2338 IC Interlude: Chaining Insanity
Malagor hefted the drooling and slack face of the Uncloven One's head this way and that, examining it as he stood, hunched before the ritual circle atop the cliff face. Below, a deep valley hewn into the earth long ago lay, the forest and woods especially deep and putrid. So dark and deep that its towering trees were in fact of far greater height than the others of their kind for dozens of miles around, yet had stretched higher and higher until the sun shone down upon them properly enough to live, reaching equal height with the rest of the canopy. The Dark Omen snorted as he tugged, touched, and pulled at the various charms that had been woven into the Uncloven One's hair and pierced through their skin. It was a pathetic mimicry of a true shaman, yet the Winds had blown quite strongly around this one regardless. It was infuriating. Yet another insult, along a great line of them that had begun the moment the first Uncloven One had dared to be born.
He stomped on the staff of bone and wood that the false human shaman had borne, shattering it and releasing its magic back into the air. Yet before it could travel too far, it was caught and swirled back into the visible miniaturized maelstrom that sat at the center of a rather enormous ritual circle. This Darkling Coven had assembled at Malagor's order, the shamans bowing their heads beneath his authority and power. All nine of them stood at equidistant points of the ritual circle, lines carved in blood, soil, and tainted liquids forming hundreds of runic symbols formed and empowered with care. The swirling mixture of the Winds roiled away, compressing and expanding but never beyond the bounds that they had held it with. Endless chanting rumbled forth from those throats which had been the commanding voice behind so many Beastlords. A grand ritual, one that the Uncloven Ones had sought to stop. They were not their greatest, no, Malagor knew that much, but they had simply been nearby and sensed the danger. If it had been a greater assemblage, he might have been even a little worried.
As it was?
"You'll never get away with this, you monsters," squealed one of the last living pale imitations as it strained against its chains, words slurred as their head wept blood.
Malagor snorted and dropped the head he'd been examining, crushing it underhoof into brain pulp and bone shards.
"Stupid meat," he snarled lowly before turning to face the deep valley and inhaled deeply, momentarily luxuriating in the smell of fear and pain before clasping his staff with both hands. "You cannot stop what is coming. No one can!"
Then he thrust his staff into the air, and with all his will began to draw forth the Winds of Chaos, swirling about him and the Darkling Coven both. The ritual circle activated, further increasing the magic filling the air, a massive, tainted cloud of it erupting forth and coating all things so thickly that fur began to itch, to smoke, and in some places even to burn. The chanting of the Darkling Coven grew louder as they began to shake and stamp their staves in rhythm with Malagor. The Beast Tongue filled the air, growing as repeated and ever louder peals of thunder. The imitations screamed in pain, in horror, some of them gibbering outright as their minds shattered before what they saw, and still Malagor forged on. His hooves stamped, his wings flared outwards, and the desecrated tomes that were chained together all began to flutter and rattle. The vestments he bore, woven together out of thickened rags woven out of holy text scraps stained with blood and filth, lifted and rose as if a second pair of wings while remaining at his shoulders.
"
Come!" He bellowed, the word a command that shot forth from his lungs and into the darkness.
The deep valley…stirred. Twisted things that held the appearance of natural birds leapt upwards and fled to the skies, to elsewhere, their true size only becoming apparent as they fully ascended. Only the Great Eagles could be said to be their equal, but only in wingspan and mass, for there was no majesty in these screeching avian beasts, only anger and inhuman hatred at having their rest disturbed. Searing red orbs glared out at those who had done so, only to falter as they did so, beating wings of leather or feather or both to get them as far away as possible from the winged incarnate of ruin that looked back at them with gimlet, square-pupiled eyes. Malagor turned his gaze away and back to what lay before him. He raised his staff again and then slammed it upon the stone of the cliff face, the moss and grasses which had once laid upon it having burnt away into nothing from his presence long ago. The stone cracked, split, the noise of such magically amplified outwards, echoing down into the valley.
"
Come!" Malagor commanded once more.
This time, he received an answer.
"
NGGRRAAAAAAAAAAAARRGGH!"
The answering and impossibly loud bellow was guttural and deep, a noise powered by lungs the size of Uncloven sailing ships. Trees began to rustle and tremble, the earth itself shaking as titanic steps began to stomp forward and upwards out of the valley below. Malagor watched, unblinking, as the sound of cracking and shattering wood began to echo up as they were forced aside, his eyes watching not just the physical but the abrupt shift in the Winds. The entire maelstrom was tugged upon as it began to be dragged outwards and towards the valley. The earthshaking approach continued to grow louder and louder, until finally a thickly furred and absolutely gigantic hand shoved one last tree aside, ruining over a thousand years of growth in a single abrupt application of unnatural strength. Finally, the cygor revealed itself, its single eye locked squarely onto Malagor.
For while Cygors were blind to the physical world, the Winds were always visible to them, as were those who wielded them.
"
Who wakes, who wakes!?" The Cygor bellowed even as it approached.
That alone divided it from the rest of its kind, the vast majority of all cygors driven into gibbering incomprehensible insanity by the visions which assailed them day and night through their cursed eye. The cygor towered above its lesser kin, and there were those there as well, almost forgotten as they stomped forth as well trailing behind their leader. These hooted and grunted, pawed at themselves and at each other as they shambled forward in the wake of the one ahead of them. The next tallest of the cygors reached only just past the waist of the speaker, all clad in the crudest of things when they were clad in anything but their fur and matted filth at all.
"
Malagor wakes!" Malagor boomed back, "
The Harbinger of Disaster! Great Shaman of the Cloven Ones! Malagor calls Graathum! Malagor commands Graathum!"
At that, Graathum the Sane paused, bloodshot eye twitching in the socket.
"
Command…Graathum?" The Elder Cygor said slowly before guffawing. "
No command! Graathum eat! Graathum devour! Graathum destroy!"
Malagor tossed his head and set his stringy hair waving before revealing a remarkably intact and clean scroll from his belt, one that burned with as much magical power as the rest of the maelstrom that had been the waking beacon. Graathum stopped in his laughter and stared at it, even as some of the lesser cygors began to move forward in endless hunger for the souls of those stepped in magic.
"
No…," Graathum rumbled, a hoof the size of a quartet of barns thumping backwards as he recoiled.
"
You serve or you serve!" Malagor cackled.
"
Kadon dead! Kadon dead!" Graathum shook his head slowly, each movement causing small gusts of wind, naked fear sounding odd from a throat that could swallow a column of soldiers in one go.
"
Kadon dead, yes," Malagor nodded vigorously before shaking the scroll again. "
But scrolls still strong!"
Graathum glared, one eye narrowed, before glancing at the souls behind Malagor.
"…Graathum serve if Graathum eat," he finally boomed, not daring to test the scrolls of the Hated One, especially if wielded by a shaman such as Malagor, of whom Graathum had heard of even when he had been unfairly spawned into the world.
Malagor simply grinned and with a flick of his wrist, the Darkling Coven shrieked as the ritual inverted upon them, magic now chaining them in place and grounding out their own protective magics. At the center, the rest of the false Uncloven shamans lay, wholly insensate at this point from the forces unleashed in their faces. They bleated, they shrieked, they screamed, but none could escape from the ritual circle they'd willingly placed themselves inside of.
"
Eat. Kill. Serve!" Malagor snarled before flying upwards and gesturing at the prepared feast below.
"
We serve!" Graathum bellowed as he rushed forward, knocking aside other cygors as he went, one hand enough to capture the Darkling Coven and the Uncloven Shamans and shove them into his mouth.
For one, darkly blessed moment, the endless hunger for souls and magic was filled.
"
We serve!" Graathum announced again, raising his fists to the sky. "
We serve Malagor!!!!"
And the Crowfather let loose a rusty bleating laugh before turning in the air to gaze upon another shower of warpstone coming to earth. Another of the Darkling Covens, one he was less willing to sacrifice, had done their job then. The blessed green stone was invaluable for too many things to simply cease summoning, though he had forced them to move their rituals further into the forest. Already, the furred Uncloven ones had begun poking their snouts out, their hunger exceeding their grasp and their sense both. But already, even as Graathum continued to proclaim his loyalty, even as the warpstone fell as fuel for more rituals and other purposes, Malagor swept his gaze across the Drakwald, seeing without seeing the warherds that continued to grow, in size and belligerence. Slaughtering the furred Uncloven would serve to blunt the bloodgreed, but only for so long if they retreated out of fear before the rightful rulers of the world, and so the rituals continued.
"Not enough…," he ground out angrily, "Not enough!"
