Audacity

"Did he say, Supreme… Void… Imp?"

I could not answer Matron Etyl. Nor could I hear the skull attempt to describe the strange sight before me. Every soul present was petrified. Locked in the most primal state of fear capable of existing in the minds of mortals. The slaughter- no, the destruction ceased. Forced into a stillness by the most vile energy to befall the Mortal Plane.

Even from here, I could feel it. A mindless malevolence that promised a perpetually unchanging emptiness. The Void. Personified as a black ball of tarry flesh gilded in unholy light. Undulating and waving as whatever creature within went against its nature by undergoing a rapid change.

When that change was complete, white webs cracked along the surface with the soul-piercing intensity of a whisper, shattering the now-solid sphere into unseen fragments and a solitary figure that landed hard against the snow, despite it hardly being off the ground in the first place. But it- Amun, stood without issue.

He stood half his former height now, but his eyes were the same. White and draconic. Yet, that same white glow was present at the corners of his hairline, appearing like stretch marks around a pair of large bumps. Just like the marks within the long claws on his webbed hands and feet, and the fine tunic beneath his skin-tight clothes of semisolid darkness.

And he had a tail. Thin, but tipped in a chevroned barb that flicked menacingly with blinding speed.

"Oho! So it's like this, huh?" He laughed in a high-pitched reel of nearly incomprehensible words, and his movements were just as fast.

Causal motions were a blur of black against white, making him seem to just stand there. Somehow smiling or moving his hands to his eyes and back to his sides without making any movements in between.

Moving dramatically slow and yet blindingly fast all the same, he made a swimming motion and ascended to the skies, where he let out a cackling howl of wicked laughter before he swam forward in a blur of blood and screams.

Dozens were lacerated, disemboweled, beheaded, stabbed, or disarmed by the second, leaving only the few who could keep up with his speed scrambling to catch up with him.

Just as quickly as it began, Amun swept through the lines and came through the other side with his 'skin' of wickedness sloughing off of him. The markings faded to nothing and the tail dissipated into darkness, leaving the sharp-toothed drow I was familiar with facing down rows upon rows of cannons with half-lidded eyes.

They wasted no time in firing. Some did not even take to aiming their weapons, evidently thinking it better to simply let loose and compensate on the next shot. But they never got one, Amun sent out a wave of his purple magic, sending the cannonballs whirling around his body before they smashed into the place from which they came at twice the speed. Then he looked to his feet.

"Alright, Lana. You're up. You know the rule."

"Yeah, yeah. No civilians. You didn't exactly give me much to play with, though."

"Next time."

The undying woman of darkness let out a little laugh, then led an army of shadows from Amun's feet.

They held every power one could think of. Affinities. Classes. The first one- Lana, flew into a rage the moment she came within range of someone, using her absurd strength to literally rip them apart before she went on the prowl. Meanwhile, Amun simply… walked.

He strode through the chaos at a casual pace towards the castle, easily avoiding the many martial undead felled from his ki, fighting what remained of the opposition. His expression was mute as he watched his shadows hunt down the retreating or surrendering barbarians with extreme prejudice, and yet his eyes tracked his skeletons blockading the city with sharp intent. His focus was unbendable amidst this chaos. Unlike ours.

By the time Matron Etyl gathered her wits and dragged me into the city, all had gone quiet. The surviving humans took it upon themselves to huddle up in their homes to watch the lone figure standing before the castle.

He did not seem to notice us upon our arrival, but he began shifting regardless, removing the spear from its rest on his shoulder to begin spinning it around so that the sling attached to the butt end picked up a little more snow, ice, and rock with each pass. Then it was launched.

A horrendous whistle- a screech that could put a banshee to shame announced its departure. Yet the resulting crash was something few creatures could replicate.

The comparatively small mass of rock and ice punched neatly through the wall and waited a split second before releasing its energy. There seemed to be no resistance. Just a plume of icy dust that blocked the view of stone falling to touch the ground for the first time in centuries. But the whistles kept coming.

Again and again, Amun threw the accelerated rocks into the wall, sometimes curving them impossibly to the sides or the rear until all that remained was a castle sitting atop a mound of rubble. And then Amun walked. Paying little mind to the many corpses strewn about as he made his way to the last standing section of the wall.

Through our little windows, though, we saw three different scenes playing out.

On one, we saw the rotund Gerdian, Blude, dragging a massive barbarian through the deep waters of Shujen Bay with the utmost ease. Her companions remained close behind her, fighting off a few humans close on their tails until they breached the water like great whales and took to the skies, swimming in the same way as Amun in his Imp form.

On another, we saw the smaller girl, Iris, dragging another massive human through the air as she flew through some unseen force I knew not she had. And then there was the Death Jarl.

Zaraxus effortlessly guided his blade through all eighty of the royal guards, rendering them wilted corpses with the most shallow of cuts as he made his way towards the rulers of Shujen's surface and the esteemed warriors guarding them.

Once there, he tossed his weapon aside and proceeded to crush skulls, rip limbs, pry hearts, and tear flesh while the decrepit king and the withered queen looked on in horror.

When all that was left was them and the new king, Zaraxus tossed the former rulers aside and stepped back after placing one item on the royal dais. His shrunken lair, once reduced to the shape of a ring, was now expanding to form his new lair.

Rather than watch it take shape, however, he kicked and tossed the King and Queen to the side of every group of fallen guards so that they could watch them be born anew. Then, with a company of new draugr ranked and filed behind him, they marched to the edge of that final standing wall and stepped over it.

There was no crash when they landed. Only a gentle breeze coupled with a short march to Amun's side, wherein the former rulers were forced to their knees and the Death Jarl leaned back on his heels to bellow a victorious roar across the city.

While the roar forced their wide eyes deeper into the ground, they hoped and silently pleaded for their worthless lives to be spared. However, Amun's eyes turned to the sky.

Seconds passed. Long seconds of sobbing shivers, howling winds, and shifting flesh. Then… screaming. A scream of sheer terror echoed from the skies like the call of a predatory bird. Only, the birds were shaped like little human girls. And their prey was a pair of humans more than twice their size.

They threw them like trash, sending them hurdling to the ground. But Amun cast a quick spell that quickly lessened their speed, leaving them dangling in the air nearby. They seemed young. Several years younger than me and Amun but a few years older than the girls, if barely. Siblings, undoubtedly. Born with the same broad, brutish faces and snarling eyes that bore holes at the beings that could only be their parents.

"Why!?" Blude landed in a fire of red hair and white snow. "Why?" She repeated, screaming as she stalked to the king and queen, only to face about towards those hiding in their homes.

"What did we do? Why did you keep attacking us? Him?" She pointed towards the Elven Devil, shocking us all. Me, Matron Etyl, and even the enraged siblings and their parents.

'What a reaction. How naive.' I silently mused, looking over the others as I did so. There was shock in their eyes, of course. But to varying degrees, and far less than there should have been. But… there was also anger. Disbelief. Not at Amun, but the barbarians. Yet, there was humility, awe, and sadness written on their faces all the same.

"Many creatures have a tendency to react to things that are different- to the unknown, with violence. That is not a trait exclusive to humanity. They simply act on it the most." Amun began in an almost solemn tone. "It is through no fault of their own. Such things are born from a reality as harsh as ours. One where interacting with the unknown often warrants death. We become what this reality- what our experiences, make us.

"The things that make us becomes the thing that is most familiar. The paradigm. The status quo. The thing that must be protected. As such, the things that bring change are the things people revolt against, for they threaten to remove the comforts of familiarity.

"Like those in Bakewia." He gestured to the distance. "Some can see past what's on the outside and give the unknown a chance, though the journey to do so is long. They are the ones who embrace the changing tides.

"Many others cannot." Amun sighed heavily, looking at the sphere of death floating above. "They are the ones who label those who are different, those with cultures or beliefs unaligned with their own, as evil. Monstrosities. Abominations. They are the ones who become broken when they lose the thing that is most familiar.

"They are the ones who hold the weights of good and evil with such fervor that the scales continue to rise until they tip off the fulcrum, plunging them into wicked darkness. Isn't that right, my dear King Horas, Queen Frahna?"

Amun leaning forward must have empowered the former rulers, for the King glared and the Queen spat at Amun, who simply laughed at the display before stepping aside to display their progeny.

"Let this be your first lesson from me," Amun said. "Some people in these realms will seek to destroy all that you know and love, simply because you exist."

"I know that already," Blude muttered, seemingly embarrassed.

"I was talking to them." Amun clarified, staring at the two hulking siblings.

<<What, are you to be their guardian as well?>> Matron Etyl spat in disgust.

"I am." He nodded distantly. Much to my abject surprise. "The girl was a sickly child, despite her strength and size. So, her Horas, here,  thought it best to throw her in the wilds. She only survived by using her knowledge of the nearby farms to allow wolves to get easy prey. That caught my interest when Mani was first raised.

"The boy was deemed weak for showing kindness to animals and only killing when needed. Thus he was tortured and punished daily by his Frahna, here." He looked at me during his short but meaningful pause, and I felt my heart freeze as he continued past the girls and the siblings.

"Of all the voices in the peninsula, pleading to Mani, yours were both the loudest, and most selfless. So, I am here to grant your wish. I am here to teach you. I am here to bring you into my Troupe."

"However." Amun stepped towards the siblings before any of us, even Matron Etyl, could speak. "Parricide is an act that will forever taint your soul. You will be cursed regardless of my input. Now, I couldn't care less if you're cursed or blessed. However, there is a problem."

He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, towards the King and Queen and the celestial wolves, reduced to puppies. "Skoll and Hati have taken a liking to you. They wish to become something greater in death. They wish for you to as well. But not like this.

"They don't want you to kill your parents, so they've decided to kill them for you. In other words, if you truly want to kill your parents, you'll have to kill Skoll and Hati first, but they won't fight back.

"Now." Amun chortled in a way that was not funny. "I care deeply about these wolves. I've known them for nearly a decade. So, if you kill them, I will not only curse you and your descendants, but you will replace them. Do with that information what you will."

Their eyes fell as one, flicked between endless points on the ground as one, then rose to pour dissimilar motions into the crisp breeze. First, despair. "You will let them live!??" the boy sank. But the girl thrashed in silence.

"Not so." Amun shook his head with the calm indifference of a great wrym before a novice adventurer. "Like I said, Skoll and Hati will kill them. Then I will raise them as undead and put them in charge of the city as they once were. Only... better."

"Over my dead body!" The girl growled. But Amun threw down an axe and a bow with a snarky laugh.

"That can be arranged. So walk the walk." And with that reply, the dead formed a ring around the opponents, but not much happened for minutes.

Until that is, the King and Queen grew encouraged enough to begin throwing insults at their children. The usual ones humans would use. Coward. Weakling. Justifications for all the things they did, claiming it was to make them strong, suitable rulers or that it was once done to them, but they were disappointments in that regard. Unimaginative, but effective.

The girl moved first, exclaiming that if they would be cursed either way, it would be better to get the satisfaction of revenge. Yet, her body jerked and swayed with unease as she loosed arrow after arrow into the white wolf, and then her father.

That made the Queen laugh at the weakness of her son. A weakness that was so much greater than his frail sister's. A weakness that was pointed out further as a blade pointed her way, only for a mass of black fur to step hop on her chest and crush the words from her lungs.

The massive blow nearly missed the black wolf entirely. It only sliced through the throat and veins of the neck, leaving enough force to cleave through the Queen's ribs, silencing her forever.

"How fucking dare you!"

The words banged against reality itself like thunder echoing from a realm of perpetual storms. Or rather, from a storm that was contained in the shape of a drow-devil, giving the being a glow of silver-blue light that belied the wicked words steaming from his abyssal tongue.

With a rise of his hand and a stream of curses, the souls of the departed wolves ascended from their corpses and melded with that divine light before they dashed towards the siblings, flowing into their bodies like I would when returning from a projection. Only, they thrashed. They seized. They writhed in ways that made the martial undead seem as if they were dancing when they first stood.

My morbid mind was utterly fascinated. Bones shifted and cracked in the most unnatural ways, eliciting animalistic groans that echoed through the hearts of the humans crowded in the doors and windows, pushing them deeper inside to hide behind barricades of furniture.

Exclamations of disgust, curiosity, and of course, shock echoed once Amun's curses ran silent and tufts of black and white fur began to grow on their malformed bodies, claws began to extend from their hands and feet, their mouths elongated into feral snouts, and when they finally reared back with a howl, they pounced.

A heaping pile of raw meat that was not there before was the victim of their frenzied hunger. They devoured the carnivorous feast in mere gut-wrenching moments, leaving the massive wolf-humans surprisingly calm, if not jumpy. But with a few soft words and that divine light of his, Amun calmed them down, dissipating their fur into flakes of fire and ice and shrinking their bodies back to their human selves, sleeping peacefully in the snow as if nothing happened.