnight air, eerie beckoning calls,

The long-forgotten prince of dread, now walking once again,

In halls that once embraced his reign, before the years of men,

With every step upon cold stone, it sought to claim its right,

To rule the lands of bleakened gloom and shroud of ever-night.

The echoes of deceitful laughter cutting through the silence,

Its vile intent to conquer all, showing no compliance.

A ghostly figure in the mirror's cracked reflection seen,

Revealing truth behind the guise, a nightmare from a dream.

The imposter's grin bares no fangs, its hunger uncontrolled,

A fiendish appetite for a maw above a hole

~ [Inside of the Carriage] ~

A great evil has nested itself in the peaks of the mountain.

In the midst of a seemingly endless black forest, a rickety old carriage meanders its way up a winding mountain road, its loose wheels creaking in protest with every rotation. The gnarled branches of the surrounding trees reach out as if to claw at the intruding carriage, casting elongated, sinister shadows on the darkened path. The atmosphere is suffocatingly haunting and silent, devoid of the melodious songs of the forest-dwelling creatures; even the whispering wind dares not disturb this eerie void of noise. They are far away from the Demon-King’s immediate influence, yet even here the world has become bleaker and darker.

The desolate tableau is punctuated by the disquieting sight of countless crows perched upon the skeletal limbs of the lifeless trees, their beady eyes fixated upon the unwelcome interloper with an unnerving intensity. The once vibrant foliage that had decorated these arboreal giants has long since withered and crumbled to dust, leaving naught but a monochromatic landscape draped in varying shades of darkness.

The beleaguered anqas pulling the carriage snort uneasily, their breaths forming ghostly wisps in the unusually damp air as they struggle to ascend the steep incline. The strain of their efforts is palpable; their muscles tremble beneath their slick feathers, and their talons slip on the slick cobblestones as they fight to maintain their footing. The passengers within the carriage are shrouded in shadows, their identities and intentions obscured.

As the carriage continues its arduous journey into the heart of this forsaken forest, an almost imperceptible sense of foreboding seems to seep from every nook and cranny of this haunted landscape. The omnipresent crows appear to multiply in number with each passing moment, their obsidian feathers melding into one indistinguishable mass as they maintain their unwavering vigilance over their silent kingdom. In this almost otherworldly realm where darkness reigns supreme, hope and optimism are but distant memories, swallowed whole by the ever-present maw of despair that has clamped down on the world ever since the birth of the Demon-King. The carriage, a mere speck of glowing light in the vast abyss of shadows, perseveres in its ascent.

Within the confines of the creaking carriage, a cadre of grim adventurers sit in oppressive silence, their eyes downcast and their thoughts buried within the depths of their own minds. These hardened souls have each faced countless perils, and yet, in this darkened space, an undeniable tension weighs heavily upon them, causing even the most stalwart among them to shift uncomfortably. They are bound for a forgotten castle, nestled precariously atop the mountain summit, where evil has woven its insidious tendrils into the very stones that form the once-glorious, ancient fortress. The walls, which had once stood as a symbol of strength and defiance against the encroaching darkness in long gone days that are lost to history, now serve as a breeding ground for malevolence and corruption.

The local villagers, desperate to be free from the plight of evil over their heads, had hired them to go there.

The adventurers are an eclectic assortment of individuals, each bearing the scars and tokens of their harrowing pasts. The leader of this somber ensemble is an enigmatic figure clad in worn leather armor; his battle-hardened hands grip the hilt of a sword that has as many knicks and notches as he himself does.

“It’s not the Demon-King,” says the man, looking out of the side of his eyes.

Beside him sits a lithe sorceress cloaked in shadows, her eyes smoldering with an inner fire; her fingers idly trace intricate patterns in the air as she mutters incantations as practice.

“It is unlikely,” she remarks in a dry, monotone voice.

Across from this duo sits a stoic cleric bearing the symbols of a long-forgotten deity, his faith unwavering even in these dire times; his calloused hands clutch a sacred amulet as he whispers prayers for protection and guidance. He doesn’t interrupt his prayers to argue with the others anymore. Although he is fairly convinced that whatever is happening here is the work of the Demon-King. What else could it be?

Beside him is a silent crossbowman, his presence nearly imperceptible in the gloom; his keen eyes, peering from beneath a face-obscuring wooden mask and hood, scrutinize every detail of their surroundings rather than looking at any of them. His hand rests on the handle of the door as if he were ready to escape at any moment, even if they’re moving far too fast for anyone to be able to exit safely.

Regarding his personal opinion on the Demon-King matter, it’s difficult to say for sure. He simply doesn’t talk all that much.

As the carriage continues its ascent toward the summit, an oppressive aura of dread permeates the air, causing the adventurers to cling ever more tightly to their weapons and talismans.

~ [Inside of the Castle] ~

From the walls of the castle, a figure stares down over the horizon, watching in the shadows.

Deep within the bowels of the forgotten castle, a malevolent entity broods in the darkness, its sinister gaze fixed on the distant carriage as it laboriously ascends the treacherous mountain path. The air within this forsaken fortress is heavy with a sour, acrid stench that seems to permeate every nook and cranny, clawing at the senses with its rancid tendrils.

From its shadowy perch, the vile presence observes the slow-motion procession of the carriage, its formless visage twisted into a grotesque facsimile of a smile as it revels in anticipation of what is to come — a feast. The decaying walls surrounding this abhorrent being seem to absorb the very darkness that cloaks it, their crumbling surfaces tainted by the indelible mark of malevolence. The moonlight filters through broken windows and cracks in the castle's facade, casting eerie patterns upon the rotting tapestries that adorn the desolate chambers. The once resplendent halls now lay in ruin, haunted by the whispers of long-dead inhabitants and consumed by an insidious corruption that gnaws at their deep-set foundations.

There is a rot, an eating, that happens deep down below the stonework.

As the carriage draws ever nearer to its harrowing destination, the air within the castle seems to thicken with an oppressive tension that chokes every breath. The entity's dark essence reverberates through the ancient stones with excitement. The brick seems to ripple unnaturally, moving as if it were an organic fluid, rather than being a strong, sturdy construction.

As they approach their final destination, unaware of the watchful eyes that observe their progress from within the castle's depths, they remain blissfully ignorant of the true nature of their journey's end.

For amidst this miasma of decay and malevolence lies an evil far beyond their comprehension — a darkness that hungers for their very souls. And as the carriage approaches the castle's foreboding gates, the being there within stirs with anticipation, eager to welcome its unwary guests into the cold embrace of eternal night.

The castle squelches, which is quite the odd thing for a castle to be doing. But it is best not to question that.

~ [Inside of the Castle, Lower Floors] ~

It is a little while later.

Bats screech in the air above their heads, fighting to fly away now that their nest has been disturbed by the glows of raging cinders.

Falsch, the Sorceress, holds her hands out before herself, letting out a torrent of flames that swallows a shambling mass that had come to greet them the moment they arrived. Undead, a swarm of them, had crept and crawled out of the shadows the instant they opened the massive oakwood doors into the old castle.

Dust and cobwebs, strangely, fail to catch fire or burn. Rather, it all just fades away, as if they were being retracted by an unseen force.

— As the world before her glows with fire, the world behind her glows with holy light. The monotone sorceress looks back over her shoulder at the priest, who has created a magical barrier to block the open door they had just entered through. A legion of drooling, sloshing undead hammers at it from the outside, trying to reach them.

“Now!” yells the party fighter, the man in the leather armor, Erfunden. He presses against one of the massive doors, and the obscured crossbowman, Unecht, presses against the other one. The two of them move the swinging doors, slamming them shut against the magical barrier. The priest, Gelogen, dives out of the way just in time to avoid being crushed as the heavy barriers crash closed with a resounding clap that is akin to thunder.

A pillar of broken wood is shoved in between the grips, barring the door from the inside.

Erfunden, the human fighter, looks down at his hands and then wipes them off on his clothes as he looks around at the grand entrance hall of the castle — if it can be called that still in its current state. The structure is dilapidated beyond repair. There is a hole in the floor above that lets the moonlight eke in through the upstairs windows and illuminate the entrance below in a circle, as if it were marking a ritual space.

The flames have died, the sorceress’ spell having come to an end.

With his hand on the hilt of his sword, he looks around the area, stepping over the crumbling debris on the floor.

Their carriage had arrived at the castle; however, the anqas were greatly uneased. As soon as they stepped out, the animals bolted in terror with the carriage in tow. It didn’t take a minute more for the undead ambush to roll over them. There were too many, so they had to run into the castle. Also, there was something else — something big.

“This was a mistake,” says the priest, slowly rising up to his legs and looking around himself as he clutches his talisman. “We shouldn’t have come here!”

“Shh,” hisses the crossbowman, his blackened leather glove creaking as he lifts it to shush him. Warily, he stares around the hall. The entrance to the castle’s first area is a grand, open room with an inner balcony that has long crumbled down onto the ground floor. There is a winding staircase that might have served for grand entrances back in the day, long, long ago. However, now it only acts as a rest for the beams that have fallen from the upper floors.

No noises fill the air other than the haunting whisper of the winds outside of the castle.

The two men turn their heads, looking back at the entrance door behind them that has fallen silent. There is no hammering on it anymore. The undead have stopped.

“…Where did they go?” asks the priest, nervously.

The hooded man lowers his hand and walks onward without replying, causing the priest to look toward the sorceress instead for answers. She looks at him and then keeps walking too. “They’re taking another door,” she replies quietly.

“…Other door?” he asks, receiving no other answer. “What other door?! Hey!”

The man runs after his party, which begins moving through the castle in search of what they came here for.

Through the nebulous gloom of the forsaken castle, the band of grim adventurers cautiously advances, their hearts pounding in perfect harmony with the ominous rhythm of their own footsteps. The haunting atmosphere of the forgotten castle clings to them like a shroud, and each oddly wet creak of the ancient floorboards beneath them sends a shiver down the spines of the nervous priest as they all traverse the labyrinthine network of shattered chambers and desolate halls that never quite seems to come to a sensible end.

It’s as if the castle kept making more of itself every time they opened a new door, as if it were intent on keeping them inside for as long as it could.

All the while, something large moves elsewhere. It’s not clear where, but its presence can be heard, ambling, shuffling, lumbering.

The walls of these once stately rooms now stand ravaged by the relentless passage of time, their moldering surfaces having borne witness to untold tales of terror and suffering that have now long since passed. Tattered banners with the iconography of a forgotten house of nobles hang limply from cracked rafters, their once-colorful sigils long since bleached by darkness and decay. Shattered remnants of gilded mirrors reflect twisted fragments of reality, casting eerie illusions that dance along the periphery of the adventurers' vision, as if they were looking into a disturbed body of water rather than at the shards of looking glasses.

As they delve deeper into this oppressive realm, the sounds and sensations of creeping horror serve as constant reminders that they are not alone. The faintest whispers echo through abandoned corridors, voices that seem to have clawed their way out from beyond the veil of death to torment those who dare trespass upon this cursed domain. The undead shamble and groan, always nearby but never quite on their heels — as if the horde were a minotaur, chasing them through a labyrinth.

In one forsaken chamber, the impossible remnants of an opulent feast lay strewn across a vast dining table, as if frozen in time at the very moment when darkness had descended upon this doomed gathering. A once resplendent chandelier hangs precariously above them, its crystal pendalogues no longer reflecting light but instead absorbing it like the endless void between the many stars in the night sky.

In another room, they chance upon a macabre gallery lined with portraits whose subjects' eyes seem to follow them with an unnerving intensity. The faces on the paintings never move, but they do not need to. Their screaming visages speak for themselves. One of their many eyes is yellow, which is inexplicably out of place.

As they delve further into this unhallowed fortress, navigating through the suffocating darkness that threatens to envelop them whole, the adventurers are plagued by a mounting sense of dread. They can feel the oppressive weight of the malevolent presence that resides here, its very essence seeping into the very air they breathe. It smells… acrid and acidic. There is a dankness to the damp air that is akin to the deepest, oldest, and mustiest dungeons in the world.

“Hey,” says a voice from the front of the group. The fighter, Erfunden, turns around to look at them for a moment. “…Where’s Gelogen?” he asks.

The sorceress and the crossbowman look at one another and then around the hallway that they’re walking down for any signs of the missing priest. No doors are open anywhere that they themselves haven’t opened.

He’s nowhere to be seen.

“Ge-!” starts the fighter, calling out. Before he can finish, a leather gloved hand is over his mouth. In indignant anger, he swipes it away, scowling at the crossbowman, who shushes him just the same as he had shushed the missing priest before. His lifted, gloved finger moves through the air as his outstretched hand switches from gesturing ‘silence’ to gesturing ‘wait’, without ever changing anything except its position in the air between them.

The three of them stand there, listening.

— But it isn’t so much what they hear that they notice. It is what they sense.

Something very large is moving nearby; its presence is made clear by the vibrations in the stonework beneath their boots—vibrations that travel deeply, unnaturally for this sort of material. They look down at the ground below their feet, watching it tremor strangely. The little pebbles on its surface, the puffs of dust, the fractured wood — none of it ever shakes or vibrates as something heavy thuds along. Instead… the fragments are perfectly, unnaturally still.

Only the brickwork floor itself somehow carries the sensation of the other toward them, not as a shaking vibration but as a soft ripple.

“This place is fucked…” whispers the fighter. “What do we do?” he asks, receiving no answer from either the crossbowman or the sorceress other than their continued walking onward.

It’s in the room with them.

With her back pressed against the bookshelf, Falsch the sorceress quietly shuffles down the row in the old library until she reaches the end. Her fingers grip the edge of the shelving behind her as she cautiously leans out a few inches, staring into the darkness of the central library.

A smell is in the air — the smell of foul, rotting meat. It reeks of something that had been digested and then never fully completed.

Moonlight ekes in between the shelves of the upstairs library, entering through the glass, half-atrium windows on the ceiling above. Many of the panes are broken, having allowed the rain to enter and flood the library. Crow droppings from nests above mark the shelves. The books are soaked and molded, many of them rotting and fallow. The acrid smell of their presence comes together as if they were themselves their own horde of undead.

But they are nothing compared to it — to the creature, the large thing.

She can’t make it out clearly.

But it is a hulking entity, the size of several men. Its torso is stiff and elongated, almost dragging down to the floor itself as if it had no legs. Its arms are what look like two long clubs that it uses to drag itself around, each of them easily enough to crush a knight in his armor with a single swing.

They say that a vampire used to live in this castle a long, long time ago, but that was ancient history. It was killed generations ago. At least, so everyone thought. However, now that the castle, which was reduced to nothing but a heap of bricks, has reconstituted itself in an odd manner. It has come back — broken and destroyed, but returned nonetheless. It is as if the castle itself were an undead, just like the things that fill it.

— The lurching thing slowly turns.

She hides back behind the shelf, quickly and quietly shuffling back down the other way toward the end of the row as its heavy steps come closer and closer. Each lumbering movement of its thick, club-like appendages against the floor ripples out unnaturally and lets her feel its presence.

Aiming a finger across the room, she points it at a book on the other side of the library and casts a smell to let it start smoldering.

— The wet paper doesn’t catch.

However, the magical glow persists nonetheless as the flame tries at least to eat away at it for as long as the effects of the spell remain. The lumbering stops for a moment, and she uses the time to sneak further toward the end. There’s no way out of this row. The open gap between this row and the next one is full of debris. She’s trapped at a dead end.

Quietly swearing, the woman grabs an armful of soggy, mold eaten books and quietly sets them down onto the floor, before repeating the pattern a few more times as the lumbering sensation returns.

She crawls sideways into the open shelf, pressing her body against the little hollow space, flat and long, with her back out in the open and her face facing the wood. Quietly whispering, her palms pressed against the inside of the shelf, she works. Flames crackle and pop as they come into contact with the wet, soaked wood of the shelves that have collapsed in many places. The wood doesn’t burn; rather, it just… sort of melts away in a deeply unnatural manner.

The ground ripples, quivering as the heavy thing moves. Its unnaturally large body forces itself into the tight gap between the shelves as it tries to enter the row that she’s in. Its long, stumpy growths churn in through the pulp and indiscriminate, black slush that covers the floors as it forces its way inside, violently pressing its hulking gestalt in where it does not fit.

— The ground shakes together with her body as it approaches, coming further and further inside, tearing and breaking everything delicate and soft on the way to her. It’s closer now. Steps away. She works, feverishly whispering, as a heavy thud lands just behind her body.

The inner wall of the long shelf that she had been burning gives way, and she rolls through the hole into the adjacent row and then quickly crawls away on her stomach as something big looks down where she just was but sees nothing there.

Quietly, she sneaks out and down the row as fast as she can, heading back into the central library before it can too.

Looking up, she sees the human fighter, Erfunden, quietly waving to her from the upper balcony of the library.

In a hurry, she runs through the library toward him, her steps coming to a stop as his full silhouette comes into light.

He’s just hanging there over the edge of the balcony, his entrails tangled and torn out of his sides. The many undead, swarming behind him, eat his insides as he drools and fails to scream — still alive.

He reaches out for her.

— The shelves behind her shatter apart as this thing, the creature, breaks free.

She runs, sprinting down through the library and over a heap of broken glass on her way to the door that does not crunch as her boots press down onto it.

The crushing monster slams into the open door behind her, the walls around the frame cracking as its forceful impact is too substantial to fit through immediately. By the time it is done rupturing the entrance open wide enough, she has already vanished.

The sorceress now finds herself alone in this wretched castle, her heart pounding with an echo of her companions' absence. The atmosphere is oppressively bleak, and the air hangs heavy with a palpable sense of malevolence.

As she traverses the desolate corridors, her footsteps muffled by the oppressive silence that envelops this forsaken place, she becomes acutely aware of a series of chillingly wet slurping and sloshing noises that appear to emanate from all around her. These grotesque sounds seem to taunt her with their dissonant cacophony, sending icy tendrils of dread snaking down her spine and causing the hairs on the back of her neck to stand on end.

Each step she takes is tainted by a creeping sense of despair, and as she passes through the gloomy chambers that lay strewn with the detritus of unspeakable horrors long past, she cannot shake the feeling that she is being watched by unseen eyes — predatory gazes that linger on her every movement from within the depths of the surrounding darkness.

The walls themselves seem to close in upon her, their cracked surfaces whispering unspeakable secrets into her ears as they ooze some foul ichor that drips onto the cold stone floor beneath her feet. The very air is thick with tension, and it feels as though even time itself has become distorted within this hellish domain.

With each passing moment, it seems as though the darkness grows ever more oppressive, and the grotesque slurping and sloshing noises that surround her take on a life of their own.

Falsch, the sorceress, keeps walking. She’s almost there. She’s certain.

Opening the next door, she walks through a room that looks like a grand bedroom and looks to the side at the wall. There, the missing priest, Gelogen, is present.

— In the context that his physical form is so.

The man is dead. He’s melded, merged into the wall. His body is plastered against it, his arms splayed out wide to his sides, as are his legs. His skull and chest sit half within the brickwork, as if it had been sucking him inside of itself. Ooze dribbles down out through his sockets and nostrils, the fluid that has already long since eaten his back and insides leaking down through his front.

That acrid smell is in the air again. The smell of something sour and foul.

Falsch looks away from the dead man and keeps walking, turning to go down the staircase that he is plastered next to. His outstretched fingers had reached for the corner of the wall but never quite managed to touch it.

They say that the vampire returned after all of these years. That is why they are here.

The sorceress keeps a cinder aglow in her clasped fingers as she descends now deeper into the castle, if only to be ready for anything as she approaches the final chamber.

— Something moves behind her.

Quickly, she turns her head and looks back up the staircase, but sees nothing.

Then, quietly, she descends.

The vampire’s chamber.

Falsch looks at the hidden room she’s found.

It’s a dark, underground chamber akin to a castle dungeon. Chains and brickwork lie scattered all around the area, as if it had been under construction and then simply never finished.

Here, in the center of it all, sits a sarcophagus.

Vampires can only ever move about during the night, for they must rest during the day. However, now in the era of the Demon-King, in the era of the night that never stops, there is nothing around to stop such a creature from ever roaming the world again.

Her hand lifted with a glowing spell, she creeps toward the coffin and gets ready to open it.

— The castle above her shakes as something heavy moves nearby.

Her fingers grasp the edge of the coffin, and she yanks it open, the cinders glowing around her fingers aimed at the inside.

A gloved hand covers her mouth from behind as her body lurches, a painful heat shooting through her core as something presses into her flesh. She looks down at the old knife sticking through her, then back at the crossbowman behind her. The man with the obscured face is holding her.

“Shh…” he says again, pressing the knife through her. “You did well,” he says, restraining her as the last of the fight fades from her body. He pushes her face down into the open coffin and then looks around the room, listening to the noise of the heavy thing moving and lumbering above and around him.

It had tried to stop him from returning.

The crossbowman drops the knife, lowers his hood, and takes off his mask.

“It’s over,” he says out loud to the chamber. “I’ve won,” says the man as his pale face is revealed to the world. His sunken features, his cold, off-blue skin, and sharpened teeth reveal his nature as an elder vampire. He looks around himself. “Leave this place and never return.”

There is no response.

But that is because it does not fear him, for it does not know who and what he is.

— Sanctioned by the Demon-King.

It has been generations since he last walked the world’s surface, generations since he tasted the blood of the living, and generations since his castle stood whole and true. All of those many, many years ago, he had been slain by a man, a hero, an avatar of the sun and the day.

However, now they find themselves in the truest of nights, and he, by the graces of the Demon-King, has been resurrected to fulfill his purpose. Even here, on the other end of the world, far, far away from the Demon-Carnival and its grim parade toward humanity’s last bastions.

The roof above him gives way.

But it does not break.

Rather, it simply forms a hole in itself, as if it were a liquid, as if the bricks and the wood and everything there were no such things. It’s almost like they just looked like it — like they were made from a fluid substance pretending to be solid, pretending to be a destroyed castle.

Because that is what it is.

A heavy, lumbering thing falls down from above, the fake stones below his boots quaking and rippling as its heavy weight comes to a crash there before him. The vampire’s excellent vision in the dark lets him see what the lumbering monster truly is.

— A slime.

To be exact, it is slime that has bitten off far more than it could chew, as one might say.

“Hmpf,” he says, flicking his wrist as if overcome by amused boredom. A sharp line of energy cuts through the hulking thing.

Its long, elongated torso with no legs is a slime covered sarcophagus.

The little beast somehow wandered to the ruins of his castle and ate his old grave site, his staked coffin with his old bones in it and all. However, this was far too much power for a thing like it to handle. It couldn’t digest it or absorb it, and so his magic has been restoring his castle in his absence, but with the slime’s properties. The fake vampire has made a fake castle.

After his return, he needed a little help to make his way through. The slime had altered the layout of his castle so that its core, this chamber, could not be reached.

It is cut in half, with acidic goo splashing everywhere. His old coffin, inside the mess, crumbles into two pieces as one of the only really solid things in this entire structure.

The false-vampire splashes, falling apart in an instant as its stabilizing core is destroyed. His old bones scatter, rolling around the floor in a mess of ooze. The castle rumbles and quivers, the walls and stones shaking like a gelatinous mass. “I shall not tell you a second time,” he says, lifting his hand and a long, clawed finger that pierces through the black leather glove from the inside-out.

— Droplets of slime pull themselves together, a single, yellow eye forming in the oozing mass and looking up his way.

A slime that is deeply out of its league now that it has been robbed of its nigh-infinite power flattens itself down into a meek puddle and quietly begins to ooze away. The castle’s walls melt, and the entire structure starts to break apart into a leaking mass, as if it were entirely made out of ice on a summer’s day.

The elder vampire breathes a sigh of relief as the sour smell of the slime begins to fade and the cold night air finally reaches him again. The fake castle, the fake undead, the fake everything fades, melts, and vanishes. An entire castle simply disappears.

And if anyone were watching down from a village below the mountain, watching the silhouette break, crumble, and fade, then they might perhaps think that the castle and the creature inside had been destroyed.

— As if such things were possible in the year of the Demon-King.

He looks out over the landscape that reveals itself to him — a world that he once failed to best. But now the era of heroes is over. Now, he has risen once more from the grave, this time in the service of a king.

~ [A Strange Village Down in a Dark Forest] ~

The villagers cheer, adorning her with beads and trinkets as she quietly walks down the road away from the castle, the forest, and the village.

“Thank you!” says the old woman, grabbing her hand and squeezing it. “I am sorry for your friends,” she adds.

The quiet sorceress looks her way with a monotone expression and shakes her head. The fact that she has one yellow eye is not noticed.

Without much more than that, she simply walks off in the direction the carriage had come from earlier that day. Lowering her gaze as she wanders the dark road at night toward the thing that calls her, she looks down at her hand.

Her skin is compressed. Her hand, boneless, is squished into a flattened oddity.

After a second, it begins to reshape itself. The beads and trinkets adorning her body are absorbed and taken in. They begin to fade, sinking into her body and through her clothes that are as fake as her hair, eyes, nails, or anything else.

She clenches her fingers, a jiggle running down along her arm and to her shoulder.

The slime, pretending to be a person, quietly marches on toward the horizon, toward something even bigger that it wants to eat now that it is free from the spell it was trapped within. It doesn’t know what it is yet. But it is getting closer and closer.

The body melts down into a featureless puddle of green goo with one yellow eye and it begins hopping through the endless night.