566. Leagues (VI)

A/N: Sorry for late chapter folks--just realized I scheduled it for the wrong day!

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Gaoler’s Observation Chambers 

The longtime gaoler of the Superdungeon, the Faceless One, still lay petrified on the floor of his own observation room, stuck through with Corruption needles. Soul trembling with agony. 

Each needle was fashioned from million-year Bone of a beast, then corrupted with the bloodline of the Heavenly Demon and placed precisely where his essence flows met. They utterly suppressed the Gaoler’s T3 Empyrean strength.

It was no mean feat. The Ghoul Doctor meticulously refreshed the curses in those needles once every seven years.

His master simply insisted on keeping the Gaoler alive, if barely… the Ghoul Doctor could guess at why. The Ghoul Doctor suspected it was for the same reason why Malzareth insisted on using this room, of all places, to host their meetings. There were grander, more spacious, more convenient choices that would serve just as well, after all. 

There were practical reasons why one might choose this room. The many scraps of visions, swirling above in a slow whirlwind, gave clear views of all the Superdungeon’s lowest floors. Each floor once a mighty cell custom-built to maximally suppress its prisoners, rife with runes and dreamsteel chains and demon-sealing spears—now all shattered, clawed over with Corruption, rebuilt to serve as lairs for Malzareth’s finest…It was all on full display here. 

But the Master had no need for that. By now the seals and chains on the Master could hardly hold him anymore. The Four God-Sealing spears that stuck Malzareth through, placed before the dawn of the Cycle, had deteriorated to near-disintegration. With the Master’s reality-breaking powers, it would take the barest of efforts to manifest visions of any floor he wished, visions far more comprehensive than anything this room could offer. With the Master’s signature eye, he could glimpse anything he wished to know with a single thought. 

No. The Ghoul Doctor suspected the Master came here, time and time again, simply for his own pleasure. 

At first he didn’t fully understand it. But then, he’d never truly understood this aspect of the Master. Malzareth never let anything go. Not a grudge, which the Doctor could understand; but especially not a victory. If Malzareth won, he would to savor it—savor it far beyond when most would tire of it. One would never hear the end of it. The more the Master hated the enemy, the more he wished to make them suffer, again and again. The more he would make certain to lord his every new achievement over them, force them to listen to the consequence of their failures even as they writhed… 

Looking at the Gaoler, the Ghoul Doctor nearly pitied what would become of the ones Malzareth hated most lately, the ones that had dared defy him and win, even if only in a small way. 

They weren’t the greatest threats to Malzareth in Dragonspire. Not by far. But if Malzareth got his claws on Zane Walker and Reina, the Mistress… 

Their fates would make the Gaoler’s seem merciful.

The Ghoul Doctor knelt, awaiting his Master’s presence. As did Hreinn a few paces away. 

Soon six crimson eyes appeared at the head of the table, making crimson crescents. 

The Master seemed in a good mood today, the Doctor noted. Malzareth’s crimson eyes raked over the Gaoler once, mirthfully. Then they turned to his Primes. 

“Master,” said the Doctor, kneeling instantly. As did Hreinn. 

“Master!” 

Hreinn. Ghoul. You must be wondering why I’ve called you here on a mere day’s notice. I bring news, gentlemen… The eyes glinted. The best. It is done, at last. The final chain has been severed, by my hand. The last of the Greater Endbringers roams free. 

“Already?” The Doctor’s surprise was genuine. 

My strength returns far faster than even I had surmised…The army which shall rend Dragonspire itself from end to end now lies complete. 

The images swirling around them all changed, showing a single floor—the first floor of the Troubled Zone. The base of Malzareth’s infantry. 

It was now a swarming mass of Monsters, swallowing continent after continent. So many True Gods one couldn’t even make them all out in the image; they were all mere pinpricks in a massive ocean of raw Corruption. Merely thousands upon thousands of Distortion Fields, stacked so thickly there was only a roiling mass of Corruption-black where mandibles, or bone-limbs, or claws would surface, and fade. Now and again an Empyrean would crop up in that mind-bendingly large horde—a mammoth of bone here, a colossal serpent there. Far bigger in physique than all the rest, their universes marking out great spheres of space. 

The scene shifted. Stretching down floor after floor, too many deities to count… then there were the lairs housing the Greater Endbringers; lairs housing just two or three Monsters each. Each Monster the size of a moon, the weakest of them a half-step T2—but the strongest peaking far past T3. A grotesque menagerie of ancient stone drakes, 3-headed bone-dragons, each spewing a different element, elder nagas and vampire overlords, and more, all feeding on these great pillars of hardened Corruption striking up in their lairs. Feeding off the essence of the Heavely Demon, and growing stronger. 

Then there were the Primes. The very Monsters the Master had worked so diligently to free. 

They saw Cromm, the Meat King, sitting there on his throne of bone—lump after lump of muscle stitched haphazardly on top of each other. No skin, merely raw flesh. Tearing bloodied chunks of flesh of a human Empyrean. The Ghoul Doctor had a personal distaste for Cromm, but he could not deny Cromm’s immense physicality; the most physically dominant of any creature in Dragonspire, his flesh nourished by the bloodlines of the thousands of Empyreans he’d cannibalized. 

They saw the Mirror Dragon, the strongest of the Master’s Primes, whose very being was made out of massive shards of Destruction. Prowling in its crystal mountain. 

Farther down lay the Doctor and Hreinn’s own lairs; the lair of the Spirit Queen and the gear-ridden world of Stegar, the Mechanism… 

And that was before you got to the Master himself. 

That, hissed Malzareth. Is the work of a chaos cycle… a plan which I first conceived of at its very dawn, a plan the magnitude of which this Galaxy has never encountered. Laid across the breadth of time and space… at last, come together. A cycle’s worth of preparation. All made for a single crush. 

Malzareth’s tripled voices were thick with pleasure. A plan which defies the very heavens themselves, which even Aiwe’s Great Creation could not stop! A plan which only Lord Malzareth knows in its full sum…And its timeline has just accelerated. Mankind thinks it has time… thinks this war will move, much like the last! But this time there shall be no rising tide, cluminating at a climax. Humanity will be crippled on the war’s first day. Snuffed out on the second. 

The Ghoul Doctor tried to be his master’s voice of reason. But staring down the extent of that army, the extent of which was far greater than even he’d imagined, it was difficult to come to any other conclusion.

“Very good, master!” cackled Hreinn. “Dare I say—your masterpiece, even?” 

Perhaps… said Malzareth. We shall see. 

“I’ll bet even our dour Ghoul here can’t find a way to bring you down this time.” 

One of these days, the Ghoul Doctor really would run a needle through that weasel’s tongue. And his heart, too, while he was at it. Hreinn grinned, baring buck teeth, and he seemed in that instant especially greasy, even by his low standards. 

“That is never my intent,” said the Doctor through gritted teeth. “Of course I recognize the Master’s great accomplishment." 

Quiet, Hreinn, said Malzareth. Let the Doctor speak. 

It pleased the Doctor to know that even the Master grew tired of Hreinn on occasion.

“As I see it, Master, your position is akin to that of the executioner,” said the Doctor. “You have your hands on the axe… yet the victim can still weasel away.” 

“I do hope that wasn’t a jab at me,” giggled Hreinn. “How unprofessional… and what a profound insight, Doctor!” 

Hreinn, snarled Malzareth. 

“Sorry, sorry!” 

Continue, Doctor. 

“Those on the Hegemon Ranking still pose a threat, especially those who have not been active for aeons, whom we know little about… there are the knowns, the Patriarchs and Matriarchs—Thalia, the Warrior-Queen, the Nameless King, Brondir, and the like… each a rare talent. It would not do to discount them utterly. But that still excludes those long since inactive, of whom even the best scrying knows little. If the Thunderclast’s second Ancestor, the Rage Knight, broke through to Tier 4, for instance, in that secluded pocket universe of his. Or if the Azure Flame’s Noughtfire, and his disciples, have made breakthroughs of their own. And some say the Endless Shadows’ First Ancestor, the Witch-King, is just as deadly as the Nameless King. Especially if he’s advanced as well.” 

Hreinn raised a timid hand, and even managed to make that little action irritating. “May I?” 

Speak. 

“I sympathize, Doctor. Truly I do,” Hreinn began. “But … well.” 

He spread his hands at Malzareth’s army. “What more needs to be said? Do you truly believe our Mirror Dragon wouldn’t simply annnihilate Brondir with ease? Or that Thalia, and that Rage Knight combined, could halt the spirit-legions of our dear Daressa, or halt Stegar’s machine? And even if they could, what happens when the Master, our true trump-card, joins himself? Unless you believe humanity has produced a being which can rival him, which… if that is your belief… well.” Hreinn chuckled. “You’re certainly entitled to it.” 

“No one claimed such a thing,” snapped the Ghoul Doctor. “Then there is the matter of the rising threats. Say humanity’s forces do hold on. Say they last weeks, months, even, and have a chance to take advantage of the System Store’s tremendous prizes… then we could even see rising threats—such as Lain the Moon Reaper, or Haxorax—and most concerningly…” 

He eyed his Master with some trepidation. The Master had a special hatred for the names he was about to state, but Malzareth seemed in a good enough mood today. 

“…Zane Walker, and Reina the Mistress. Two figures who must not be allowed time to grow.” 

He didn’t care if the Master already knew it, or if the Master would be offended by it; he felt it had to be emphasized. Hreinn might downplay it, but the Doctor had seen Zane’s duel with Haxorax. He’d seen that man’s potential, no matter how the weasel sneered. 

That man… could not be allowed to run wild, and rack up credits in a fully unlocked System Store. 

It was the only scenario which struck genuine fear into the Ghoul Doctor’s heart. 

“That is all, Master,” said the Ghoul Doctor. 

I see. The Master sounded surprisingly measured. Before, any mention of him would set the Master off, but… Zane Walker is no longer a concern. He will be dead before the month is out. 

“You’re speaking of Hreinn’s plan to assassinate him,” said the Ghoul Doctor, hesitant. 

The only explanation for the Master’s ease, for the smguness in his tone, was sheer confidence. It was the kind of confidence that could only come with absolute certainty. The Master spoke as if it were already done. 

Hreinn has not given you the extent of his reports. But certain events in the Pure Yang Lands have been set in motion, events which can no longer be changed. The deed is done. 

“Noughtfire, Noughtfire…a sound scheme, on paper. His disciple should be safe. He knows I can barely project my presence beyond the Superdungeon as is, even with how much it’s weakened. Even if I managed somehow to learn of his plans for his disciple, and even if I managed to follow him through, entering the Pure Yang without a Galaxy Gear—already a tremendous ask—how much could I really retain, projecting so far back in time? Surely barely enough to scratch a rune, much less harm Zane Walker! And that’s if I managed to find Zane at all, with that oh-so-sophisticated disguise amulet of his…” Hreinn grinned. “Fair assumptions, certainly… but quite mistaken. Alas! So many years without his great rival to test him has left him rusty, I fear. He’s simply not the Noughtfire I knew. It’s little wonder I caught him back in the Superdungeon, just as I’ve trapped his disciple now. The look on his face when he realizes… I can hardly wait!”