Never Die Twice

Darkness choked the air of the crypt, an overwhelming evil taking hold of the area. Bleeding and wounded in her flesh, Gwenhyfar felt the pain in her soul too.

As a [Paladin of Tyr], she always shared a nonverbal, ethereal bond with her patron deity. As the god of justice and fairest of the Aesir, Tyr had empowered the princess in her quest to make this broken world right. For years, his presence and powers guided her, every step of the way.

Only for this light, this unbreakable link, to be cut by overwhelming darkness.

You lost your connection to your patron deity due to [Nidhogg]’s [Godslayer] perk. All [Paladin] Perks have become unavailable.

In its place, there was only a gaping emptiness.

Facing her, the burning mummy Spook raised his arms like a man possessed. “He is… back…” the undead hissed, putting his fiery hands over his charbroiled chest. “Ble… [Blessing].”

A dark, corrupt, yet divine energy coursed through his fingers and partly restored the monster’s bandages.

A [Priest] of some dark, terrible god. The same creature that now overshadowed Gwen’s own patron. This was bad, very bad; if the mummy could recover health, she would lose the battle of attrition.

“Tyr,” Gwen prayed to her own patron, begging him to repel the darkness and help her save her friends. “Please, if you ever believed in me… grant me the strength to prevail in my final hour!”

You prayed to [Tyr]...

But [Nidhogg] answered.

Instantly, a bolt of necrotic energy raced through her spine, sapping her lifeforce and undoing all her magical defenses.

You have been targeted by a powerful [Curse] effect. All magical buffs were undone, and you can no longer regain HP.

Alone. She was well and truly alone. Since Arthur hadn’t come to her help, then her brother must have perished or retreated. No one would come. Her dreams would be buried in this tomb, unfulfilled.

But Gwenhyfar would not die in solitude, and certainly not in surrender.

Intent on finishing his cruel execution and possessed by religious frenzy, the mummy raised his claws to land the killing blow. He lunged at her with three steps, a vicious wolf pouncing on a sheep.

“Kill… you!”

Gwen raised her sword, but let him approach.

The claws hit her chestplate and pierced through the steel, lifting her above the ground like a bag of meat. After all the wounds she had taken, the princess’ pain felt swift, almost tolerable.

And then, as the mummy rejoiced over his victory, Gwen raised her blade and impaled him through the skull.

“Ah… aha!” The mummy cackled in his madness, finding greater bliss in his murder of the princess than fear in his impending death. His ancient body collapsed and aged to dust in the space of seconds, becoming nothing more than old ashes on the ground.

The blades still in her chest, her left eye a pit of blood, Gwenhyfar collapsed on herself. She was bleeding out, her body going numb from the pain and helplessness.

Warning: HP critically low!

No notification came to congratulate her, to offer her levels. Yggdrasil did not grant salvation to the doomed. Instead, as she rested in her own blood, Gwenhyfar looked up with her last eye to see Morgane’s vampiric face smiling at her.

“Guess it falls to me to take care of you, Gwen.” The creature caressed her ‘sister’s’ hair, her fingers staying away from the [Amulet of Avalon]. “Don’t worry. I won’t kill you. This body of yours, this life you waste… I have envied it since the moment I set my eyes upon your fair face.”

“Go… to Hel…” Gwen whispered back, struggling to breathe as her lungs burned in agony.

“I will drain your blood, and take your husk as my own,” the thing wearing her sister’s face whispered softly, showing her fangs. “I have never been a princess before—”

Steps echoed in the crypt, heavy and powerful. Morgane backed away from Gwenhyfar’s neck, turning her eyes towards an unseen newcomer. “You?” she whispered, her glee replaced with stark, raving terror.

A claymore beheaded the vampire so swiftly, Gwenhyfar barely saw it.

“Begone,” a familiar voice said, an armored, towering figure tossing the corpse away. Within seconds, Morgane’s remains had turned to dust, a shadowy fiend escaping the corpse and fleeing through the fog.

My knight… cried the little girl inside Gwenhyfar, as he raised her eyes at her rescuer. “Lancelot?”

No. Not Lancelot.

Flames had blackened his armor, and embers still smoldered on the surface, unleashing unnatural smoke into the air. Someone had applied blazing runes to the plates, alongside a symbol on the chest; that of Calamity Surtr’s fiery sword. His claymore had transformed into a replica of Surtr’s [Laevatein] blade, a runic longsword burning so brightly, that it was painful to look at.

A corpse inhabited the armor. A blackened skeleton with fiery pits for eyes; a burning undead engine, fueled by hate. A hag with a crimson ruby on her forehead cowered behind him, a craven lackey in awe of a greater evil.

“You fought bravely, Gwenhyfar, but this is the end. The Convergence can no longer be stopped, and Avalon will fall.” The black knight looked down on her with what seemed to be a mix of contempt and compassion. “You failed.”

“Lancelot… you were…”

“Your Shining Knight perished by my lord’s hand long ago, child!” The hag cackled, but a mere glance of the [Death Knight] silenced her.

“I bested him in a fair fight, and took his flesh as my own,” the knight declared. “A gift of Loki, that can fool even the Allfather’s greatest divinations.”

The [Death Knight]’s burning eyes peered into Gwen’s.

“I am Medraut.”

“Why…”

“You are a clever girl, Gwenhyfar. My favorite niece, I dare say. So believe me when I say this is nothing personal, for my grudge is against your father alone. My brother Siegfried must know my pain in penance for his crimes; to watch his entire line extinguished. Blood, for blood.”

He raised his sword above her head, like an executioner’s axe.

“I regret it, dear niece,” the [Death Knight] said, his words hollow and devoid of emotion. “Asclepius, you are avenged.”

The sword fell down as Gwen’s amulet burnt against her skin, and all went dark.

The day Lyonesse died was a dark one indeed.

As the tears into Helheim spread farther in the skies, the people prayed. Prayed to their gods, to grant their chosen, invincible prince victory. He who was fated to rule Avalon. He who was fated to prevail over evil.

They were so certain of his victory, that very few evacuated the city. Craven merchants, doubtful peasants, wise cultists, or canny rogues warned ahead of time. They fled the purple fog seeping into the city until it obscured the sunlight itself. Others hid in their basements, in their banks, or in safe houses.

They were the wiser ones and they alone who would tell the tales of the city’s demise.

The restless dead were the first to rise.

Tombs opened from the inside; old bones buried below houses stirred; the corpses of giants slumbering in the lake opened their eyes. A dozen rose, then hundreds, then thousands. The wicked dead condemned to Helheim for their sins, faithlessness, unworthiness, or diseases, returned to the world of the living; their souls crossing the rifts to possess husks of empty flesh.

And they were vengeful.

Joining them were swarms of vermin, called by the will of the serpent below. Snakes, rats, maggots, worms, crows, the carrion-eaters came from all sides; parasites spilled from the corpses of beasts and diseases choked the air, summoned by the wrath of Hel herself. The proud city was besieged from all sides.

Soldiers and watchmen fought bravely to defend their home, but each fallen joined the ranks of their enemies. Maybe, if their priests had their prayers answered, they could have contained the tide of death; but their magic failed them, their spells blocked by a dark power coming from below. Screams were drowned in the fog, and no house was left unturned. As the dead prowled the street, no one was safe. The very gods had abandoned them.

The rifts in space widened until someone watched back on the other side.

The horned face of the Fell God Loki Laufeyson peered into the rift, his baleful, fiery gaze glancing at the city below with malice. Unable to cross the tiny rift from his Helheim prison, he laughed in dark joy as undead ravaged the city, like a child watching a theater play. Fiends beholden to his service flocked through the tears, gargoyles, bats, and poisonous horrors from the beyond. They spread through the skies and the countryside, to kill, and kill, and kill.

Within three hours, the cohort of the dead outnumbered the living ten to one.

Within four, there was no living man left in Lyonesse’s streets.

The undead and the fiends then spread beyond the walls, to claim the surrounding region. For months, monsters would haunt the forests and the hills; none would feel safe at night. The air was heavy with terror and curses.

On the fifth hour, Lyonesse’s central district collapsed on itself, a hole opening right below its foundations. A pit spewing fog and rot widened, a maw hungry for fresh air. Below, in the dark abyss, fiends watched another city buried under Lyonesse return from the dead; the undead city of Nastrond had risen again, the seal broken.

And then, on the sixth hour, the rifts stopped expanding. The fabric of the realms held, and the World Tree Yggdrasil did not collapse. Ragnarok did not start, and the cosmos did not erupt in chaos.

The tears in space shrank on themselves, although the dark mists of Helheim remained behind to poison Midgard. The growl of Calamity Loki echoed one last time, as he saw his chance at escape snatched away, his prison closing on itself.

When the rifts closed on the seventh hour, only the dead and carrion-eaters remained behind.

Lyonesse was silent at last.

Yseult awoke surrounded by dead men.

She was in some kind of underground giant city, gently carried by two undead knights; their hands were cold to the touch, as still as the grave. Her breathing was slow, the ribs shattered by the linnorm were still broken.

An army of undead awaited before a massive cathedral, its doors protected by giant adamantine golems. Among the key figures of this undead cohort were familiar faces. The Dullahan Hagen of Vendemar; a purple ghost; a goblin archer, and a linnorm demilich. Others she did not recognize, such as a spectral elf lost in her thoughts, torn between terror and a dark, terrible pride. This [Banshee] reminded the priestess of Laufey, long missing.

Above, she could see the faint trace of moonlight, a hole opened to Lyonesse above. As she glanced at the open ceiling, she only saw the shadows of ruined, burning buildings above; the leftovers of the city to whom she had given her life.

Most terrifying of all… Balder’s warmth had left her side.

You lost your connection to your patron deity due to [Nidhogg]’s [Godslayer] perk. All [Vestal] Perks and most [Muse] ones have become unavailable.

For the first time in decades, Yseult’s god could no longer guide her.

And then, the cathedral’s doors slowly opened, a terrible shadow emerging from within.

The horrifying creature that stepped out of the temple was an abomination, unlike anything the priestess had ever seen. More than thirty-five feet tall, it had the vague shape of a giant humanoid, but nothing else. For its body was made of a thousand ghoulish, pallid, blood-drained husks fused together by necromantic magic.

How many corpses did it take? How many?

Perhaps to hide his gruesome true self, the creature wore a hooded, tattered dark crimson cloak over most of his body; while his pallid hand carried a black staff as tall as him. The light of two blazing red eyes peered beneath the hood, and Yseult glimpsed at the shadow of a giant serpent’s skull. A black stone, some kind of artifact from the terrible aura it unleashed, had been embedded in the forehead like a makeshift crown.

The creature spoke, but no lips moved. Instead, Walter’s voice echoed in her mind, while the ghoulish visages on the entity’s skin whispered lowly. “Are you afraid, milady?”

Was she afraid?

Lyonesse had been ravaged, the undead ruling the ruins; everyone she had fought with had died; she was the only person breathing in the entire plaza, her heartbeat the only sound. And she faced a monster so powerful, that her own god could not rescue her from its grasp.

Deep inside herself, Yseult knew what the horror before her was. One of the ancient destroyers fated to annihilate the Nine Realms, to pull the curtain on existence itself. The serpent foretold to eat the roots of the World Tree, which held the universe in balance.

A Calamity.

“I am,” she said, her voice breaking. “I am, Walter. You frighten me.”

“You shouldn’t feel afraid,” the necromantic abomination replied, almost warmly. “I wish you no harm. I never did.”

“You abused my trust!” the priestess replied, tears in her eyes. “I thought you were my friend! I defended you when everyone accused you, only for you to destroy everything I cared for! You made a fool of me…” She clenched her hands. “Just like Tristan.”

“I am sorry,” the necromancer whispered in her mind, and he sounded genuine. “I only lied about my true nature as an undead, because I knew the world would hunt me should it know of my condition… and it could not accept me. I truly consider you a friend and Annie too. I hope we can stay friends too.”

“You have too much blood on your hand for me to call you a friend, Nidhogg.”

“Walter Tye, milady,” the necromancer replied, insisting on it. “Walter Tye, now and forever.”

His ginormous head turned to his undead cohort Hagen, the Dullahan presenting him with a funerary urn. “Percy’s ashes,” the necromancer rasped with condemnation. “I wished him not to be harmed. Who did the deed?”

“Spook went crazy, chief,” the purple ghost said. “He regained old memories, and it did terrible things to his sanity.”

“Duke fell into Helheim,” Hagen of Vendemar said. “Losses are horrendous.”

“We will recover our fallen,” Walter replied with confidence. “The frontier with Helheim is now so thin, that I can open tears at will.”

“What about Annie?” Yseult asked, not having seen the young witch since she had been knocked unconscious. “What about Takeru? What about all the people you slew?”

“Annie is sick. Hel cursed her, but I can cure her. I can cure everything.” Walter raised his ‘hand’ at Percy’s ashes. “[Naglfar].”

Dark magic radiated from the black stone on his forehead, gathering in the shape of a cloud of miasma. Much to Yseult’s astonishment, the smoke mixed with the ashes as both swirled together, into the shape of a sleeping young man sleeping on the cold hard ground.

“I can raise the dead,” the necromancer confirmed, as an unconscious Percy breathed again, naked as the day he was born. Two undead soldiers grabbed the squire, to carry him to a nearby house. “I completed the Great Work, the [Necromancer’s Stone], and the elixir of life. My labor bore fruit at long last. Immortality for all living beings is within reach.”

At what cost? Yseult eyed the purple smoke coming out of the cathedral, other undead looking at it warily.

“The root of Yggdrasil,” Walter confirmed, sensing her fear and confusion. “The ritual blackened it somewhat, but it survived. Ragnarok will not start today.”

“But it could have,” Yseult realized. “You threatened all of creation in your bid for false godhood.”

“A calculated risk, carefully measured. All to vanquish death.”

“What if you had failed, Walter?” Yseult asked, horrified. “What if you had failed? What if your dream had been impossible?”

“It never was.”

“What if it had? Would you have felt regret for all the people you killed? Answer me truthfully. If you have ever been my friend… please be honest.”

The abomination marked a short pause.

“No,” the Calamity replied without malice, but without remorse either. “The Great Work, my dream, my brotherhood’s dream, was more important than anything. Someone had to try, no matter the odds, no matter the cost. Even if it had been for nothing.”

That was what she had feared. “Walter, you care more about the abstract idea of immortality, than the people you claim will benefit from it.”

“What difference does it make?” he asked, sounding genuinely puzzled. Beneath the veneer of civility and understanding, he was a cold-blooded, heartless thing; a monster more reptile than man.

“All the difference in the world.”

“Yet you condemn me by using abstract principles when I offer concrete results. My spell works. I can raise the dead, any dead. I can free mankind from Helheim, from the rule of the gods, and the terrible fate that is Ragnarok. No one will ever die because they were born with a disease, milady.”

“Do not dare use me as your excuse.”

“I am not,” replied the godlike necromancer. “But since I answered your question truthfully, milady, let me ask you one of mine. If you could go to blessed Valhalla, no matter your deeds in life nor taking the field of battle… would you have prayed to Balder so fervently?”

The priestess opened her mouth, but no sound came out of it. Yseult breathed heavily, her answer dying in her throat.

The crimson eyes peered into her soul, her silence an answer in itself. “That is what I thought. You abhor fighting, so prayer was your last refuge.”

“My faith is genuine,” Yseult replied, although she felt her conviction weaken. The seed of doubt had crept in.

“It is a hollow, forced thing,” the abomination replied. “Fueled by fear and desperation.”

“Balder is the champion of hope, light, healing, and beauty,” Yseult said. “I honor him for his work, and see myself in him.”

“Mayhaps you would have respected him for his deeds if you did not need his salvation. But would you have worshiped him?” Walter mused, pressing on her weakness. “What I offer is freedom, milady. Freedom from death, freedom from the gods, freedom from this absurdity we call fate.”

Lady Yseult turned her face away, unwilling to look at the Calamity’s eyes. “What will you do with me? Will you keep me as a trophy, or will you free me?”

“For a short while, I expect you to remain my guest until we clean up the mess above.”

“And afterward?” Yseult asked, a chilling, ghostly wind freezing her cheek.

“You will be allowed to do as you wish,” the necromancer replied, much to her surprise. “You, Annie, Percy… you may have opposed me, but as I told you, I wish you no harm. If you do not intend to stay in Lyonesse or Nastrond, you are free to go. You have my word that no harm will befall any of you.”

“Even after we fought?” This mercy shocked even Yseult, who had expected a far worse fate. “Are you not afraid that we will do so again?”

If anything, her retort simply amused him. “Milady, there is nothing you can do to me.”

Much to Yseult’s horror… he may very well be right.

The discussion done, Walter let out a heavy sigh. “Now, if you will excuse me, I have thousands of civilians to raise from the dead.”

Then he added as if it was the only thing that truly mattered to him.

“I hope my shop is alright.”