Theurgy: Forsaken Oaths (Book Two)

Chapter 53 Dragon's Seige

    Thanatos crashed into a lake. He had not been flying long before he began to lose altitude. His wings continued to degrade along with the rest of his body, rotten black feathering littering the path he took through the sky. He felt so weak and tired. Soon, his wings became entirely useless as he plummeted from the sky into the lake in a tremendous explosion of water. The calm and clear waters were disturbed by his presence as its surface engulfed him. The lake soon became still once more. But things began to pop up on the surface, one after the other. Dead fish, their carcasses surfacing and covering the lake in their rapidly decomposing bodies. The once clear lake became increasingly murky, turning sickly grey and green, infected by the caustic powers that were dead. Dulmont climbed out on his hands and knees onto the soggy shores, losing his war scythe from the fall. His once pristine white cloak was now infected with the sickness he had inflicted upon the lake. He took in breaths, though he knew he didn't need to breathe. He couldn't feel his chest rise, nor his heart beat within his chest. He looked at his reflection in the murky waters, the distorted visage of what he now looked like. His skin was pulled tight along his skull, making his angular figure almost inhuman. His eyes were sunken and black, his hair losing all pigmentation and turning silver-white. And the black raven winges were reduced to pale bones jutting from his shoulder blades, no longer used as they continued to turn foul. And over his shoulder, he could see the visage of Thanatos looking down at him.

    "Look away from me!" he shouted as he cowered away from his tormentor, shoving his hands over his face.

     "What a pitiful sight you are," Remmus whispered, looking down at the cowering ball that was once a god. "The spirit is tearing you apart inside out. You don't have a long young man."

   "Please," Dulmont sobbed. "Stop the voices. Take them away. Please take them away."

   Remmus sighed, taking out his tome and flipping through the pages. "I would say that death would be a mercy, but going to his domain will undoubtedly render your soul to oblivion. Rest, poor soul."

   Before he could cast the appropriate spell, a blade engulfed in psychic energy rushed past his head and embedded itself into his chest of Thanatos. Remmus quickly turned to see Novia descending from the skies, her other psionic blades hovering behind her, eyes ablaze with the same mystical energy. Thanatos let out one final gasp of air before collapsing into the lake, his body continuing to decay. 

   "A bit uncalled for, Paladin," he said.

    "Didn't mean to steal the glory of the kill, but my blades work faster than your spells, Grandmaster," she told him. 

    "Well," he looked back at the body. "Sometimes patience is a virtue."

     From the corpse, a black and purple haze rose from his facial orifices into the air, merging into the vague figure of a man wearing black robes and black raven wings on his back. He looked down upon the pair with a disinterested gaze, seeming to even look past Remmus. He ascended slowly into the heavens, the bright sun of the day consuming the hazy image. Thanatos' ascension back to the realm of the gods, Remmus realized, back to his proper domain. But before it could make it far, blood-red chains suddenly materialized around his arms, neck, and legs. His wings disappeared, and an expectant look flushed his face before he began to pull rapidly away, due east, leaving behind a blast of necrotic energy in all directions.

    "What was that?" Novia asked, staring in the direction the spirit was ushered off to.

    "Talin," he said. "That is how they anchor the gods to these mortal realms. In time, a new host will be brought forth to become Thanatos once more."

    "That's troublesome," she said. "And I assume your spell would hinder such things from happening?"

     "It's not my spell," Remmus said. "One passed through the members of Theurgy to more permanently deal with these gods and reduce their arsenal when we can. Though don't feel too bad. With how disastrous this has gone for them, no doubt they may consider more carefully to whom they hand the spirit of a death god. Come now, Paladin, the child, is not far. Let us return to the Wild Halls with the wonderful news, shall we?"