"How dare they!" Lord Itremium screamed, throwing an ornately carved crystal flute across the room. It struck the maid in the back on the head, sending her stumbling forward as the glass shattered on the back of her tattooed and bald head.

The dapperly dressed Lord turned from the doorway, ignoring the sobbing woman who staggered from the room holding her head, and stared out the window. Already smoke was rising from the city as the Forsaken Legion took to the streets to overthrow the Council. His face was twisted in a petulant look, more like a child than a man who wielded vast power within a powerful city-state.

"They claim that they are defending the city from the Council and are slaughtering house troops and city guard who raise steel against them," Lord Strathmore said, still shaking slightly. He had seen a single one of the dread-knights reave its way through a hundred steel clad men, the undead creature wreathed in ancient and terrible magics that ripped and tore at any who dared attack it. He had ordered his own guard to reinforce the city militia that had been fighting the dread knight. Before Lord Strathmore had reached the estate of Lord Itremium the single survivor of his personal guard had staggered back to report that the dread knight had killed House Strathmore's elite guard as if they were mere farmers.

"The Council is Deliarre-Traxx." Itremium snarled, picking up a crystal knickknack to throw against the wall. "How dare they. I will have them all executed at dawn. I will have them burned at the stake. I will have..."

The door to the study burst open, a man in heavy platemail that was warped and smoking, half of the runic inscriptions dark, his sword still in his fist despite being broken only six inches from the guard.

"Milord, we must retreat, the Forsaken are here on the grounds and we cannot withstand them." The man said, his words slurred due his swollen lips and missing front teeth. "The three of them are unstoppable, we cannot hold against them."

"Get back out there and fight, you son a goat." Lord Itremium screamed, his face turning red. "They are nothing. Nothing. Just order them to leave. If they resist, just subdue them and burn them at the stake."

A thunderous detonation made the pictures drop from the walls and the knickknacks on the shelves leap off to crash onto the floor. A second, then a third cleared the walls of everything but bare shelves.

"Milord, we cannot even slow them down. Their blades cut through our armor like air, their magics are devastating, and our weapons cannot even mar their armor." The man in smoking armor tried to explain. Lord Itremium was hearing none of it, turning back to the window with a wave of his hand.

"This is of no concern to me. Do your duty or you shall find yourself penniless on the dock performing carnal favors for your betters." The nobleman said.

There was the brief sound of metal on metal in the hallway beyond and the man in armor turned around to look. He began backing up, dropping the broken blade to the floor where it lay on the wood with arcane sparks snapping from the broken end.

"Mercy, please." The armored man cried out as a massive form clad in gray armor stepped into the doorway. The style of armor gave no clue to the sex, the facemask was little more than a blank mask, the eyeholes filled with bluish-white fire. The armor had three deep puncture marks in the torso, the gaps filled with the same bluish-white fire as filled the eye sockets and the runes inscribed across the alchemically treated alloy.

"Mercy, please, mercy." The fat, balding Lord Strathmore threw himself to the floor, shrieking in fear as the massive figure stalked into the room, spurs ringing on the wooden floor. He was completely unaware that he was repeating the same words that many a craftsman or low ranking merchant had uttered to him as the dread knight thudded past the surrendering soldier and toward Lord Itremium.

Without sparing the cowering Lord Strathmore a single glance the dread knight thrust the first third of the smoking and acid dripping blade into the man's body. Lord Strathmore's shrieks for mercy ended suddenly as his body turned to ash and fell to the floor with a sighing sound.

"Begone from my presence, you aren't allowed in here." Lord Itremium screamed at the approaching dread knight. "I will have you burned at the stake. I will have your soul stripped from you and fed to hellhounds. I will..."

The dread knight's blade came up, the engraved runes filled with an inner fire.