Awakening Vampires
Everything was set. Forces moving to execute, and then there was him. Staring down a checkpoint. Seems they are on alert too, last nights attack has seemed to stir them. He could tell they bolstered the ranks, nearly by double too. Perhaps they have done more?
Hard to tell, the city was a buzz in the background, seeing much further than the trees didn't seem possible. He could use his earthly sense, but this city made sure to keep the forest back by nearly two miles. Giving him little more than the dead to look at. I suppose that's another graveyard.. Old forest, hell even old battlefields that have been buried by the wilds.
He nodded to himself, though he felt comfortable, whats a king without other caste of near the same teir. He inhaled as he retreated from the tree line. Exhaling in a call, an undead call that raced across the lands, back to Garlen, back to the crypt. Down its halls surpassing signs of battle, past the old creaky doors and straight towards the throne.
A ghastly ghostly lich flickered fir only a few moments. A transparent green wisping. The image exhaled.
"Wake from your coffins my nobles, you have been absent enough. Join me by my side, at the forefront of a falling city. I will be expecting you!"
The image flickered, fading away into wisping smoke. Dissipating.
Silence reigned for moments more, before.
Crack!
A broken union of coffins cracked and slid as its occupants woke.
The first to rise out was Riel, then Bael, other proceeding to wake. Yet it was clear that this waking wasnt as peaceful as it should have been.
The decaying crumbling walls made Riel gnash his teeth and cringe. "Ugh.. Awful.. Why call us back when it looks like this?!"
Bael frowned
"Dont be so harsh, its been far too long for any maintenance to be done."
"Nonesense Bael, i left four of my best Blood lurkers. Yet i cant even feel their presence or death of them. They left us! Those hybrid dogs.. When i get-"
"They weren't yours to begin with, but our masters now, shush it. Retrieve the book and let's set out immediately!"
Riel scowled; he already hated the deacy and filth of a once divine place, but the blatant disregard of his power really pissed him off.
"I say we sleep off another few hundred years. The lich shouldn't care-"
BANG!
Bael back handed Riel with the force of a freight train. The man shot back slamming into one of the burial pillars. A web of cracks running up the pillar as stone chipped off and the chamber rumbled, its slight quake raining debris.
"Do. Not. Talk about our master like that"
Riel growled walking out of the crumbling pillar. "Hit me again and ill remove your jaw you low life-"
Riel shuddered, a sudden dark glare from Bael there was only so much you could push..
Riel coughed, stopping there before he coughed again. "Fine, lets get going.. Like you said" spitting venom he waved at his own men. "We will take the lead.."
Bael sneered. "Go ahead."
Riel leading the way push aside the oak doors, opening up to a corridor. His eyes roved over the empty catacombs, peering down some halls that appeared collapsed. "Let us check the armory, we can bring whatever the lord hadnt."
Riel spoke, yet when he moved to enter. He paused at the entrance. Within pedestals covered with enchanted glass lined the walls. Wepain racks and armor stands holding glistening armor sets, blades of high end enchantment that could sunder any man from their life. Crimson torches burning from above amongst many floating lanterns.
However that image faded. Leaving Riel reeling, because what they found wasnt at all what he imagined.
Many of the pedestals were shattered, the few that did stand, cracked and crumbling. Their treasure rusted beyond repair. Armor lay crippled, rusting away into rot. Once floating lanterns on the floor, some crushed under fallen debris.
"W..what?! What happened? These weapons, this armor! It should have survived countless eras! Countless!"
When Bael entered, he was equally stumped. "What? The runes, the arrays.. Their.."
"Gone" Riel calmed down. But now he uttered the words in disbelief.
Hundreds of years doesn't break a resting place like this without some sort of event that leads to it.
"Ace, Hindsight would you."
A vampire draped in loose crimson black robes nodded. He inhaled, closing his eyes as his heartbeat.
He had a special ability in his blood. That was apparent, when his blood red arua surged, wisping out as it grasp the entire underground. Reconstructing what happened years prior.
Ace was about to open his eyes when Bael spoke out. "Connect us, that should let you peer further back than your limit"
Ace shifted, he agreed, aside from two centuries nothing much happened. But he connected his brothers and sisters, using them as boosters. Finally he found it.
Sifting through he saw something happen at least a hundred plus years past his limit. Yet the images shook him, his body trembled, muscles tensing up.
Ace eyes shot open, he fell to his knees and spat a mouthful of blood!
His eyes, ears, and pores bled much to Riel's surprise. Ace was a very strong vampire. To put it in perspective, he could single handedly bring a squad of death knights to their knees with enough effort. If anything, his level sat around seventy-five.
Though it isnt clarified much, there are boost after certain intervals are met in leveling. Akin to level 10 seemingly yielding double the added strength unlike a normal level. Now where they lay isn't much known, nor do all races experience the same boost at specific levels, if at all.
"What did you see.."
Ace raised a shaky finger, hoarsely speaking. "Get closer." He would show them, too weak to speak for now. Whatever backlash struck him would do this. The further back, the worse.
And they did, getting closer with an ominous whine in the atmosphere. Something changed, but they couldn't pick that up, too inaudible for even the vampires.
When close enough, Ace gave them a poke. Transferring his vision telepathically
###
Three hundred and Fifty years prior.
The tomb at its peak state was akin to an underground luxury castle. Its runes glowered brightly, showcasing their magical presence. Even so much as causing mana in the underground to liquify.
The crypt held many rooms, be they armories, labs, a courtyard, rooms, war room, throne hall, catacombs, even barracks and over locations like a forge.
The front door of the tomb at the time was almost deeply engraved. Many undead lived here, asleep. Safeguards protected them. Arrays, golems, even powerful undead that was either stronger or on par with Death Knights!
The crypt was the prepared tomb and future grounds for a powerful rising of a lich. Such prophecies were foretold centuries before its rising. A high king of the very dead, yet what happened to cripple this place? Even delabidate to its current state?
That is where the group found themselves, in the main hall of a brightly lit room, floating lanterns with crimson wisp giving the crypt an eerie white glower.
Suddenly, the hall trembled! At first the undead patrolling didnt notice, until it happened again.
The tremor rocked the crypt, its arrays flickered. Runes dimming swiftly as if being fast forwarded.
A sudden unfamiliar sound chimed, a spatial tear opening near them. The tear stabilized and reinforced itself.
Three figure stepping out, the mere auras of their bodies making the crypt shake uncontrollably.
The steucture began to crack, arrays flickered, some downright shutting down! The dead here looked over. Drawing their blades, yet they crumbled into dust the next second, a sneer coming from the far left figure.
"Don't even think you have a chance little freaks"
The far right figure snapped their fingers, a slow crawl of visible distorting waves disrupting the mana here. Scrambling the runes signals, shattering the arrays and quickening the aging process of any magically enchanted item. Even the structure itself.
"Are you sure its here?"
The middle figure pointed. "In the throne room"
The far right figure cocked their head in surprise. "It seems it has blocked my attempts at breaking through." their scramming couldn't pass through.
The figures began to walk, each step akin to an earthquake.
Their bodies, cloth and even features were obscured by the intense torrent of power that seemed to enveloped them. It held a very different color to mana. Hell the mana was being destroyed from merely being near the auras of the three.
They stopped before a heavy enchanted oak doors easily several feet thick, lined in strange stone bracing colored in deep hues of a blue sheen.
any undead between them and the door had been dusted. only saving those who were asleep and unaware, sure the crypt shook violently, but since when was it easy to even wake them?
"This door is enchanted with another power than the norm. My powers will not work on this."
The far right figure said with concern, the far left nodded the same solemn issue. "Same"
"No worries, what is trash before absolute power?"
The figure stepped up to the door, placing his hand on the door. Its power surged, trying to rebound the force.
Yet it was akin to an unbreachable wall verse an unstoppable force.
This time around, the wall lost.
The figure took a step forward, a cascading series of cracks rang out, the frame of strange stone cracked deeply, before the doors enchantments shattered and the door pushed in just a few feet. It seemed that the door was certainly not oak. It should have come off its hinges and shattered. This outcome made the figure frowned. But he shrugged. Following in. A crimson purple flame burning from a skeleton atop a throne.
The lich glancing up with a hiss!