First Eclipse Of The Exist

The call came while they slumbered, woven into their darkened dreams like embroidered threads hidden behind the many folds of regal robes.

Within those late-evening dreams, a new dream was planted that was not truly a dream at all: something from Bintaar, from the Great Beyond itself, had wormed its way into the sleeping minds of all of Aloria’s Ordial Mages and those otherwise gifted with Bintaar’s touch. The Lamp-lighters of the Songaskian Masaya, the few shaman of the Eronidas people who still swear to the oldest ways, the Nightseers and Sefakhem of the Asha peoples, the Regalian Empire’s secretive clutch of Ordial-empowered and the rest of the scattered Mages and spiritualists of the world at large were all collectively visited by a vision not unlike ones they had experienced prior. The familiar sensation of sinking into a cold, dark sea as thick as sandy dunes was felt among them all, and soon enough their eyes opened to all gaze upon a place that was unmistakably different from wherever they had individually fallen asleep that evening.

One by one, the mages and spiritualists alike awoke, to gaze upon one another and found them to be partly-ethereal, like hazy green ghosts, a method of visiting the dead plane of Bintaar that was familiar to all of them. They had all astrally projected to this same place at least once before, whether purposefully or by accident while dreaming, so the journey’s sudden beginning was not much of a surprise. These trips to Bintaar in the dreams of these mages always led them to the same place, too: a staggeringly grand but hollow shell of a towering temple, that some had eventually come to realize was some sort of facsimile of the great All-Beacon Temple within the heart of Regalia’s capital city. Here in Bintaar, though, the temple was far from the monument to the Everwatcher’s glory it stood as in Aloria. The towering building was in a preserved state of decay, with some parapets having crumbled away and other sections of the structure seemingly being layered over with the architecture of eras long past, as if the Temple had been cobbled together from many pieces of itself throughout history. Inside, with pews scattered aside and broken, the very center of it– where in Aloria there is an altar– had the broad base of an old statue that had long since fallen apart, with only the chiseled ankles and feet remaining in place. The Ordial-touched who had been here before recognized this Temple as a gathering place, of sorts: when they visited in their dreams, they arrived at this Temple, and could never leave its boundaries thanks to the interference of some power that kept the doors and windows encased in an impassable barrier. Sometimes, too, they would see the passing ethereal projections of others within this Temple who were also there in their slumber, but this night in particular was an unusual one, as never had there been so many of their kind gathered together there. Never, too, had there been the Herald standing upon the statue’s base.

The Herald was an entirely unfamiliar being to them all, even to the most learned among those present. It took the appearance of a set of dourly-colored, green-and-black striped clothing with an empty breastplate and old, ruddy helm, plume and all. There was no occupant within the garment save for an ever-swirling green mist that seemed to be puppeteering the shell. Despite its lack of a body, though, it was able to speak: its voice coming not from any mouth of its own but as a directionless sound that echoed all around the Temple’s interior. It became rapidly apparent that this Herald was speaking not aloud, but within the very minds of those in the Temple.

”Gathered friends, servants, dedicants and singers, all. An honor to look upon all your faces, here in this hallowed place. An unusual time to be here though, assuredly, as not a single one of you received an invitation to what I must declare is an exciting occasion beyond all imaginable extents!”

With an extravagant wave of its armored hand, it took a deep bow before them all and a chorus of disembodied, unseen trumpets and string instruments rang out to accompany the gesture with fanfare. Glances were exchanged with one another by the summoned peoples, until the first among them stepped forward: Sandaki Bal Garan, the Great Lamp-Bearer and the acknowledged leader of the Ordial Mages of the Songaskian Masaya.

“We do not know who or what you are, speaker, or what you may want with us here or what exciting occasion you describe here. We have come here from our dreams, but now we want answers.” He clutched tightly onto the conjured manifestation of his revered staff, a lengthy blacksteel pole from which hung an ancient lantern that remained perpetually lit with the guiding light of the Lantern’s graces. “Never before have we all come together like this, and not without prompting. I smell even now the reek of the servants of Undeath, here, who I would never pass palms with or welcome with any warm fashion. We want an explanation.”

The odd Herald straightened and extended its arms wide along with a low, hollow chuckle: the sort of sound that is felt physically within one’s own core as it vibrates around.

“The stench of Undeath! You are all seers into this great and shaded world, are you not? Come, at least find some common ground in that fact, to make the occasion here much more enjoyable.” The Herald’s continued obfuscation of the Lamp-Bearer’s question clearly left him frustrated with a lack of answers, and as the gathered Mages and other ilk began to murmur amongst themselves he slammed the heavy end of his staff into the old, cracked stone beneath him to bring silence sweeping over the small crowd.

“I and the Lamp-lighters have had more than enough of this mad charade, speaker. Either answer my question or we shall depart and return to our holy duty in the waking world.” The throng of Lantern-chained Mages behind the Great Lamp-Bearer all nodded and vocalized their agreement with the sentiment together. Then, from the cluster of people stood opposite the Lantern Mages, a large figure strolled forth: the Bone King of Etosil himself, all garbed in his Regal Remnants, a suit of ceremonial armor fashioned from the bones of the numerous tombs he exhumed in the quest to build his army.

“The Interring has begun, hasn’t it?” rumbled the larger-than-life, helmed man, his hands clasped at the small of his back in formal fashion. “I have been waiting for quite some time to see its beginning, you know. The Dragons moved far quicker than we.” Mention of an ‘Interring’ prompted even more hushed conversation among the Ordial throng, which Sandaki took more than a few slams of his staff to silence so that he might speak in apparent agitation.

“What ‘Interring’? I should have expected no better than a slave of Undeath to be in leagues with an enigmatic blackguard like this Herald, here, and know of some dark purpose.” Sandaki pointed an accusatory finger out toward the Bone King. “And why speak of the Dragons? What could they possibly have to do with any of this?”

“Not all of your ilk are so gifted with true sight as you are, o venerated King of Bones!” cried the Herald with mirth in its detached, tinny tone. “I will grant unto all you, then, a vision of what has transpired so that when I show you what is about to transpire, the pieces of our little puzzle will feat seamlessly with one another and there will be no questions left to ask until all is concluded. Huzzah!” Two rusty old gauntlets raised, then, and the Herald brought them together with a loud clap: prompting the sight of all those there to go dark, as even within this dream-state they were seized by yet another vision.

The vision was presented to them like the old, weathered pages of a storybook, the events playing out in their sight with the misty haze of ancient memory blanketing it and the hollow voice of the Herald speaking in time with the imagery quite like the narrator of said book.

“About seven milleniae ago, a Dragon became trapped in the Void. The simple curiosity that compels even mortalkind today possessed Ruunh to slip into the very first tear in the Veil, and so the Dragon of Revenge became imprisoned in the realm of Nonexistence with no way to return home.”

The memory of Ruunh showed before them all, the dragon’s gaze settling on a great and terrifying rift in the reality of Binral itself before he pushed his way into the seam headfirst and vanished beyond its darkness. There, they witnessed the dragon swallowed up by the infinite dark of the Void and watched as the millenia passed by and he was transformed by the realm’s influence.

“Ruunh languished in the Void for years upon years, the essence of his very being warped by the Void until he became almost one with the plane itself: a Greater Demon of the Void, nearly indistinguishable from the others populating its vast nothingness. Seven thousand years after his imprisonment, he found a way to open a new door, though this door would only allow the Primal Essence he originated from to enter the Void. He began to feed upon it, growing ever stronger, and the rest is contemporary to your world right now. But as you all should know, the sister realms– our sister realms– share in one another’s fortune and misfortune both. What happens in one must, in some way, be reflected in the other. Lives lost in Binral come to Bintaar to persist. So when Ruunh departed the realm of Life to enter that of the Void, so too did something leave Bintaar behind and find its way into the Exist.”

A new image in the faded vision was shown to all of them, then. A vast and barren landscape not unlike a great deal of Bintaar stretched out before them, with its only landmarks being the occasional dead tree sprouting up from the cracked and dry earth. Where once these trees might have been towering giants, they were now only sombrous monuments that reminded of the inevitable death of even the greatest living things. The dead forest was still and silent just as the grave is, until that morbid serenity was disturbed all of a sudden by a crack and a ripple in the air itself as a streak of silver-blue tore open a rift in reality. The gate to the Exist yawned wide, and its invitation was answered by a ripping of dead roots at the base of a nearby tree. From its dried chokehold emerged a relatively small figure made up of old and rusted armor with dead branches and wood twining its various pieces together. It shambled forward, pathetic and weak, barely composed: as if any one of its aging appendages would fall off with too harsh of a breeze. With a hand outstretched toward the great Light of Existence, it entered, and was swallowed up by the silver.

“You see, when Ruunh left Binral for the Void, a being of equivalent status left Bintaar for the Exist. An ancestor to the regents and rulers of the Beyond as you know them, the being formerly called ‘the Blight’ once existed here as the embodiment of the ceaseless, inevitable decay of all things. They were forgotten– wiped from the perpetual, stagnant memory of this place– when they left for the Exist.”

They watched in the vision as the shambling being they now knew as the Blight collapsed among the endless light making up what they could see of the Exist, its various parts all coming undone as the armor and wood and stone crumbled into a useless pile. From its middle, though, the beginnings of a white tree sprouted upward and began to grow. The vision shifted shortly afterward to a place that most of the gathered Ordial-touched were familiar with the sight of: the great, black hole in the middle of Bintaar’s version of Western Daen that was colloquially referred to as ‘the Pit’. They watched as Shade after Shade, the wandering echoes that populated the realm of Death, shambled up to its edge and simply fell in. They plummeted into the black and vanished.

“Seven thousand years passed, and then the rule of mirrors was enacted once more. As Ruunh ripped open another door from Binral to the Void, a door was opened too from Bintaar to the Exist. Ordial Essence– the raw power of memories and the Dead– flooded through. This host of Shades fueled the Blight just as Ruunh was, and helped the forgotten god grow and grow until it became something entirely new.”

The vision abruptly ended, then, leaving the conjured peoples back in their circle in the ruined Temple’s midst and the Herald upon the statue’s platform once more. Most were too shell-shocked by the revelation to say or do much but gawk at one another in silent stares, but the Bone King looked entirely unperturbed. Conversely, Sandaki Bal Garan looked entirely shaken.

“Do you mean to tell us,” he began, his grip on his staff tightening with visible agitation, “that the slaves of Undeath were privy to this truth before any of us else were? That they were given this knowledge of our sacred realm’s beginnings and we were kept blind to it? We are its eternal protectors! Should we not be allowed such secrets, instead of those like this Blasphemous King who seek to disturb the balance of death and serve its dark powers?” The Great Lamp-Bearer pointed his staff toward the Bone King in a rather threatening gesture, and the collection of necromancers and Ordial-touched warriors that had accompanied the old Etosian into this dream all braced themselves for a potential confrontation. They were stopped when another necromancer from outside of the Bone King’s flock raised her voice among the growing din.

“I was not aware of any of this, good servant of the Lantern!” called forth Xaella, the Lord of Graves, but her voice was quickly silenced with a dismissive wave from the Bone King’s gauntleted hand.

“You are a fledgling and an inheritor of something beyond your grasp, Sister Spider. You do not have the true sight into the hallowed history of our realm that my rightful crown has given me.” The crowned necromancer turned then to face his accuser. “You assume the worst of us again, Lamp-Bearer. There was no grand plot on my part. I simply knew what had transpired, and what will soon transpire.” There was a great roar from the crowd, and all heads turned to look at its source: watching as a new contender entered into the verbal fray in the form of an Eronidas with skin so pallid the color was comparable to bone. He stormed forward, ghostly green eyes fixed menacingly on the Bone King, his blacksteel prosthetic jaw grinding from left to right in barely-contained rage. Ghōl’an raised a steel fist toward the King and bellowed.

“I have stood idly by and tolerated your undeserved smugness for long enough, thief of power.” He snarled and spat aside, while his contingency of shaman and warriors just behind him echoed his sentiments with a boisterous cheer. “You continue to speak of ‘what will happen’. What is this ‘Interring’? I will hear no more riddles from you or this pile of scrap metal.”

“Why, the answer is quite apparent.” chortled the Herald, with an oddly jovial fling of its arms upward. “Have you been paying attention at all, great Ghōl’an? The rule of mirrors is in play yet again. Just as the Void was invaded…” Bit by bit, the image of the Temple around them began to crumble away, just as the realization was dawning over all gathered there. Soon the Temple had vanished, and now they were all standing around on an expanse of dead grass that ran all the way up to the edge of that very same black hole they had witnessed in their prior visions. Now, though, the grasslands surrounding it were not empty: spanning them, as far as their eyes could see, was an army of the dead.

“... So too shall the Exist be invaded. Welcome, all, to the Interring!” The Herald raised its arms, and with the same disembodied musical fanfare as before, the vast army across the Pit from them all began to charge forth. They all watched the stream pour downward into the darkness: ghosts, shambling corpses and skeletons, foot soldiers in old armor, rotting beasts and monsters, titans forged of dark steel and bone and spirits carrying lanterns alike flooded over the edge and right down into the waiting black beneath them. The crowd parted as the Bone King, too, walked forward through the group of them with his own cadre. He stood upon the Pit’s edge and slowly raised his greatsword– a sawblade-like weapon, forged from the spine of a large Etosian Bear– to the sky, a beam of Ordial light suffusing its jagged length and blazing upward like a signal beacon. He then swung the mighty sword through the air right in front of him and carved a rift open. The tear broadened, and made way for another horde of the Undead to pour out and into the Pit below: the Bone King’s venerated, feared Last Legion. The bone-armored soldiers marched directly through the rift opened for them, already assembled and prepared for the journey, descending rank and file into the Pit’s dark depths. The others gathered there, as merely conjured projections, could do nothing but watch as the great invasion began and all of the realm of Death’s might was sent down into the darkness. The Bone King’s legion seemed never-ending, and its leader turned to address the rest of those there.

“I shall see you all on the other side of this great war, when the Dead are victorious.” Then he, too, descended.

“Your opportunity to aid will come in time,” spoke the Herald to them, arms still outstretched, marveling at the glory of the dead army’s progression, “but for now you will bear witness to the inglourious onslaught that is to come, all in the name of our new and good Lord. Hail to the Rotting One! Let us all watch, now, as our long-deserved revenge comes crashing upon the Outer Demons of Order and we bring their putridity to heel.” With a raucous cry, the Herald clapped its hands together once more, and the whole of the spectators were transported yet again.

This time, though, their bodies were not manifested in this new place. It was as if their sight had been forcibly fixated through the lenses of another’s eyes who watched the proceeding events like a bird from above, disembodied and detached but still present to see and hear all that transpired. This new place was an alien one with some oddly familiar elements: a great expanse of raw and dry earth, with pieces of once-pristine white marble tile that formed spots and patches of flooring from which sprouted huge and towering trees. While these trees were partially dead just as in those of the prior vision, they were also not entirely made of wood in that stripes of silvery steel ran through them like the veins of a living being and some amount of marble petrification had occurred in places among their trunks and branches, leaving them white like the aged tiles beneath and even white like bone. From their branches, sprawled outward like clawing hands and arms, hung chains of silver, and from those chains hung the corpses of beings that none among the audience had ever seen anything akin to.

The beings’ shapes only bared the slightest resemblance to the kinds of living mortal creatures populating Aloria in that they had the vague suggestions of torsos, limbs and heads, but not an ounce of flesh nor bone nor the details of a recognizable visage were to be found anywhere on their surface. Instead, they were made of various colors of stone and metal, ranging between silver and white and black and blue, and each aspect of their bodies was composed in a perfectly symmetrical fashion: not a single part of them was uneven, each component of their selves unerringly sleek and smooth or angular. They varied in shape among themselves, too, with some having many arms and some having none, some having wings and some being headless. These beings were almost comparable in some ways to the Clockwork Golems of Binral in the way they seemed almost entirely mechanical in their makeup, though even those Golems were in some way fashioned to imitate the people controlling them. Golems, though, did not bleed like these did. The odd beings all hanging from their chains and hooks and swaying from the tree branches individually and ceaselessly dripped streams of viscous, mercurial silver liquid that puddled up in thick pools upon the earth and tile beneath them, never coagulating but remaining as neat and mathematically perfect circles instead. Despite their foreign physiology and nature, those watching could clearly discern that these things were, in fact, distinctly dead. Not a single one of them moved as they hung from the trees and leaked their lifeblood onto the ground below.

Their study of the beings was interrupted by the appearance of a great, ghostly green rift in the air, and from it stormed outward the endless legions of the Dead they had just witnessed descending into the darkness. The ghastly army marched onto the plains, assembling themselves into neat columns and ranks: those undead who had been soldiers finding orderly formations and creating impenetrable blocks, while the undying beasts roamed around the trees and wastes impatiently and the great monsters of Bintaar found their places in the midst or behind the soldiers. The Bone King and his own army emerged from their own rift and formed a flank alongside the main undead force, with his own self helming the vanguard alongside his most dedicated Geists, who were also known as the Tychiménean Knights. They were a notoriously terrifying group, six of the Bone King’s hand-picked elite dressed in ancient skeletal armor of black and green with lengths of Thyemic scripture written upon aged parchment adhered to it who all wielded their own phantom-possessed armaments. Seldom deployed onto the field of battle, what times they were seen in the thick of it had never resulted in failure on their part, so their presence here was indication enough of the gravity the crowned necromancer was treating this invasion with. The rest of the King’s ranks were filled out by varying bone-armored infantry, resurrected holy knights and Thyemic clerics who preached aloud from their weathered tomes to instill the Dead Emperor’s blessings upon them all.

The first of Bintaar’s great lords to emerge from the rift was the Hunter. It manifested itself as a towering creature, with the upper torso of a leather-and-furs garbed person and the lower half of a skeletal deer, wielding a large greatbow fashioned from the branch of a massive tree. The assembled armies turned to watch the Hunter in awe as it galloped through the many dead trunks scattering the plain, and all the undead beasts that had emerged from the rift followed it like some sort of packleader. So too did many other undead and spirits that wielded bows or rode upon mounts of their own, a cadre of them making their way toward the very middle of the plain where stood a tree distinctly larger than the rest of them. This colossal tree loomed over the others, and at its base a huge amount of the odd geometric beings hanging from the others’ branches were piled up and interwoven into its roots, as if the tree had been slowly absorbing them over a long time. There, the Hunter slowly lowered itself to its knees, bowing its hooded face in reverence to the tree and simply waiting.

Next to arrive was the Lantern, who came with a funeral procession of robed spirits all carrying guiding lights of their own. The Lantern appeared as a lengthy, hooded cloak of black like the night sky, with dead starlight inside of itself peeking out from the many tatters in its cloth. In each of its many lanky arms, a lamp filled with swirling ghost-light was held in a hand, extended in various directions to create an aura of phantasmal radiance around itself. The procession drifted through the macabre forest and took its own place right next to the Hunter and its own followers.

Third and final to come was the Malefica, arriving in a vaguely mortal silhouette. Rather than walking on two legs, it rode upon an ever-shifting sea of clawing arms and hands that held it aloft and let it surf along the ground effortlessly. A lengthy cloak woven from the very essence of captured Shades and souls dragged upon the earth behind it, and in each of its many arms was clutched a wicked-looking weapon. In one was a flail, the chain formed of many large sections of spine linked together, ending in the skull of some long-forgotten titan that had been outfitted with many spikes. In another was a scythe, the haft formed of a massive spinal column and the curved blade dripping with ectoplasmic venom. One grasped tightly onto a lengthy sword formed of many discarded, conquered weapons grafted together into a rough and crude blade and in its fourth and final hand a scepter was wielded, recognizable to all watching onward as the legendary Nafh'xhil, Clutch of the Everlasting. Following behind the Malefica was a train of Undead horrors of varying shapes and sizes, cruel experiments and creations of the being that had been cobbled together with the express purpose of perpetually serving the god of Undeath. The Lantern and Hunter-aligned watched the Malefica approach the central tree with disdain but respect nonetheless, where it stopped and faced the trunk as well.

Silence rang out over the vast, dead forest, and lingered that way for some time until one of the Entities began to speak. Harsh whispers and scraping metal, guttural screams and the rumblings of the incomprehensible dead below all assailed the ears of those listening as the Entities conversed with one another in their own primordial, incomprehensible form of Deathspeech. The Herald’s voice then rang out within their minds once more, speaking above the abrasive clamor.

“I will act as translator, since not a single one among you will be able to understand a word that the Dead Ones speak. They are convening now and discussing the battle ahead. The Malefica desires to bind the demons they will slay in order to bolster their ranks, but the Lantern has opposed the creation of more Undead as is its usual principle. The Hunter has reminded them both that these are Demons of an Exterior Plane, and as such it would be sacrilegious for the Malefica to use Bintaar’s precious essence on them, even for resurrection. The Malefica has now begrudgingly agreed with that sentiment though they will still use the cadavers of the Exist Demons strung up in the trees for their own purposes. Now they discuss the proper methodology of awakening their sleeping brethren within the tree, here.”

The Lantern lifted one arm, pointing the lamp in it toward the trunk of the tree in indication. The Malefica lifted its greatsword, too, and brought it down heavily against the fused wood-and-marble. It struck off harmlessly. The tree would not be split open, quite apparently, despite the best efforts of the gathered Dead Ones. The Malefica looked as if it would make another attempt before it was interrupted by a deafening sound billowing out from the space beyond the petrified forest: a rumbling, metallic sort of ripple that caused the entirety of the dead army to shudder in place as the soundwave it created pushed through them. The trio of Bintaar’s entities turned around to face the source of the tremendous noise, watching as a crest of blindingly silver light sparked itself out of the expanse and opened wide. A shower of similar crests, smaller than it, careened down to the ground in a shower of falling stars that all embedded themselves into the cracked wastes until there was a veritable sea of them as far as the eye could see. Then, one by one, they split open like eggs and from each emerged one of the odd beings that were strung up in the trees: strangely mechanical, mathematical and perfectly orderly each, they took a moment to fully unfold themselves from the luminous vessels they had arrived in. They quickly formed themselves into an innumerably large army that dwarfed even the horde that had come here from Bintaar, and they all stood motionless as if waiting for something to happen.

They did not have to wait for long, as the Malefica reached one of its hands out toward a nearby tree and plucked the body from its chain, crushing it within its grasp. Ghastly light spilled out from between its fingers as it re-shaped its corpse, turning it into a jagged spear suffused with pale green veins. It cocked its arm backward, and then hurled it forward like a javelin: the weapon soaring through the air and producing a distinct, bone-chilling screech as it screamed through the wind before it unceremoniously impaled a score of the Exist Demons and send others around it scattering to the side as it slid along the earth. Like clockwork, the army of them immediately began to advance. The strangely-mechanical beings marched in perfectly synchronized tandem with one another, advancing forward like a well-oiled machine and without pause at all. Their footsteps and the dust on the plain they kicked up caused a grimy cloud to drift along with them, though none of their pristine surfaces were soiled whatsoever: remaining slick and clean, devoid of any tarnish, even as a rain of spectral arrows began to volley down upon them. The archers in the gathered dead armies had begun loosing a storm from their bows, letting them cascade onto the approaching Demons and bring their front ranks dropping to the ground the moment they were within range. The phantasmal arrows pierced through the demons’ bodies, finding nooks and crannies to jam themselves into and spill their mercurial blood, but it did not stain them or the ground and instead slipped off seamlessly like water upon an oily surface. Even as they collapsed forward in scores, slain by well-placed shots, the lines of the Exist’s defenders behind them continued to advance and walk over the piling cadavers. The Hunter too, galloping forward upon its great skeletal legs, fired off massive arrow after arrow, each the size of a ballista bolt and carving through the advancing demons.

With the ranged assault continuing, the various spiritualists and necromancers among the Bintaar’s force began to supplant them by preparing their individual rituals and spells. The Bone King raised his sword once more, and with a booming roar in Deathspeech that his army echoed, they sallied forth. With the warrior-king at the helm, his legion charged across the dusty wasteland and head-on into the oncoming battalion of geometric demons. He and his Knights pierced through them in an angular formation, creating a gap in their ranks as their various weapons cleaved and crushed the bodies in their path. Silvery blood sprayed and splattered, wetting their armor and their boots as they stomped ceaselessly through the mire of demonic corpses they were creating with each passing moment. Watching the Bone King and his Geists fight in person was a truly terrifying sight to behold for the projected onlookers, and would have terrified the swarm of Demons too had they the capability of fearing at all. Instead, they swung their metallic claws and angular blades without abandon, bringing them to blows with the necrotic vanguard that was making short work of them. With the opening created, the rest of the Bone King’s legion soon followed suit right behind the triangular gap and spread outward from there, infantry raising their shields and spears and pushing back the incoming Demons. The lesser soldiers among his army were much lesser fighters, however, and were barely able to hold the much larger and much stronger demons at bay. Still, it was enough to sustain their king’s charge for the time being.

Bintaar’s horrors and monsters soon joined the fray, charging into the marching line without much regard for their own selves for they were creatures of death already and had no fear of dying there on the battlefield. A swarm of animals from all corners of Binral, phantasmal and skeletal and rotten alike, descended in droves and savagery ripped the Demons limb from limb. Decaying bears ripped their claws through their chests while great, skeletal elk gored them upon their horns, swinging their racks of piercing antlers to and fro while they charged about madly. A great, terrifying Thunderbird swooped down, raking talons through the ground and picking up multitudes of Demons in its clutches before bringing them skyward, only to drop them and watch them crash into their own ranks. A horrifying colossus with the hooves of some large bull, the torso of a powerful feline and the head of a many-fanged reptile savagely trampled and crushed some Demons while eviscerating and devouring others.

The remaining column of undead soldiers waited for their moment, and finally found it when the Malefica itself emerged from the petrified forest with all four of its titanic weapons at the ready. It looked out over the battlefield, drinking in the swath of death being carved out through the Exist’s forces, and then it joined in the slaughter: all four of its limbs swinging about as it drifted right through a section of the Demons’ army, sending waves of mercurial silver and gibbed body parts flying through the air. Each of its arms and its corresponding weapon moved on its own, as the god of Undeath itself became a whirling hurricane of carnage. Inspired by their lord’s presence, the last mass of undead charged through the swamp of Demon corpses left behind it, battling outward and cutting into their foes. This was signal enough for the ritualists to let their spells loose, and soon bolts of green essence were flying through the air and burning necrotic holes through the chests of the Demons they collided with. Elsewhere, a mass of skeletal arms ripped out of the earth, clawing at the ankles of their enemies and holding them in place just as the Bone King’s greatsword bisected them horizontally. Even the Lantern and its apostles supported the ranks, raising barriers and walls of ghostly light in order to trap pockets of Demons in the path of the meat grinder that the Malefica had become.

Even as the Exist’s Demonic host was slaughtered, the tides would not stay forever in the Dead Army’s favor. As soon as one swath of them were killed, another rain of silver stars would fall from that same entity of light, and almost the entirety of their ranks were completely restored by reinforcements. Their numbers were neverending, and even though Bintaar’s forces were mostly Undead they could not fight forever. The lesser soldiers among them began to tire or were slowly overwhelmed by the non stop flow of Demons colliding with them and slowly pushing them backward. The battle was one of attrition, surely, and the Dead were losing it inch by inch. They continued to fight on, regardless, as mounds of Demonic corpses were created like hills in the middle of the battlefield and the wastes were made into a marsh of bodies and blood. The Bone King eventually ordered a retreat, using the huge amount of space he and his Knights had created to back up and recuperate his legion while deciding how next to proceed into the neverending army standing before them. Even the bestial colossus eventually fell: so many Demons had swarmed its legs and grappled onto it that it was eventually weighed down and overtaken, ripped apart by the blade-arms of the orderly creatures of the Exist. The Army of the Dead had hit a brick wall, and they’d soon enough be on the back foot if they couldn’t change the course of the battle.

As if by perfectly arranged divine providence, another rift of necrotic magic tore itself open in the air: this time right on the flank of the Demonic army. First a huge bestial claw of black stone emerged, and then another, and finally a canine head adorned with golden ornamentation and a regal headdress. Attention moved to the new arrivals, and soon they made themselves apparent as the rest of what was behind the rift tore out of it and immediately charged into the side of the Demons’ column. It was a huge construct made of sleek, polished black stone, with four powerful legs and a lengthy armored bladed tail that swung to and fro, and the immaculately chiseled head of a snarling hound whose jaws snapped open and closed, tearing into nearby Demons without abandon. Yet another similar construct with that of a feline’s head emerged behind it, and then another, and another, until an entire cavalry of the things were soon charging through. Set atop each of their backs were wooden platforms and canopies from which Undead Asha archers and javelin-throwers assailed the Exist’s forces from above. The denizens of the Gardens of Baskarr had emerged from their walled paradise and come to join the slaughter, led by the glorious ghost of Imeshret the Night-Gazer himself. In Undeath, he had taken the form of a living sarcophagus of sorts: a vessel of sculpted stone and metal adornments, wielding a staff from which he conjured a hail of bone spikes to pierce the Demons below him, his very body coursing with raw Ordial essence.

The onset of Bintaar’s reinforcements was enough to prompt some change in the Exist’s strategy, it seemed, for the large white light that had previously been pumping out starfall after starfall of Demons began to quiver and shudder just like the shards it had been spawning. Its silhouette changed, limbs splitting off as it descended toward the ground and its blinding luminance dimmed. It took further shape and darkened, the rest of its light compounding itself into the core of the titanic Greater Demon it had become: a rhombus-shaped torso set atop two powerful legs, sporting a pair of arms that each held a blade of differing light. One was silver and shone like the moon, and the other was blue and raged with silently-crackling fire. A pair of delicate gossamer wings unfurled from its back, not unlike some sort of polygon-crafted butterfly, and it raised its cyclopian gaze unto the advancing Army of the Dead. A set of neat silver rings slowly spun and rotated around its head as if it were an astronomical instrument, serving as some sort of crown for the creature.

“It has come!” called out the Herald into the minds of all spectating the dizzying clash playing out before them. “Azhagmenos, the Preserver, has made itself seen! Guardian of What Is, Expeller of What Is Not, Magnanimous Blades of the Silver Eyes: the Exist’s greatest weapon is finally here! Watch, fellow servants of the Beyond, as our story reaches its great climax!”

Azhagmenos turned its stare to the Malefica, slowly lifting both of its swords. From its core, a blood-curdling screeching sound echoed across the battlefield: the noise of whatever incomprehensible existence that it and its lesser Demonic kin led, it staggered the minds and senses of the Undead there but spurred the Exist’s army into action. They shoved forward into their dead foes, fighting with renewed vigor and mechanical purpose, while their leader took to the sky with a few beats of its ethereal wings. It brandished its blades, and swooped downward, rocketing right toward the Malefica like a falling asteroid and colliding with the other towering being in similar fashion, causing a shockwave of raw force to ripple outward from the both of them and send Demon and Deathless alike off their feet. As the dust settled, the battle between the two colossal beings became all the more visible: Azhagmenos’ swords sliced relentlessly and cleanly, each blow perfectly timed and swung at its necrotic foe, who could only defend itself and deflect repeatedly as it was pushed backward. Great blue embers flew from one of its swords as it collided with the Malefica’s own blade, and light beamed outward from the other as it was repeatedly knocked aside by the scythe. It was winning, albeit quite slowly, just like the rest of its army had been. As powerful as the Malefica might be within its own realm, it was only as strong as the Undead it could amass, and such were of no use against something like a Greater Demon of the Exist, so it could do nothing but bide time while Azhagmenos’ weapons lashed outward over and over again. The god of Undeath could not hold out like that forever, though, and soon one of the Preserver’s swords sliced right through the Malefica’s flank. A torrent of pallid green light spilled out in the place of blood and the being staggered rightward, falling to the side and plunging its sword into the ground in order to keep itself upright. Azhagmenos raised one sword, perfectly aligning it with the Malefica’s helmed visage, and then it was struck squarely in the chest by a huge ghostly arrow.

The Hunter’s many skeletal legs galloped across the battlefield, stomping out lesser Demons below, all while loosing arrow after arrow from its greatbow, all aimed for the Exist’s Great Defender. Its body moved with impossible speed and precision, perfectly dodging all of the subsequent volley, but the one that had pierced its chest was enough to give it some pause and step backward from the fallen Malefica in order to recover for a moment. Its wings flapped once, twice, and then lifted it from the ground into the sky, where it hovered for some time until it set its sights on the Lantern, all the way at the back of the dead army. It raised its twin blades, crossing them together and mixing the magical properties of both: silver light infused itself with the blue flame, a ball of searing white energy growing at their crossed point before a destructive laser ripped out and began to tear through the battlefield. It sliced cleanly through a score of Undead, incinerating them on the spot and tearing up the crumbling earth along its path toward the Lantern. The Entity was ill-armed for battle, having arrived only with its guiding lamps, but it knew how to defend itself: pale green light billowed out from each lamp, forming a wobbling shield of glass that stopped the laser upon contact. The conjured barrier shuddered from the sheer force of Azhagmenos’ attack, but held strong for the moment: and the moment was all they needed. Another of the Hunter’s arrows struck the Greater Demon squarely in the flank, interrupting its spell and forcing another unearthly scraping screech from its core. It made an uncharacteristically disorderly move, and suddenly swooped downward, slicing its blades through more dead soldiers along its path toward the Lantern. Trails of silver blood and starlit droplets rained through the air in its wake while the Demon careened right for its quarry. It would never reach its target, though.

Just before it would have made impact, the ground in front of the Lantern erupted with spectral light and revealed an intricate pattern of Deathspeech runes that had been etched into the earth. All while the battle had been raging on, the Lantern and its apostles had conducted a ritual to create a binding trap meant for Azhagmenos itself, and the trap had been sprung: ghostly chains shot out of the intersecting corners of the runic pattern, leashing the winged being and tethering it to the ground helplessly. It thrashed and struggled in futility while the Ordial bindings secured it in place, and the Lantern carefully drifted out of its reach.

“The Great Dead Ones’ plan comes to fruition!” cheered the Herald within the audience’s minds. “This assault, the battle on foot– all theatrics, intended to draw out the real target: the Preserver itself! Never could we wage such a war upon a plane itself from within its own boundaries. Never could we wage such a war without the proper tools, at least!”

The Greater Demon continued to struggle and screech, as the perfectly-crafted creature expressed some degree of apparent panic at its trapped state. Even then, the lesser Demons still battled onward, but had lost their rallying leader and were being slowly pushed back by the dead army. Soon enough, the Hunter had trotted over to stand near the Demon with its bow at the ready and the wounded Malefica had come, leaned still upon its staff and scythe, a hand clutched to keep its open tear closed up. The three Entities looked to one another, and then collectively to the great tree at the heart of the petrified forest. The binding runes flickered, and ghostly light beamed outward from the center rune, impaling Azhagmenos upon it and causing it to thrash around wildly in apparent agony. The ground shuddered: many eyes from the dead army peeled away from the raging battle and turned back toward the sparse wood, to watch as the massive tree’s roots began to shift and move, burrowing through the ground like serpentine worms and twining with one another to form a pair of knotted arms. They reached out, groping blindly at the chained Demon, until they encapsulated what would have been Azhagmenos’ head. The root-fingers sank deep into its neck, causing silvery blood to bubble and spray, and then without any further ado they tore its head clean off of its body. It collapsed limply as mercurial blood gushed out like a waterfall, the magical light in its blades dying as their owner did, and its head was discarded without any care. One of the root-hands writhed and embedded itself within the crevice left at its neck, burrowing deep and spreading throughout the Greater Demon’s cadaver, all while the lengths of root pulsated and drank deeply of its lifeblood. Soon, what remained of Azhagmenos was dragged across the dust and inward toward the tree, until it was swallowed up by the mass of roots at the bottom and devoured with the rest of the Demons’ corpses that had been there prior. The earth shuddered once more, and then the great tree tore itself from the ground.

Bark and marble split apart while branches and roots grew and tangled with one another, forming new shapes out of the dead matter. Huge arms, bolstered by segments of stone and wood and Demonic cadaver, reached out and into the battlefield to scoop up the piles of corpses left behind by the slaughter, scooping them into the gaping chest cavity that the transforming tree-thing had formed in its center. Huge shards of bone and branch formed giant ribs that enclosed the prison of Demon flesh within itself, the silvery blood dripping down itself but being thirstily swallowed by the plantlike veins of the colossal horror. Legs formed, starting in a kneeling position but pushing upward, the ground trembling as the newly-made titan finally found its way to its feet, and all could do nothing but stare up at it in awe. Four silvery, moth-like wings unfurled from its back while the tendons and musculature it had formed from wood and repurposed Demon-flesh pulsated and flexed. No head sat atop its shoulders, with a gaping maw of bone shards and jutting roots instead having formed in the middle of its torso, still gushing with waterfalls of viscous mercurial Exist blood. The colossus stood there, looking over the retreating forces of Exist Demons, who backed away quickly from the battlefield in droves and retreated into rapidly-manifesting rifts of light until not a living Demon was left. Bintaar’s rulers looked up at the creature that had been born of their bloodshed, and so did the Bone King, and so did Imeshret. The Herald called once more into the minds of those witnessing it all through their visions:

“Hail to Cariel, the Blighted One! The Lord of Inevitable Decay, the God of Eternal Rot, and the very first Greater Demon of Deathly Existence! Upon its back shall we lay waste to What Is, and remind them of the Death that comes for each and all.”

The vision went dark, then, and each and every Mage and spiritualist who had been witness to it awoke in a sweat. Sandaki and the other Songaskians were quick to warn those in the Masaya who would listen, and word soon spread outward and reached those who believed in the Beyond:

The Law of Mirrors had come to pass, and Death’s crusade upon the Exist had only just begun.