Dreamer's Throne

Core's rough breathing seemed to be the only sound in the darkness of the tomb. The team had found a little spot in one of the tunnels that was hidden from the glaring white light of the flame that burned in the torches. The grave walker lieutenant held the stump of his arm, trying to keep the waves of pain at bay as the party regained their energy. The corruption that had seeped into his soul had been completely consumed by the dream flower planted there, and he was safe from turning into an undead, however, from the way he sat apart from the rest of the group, it was clear that he didn't want to take any chances.

Garrett, still possessing Viper, looked at Cynen, who in turn was watching her lieutenant carefully. Both Core and Gale were Cynen's most trusted officers, and to lose either of them would be a significant blow. They had been sitting like this in near silence for almost half an hour, chewing on some of the food they had brought with them, and trying to regain their strength after the fierce fight against the undead spawning from the Cauldron of Souls.

In sealing the hole containing the white flame, they had managed to keep more undead from spawning, but Garrett was pretty certain that if they didn't get through the rest of the tomb and kill Agma-Yoth soon, they would be buried under hordes of undead. Even from a distance he could feel the energy of the cauldron brewing, and didn’t like the idea that it was cooking up a massive undead monster. Furthermore, up above, in the tunnels where the flower ghouls were fighting against the necromancers and their zombies, he had noticed that Agma-Yoth's forces were starting to retreat, intending to pull back to the first tomb to defend their master. It was a subtle movement, clearly intended to avoid his gaze, but Garrett had eyes and ears everywhere, thanks to his connections to the dream flowers, and he had noticed the shift as soon as it happened.

Just as he was about to command Viper to stand up, he heard a small sigh from Cynen and looked over, noticing a paleness on her face that had not been there before. Sensing his gaze, she turned to look at him and he caught sight of a faint green reflection in her eyes that set off warning bells in his head.

"Is everything okay?" he asked, Viper’s eyes narrowing behind his red mask.

Instead of answering the question directly, Cynen held out her hand, summoning a wisp of green flame that danced above her palm, filling the area and casting a green tint everywhere its light reached.

"My first memories are wonderful," she said, catching Garrett off guard with what seemed like a non-sequitur.

Instead of interrupting her, however, he had Viper settle back down to listen. He could hear the faint hint of relief in her voice, as if she had come to some sort of decision to unburden herself, and despite the pressing nature of their task, he thought it couldn't hurt to give her a few minutes to speak.

"They're full of warmth, full of life. I lived in the southern part of our district. Our home was tucked away near the royal graveyard where my father was one of the grave tenders who cleaned the stones. We didn't have anything to do with gangs or undead monsters. We were just simple folk."

Here, she paused for half a beat, and when she resumed, her voice had grown hard, her words jagged.

"But that changed. A group of undead, controlled by a necromancer, slipped through the Grave Walkers’ net and decided to run an experiment in our neighborhood. Everyone in my home was infected with a parasite that transformed them into ghouls. Big, stronger, faster ghouls. I don't know if it was because I was so young or because of something else, but it took me longer than the others to transform. I remember waking in the middle of the night and hearing the sounds that my family made as their flesh was warped and their minds destroyed. The Grave Walkers who were chasing the necromancer found us. With them was Marius, their leader, whose flame cleansed our house, taking all of those who had transformed with it. The flame burned the parasite out of my heart, but somehow I survived."

Cynen fell silent, her eyes reflecting the flame on her palm, her thoughts far away in years past. Unsure where this reminiscence was going, Garrett remained quiet as well, simply giving her the time and space she needed to process her story. Even Core's pained gasp had quieted as everyone listened intently to what Cynen had to say.

"In the place of that parasite, I gained something else," she finally said. "Death's flame. It lodged in my heart, and as time passed, it grew until I learned to manifest it. That eventually led to me taking over the gang.”

With a flick, she sent the tongue of flame tumbling into the air, watching as it danced above her head.

“You asked me earlier," she said, suddenly, turning to Viper, "whether or not anyone has been tempted to take the life force of the flame for themselves. The answer is yes."

With a hiss, Gale leaned back, his eyes widening in shock. His reaction didn't go unnoticed, and as Viper glanced over at him, Cynen let out a hollow chuckle.

"The problem is, absorbing the life force contained in the flame is the same as absorbing corrupt life force from the undead. The flame has two primary functions. Absorb undead energy and corrupt living flesh. And while I, and my master before me, can do the first, we are forced to deal with the second. Bearing the flame causes the wielder to age prematurely, as it corrupts our flesh from the inside out. Worse still is what it does to our mind. Marius, our first leader, realized too late the corruption of the flame. By the time he did, it had already seeped deep into his brain. My master found him trying to absorb the flame in its entirety, and was forced to kill him after witnessing him turn into an undead monstrosity.

Sensing where the story was going, Garrett leaned forward.

"And your master?"

With a bitter chuckle, Cynen reached out and grasped the dancing flame, closing her hand around the green tongue of flame, causing it to extinguish as she laughed bitterly.

"Killed by my own hand," she said, "on the eve of his own transformation."

The implications of what Cynen was saying were terrible, but Garrett didn't panic, instead examining her closely. After she had mentioned it, he could clearly see the signs. There was a brittleness to her body that had not existed when he had met her on the surface, and it was clear that the heavy use of her flames had accelerated the corruption of her body. Still, from the look in her eyes, it didn't appear that her mind had been corrupted yet. Sensing his appraising gaze, Cynen grinned mirthlessly.

"That's the right look," she said, "because I'm going to need you to put that sword through my heart by the end of this, most likely.”

“Boss—!”

Waving her hand to cut Gale off, Cynen kept her gaze fixed on Viper as she continued to speak.

“But not before we kill Agma-Yoth. Undead destroyed my family. They took my master and his master before him, and now they're coming for me. This corrupt power needs to be destroyed, and I’m going to be the one to do it, no matter the cost."

Letting out a deep breath, her shoulders straightened, and she turned to look at Core and Gale.

"It's likely the Grave Walkers will end with us," she said, "but only after we've destroyed the root of the evil in this city."

Pushing herself to her feet, Cynen dusted her hands off and gestured for the others to get up.

"All right, enough delaying. Let's go kill this monster."

Taking their weapons up, the team headed further into the tomb. They were quite subdued, in large part due to the tragic story they had just heard and the knowledge that Cynen likely wouldn't survive the upcoming battle. Garrett couldn't help but feel an intense admiration for the Grave Walker gang leader. She had expressed previously that her greatest desire was to destroy the undead threat that plagued the city, but the reality was that human motivation was more complicated than that, and Garrett hadn't been sure just how committed she was. Now it seemed that she was so committed, she was willing to die for it, burning herself out in the process.

The team headed deeper into the tomb, making their way through a series of twisting tunnels, avoiding the traps that littered the floor, and fighting against an occasional group of skeletons that emerged. Garrett had assumed that considering the damage Cynen was doing to herself as she wielded her flame, she would have left the fighting to Viper, but it seemed that her imminent death only spurred her on to fight.

The flame had undergone a qualitative change after absorbing so many undead, and Garrett was starting to feel as if he could sense it eating away at Cynen's life force as well, twisting it. Coming into a large open room, he saw a hunched figure in a robe, surrounded by half a dozen fully armored undead. Each wielded a giant executioner's axe and stood at least seven feet tall, their bodies clad head to toe in black armor.

"Death knights," Cynen whispered, her voice grim.

Garrett, who was not nearly as familiar with the undead as she was, could feel the danger that these death knights exuded. Each was a powerful warrior in its own right, more than a match for a standard awakened. With half a dozen of them there, it was clear that they were in for a fierce fight. The hunched necromancer, who stood in the middle of the group, didn’t seem to be any slouch either. It seemed to Garrett that they had come up against their first real obstacle.

Stopping at the entrance to the room, Garrett looked around, trying to find any traps or hidden attackers that might ambush them. He didn't see anything, though that didn't mean that they were entirely in the clear. But as he had Viper step forward, the necromancer held up a thin, skeletal-looking hand.

"You have come far enough," a raspy voice said from under the necromancer's cowl. "You will leave your lives here, becoming members of my death knight squadron."

Cynen responded by summoning her flames and darting forward, moving so quickly she left burning green afterimages in the air. The death knights reacted to her assault by stepping forward, two of them bringing their axes around in fierce slashes, while another stepped directly in front of the necromancer to try to block her advance. With a sneering laugh, the necromancer took a small step back, his palm suddenly glowing with dark energy. Yet before he could cast his curse at Cynen, there was a soft sound and a silver blade sprouted from the palm of his hand. As fast as Cynen was, and as quickly as the undead death knights had responded, no one in the room was as fast as Viper. He appeared to teleport as he launched his attack, racing past Cynen, dodging around the death knights, and stabbing the necromancer straight through the palm.

With a shriek of pain, the necromancer tried to jerk his hand free, but before he could, Viper's sword twisted and stabbed into the ground, forcing the necromancer off balance. A moment later, a long bladed dagger appeared and stabbed into the side of the necromancer's cowl, planted there by Viper's swift strike. Thrown into confusion, the death knights who were trying to block Cynen didn't know what to do, and as the three who had not yet reacted surged forward, two of the others tried to turn around. The one remaining death knight who continued to attack Cynen saw her fists gleam with green flame, and a moment later, a punch landed on the death knight's breastplate, causing cracks to radiate through it. Through those cracks, the fire slipped, biting deep into the corrupt life force below the death knight's armor.

Thrashing wildly, the death knight tried to put the flames out, but its movement simply made them burn all the fiercer, and within a few seconds, its body had transformed into nothing but ash. It was clear from the way Cynen grimaced that absorbing so much corrupt life force was causing her flame to grow unstable, but she gritted her teeth as she blocked another axe blow, deflecting the blade downward as she vaulted over it, her hand gripping the helmet of the death knight who attacked her.

Flame surged once again, and with a shriek, the undead monstrosity fell to his knees before vanishing in a puff of green smoke. In the time it took her to take down two of the death knights, Viper had already stabbed the necromancer a dozen more times, each of his blows driving deep into the old man's body, piercing vital organs and severing his tendons. Each time the necromancer tried to gather his energy, Viper's blade appeared, piercing into him and disrupting his concentration.

With a final gurgle, the necromancer, who had been practically chopped to pieces by this point, died, causing all of the death knights to stumble to a stop as the backlash from their master's death rattled through them. With a shout, Gale rushed forward, a crimson shadow at his side. As they kept one of the death knights occupied, Cynen and Viper quickly cleaned up the rest, and soon the room was clear.

The flames around Cynen danced wildly, and she quickly sat down to try to get them under control, focusing her mental energy. Viper searched the necromancer for anything interesting while he waited. It took Cynen a good five minutes before the flames that danced around her began to die down and retreat back into her body. Her face had grown noticeably whiter once more, the pallor of undeath seeming to shroud her. With a gasp, she opened her eyes.

"Viper," she growled, causing him to walk over and give her a hard look.

"This is exactly what happened to my master," she said. "The more the flame grows, the harder it is to resist the temptation to integrate with it completely. I need you to promise me."

Though she didn't say what she was asking Viper to do, it was obvious to everyone there. Gale was about to protest, but Core grabbed him. The grave walker lieutenant's expression was just as pale as Cynen's, though in his case it was from pain and blood loss after losing an arm.

"You know what we swore," he said quietly.