Chapter 11: The Leftovers
True to his word, most of Kaligos’ men died fighting, but to their credit they took down several times their weight in zombies before they fell. The swamp didn’t care. All the broken pieces were just spare parts that would be repurposed for other experiments. With the tribe of lizardmen and their strange worship of it all but extinguished it wouldn’t have enough energy to fuel so many constructs in perpetuity anyway. In time they might yet grow in number again, but that would be years from now. Until then it would have to make do with less unless it could find other ways to feed its ravenous hunger.
Right now that wasn’t a problem though. Right now it was overflowing with blood and suffering, and with so many fresh test subjects, both living and dead, it was eager to try a number of experiments that it had been dreaming up during all the quiet years it had slumbered in the swamp. Yes, it decided, it would torture the living to power its terrible projects with their dead friends, and any that survived after that, it would find other uses for.
Unlike the village, there was no hurry here. Once its zombies seized control of the tower entrance, everyone else was trapped inside, and there was no troublesome divinity to get in its way. That flicker of holy light had died with Kaligos, and was at best a minor irritation compared to the painful sore that was the temple. The zombies would set his body aside anyway though - the last thing it wanted to do was reconnect with the man’s angry god in some accidental way during the resurrection process.
The wounded on the second floor fell quickly enough. They lasted only a day before they were dragged below; they would never see the sun rise again. They screamed until their throats were raw as flesh was flayed from bone and minds were broken by the darkest sights that the wraith could imagine. While all that happened the bulk of its zombies went to the surface, to gather all the corpses of the lizards that they could. They had been strong warriors in life, but they would be even stronger in death.
The lizard corpses that were mostly whole would be set aside for embalming. Properly treated, they would then be able to last a century or more, which suited the dark plans slowly taking shape in the mind of the wraith. Now that it had a mind it could plan, and those plans always led to other plans, even this one. Because the pieces of the tribe that were too maimed and mutilated to rise again were gathered too. Their tribal bonds and spiritual beliefs would be exploited as much as their rotting flesh, and their shattered parts would be stitched together into something altogether more terrible than a zombie.
In the end only the bard was allowed to run free in the endless tunnels. It became a game to the swamp - allowing him to think he was almost free before a new enemy lurched from the shadows, and scared the hapless creature down another path. The bard was utterly harmless, but the swamp had important plans for him once his mind had been completely shattered, so it was important that the pitiful man stayed utterly terrified until all was in readiness.
For days the darkest rooms underneath the tower throbbed with dark and baleful energies while the dead chanted and the living screamed. From the eldritch circles painted in blood beings that never should have existed were raised into terrible unlife, destined to spend eternity enslaved to the Lich and its machinations. First came the lovers. Marko and Lizela never wanted to be parted. They’d said as much with their dying breath, so the wraith granted their wish. From two separate bodies it stitched together a single two headed, four armed monstrosity. Into that body both of their souls were pulled back from paradise screaming, and forced to power the wretched, broken creature that was the mockery of their love. It would have been tragic if anyone but the swamp was ever likely to learn of it.
After the lovers had a chance to despair at the abomination, the swamp set them to using their four hands and still nimble flesh to assemble the true monstrosity. This had to be done outside in the ruins of what had once been Albrecht’s manor, because the thing that they were creating was too large to navigate the tunnels under the tower. It would take weeks before it was ready for reanimation, maybe months. That didn’t matter to the swamp though - one stitch at a time the lovers would assemble the pieces of over a dozen mutilated warriors into something the world had never seen before.
Only after all this was done did the Lich finally turn its gaze to the one that they had called Solovino. After two days of constant running and hiding the man was a wreck, with wild eyes that no longer seemed to focus on anything. He was not yet the sole survivor of the expedition, but he was the only one that had anything resembling a mind anymore. When the zombies that were sent to drag him to the throne room finally reached the broken bard, he put up no resistance, and all he did when the zombies picked him up and dragged him down the hall was quietly piss himself. There was no fight left in him, but that was hardly a surprise. There had been very little to begin with. The only surprise was that despite all the bruises and scrapes he’d gotten running in the dark, he’d somehow managed to keep a hold on his mandolin. It had come through the whole ordeal without a scratch.
The zombies said nothing as they walked unerringly through the darkness to the very throne of the Lich. Like everything else, they were just an extension of the swamp. They were just two fingers on one hand bringing them ever closer to its mouth. Whether that was because it wanted to speak to the wreck of a man, or it wanted to devour him whole had not yet been decided. Solovino was the first living soul ever to enter the throne room. It had been carved from the bedrock three levels below the tower, though there was no quick way to reach it without navigating most of the labyrinth in a wide and circuitous fashion. Besides the ritual rooms, it was the only place that was lit in the entire maze, and two burning braziers of witchfire burned in the corners of the room, casting blue-purple light that resulted in dancing shadows tinged with red, making the already bizarre room look even more nightmarish.
Even though the bard was physically present, he did not see. He did not see the squat bronze throne that held up the gilded body of the Lich, or the creeping patina of corruption that ate at it, even though it had been cast barely a year ago. He also didn’t see that the gold that had once been hoarded in a pile had been put to better use. It now spread across the floor, and climbed the walls, forming a web of nameless arcane purpose that looked like the baroque decorations of a royal family gone mad, but was really a series of arcane focuses allowing the heart of the swamp to better store and direct the tides of mana it received from its terrible domain.
“Do you wish to live?” That was the question that was posed to the bard by the swamp, but it didn’t come from the mouth of the Lich, for it was bound eternally into its molten sarcophagus and utterly unable to move. Instead the speaker was the fresh corpse of another human very familiar to the bard: the mage Von Wandren. In time the swamp would find another use for such a talented mind, but for now it needed to speak, and this was the only mouth that still had a set of lungs that hadn’t been put to other uses.
Solovino responded to the voice, and looked unseeingly at the speaker, but didn’t respond, so the mage repeated himself with its unnatural voice. “Do you wish to live Bard, or has life lost its luster?”
This time the bard found his voice. “Y-yes… I-I want to live. I have a family, well, a lover or two at least, and the king… I must—”
“I care not for your reasons, worm. I only ask what you would do to leave here with your heart still beating.” The voice of the dead mage sounded nothing like it had in life. That wasn’t because it was missing an arm or because it was two days dead though. It was just because the swamp no longer had the correct mannerisms or nuance to sound like a human. It was beyond all of that now.
“Anything!” the bard shouted as he finally started to realize where he was and what was happening. Even in the depths of madness, the broken parts of him still wanted to live on. “I’ll do whatever you ask Von Wandren, I—”
“The mage is dead, and his soul is mine, dog. Make no mistake about that.” The swamp had not known that it was still capable of taking offense until the moment this pitiful creature dared to address it by the name of its broken puppet. The rage that flowed through it in that moment made the lights flicker and the Lich almost snuffed the lights in the impudent bard’s eyes out by accident in its wroth, but it restrained itself at the last moment.
“I- I’m sorry my lord.” The bard bowed his head until it touched the stone floor as much to repent as to avoid looking. He had felt the shadow of death pass by him, and he did not want to feel that cold touch again. “Tell me what I must do.”
“Swear fealty to me—” The mage intoned.
“I will!” the Bard interrupted, too afraid to do anything else.
“Swear fealty to me, and wear this.” With its one remaining arm the mage held out a heavy bronze chain with a large medallion attached. It was a plain thing, that highwaymen might not even steal from their victims, but that was only on the front. The back of the medallion was covered in runes and profane symbols that completed the spell.
Solovino grabbed it and put it on immediately, afraid to do anything else. Immediately he doubled over in pain as the thing burned into his flesh. “Ahhhh! What… My lord! What is this!” he screamed loud enough for his voice to echo through the catacombs.
It was only when he was silent that the Lich’s mouthpiece began to speak once more. “The bargain is struck. I give your life, and in exchange it is mine forever more.”
“What must I d-do,” the bard asked, struggling to rise.
“You must tell my story. To everyone. Sing your songs and spread the word. There is evil here and heroes must come to defeat it.”
“I’ll s-sing the s-song of the last s-stand of the Unwritten Rule,” the Bard stammered, “But I don’t know your story my Lord. How can I write a song for a legend I don’t know?”
“You will,” the dead throat chuckled dryly. “You’ll never dream of anything but my story ever again bard. You’ll sing and dance and spread my story until you break, and even then you won’t get away from me. Enjoy what time you have left, because your soul is mine for eternity now.”