—Luneil—

The gods were gone.

They had been gone so long, yet the thought still sent a shiver of despair down his spine.

Nowadays, there was only Tyl, the Goddess.

The despairing chill was banished immediately by a conflagration of rage.

That bitch. She was the cause of all this. She had betrayed them.

The gods were gone. Tyl was to blame.

It had been millenia. When he had begun his arduous crawl towards ever greater heights of power, his current resolution would have been unthinkable. However, the freeze-thaw cycle of anger and despair had broken him. Shattered him into a broken mirror of a man.

His principles and scruples had not saved the gods. He would not rely on moral posturing to avenge them. Not when their betrayer ruled from Heaven's highest seat. Not when their betrayer ruled a sky of empty thrones.

So what if he undid their work? Unpicked each thread of the Veil that they had so lovingly woven.

It mattered little. They were gone. Gone!

The gods who had lifted him and his people up, elevated the Mani-elva to the highest of the elven races until their might rivaled the gods. And the Exiles.

The Exiles were gone too, hence their name, the final gift from a toppled pantheon. Once upon an aeon, Luneil would have been relieved by such knowledge. But all he felt was grief and fire. The gods were gone and he would do anything to bring those gentle deities back.

It was not possible, alas. He had searched his people's hidden libraries, long ago fallen to dust and disuse. He had found nothing there. Not even a recipe for bread. Every shelf had been scoured clean by Tyl's paladins and Pardoners.

Luneil spat. Pardoner scum.

He would send them all into the Abyss soon enough. Them and their whore Goddess.

And to do that, he had to break the Veil—a great barrier between the universes that had been designed for a single purpose: To keep the Exiles out.

Luneil stroked the pointed tips of his ears, admiring the ritual circle he had created, now laid out before him. It was a work of art and the arcane; the most perfect spell pattern he had ever created.

Runes spiraled around hundreds of the most flawless Arcane Foci in existence, each diamond, gem, and jewel wrapped in a nest of the purest Demon Silver runes. The Foci would help form the spell, each Arcane Focus converting mana into a distinct useable mana subtype—such as air, fire, or death, and also rarer subtypes such as gravity—creating the perfect combination of mana types that would drive the spell pattern. Although, this would only happen at the last moment. Mana subtypes were unstable and typically lasted for a brief period of time, before deteriorating into depleted mana—a disruptive and detrimental byproduct of the subtypes’ use.

The ritual circle’s sole purpose was a brute force attack on the Veil, creating a small tear in the fabric of the magical barrier. Such a rent would allow the descendants of the Exiles to return to the world of Era, whereupon they would once again accumulate enough power to rival even a deity—Luneil had a very specific Goddess in mind. Only a few would return at first, however, over time the flow of souls passing through the rift would erode the Veil away to nothing but fragments of mana and Lifeforce, allowing the Exiles' descendants to return home to Era.

Most would die at the hands of foolish farmers. Luneil shrugged, it was a fact of life. Only the strong survive. The statement was doubly true, accumulating enough Lifeforce would halt the aging process.

A light breeze from a nearby window carried the sound of marching feet to him. Outside, an endless stream of torches lit the darkness, winding their way towards his isolated tower. An army of paladins and Pardoners had finally mustered up the courage to come for his head. It was kind of flattering actually, that they would waste an army on him, when a modestly sized brigade would do the trick—give or take a thousand.

He watched for a few minutes more, sighing. So this was it. He had hoped they would have taken longer to find him. It was no great matter. He would just have to imagine Tyl's look of horror as she finally joined the ones she had betrayed.

Luneil reached into his dimensional bag for the most important part of the spell: the power source.

Charging it had been the work of countless centuries, but that meant little to one such as him. He was a Rank IX Warder Variant, perhaps the only one of his kind. After all, warding was an art unto itself. Caster Variants of the crystalline mana form would simply create ephemeral spell patterns out of mana and release them. Warders made their magic to last, creating wards—complex magical traps and formations out of mana and its subtypes. They were constructed in such a way as to actively prevent the catastrophic deterioration of the subtypes into depleted mana until after they had been triggered. Learning how to do so took dedication and numerous lifetimes, even for simple spells. Not that age was an issue to any mana user sufficiently advanced in Rank. And achieving the prerequisite amount of personal Lifeforce to reach a higher Rank was childsplay to any necromancer worth their salt.

He withdrew the power source from his bag, feeling a twinge of regret as he stared at it. It was hard not to, considering how many innocents had died to fill the ancient Dungeon Core with power.

Luneil shook his head. He would do it all again. He would slaughter all of Era, just to hear Tyl scream.

He had taken up necromancy for that very reason. Sure, it helped in charging the Core and gaining Lifeforce. However, his true motive was that it pissed off Tyl.

A small distortion in the air flitted past him, barely visible even to his excellent vision. He sent a small bolt of mana at it, to shoo it away. This was not the time for the Sylph to harass him. In truth, he felt bad for the small creature. They were normally shy creatures but this one had seemed rather attached to the Dungeon Core, going so far as to interpose itself between him and the crystal when he had first acquired it. Selgard's oldest dungeon had ended that day and the growing kingdom had followed in the dungeon’s footsteps soon after. Such was the way of things in a culture that prioritized power over almost everything else. Weakness could kill as surely as a blade in the back, only the dying was greatly prolonged and far more painful. He had caused the deaths of many such weaklings. He thought about them from time to time.

The ghosts of his past had haunted him for so long, all he had seen, all he had done. Still, the only ghost that ever truly remained was the Sylph. Always nearby. Hovering. Watching. Waiting. Waiting for what? He didn't know, but ever since he had claimed the Dungeon Core, the Sylph had followed him incessantly. Maybe it was in love?

Heh. Luneil was secretly quite fond of the reclusive creature, but now was not the time for indulgence. He could feel the sins burdening his shoulders like the weight of a nightmare sky.

He’d borne the price of those sins for far too long, this was his moment of vindication.

The gods were gone. Soon, the Goddess would be as well.

Carefully making his way through the ritual circle, Luneil placed the charged Core at its center.

He pushed a small amount of mana into one of the many rune-encircled Arcane Foci, giving it the burst of power needed to activate the spell and begin siphoning mana from the Dungeon Core—the siphoned mana now used to power the removal of yet more mana.

Luneil stepped back as the ritual circle lit up with the combined power of mana from over two hundred thousand souls, the population of a capital city. It made him feel slightly sick. Even using necromancy to increase the power taken from his victims, it had taken centuries to charge the damn thing. He shuddered to think how long it would have taken to charge it relying only on his mana capacity and recovery.

His enhanced hearing detected heavy footsteps near the door, metal plated boots pounding against stone.

He needed more time. He would give anything for more time. Anything except his revenge.

Luneil delved inwards, alternating the structures and patterns of the condensed points of crystalline mana within his hands, letting them act as Arcane Foci, creating various mana subtypes for him to use. He quickly strengthened the magical wards around the door, using several mana subtypes to achieve maximum efficiency.

Time. Time. Time. The spell had to be completed, no matter the cost. He just needed time.

Luneil adjusted another ward. Then, he changed the crystalline mana in his hand to resemble a fire specific Arcane Focus and fired a wild burst of fire mana through the door, leaving a scorched hole behind. It was one of the drawbacks of being a Warder, unlike a Caster Variant, he couldn’t create complex spellbolts. It didn’t matter, he had his tricks.

The ward he had adjusted detached in the wake of the fire mana burst, settling over the intruder like a shroud. The ward held the fire mana close to his body, forcing the flame inwards, not letting the man escape a single ember. Luneil smiled at the sight, remembering the first time he had learned that wards could be used offensively. They were just like runes, all you needed was the right pattern. He tried to see how his victim was faring.

The warrior was hard to kill, at least a Rank VII of the liquid mana form, likely a Brawler Variant, a specialization which gave him remarkable resilience and healing, even with rampant fire mana both burning and boiling him alive. His high Rank was probably why he got here so fast. Luneil suspected the warrior was one of his country’s greatest heroes, foolishly running ahead to try and garner all the glory. Instead, he got a face full of fire.

From the way the screaming had degenerated into a wet gurgling it must have been pretty painful, Luneil fired a few deathbolts to finish him off, quietly thanking the dead gods that he had chosen to practice a form of mana that specialized in magic. The battle junkies had it tough.

He turned back to the ritual circle. The spell seemed to be progressing as expected. The Dungeon Core was nearing empty, its contents flowing down the lines of the ritual circle and gathering in the hundreds of Arcane Foci. He directed some Lifeforce and mana towards the Core, giving it a little boost. He had gone over the calculations a hundred times, but it was always worth erring on the side of caution. Not that it really mattered, the small amount he gave it was a fraction of a drop compared to the seas of mana and Lifeforce it had once contained.

Still, it was reassuring. Unlike the pounding of armored boots approaching from outside his tower. That, and the sound of bells, small chiming bells. Hooked onto armor, belts and weaponry, anywhere they would fit.

Those bells meant one thing... Two actually. One, the Pardoners had finally arrived; and, two, he was royally fucked. Every child was taught to fear those bells. Luneil was no longer a child, and he could take on five hundred Pardoners any day of the week, but some things never left. The irrational fears of darkness and of goblins hiding underneath your bed faded with age and maturity. But those bells... Luneil would happily swear that those bells could vex an Elder Demon to nightmare. He got back to work.

There were so many Pardoners, far more than five hundred. The sinister chiming echoed through the corridors, gently insinuating its way into his thoughts and dredging out his primal fears.

Time. More time.

Luneil was loath to leave the spell unattended, but circumstances usurped caution and he found himself striding through his scorched door, temporarily deactivating wards wherever he went in order to avoid getting mired in them while retreating.

Finding a prime stretch of unwarded corridor in the Pardoners' path, he laid out a complex series of wards upon the floor. Filling them with death mana, he reclined against the wall and waited for the Goddess' servants to arrive.

They should be here any second now. Those damned bells were so close.

The first Pardoner turned a corner, continuing forwards, his mana-augmented vision not sufficient to detect wards lain down by a true master of the arcane crafts.

His foot landed on a crack between the floor-tiles. And stuck there. Immobilized. An inky darkness oozed out of the crack, slowly seeping up his leg, spreading rot and decay wherever it touched.

The Pardoner tried to use his own mana to repel the creeping darkness but his attention was divided as he simultaneously tried directing mana to heal his leg, to little avail.

More Pardoners pushed past him, an unending flood of fanatics promised a Heavenly throne at the Goddess' right hand. With the amount of Pardoners he was planning to send to meet their Goddess, he suspected her right hand might be a little crowded. Luneil chuckled, they should have asked for a place at her left side.

Soon, twenty Pardoners were mired in the cracks between the tiles, darkness creeping up their bodies as they struggled. Wherever the sinister blackness touched, flesh rotted and muscles seized up, their owners no longer in control of the affected limbs. Their bodies slowly locking into a living rigor mortis.

The first Pardoner's head was fully steeped in blackness. When the darkness dissipated, his head was conspicuously absent.

Now was the fun part.

More Pardoners rushed past, thinking the threat was gone.

They should have learned not to underestimate a six thousand year old mage, one who was both a Warder and a necromancer.

Luneil just shook his head with a sad smile as the statue-like Pardoner's flesh uncoiled in rotting ribbons, poised liked a sea of striking snakes above the decapitated corpse.

Ropes of flesh ensnared the ankles of those passing by, dragging them towards the monstrosity that used to be a man.

As the last was pulled close to the ex-Pardoner's headless body, the corpse's tissues liquified, streams of suppurating flesh forcing themselves down their victims' throats before solidifying and lifting them up high in the air like hanged-men lynched up on a gibbet of yellowed bone and rotting tissues.

Luneil vomited on the floor in front of him, eyes wide. He hadn't expected it to be so... effective. He'd had a lot of time to think up devious little wards and traps; he hadn’t had the pleasure to put them to—subjectively—good use, until now. It was fucking disgusting and he once again congratulated himself on choosing to focus on magic and necromancy, neither of which involved wading through magically trapped corridors. That wasn’t to say he didn’t feel a little guilty. He did, but only momentarily. The Pardoners deserved it.

He was relieved to decide that he had spent more than enough time enjoying the view as more of the ward's initial victims morphed into macabre versions of trees from the Winter Willow Festival. The memory of the children in his homeland hanging dolls on trees brought a smile to his face. A smile that quickly faded as he took one final look at the gristly scene.

Killing Pardoners was great... Watching them die... not so much. Luneil batted away the incongruent thoughts with an irritated gesture as he turned to leave.

A flash of cleansing light erupted down the corridor, dragging him out of his thoughts. He raised a ward to shield himself, but it washed over him harmlessly. Instead, wherever the light touched, his skeletal gibbets withered into windblown dust.

After an initial surge of annoyance, Luneil shrugged. He formed a series of wards mid air in the blink of an eye, not giving them time to dissipate in the absence of a structure to place them on, rapidly firing a blast composed of several mana types through the center of the magical formation.

The blast carried the wards with it, trailing the edges behind like the tail of a magical comet.

The bolt hit the caster who had purged his creations dead center. The young woman barely had time to blink before the power of the bolt overwhelmed her. The crystalline mana inside her body was forcibly condensed, packed closer and closer together, drawing mana in from nearby.

Luneil felt a tug on his own mana but resisted it. Those near the caster were not so lucky as their entire mana pools were dragged into hers, killing them instantly and overloading the caster's capacity. The incredible influx of mana also had the amusing effect of keeping her alive, much to the victim’s obvious displeasure.

And still mana kept on being drawn into her.

Luneil wondered if he had made the spell too strong, before shaking his head with a wry grin and putting another ten feet between himself and the disaster waiting to happen.

The girl detonated. Shards of hyper condensed crystalline mana exploded outwards, shredding anyone caught nearby and embedding themselves in the stone walls where they steamed like snowmen on a hot summer day.

Satisfied with the results, Luneil set another ward in the corridor before returning to the ritual circle to check on it's progress.

The spell was progressing well and everything was relatively peaceful. Or, rather, it was, until the seventeenth Pardoner that tried to burst through the warded door died very slowly. After that they decided that going through the walls was a safer bet.

It wasn't. But they never touched the magically protected door again, which was a pity since it had so many lovely surprises in it.

No, the main issue was that, by the one hundred and ninetieth casualty, the stone walls were critically weakened and oversaturated with too much depleted mana to stably support more wards. The floor on either side could probably support enough wards to kill two hundred more, maximum. After that he would have to cast all his wards mid air, moving around to avoid filling the area around him with depleted mana. And that was inefficient in both mana and movement.

Luneil had been trying his utmost to conserve mana, but he had already drained about a fifth of his maximum capacity, even with his unnaturally high rate of mana recovery due to his massive stores of Lifeforce. It was only going to get worse and the waves of Pardoners was endless, the line of torches making their way up the trail had not thinned out in the slightest.

Worse yet, the density of depleted mana in the room was becoming disruptively high, so he was having to divide his attention between regulating the amount of mana around his spell circle and dealing with his uninvited guests. It was times like these when Luneil wished that mana subtypes would just disappear when they were used, not clog up the air with their useless byproducts.

There was no help for it. Ignoring the weakening walls, he began constructing a large ward on the ceiling. It took up a large amount of mana, but if he didn't do something the high ambient saturation of depleted mana would disrupt his ability to cast wards long before he ran out of power.

Struggling against the magic distorting effects of too much depleted mana, Luneil painstakingly finalized the required pattern on the ceiling before forcing a full tenth of his total capacity into it.

Mana began to be sucked up into the magical formation at an accelerated rate, causing the ceiling to warp with a dull greyish blue haze.

With that complete, Luneil hurried to place a final ward on the wall, hoping it would stick. However, the disruptive pressure of depleted mana finally overcame the structural integrity of the wall and it crumbled in a puff of dust and blue haze.

At the same time, the ward on the ceiling had finished accumulating the depleted mana, redirecting it upwards while releasing a wide beam of light and heat to punch through the upper floors of the tower into the open air above.

A small number of bricks and rubble collapsed from the ceiling, mostly intact, despite the damage the beam of light and fire had dealt to the upper floors. The rest had been vaporized.

Luneil had to ward away the debris from the ritual circle to avoid it being damaged. It was that or risk centuries of work being disrupted by a loose rock.

It was a small distraction, but it was enough.

A thrown javelin came sailing out of nowhere, practically iridescent with the amount of gaseous mana imbued in it by some Skirmisher Variant. There was a surge of pain as the projectile cleaved straight through his windpipe before he got the chance to reinforce his skin with a layer of crystalline mana. The javelin continued to tear through his flesh, before embedding itself in his spinal column.

Luneil cursed in the silence of his mind, it was a foolish error. He hadn't been watching and it had cost him. The spear was lodged in him, allowing the Skirmisher's gaseous mana to conflict with his own, slowing the javelin’s removal from his body and making healing difficult.

Furthermore, its location, combined with the hostile mana, was disrupting the signals his brain was sending to his lower body.

He made a vain effort to remove it, but he knew it was too little too late. Either way, he would be dead in less than a minute.

Damn that bitch Tyl. He'd die before he let her have a victory. But he was going to die anyway, so it was best to make his death count.

Beyond all of these thoughts was a creeping feeling of unease.

He thought it would be different from this. He had focused a large portion of his life around death. He was a necromancer. So why was he so scared?

Death? No.

Failure? Maybe…

In the corner of his fading vision the Sylph flew in mournful circles, weaving dolorous loops around its chosen spot of empty air, always nearby, always watching the Core that sat empty in the center of the room, its former contents now powering a spell that was not yet complete.

Too little, too late.

Too little. The thought struck him harder than the spear ever had. It was such a simple concept, and yet it might just work.

Even as Luneil fell to the floor, he rallied the full might of his power, diverting it away from healing his body, focusing solely on one final beautiful pattern.

All too soon it was done.

His last vestiges. Spent.

His fear. Gone.

His power, for the first time, truly as empty as he realized he had always felt.

It was done and he wished he could at least feel something. Anything. The slow creep of despair. The fervent rage against the darkness. The bitter hatred he had adopted as a bedfellow to assuage his grief. There was no sense of triumph now that his moment of vengeance was complete.

Luneil just felt hollow.

The gods were gone.

So was he.

——

The final spell of the greatest mage to walk the face of Era for millennia settled upon the ritual circle. Copying the pattern of the circle, miniaturizing it, reproducing it again and again. Recursion after recursion. Forcing a tiny inclusion at the center of the Dungeon Core into alignment, bonds between atoms restructuring to form the shapes of runes. Mana temporarily crystallizing to form Arcane Focus-like structures deep within the Core.

A tiny fracture at the center of the crystal was smoothed over, as if it had never existed, reigniting its long lost potential for life.

The Dungeon Core glowed with new life as a small Sylph brought the soul it had salvaged from Luneil’s Lifeforce, replacing the one the Core had lost. That of a man who had defended her dead friend's crystal body with his life and restored it in his death. The only corpse the necromancer had ever truly given new life to. He was a murderer and a thief, but one with purpose, one with loyalty towards his convictions. So different from the monsters whose souls were usually selected for joining with the Core, and yet so similar.

The soul was absorbed without a hitch.

The Sylph looked at her handiwork.

Why did she feel like something was missing?

Her eyes fell upon Luneil's last pattern, surrounded by armored men who shrank back in fear from its radiance. Terrified of retribution from beyond the grave by one of the greatest mages in history.

Then, one of the men nudged an Arcane Focus, disrupting the unfinished spell, mid-formation.

The continual siphoning of mana from the Core stopped and the mana invested in the enormous ritual circle reversed its course, flowing back into the Dungeon Core.

A million miniature ritual circles buried deep inside the Core burst into life, each one quickly filling with mana that flowed back from a spell which had never been completed.

It was a simple thing, but one of unparalleled genius. Where a single large ritual circle would take an hour to activate, a thousand small ones would be done in seconds. It was Luneil's final revelation.

The spell concluded.

The entire tower and its surroundings burst apart in a flash of light, the explosion hurling the Dungeon Core far away and riddling its outer shell with cracks and fractures. A few wisps of the Sylph’s shattered body still clung loosely to the Core, slowly disintegrating into an unseen stream of blue and gold that was quickly absorbed through the damaged crystal. Slowly, however, the Core’s trajectory changed as gravity dug its claws in. The change in direction was too much for the final wisps of the Sylph and even its final remnants fell away, scattering on a late summer night’s breeze.

The effects on the Ethereal plane were far more drastic. The ritual circles inside the Core latched onto the fabric of the Veil, before blasting apart in every direction, tearing a gaping wound in the magical barrier that no single god or Goddess could ever hope to heal.

—Tyl—

Tyl felt the whole of Era shudder as an ancient barrier failed, one intended to last forever. She screamed in outrage, venting her frustration and trying to drown out the small frisson of fear that had nestled inside her very being.

The Exiles were returning. Humans were coming back to Era.

Even worse, Luneil's soul was nowhere to be found.