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[Darrien Church]

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"Part I. of III."


Audrina Thormear was jolted sharply awake as the heavy wrought-iron door sealing her into the Lich Lord’s dungeon swung open. Her nude and malnourished body clung feveriously with sweat to the cold dungeon walls.

Four of Darrien’s acolytes, putrid and timid slaves they were, processed, their sickly hands wrapped tightly around the disfigured, mutilated and barely living body of her daughter, Braelyn. Instinctually she felt an urge to cry out to her child well up inside of her, but she sensed the Lich Lord, knew he was somewhere just beyond that iron door waiting for her to do just that. She had come to learn quite quickly as the Lich Lord’s prisoner the difference between the rulers of Umbra in his day and her own.

The Lich Lord, last known being to survive the final collapse of the Order of the Ebon Skull lacked any semblance of the humanity her husband claimed he had once known in Darrien. The Lich Lord seemed to revel only in decay, pain, suffering and torture, his mood and his personality no matter how well he was able to mimic normal human behavior she knew thinly veiled the destructive hatred and pride that composed his entire nature.

She had only glimpsed the Lich Lord in the guise of the young and almost artificially attractive elfin human male form he used, as opposed to the horrific undead form Beo had mentioned on numerous occasions. She had come to find this human guise for more horrible she thought. His fine features, his bright green eyes, they seemed to gentle and so calm, his voice the gentlest whisper one might here from a noble prince or humble cleric…but the things he said in that voice…the way his eyes seemed to twinkle with delight when she wept or cried out.

They dropped her poor daughter on a large stone hewn table before her…

She knew what was coming…

Odd scars, ritualistic markings and scabbing wounds pocked the hand and footless body of her poor daughter.

The Lich Lord so rarely did any of his own work in this age, but the Thormears, much like the Skyfires he could not resist tormenting himself.

Then he appeared in the door way, garbed in tightly fitting pieces of leather and chainmail, a surgeon like smock clinging tightly to his form. He stepped infront of her and her daughter waving one of his ritual daggers playfully before Audrina's eyes….

Braelyn began to sob uncontrollably…

Darrien Church’s gaze met Audrina’s…

He smiled…

A single tear rolled down Audrina’s cheek.

The cries of both mother and daughter would resonate through the crumbling Citadel of the Skull for several hours.