Laria
Laria screamed in terror as the animated skeletons carried her with demonic swiftness through the unearthly catacombs. Their dry, bony fingers dug into her skin like the fingers of death itself. Their hollow eye sockets glowed with a chilling orange light as they sped through the enchanted caverns on the Black Altar’s borrowed power.
In moments they came to an abrupt stop outside a small antechamber. One of the skeletons went to work opening a hidden door, which opened with a metallic screech as he thrust the black, functional lever back. Two of the empty figures rushed into the lightless space beyond, carrying Laria at high speed with eerie silence. As they came closer to the back chamber, their voices began to echo eerily from the walls.
“The master commands your presence,” the ghastly leader said with a hollow, grating voice. “The stars have nearly aligned, and the sacrifice must be made ready.”
“The sacrifice must be made ready,” the others all repeated as one. Though not entirely mindless, they seemed to be the very guardians of doom, executing their master’s will without hesitation or emotion.
Laria screamed as they carried her back through the door and into the cloistered halls of the temple. Once again, she stood under the enormous dome, but this time the chamber was not empty–it was filled with the animated bones of the undead souls the Dark King had twisted by his evil sorcery to obey his will.
The black altar stood in the center of the chamber, its ebony stonework gleaming with a sinister light from within. Behind the altar stood a sinister figure dressed in robes of deepest ebony –The Dark King. He smiled wide and beckoned at Laria as the skeletal warriors pushed her forcefully towards him.
Though her body trembled with fear, she did not have the strength to break away from their iron grasp. Against her will, she was constrained before him on the chilly stone platform and forced to kneel in submission before his chilling presence.
“So!” the Dark King bellowed, “the stars have nearly aligned, and the hour of Xulthar’s restoration is nearly at hand. Bind the sacrifice!”
“Bind the sacrifice,” the skeletal warriors repeated with one voice, sending chills of terror down Laria’s back. Before she could even scream, two bony apparitions had her in their grasp, methodically ripping off her garments until she was utterly naked. She tried to fight back, but they were too strong for her, their dry and bony hands tying ropes around her wrists and ankles and lashing her to the cold stone altar.
Soon she was bound securely in place, powerless against the evil forces now gathered around her. A smile of cruel intent crossed the Dark King’s countenance as he stepped closer and leaned over her.
“Now, at long last,” he barked with an icy malice, “the dawn of my immortal reign has come! Centuries I have waited for this moment, when my sould will no longer be bound to these crumbling, forgotten ruins. With your death, my power will fill the whole Earth, and all nations shall be enslaved to my will!”
Laria’s body shook with fear as the priest of the black altar materialized in a cloud of smoke. His glowing eyes seemed to be filled with sadness as he looked upon her, but his will was bound to his master’s, and this was the Dark King’s hour.
“Help!” Laria screamed, glancing every which way. “Roderick! Help me!”
“Your foolish companion will not save you,” the Dark King taunted her. “But it shall give me great pleasure to enslave him when he comes for you. What form shall I change him into? A wolf? A bear?”
Laria gazed up at the Dark King in horror–and suddenly saw the Heart of Xulthar set in the center of his crown. Her eyes widened with recognition as she rememembered the priest’s words.
“Roderick!” she shouted. “The Heart of Xulthar–I’ve found it! It’s here!”
“Silence!” screeched the Dark King, his mocking turned to malice. His arm rose, and his fingertips sparkled with an ethereal light. With a flick of his wrist, an invisible shockwave rippled through the air and over Laria’s naked flesh.
Laria tried to scream, but she felt as if the air were being torn from her lungs. She could feel herself being pulled away from her physical form, her consciousness suddenly lifted from her body. The Dark King’s triumphant cackle seemed to open a gateway to the Void–a swirling black abyss that pulled at her spirit and threatened to swallow her whole. She tried to pull herself away, to return to her body now lying unconscious below her, but the Dark King’s power was too great, and she fell into oblivion.
Laria
Laria could feel her consciousness leave her body. It felt a bit like shedding some exceptionally dirty clothes, or washing layers of mud, dirt, and refuse off of her skin in a crystal clear spring of pure water. At the same time, her spirit felt so insubstantial that she feared a gust of wind would blow her into non-existence, like a whisp of a cloud over the desert at the touch of the dawn’s first rays.
She floated into a swirling vortex of mist, and found herself looking down into a dark and misty canyon. A pale ribbon of a river wound its way through a chaotic series of rapids, and the canyon walls climbed ever higher and higher, taking the river and the fog with them into the shadows. A distant hiss of water flowing over rocks was the only sound, and the canyon seemed to go on forever.
Bright pricks of light pulsed in the fog like light shining from lanterns. They glowed and flickered, and seemed to come closer as Laria drifted downwards to the river. As the glow from the lanterns brightened, Laria saw that each one belonged to a shrouded figure, their faces hidden by long, hooded robes. They seemed to float with the river, carried down canyon by the current.
As they passed, their hands reached out in silent communication to Laria. She could feel their panicked fear as they were carried away from the light and down into the darkness. Laria called out to them, but their faces were as still as stone, their misty features distant and cold.
Laria recognized the canyon, and she knew the river. It was the River of Death, and that flowed eternally through the Void without beginning or end, like a snake eating its own tail. The shrouded figures were spirits, like herself, used by the Dark King and cast aside like old clothing.
“Who are you?” she asked as they drifted past her.
“We are the forgotten, the ones caught under the spell of the Dark King,” one of the figures spoke. His voice was a whisper, barely audible above the rush of water. “In life, we were citizens of Xulthar, rich and poor alike, but our names have been stolen from us, and we no longer remember who we were.”
“Who you were?” Laria asked, confused. “Don’t you mean, who you are?”
“No,” the figure said sadly. “Our bodies were stolen from us, our flesh stripped away and our skeletons animated by the sorcery of the Dark King. Because we are neither dead, nor living, our souls are consigned to wander the Void until our physical form has been shattered, or the Dark King has been slain.
As Laria watched, the lantern of one of the distant figures suddenly went out, like a flickering candle extinguished by a gust of wind. The shrouded figure drifted up from the river, rising through the haze and fog.
“I am free!” the nameless figured cried in exultation. “Farewell, sad friends! My chains have been shattered, and I go to the immortal realm!”
The spirit’s face was wreathed in joy, but as he drifted upward, his face suddenly twisted into a mask of agony, his mouth contorted in a silent scream. A light appeared, and he flew toward it like a moth circling a flame, until it swallowed him and vanished into the fog.
“What was that?” Laria asked, a feeling of dread rising within her.
The voices of the spirits howled in unison as the ghostly figures watched, a despairing cacophony that flung its echoes across the chasm between life and death.
“That was his freedom,” one wailed, her voice hollow and echoing with anguish. “His skeletal form was slain in the land of the living, freeing his spirit to enter his eternal reward.”
Laria shuddered at those words. “His eternal reward?” she whispered.
“Yes,” rumbled another figure, a deep moan that seemed to contain all of their sorrow and regret. “The moment his eyes beheld the Immortal Realm, he remembered who he was – and all of his sins. They must have been many, for him to be such an anguished soul.”
Laria’s eyes widened in shock and horror. “What happened to him?”
“He passed on to his eternal reward,” the figure lamented.
“No,” argued another. “His soul was not ready, and he passed into another part of the Void.”
“We don’t know,” the first figure admitted to Laria. “All we know is that our souls have been bound here for longer than we ever lived in life, and that we can no longer return to the mortal realm.”
Laria pondered this for some time. Unlike the ghostly figures, she bore no lamp, and her body was not shrouded in robes. She was naked, just as she had been when the Dark King’s priest had bound her to the altar. But she sensed that the thinnest of threads bound her to her physical form, and the moment it was severed, she, too, would drift upward into the light.
“Is there nothing we can do?” she asked.
“No,” the first figure said sadly. “When Xulthar was destroyed, our souls were bound to this river. There is nothing we can do.”
Laria’s heart sank in the despair at the figure’s words. She had come to the Void with a purpose, to stop the Dark King from unleashing his evil on the mortal world. But now, she wondered if her fate would be the same as these lost souls.
“Is there no way out?” she asked, hoping against hope that there was a way to break the cycle.
The figure paused for a long time to consider. “For us, death is our only release. But for you, there may be a way back to the land of the living. It all depends on how you came to be here.”
Laria thought on that for a moment. With dismay, she remembered the black altar, and how the Dark King had tied her body down there before banishing her spirit to this place.
“The Dark King plans to use me as a human sacrifice,” she said desperately. “My body is tied to the altar in his temple. When the stars are perfectly aligned, he will slay me to complete his spell.”
The ghostly figure nodded sadly. “Then your fate is already sealed. Once the Dark King has sacrificed your physical form, your soul will be forever bound to the Void.”
Laria felt a shudder run through her spirit, like a cold sweat except more ephemeral. She had to find a way back to her physical form before it was too late. She knew that the Dark King’s temple was full of dark sorcery, but she had to try.
“I have to find a way out of here,” she said firmly. “I have to stop the Dark King and save the mortal realm.”
“You seek the impossible,” the dark figure told her as he drifted down the river with the others. “Farewell, Laria. May you find your way to the eternal peace of the Immortal Realm.”
“Wait!” Laria called out, but the ghostly figures drifted away from her, disappearing into the mist. She tried to run after them, but it was as if she were caught in a dream, unable to move of her own accord.
Laria was desperate. She had to find a way back to the temple of Xulthar before the Dark King completed his ritual. But how?
The mists seemed impenetrable, and no matter which way she turned, she found only more fog. She felt as if she were spinning in circles, her feet rooted to the ground beneath her.
Suddenly, she heard a voice from within the mist. It was an old voice, familiar yet distant. The kind words of her first slave master echoed in the air.
“Come back, young child,” he said gently. “We need you.”
Laria clung to the hope that he offered and followed the sound of his voice into the mists. But as she drew closer, she realized it was not him at all but something much more sinister lurking in the darkness.
A creature with glowing red eyes stepped out of the shadows and roared a challenge at her with its fangs bared. Instinctively, Laria whirled around and ran for her life through the swirling fog until finally emerging breathless and terrified from its depths.
Laria took a step, but was suddenly met with an overwhelming chorus of voices from within the mist.
“Come here, slave girl!”
“Come to me, you little wench!”
“Here, my pretty my pretty little slave!
“What’s wrong? Would I ever hurt you? Ha!”
Many years prior, these same voices had made her submit to their cruel bondage. Laria’s body shuddered in fear as she realized that if she chose to heed their voices, there would be no possibility of ever finding her way back home.
Laria stood at the edge of the mist, her heart pounding in her chest. She had come too far to turn back now. The voices of all her previous masters called out to her, but she ignored them, though it took all of her strength of will to do so.
She took a deep breath and stepped forward. As she moved deeper into the mist, she could feel a sense of dread creeping over her, and found herself yearning to hear Roderick’s voice. Surely, he would know what to do in a place like this.
But then, she remembered the beast who had nearly attacked her when she had followed the voice of her first master. None of these voices truly belonged to any of her previous masters–or if they did, they were all monsters now, eager to consumer her.
Roderick was not in this place. He was still in the catacombs beneath the temple of Xulthar, in the mortal realm. Fixing that thought in her head, she pressed forward, ignoring the voices that called to her.
Laria emerged from the mists and found herself floating over the ruins of Xulthar, a city of dark and sorcerous power that humans had once built but no longer remembered. She looked down and saw the city in its full, dismal beauty–the tall towers that crumbled with age, the deep shadows that lurked in every corner, and the faint glimmer of strange blue-green lights that shimmered from within the forgotten depths.
But what caught her attention most were the strange swirling energies she could feel emanating from the city. Invisible to mortal eyes, it seemed as though some powerful presence had filled the ruined city. Fearful yet curious, Laria followed these energies, drifting like a ghost on the dusty wind.
She saw the temple, with the Dark King and his minions crowded around the black altar. She even saw her own naked and unconscious body tied to its black marble surface. But to her surprise, the source of the power was not there.
Instead, her gaze was drawn to a strange shimmering pool of energy swirling in the heart of the temple. When she concentrated on it, she could feel its tremendous power and remembered the tales she had heard as a child – tales of the cursed treasure of Xulthar said to be hidden somewhere in this city.
The Dark King and his minions seemed almost like slaves before this power, and Laria finally realized that the true source of their power came not from him but from the cursed treasure of Xulthar itself.
But what could she do? She was nothing more than a spirit, her body still bound to the black altar.
As if in answer to her thoughts, a figure materialized in the center of the pool of energy that now filled the temple. Laria gasped as she recognized him. It was Roderick, his eyes blazing with power and determination as he stepped forward and raised his sword.
