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Of Arms and Arcane: Chapter 239
🕑 Added 2025-06-26 08:34:46 +0000 UTCFalling for what felt like a ten-meter drop, I broke my fall with a forward roll before recovering and readying myself in a defensive stance, only to see darkness. The only light source was the hole I fell from.
I activated the night vision glasses I attached under my mask, only to see an empty hallway. But before taking my first step, I heard a thud behind me. I spun around and saw one of the undead I was fighting earlier, on the ground with its skull splattered and neck twisted at an unnatural angle.
When I confirmed that the undead before me was not moving, I looked up to the hole I assumed the undead had fallen from and saw that the hole was surrounded by the undead looking down at me and not moving an inch.
It was then that my wind spell, keeping back the fog, lost its strength, and the fog covered the hole, dimming my source of light by a significant amount. But weirdly, the fog did not enter the hole. It only whisped and wavered just beyond the entrance.
“Well… that is not ominous at all.” I quipped to myself.
Seeing that the undead were not going to jump in after me, I looked around with my night vision to inspect my surroundings. It seems that I have fallen in the middle of a corridor.
As I further examined my surroundings, I noticed that the walls were decorated with murals showing a man. No, there is a larger man in the next mural beside the first figure, and the objects painted around them are not in proportion. It was a young boy.
By the gilding and finery depicted on the boy, he was most likely a noble, and next to the boy was clearly an armored knight.
I studied my surroundings for a while longer and noticed dark dots on the floor leading down the corridor, and along with those dark dots were footsteps in the dust that coated the floor. “I guess that is where I am supposed to go.”
As I followed the footsteps, I examined the murals and watched the boy go through his life. Growing, learning, and interacting with what I believe are the common folk. But that was the strange part. It was all so... mundane. Too mundane to be recorded on a mural, which was usually reserved for key moments in a person’s life, their great triumphs or failures. Not every day growing up.
As I traveled further, I saw the boy turn into a teenager, and if I am reading the pictures correctly, he began learning to become a mage. But that was where things suddenly changed. In the next mural, after the now-teenage boy starts learning to become a mage, the boy and many others in what I assume are mage robes of different colors are kneeling before a king who is thrusting his sword forward.
The following murals showed me why they were called before the king. They were going to war, and it did not matter if they were young or old, peasant or noble. They all marched to war.
As for who or what they were fighting, it turns out that they were fighting against the undead, and it was depicted over four mural sections, in which the undead were legion, an unending horde. And on the fourth panel of the undead, sat a huge, robe-clad skeleton holding a staff, casting what was most likely some foul magics.
This… was a necromancer, one of the outlawed magical disciplines that, if left unchecked, can topple kingdoms and empires.
The next mural depicted the teen and the other mages casting spells upon the undead while soldiers and what I assume is the teen’s personal knight, who I have seen in every mural with the boy, holding back the tide of undead.
In the next mural, the teen is depicted catching an arrow to the chest, and the mural after that was the knight carrying the teen in a fighting retreat.
When I moved to the next, I saw the necromancer cast a spell upon the survivors, felling all of them, including the knight. The mural after that depicted a cavalry charge by knights who had a symbol on their armor that looked like it belonged to the Zagraf Theocracy, but was different. Could it be an older heraldry compared to the modern Zagraf Theocracy? I will need to consult some history books when I get home.
The last mural depicted the teen and the knight being carried into a mausoleum, which I assume is where I am now, to be entombed. The mural shows the teen lying on an altar, and the knight, who has been with the teen throughout his life, standing in eternal vigil.
This, in a rather sad way, makes me guess why the murals depicted every mundane achievement of the boy’s life. He died young, so his family was likely padding out his life story. This whole series of murals led me to a rusted metal door, from which I feel mana emanating beyond it.
“I guess this is the boss fight.” I said to myself as I pushed the door open, the long rusted hinges kicking up a ruckus of squeaks.
When the door was open, just like the mural, the knight, or should I say Death Knight, was standing vigil over his charge, but unlike the mural, the skeletal remains of the teen were seated up from the altar, its eyes filled with the glow of undeath, staring straight out into nowhere.
As I locked eyes with Death Knight, it bellowed out in a hollow voice, “Vek'zul ahrak dosh-kaar val'ruun?! Ka'shath vel drogar'duun!”
Wait! I kind of understood those words from Professor Sageira’s Languages of Power class. It sounds like a dialect, but I picked it up as, “Something something, ‘disturb’ or ‘move wrong’ his master’s something… ‘trade’ my life?” I roughly translated in my mind.
But despite my rough translation, the Death Knight bringing his blood-stained, rusted sword from its resting position on the ground to charge me with it, puts the roughly translated words into context. I disturbed his master, and I am going to pay with my life.
