Chapter 133: The seal- 1
Rhys stood in the silent, dead nest, the Queen’s core warm in his hand. Their first major threat in the Unclaimed Territories had been eliminated.
He looked down at the massive pile of the Queen’s bones. He had planned to raise it as a powerful new soldier for his Ashen Legion.
He knelt, placed his hand on the bones, and focused his will, reaching for his Ashen Sovereign bloodline.
"Arise," he commanded.
He felt the familiar drain on his lifespan. The thick, grey fog poured from his body, swirling around the pile of bones. He waited for the familiar silver glow, for the bones to begin knitting themselves back together under his command.
But nothing happened.
He felt a strange resistance. It was not a physical resistance. It was a conceptual one. It felt like he was trying to claim ownership of something that already belonged to someone else.
The grey fog swirled uselessly, unable to take hold of the bones.
He frowned, a deep confusion and a sense of alarm rising in him. He tried again, pouring more of his lifespan into the effort.
The result was the same. The bones, the black sinew, the very essence of these creatures, they were all marked by another, older power, a stamp of ownership that his own authority could not overwrite.
His calculations had failed. He couldn’t summon these creatures. A chilling realization settled in his mind. The Ossian Stalkers were not natural beasts.
They were constructs. They were already summons, puppets of another, far more powerful entity.
And the only entity he knew of that was connected to this kind of ancient, necromantic energy, this kind of world-spanning power, was the thing trapped behind the Seal.
Emma saw him emerge from the dark crack in the giant skull. He was moving with a slow, thoughtful pace. She stood up, a look of relief on her face.
"You’re back," she said. "Is it done?"
"The Queen is dead," Rhys confirmed, his voice flat. He walked over to her and held out his hand. In his palm was the Queen’s core, a fist-sized crystal that glowed with a soft, red light. "This is its core. It will be a good source of energy."
She looked from the core to his face. The victory had not brought any relief to his expression. His brow was furrowed in a deep, troubled thought. "What is it?" she asked, sensing his unease. "What did you find in there?"
Rhys was silent for a moment, his mind working through the implications of his discovery. "These creatures," he began, his voice low and serious, "they are not natural. They are puppets. Someone, or something, created them. They are already under the command of another master."
Emma’s eyes widened in understanding. "The Warden," she whispered. "He controlled the dead in the city. Could it be him?"
Rhys shook his head. "No. The Warden’s power was different. It was the power of a necromancer, a man who controlled the spirits of the dead. This is different. These creatures are not risen corpses. They are constructs, artificial soldiers created from bone and a strange, necrotic life-force. And their master’s authority over them is absolute. Even I cannot break it."
He did not tell her the full truth, that he had tried and failed to use his own necromantic power. But she understood the implication.
"The entity behind the Seal," she said, her voice a hushed whisper of dawning horror.
"It’s the only explanation," Rhys confirmed. "The Warden was its jailer. These things... they are its soldiers. Its influence is not just contained behind the Seal. It can reach out. It can create armies. The Unclaimed Territories are not just a wild, untamed land. They are its territory."
The true nature of their journey had just become terrifyingly clear. They were not just crossing a dangerous wilderness. They were walking through an enemy’s kingdom, a kingdom ruled by a silent, unseen god of death.
"The scout that escaped," Emma said, her voice tight with a new urgency. "It wasn’t just running back to its nest. It was reporting back to its true master."
"Yes," Rhys said. "And the death of the Queen will not have gone unnoticed. That master now knows we are here. And it knows we are a threat."
They looked at each other, the same grim understanding in their eyes. Their plan to travel at night and rest during the day was no longer viable. They were no longer just hiding from the sun. They were now hiding from a far more dangerous and intelligent enemy.
"We have to move," Rhys said, his voice firm. "Now. We travel during the day. We have to cross this desert as fast as we can, before it sends something else after us. Something stronger."
Emma nodded, her fear replaced by a cold resolve. She packed her mother’s book away, and they began to walk, leaving the giant skull and the dead nest behind them.
The journey was a brutal, relentless grind. The white-hot sun of the Boneyard Desert was a merciless enemy. The heat was a physical weight, pressing down on them, draining their strength. They walked through a silent, white world, the colossal skeletons of long-dead gods their only landmarks.
Rhys was a pillar of strength. His inhuman constitution allowed him to endure the heat without any visible sign of strain. He took the lead, his eyes constantly scanning the horizon, his senses expanded to their limit, feeling for any sign of a new threat. He made sure Emma drank water regularly and took her stamina pills whenever she began to falter.
Emma, in turn, was their navigator. Her mother’s book was their only map in this featureless wasteland.
She would study the ancient charts, looking for subtle clues in the landscape, a specific arrangement of giant vertebrae, a particular curve of a massive ribcage, that would confirm they were on the right path.
They were a team, their individual strengths covering each other’s weaknesses. His power and her knowledge. They moved as a single, determined unit through the harshest environment either of them had ever faced.
For two days, they saw nothing but white sand and old bones. The desert was empty, and the silence was unnerving. Rhys knew it was the calm before the storm. The master of this land was watching them. It was preparing its next move.
On the third day, they saw them.
They appeared as small, dark specks high in the pale, washed-out sky. At first, Rhys thought they were just desert birds. But they grew larger, and their movements were too smooth, too coordinated, to be natural.
There were about twenty of them. They were flying creatures, with wide, leathery wings like those of a bat. But their bodies were made of the same mismatched, white bone as the Ossian Stalkers. They were Skeletal Harriers, the aerial scouts of the Boneyard Desert.
They did not attack. They simply circled, high above, their forms dark silhouettes against the bright sun. They were watching. They were tracking. They were reporting their position back to their unseen master.
"They’ve found us," Emma said, her voice a low, worried whisper. She looked around at the vast, open desert. "There is nowhere to hide."
Rhys knew she was right. In this open wasteland, they were completely exposed. The Harriers could follow them for days, waiting for the perfect moment to strike, or to lead a much larger force to their location.
They had to find cover.
"Your map," he said, his voice urgent. "Is there anything? A cave? A canyon? Anything that can give us shelter from the sky?"
Emma frantically flipped through the pages of her mother’s book. Her finger traced the ancient, faded lines of the desert map.
"There is one place," she said after a moment, her voice tight with a desperate hope.
"It’s not a cave. The ancient texts call it the ’Ribcage of the World-Serpent’. It’s a massive, fully intact skeleton of a creature so large its ribcage is said to be a network of natural tunnels and caverns."
She looked up at him, her eyes pleading. "It is still a day’s journey from here. To the east."
"Then we run," Rhys said simply.
The slow, grinding journey became a desperate, grueling race. Rhys knew Emma could not keep up on her own. Without a word, he lifted her into his arms.
She let out a small gasp of surprise but did not protest. He held her easily, her weight nothing to his inhuman strength.
He began to run. His feet pounded on the hot, white sand, kicking up a cloud of fine dust. He moved with a steady, relentless pace, his eyes fixed on the eastern horizon.
High above, the Skeletal Harriers followed, their dark forms a constant, ominous presence in the sky. They began to circle lower, their silent, patient observation turning into a more active hunt.
The sun beat down on them. The heat was a physical enemy. But they kept going. Hours passed. The desert seemed endless, the landscape unchanging.
But Rhys’s stamina was not endless. Even he was beginning to feel the strain of running at full speed, under the brutal sun, while carrying another person.
Just as he felt his own strength beginning to wane, he saw it.
On the horizon, a series of massive, white arches rose from the sand. They were perfectly curved, like the ribs of a colossal beast.
It was the Ribcage of the World-Serpent.
But the Skeletal Harriers saw it too. They let out a high-pitched, collective screech, a sound that grated on the soul. Their patient circling was over.
They folded their leathery wings and dived. They came down from the sky like a storm of black-tipped arrows, their sharp, bony claws extended, aimed at their fleeing prey.
Rhys pushed his body to its absolute limit. He ran faster, his legs a blur of motion. The entrance to the Ribcage Caverns, a dark opening at the base of the giant bones, was just a hundred yards away.
Fifty yards.
Twenty yards.
The screech of the diving Harriers was a deafening sound now. He could feel the rush of wind from their wings. He could see the sharp, black points of their claws.
Ten yards.
The first Skeletal Harrier, its bony maw open in a silent scream, was almost upon them.