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Interlude 3.1
🕑 Added 2024-12-27 00:30:01 +0000 UTCVorak woke up, yet again, to the delightful chaos of light mana going absolutely ballistic inside him. His eyes shot open, a string of curses tumbling from his lips like water from a busted dam. Tossing his blanket aside with the grace of a pissed-off troll, he dragged himself forward, his body jolting with every surge of unruly mana.
Anyone from the Iron Pact who saw him like this would probably laugh their shiny helms off. “That old bastard’s got bats in his belfry,” they’d say, mocking his over-the-top alarms. But, oh, the youth. So blissfully ignorant of the high-stakes tightrope walk that came with being the Warden of sealed artifacts. Those sniveling twits wouldn’t last a day in his boots.
These artifacts had been quiet for decades, so much so that the seals meant to lock them down had grown rustier than his knees on a cold morning. Well, mostly, he still tried his best to keep them in pristine conditions. Back in the day, the challenge was keeping people safe from these blasted trinkets. Now? It was the artifacts that needed protection—from sticky-fingered thieves, no less. Oh, how the mighty times had fallen.
Grumbling under his breath, Vorak shuffled through the dimly lit sleeping quarters, a space tucked underground like some miserable mole’s burrow. The room smelled faintly of damp stone, the walls lined with worn runes and faintly glowing protection glyphs. Shadows flickered from a single enchanted lantern dangling on a chain.
Despite being under the Iron Pact’s jurisdiction—Varkaigrad’s oh-so-glorious enforcer organization—this little hideaway wasn’t in their central base at the middle district. Nope. After thieves had cracked even the most advanced security systems and made off with a few artifacts, the Iron Pact had decided to shove this whole operation to the edge of the middle district, burying it underground like an embarrassing secret. Anti-divination wards, barrier enchantments, you name it—they had it. Enough to make ancestors squint. And yet, if his alarms were to be believed, some poor sod had managed to sniff this place out and break in.
Vorak stalked to the weapons rack at the far end, fingers curling around a sturdy staff that had seen its fair share of skull-bashing. Whoever it was, they’d better pray to the ancestors, because Vorak wasn’t exactly brimming with holiday cheer tonight.
“Warden? That you, old man?”
The voice made him snarl. Grabbing the staff must’ve woken up the chamber’s other occupant—because these days, gods forbid the Iron Pact assign someone competent to guard priceless relics. No, instead, they handed the job to a student serving detention. Tsk.
A bleary-eyed drakkari youth stumbled out of an adjoining room, rubbing the sleep from his face. His slitted eyes scanned the room until they landed on Vorak, standing by the weapons rack like a vengeful ghost.
“Don’t you dare call me ‘old man,’ you scaly little turd!” Vorak barked, jabbing the staff in the kid’s direction. “It’s sir warden to you.”
“Yeah, yeah…” The brat grumbled, his voice thick with sleep. “Isn’t your shift over, sir warden?”
“Shift? My shift ends when I’m in the grave, you insolent whelp,” Vorak snapped. “Now shut up and stay here. Keep your eyes open in case something hostile slinks past the barriers.”
The kid groaned but didn’t argue, which Vorak begrudgingly appreciated. Not that it mattered. He didn’t think it was anything alive, anyway. This place was too well-hidden for a flesh-and-blood idiot to stumble across. It was probably just some incorporeal pest sniffing around. The last time that happened—what, eight months ago?—it had been some ghostly leech drawn in by the stray energy leaking from the artifacts.
Still, Vorak tightened his grip on the staff. If tonight’s intruder wasn’t some mindless specter, they were about to learn exactly why the Iron Pact kept a crotchety old bastard like him on duty.
Only one way to be sure. After all, he was on the path of a divinator. Pulling on his mana reserves, Vorak formed glowing runes behind his head, their faint shimmer enough to make his hair stand on end. With a tap of his staff against the floor, he muttered under his breath:
“Something dangerous has broken into the artifacts chamber…
Something dangerous has broken into the artifacts chamber…
Something dangerous has broken into the artifacts chamber…”
Each word laced the spell tighter as he funneled the spiritual energy coalescing behind him directly into his eyes. His pupils darkened like ink spilling into water, and his head snapped upward.
The image hit him instantly: the artifacts chamber, iron doors looming like a pair of solemn sentinels. Every seal and enchantment along the frame glowed an angry red. The doors themselves were open—just enough for a sliver of air to slip through.
The spell broke with a crack, and Vorak staggered back, sucking in a sharp breath as he clutched his staff. Normally, even at high yellow core, a divinator could only manage one decent spell at a time. But Vorak, being the stubborn old bastard he was, had cooked up his own custom trick, a two-headed spell. One part answered your question; the other offered you with a vision for context.
His answer was “False.” Whatever had tripped the alarm wasn’t dangerous, yet. But that vision? Oh, that vision was a five-alarm disaster waiting to happen. The chamber doors were open. Wide enough to make his gut churn.
“Ancestors help me,” he muttered, already moving.
The young drakkari shouted something as Vorak stormed past, but the old man waved him off with a curt “Stay put!” He marched down the hallway, his staff clicking sharply against the stone.
This place was supposed to be hidden, sealed tight against every nosy thief and ambitious divinator. Not just that, the security upstairs was top-notch. Vorak’s job was the final line of defense. And now it looked like someone had pissed all over that line.
He reached the dead-end wall at the corridor’s far side and pressed his hand against the cold stone. Runes flickered to life beneath his palm, lighting up the dim hallway as tiles groaned and shifted aside. The hidden passage opened, revealing a wider, darker tunnel beyond.
At the end of the hallway, the chamber loomed, its iron frame like the maw of some ancient beast, the red runes etched into it pulsing angrily. The door, however, was ajar.
A fraction.
That was all it took for Vorak to feel his gut tighten. A chill raced down his spine, and the wave of icy air pouring from the gap gnawed at his bones. His instincts, finely honed over years of handling cursed relics and unspeakable horrors he saw during divinations, screamed at him. Something was here. Lurking.
And it sure as shit wasn’t friendly.
Spectre, maybe? It felt like one. Close, too close.
Vorak wasted no time. His mind was a flurry of activity as he wove a mental fortitude barrier around his head with light mana. If there was a body-snatching wraith in the vicinity, he wasn’t about to let it stroll in and start rearranging his brain like a cheap puzzle of sigils. At the same time, the spell in his staff flared to life, crackling with the promise of retribution.
He crept closer, every sense on high alert. The door, slightly open, spilled crimson light that danced along the floor like spilled blood. His heart pounded harder when his fingers brushed the edge of the gap. He leaned in, just enough to inspect the frame—
And then the headache hit.
It wasn’t a dull ache or a sharp jab—it was like someone had taken a sledgehammer to his skull. Vorak stumbled, the barrier around his mind snapping like a twig underfoot. Before he could recover, his eyes locked on the door, and what peeked through nearly stopped his heart.
A hand—if it could be called that—clawed, shadowy, and grotesque, gripped the iron frame. Smoke poured from the gap. Thick. Cloying. Swirling like shredded cloaks. Then a head emerged, if such a malformed thing deserved the title. A bulbous mass of black flesh, its single crimson eye, slit like a viper’s, stared directly at him.
Vorak’s blood turned to ice.
What. The. Hell?
His divination had been clear—no major threats had breached the chamber. So why in all the ancestors’ saggy beards was a high wraith crawling out of his artefacts chamber? Even looking at the damn thing made his head throb worse, and to his disgust, the flesh on his hand twisted, warping into a single crimson eye that mirrored the creature’s as its essence started taking root in his head. He cursed loudly.
But Vorak was no novice. He was a Light Pathway walker, and this wraith had made one critical error—it had picked the wrong old bastard to mess with.
Before it could slither through the door, Vorak unleashed the spell in his staff. A burst of concentrated light mana struck the wraith directly in its glowing eye. The thing screeched, a high, keening wail that made Vorak’s teeth ache. He didn’t pause, recasting his mental barrier, this time with three layers. No chances, no mercy.
The wraith twisted in the air, its form flickering, retreating into the safety of incorporeality. But Vorak wasn’t having it. His staff slammed into the ground, light mana rippling out in a wave as he roared:
“Pierce the curtain!”
The spell yanked the wraith out of its intangible refuge, dragging it screaming back into the corporeal world. Its shadowy form writhed, trying to escape, but Vorak was already on it.
“Light Bolt!”
A beam of searing mana slammed into the creature.
“Light Bolt!”
Another.
And another.
And another.
Each bolt struck true, exploding against the wraith like miniature suns, leaving no room for retaliation. It screeched, it twisted, it ran—but Vorak wasn’t about to let this slippery bastard slink off. His bolts chased it relentlessly, tearing into its form until, at last, its struggles ceased.
The wraith dissolved into ether, its high-pitched cries fading into silence.
Vorak leaned against his staff, panting. His head throbbed like a drum, and his mana reserves felt like they’d been wrung dry. Overwhelming the enemy was the key with creatures like this—they adapted too quickly for prolonged fights. Still, being a high yellow core only got you so far when combat wasn’t your pathway’s primary focus.
But that was a problem for another day.
Vorak stepped cautiously toward the iron-framed door, his sharp eyes sweeping over the intricate sigils etched across its surface. The runes still glowed steadily, their patterns unbroken, the protective seals intact. No sign of tampering.
So how in the abyss had the door opened?
His brow furrowed as he examined the faint sliver of crimson light spilling through the gap. Was it possible the alarms had only reacted to the wraith? A coincidence, perhaps?
Still, something didn’t sit right.
Vorak’s gaze lingered on the chamber’s entrance, his instincts urging him to step inside and confirm the state of the artefacts for himself. Yet, just as his foot inched forward, a thought froze him in place.
The divination.
His first question had been simple, precise: Has something dangerous broken into the artefact chamber? And the answer had been false.
His gut twisted as he slowly backed away from the door.
The artefact seals couldn’t fail on their own. It was impossible—or so he told himself. Decades of dormancy, of painstaking care to keep these cursed relics inert, couldn’t just unravel without cause. But the nagging thought persisted, clawing at the edges of his mind.
Was it possible?
“No,” Vorak muttered, shaking his head. “Impossible.”
Yet, he couldn’t ignore the itch. As a diviner, he knew better than most—sometimes the questions you didn’t ask were the most damning.
Planting his staff firmly on the ground, he exhaled and let mana flow. Runes swirled to life behind his head, glowing in rhythmic patterns as his mind reached into the threads of spirituality.
This time, he changed the question.
“Has something dangerous broken out of the artefact chamber?”
The words echoed in his mind. The inquiry pulsed through the layers of reality.
“Has something dangerous broken out of the artefact chamber?”
“Has something dangerous broken out of the artefact chamber?”
His pupils darkened, the runes flaring to a blinding brilliance before his vision snapped to another place.
A room.
Messy. Chaotic. Notes and books strewn across the floor, the kind of disarray he associated with a student’s quarters. Seated at a desk, her silver hair catching the dim light, a young Drakkari girl poured over her studies, oblivious to the faint chill that lingered in the air.
On the window sill, it waited.
A black-and-white doll, stitched together in crude mockery of life, stared into the room with beady eyes. Malice radiated from its from as it stared at young girl.
Then its gaze snapped upward.
Straight at him.
The spell shattered violently, flinging Vorak backward into the far wall. Pain exploded across his skull as blood trickled from his eyes, his mind reeling from the backlash. Divination always carried risks—peering too far, too deeply, often came at a cost.
But Vorak was no novice.
He gritted his teeth, forcing himself upright as he downed a mental recovery potion, the alchemical blend cooling the shattered fragments of his psyche. Relief washed over him as his thoughts coalesced once more.
And with them came the answer.
True.
Something dangerous had broken free.
His breath came in shallow gasps as realization dawned. It wasn’t just any artefact. The Pravodov Family Puppet. One of the very few grade-3 cursed artefacts sealed within the chamber. And it had awakened. On its own.
"Damn it all," Vorak muttered, steadying himself with a quick healing spell. The Puppet's malice still clung to his thoughts, its beady, soulless eyes burned into his memory. What in the depths was happening in Varkaigrad? First, people started shifting unnaturally. Then young beastkin children began vanishing. An unexpected monster Wave struck. And now, a sealed artifact had broken free, waltzing out of its containment as if the wards meant nothing.
There was no time to lose.
Vorak bolted from the chamber, his staff sparking with light mana as he half-ran, half-staggered through the hallway. This wasn’t just about retrieval—it was containment. The Puppet wasn’t just dangerous; it was predatory.
And worse, it had already marked a target.
The image of the silver-haired Drakkari girl from his vision flashed in his mind. Vorak could only hope she was still alive.
Comments
TimeDrawsNigh
> Malice radiated from its from as it stared at young girl. Typo: from its form
jeffh4
“Aw! Aren't you the most ADORABLE little bundle of Chaos Incarnate! Yes you are!”
AwesumCoolNinja
I feel like the puppet itself is going to be less of an issue for Jade than having to explain how she actually survived it to this guy without drawing attention to herself lmao
IDK
Welp. Good luck, jade. Surely the puppet is a friend, right?
M van Dongen
More *fun* And *happy* times
