Abad-Shai, Scion of the Black Flame, Scourge of the Ten Realms, the Dark Scholar, felt himself slowly pulling back together. Piece by piece, mote of essence by mote of essence, he gathered himself at the edge of the void between thought and form.
A former lord among lords, a once magnificent being, one of the fragments of the greatest being to ever walk Reial, had been brought low. Ever so low. While he would have been too proud to whinge and whine before, now Abad-Shai did not bother to mask his seething, impotent rage at his current state—that of a literal shadow barely tethered to his rotting corpse.
Oh, he had lofty ideas back then. He had it all planned out. He''d slowly infiltrate the court. He''d seduce some noblewomen, become the talk of the court. He would slowly grow closer to the king and queen. He twist the queen away from her husband, planting treachery in her heart. He''d patiently whisper poisoned words into the king''s ear, convincing the soft-minded mortal to take action against his enemies. Who, of course, would include the Hero, hells curse her blessed name.
Of course she secretly wanted his throne, Abad would have said. Of course she had already made alliances with the faction of dissident nobles, Abad would have claimed. Of course she was readying herself to strike, Abad would have insisted.
It would have been glorious.
While his idiot "siblings," if the various coalesced essences of a dead being who called himself "The Dark Lord" could even be called siblings, were busy fighting their "glorious" battles in the shit-covered plains, striking down peasants and their petty lords, he would have watched the hero hang. He would have brought low the king. He would have executed the "dissidents" who orchestrated the king''s death. Then, he would have used his position to become the king, or at least he would have put the next king in the queen''s fertile belly, taking the dead man''s throne, his beautiful wife, and the greatest of the ten kingdoms.
Instead, he got a holy sword planted three feet into his sternum.
How could she see him? His illusions were perfect. His weaves were intricately designed to bypass all manner of magical protections, and he had personally unwoven the enchantments that he couldn''t. The question was vexing. He had turned it over in his mind countless times.
He also certainly hadn’t seen her coming. One moment, he was flirting with the queen in the castle''s courtyard after their most recent week-long tryst in the countryside, and the next moment--POW, sword. A few slices later, and he was only half of himself. Only a fortuitous protection spell and a last-resort ring of teleportation had prevented him from joining the ash-heap of history.
Not that it meant much. His vault called his broken body back home, and there he found himself bound to the little sarcophagus he had crafted as an apprentice. He had honestly forgotten about the old thing, buried under pounds and pounds of riches in the back of his vault. He remembered placing a giant''s axe on top of it as a makeshift display, but that was as far as his memory went.
Once he found himself inside the stone coffin, the glowing runes illuminating his ashen skin, he was grateful that he hadn''t gotten rid of it to make more room for his collection. He was, however, upset at his past self for not making it larger. The stone walls brushed against his skin terribly whenever he tethered his soul back into his body.
Adjustments for later, when he restored his vault to its former glory.
Ah, his vault. The most decadent storage space for the most eclectic collection of art, treasure, and artifacts ever known to the seven races. Even his progenitor couldn''t claim a vault rivaling Abad''s own! It was his pride and joy... and now it was gone.
To think that he had heard voices outside of his sarcophagus. Lousy, filthy, disgusting voices cackling about the score they had found. His spirit bristled as he remembered the way they laughed. To think that mortals would dare enter his glorious vault. Day after day, they returned, stealing more and more of Abad''s precious belongings. They stole from the man who stole all that treasure! The audacity.
Thinking on it, he vowed, for possibly the thousandth time, that somewhere, someday, he would find them. The two men and the woman. He would remember their voices. They''d been burned into his spirit like a branding iron on flesh. Ooohhh, then he''d make them laugh. Laugh and cry, and scream and—
He felt his spirit grow weary.
It didn’t matter now. What mattered was that he was here—rotting in his own vault like some lifeless corpse. Like a mortal. A mortal!
The thought sent a grimace through his still-forming jaw, and he willed his body to sigh, producing a dry, rattling sound that echoed through his tomb. The noise made him cough, which caused his arm to fall off. And not before the stone walls scraped his shoulders.
He grumbled and groaned before willing himself out of his body, back to the edge of the world between worlds.
There, he simmered, slowly slipping back into a dreamless slumber, a kind of restless nothingness that ebbed and flowed, caught in a place between worlds.
***
He woke up with a start.
His spirit was brought back to reality by a soft, metallic, impossibly irritating tapping noise.
As the haze slowly cleared from his mind, he realized he, his body at least, had been hearing the terrible noise every few minutes or so now for... a year? Time was fuzzy when you were a corpse. However, he knew it had been happening more and more frequently.
He pulled himself into his rotten body for the first time in however long and immediately regretted it. The smell! Devils below, he would do anything to not smell that smell again. Slowly, he pushed some of his essence into his desiccated eyes and fluttered them open. He felt his left eyelid split apart as he did. His shoulders scraped the walls of his coffin as his corpse animated.
The space around him was as dark as ever, save for the softly glowing runes on the lid of his too-small tomb. Listening intently, he realized the sound must be the wind knocking some piece of metal against the outside of his sarcophagus.
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Tink.
Tink.
Tink.
Tink.
The wind? His vault was underground.
The sound made his fangs itch. He hated it. He hated it so much. The rage and curiosity and self-loathing would kill him if he weren''t already dead.
His spirit roiling, he willed his mind out of his body and back into the world between worlds, hoping that whatever it was that was making that racket would most quickly rust away, or die, or de-animate, or get eaten by wolves, or...
***
It felt like a thousand years since he’d drifted back to his body, yet no time at all.
The abominable noise finally had stopped at some point. Madness was barely staved off. His fangs no longer itched.
His spirit floated back into his corpse, more easily this time. Once he had settled comfortably into his body, he noted that the smell had at last diminished. He was certain all of his insides had dried out at some point in his long rest. He sighed. How long would he have to wait?
He raised a hand to his face, feeling around with the stiff, almost mechanical movement of fingers unused to effort. His skin was thin and cold, bending with an unsettling tautness over sharp bones. His hands, once capable of conjuring storms and calling forth legions, felt tired from the effort. He shifted in his sarcophagus, yawning.
He froze.
For the first time in a very long time, he felt it—the weight of his body. He could move. His body felt… whole, or at least not entirely rotten. He didn''t stink. He could feel his own muscles, the tension in his sinews. His skin was cold, but it wasn''t as cold as the stone around him. There was life in him again!
After years of waiting, his form had returned enough to contain his essence. His body could respond to his will once again.
A flicker of hope curled within him. He moved slowly, experimentally stretching each muscle, feeling the stiffness of limbs that had lain dormant for what he could only assume had been years. Decades even. His vision began to clear as he opened his eyes, taking in the faint, darkened interior of his sarcophagus.
He felt weak, abysmally so. He was certain even a lowly zombie could have made quick work of him if he wasn’t careful, but one thing was clear: He. Was. Alive.
He surveyed the cold light emanating from the sigils carved into the underside of his sarcophagus. Each softly glowed in a variety of dull, dust-covered colors—each contributing to an enchantment to preserve the sarcophagus''s contents, a precaution he’d woven himself in his younger days, back when he was little more than an eager apprentice to his mistress. Basic, yes, but effective. A spark of pride stirred within him at the memory, though even his pride felt weak, ghostly, like an echo.
He gave himself permission to smile for the first time since his unfortunate passing. A small flicker of joy filled his heart.
"Master Abad, are you awake?"
Abad''s heart froze. He hadn''t heard a voice in... however long.
The voice came again, faint and muffled by the thick stone lid above. “Master Abad,” the voice repeated, insistent now, as though Abad’s silence was more alarming than his stirring.
Abad felt his thoughts gather, like mist swirling into form. He recognized that voice. Who had it belonged to?
Ah! It belonged to Angra, his most loyal servant. He had summoned the diminutive shadowspawn as his familiar during his final testing, when his mistress demanded perfection. He had almost botched the ritual and lost his life, but, thankfully, the creature heeded his call. Even since, it had been loyal and tireless in the ways Abad needed, and unflaggingly persistent.
Abad hesitated before answering his servant, curiosity tugging at him to assess the state of his newly restored form. Reaching into his mind, he summoned the metaphysical scroll that contained his unique qualities. A gift from the goddess during the mortal''s war with his sire, it didn''t take long for Abad''s kind to learn to access the goddess''s potent magic.
"Goddess be praised," he whispered.
With a faint shimmer of dark magic, a translucent scroll formed above his head, then unfurled before his eyes:
<hr>
Abad-Shai, Shadowspawn Elf Adept of the Mask
Level: 1
Experience: 0/100
HP: 14/14
MP: 18/18
<hr>
Might [D]: 3
Resilience [B]: 5
Agility [A]: 6
Power [S]: 7
Resistance [B]: 5
Focus [A]: 6
<hr>
Class Talents:
[Familiar] (Passive, Class, Adept): Grants the Adept the ability to summon and bind a creature as a familiar. This familiar aids in both exploration and minor spellcasting.
[Minor Spellcraft] (Passive, Class, Adept): The Adept can cast cantrips from a spellbook using their MP as a resource.
Personal Talents:
[Elvish Reflexes] (Passive, Racial, Elf): Elves possess exceptional agility and coordination. Their minimum growth ranking in Agility is set to B, ensuring they maintain above-average dexterity even with basic training.
[Elvish Senses] (Passive, Racial, Elf): Elves have superior perception, blending heightened physical senses with an intuitive connection to magic. An elf’s Focus cannot fall below a B rank, and they can use their senses to detect magic.
[Dark Vision] (Passive, Racial, Darkspawn): Darkspawn are attuned to the shadows, granting them clear vision in low-light and total darkness, though colors appear muted in complete darkness.
[Dark One''s Embrace] (Passive, Heritage, Darkspawn): As the spiritual progeny of a powerful dark entity, Darkspawn receive attribute growth ratings that are one tier higher than the base level provided by their class.
[Mask of Many Faces I] (Active, 10 MP, Sign, The Mask): Enables the user to change subtle features of their appearance, allowing them to adopt altered identities to remain undetected.
<hr>
Items:
[Rotten Clothes] (Poor, Broken): Tattered remnants of what was once finely crafted attire. These clothes are marred with age and decay, providing little in terms of protection or dignity. They emit a faint, unpleasant odor and are prone to tearing with the slightest movement, reminding you of your fall from power and the time spent dormant.
<hr>
Quests:
[None]
<hr>
Abad’s eyes narrowed as he read the top entries on the scroll. He often forgot that his birth mother was elven. He couldn''t remember much about her aside from her long golden hair. She mattered little in the grand scheme of things. The second his sire''s poison slipped into her womb, her destiny was no longer her own.
Reading further, His lips curled into a sneer.
His form, once fearsome and beautiful and brimming with power, had withered into something nearly mortal. His stats were low, suggesting a fragility he was not used to. In fact, everything about him was diminished. His once-vast repertoire of magic was reduced to a single warlock skill, a faint echo of his former reach. At the very least, he still had the ability to mask his appearance. He would need it being this weak.
Once, he had been more than this, a being of pure darkness and ambition. Now, he was simply the memory of power, with just enough Essence to pull his form together, and Essence barely sufficient to sustain the old wards in his tomb.
With a sigh, Abad closed the page, the weight of his diminished power hanging over him like a shroud.
“Yes, Angra,” Abad’s voice rasped, barely more than a whisper. It grated against his throat, unused for far too long. “I am awake.”
There was a sound of relief from outside the sarcophagus, which surprised Abad.
"You''ve been in your vault for a very long time, master," the creature explained, then fell quiet for a moment before adding, "I feared you would never awaken."
The creature''s pitiful voice awoke something in Abad''s heart. A pang of empathy flickered through Abad’s chest. Empathy had never been one of his virtues. Empathy. Mercy. Kindness. All useless, he had often thought. But the idea of his most loyal servant waiting for multiple cycles... made him pity the creature. Her voice cracked his newly reformed heart.
"I am here now. Please. Help me open the lid, my dearest friend."