With the unconfirmed revelation of Amun's station as the God of Gods looming over my head, I found it difficult to do my duty as the Abbot dictated. Not to say Amun needed any training in how to use his newfound ki, I had him train to walk on water before he opened his last Ki Pond, after all. And he'd long since developed the habit of reading Ki at increasingly further distances.
To top it off, he was nearing the end of The Walk. It was back to the Halls once he reached the 9th Step by forming his final Pond of Necrotic Ki. I knew not how he would accomplish that, other than meditating among the dead. I was certain, however, that it did not involve training and playing games with the human, teleporting his cohort of animals elsewhere, or pampering his celestial wolves and owls. Creatures that growled and screeched whenever me or Matron Etyl crept close.
It had been three days since we left the walled city of Charrlagith. Three days of him coddling his companions. Three days of those beasts allowing me to train their master. Three days of militant humans stalking him from afar. Watching his every move. Calling for reinforcements. Organizing their numbers around the ever-shifting terrain.
Matron Etyl, a predator of the opportune, dragged me into her ploy the night they began organizing. Using a mixed bag of Amun's amiability and her vast repertoire of divine spells, the Matron trapped the humans in a web of uncertainty and security, then stood in wait while her fear-inducing toxins drizzled down the strands.
It went without saying, though. Amun accomplished that on his own. And, not to mention, I was confident of the Elven Devil knowing of her ploy. Made evident by the fact that the girls could be seen sneaking through the human ranks alongside us, stealing everything from maps and weapons to boots and rations. Harmless but effective trickery, meant to build skills in stealth more than anything.
Such actions have since then ceased. Halted by virtue of anticipation as an effect of the city of Ullikis coming into clear view. When it did, the theft, trickery, and manipulations ceased on all accounts. Even the beasts allowed us to approach their master freely, and the girls returned to their strange fox.
The Matron inquired of the plan the moment she faced him. But Amun only smiled, saying his destination was some 350 kilometers to the coast. Alrafethinn was just beyond this city. Followed by Dretnat, and finally, the capital of both Alerus County and the human-governed Shujen, Bemarra. His destination was only a few kilometers past that, on the ice.
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That marked the end of any conversations between us and him for what would amount to days. Amun and the fox-thing took point throughout the journey, allowing me and the Matron to take up positions behind him, flanked by the wolves.
He hardly even glanced at the city of Ullikis, paying no mind to the 97-thousand inhabitants protected by a mere band of hardened stone and a regiment of nearly seven-thousand humans hoping that the dangerous figure decided against making camp nearby.
Much to their relief and more to the Matron's dismay, Amun did not. He continued walking north. Pausing only to meditate for four hours before he continued on, his dogs ever close, his owls perched nearby, always; the strange fox lurking close by his side, the soldiers trailing behind me and the Matron, doing our best to remain hidden throughout the hated day and the blessed night.
The same scene played out in the much less-populated city of Alrafethinn. But with much more intrigue. The cavalry rode out to warn and prepare the paltry force of eight hundred while the regiment behind Amun split apart for a flanking maneuver. Within the span of half a day, he was surrounded on three sides, with the eastern flank being the weakest.
An admirable effort, but the city of twelve thousand was assumed to be in grave danger still.
Yet, Amun continued onward without as much as a look their way. And, as before, the armies followed close behind. Armies that had to stop and make camp in the webs of a demonic spider.
The long marches led by Amun lasted throughout the day and most of the night, leaving their ranks fatigued. The Matron's webs and my illusions left them restless. Their trickery of Amun's girls filled their mornings with unease, confusion, and frustration as provisions and personal items were found missing or, better yet, in places they should not have been.
It seemed either Amun or the girls were of the same mind as the Matron, for the tactics changed shortly after Dretnat loomed over the hills. The girls left them alone, returning to their fox. I Astral Projected, the Matron simply turned invisible. We both drifted through the camp. Listening purely for the sake of amusement.
"Agh!" one of the weary ones threw a horn of water into a tree. "This is fuckin' stupid! Chasin' some fuckin' kids around the wilds!"
"That ain't no kid." An older human growled. A peasant-turned-fighter, it seemed, or a wanderer. It was hard to tell, with them all looking the same. Filthy and covered in rags. "That's a fuckin' undead monster!" The brute so eloquently continued. "He's killed thousands. Three hundred soldiers in Dryndrabethei. Gone. Over six hundred in Lainoara. Dead. Almost two thousand from Charrlagith. Decimated. Now, all three cities belong to the dead."
"How the fuck you know then, if they're all dead?" The first one leaned forward, squinting hard.
"Refugees. They say he killed them all with his bare hands. Used his own broken limbs like fuckin' weapons."
"Bullshite!" Another one spat. "Ain't no darkie monk killin' thousands in martial combat. Much less with his fuckin' guts hangin' out. One cut an' they run for the hills!"
I winced at the insult, but another brute interjected. "That's cause he ain't drow! That's a half-elf with dark skin and white hair! Not the same!"
"Still, ain't no half-elf kid killin' that many soldiers." The first one retorted.
"It's those wolves, I bet. They ain't natural."
"No fuckin' shite, they ain't natural! They're fuckin' glowing!"
It was much the same throughout the sleepless camp. The next night, however, was a different story. By dusk, Amun came upon the outer farms of Dretnat. With a native force of 2,400 troops, they were able to bolster the ranks of the trailing army while a sole negotiator trotted out on horseback to intercept him.
"Hail! Messenger inbound!" He shouted, one hand raised high. Surprisingly, Amun stopped and silently watched him dismount and throw his weapon to the ground before he met the eyes of the strange elf and took a whole step back. "W- what are your intentions in heading towards our capital?" He stammered moments later.
"I am not heading towards your capital." Amun blinked slowly. "My destination lies beyond your city."
"There is not but ice and water beyond Bemarra."
Yes." Amun nodded calmly. "The sea is my destination."
The man squinted silently for a few moments, looking Amun up and down while intense focus was concentrated on the words pouring from his mouth. "Even so. Your actions cannot be excused. You've trespassed the town of Dryndrabethei and killed hundreds of our brothers."
"I have only killed those who attacked me while passing by the city of Dryndrabethei." Amun corrected him with a cold, unchanging tone. "If you wish to kill me because of that, you are welcome to try. But, do you speak for those behind you? Do you speak for those beside you? Do you speak for King Horus and Queen Frahna?
"Are you the one who will dig their graves?" Amun stepped forward and the man paled in turn, facing his widened eyes to the thousands of souls waiting in the distance before he crumpled beneath their combined weight. And by the time he looked back, Amun had disappeared into the cold bog.
They must have believed him, for they watched from afar just as they had done before, only with a little more distance placed between them and us. More so, the trickery of his girls ceased entirely, and Matron Etyl's displeasure pulled her away from any more webs of deceit. However, she refrained from any outbursts until we passed the expansive city-state of Bemarra and their gathered army.
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Amun ignored her entirely and instead gazed upon the city from afar. It was a magnificent place. By human standards. A wall of glistening blue contoured around the river, forming a crescent-shaped block of glimmering stone so the nobles could look down on the complex of buildings and fields with as little effort as possible.
The keeps and castles lining the walls were always a prime target for raids. But with an estimated population of 200,000 surface dwellers, it was something rarely pursued. After all, the Demon Queen Spider had her eyes on different prey. And apparently, Amun did as well.
He kept his pace over the semi-frozen waters of Shujen Bay, formed from the aftermath of Crater Lake's formation. An irony in itself, for it was his ancestor, the Mad Void Monk, who formed the lake.
It was a cataclysmic event. A void destroyed everything between here and the Bodhi Tree, leaving a sheer cliff that stretched from the Mazi Council's shores in the far east to the western edge of the Knighilian coast, decimating the Nevstan Principality and Shujen in the process.
The imploding water and the lack of support for the rest of the peninsula resulted in the southern half sinking to sea level. From there, erosion and time reduced the still-towering cliffside to a ridge that averaged thirty meters higher in elevation than the marshes below. Naturally, those wetlands transitioned to open waters that, for the most part, remained clear and choppy, with the seas freezing over once every four years or so. But this time, the winter seemed unnatural. For the cold was biting and the ice was unbroken for leagues.
We were nearly across the bay by the time we noticed it. The unnatural chill in the air was chased by a strong malevolent force. The girls soon jumped out of the frigid waters with no signs of them being cold as they claimed they hit a wall of ice. Then, we felt the pang of death just before the hardened crunch of frozen bone rattled beneath our boots.
Even the Matron was silent. More than that, she grew uneasy once a blue-green flame pierced the dense fog, illuminating a threshold of crystalline ice leading down into the darkness.
We entered behind Amun, stepping trepidatiously down the slick stairs. Shivering with each pass of the arcane flames. Step by echoing step, I followed, feeling the cold sense of death work its way into my bones until we were faced with a similar threshold.
Inside was an atrium of white marble, ice, and gold, hexagonal in shape and immense in volume. A lair so elaborate as to make me believe a white dragon convinced a drow to furnish its hole.
Winter moss and plants bloomed throughout a floor of icy stone, tainting the overbearing stench of death with an earthly aroma. Gold, trinkets, weapons, and baubles were strewn about the place in places that seemed random, at a glance. But as I moved, I found my eyes drawn not to various pieces around the room but to the denizens.
Corpses frozen in time went about their eternal routines in every corner of the space. Their faces were permanently curled in angry visages. Some were frozen beneath blocks of solid ice. Many more had the blackened scars of frostbite throughout their bodies. But their stature seemed peaceful. They sat atop pillows of frost, gesturing as if they had been in mid-discussion or prayer or… meditation.
Two rows of pillars ran the length of the room and rose to the glass-like ceiling, boasting tapestries and carvings depicting battles with mighty warriors of shadow pitted against the likes of dark dwarves. Then they shifted to landless expanses filled with stars and round realms filled with animals and undead.
At the end of the room, of course, was a throne. But atop it sat the most brilliant skeleton I had ever seen, poised like a monk in a deep meditative state.
The bones were plated, somehow, in adamantine and then inlaid with gold in the same way as the Head and the Fox, only going further to include the edge of the nose and cloud-like swirls for the eyebrows. Like Amun, however, it had the visage of a great tree inlaid onto its hinged ribs and more gold to fill the cracks of its skull.
With my keen eyes, I managed to notice the hinges on its skull before Amun captured my attention by reaching into his shadow, producing a crown of gold and blue-green glowing mithral. And without a word, he placed it atop the robed skeleton's head.
The crown pulsed the moment it touched the creature, releasing a wave of necrotic energy that cascaded down the corpse to pour from the eye sockets as necrotic fire, burning blackened muscle and paled flesh onto the bone. Black hair soon plumed around the head, obscuring the face while the skin continued to burn into existence. Down the neck. Across the torso. To both arms and down to the feet until a cold and malice-fueled young man sat before us.
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"Yes, my liege." The evolved draugr, the Death Jarl, Zaraxus, hissed with glee.