With the Dwarves thoroughly defeated, Lieze was given the first chance to lower her guard since disembarking from their journey across the sea. Those mountains, once thought of as impenetrable, were now well and truly under the Order’s control. All that remained was to reanimate its populace and recoup most of the losses sustained during the battle.
Before anything else, however, Lieze had a few decisions of a more personal sort to make. Relinquishing control of her army to the Skeletal Necromancers, she retraced the Order’s destructive steps through the Royal Delve and found herself a quiet corner of the mountains to disappear into her Portable Home, setting the artefact down on the counter of an abandoned pub and breathing a sigh of relief once she was safely within its confines.
“I want to go to bed…” She wiped the sweat from her brow, “But first…”
Her scale projected an exhaustive blurb across her field of vision.
There was a decision to be made. Burnout Toll was a method of circumventing Lieze’s overreliance on MP in a fight, but the HP drain for dipping below 0 was something that would benefit a spellsword more than a sorcerer with a terrible constitution like herself.
Heightened Potential - Necromancy presented a unique gamble. She wouldn’t be able to gain levels or extra specialisations for a while, but in exchange, she’d be able to reach yet another milestone. [Master Necromancy] was already rather powerful, but the idea of pushing her innate abilities to their upper limit was a tempting one.
She didn’t have much to gain from pointlessly rising through the levels other than banking on a more agreeable specialisation. It would just be a matter of completing quests as usual until she could return to normal. More than anything else, she was intrigued by the idea of seeing just how much her necromancy would improve with the addition of another milestone.
-But that wasn’t the only benefit she had to reap. A quick dig through her Bag of Holding revealed the twin gemstones once belonging to Alberich and Mime. Anticipating the influx of magical power, she placed one stone after another on top of her scale, watching the artefacts sink into her palm and flinching as a voice echoed against the walls of her skull.
I am the One who knits all wounds.
I am the lost truth. I am the nemesis of death.
If thou seekest power, then become one with my waters.
In the name of Salvation…
Before she could inquire any further, another voice rattled her eardrums.
I am the One who empowers the earth..
I am the soul of the forge. I am the edge of the blade.
If thou seekest power, then become one with my fire.
In the name of Salvation…
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Lieze placed both hands on her temples and tried to massage the headache away, but she knew it was pointless. Whenever the stones blessed her with a new Heavenly Favour, she could feel the Blackbriar’s influence invading her mind and forcefully corrupting their influence. It had been some time since she was reminded of the fact that her survival was owed to one of the Gods she was trying to oppose.
“Hah…” When the thumping in her brain subsided, she moved over to her desk and took a seat, “Let’s have a look at those Favours before anything else.”
“This is good… our alchemical enhancements were beginning to form a bottleneck. This should alleviate the worst of our logistical problems…” Lieze placed a hand to her chin, “-And two extra Heavenly Favours per dawn allows me to wield them with impunity. I would have preferred Alberich’s [Peerless Invulnerability], but that’s the price I have to pay for making a deal with the Blackbriar.”
There was one last advancement on her docket - the enigmatic ‘Ascension’ she’d received for absorbing the power of five Scions. The scale reacted to her curiosity, more than happy to explain the concept to her in plain terms.
“A Mythic Destiny…” Lieze muttered, “I wonder what my options are?”
“...Well, I’m definitely not taking that last one, no matter how deadly it sounds.” Lieze muttered, “I didn’t usurp leadership of the Order just to kill my own comrades for no good reason. That leaves the other two choices to consider…”
Each Mythic Destiny was tagged with a severe disadvantage that pushed Lieze into a specific archetype. She had the choice of wielding a small but extraordinarily powerful army, or an oversized horde at a damning malus to her maximum HP. She weighed both choices up in her mind, recalling the boons she’d already acquired.
“My first specialisation already increased my capacity to a ludicrous degree… if I took [Fleshwarper], that choice would have been for nothing. But it would also ease the Destiny’s greatest weakness and increase the amount of powerful thralls I could command…”
A lowered capacity would mean relying more on the Skeletal Necromancers and the Order to carry out her commands, reducing cohesion across the board. Not only that, but a lowered overall presence of thralls within her army would expose her to enemy attacks more frequently. She wasn’t exactly a frontline fighter, so there was a risk involved in exposing herself. Not only that, but factors like formations and predictions would become the defining aspects of her gameplan thanks to the reduced presence of her army.
As if sensing her uncertainty, the list of Mythic Destinies retracted from her vision.
“I can always choose later, I suppose…” She muttered, “It would be foolish to decide on a particular strategy before learning the capabilities of our next foe.”
With her mind thoroughly exhausted from the day’s decision-making, she collapsed onto the bed tucked snugly into the room’s corner and entertained the idea of sleeping in for the rest of the day. Her fatigue must have been more pronounced than her body was willing to admit, however, because as soon as Lieze’s head hit the pillow, her eyes closed of their own accord and sleep rose up to take her by surprise. She was out like a light in the next instant, with neither the energy nor the motivation to resist.
Lieze awoke, but she was not awake.
The dreaming void of beasts best left to the imagination surrounded her. A far-seeing darkness spread out to what she assumed to be the infinite expanse of the cosmos, only there were no stars or nebulae to be seen within the expanse.
As she hovered there, lost and weary in delirium, something emerged from the otherworldly threshold beyond life and death, seeping into the palace of her mind. The Blackbriar’s tentacled mass seemed colossal in that space devoid of physicality. Lieze felt like a speck of dust caught in the lazy eye of a Dragon, her presence so poignantly inconsequential that it seemed like pure heresy to consider the idea of such a divine creature acknowledging her existence.
She was lucid enough to be displeased - annoyed, even. When last they communicated, she had struck a bargain with the Dead God in exchange for a second chance at life. Since then, she had learned of the Heavens’ folly and the fickle nature of its deities. The death-touched entity she had worshipped so dearly in her youth was now like all the others - a mastermind seeking to bend the world and its inhabitants to its will.
The Blackbriar’s voice - if it could be called that - pulsed through her like a thunderwave, inaudible but somehow understandable.
One…
One remains…
In the dark…
“...This again?” She sighed and reached towards her waist, “No. I’m done listening to the mindless ramblings of a God. Find someone else to spit your prophecies at.”
She grabbed the handle of her dagger and lifted the blade to her chest.
Betrayal…
Insolence!
She flinched as the tip pierced her breast, and then she was alive again - back in the safe confines of her Portable Home, sitting upright in bed with the very same dagger inches away from puncturing her heart. When she dropped the blade, it fell to the sheets, leaving a smudge of blood on the silver fabric.
“Hah…” She covered the scratch on her chest with the side of her thumb, “No more of this… I won’t be anyone’s puppet, the consequences be damned!”
