The Forsaken Legion Part 1

After a few hours of running on the road, the sun set down and left the tired party of valorous magicians under the moonlight. There were many clouds and Laena could barely see with the dim rays that managed to go through the sky, guiding Evelyn by dragging her hand. Jack also served as a lighting source unbeknownst to him as he was burning with an eerie carmine light.

The girls were barely managing to follow the rhythm, Evelyn running on fumes and gasping for breath while Laena was starting to struggle. Yet, their determination didn't allow them to give up and they continued to run after their relentless undead teacher while diligently doing their exercises.

Surprisingly, it was the blond girl who made the most progress as she found an useful shortcut : She didn't weave the strands in the air to form a blade, she instead used her dagger as a support and weaved them around the blade then shook it, triggering the spell. Her strands were still crude and the spell lacked range to be useful but it was still a pretty impressive progress and it only motivated her to further improve herself.

Jack had been monitoring them all along the way and smiled wryly when he saw that his small protege getting a hold of a spell's flexibility by herself. He also knew that this couldn't continue and after a few hundred meters, he told them to stop. He looked at them in the eyes, sad to see them pushing themselves over their limits like this but also felt incredibly proud at the same times.

'They will make incredible companions in a few years. Let's not get them killed tonight.' He thought and then said :

"You truly amazed me with your determination and your ingenuity. Sadly, all the determination of the world can't save you from a sword strike, only strength will." Understanding where he was going, the girls tried to retort but he cut them short : "Take a break. You will not be useful on a battlefield if you are dead tired, you will instead be a liability."

Facing the weight of the reality, they understood that he was right and gave up, frustrated. Evelyn, trying to hide her tears, asked :

"You will be back master, right?"

"I'll always be back. It's not this small pest who will stop me from my objectives, trust me." The undead replied while patting the worried girl.

Laena seemed conflicted and after a few second she said in a straight tone :

"Take my blade, master. You will make a good use of it in the upcoming battle."

Gently refusing the elven blade, Jack simply explained with a wry smile before going on his way :

"You don't want me to break it if I go a little to hard on it don't you. Now then, be safe kids."

After dropping his backpack with them, the skeleton was able to go a little faster and at dawn he saw the first zombies further on the road. They seemed to be jogging, mindlessly following their master. Jack gingerly approached them and felt a familiar tinge of dark magic animating them. A huge and vicious smile appeared on his face as the first part of his plan started : He was going to go through the horde and take over a "few" of them.

Since his own mana had been used to create those undeads, he simply imprinted them with his own soul and felt no resistance. Undeads followed only one person : their maker. Since he was part of their maker and that half of the mana signature inside of them was his, he easily overtook the other half and felt them fall under his control.

It seemed that their owner didn't realize what was happening while Jack was happily and swiftly corrupting a good quarter of the whole horde of zombies, skeletons, undeads Thunder Komodos and more. Then, he slowly reached the middle of the whole army and saw his prey sitting on a skeleton wyvern like he was owning the world.

He looked a bit pale but had quite a nice face, short black hairs and blood red eyes with cat pupils. Wearing a dark robe with a golden necklace and small rings on his finger, he seemed quite rich. His left hand stood out as it was way bigger than a normal one. The skin on it looked like black scales, giving the whole hand an armored look. Articulated claws replaced the fingers, making the whole thing look like a monster's part.

'That's my hand, I feel it calling me. It's unfortunate that this damned vampire raised the wyvern without my hand, it would have made thing easier.'

He slowly came closer, doing his best to look like a grunt. Jack noticed that around the necromancer were probably standing his strongest and oldest followers, making him unable to overtake them since they were created without his hand's mana. As a part of him, the member held enough mana in its small mana circuits to cast tremendous spells without any difficulty. Furthermore, the veins were forged through their use and transformed a difficult necromancy spell weaving into a walk in a park.

Fortunately, the undead knights seemed as mindless as the others and the skeleton sneaked in without troubles. Around ten meters from his target, he was about to strike when something unexpected happened.

He felt the resonance with his hand way stronger than he expected and, apparently, the vampire felt it too since the was writhing in pain while holding his wrist. Since the situation was even better than what he expected, Jack proceeded to sprint toward his target and tossed two Ice Arrow : one on the poor vampire and the other one in the wyvern's neck spine, freezing it in place.

A black barrier appeared around the skeleton's prey, blocking the ice projectile but this was in his calculations since he saw it even before it was triggered. It was a type of lifesaving artifact linked to the mage's heart, drawing mana when the right stimulation like a spell came. The lecherous magician of before had a few too but since he had a terribly chaotic mana flow, the artifact couldn't draw enough energy to create a barrier correctly.

Jack objective had been to shake the magician from the start : With less concentration, he would not be able to control the stolen hand and would die from the drawback. In order to disturb the vampire even more, the skeleton nimbly climbed on the wyvern's stuck neck and made his way on the unhappy undead beast.

Standing before the crouching vampire, he started pounding one spot of the barrier with his sword and stimulated his soul, screaming a few words with it :

" Give me back my hand ! "

Those worked better than he thought since he truly surprised the necromancer and triggered an even more reaction in his hand, making it wriggle to get away. It was slowly tearing itself free, pulling on the connected mana circuits and menacing to take them with itself.

The vampire was truly shaken, not understanding what was happening to him. He then pulled himself back together, looking at the skeleton who was daring to fight him all alone and screamed with zealous madness :

"How dare you say that the hand of the Dark Lord is yours ! This is an heirloom of my people that I bring back home !"

Jack simply laughed at the crazy fanatic and replied :

"Bringing it back home with an army? Such a weird custom. Furthermore, you look way too young for a vampire to own such heirloom. You dared to pillage my tomb when the earthquake happened didn't you? "

Hearing those words made the necromancer crazy as he knew that the skeleton was telling the truth. He studied his people's history in order to try to pinpoint one of the many part's of the Dark Lord but was repelled by the place's defensive barrier. When the mana density rose, his clan was prepared and they had no troubles to adapt themselves. However, they didn't expect him to go and forcefully fuse with the hand now that the array had broke in the earthquake.

His plan was perfect... Until this goddamn blasphemous skeleton appeared and his hand started rebelling like it never did before ! Knowing that if it continued he would die, he finally managed to focus and cut the Dark Lord's hand with a few dagger strike. It hurt terribly as he had to cut tendons and break his bones but at least, it wasn't worse than what he felt earlier.

Free of the raging storm of mana the hand was raising, he became able to reach out to his army and yelled with a tinge of mana in his voice : "Kill him !"

However, after seeing his bloody member fly to his opponent and fuse without any troubles, he doubted his order and became whiter than ever. The skeleton was grinning at him, black flames dancing on his whole body and forming a silhouette around it. The dark fire looked like a huge man with horns, around 2.30 meters high with enormous wings. And the vampire recognize this person. He recognized that he had made an enormous mistake.

"You heard him, soldiers ! Kill him !" Jack roared with a pulse of black mana that went into every of his overtaken undead, lighting their eyes sockets with a jet black soul fire. He felt terribly good as he was currently overflowing of mana but he knew that the situation was temporary and he couldn't let euphoria get the best of him.

Yet, he still wanted to wreck havoc like he did before and had troubles to restrain himself. He couldn't regenerate his energy and thus had to suck dry the mana lingering in his hand.

'I have enough to cast this spell and recreate myself my basic human body...' He though with a devilish grin.

Still standing on the wyvern, he was actually hacking in pieces the brainless undead knights that came to him while the lesser dragon skeleton couldn't move too much since its master was still on it. Even if they were higher undeads, their patterns were easy to dodge once you knew them and he had his razor sharp hand helping him to cut through their armors like butter.

The vampire was still quivering in fear and blurted out a few words while trying to stop his bleeding :

"Y-You truly are T-The Rav-"

"No need for useless and offensive nickname boy. Tonight, your head will be on a pike and facing the sun." Jack cut, visibly irritated while the flaming silhouette enveloping him receded, leaving only two dots of burning abyss show themselves through the helmet. Vampires weren't particularly vulnerable to sunlight but it was a terrible racist insult to them based on their lack of tan.

Seeing him coming closer, the mage cast a spell while fearing for his life and tossed Jack away, sending him fly into pieces and fall into the melee of undeads under the dragon and all around there. Thunder, arrows and bodies parts were flying, creating a disturbing picture of a mindless war. However, it seemed that the undeads with dark flames were more intelligent as they showed that they were learning how to fight better with every seconds spent in the gory battle.

"Ha... I've beaten him with a simple Shadow Pulse... I truly am deserving the throne of the Karthorn Family !" The vampire mage hysterically screamed, seemingly losing his mind as all he believed in appeared and disappeared in front of him in a few seconds of interval.

"Don't speak too fast, brat." Jack grunted, glaring at the vampire from the distance but making himself heard. He had retreated, leaving a few hundred meters between him and his precious prey. "Now, let's have some fun shall we ?"

He then started chanting a spell, seemingly oblivious to the destruction happening to him. A wall of undeads protected him from the most of the projectiles and spells the weakened necromancer threw, but most of those still had a power equal to a level 2 one and soon, a few touched Jack's body.

Yet, none managed to interrupt his chant as he finished it without flaws. The wounded vampire's face fell when he heard the last word, repeating the incantation in his head. He didn't recognize it but he knew one rule when somebody dared to try standing in the Dark Lord's way : Only Hell awaited the fool as his punishment.

"Heed my call darkness and take form as my shadow. Arise as a soldier and destroy as my wrath. Incarnate yourself because tonight, we are the reapers, the bringers of death. Bring my enemies to the lords of the underworld and flood the earth with their blood ! Get up, my proud army, The Forsaken Legion." Jack ordered, his shadow growing and seemingly wanting to devour the world.