The darkness swirled and writhed in chaotic movements.

  Those unfortunates trapped in the cavernous hall could see very little in the shadowy darkness of the center of the hall. The light shining on their own sufferings, like little vignettes scattered randomly through the room, highlighting some form of degradation, torture, or death, also prevented them from seeing into the darkened areas of the great hall. They could see each other well enough, but to find that they were not alone in their tribulation was not meant to be a source of comfort. It only increased their anguish as they all contemplated their utter powerlessness to escape the atrocities that were being performed on them. Cries of pain, terror, and despair echoed throughout the hall day and night.

  Those who were unfortunate enough to be featured in the lights couldn’t actually see the writhing mass of shadow, but they could feel its menacing, terrifying aura. It smelled of pitch. They knew it was an Evil they were completely powerless against, which made their despair even more keen. Almost every one of them longed for the release of death. It would be far too long in coming.

  The Evil there considered its situation and smiled grimly to itself. It gazed at the quickly gyrating magical artifact hovering close by. As the relic slowly absorbed magical energies from the two beings trapped in the darkness close to it, the artifact spun faster, and now, after years of absorption, it spun so fast that it was difficult to see it clearly. The time was coming to utilize its energies again, and at long last the Evil’s patience would be rewarded.

  The Evil had waited hundreds of years for this particular work to be completed. It had labored with secret cunning at first, then openly, in complete command of those who thought to use it for their own ends. Siphoning power from the spinning relic over the course of long years, it had even changed the makeup of its own body in order to use the magical forces of this world, and to bend those forces in its own corruptive ways, unknown to those who were warped by it. The Evil couldn’t feel the chaotic energies of its original plane of existence anymore, and it didn’t consider that to be troublesome at all. It had traded that diabolically spiritual power to gain mastery over the forces that made up this world. After all, it could summon magic to fulfill its every carnal desire, so nothing had been lost except the possibility of being banished back to its original home plane of existence. The Evil was sure that those still imprisoned in the burning hells would trade anything to be in its place. This world was a playground for one such as it, and the city around it reflected its character.

  The millennia of the Evil’s existence had ebbs and flows in the misery it caused others, and a time of great boredom was coming to an end. The Evil licked its lips in anticipation of ruling this world in a vision as dark as its own heart. Finally, things would soon get interesting. There were just a few things that it still needed before it could make its vision a reality. It adopted a shape its minions knew well, drew its visible aura back into itself, then let the light increase around its throne. It beckoned to a servant.

  “Bring me Raynold and Bermin.”

  The servant knew better than to speak. He simply turned and ran through one of the great hall’s many exits. Several minutes went by before the door opened again, and three men hurried through it and jogged across the expansive room to fall face down on the stone floor before the throne. The Evil knew the effect that it had on its lessers, and it paused for some time to let its servants absorb the full impact of its infernal majesty. King Karnas sat on a massive golden throne that had a light now shining on it from above that made the glittering gold of the throne reflect light everywhere but directly on him. The king was wearing black plate armor in a full suit except for the helm. Its minions could see its short black beard, backswept black hair that was held in place by a crown of dark metal that had ivory talons spaced evenly around the perimeter. The king’s eyes glowed red with power and the menace of the aura it projected penetrated every inch of the great hall.

  “Raynold. My favored servant,” the king said darkly. “You may stand.”

  Shakily, Raynold got to his knees, then to his feet. He was a small, thin young man with black hair and a thin face. He was obviously no warrior, and in his dark robes he looked every bit a scholar. Knowing that the king had not given him permission to speak, he did not give thanks for this show of favor, but stood with his head bowed, looking at the floor before the throne as he knew was proper.

  King Karnas was pleased. “How goes your research into the Codex of Death?”

  “Very well, your royal majesty,” Raynold said in his small voice. “I have mastered nearly all of its secrets.”

  “Good. Have you learned to create a necromantic focus, by chance?” the king asked.

  During the centuries of the Evil’s reign here in Fellton, it had learned how to influence its minions. In fact, it had honed its powers to such a degree that it could influence the people in its presence to do its bidding without their ever knowing how much they’d been controlled. The most effective ways of doing this involved finding people whose goals were very similar to its own goals and giving them small mental nudges towards the end the Evil wanted. In this way it was possible to guide a person to their own destruction with a smile on their face. The Evil used this power subtly now.

  “Yes, your royal majesty, though I have not yet tried to work such a grand magic.”

  King Karnas’ attention shifted briefly. From the far corner of the room, a flicker of shadow moved and the tortured soul within a column of light screamed as if set on fire. The scream lasted for several minutes while Raynold stood as still as his shaking limbs would allow. He sweated with nervousness because he not only knew that he could end up in one of those sadistic vignettes, but because he had a very good idea of the true nature of King Karnas. The thought of the king’s displeasure nearly made Raynold lose control of his bladder. From his prostrate position on the floor, Bermin whimpered slightly.

  Finally, the scream trailed off. “But you know you are able to perform it, should I require it of you, do you not?” King Karnas asked softly. He gave Raynold another mental nudge.

  “I… I can, y-your royal majesty,” Raynold said. He clamped his mouth shut to keep his teeth from chattering.

  “Good! Very good, Raynold!” King Karnas boomed out, smiling. “You have read about the focus that Ithion, son of Mordon, constructed more than a thousand years ago, then?”

  Raynold nodded. He knew that Ithion’s focus had been a very difficult thing to create, and that it required a great sacrifice.

  “I have something better in mind,” King Karnas said. “Grander. Mobile. Something that will make this world tremble before it dies,” he said as he looked over to one of the two darkened spheres behind his throne. He laughed cruelly. “What do you need to create such a thing?” Another nudge.

  Knowing that he didn’t yet have the personal power or the connection to the energies of death, Raynold thought fast. “First, I would need Ithion’s staff, or something like it. It was a powerful tool for shaping necromantic energies.”

  “Ithion died after his feud with Charles Golemgear, whom you would know as the Pirate King, nearly a thousand years ago, shortly after creating the necromantic focus he cursed his enemy with.” The king said. “No word of his staff has reached my ears in all that time.” King Karnas was silent for several minutes as he thought about it.

  “Perhaps we can ask him where it is,” Raynold boldly suggested.

  King Karnas glowered at Raynold. “Why did you not suggest this course of action several minutes ago?”

  “I did not have permission to speak, your royal majesty.” Raynold was busily thinking about the task with his eyes on the ground and was completely oblivious to the danger he was now in. Shadows in the room took on a life of their own, and the king looked like he would explode in rage, but he reined himself in with difficulty.

  “Whenever you have insight of a necromantic nature that I should hear, you have my permission to speak even if I do not ask,” the king said. “Of all my servants, only you are blessed in this regard, Raynold.”

  Raynold bowed low. “I can perform this for you now if you command it, my lord.”

  King Karnas glanced at the dark spheres behind him and said, “I would very much like to see you perform this magic.”

  Raynold bowed low again, then took a small pouch off of his belt. Opening it carefully, he spoke in a whispery, hollow voice words that sounded like they came from beyond the grave. The contents of the pouch, a fine white dust, floated out and into the air in a thin stream, then landed on the floor in a very precise circle three feet in diameter a few paces away from him. Raynold closed the pouch and put it back on his belt. He spoke again, chanting a fell summoning spell in that same dead, whispery voice. The circle of white dust began burning with a green flame, and still Raynold chanted. A pinpoint of green light appeared, floating within the circle at around waist height. It grew until it became a softly undulating wisp of vapor about a cubic foot in size.

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  An unearthly moan sounded from the wisp. “Why have you summoned me?” it said in a hauntingly sorrowful tone that sounded like it came up from a deep well.

  “I wish to know about your death, Ithion. When you died, did you have your staff with you?”

  “No,” the spirit of Ithion said. The power of this summoning spell compelled his truthful obedience.

  “And where is your staff now?” Raynold asked.

  “I don’t know. I gave it to an apprentice who died carrying out my vengeance on Charles Golemgear. It’s near the Pirate King’s lair.”

  “Where exactly is the Pirate King’s lair?”

  “It is in the Sunset Isles, in a subterranean complex beneath the ruins of his villa on the east side of the westernmost island.”

  “There we have it,” King Karnas said with a calculating smile. “Raynold, ask him how he likes his current conditions in the afterlife.”

  Dutifully, Raynold asked, “How do you like your current conditions in the afterlife, Ithion?”

  “I am burning in the hells! It is horrible beyond description! Get me out, and I’ll serve you!” Ithion screamed out.

  King Karnas laughed loud and long, then made a dismissive flick of its wrist. Ithion screamed in frustration and anguish. Raynold dismissed the spirit with the whispery voice of death itself.

  “Burning in the hells!” King Karnas turned and shouted at the two spheres of darkness behind its throne. “How delicious!” It laughed again, but there was nothing funny about the way it did it. It was the scariest laugh Raynold had ever heard, something born of insanity and a deep, dark hatred.

  When the king had calmed itself, it made a beckoning gesture to one of the vignettes of light close by. The circle of stone floated an inch off the ground and positioned itself before the throne to the side of where Bermin and the servant of the king still cowered, prostrate on the floor. The circle of stone had two metal poles on it. On one was a man who was flayed alive and hung from a hook through his hands with his feet barely able to touch the blood-covered stone beneath him. On the other pole was a series of wires supporting the poor man’s skin. It had been taken off patch by little patch, then stitched together again on the wire supports like an obscene, man-shaped quilt. Raynold could see that the skin was still flush with life somehow, as was the man, though he should have been dead of shock a long time ago.

  “Hello, Kromwell,” King Karnas said.

  The poor, tortured soul had nothing left to give and hung there completely limp. Raynold flinched back when he saw what had become of his childhood friend. Bermin whimpered once and pressed his forehead against the stone floor.

  “Do you feel that you’ve suffered long enough?” King Karnas asked mildly. There was no response from Kromwell. “Are you ready to serve once again?”

  The barest whisper came from the man’s bloody lips. “Please.”

  “You know what awaits you at my displeasure now?” King Karnas said softly from its throne.

  Kromwell nodded his bloody skull a fraction of an inch, the exposed bone of his skull gleaming dully in the light.

  King Karnas nodded. “I’ll bet you do. Once you’ve recovered enough, say, by the end of the week, you will accompany your friends on their quest to get the things Raynold needs to make my new necromantic focus.” The king fixed a glare on the nameless servant. “Fetch the Sage and have her bring the items.” The servant got up with haste and ran toward a particular door as fast as he could.

  “I want you all to know how seriously I take this new assignment. It is the culmination of many years of planning, and I will not accept any sort of failure in this venture, or the consequences to each of you will be… most… severe. Do you understand me?” King Karnas put considerable power behind its words, guiding the will of each of its subjects. Its minions would complete their task or die trying.

  All three young men nodded their heads. The Evil that was King Karnas was never satisfied with a spoken threat when a grandiose gesture could do so much more. It took control of the shadows in the grand hall and gave them material substance. The three young men saw the shadows move but tried not to look. When the first screams rang out, all three men stared straight down at the floor, refusing to look around them. The Evil then created a terrible symphony of screams with different combinations of the suffering souls trapped here, and to Kromwell, Bermin, and Raynold, it seemed to last forever. It was another subtle magic the Evil employed.

  Finally, a cloaked woman seemed to materialize from a cloud of darkness, so quickly did she arrive on the dark cloud of her magic. She was robed and cloaked all in black, only her fair hands visible as she glided to a stop, already prone on the stone floor. In one outstretched hand she held three golden signet rings. King Karnas allowed the shadows to fade back whence they came and waited for the symphony of suffering to die before continuing.

  “I think it very likely that my rival kings will be magically looking for you since your spectacular failure in your attempt to take Stonekeep, Kromwell. My servant will give you each a trinket that will keep your movements undetectable by magical scrying.” He paused. “You will wear those rings at all times with no exceptions.” Another mental nudge.

  The three men nodded once again as a golden ring with the royal seal of Fellton flew telekinetically to each of them.

  “Bermin, you have proven to be a very capable smuggler. You will make sure that Kromwell and Raynold have what they need and get where they need to go.”

  Bermin pressed his forehead to the floor to signal his subservience.

  “Go west, through the lands of the ogres to their capital, Grunbar,” King Karnas ordered. “Kromwell, your task will be to rally the ogres and their goblin minions to war.”

  Kromwell knew how likely it was that the ogres would obey his commands again. The defeat at Stonekeep provoked such a feeling of fear in the ogres and goblins that had survived that it had become a racial memory. He sighed and dipped his head slightly more. The king noticed. He removed a golden scrollcase from the right side of the throne, just under the armrest and held it up to the light. It was decorated with a ring of rubies at each end. After showing them the object for a long moment, he set the scrollcase back in its nook. It was not lost on anyone present how important that scrollcase must be for it to have its own place carved out of the golden throne.

  “This will get you through the lands of the ogres unharmed. It is the contract that binds all ogres to my will. Though you humans have forgotten what this is, if you ever knew in the first place, I assure you the ogres have not. No ogre or goblin will be able to harm your party while you possess it. Chieftain Garog, though initially unenthusiastic about my demand, will reconsider when you tell him that I will nullify the power of this contract forever for one last service. But he must rally every single male, female and child of the ogre and goblin races, and march them here. Only then will they be released of my hold over them and be free to do as they please. In fact, I plan to help them take over the world, and you should tell them I said that. I believe their reluctance will disappear when they hear it.”

  Kromwell nodded once. No ogre would be able to resist that lure.

  “The ogres should have at least a few ships left,” King Karnas said. “You will arrange for one war galley to take you to the Sunset Isles so you can gain Ithion’s staff, then you will return here with haste.” He paused. “Any questions or concerns?”

  Raynold cleared his throat with a very small noise. King Karnas fixed his gaze upon him. “Yes, Raynold?”

  “There are two other things that I will need to create your focus, your majesty,” Raynold said.

  “And what might those other things be?” King Karnas growled out.

  “The first is a load of obsidian. I think we can acquire that on Kraken’s Rock if we take a detour on our way back,” Raynold said.

  “Of course. The second thing?” King Karnas asked.

  “A dragon’s corpse,” Raynold said.

  “Ah. You’re going to use that as the focus, aren’t you?” the king guessed.

  “Part of it, yes, your royal majesty,” Raynold said.

  “I knew there was a reason I liked you,” the king said mildly. He then smiled widely. “You’re always thinking a step ahead.” He considered briefly. “There was a mighty dragon named Rumbloroth that was felled in the last days of the Crix War near the battlefields surrounding Grim Hold.”

  “How will we find its resting place, your royal majesty?” Raynold asked.

  “Devastating magic was used in that battle, and I doubt that anything from this world would be able to grow there even to this day. If you find a barren patch of ground within sight of the walls, you’re in the right place.”

  King Karnas gestured to another servant, an obese man who dashed forward and awkwardly prostrated himself next to the Sage. “Make sure Raynold has enough gold to purchase provisions for a journey several months long and then procure a load of obsidian from the slavers at Kraken’s Rock,” the king said to the servant. As the servant began to rise, King Karnas held his hand up in a halting motion. The servant paused with one knee on the floor, still breathing heavily from his exertions. “I sense you have something else you wish to ask of me, Raynold. What is it?”

  “Well, since you mentioned it, your majesty,” Raynold began, “I will need two baskets of death cap mushrooms, a basket of grave moss, a bucket of black ooze from your dungeons that has never been touched by the sun, two dozen death lily blooms, a goblet made of obsidian, and thirteen armored knights who are all happily married,” Raynold quickly listed.

  “Is that all? And you knew all that off the top of your head?” King Karnas growled, suddenly looking dangerous again.

  Raynold knew right away that the king was suspicious of his knowledge. The king was probably thinking that Raynold was already planning something, and that didn’t bode well for Raynold’s continued good health. Raynold prostrated himself without having to be told.

  “Y-yes, your majesty,” Raynold stammered. “I read the requirements only last night, so they’re very fresh in my memory. I promise that you’ll be impressed with what I do with those things.”

  “Very well. My interest is piqued,” King Karnas said, leaning back in its throne. It addressed the pudgy servant. “Get him all that he requires.”

  The servant quickly got back to his feet and ran off.

  “I think we’re done here,” King Karnas said pleasantly. “You are all dismissed.”

  Kromwell turned his head enough to see his skin hanging a few feet away and moaned. At this, King Karnas motioned with its hand, and a tendril of darkness sprang up from the floor and lifted Kromwell off the hook, then dropped him to the bloody stone floor, where the exposed bones of his elbows and knees made clacking noises as they made contact with the cold stone. The king then summoned a tiny sphere of chaotic, demonic magic in the air before him and flicked it into Kromwell’s prostrate form. Kromwell began to breathe more strongly, then slowly and painfully got to his feet. He used the tiny amount of energy granted to heal himself and began the process of putting his skin back on. The healing magic wasn’t nearly enough. King Karnas watched every painful moment of Kromwell’s struggle with a cruel smile on its lips.