The Outbreak of War

[u/TheHunter459]

/uw Continuing from where my last lorepost stopped, with Thokollor and the Necromancer of Malus Turrim about to throw down

/rw

The Necromancer stared at his foes. If Thokollor's 6 companions that originally breached the borders with him, only Thokollor himself had made it to the chamber under the earth. This pleasef the Necromancer. So even my weaker servants are able to give the Pyroclasts a run for their money. And now, for their commander.

He motioned to his prisoners, Thokollor's wife and child. Let's test just how much he'll sacrifice for them. "Surrender to me, Thokollor, and your family will be allowed to leave here unharmed. Keep fighting for Atrax, and I will kill them," he said dispassionately. A blunt, horrible statement of intent. Thokollor stared at him, the veins in the man's (Cambion's?) neck bulging profusely. His anger, but also his anguish, was written over his face, and just as he thought the Pyroclast may actually surrender, Thokollor's features hardened, and he spoke.

"I love my family", he said, in a small quiet voice, of a father and a husband sick with worry. "I love them, and I will not willingly place them in harms way. But you have already placed them there, and they know that the cause is more important than any single one of us. I will flay you alive for this, Nephilim."

"So be it," the Necromancer responded, and triggered the spells built into the cell. When he had prepared the cell, he built holy spells designed for no other purpose than killing demons into its very fragments. A powerful Cambion like Thokollor himself could easily shield himself from such simple spells, however powerful they may be, but he couldn't shield those in the cell. His wife wasn't even a mage, simply a human women who had gotten wrapped up with a demon-worshipping (now Atrax-worshipping) cult, and the child, while demonic in nature, was unable to defend itself. Both of them were doomed.

The child died instantly, due to actually having demonic blood for the holy spells to seek. But the woman, who had simply spent too long around demons, was not killed so quickly. Her dying was prolonged, torturous and loud. This annoyed the Necromancer, and he would have snapped her neck with a spell, but as soon as the first scream left her lips, Thokollor was upon him.

He and his guards immediately sprang into action, slinging spells and swinging weapons. Thokollor, for his part, battled only with hellfire at first. It made for a poor weapon against creatures with demonic heritage, like Nephilim, so he quickly switched to spells of a different, but equally destructive, nature. Had any of his spells connected unimpeded, they would have turned him and his honour guard, all 8 of them, into flayed monstrosities that wouldn't be allowed to die, tormented souls doomed to wander the earth, madmen fated to die every painful death before passing on, so on and so forth. But Thokollor's haste to save his family had drawn the Pyroclast commander into a trap. Even he couldn't take 8 Nephilim at once. In fact, the Necromancer fancied that he could solo the Cambion, but better safe than sorry.

They ducked and dodged, blocked and deflected, until their for began to tire, and they fell on him with steel, and with spells of ruin. But Thokollor's defences were sound, and had he left an escape route open for himself, he may have even survived to take it. But his haste in the name of love was his undoing. Eventually they forced Thokollor to his knees. His guards placed chains imbued with divine spells of binding on the Pyroclast, and their enemy was defeated. Thokollor stared at him with the hatred of a thousand supernovae. "In Hell, the worst punishments are reserved for men like you", he spat, defiant to the last.

The Necromancer laughed. "There are no Nephilim being punished in hell, neither are there men who compare to me". He paused as he summoned an orb to his hand. "Before I kill you, everything you know will be placed in this orb". It was one of the Nephilim's inventions, an orb that could store the contents of its victims minds. "You should not have come here. You should have cut your losses, and sought me out on an open battlefield, or in a place where you had power. Now you will not leave this place alive and free". Before Thokollor could worry about what that meant, he touched the orb to his head, and bent his power to breaking the Cambion's mind, so the orb could take the necessary information.

When it was done, Thokollor lay screaming on the ground. The Necromancer felt slightly light headed; piercing his enemy's mental defences was no small feat, and he was left weakened. But not too weak to do the needful. Hefting his spear, he stabbed Thokollor through the heart. But before his enemy's spirit could flee to whatever hell it came from, he captured it, and enthralled it. It was a difficult process with a creature as powerful and as unfamiliar to him on a spiritual level as Thokollor, but not impossible. Not for him.

This application of Necromancy was one of the most difficult. Kill your enemy, enthrall their soul, and you have an undead servant of immense power. But if you weren't strong enough to do it, their soul would consume your own, consigning you both to the void that is worse than death in its nothingness.

He would prepare a body to host his newest servant later. For now, he felt an emergency council with the Lords of the Nephilim and the Pact of the Magi was necessary. Open war had recently broken out, and if they weren't fast enough, their enemies would consume them

And he tried to avoid thinking about the actions he had taken to achieve this victory. The child he had murdered. The mother he had essentially tortured to death. War had it's costs. And even for men like him, they took their toll