Twilight looked up as she felt a hoof laid on her shoulder. She saw her old foalsitter smiling down at her.
"I'm so sorry!" she apologised, on the verge of crying.
Cadance's smile turned into a sneer. "Oh, that's quite alright, since I'm not actually Cadance, the real one is safe for now, but you won't be able to do anything about that in a moment." the false Cadance said. Her horn glowed green as the impostor prepared an unfamiliar spell, then Twilight lost consciousness.
***Location: Unknown. Time: Unknown.***
When she came to, she was in a forest clearing. She saw strange slimy creatures and what appeared to be undead bipedal beings in basic armor moving around. She shuddered slightly, necromancy was a foul magic that forced a soul back from the afterlife and bound it to the necromancer's will.
The poor things had no say in anything they did. The only way to set them free was to destroy them, or at least the spell that had brought them back. The confirmation of there being an afterlife was the only beneficial effect of the use of necromancy, otherwise there wouldn't be anywhere to bring the souls back from.
It was then that she noticed that she had undergone a strange transformation. Her forelegs and forehooves had become slimmer arms and hands like Spike's, but ending in stubby digits instead of claws, they looked extraordinarily dexterous. Her hind legs and hooves were now slimmer as well, and ended in feet that appeared to be versions of her new hands that had evolved to be more useful for walking and enable bipedal movement, and thus lost much of their dexterity. She was also wearing clothes to fit her new form, a light blue shirt, a dark blue skirt that matched her mane and tail and had her cutie mark on it, and a pair of white boots.
Her horn was still present and her magic seemed fine, which kept her far more calm than she would have been otherwise as she continued her examination. Her ears were untouched, but her muzzle had divided into component nose and mouth. Her fur was gone, but her skin had taken on it's hue. One of the skeletons had noticed her and charged at her with sword and shield, it's only armor was a battered helm.
She raised a shield spell that stopped it's attack more or less effortlessly, then hit it with one of the medium level Light spells that she had learned from the princess for such occasions as this, well, the creature tied to Darkness trying to kill her part anyway. It collapsed into a pile of bones, but the loud noises alerted the others.
30 more skeletons surrounded her, some with better armor and weapons, she repeatedly used area-of-effect type spells in strafing attacks and eventually cut them down. A 'Level 2' briefly appeared over her head in the middle of the fight, and it was abruptly a tiny bit easier to take out the skeletons. She had to ask someone about that later, she noted. She took the two best swords from the pile and the least battered helm from the collection, after checking for curses of course. She needed some form of protection in case something snuck up on her, she couldn't depend solely on seeing whatever it was in time to cast a shielding spell, and her head was the most important of what she needed to prioritize protection for.
She avoided the slimes if possible, she saw one of them swallow a squirrel that got too close, what followed was going to give her nightmares for some time. They were essentially amoebas the size of a beach ball, which was impressive when you took into account how amoebas were usually microscopic. It should not be possible for an amoeba that large to survive since they needed a massive amount of food to accommodate their volume when not sub-divided into billions of cells. These, however, were entirely natural, there was only an almost ludicrously small amount of magic in them, less than many of the plants. This lent support to her theory on what exactly had happened.
She believed that the impostor had managed to send her to another dimension, it explained the slimes and her transformation, but since she'd seen some of the spell, she now knew some of it, and could, in theory, devise a counter, or even an outright opposing spell that would get her home. She decided to go visit a town, preferably with a library, assuming there was intelligent life wasn't a real stretch when there were undead walking around, that almost necessitated intelligent life of some kind.
She saw an occasional other person as she walked in the direction of decreasing density of vegetation, got directions from them to the nearest town, called BattleOn, and fended off attacks by the native fauna (and occasionally flora) all just to get there.
She didn't tell anyone about the undead as there were people already dealing with it, so she could safely say that they already knew about the skeletons walking around, and she saw what could only be a paladin with brown hair rush off into the forest with a huge grin on his face yelling. "Finally! I was getting bored!" so she could assume this happened fairly often.
She noticed that roughly half the people around here carried weapons and armor of some sort. This likely meant that there were similar threats to one's safety on a widespread basis throughout this world, so she ought to learn some more combat-oriented magic, just in case. Light spells were really only useful against those tied to Darkness.
She was planning on hunkering down in the nearest library and researching a way home, but that didn't mean she was going to do nothing but focus on that to the exclusion of anything else up to and including the end of the world, or rather, this world. She ought to at least help out if she was going to be stuck here for any great length of time.
She got directions to the resident magician of the area, Warlic. Warlic was apparently the Archmage, which put him in charge of any and every mage in the world, or at least made him responsible for keeping anything related to magic from causing the world to come to an end anyway, if the seeming lack of any real restraints on what the mages used their magic for was any indication. She considered the idea that she was thinking a lot more morbidly than usual for a moment, but dismissed it. She'd been shunted from her universe, of course she was upset.
She went into his shop, he was the tutor on spells in the area as well, he had silver hair, an orb on a rod, and a blue robe, she found him reading a book, he dropped it in surprise as she came in.
"Miss, are you aware that you're leaking magic like some kind of fire hose gone mad?" he asked. No one had said he was very subtle.
"Really? I thought I'd gotten better about that." she had in fact thought she'd improved since school.
"I sensed you appear nearby, I was looking into how on Lore you could hide your presence so well, only to appear now when there were no obvious threats, which is actually fairly rare, wars and other such events are so common that if Death weren't so lenient on most people, the continent would be depopulated by now, it would have been like trying to hide a lit bonfire at night." he said.
"That's... somewhat disturbing actually, who's in charge of this place?" she asked, more than a little perturbed at the off-hand way Warlic could talk about wars, from the sound of it, they happened all the time.
"Technically, there is no one supreme ruler of Lore and the Elemental Lords only rarely get involved in our affairs. King Alteon the Good and Sepulchre the Doomknight are in almost constant conflict, and the Creator will only intervene if there is absolutely no hope of the world not being destroyed otherwise." he explained.
"Oh, great, I'm going to have problems if I want to visit anywhere else, aren't I?" she asked.
"Yes, monster attacks are common, and have been slowly increasing in frequency of late. I think something big will happen within the month, but I can't figure out or scry what exactly it might be. Incidentally, what level are you?" he asked.
"Level? That thing that popped up in the forest? Sorry, I'm pretty sure this is a different dimension from my home, so I'll likely need pointers on things that will seem basic to you." she apologized.
"Right, your level determines how powerful you are, though you can boost that sort of thing artificially with equipment, a person of a high level with poor equipment will usually be able to overpower a person of a low level with good equipment. There's a cap of 999, but most don't get past 100. You really only need be 60 or so to defeat most strong enemies though." he explained.
"Okay, I'm only level 2 though." she said.
Warlic sighed. "Right, then I suggest you fight the monsters around town. BattleOn has relatively weak monsters, but there are some dangerous ones about, even here. There's a proverb that most adventurers stick to, 'Be brave, but if things look grim, run away and live to be brave some other day.' it applies to the situations you'll encounter.
I can lend you some spells as well, though I'm afraid I can't just give them away, but don't worry, winning monster fights awards money that's automatically added to what you have." Warlic said.
"Right, what have you got?" she asked.
Warlic turned to the bookshelves in the back of the shop. He pulled out a blue hardcover book.
"This book contains the low-level combat spells, but first we have to figure out what Class you are. Before you ask, Classes are essentially jobs that influence what abilities, and spells you can learn, and how your attributes grow over levels." Warlic said, holding a book with a blue cover and the same star as her cutie mark.
After several tests, Warlic announced his verdict. "It seems that you're a new Class. You can dual wield swords, but also use magic, and your statistics appear much more well-rounded than most people's. I think we should tentatively call your Class Red Mage. A mage with light and dark magic, but also uses weapons.
A jack-of-all-trades, your strength lies in your versatility, but you aren't quite as good as a specialist at their skillset. You can heal like a Priest, but not as well, but you can also deal damage effectively with physical attacks or black magic, something no Priest can do. You'll be slower than a Rogue, but faster than a Warrior, have better Endurance than a mage, but less than a Warrior." Warlic said.
"So, does that mean I can have all the spells in that book that I can afford?" Twilight asked him.
"Yes, yes it does." he deadpanned.
She started to look through the spellbook for spells that seemed useful for fighting.
*** 10 Minutes Later ***
She left Warlic's shop with her money bag considerably lighter, but her mind and spell list considerably fuller. She'd gotten a spell in each element of the 8 elements (fire, water, ice, lightning, earth, wind, light, and darkness) as well as a spell to increase the force of her physical attacks and a small healing spell.
Though now she was almost broke, she had a plan, fight the nearby monsters until a day's worth didn't get her to the next level, get more spells and better equipment, then visit the library in each town and research a way home. She'd have to help in any major problems that happened though.
She fought a few monsters on the edge of town to raise the necessary money, and then rented a room and board at the town's inn. She repeated the process of fighting monsters, re-outfitting herself, and studying at the library for a few weeks until she hit level 15. Then she left for the next town over, she fended off the occasional monster, until she ran into that same Paladin that had been slaying the undead when she got to BattleOn being swarmed by more undead. She ran to help him.
'It's going to be a long day, I can tell already.' she thought as she began to cut down the enemies in her way.
Author's Note
Another story, this one's either going to be updated very quickly, or very slowly.
There had to be hundreds of these things! The paladin was doing well though, he took out three of the undead for every one she did (which was sort of the point). And was it her imagination, or did his ax have some kind of spell on it that made it a little stronger with every fallen undead? That was all pushed to the back of her mind as a figure in red armor moved into view at the top of the nearby mountain just as the paladin met her.
"Nice to meet you. I'm Artix! Slaying undead is my hobby, obsession, and profession!" the paladin said as he bisected a skeleton unlucky enough not to have a helmet.
Twilight knocked the head off another while answering, "I'm Twilight Sparkle, I study magic, but I seem to be a natural swordsman and I've gained experience at it while fighting monsters." That last bit applied to both magic and swordsmanship. She pointed at the figure while ducking under the swing of another skeleton. "By the way, who's that?" she asked.
"Oh, that's Sepulchre, he's the undead guy in charge of the rest of these undead, and he's got this whole nation of undead and necromancers behind him. He's always starting wars to try and take over Lore. This is the biggest invasion yet though." he said, serious for a moment, before grinning widely. "It's like my birthday or something!"
Twilight sighed, it was like Pinkie with an ax and an obsession with slaying the undead. ...That thought was going to give her nightmares.
"So if we take him out, then we stop this invasion?" she asked, literally kicking the legs out from under a skeleton.
"Well, we'll have to take care of some of them, we can't have an army of undead running around without a leader to keep them from trying to kill everything that moves." Artix said, slicing through several more skeletons. Yes, his ax definitely got stronger with each fallen undead, she just didn't know how or by what amount. It didn't seem to be very much though.
Sepulchre raised a hand as the volcano erupted behind him and an enormous undead dragon carrying a castle rose up. She stared at it while absentmindedly skewering a skeleton. "You don't see that sort of thing every day." she commented.
"I do. We in the hero business get used to it." Artix said, practically vibrating at the chance to fight such a huge undead.
Sepulchre waved his massive blade at them. It was red like his armor, pulsed with dark energy at regular intervals, and had a skull in the hilt. As he waved it, a wave of undead poured down the hill, including a Darkness dragon.
Sepulchre rode another dragon to the fortress, leaving the undead to deal with them. Apparently he either thought they didn't warrant his personal attention, or had more important things to worry about. Probably the latter, since Artix was a legendary Paladin who had slain countless undead and helped fight dozens of wars against the forces of Darkness and evil.
However, about two-thirds of the group went past them, towards Battleon. They dealt with the group engaging and defeating them as quickly as they could, then followed the undead.
They found the minions attacking a tower nearby. There was a girl outside the tower dressed in furs and boots with blue hair and a gold headpiece. The undead paid her little attention, as she was clearly in no condition to fight. She had several semi-serious wounds, not debilitating individually, but together...
Twilight quickly applied her new healing spell on the downed girl a few times. The girl stood. "Thank you! My name's Meryth, and I need your help! Sepulchre's minions are trying to destroy my tower!" she said.
"Alright." Twilight and Artix said at the same time.
"Take care of the ones outside before you go after the dragon. You healed me, but I'm still exhausted from fighting them before. I might not look it, but I know some decent offensive magic." Meryth said.
They soon had the skeletons outside the tower cleared out. "There's a teleportation circle inside the tower, it'll take you to the top." Meryth said.
"Alright, I'll take any undead in there, you go after the dragon." Artix said.
Twilight nodded her agreement.
She and Artix went inside the tower. After taking care of the skeletons on the ground floor, Artix started up the stairs, while Twilight took the teleportation circle to the top, and started clearing out the undead on that floor, while avoiding the dragon's breath attacks until she could focus solely on it.
Artix showed up just as she slew the second-to-last one. "Alright! One left!" he said, before smashing into the skeleton, and carrying them both out of the tower through the hole the dragon had made.
After making sure that Artix was alright, she turned her attention to the dragon. It felt weird to be fighting a dragon considering one of her friends was a dragon, but she had to. This dragon was clearly malicious and lacking in higher intellectual functions. Since dragons here were normally intelligent beings, like in Equestria, this was probably because of Sepulchre. Either a spell or that of his underlings.
She dodged it's breath attacks as best she could, and slashed at it while casting a few Light spells to take advantage of the advantages of using an opposing element on such beings. She could probably have taken this thing at level 10, before anyone told her about Enhancements, special spells that could be placed on her equipment that added to her performance. At level 15 and with Enhancements, it was childsplay. She felt sorry for it though, it had been enslaved to a necromancer's will and robbed of it's own.
Artix got back up to the top by taking the stairs. "Stairs and armor do not mix well." he said breathing heavily.
"Why didn't you take the teleportation circle? Also, don't you think it's strange that he sent this group to attack this tower? It's not a strategic location, it could only have served as..." her eyes widened. "... a distraction! He wanted to keep you out of the fight with all those undead!" Twilight exclaimed in epiphany, inwardly berating herself at not having realized it sooner.
Sepulchre hadn't encountered her, and she hadn't done anything to warrant his notice, so she was almost certainly not his target. Artix, on the other hand, was a well-known Paladin who not only liked slaying undead to the point of obsession, but was very, very good at it. Of course Sepulchre would want him out of the way.
Artix gasped. "All those undead!" He suddenly stopped sniffing. "...Do you smell something burning?" he asked before getting up, his eyes widened. "Oh." he said simply.
Twilight turned around and gasped. She'd had her line of sight blocked by the dragon before, but now that she had a clear view, she saw the city of Swordhaven burning. Swordhaven was the city that King Alteon the Good ruled from, essentially the yang to Sepulchre's yin. If Sepulchre wanted to take out the forces of good, he'd need to take out their stronghold.
"So that's where the rest of the undead went." Artix said, his face serious again. "Come as soon as you can, we'll need your help." he jumped down from the hole. Twilight teleported down. She quickly explained what was going on to Meryth, and started through the forest towards the town.
She stopped at BattleOn just long enough to take advantage of reaching level 16 after defeating the dragon by grabbing some better Enhancements and equipment, then hurried off towards Swordhaven.
She had to deal with large numbers of undead still pouring in the direction of the city, but used the more powerful spells she couldn't use in close quarters before at risk of hurting herself or Artix. Larger blasts like those would likely render her unconscious if she was caught in them. She couldn't afford any such delays, so she still needed to be careful.
*** Meanwhile With Artix in Swordhaven ***
Artix was not having as good a time slaying undead as usual. Oh, he looked like it to someone that didn't know him well enough to tell, but he was aware that even he couldn't take down this many on his own, and the knights were ill-equipped to deal with this titanic an outnumbering force. They weren't helpless, but they weren't used to being and fighting surrounded like Artix was. What was worse, any fallen knight was turned into an undead soldier, causing their losses to only swell the ranks of the enemy.
Still, the undead reinforcements had thinned-out slightly, probably the handiwork of their own allies.
"Sir Artix!" a messenger of the Rogue class ran over to him, dealing some light damage to a few undead in his path and making a few holes in their ranks that allowed the few remaining knights to break out of their entrapments.
"Yeah?" Artix asked, slicing through four undead at once. He was bringing his A-game to the fight.
"The castle's been breached, but we managed to raise the drawbridge before too many got in." He glanced at his surroundings. "Of course, too many is relative to the rest of this horde." he said, dispatching a skeleton with an expert thrust.
"It was worse about an hour ago." Artix said. What was taking Twilight so long?
*** With Twilight ***
"Undead people, undead dragons, undead mammals, Darkness dragons. So. Many. Enemies!" she cried out in exasperation as she spelled, slashed, and kicked her way through the increasing number of enemies. The groups of Sepulchre's forces had started to turn on her when it became clear she was a threat to them. On the bright side, she was almost to Swordhaven.
She arrived to find a priestess and a surviving knight were just barely managing to stay alive as they were assaulted by at least thirty undead, including a new type that threw fireballs from their staves. She quickly dispatched the undead, and healed the knight and the priestess.
"Are you two alright?" Twilight asked them.
"Yes, we'll be fine, thank you for dealing with these undead, unfortunately, we're too fatigued to fight any longer." the knight said.
"One of the undead dropped the key to open the gate into Swordhaven, we'll let you in." the priestess said.
"Thanks." Twilight said, as they opened the gates. Twilight slew the few undead that turned their attention to them, then quickly closed the gates behind her. Those two had said themselves they were too exhausted to fight. Letting the undead get to them was tantamount to killing them.
Twilight found Artix to be standing on a pile of fallen undead, even as he enlarged the pile by felling even more undead.
"Hey Twilight! If you could take out like a hundered of these guys it'd be great!" Artix called, slicing through a pair of undead as Twilight blasted one out of existence.
Twilight stared at him incredulously for a moment, then she realized he didn't mean all at once. Why had she thought he had? She nodded affirmatively, then rushed off to the eastern side of town, and cast a few spells that blasted large holes into the slowly advancing main body of the army. The ones she and Artix had been fighting inside the city so far were probably merely meant to soften up the defenses of the town. The citizens were holed up in their houses, on their roofs, or presumably in their attics. The undead had already broken into many homes, but didn't seem to have reached the second floor of any buildings yet.
She had a slightly horrible feeling when she noticed there weren't any of the city's defenders around. She had the distinct impression that they'd been 'absorbed' into the ranks of the undead. After destroying the large number of undead, she noticed the advance halted as they tried to close ranks. Satisfied that their advance had been halted for the moment, Twilight ran past Artix to the west side, other than the pizzeria, it was almost the same as the east had been.
After she punched holes in this side too, she reached level 17. She hurried back over to Artix, and he said "Great job! There's a Boss skeleton in front of the gates to the castle. He's trying to break down the gates. We're the only ones left outside the castle who can keep the defenses from being breached." Artix said, somewhat less cheerily than before.
"Be careful." Twilight said.
"Heh, don't worry. I can take care of the ones out here, you go protect the king!" Artix said. smiling brightly.
Twilight nodded at him, a small smile tugging at her lips. This was a grim situation, but a tiny part of her was enjoying the fighting and the camaraderie between her and her fellow defender was certainly a very much appreciated side effect. She fought her way to the castle, and took care of the giant skeleton with relative ease. She got them to lower the drawbridge, which was immediately closed behind her. Twilight put a shield spell over it just in case.
The inside of the castle was a melee. Knights and a stronger version of the skeletal soldiers were in conflict all over the castle.
A girl in green who was using a bow and arrow, and had taken out a sizeable number of undead, if the arrows sticking out of their fallen forms were her handiwork, who could only be Robina Hood, was fighting with the knights. Twilight took out several of the undead, and got within speaking distance of Robina. "I'll help you clear out the undead, how many are there in the castle?" she asked, slicing through one, and blasting another two out of existence.
Fourty more." Robina answered after shooting an arrow through the head of another.
Working with Robina and the knights, Twilight helped clear the castle of undead in minutes.
"We'll stay here and delay Sepulchre when he arrives, you go meet my... I mean the king. I would appreciate if you helped in defending him from Sepulchre." Robina said.
"Of course, though I don't know how much help I'll be." Twilight said. She was kind of curious as to what Robina had been about to say before she corrected herself, but pushed it aside. Now was most definitely not the time.
Twilight entered the throne room, and immediately knelt before the king. She realized that they were in an invasion, but she wasn't going to just abandon civilized practices completely.
"Ah, you must be the one Artix mentioned to a scout before the undead overran our defenses to the point where the messengers couldn't get through." King Alteon said. The king was covered in golden armor and had a golden crown that with a draconic sword. His beard and hair were brown.
"Yes, that's me." Twilight said, placing a barrier over the door. It wouldn't stop Sepulchre if he was able to raise a necromantic army of this size, but it would slow him down.
"Sepulchre will soon be here. We'll have to talk later." Alteon said. Twilight felt a massive attack shatter the shield she'd put over the drawbridge. She reinforced the remaining shield on the door behind her as best she could. Sepulchre was capable of smashing through that first shield like it was nothing, but she was determined to at least slow him down with this one.
There was a pause of about thirty seconds, then several more massive attacks smashed into the shield she'd made over the door, causing it to disintegrate. Three slashes that glowed red at the edges followed, before the door exploded, sending several fallen knights flying into the room. The two knights in the room rushed Sepulchre, one was knocked out by suddenly being smashed into by a giant skull that shot out of the floor. The other was killed as Sepulchre almost negligently overloaded his body with necrotic energy, causing his armor to fall apart as not even bones remained to keep it together. The undead servant he'd brought with him laughed.
Twilight sent a fireball at him, then dodged behind a pillar as he sent a blast of dark magic at her, before raising a dozen undead he directed to attack her. Twilight was forced to focus on them, while Alteon dealt with Sepulchre, Twilight made short work of the undead, and watched the battle in earnest. These two were dealing and shrugging off blows that she was certain would have knocked her out or killed her outright. For example, that last clash had sent them into the walls on either side of the room with enough force to crater the solid stone.
"Let's finish this." Alteon said, readying himself for one last assault.
"Agreed, this will be the final blow." Sepulchre said, speaking for the first time she'd heard.
"YES! Let's finish him!" the sword Sepulchre carried spoke.
... This place was weird. Hey wait, what was that, I'm-going-to-die feeling that she'd gotten all of a sudden. It seemed to be coming from behind her. She looked behind her, and saw a figure cloaked in shadows with bat-like wings, a purple slitted eye in the middle of his chest, and eyes that glowed orange, shot up from the ground, and smashed into the castle in an explosion of chaotic energy that had sent out hundreds of miniature versions of the eye in the figure's chest.
Alteon and Sepulchre stopped fighting as they sized up the newcomer. He had an enormous purple sword with a stone hilt and some stone bleeding over, for lack of a better phrase, onto the actual weapon. The shadows covering his face faded, revealing a teenager with black hair, and a seemingly permanent scowl.
Alteon and Sepulchre both cried out in surprise. "Drakath?!"
Her eyes widened. "Drakath? But he's supposed to be dead!" she said, voicing her surprise. He had apparently died after turning himself into an undead dragon.
The skeleton that Sepulchre came in with laughed, and the shadows over Drakath returned. Suddenly, the laughing skeleton stopped laughing and fell apart for no obvious reason.
Drakath raised the massive purple blade he'd been carrying, and smashed both Alteon and Sepulchre into the walls of the room.
There were smaller purple eyes all over their bodies, connected by tiny black tendrils.
"...What!?" Alteon struggled out. His confusion was understandable, she'd only believed it was Drakath who had done that because his sword was in a different position than before, she hadn't been able to see him move. That would have been terrifying on it's own, but the fact that he had done such immense damage to both of the champions here with little visible effort only made him more intimidating.
Twilight prepared the strongest spell she knew that wouldn't kill everybody in the room, and fired it at him, only to barely scratch his armor. His attention turned to her. He paused, then appeared next to her and raked her with his clawed gauntlet, sending her flying. That single attack left her on her last legs. Drakath seemed to be surprised.
"Odd, the Chaos didn't infect you." he said as placidly as if he were giving directions.
Sepulchre stood back up. "How arrogant, acting as though I were already defeated.You cannot kill an undead entity of my level with an attack like that. Fool." Sepulchre seemed more irritated than seriously injured.
"My mistake." Drakath nodded, moving over to Sepulchre as little more than a blur. "I'll correct it momentarily." He said, reaching into a strange purple portal right in front of Sepulchre with that same clawed gauntlet. He pulled out a small red light, Sepulchre's soul. She didn't know how she knew, but she was certain that was Sepulchre's soul.
Though there was now a gaping hole in both his armor and body, it was to Sepulchre's credit that he managed to stay standing as he declared. "I AM Darkness! I AM Doom..." He was slowly raising his sword. "No force on this world can destroy what I am! LONG UNLIVE THE SHADOWSCYTHE!" Sepulchre roared, raising his sword in preparation for what would likely be a suicidal charge in his current state.
Drakath casually crushed Sepulchre's soul, which was still in his grip. Sepulchre's armor collapsed with it's owner's body having vanished alongside their soul. A massive blast of necrotic energy was directed upwards from the armor.
Twilight heard a scream from the direction of the dracolich oustide. It sounded like, "Father, no!"
She and Drakath both looked over at the source. Though Twilight was only able to move her eyes from her position on the floor, whereas Drakath actually moved over to look. It was a girl with red hair that almost hid the gold circlet on her head, but most striking was the red armor that appeared to be a feminine version of Sepulchre's. Twilight and Drakath immediately came to the conclusion that this was Sepulchre's daughter, whether she was adopted or whatever else was largely irrelevant.
As soon as Sepulchre's daughter saw Drakath, her expression shifted to surprise briefly, before becoming rage that left her shaking.
"Hm, Sepulchre has a daughter? ...How amusing." Drakath said. Twilight felt a surge of anger at that. How dare he treat a familial relationship as an amusement!
His gauntlet glowed purple as a ball of purple flame formed in front of it. Twilight's body was too battered to move, but her magic was fine. She jammed every last bit of magic she could into a shield spell, and placed it in between Drakath and the dracolich just as he fired the spell. She was left exhausted, but stopped the first attack.
"Well, perhaps you'll be entertaining." Drakath remarked at her, before sending a second attack that destroyed the remnant of her shield and struck the dragon in an explosion of purple energy and more of those strange eyes.
The gigantic dragon's tail and small amounts of the mountain fell of as it crashed into a nearby mountain range.
Drakath lowered the gauntleted hand and said, "The battle between Good and Evil is over. Now begins, THE AGE OF CHAOS!"
Alteon looked haggard and struggled to ask, "What is happening to me?! Drakath... what have you done?"
Drakath turned to him and answered. "Heh. Not feeling yourself, King? Well, I suppose that's only to be expected. Ironic that Chaos could be expected to do something. You and this pathetic Hero can't hope to stop what I'm going to do to the world. You'll have no choice but to watch as the 13 Lords of Chaos destroy everything you love. Don't worry, I'll save you two for last. Enjoy the show!" he chuckled evilly, then took flight.
Twilight was starting to lose consciousness when Artix arrived. "What the heck happened in here?!" he yelled, accompanied by startled exclamations from a wounded, but in no imminent danger of death, party that consisted of Robina and a half-dozen knights.
"Drakath... he did something to Alteon and crushed... Sepulchre's soul. He sent the ... dracolich crashing down into the mountains." she managed, before pain and exhaustion overcame her and she lost consciousness. Her last thought was 'It looks like I'll have to put going home on hold for now.'
When she woke up, she was in the infirmary, along with the majority of the surviving knights. She was being watched over by several medics of the Priest class. Priests were healers with little to no combat ability. Paladins sacrificed a bit of the immense healing power that Priests possessed to gain combat abilities, physical and magical.
She managed to get herself into a sitting position with a groan. The medics did a quick check on her condition, and advised her to stay in bed, but were counter-manded when a courier arrived with a message saying that King Alteon and Gravelyn, who was apparently the new leader of the forces of Evil, wanted to speak with her.
She got up, stretching to work the metaphorical kinks out of her body as she walked in the direction of the throne room with the courier. She needed him to lead her to their destination since she'd never been to the castle's infirmary before.
When they arrived, a few high-ranking officials of both sides were present. Artix was there as well, wearing one of his rare serious expressions. She assumed Gravelyn was the girl she'd seen on the dracolich, and who appeared to be the only member of the Evil side wearing armor that was not skeletal or cursed. She had noticed before, but it really bore a striking resemblance to Sepulchre's.
What caught her attention, however, was King Alteon himself. He had a drained look about him, and was leaning heavily on his sword and throne. Worse, there were those little purple eyes and black tentacles which were still present, despite there being plenty of time to treat him, as she had been out of it for a minimum of twelve hours if the clock was right. If anything, they looked worse than before.
"King Alteon, are you alright? You look like a full-grown dragon stomped on you repeatedly." she asked, too concerned to worry about propriety.
"I'm fine, for the moment at least." Alteon responded. He was aware that showing weakness right now would be asking for a panic, so he put on a brave face despite the fact he was almost certainly in no condition to be out of bed. He reminded Twilight of Celestia in many ways.
"We're here to discuss the events of last night, and King Alteon has proposed a truce until the threat of Chaos has been dealt with. It certainly warrants attention that both my father and King Alteon were struck down with almost contemptuous ease." Gravelyn said.
"As one of those present for the fight, we would like to hear your testimony." one of the officers on the side of Good said.
Ah, that explained why she was summoned. "Well, after fighting my way here through the undead, I put a barrier on the door that momentarily stalled Sepulchre. Once he broke that down, I fired a spell at him, thought I wasn't really expecting much of an effect.
He seemed more annoyed than anything else, and sent a wave of dark magic at me, which I hid behind a pillar to avoid. He had better things to do, or something along those lines, than fight a newbie, so he sicked a dozen skeletons on me. By the time I'd dealt with them, the king and Sepulchre were in the middle of a fight I had no chance of helping with.
They had just made those craters in the walls" she gestured to the respective holes to either side of them that some stonemasons were examining "and were about to clash one last time, when I got a really bad feeling. My instincts were screaming at me to get as far away as possible, then I saw Drakath out the window, though we didn't know it was him yet.
He smashed into the castle, and that's when we found out who he was, surprising all of us. I'm not entirely sure how, but he somehow made the one undead Sepulchre had brought with him explode with a look, then took King Alteon out of the fight with one hit, and badly damaged Sepulchre." Gravelyn's fists clenched at those last four words Twilight had spoken.
"I attacked him with the strongest spell I had that wouldn't harm anyone else, and accomplished virtually nothing. He slashed me with the clawed gauntlet on one hand, and seemed surprised that I was badly wounded, but nothing unusual happened. Sepulchre got up, angry about being treated like one attack of that caliber would kill him. Drakath blurred over to him, and... ripped his soul out. Sepulchre kept going until Drakath crushed it." she explained solemnly. She hadn't been fond of Sepulchre, but this was his daughter, and Twilight wasn't insensitive enough to take a slight dislike out on a stranger.
She continued. "Drakath basically said he was going to destroy the world with a group called the 13 Lords of Chaos, saving King Alteon and myself for last."
She paused for a moment, then added, "I'm just making a guess here, but I think his attack was supposed to do something along the lines of infecting me with Chaos' power." She was a little creeped out by the parallel between Drakath and Discord in focusing their powers. Although discord was not the exact same thing as chaos, they were apparently similar enough that her ties to the Element of Magic were enough to make her resistant to the power of Chaos.
"Do you have any reasoning behind this?" an officer of Good asked.
"Whenever Drakath did something, a bunch of eyes like the ones on King Alteon would form. In addition, his armor had the same eye set in it. It seemed to be linked to his powers, but he acted like his gauntlet could do it too." Twilight explained.
"Well, I can tell you all that this... infection is attempting to influence me. It isn't succeeding so far, but the point stands." King Alteon admitted, causing a bit of a stir.
"Wait, wasn't my father's armor infected as well?" Gravelyn asked, eyes widening slightly.
"Yes, but we moved it to a safe place not far beyond the town and under guard. I had misgivings about the power of Chaos it had been affected with." King Alteon explained.
"Wait, if Drakath can infect people with Chaos energy with a touch, then the armor might..." Twilight trailed off.
"Hm, yes, and so far as we know, you are the only one resistant to infection, which means the knights I sent to guard it have most likely been infected." King Alteon said, concerned.
"I'd like to ask where the armor is being stored so I can look into it. I'm the only one who can check on it without real risk. Since Drakath literally said he was going to come after me eventually, I'm involved in this whether I like it or not, plus I'd rather not see the world destroyed." Twilight asked, covering most arguments that could be brought up. She wasn't going to just abandon people to whatever plans Drakath had. Besides, she was the only one who had any degree of immunity as far as they knew. She had to help.
"Very well." King Alteon nodded, and she was given a map with spot in the nearby forest circled on it.
"We would send help, but that would defeat the purpose of sending you in the first place." Gravelyn said.
"Right, I'll see what's going on and come back as soon as I can. Although if the knights are infected, it might take a while." Twilight said, starting off.
"Hey Twilight, make sure you grab the new Enhancements you qualify for." Artix called.
"Right, thanks for reminding me!" she called back, then paused. "Okay, how am I Level 25? I was only Level 17 when I got into the castle." she asked, after checking just to make sure. She hadn't noticed earlier because she'd been preoccupied.
"Well, when you fight someone that much stronger than you, you get Exp just for surviving." Artix explained.
"Oh, alright then. Thanks again!" she said, leaving for real this time.
"... Are we certain she's the one?" an officer of Good asked. Gravelyn didn't have many non-undead followers, and they tended not to talk much.
"Yes, positive." Artix said seriously. "The medics said that the power of Chaos was in her system for an instant before being rejected. The only ones who could do that would be Elemental Lords, the Creator, or the Champion of Order." Artix said.
"Since she's obviously not part of the first two categories, she must be the latter-most. Considering who and what we're dealing with, that makes her our best chance, naive or not." Gravelyn said.
"Hm, yes, but we can't expect her to fight a war alone." King Alteon countered.
"The healers were able to create a spell by studying the power of Order, with the help of Warlic, that should ward off the power of Chaos. It won't do much against Drakath himself, but his soldiers won't be able to turn our troops against us with a touch. Unfortunately, it's a preventative measure, so we can't eradicate the Chaos energy Drakath infected you with sir." a mage reported.
"That is more than enough for so short a time, now we must begin planning for a conflict the likes of which we've never seen. Most of the enemies we've faced over the years have been relatively small in both numbers and how many powerful figures the have in their group. We will likely have to face 14 major enemies and whatever forces they bring to bear. Worse, Drakath, and presumably the Lords of Chaos he mentioned, can recruit new soldiers with little effort." King Alteon said.
"There's something else too. If history has taught us anything about Drakath, it's that he's often manipulated by other powers. If that's still true, then we might be dealing with something even stronger than him as the end-game." Gravelyn responded.
"Right now, let's wait until Twilight gets back from her mission. We might find something out." Artix said.
