Realm of Monsters-Chapter 612: Land of the Dead

Chapter 612: Land of the Dead

The underground chamber Stryg and Melantha stood in was lined with metal covered in a light layer of frost. Beneath the frost were dozens of sigils etched into each panel of the wall and at the center sat magestones steadily feeding the enchantments mana. The walls gave off a chill that swirled through the room, not enough to freeze water but enough to make their every breath white wisps.

House Noir had several storage rooms just like this one on the massive basement floor of their manor. While some were used to store food, many were used for something far more productive.

Melantha walked over to one of the dozen stone slabs in the room and waved for Stryg to join her. A fresh cadaver laid face up on every slab, their eyes closed, arms to the side. At least, they looked fresh. Stryg noted the extra enchantments etched into the stone slabs underneath the bodies.

The cold helped with the potential rot, but whatever complex array of arcane sigils had been engraved into the stone kept the bodies from decomposing for much longer. Stryg wondered how many of these bodies were used to fuel new undead sentinels for the city or training purposes. Knowing Elzri, he had probably used plenty of them for experiments. The man was a first-class alchemist and had a penchant for pushing magic research forward.

A painful lump started forming in his throat at the thought of Elzri, but Stryg pushed it down and focused on the task at hand. Melantha noted the expressions warring on his face. “You’ve been here before?”

“A few times, before Lord Noir finally gave up on teaching me necromancy. The academy also had plenty of chambers like this for the Black ward. I didn’t do well there either.”

“I imagine. It’s in our nature to command the dead, to try and replicate that with chromatic magic would have only amounted to failure, if not outright hurting yourself.”

Stryg had a few close encounters with that very activity. He had never taken failure well, and the thought of failing necromancy had only pushed him to try harder. Which inevitably only caused him to burn out. It was a memory he wasn’t keen on discussing.

“So, what do I do?” He shrugged and gestured at the body.

The edge of Melantha’s irises flickered with a blue glow, the sign of True Blue’s clarity magic, giving her a perfect view of the invisible spell weaves and ethereal energies flowing around. “First you need to relax. You’re too tense. You're calling on your chromatic magic without even realizing it. Relax. Take a deep breath and let the chromatic mana go.”

Stryg followed her advice and relaxed his shoulders, he hadn’t even realized he had been tensing his muscles. With a long exhale, he focused inward and released the streams of chromatic mana he had been unconsciously calling and let the mana trickle back into his ‘chromatic heart.’

“You’ve been relying on chromatic magic for so long that you naturally reach for it.” Melantha tapped the stone slab in pensive thought. “It’s not a bad thing, you are a prime mage. Someday you will be an Ebon Lord capable of tapping into the leylines like no other. But that will not do for our training here. You must learn to tap into your titan side and the blood that resides within.”

She clapped her hands together, coming to a decision. “From now on when you train with me you will not touch a drop of chromatic magic.”

“How often will we train?”

“Every day.”

Stryg faltered. “Every day?” He was no stranger to training, but ever since he had returned to Hollow Shade he had a myriad of responsibilities. Besides his sword and chromatic training, he was being instructed in the ways of nobles, meeting with the city council, reading his great-grandmother’s book of memories, interacting with the Sylvan army residing in the city, not to mention trying to spend time with his family and friends. He didn’t doubt there were a dozen other duties he was forgetting.

“This isn’t the time to hesitate. You’re a very unique case, Stryg. Titan hybrids who inherit chaos have the chaos running through them since birth. We have time to become accustomed to our abilities that develop as we age, but you didn’t have that. You only came into chaos recently. Your body was essentially reborn that night. You have no control of abilities that are far stronger than any newborn titan should have. We need to teach you control as soon as possible, otherwise, you’re a danger to everyone around you.”

Stryg nodded, determination brimming within him. “I understand.”

“Good.” She poked his chest, “Your titan powers might be a recent development but your titan nature has always been with you. Lunae told me about your wanderlust as a child.”

“Lunae?” Stryg blinked. He had never met Lunae in his youth, but she had made a few comments here and there that made it seem as if she had been watching him for a long time.

“We rarely stay in one place for long, a trait we share with our father. I imagine it was the same reason you were unable to cast any necromancy spell even before your titan powers began to awaken. Fortunately, you now have access to such powers.” She tapped the cadaver on the head.

The corpse sat up, the dead orc regarding them with a blank stare. He rolled off the stone slab and stood at attention, waiting for his orders. His pallid red skin was even beginning to regain some of its warm sheen.

Stryg’s eyes gleamed with interest. “It’s that easy?!” It would ordinarily take hours of prep to properly reanimate a corpse to such an extent. She hadn’t just reanimated the orc, she was repairing the dead tissue. “How long can you keep him animated?”

“So long as his body isn’t damaged or destroyed? Practically indefinitely.”

“This is incredible.”

Melantha grinned. “This is nothing.” She raised her hand, slowly for dramatic effect, before clenching her fingers into a fist. The entire room of corpses sat up and stood to their feet.

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“How are you doing this?” Stryg whispered with awe.

“We are children of the Calamity of Death. We are primarily gods of the Aspect of Death. It’s in our nature, our blood, our power. Commanding the dead is our domain. Something like this is simple enough. Father could raise an entire army to fight for him with a snap of his fingers.”

“I’ll be able to do this?” Stryg asked, practically humming with excitement.

“And more. Our powers extend to more than just corpses. We have control of the souls of the dead, like the shades that used to dwell in the city’s walls. When you’ve mastered powers you could even travel between this world and the Null, into the place we call the Soul Chasm.”

“The Soul Chasm?” The words struck at a memory he couldn’t quite recall.

Melantha nodded. “It is where the dead go. Their souls travel through the Chasm, through the years their souls are reborn into this world. Though the cycle of rebirth has been broken since the Schism. Ever since the souls have been trapped in the Chasm. Just one more reason we need to find a way to help our grandmother.”

“Aleirune. The World Soul?”

“Yes.”

“Could we not at least help the ones in the Soul Chasm? If we have power over the dead, could we not help them along into their reincarnations?”

“It isn’t that simple. Something like that would require immense control and power.”

“But it’s possible?”

“No. Our father could potentially help a soul reincarnate, but the bridge of rebirth between our world and the Soul Chasm was severed with the Schism. We may be able to travel between the planes as we see fit, but ordinary souls would disintegrate the moment they’d enter the Null.” freewebnøvel.com

“I see…” Stryg mumbled.

Melantha narrowed her eyes and stared at him with an intensity that made him take a step back. Blue light practically sparked off her eyes.

“W-What is it?” Stryg swallowed.

“You’ve been there. You’ve been to the Soul Chasm.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“You have,” Melantha noted, certainty growing in her voice. “I can see faint traces of the land of the dead on you. It must have been a few months back at most.”

“I think I’d recall something like that—” He paused.

“Remember something?”

“Not exactly. It’s just… my memory hasn’t been very reliable the last few months.”

“Maybe I can help jog your memory? The Soul Chasm is a place of darkness, with an ocean so vast and deep you can see no end. All manners of souls wander beneath the surface, slowly sinking into the chasm deep in its trenches. The living aren’t usually allowed in such a place. The souls of the dead will try to drown any living person who steps into the plane.”

“Sounds welcoming,” he muttered sarcastically.

“It isn’t to any unfortunate living person who somehow finds themselves trapped there. But we aren’t like them. We command the dead,” she pointed her thumb back at the dead standing behind her. “If you somehow survived that place then either you had help from one of our family or you managed to call upon your powers.”

A faint memory trickled into his brain. An image of a deep ocean with black waters and a starless sky.

“You remember something? Was someone with you?” Melantha pressed.

“Not that I recall.”

“Then you must have your powers to escape.”

“What kind of powers?”

“The ability to travel through the void that is the Null that encapsulates all planes. Usually, one would require a powerful artifact to even travel to a single point between planes, like the chrome gates the Ebon Lords used.” Melantha looked him up and down, “Do you recall using any powers on the dead?”

“Huh?”

“Our powers are dependent on our emotional state and instinct. It might have been instinctual, born out of panic, something as simple as a call perhaps? Usually, it works best for those who share blood or who we were close to.” Melantha smiled bittersweetly at some distant memory. “I was adopted by a sweet couple. When I first entered the Soul Chasm I found it easier to call them to me.”

Stryg grimaced and held his head. He was in the cold black waters. A pair of arms picked him up and carried him across. A familiar face looking down on him, a smile tinged with sadness.

“Are you alright?” Melantha held his shoulders.

“Cly…?” he whispered.

“Stryg?”

He shook his head and looked up at her. “Teach me how to go back. I want to go back to the Soul Chasm.”

“You’re years away from anything so delicate… and dangerous. But if you want to learn, here is where we begin.” She waved her hand and the undead laid back down and went slack, like a puppet with its strings cut. But their flesh’s   refreshed state reimagined. Before it looked as if these people had been dead for only a few days, now it was as if they had just died only minutes ago.

“Is it possible to bring someone back?” Stryg asked after a long moment.

“A soul would never survive the journey back through the Null. And even if they did, we cannot revive the dead, only reanimate their corpses. We are gods of death, not life.”

“Then where can I find a god of life?”

“There is only one and her name is Aleirune. And even she would not do such a thing.”

“Would not or cannot?”

“Both. It goes against the natural order. Aleirune is a reflection of nature and this world just as we are a reflection of death.” Melantha placed her hand on his shoulder, “If you care about someone who has passed, then what you should be focused on is helping them find their way back to our world through rebirth.”

“But didn’t you say the Schism stopped the rebirth cycle?”

“And in order to fix that we need to save—”

“Aleirune. It all comes back to our grandmother, huh.”

“Well, she is the World Soul.”

“...I have to grow stronger.” Stryg clenched his fists.

Melantha stepped back and gestured to the orc corpse lying on the stone slab. He glared at the cadaver and silently commanded it to stand. The orc convulsed on the slab, his limbs twisting in the wrong directions, bones breaking, skin tearing apart.

“Stryg, stop—”

But Stryg didn’t want to. He poured his frustration and anger into the corpse. The orc rolled off the stone and fell onto the cold hard floor with a wet smack, blood pooling underneath it.

“No,” Stryg said, his voice calm, gone was his anger and in its place was cold determination. He poured his feelings of loss into the orc and the promise he had made to himself. He refused to let tragedy repeat itself, not on anyone he cared for ever again. Whether it be a monster or a god, he would face the threats to his tribe and he would kill them.

The orc’s broken limbs snapped back into their original positions as squelching noises echoed throughout its organs, the blood seeping back into its body. The creature staggered to its feet and faced Stryg. The orc bared his teeth, reminiscent of Stryg’s usual hissing expression, a reflection of its master’s pain and resolve.

Svartna hummed to life from where it rested next to the door.

Melantha stared at the black spear as it dragged itself upright towards Stryg. Her lips curled in a half-smirk, “Well, this is interesting.”