Adventurequest Worlds : Twilight the Hero

by ilbgar

Calm Before the Storm

When she woke up, she was in the infirmary, along with the majority of the surviving knights. She was being watched over by several medics of the Priest class. Priests were healers with little to no combat ability. Paladins sacrificed a bit of the immense healing power that Priests possessed to gain combat abilities, physical and magical.

She managed to get herself into a sitting position with a groan. The medics did a quick check on her condition, and advised her to stay in bed, but were counter-manded when a courier arrived with a message saying that King Alteon and Gravelyn, who was apparently the new leader of the forces of Evil, wanted to speak with her.

She got up, stretching to work the metaphorical kinks out of her body as she walked in the direction of the throne room with the courier. She needed him to lead her to their destination since she'd never been to the castle's infirmary before.

When they arrived, a few high-ranking officials of both sides were present. Artix was there as well, wearing one of his rare serious expressions. She assumed Gravelyn was the girl she'd seen on the dracolich, and who appeared to be the only member of the Evil side wearing armor that was not skeletal or cursed. She had noticed before, but it really bore a striking resemblance to Sepulchre's.

What caught her attention, however, was King Alteon himself. He had a drained look about him, and was leaning heavily on his sword and throne. Worse, there were those little purple eyes and black tentacles which were still present, despite there being plenty of time to treat him, as she had been out of it for a minimum of twelve hours if the clock was right. If anything, they looked worse than before.

"King Alteon, are you alright? You look like a full-grown dragon stomped on you repeatedly." she asked, too concerned to worry about propriety.

"I'm fine, for the moment at least." Alteon responded. He was aware that showing weakness right now would be asking for a panic, so he put on a brave face despite the fact he was almost certainly in no condition to be out of bed. He reminded Twilight of Celestia in many ways.

"We're here to discuss the events of last night, and King Alteon has proposed a truce until the threat of Chaos has been dealt with. It certainly warrants attention that both my father and King Alteon were struck down with almost contemptuous ease." Gravelyn said.

"As one of those present for the fight, we would like to hear your testimony." one of the officers on the side of Good said.

Ah, that explained why she was summoned. "Well, after fighting my way here through the undead, I put a barrier on the door that momentarily stalled Sepulchre. Once he broke that down, I fired a spell at him, thought I wasn't really expecting much of an effect.

He seemed more annoyed than anything else, and sent a wave of dark magic at me, which I hid behind a pillar to avoid. He had better things to do, or something along those lines, than fight a newbie, so he sicked a dozen skeletons on me. By the time I'd dealt with them, the king and Sepulchre were in the middle of a fight I had no chance of helping with.

They had just made those craters in the walls" she gestured to the respective holes to either side of them that some stonemasons were examining "and were about to clash one last time, when I got a really bad feeling. My instincts were screaming at me to get as far away as possible, then I saw Drakath out the window, though we didn't know it was him yet.

He smashed into the castle, and that's when we found out who he was, surprising all of us. I'm not entirely sure how, but he somehow made the one undead Sepulchre had brought with him explode with a look, then took King Alteon out of the fight with one hit, and badly damaged Sepulchre." Gravelyn's fists clenched at those last four words Twilight had spoken.

"I attacked him with the strongest spell I had that wouldn't harm anyone else, and accomplished virtually nothing. He slashed me with the clawed gauntlet on one hand, and seemed surprised that I was badly wounded, but nothing unusual happened. Sepulchre got up, angry about being treated like one attack of that caliber would kill him. Drakath blurred over to him, and... ripped his soul out. Sepulchre kept going until Drakath crushed it." she explained solemnly. She hadn't been fond of Sepulchre, but this was his daughter, and Twilight wasn't insensitive enough to take a slight dislike out on a stranger.

She continued. "Drakath basically said he was going to destroy the world with a group called the 13 Lords of Chaos, saving King Alteon and myself for last."

She paused for a moment, then added, "I'm just making a guess here, but I think his attack was supposed to do something along the lines of infecting me with Chaos' power." She was a little creeped out by the parallel between Drakath and Discord in focusing their powers. Although discord was not the exact same thing as chaos, they were apparently similar enough that her ties to the Element of Magic were enough to make her resistant to the power of Chaos.

"Do you have any reasoning behind this?" an officer of Good asked.

"Whenever Drakath did something, a bunch of eyes like the ones on King Alteon would form. In addition, his armor had the same eye set in it. It seemed to be linked to his powers, but he acted like his gauntlet could do it too." Twilight explained.

"Well, I can tell you all that this... infection is attempting to influence me. It isn't succeeding so far, but the point stands." King Alteon admitted, causing a bit of a stir.

"Wait, wasn't my father's armor infected as well?" Gravelyn asked, eyes widening slightly.

"Yes, but we moved it to a safe place not far beyond the town and under guard. I had misgivings about the power of Chaos it had been affected with." King Alteon explained.

"Wait, if Drakath can infect people with Chaos energy with a touch, then the armor might..." Twilight trailed off.

"Hm, yes, and so far as we know, you are the only one resistant to infection, which means the knights I sent to guard it have most likely been infected." King Alteon said, concerned.

"I'd like to ask where the armor is being stored so I can look into it. I'm the only one who can check on it without real risk. Since Drakath literally said he was going to come after me eventually, I'm involved in this whether I like it or not, plus I'd rather not see the world destroyed." Twilight asked, covering most arguments that could be brought up. She wasn't going to just abandon people to whatever plans Drakath had. Besides, she was the only one who had any degree of immunity as far as they knew. She had to help.

"Very well." King Alteon nodded, and she was given a map with spot in the nearby forest circled on it.

"We would send help, but that would defeat the purpose of sending you in the first place." Gravelyn said.

"Right, I'll see what's going on and come back as soon as I can. Although if the knights are infected, it might take a while." Twilight said, starting off.

"Hey Twilight, make sure you grab the new Enhancements you qualify for." Artix called.

"Right, thanks for reminding me!" she called back, then paused. "Okay, how am I Level 25? I was only Level 17 when I got into the castle." she asked, after checking just to make sure. She hadn't noticed earlier because she'd been preoccupied.

"Well, when you fight someone that much stronger than you, you get Exp just for surviving." Artix explained.

"Oh, alright then. Thanks again!" she said, leaving for real this time.

"... Are we certain she's the one?" an officer of Good asked. Gravelyn didn't have many non-undead followers, and they tended not to talk much.

"Yes, positive." Artix said seriously. "The medics said that the power of Chaos was in her system for an instant before being rejected. The only ones who could do that would be Elemental Lords, the Creator, or the Champion of Order." Artix said.

"Since she's obviously not part of the first two categories, she must be the latter-most. Considering who and what we're dealing with, that makes her our best chance, naive or not." Gravelyn said.

"Hm, yes, but we can't expect her to fight a war alone." King Alteon countered.

"The healers were able to create a spell by studying the power of Order, with the help of Warlic, that should ward off the power of Chaos. It won't do much against Drakath himself, but his soldiers won't be able to turn our troops against us with a touch. Unfortunately, it's a preventative measure, so we can't eradicate the Chaos energy Drakath infected you with sir." a mage reported.

"That is more than enough for so short a time, now we must begin planning for a conflict the likes of which we've never seen. Most of the enemies we've faced over the years have been relatively small in both numbers and how many powerful figures the have in their group. We will likely have to face 14 major enemies and whatever forces they bring to bear. Worse, Drakath, and presumably the Lords of Chaos he mentioned, can recruit new soldiers with little effort." King Alteon said.

"There's something else too. If history has taught us anything about Drakath, it's that he's often manipulated by other powers. If that's still true, then we might be dealing with something even stronger than him as the end-game." Gravelyn responded.

"Right now, let's wait until Twilight gets back from her mission. We might find something out." Artix said.

Comments

[Sigmacipher]

MLP+Artix Entertainment Game Crossover?

YESYESYESYESYESYES!!!!!

[The Radiance]

It would be fun seeing Twilight with the power of the class chaos Slayer and confronting discord