The Crystal Vizier

by Lich-Lord Krosis

Whispers of Madness

Chrysalis growled in sadistic delight as she tore her way to the ends of the crypt, the last of the undead unicorns putting up an admirable, but futile defense against the changeling queen’s unpredictable and vicious assault.

Kill them... Kill them...

Punish the slaughterers of your children...

Her anguished brain played that message on repeat as she destroyed the undead, the changeling queen going all out in a way she hadn’t done in centuries.

Even her attempted takeover of Canterlot saw her use a relatively tame amount of magic to overpower Celestia, though she had a feeling the goddess made flesh was holding back for her subjects’ safety.

As the last of the warriors fell to the ground with a low, wheezing moan, the changeling queen smirked. The last of the fiends had fallen, and so her bloodlust was sated...

For the moment...

.........

How could they let this happen?

Chrysalis let out a small, shuddering sigh, her form returning to it’s regular state as she began to feel the immense pain of losing her so many of her children.

When her king had told her that Shining Armor had ordered him to excavate the tombs below the surface of the Crystal Capital, the queen was excited at the prospect of work for her people.

Anub’arak had told her they would be compensated for their efforts, and that they could use the area to create a new hive after the bodies were exhumed for... whatever it was Kel’Thuzad had planned for them.

But after this... debacle, she was furious. She understood that the process of tunneling led to some accidental deaths. This was natural for a hive, and something she had learned to accept centuries ago.

But to have her children slaughtered by these... things...

She felt nothing but hatred for her new... friends...

Against her better judgement, she had let her workers, her brood, her children, work for a monster.

What else would so casually throw away lives like spent matches?

.........

Kel’Thuzad growled, his laboratory’s conversion into a temporary military checkpoint annoying him without pause as a crystal guard scurried by him, obviously terrified of being stationed at the mouth of the tunnels that led under the Crystal Empire.

“Permission to speak, master?” an echoing voice to the right of the archlich inquired.

Kel’Thuzad sighed, his former student’s insistence on honoring his title of archlich annoying him.

“Eola, while I may be your superior, that doesn’t mean that we’re not equals.” Kel’Thuzad turned his body to the smaller lich, her form already rising from a bow.

Eola nodded, bowing her head in slight shame.

“Apologies, Master.” the female lich droned, her eye sockets meeting his. “It is... difficult, to adjust to our new... relaxed ruler.”

Kel’Thuzad chuckled, his claw gently patting Deathwhisper on the shoulder, her visage brightening visibly, albeit only slightly.

“It is alright to be respectful, Eola.” the undead mage spoke. “Permission granted.”

“Oh... so... why exactly ARE we digging underneath the capital?”

“Bodies, Eola.” Kel’Thuzad simply stated. His claw waving once to bring a map from a nearby table over to them.

The parchment was old. Very old.

Easily several thousand years.

“Each of these dots below us are vaults, supposedly left by ancient unicorns that used them for burial purposes.” Kel’Thuzad explained, the vast network of burial chambers and passages enrapturing his fellow lich’s attention.

“Fascinating... even the Vrykul never made tombs this large...” Eola whispered to herself, her teacher beckoning for her to follow him into the tunnels below them, passing the ever-vigilant skeletal guards to either side of the passage, their stiff forelegs raising once in salute, but falling back into formation the moment they passed.

As they entered a large chamber, the archlich nodded at his apprentice’s observation.

“I know... which makes me think that...” Kel’Thuzad began, only to be cut off by the sight of Titus and the rest of his knights, carting their fallen out on stretchers from the battle below the citadel.

“That what, master?” Eola inquired, watching the aged wizard’s eyes follow the bodies into an antechamber to their left, the bodies numbering at least in the several dozen.

“That they weren’t JUST for burial purposes...” Kel’Thuzad finished, crossing his arms as they stopped to regard the room.

While the chamber was most likely built to house changeling workers during their excavation, it had quickly been... repurposed, seeing as Abrakkar and Amnennar sifted through the remains, seeing if any were worthy of immediate, non-reinforced resurrection.

Judging from the lack of resurrected, few if any were...

“Kel?” Eola whispered, barely audible, reaching up to gently place a claw on the archlich’s pauldron. The elder lich turned to his former apprentice once again, regret blanketing his face.

“I’m sorry, Eola. I must leave you now.” Kel’Thuzad bowed to the young mage, the female lich returning the gesture. “Lord Rivendare is expecting me...”

“I understand, master. What would you have me do in the meantime?” Eola asked, rising from her bow. Kel’Thuzad heard the shuffling of further hoofsteps up the tunnel behind him, turning to witness yet another few bodies being carried out of the crypt.

“See if Abrakkar and Amnennar need any assistance with their work. If they do not... then...” Kel’Thuzad thought, his mind racing for something that the young lich could do...

“Return to Naxrammas and await further orders from our king.” Kel’Thuzad said, a gentle smile adorning his usually stern visage.

“But... master... surely there must be something...” Eola protested.

“Eola, you have worked nearly nonstop for the past two weeks.” Kel’Thuzad explained, putting his hand on her cloth pauldron. “While I know that we no longer need most things that mortals do, our minds still need rest, young one.”

“But... but master...”

“Take a break, Eola.” Kel’Thuzad sternly spoke, his gaze boring into his apprentice’s. With a superfluous sigh, the younger lich nodded once, turning to go check on her companions’ work.

Kel’Thuzad sighed, a light chuckle leaving his magical throat as he watched Eola hesitate to tap Abrakkar on the pauldron, the orc turning to regard his fellow lich once she finally mustered up the courage to do so.

’What am I going to do with that girl?’

“Lord Kel’Thuzad?”

’Ugh...’

Sighing, the archlich turned to give Stern Staff his attention.

The stallion still was clearly not used to the lich just yet, his previous experiences at his claws clearly scarring him. He carefully fidgeted from hoof to hoof as he waited for the lich’s answer, and he still flinched when he turned to regard him.

“Yes, Stern Staff?” the lich inquired, his gaze flickering to his immediate right as he heard a stream of apologies flow from his apprentice’s mouth, Abrakkar waving the girl away with a stream of orcish curses. The female lich sighed, going to help her other fellow mage, Amnennar actually welcoming the help, from the looks of it.

“Umm... could I get some help with this?” Stern Staff nervously asked, lifting up a quite clearly injured foreleg, the flesh around the knee torn and ripped by what seemed to be blunt force trauma.

The lich paused, seemingly taken aback by the question. But try as he might, be could not see a logical reason to deny the request, seeing as his brothers and sister were busy at the moment, and Titus was nowhere to be seen.

.........

“Of course, Stern.” Kel’Thuzad smiled, the gesture... unnerving the stallion. Why would he choose to be so... accommodating all of a sudden? The archlich conjured a simple frozen surface, gesturing for the stallion to raise his hoof to the makeshift table. Without further words, the lich was at work, weaving blood magics through the air to reattach flesh, and several small tentrils of bone meal from the jar on his belt to repair bone.

“Forgive me for asking, my lord...” Stern Staff hesitated. “But... why did you seem so...”

“Happy to help?” Kel’Thuzad asked, not looking up from his work. To be honest, he should be furious with the stallion. This menial work was FAR beneath him in terms of rank...

But something about this stallion’s arrogant, blunt demeanor seemed... familiar.

He relished the thought of further observation, so he agreed to repair his mostly superficial wound. But of course, this dimwit wouldn’t understand that, so he thought up another reason that was, in his mind, equally appropriate.

“Because it has been a looong day for me, young one. Something as menial as basic necromantic mending is just what I needed to give my brain a much needed diversion, if only for a moment.” Kel’Thuzad finished, the last of his magics binding the skin above his knee together.

“There we are, good as new.” Kel’Thuzad nodded, looking slightly up to regard the stallion’s face. Seemingly forgetting his fear for the moment, Stern Staff happily smiled.

“Thank you, my lord.” the death knight bowed, turning to walk away, before the lich stopped him with a chain curling around his hind leg.

“Before you go, Stern Staff... I have a task for you.” Kel’Thuzad spoke, seriousness once again dominating his tone. The newly knighted unicorn turned to the lich once more.

“A-Anything, my lord.” Stern Staff bowed, awaiting his instructions.

“I need you to go and find King Anub’arak for me. Tell him it is urgent.” Kel’Thuzad commanded. With just a nod, the stallion turned and galloped away, further into the tunnels to find the changeling king.

“Seventy-six, Kel.”

“Grown soft on me, Titus?” Kel’Thuzad turned, looking upon his friend. The stallion shot him a rather spiteful glare, beckoning for the lich to follow him into the depths of he caves.

“It’s not the body count that upsets me, Kel. It’s my recklessness.” Titus explained, turning left after about three hundred feet to enter the catacombs that the battle had taken place in. “I should have been more cautious. Should have prodded first, not stabbed...”

“It cannot he helped, Titus. You did the best with what you had." Kel'Thuzad spoke, taking a look around him at the architecture of the crypt.

“Gods above...” Kel’Thuzad spoke, the amount of desiccated and recently dead corpses within the crypt nearly blocking a few corridors, the undead warriors certainly having put up a good fight before their second deaths.

Wrenching a moderately damaged corpse before him, the archlich studied the creature.

They were quite large.

Compared to modern Equestrians, anyway.

Most Equestrian stallions never broke the seven foot mark, but the majority of these ancient unicorns broke it with ease, some even scraping eight. Muttering a few incantations, and several tendrils of blood magic, the lich attempted to recreate what the colossal pony would have looked like in life.

Skin reattached to skin. Hair and fur grew out.

Bones snapped into their proper places as ligaments strengthened.

The stallion’s form grew with muscle and fat, the bulky unicorn’s body reminding him heavily of a shire horse from back on Azeroth.

“How long could you do that?” Titus asked, his eyes slightly widened at his friend’s magical restoration. The lich shrugged.

“It was actually one of the first things Ner’Zhul taught me about blood magic.” Kel’Thuzad explained, freezing the joints of the stallion, so that it could stand on it’s own, before setting it down to look at it. “Using blood magic, you can effectively de-desiccate a corpse, but doing so is... rather situational.”

Titus nodded, a glimmer of movement from deeper in the tunnel, along with the sound of sobbing alerting him of the changeling queen’s return from the depths of the crypt.

Kel’Thuzad chuckled, about to comment on the queen’s rampage.

But before the lich could even begin forming words, the changeling had speared Titus through the skull, his friend’s corpse lifelessly hanging by one of his eye sockets.

Kel’Thuzad, shocked for only a moment, blasted the changeling further back into the tunnel with a wave of arcane force, forcing her to drop the deceased death knight, before erecting pillars of ice and snow around her, to which he bound his chains as a sort of magically reinforced fence.

A chittering growling caught his attention, the matriarch glaring and snarling at the lich with utter hatred.

Even more troubling, however, was the trio of pitch-black, oily tentacles erupting from her carapace.

’Damn it all...’

Comments

[Venerable Ro]

Poor Chrysalis. She just can't catch a break.

[Anachronon]

Black tentacles? What now, an Old God?

[dragon_claws]

9418560
Possibly the Void.

[Tonto the Trotter]

9418629
The void? What is this Hollow Knight? XP But I'm guessing this void is something WoW related?

[Speven Dillberg]

9419429
There are two major forces, the Light and the Void, both opposed to each other on a fundamental, existential level.
Mortals who dabble with the Void tend to go utterly insane, and even those who don't aren't exactly normal after. The easiest, closest comparison is the Elder Gods of Lovecraft, mainly because the Old Gods and the Void is Lovecraft with the serial numbers filed off.

[RazorWing_GB]

9419487