Book Two

Chapter-One

Desolation

Wraith sat in the hole that had once been his core room the walls were ripped to shreds to take every piece of mithril and gold leaving not one stone on the other. Wraith had no soul spark or rogue monsters. Not one plant was left in the cavern or the area around his dungeon the elves had burned it to ash. The only thing they had left were corpses stripped bare and left to rot as well as the Stryker which had escaped into the sewers. Even this beast was of no use to Wraith without soul sparks to enforce his will the creature was wild and out of control. The corpses of the elves the Stryker had killed and infected with the design of its being had lain on the street where they had been drained of blood. A few days later they started to twitch and opened red eyes and floated to their feet their corpses transfused to a spirit like being.

Wraith couldn’t build any protection around his core. All his mana had been stolen from him, and undead like the Stryker’s could not provide any mana. He felt the area of his dungeon grow gradually smaller as he was unable to defend his territory. Rage and importance filled him. He was a dungeon core, a being with the power so great that he was limited only by what his mind could create, and his sparks could control. But without those sparks, he was helpless, unable to lift hands he didn’t have or a moving body.

Despair was all he knew as he sat there for weeks unable to speak to another creature, to create anything, to impact in any small way the world around him. His mind began to drift as he sat there feeling the area of his dungeon become smaller and smaller.

Then one day he felt something enter his area. A fly it landed on the corpse of an elf and began feasting and implanting its eggs. Wraith watched the life in fascination. Day after day more flies joined the first and implanting eggs into the corpses. After the flies came, rats and they tore into the flesh gorging themselves on the meat and setting up burrows around the cavern. A week later snakes followed and began consuming the rats. Bits of cave moss started growing on the gnawed bare bones their seeds transported by the rats. Wraith breathed in the bits of earth mana floating off the cave moss with a glorious intake like an addict who had been suffering withdrawal.

Wraith used his bit of mana to seed the patterns of herb plants in his core room. The plants began to bloom and grow and provide Wraith with even more mana. He planted a garden around his core and take in tiny bits of mana and expending them to increase the flow of mana. His garden grew, and he began building a stone shell over his core room to protect him from someone stumbling across his core.

In spite of having a source of mana Wraith was still defenseless. Wraith noticed a disturbance outside his dungeon and looked and saw a party of adventurers running down the tunnel into the room cavern. They gathered on their side of the tube that he had never explored and presumably led more in-depth into the World Below. Black skinned elves rushed out of the tunnel, their eyes were glazed over, and they fought with stilted puppeted moves. The adventurers fought the elves and were pushed down the steps into the city. The Stryker’s began to circle the group as more dark elves entered the cavern.

Pale grey skinned dwarves began joining the mix of dark elves with same glazed eyes and behind them came humanoids that Wraith had never seen before.

What are those? Wraith asked forgetting for a moment that Ember was not there to answer him.

Bald with four tentacles at the end of their face hiding their mouth. Tiny black eyes and long arms that ended in four lengthy protruding fingers and a body whose legs were covered by a long robe that covered every inch of skin apart from the creatures hands and head and had a tall collar that rose around the creatures neck. The surface of the creatures was a pale grey that glistened with moisture. Wraith mentally closed his eyes and went through every bestiary he had read until he came up with the name for the creatures, mind-flayers. Wraith focused on the mind-flayers, and his consciousness jerked back as he saw the mind flayers turn in his direction and send a physic probe in his direction.

Wraith activated all his traps and sent a subtle urge for the Strykers to attack the mind-flayers. The Strykers on the verge of attacking the adventurers instead leaped at the mind-flayers and ripped out their throats. They shook their heads in disgust at the dark black ichor of the mind-flayers and turned on the deep dwarfs and dark elves. The five-remaining mind-flayers began to float toward the ceiling at pulling short black wands out of their belt began to blast at the adventurers.

Wraith watched helplessly as the adventurer’s retreated through the city and to the tower. He withdrew within himself and watched from afar as the enthralled dark elves and deep dwarves acted as the meat shields for the mind-flayers and died on the adventurer’s blades while slowly weakening them.

The Strykers picked off a few here of their dragging them into the shadows where they sucked them dry and left the corpse to rise a few days later. Wraith eagerly took in three dozen soul sparks delighted at having new ones, but his elation soon turned to despair when he realized that they were nothing but balls of energy without Ember to give them sentience. He could gather the souls of a thousand adventurers and still be in the same position he was in now.

The mind-flayers alighted upon a balcony of the ruined tower and extended their tentacles forward testing the air. A ranger in the party of adventures knocked an arrow and struck the mind-flayer in the head, and the monstrous humanoid tumbled down to crash onto the floor. Wraith reached out to take the creature’s soul but was stunned to see that no soul rose up from the humanoid’s body. Again the mind-flayers noticed his presence and looked down directly above Wraith’s core room beneath the stone floor of the tower. Then the mind-flayers dropped down eighty feet alighting on the ground like a feather and letting out a psychic wail. The wail caused every member of the party apart from the lone elf ranger to stiffen and collapse. Wraith screamed silently as the psychic blast went through him directly attacking his spirt.

The dark elves and deep dwarves fell upon the elf ranger beating him into unconsciousness. They bound and gagged the party, and the dark elves began carrying them back the way they had come. The mind-flayers began circling the floor around where Wraith was hidden. They ordered the deep dwarves to start hammering at the floor and break it open. Wraith gave up hiding and began strengthening the ceiling with steel. The dwarves broke through the stone floor the rocks falling down into Wraith’s herb garden. They came across the bands of solid steel barring their way and began muttering spells their hands glowing red hot as the bent the iron out of their way. Wraith prepared to go out in a blaze of glory and sucked every drop of mana out of the plants and air around them withering the plants to dust and leaving a temporary vacuum in his core room.

Preparing to let out a burst or raw wild mana Wraith began to open up a crack in his core. A mind-flayer dropped into the room and let loose another psychic attack. Wraith’s mind imploded in on itself, and his consciousness retreated to the depths of his core to escape from the psychic attack. His awareness shrunk to only five feet around him and he felt his core lifted up and placed on a litter, and two dwarves began to carry him out of his dungeon and down deep into the World Below.