That was all they saw: ruin, chaos, and destruction. Titan was silent as he surveyed the wreckage of what had once been a prosperous settlement, and now was nothing but a mix of black mire and ruined, fallen-apart buildings.
Morgan was horrified, and her Paladin shivered in fear at the destruction that had been left in the wake of the creature that had passed through this place. Not a single soul had survived, it seemed: every home, every possible escape had been plowed through or broken open like an egg, and there were bodies strewn here and there through the mire... and worse yet, shapes as if bodies had once lain here and there, but then had been dragged off by something.
Titan and Morgan slowly explored the wreckage, the Paladin lingering close behind, the disciple of Veliuona striding along with them, for once seeming alert and aware instead of distant and aloof. It spoke to them in harsh tones, but Titan heard fear in its voice when it said that dark and ominous things had been at work here, and that death and undeath had both been perverted to the cause of the sinister creature that had attacked this place.
Titan said quietly that the Tyrant Wyrms had given their reply, for this, he stated, was the first sign of what such beasts were truly capable of. Yes, they had seen great destruction in the past, but this had warped nature itself, and when they touched the black mire, they felt poison in the soil, and a terrible evil that tried to stretch itself up into their minds.
Morgan heard such terrible voices. Felt such awful feelings run through her... heard a whisper she had never heard before, as they walked through the bog-land, a voice from the deepest darkness inside her. And her Paladin quavered as he tried to stride beside her, but at the same time, walked not like a noble knight but instead a scared foal, trying to slip beneath his lover's wing, uncaring of what he looked like.
And Titan heard not just mockery, but callousness and cruelty, a disdain for all that was that attempted to claw into his very soul. For Titan was a creature of nature and the world, but also a being who believed in love, and strength through mercy and virtue. This voice in the mire whispered that all such things were worthless, with how often it was conquerors who wrote history and decided what would be fact, and what would be fiction...
But no. Titan knew there was more than power to rule, just as those who lived by force, died by it as well. He knew that all must sow what they reaped, for that was the law of nature. He would not let such terrible persuasions take root inside him, and instead guided his group away from the mire, and its unnatural heat and evil voices.
They found little in the village of use to them, but Veliuona's disciple, on the other hoof, became suddenly anxious as they approached several burned, dead bodies, twisted in unnatural display. She asked permission to examine them: the paladin was horrified, and Morgan neutral, although she little liked the idea of letting the disciple play with these murdered lives. But to her surprise, Titan agreed immediately, then reassured his sibling that nature had already taken back these lives: there was no disrespect in allowing Veliuona's disciple to examine these corpses.
All the same, Titan watched closely as the disciple looked over the bodies, then used its dark magics to bring one of the corpses to a state of half-undeath. It could not move... and immediately, Titan sensed that something was wrong. Not in the balance of life and death, but rather, in the way the disciple stiffened, and the now-moving corpse shifted, unnatural even by the standards of the living dead...
It rasped at them. It spoke, in a tongue that Titan could not understand, and yet all the same he recognized: the language of the Wyrms. It hissed what could only be threats, until the disciple of Veliuona suddenly ended its magic, and the corpse fell still again.
For a time, it was quiet, even as Morgan shifted and her Paladin blurted questions, shouted accusations until he was silenced by his lover. And Titan asked a single question, but he already knew the answer, even before Veliuona's disciple turned to him... grim, even for the living dead, and answering in a voice that was filled with the same fear that so many of the living felt for those touched by undeath.
The Wyrm that had destroyed this village had stolen the corpses... but not merely to feast. Titan was right: the Wyrms were taking the offensive now, instead of merely playing their games of destruction. They were beginning to show what they were truly capable of: tarnishing the spirits and bodies of those they killed so blackly that they became deathless servants, connected to their master, who existed only to spread their disease into others.
And Titan realized that no matter how quickly they moved, they were fighting a losing battle: these Wyrms in play had already destroyed dozens of settlements and tarnished who knew how much of their land black with mire. Now, if they were marshaling their own armies of the dead... he feared what they would have to do, merely to survive.
He feared this was a battle that even together, they could not win.
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