Henric was one who lived on death. He was trained at killing any other living creature, and wouldn't just rip the heart from his target and crush it into the ground with his iron clad feet, but would make an art of it. He could with ease bring down the largest of beasts, or cleverest of men, but sometimes it is not that which counts.
The slayer of the royal city of Talinshrine had just been hired for what was going to be his largest raid yet. Though no dragons needed slaying, and no clan leaders needed a gentle nudge at their throat with a knife to help convince them rebellion on the high throne was a bad idea, forces of pure power and thousands of year old magic were at work.
In the second age of this world, there had lived who many scholars of his time believed to be the greatest necromancer ever, Cornelius Thornbearer. When he understood, at the age of two-hundered and thirty-seven, that death could be delayed from his still, somehow, mortal body no longer he finally gave up with his dreams of immortality, but not without the conjuration of his most powerful spell ever, and probably the most powerful this world would ever see.
Deep beneath a temple of a once great necromancer, now long dead, there was a dungeon which twisted and wound like a maze downward. None living had ever reached the bottom, and some believed that it would continue until it dropped down from the bottom of the earth, sending one who made the mistake of venturing that deep plummeting down forever into the black abyss that was the heavens. Obviously the boy who hired Henric was not one of these men. His client was no more than fourteen years of age, but already reached levels of power unobtainable by many practiced magicians of the time. He believed that Cornelius would not punish one who navigated his way through to the bottom of the great dungeon alive, but instead gift them with great treasure. He believed this treasure was the vast sea of knowledge that the undead master of ancient had received. Henric was to venture into the tunnels with twelve other mercenaries, all armed to the teeth with the latest alloys of metal and designs of weapons to aid them in their pillage of this crypt, find the bottom, take what was to be found, and return it to the young lord. Simple enough.
~*~
By The next cycle of the ancient saint's names Henric was prepared. He had battled with the late Cornelius's monstrosities and packed as such. He brought a light pack with a full water-skin and a couple pounds of dry meat because he knew it would most likely be a long and trying journey, but he had no doubt he would find at least semi-sufficient resources on his descent, as the dungeon master whose final resting place he was to defile was definitely an honorable one. His armor was no more than hardened leather with some chain mail around his joints and throat, due to the fact that one of the ancient necromancers favorite spells was one he invented, animating a skeleton and bringing a weak magical spell to move its joints, this spell would slowly drain power from its surroundings until with time the force became stronger and stronger until eventually when the corpses were as ancient as these would be had the force of a thousand men behind their blows. Although infinitely powerful, these beasts were slow moving and would need to be avoided, not fought. As for weaponry he brought silent, his trademark short-sword enchanted by the high priest himself so that it could slice through flesh like butter, and when against his victims throat would would not allow them to be able to emit even a whisper from their soon dead lips. His favorite shield, made from an extremely rare strange blueish metal, both light and strong was packed so that he would be able to deflect some blows from his body. He had also packed, as a long range alternative a pocket crossbow, currently slung around his left shoulder with five iron bolts on a strap above his leg. He was ready for anything this old death-twister could throw at him.
At the entrance of the tomb it was apparent that some of his allies were not quite so battle ready as he, wearing heavy armor and broadswords, possibly the worst choice of arms for this particular situation. He was absolutely sure several of them would die almost immediately on this dangerous expedition.
Henric, after the minimum possible greeting with his to-be brothers in arms, told the rest of the group to remain behind him, as he opened the door to the ancient crypt, somewhere no man had been in more than a thousand years.
The air, what little there was among the dust in the first chamber was cool and musty. Almost immediately Henric felt a sapping of his strength, justifying to him that his skeleton hypothesis was correct. He used his small aptitude in magic to light a fire to shine in front of him that would move as he did making the dank dark room they were occupying glow. This revealed that they were currently in a chamber carved from stone. At the far end of the room was a stairway leading down into a pitch-black abyss. He spoke one of the meager supply of words he supplied to others with his own voice saying a simple, harsh, raspy, "This way." and so the greatest venture of his life to that date began.
~*~
Stairs descended straight down on and on with the occasional trapped room with a couple of skeletons inside to keep the trek interesting. Henric thought of the struggle he would have coming back up, but then looked towards the bright side of the situation as he realized that the chain of idiots following him would most likely be shortened considerably. This brought a ghost of a smile fighting hard to capture a spot at the corners of his mouth, the most emotion he ever really showed, but this was killed instantly when a creature dropped from the top of the crypt and landed directly on his head, snarling.
He reached upwards, grabbing the beast, and slammed it on the ground with all his might, making a sickening crunch, he then slammed his foot down using all the strength he could muster on the forty pound nimble beasty in front of him. This would probably have killed nearly any living creature under twice the weight of the skilled assassin, much less the unfortunate wall hugger that was tired of munching on old bones. Henric was furious, not at the beast, nor the human train following behind him, but at himself. He had let his guard down and made himself appear weak. This was why he hated feeling. Why he hated being constrained in a silly human body, with silly human emotions, and why he needed to rise above the filth of this world and ascend to near-godhood.
~*~
Henric was worried. Not panicked, or scared, he would never allow himself to be as weak as to feel those emotions, but he had a deep feeling of dread welling up deep inside him, knowing that ancient devil whose grave he was traipsing through definitely had something waiting, something dark, something bad. He took his feeling to action and said to the person behind him "Johan, would you please take up point? I am not feeling to well right now and you seem more than capable to lead us", and with that he took the second-to-last place in the line.
Of course, Johan, the big dumb brute took the chance. He was overconfident and cocky. Henric knew when something exceeded his own ability and would not take a dumb risk, but for honor, Johan would do just about anything. If you told him a true test of strength was to chop off ones own balls, he would go right ahead with it. It pleased Henric knowing he would soon be gone from the world.
Once again Henric's instinct had proved true, when they descended into a plain, stone room. Johan, the idiot he was, stepped directly on a piece of earth that slid down, making a grinding sound with his weight. Tortured souls of those who perished down in the crypt rushed from the walls wanting only revenge on he who had awakened them. They rushed toward the massive bodied, minuscule brained knight and began literally tearing off his limbs and eating his flesh. Johan screamed what were to be the final utterances of a brain-dead warrior.
The rest of the way down was riddled with dangers, with the skin from one being melted off by a magical barrier here, and an axe swinging from a wall to decapitate another there, but there was still no conventional battles. This told Henric that there really was something good to be found at the end of this all.
Eventually through all of the blood and death there was light at the end of the tunnel. A room was reached with a single glowing orb levitating in the center, this must have been it. Including Henric three were still alive, the knight ahead of him and the one behind him. The first warrior ventured forth and from the very floor beneath them sprung demons of pure rage and flame. They grabbed the one trailing him by the legs and gouged into his flesh with their claws. As the knight howled in pain, one demon stood climbing from the very earth and ripped off his head, ending all there would ever be for him. They were everywhere, flanking and screaming as they ripped apart the flesh of the once living being as the door they came in on closed.
Henric wasted no time, he sprinted to the center holding his shield ahead of him and breaking through the wall of solid demon, until he reached the orb, then he grabbed it.
~*~
A certain ancient necromancer chuckled a bit in his grave beneath the tomb, he had never truly died, trapped forever in a limbo due to his ever-frequent exposure to spells against the forces of death, he knew that the clever one had not quite found what he was looking for, though it was in a certain way his lives work that had been activated.
Henric saw a nothing but pure magical light, as a shockwave of energy powerful enough to split apart worlds warped the very meaning of reality and brought forth a hole between dimensions. This eternal void sucked in Henric, bringing him to somewhere nothing in his great mind would be able to prepare him for.