As for me, Baron Zoria carried my skull over to the new world the home of the ancient Oranbegans. My soul, being as it was bound to it, followed. As I travelled and was able to see the world up close, it amazed me how much things had changed. I had known humans had forgotten all about magic, but their obsession with technology was still very much astounding. The Oranbegans, users of magic though they were, had adapted to this environment pretty well, blending with the unsuspecting humans so completely. It was impressive, and yet so utterly pathetic to see one of the most ancient and powerful cultures of the world skulking amid these weak humans like thieves. And though I was dead, decomposed and bound to a carcass, I had retained my dignity, where they had fallen so very low.
Eventually, I was taken into the ruins of their old city of Oranbega. I had heard and read so much about the glorious ancient city, yet from all I had seen of the Oranbegans, I was not surprised to see it in ruins. I was locked away in a warded chamber and put under heavy protective spells. Their techniques were pretty impressive and their magic was very strong, but they obviously had no idea who and what it was that they had brought home. They thought themselves safe from my reach, certain that their prison would contain my gaze and my touch, unaware just how simple their outdated warding spells were to someone of my knowledge and power. But their ignorance served my purposes well. I was quickly able to extend my clairvoyance and telekinesis past the prison perimeter and so began listening in on their conversations, researching the books in their libraries and even making use of their equipment when no-one was looking. I was generally biding my time.
As I waited for my power to build up to where I could achieve immortality, I bore witness to a series of intriguing debates among the Oranbegans. Debates about what to do with me. They had first found out about me from one of the spirits that I had experimented on and then set about researching the nature of my existence. The Oranbegans had discovered my history and been intrigued by my being an heir of the Mortix bloodline. Apparently they were collecting people of magical descent for their spirits to inhabit. Possessing the body of a person with magical blood increased the sorcerers powers tremendously. But most of the people alive then were not practitioners of magic. Even the descendants of actual sorcerers had blood much diluted by time and generations perpetuated by non-magical humans. The Oranbegans were, in a sense, scraping the bottom of the barrel for suitable hosts.
I, on the other hand, was a true heir to one of the most powerful and most ancient bloodlines of history, and one that went back to the first practitioners of magic, the ones who had stolen it from the gods in the time before the First Divine War. My bloodline had been entirely restricted to my own clan the Necrotius and had been passed down through a lineage of wise and powerful wizards. I was a pure-blood descendent of true magical power, and as such presented a host body of unprecedented potential. But I also presented a rather significant danger, namely colossal personal power that, if unchained, the Oranbegans simply could not control. Those who had felt the very small sample of my power that was the curse which held my forest were well aware of the danger, but Zorias seemingly easy victory had convinced him that my power could be contained with the proper preparations. For a member of the Circle of Thorns, the governing institution of the ancient city of Oranbega, Baron Zorias lack of insight into the grave danger he was facing just bringing me into his city was very amusing. It was so entertaining watching him argue about how he could bind me and restrict my power and how he could utilize my bloodline, listening to him list plans that I knew would fail then and there and imagining what I would do were the Oranbegans foolish enough to give me the opportunity to. And all of this while everyone was convinced I was bound within my prison and unable to see or hear anything. Unfortunately, Zoria was unable to convince the Circle to go ahead with the ceremony, so my skull was stored away for the future where the Oranbegans may have a better means to steal the power of my blood.
Now, it may seem unbelievable to talk about my blood when I was a soul bound to a dried-up old skull. After all, I had no blood. But then, neither did Edward Mortix, the very originator of the Mortix bloodline. He was a Lich, so his body was a bloodless corpse, but that did not prevent him from fathering an entire lineage of sorcerers. Now, most magical bloodlines are passed on through the body, most often through the blood, and so the children of magic practitioners inherit their affinity for magic. However, in schools of magic that deal with life, death and the soul, the bloodline is passed down to the children through the spirit. Necromancers in particular spend their lives using magic that affects the binds between the body and the soul, in the process changing them rather dramatically. When a child is born in a Necromancy bloodline, it inherits those altered binds, mutating its spirit in the process. Compared to a normal human soul, a Necromancers enjoys far greater control over its bodys aura and even physiology, as well as much less rigid, but not necessarily weaker binds to it. That is why it is such a simple matter for a Necromancer to transform himself into a Lich and why it is so easy for them to sustain their bodies for decades after they should have died. Moreover, a Necromancers soul imprints its own magical affinity, its bloodline, to any body it occupies. However, those physical changes have to be constantly maintained by the Necromancers soul. While that worked even inside a dead body, once the Necromancer died and his soul passed on to the afterlife, the changes to his body would quickly disappear.
What that means is that in order for the Oranbegans to make use of my bloodline, they would have to return me to life inside a living body and let me stay there for at least a short period of time. That way, my soul would transform the body into that of a descendant of the Mortix bloodline. The body thus suitable, they would need to once more extract my soul from this body and place one of their own spirits into it, ending up with a sorcerer with the powers of the Mortix bloodline, but loyal to the ancient city of Oranbega. They couldnt use my ancient skull for the purpose, as it had long since lost its magical properties. Though my soul was still bound to it, this was only as an anchor to this world, preventing it from passing in. It did not actually inhabit the skull so much as haunt it, and so the skull was useless. Returning me into a body would also be rather difficult, as they could not simply bind my soul into the body of some poor man they dragged off the street. While it would work for their own cursed spirits, returning me to life would require a ritual of greater resurrection. Such a ritual not only returns the soul of a dead man to life, but would also repair his body of any damage it had sustained. Such a spell was powerful enough to return my long-lost body to me as it was before I died, returning me to life at full strength.
And that was where the danger arose. Resurrecting a sorcerer as powerful as me to full strength could easily turn disastrous, as there was no guarantee Id be willing to allow the Oranbegans to steal my soul and take over my new body. This was the main concern of the Circle of Thorns, and the biggest reason why they refused to heed Baron Zorias requests to attempt the ceremony. They had further rejected his suggestion at using an elaborate system of binds for fear they may not be enough to hold me. And they were right to be afraid. I had almost enough power to gain immortality once I was alive, but returning to life would be a problem. Had they chosen to return me to life, they would have simply done me a favour and they knew it. They had spoken to me about it and I had let them know of my intentions in no uncertain terms. It had spooked them enough to seal me away for years to come.
So I spent almost 50 years in a warded chamber, biding my time and gathering power. I let the Oranbegans think their binds were secure and safely keeping me locked away while I wandered their ancient city remotely. It began to remind me of the first years of my life when I was still exploring the ruins of my own Necropolis with my new-found clairvoyance, brushing up on old spells and trying to find something to fill my time with. I took to researching their history and spent a long time reading about their war with the Mu. I read about the deal they had made with the Demon Prince and the desperation that had driven them to even consider it. I read about the many thousands of years they had spent as undead spectres, haunting the ruins of their own city. But where they felt sorry for themselves and mourned their great tragedy, I criticised their sentimentality, for I considered the curse of undead life to be a normal part of life. I had, after all, spent a millennium as a lost soul, bound to an unmoving object. But rather than cry about my fate, I had looked for and found a way to continue working towards my goal, and I was fixed to a single location unable to affect the physical world. These people were given full mobility, the unlimited ability of interaction and an entire society of them to work with, and what had they done with their time? They had spent all eternity crying over spilt milk. Pathetic didnt even begin to describe them.
But for all of their childish defeatism, the Oranbegans had done a good job of keeping a record of their magical practices, spells and rituals. During my wandering, I came upon a magnificent library, stocked with books long considered lost and the writings of wizards who had been dead for aeons. Their stockpile of knowledge was unlike anything that I had ever seen in my life or my unlife. It contained magic that I didnt even know existed, and I had thought I knew everything. It was an indescribable repository of knowledge, and I spent many years just pouring over ancient books, scrolls and manuscripts. For all of their shortcomings, the Oranbegans appeared to have specialised in every single field of magic that ever existed. And while they did not have records of some of the later magical practices that were developed during the Golden Age of Magic, as they had been exiled from the continent centuries before, they did have a large selection of old magic that had long since been forgotten by the time I began studying. They even had writings by Jonathan Mortix, himself, as well as a wide selection of books on Necromancy. Those would eventually prove to be invaluable.
Initially I had taken to waiting for my power to build up to where I could cast my curse onto myself and forever lock my soul into my body. However, my power had peaked and just kept on growing, but I had no means to use it unless I were alive, and locked in a warded chamber as I was, that would prove to be difficult. I spoke to some of the Circle of Thorns and tried to convince them to follow through with Baron Zorias old plans for stealing my body, but they all felt the risk was not worth it. And it wasnt I had no intention of sharing my body but it was disheartening to see I could not mislead them into trying it anyway. A change of plans was needed, and I decided to use a resource unique to this new, modern age heroes. I was locked deep underground, in catacombs of carved stone below an ancient sunken city. But above me on the surface, a vast, modern human city thrived. But unlike any other human city I had seen, this one was densely populated by incredibly powerful beings. Some of them I could recognise as human while others were completely alien to me. They used a mind-boggling array of tools and weapons, ranging from traditional magic to exotic magic to a plethora of devices and abilities I couldnt identify.
But one thing identified all of these individuals they were considered heroes by the humans. They were, as well, enemies of the ancient Oranbegans. It had become clear to me that the Circle of Thorns were facing some rather serious difficulties for some time, but it hadnt dawned on me that they were fighting a constant war with these heroes all over the city. Once I realised that, my recourse was clear if the Circle would not resurrect me by choice, I would make it so they had to do it. And with their enemies knocking on their front door and me listening in on their most secret of plans, making them have to resort to some drastic measures would not be so difficult. All I had to do was pay attention to the Circles plans and then give them to the heroes of the city, be it in visions or by leaving cryptic clues for them to find out. The Oranbegans quickly felt the pressure, but they simply could not find out how the heroes were getting their inside information. Because the fools thought me contained in my cell, they never thought to check if it wasnt me who was betraying them. By that time, in fact, they had all but forgotten about my existence. All the same. I would make them remember soon enough.
The heroes of the inflicted significant damage on the Oranbegans, defeated many of their mystics and took over large parts of their sunken city. The Circle of Thorns felt every blow and got more and more concerned with every defeat. What finally tipped the scales was when one of their own the archmage Akharist betrayed them and deserted his people. He had been one of the most respected members of the Circle and instrumental in making some of their most important decisions. I had spoken with him a few times and knew him to be tired, depressed and disillusioned. He was one of the most sentimental of all the Oranbegans and one of those who really suffered from their unlife of violence and hatred. He was also a colossal fool, as he had made the least of his unlife and would always go on and on about the horrors the Circle was forced to commit. No doubt a follower of the teachings of Tielleku, Akharist was always concerned about keeping his humanity, like that had any merit to it. But in keeping his humanity, he had transformed himself into a sorry weakling who eventually deserted his own people, and that served my purposes just fine.
Akharists desertion threw the Circle of Thorns into panic, and in an almost unbelievable example of repeating the mistakes of history, they chose to bargain with the Demon Prince yet again. It was as if the destruction of their entire people, though largely their own fault, was not enough to teach the Oranbegans that you simply do not bargain with demons. And yet here they were, bargaining with the very prince of demons for still more power to defeat their foes. That was a colossally bad idea and one that would put my own plans into turmoil, so I had to intervene. I contacted Akharist telepathically and briefed him on the situation. Like me, he was appalled that his brethren could be so foolish as to bargain with the Demon Prince after the disaster their previous bargain had caused, so he agreed to help the heroes stop the deal. With my inside information and his knowledge in demonology at their disposal, the heroes of the city were able to defeat the Demon Princes envoy into this world and send him back to the demon realm, breaking the Circles deal into the process. They wasted no time in mounting a counterattack and keeping the pressure on the Oranbegans.
The Circle of Thorns was at a crisis point. They were losing positions with frightening speed, their power was waning and their last lifeline to victory the Demon Prince was no longer of any use. Akharist pleaded with them to stop the violence and work with the humans, but the Circle refused. They were scared and desperate. Now was the time for them to learn from history, realise their mistakes and think their actions through carefully. Yet in an almost embarrassing example of repeating the mistakes of the past, they clung to one final straw me. After all these years being too afraid to try to resurrect me, they finally believed themselves to have no other choice but to try. I had intended to go to them and suggest it yet again, but I had underestimated their desperation. In the end, they came to me on their own. It had worked out even better than I had expected, as now they had no reason to suspect that I may have planned something, nor did they put much thought into weather their ritual would succeed. They simply felt that they had no choice and would sooner see me free than lose to the heroes.
Learning the history of the ancient sunken city of Oranbega had paid off. I knew the Oranbegans, as a people, were prone to panicking and making rash decisions. I knew that under extreme circumstances, they would consider even the most unthinkable options. I knew that they could not think things through and make sound decisions under pressure. And I also knew what they had learned from their history that when things start going bad, they will always end up getting really, really bad. This made them paranoid as a people and likely to blow problems out of proportion. This mentality had been what I based my entire plan on that if I can help put the Oranbegans under pressure, they would eventually cave in and try to resurrect me. And they did.
When Akharist found out about their plan to bring me back to life, he once again tried to plead with them to have some sense and think about what they were doing. But the Circle of Thorns were beyond thinking back then. They were paranoid that their world was coming to an end and firmly believed they had no other choice. Akharist tried to appeal to me, but quickly realised exactly what I intended to do. His final recourse was to appeal to the heroes of the city and hope they, at least, could stop the ceremony.
But the Oranbegans hid the location of the resurrection well and the heroes acted slow, so they were free to begin uninterrupted. They started out by laying wards upon wars upon wards, forming a very, very strong barrier that they hope could contain my power. It appeared someone in the Circle had taken Baron Zorias original idea and tripled the precautions. So I stood there and watched as the wizards cast their spells and prepared to face off against my full power. It was quite clear from the very beginning that they had sorely underestimated me, but it was almost comedic by the time I figured out to just what lengths the Circle had gone and still managed to be so horribly unprepared. But perhaps I shouldnt blame them. The last time I showed my full power was during my battle with Valcor, and the aftereffects of that display left a forest that is deeply cursed even today, a millennium later. Now I had power far in excess of what I had had back then, simply because I had been accumulating it. The power the Oranbegans believed I had was the same power Zoria had faced during his assault on my Necropolis, and I wasnt even supporting that. I had cast it long before and it just persisted on its own. So the Oranbegans really had no idea what kind of power they were dealing with.
With the wards set, my skull was placed on top of a circle altar and the resurrection ritual began. I hadnt witnessed resurrection before, as I had never had any use for returning the dead to life, so the process proved to be rather interesting for me to observe. In fact, it reminded me a lot of a soul drain technique I had used several times before, but it was different in several ways. As the life energies accumulated and swirled, resurrection began. I felt the magical binds that thrust my soul back into my still-forming body very clearly and recognised them from my own experiments. This was almost identical to a spirit binding technique. As my body slowly formed out of thin air, I released my clairvoyance and allowed my soul to settle into its new home. Slowly but surely I felt the warmth of human blood and the beating of a heart. I took a deep breath and listened as my lungs expanded. Finally, I felt solid ground under my feet as my muscles tightened to take the weight of my body while it landed gently from the spell. I was alive. It was time to act.
I opened my eyes and smiled. What met me was the panicked expressions on the faces of the mages around me. Only then had they realised what they had done. With a mere gesture of my hand, I undid all of the wards that were meant to contain me. They were powered by significant magical force, but at their bases, they were rather simply to undo. Not only did I know exactly how they worked, but I had spent a lot of time with Valcor, reverse-engineering his spell-breaking magic. Getting free was exceptionally easy. The Oranbegan mages, horrified at what they had allowed to happen, attacked me with a whole textbook of different magic. However, I had read the same books so I knew how to use the power of darkness to protect myself. As I deflected their opening attack, I effortlessly wrenched their souls out of their bodies. The binds that hold the ancient Oranbegans spirits inside their bodies were always so easy to break. Shoved out of their hosts, the spirits scattered and ran away, leaving me with their soul-less bodies to act as perfectly fine undead minions. My undead, backed up by my own magic, made short work of all the Oranbegans who were present at the ritual and I set about setting up my own the one that would give me eternal life.
And just as it looked like things were going my way, I sensed the citys heroes barging into the Oranbegan crypt, intent on destroying me. All the same. I had more than enough power and plenty of undead minions to keep them at bay long enough for me to become immortal. I can only imagine the heroes surprise when, instead of the robed mystics they were expecting, they were beset by a legion of the undead. It may have been entertaining to watch, but I had work to do. Luckily, the Oranbegans had either broth with them or had on hand all the elements I needed to complete my ritual spell. I had made significant efforts to make this curse work without much preparation, just as I had cast it onto Valcor, so I didnt really need much to begin with.
As soon as all was ready, I began my ritual in earnest. A curse of darkness, a curse of eternity, a curse of monstrosity I placed so many curses onto myself that would make any other Necromancer shudder in terror. But it was all a calculated risk. I used one curses binding strengths and effects to keep my soul into my body by overwhelming force. Usually used to curse someone to haunt a place forever, it ensured that my soul could not be removed from my body by any means, insuring me eternal life. I used another curses effect of disfigurement to give me wilful control over my body, that I may manipulate it into whatever I chose. Finally, I cursed myself with darkness and undeath, a curse that caused me to consume life and radiate necrotic energy, magnifying my Necromancy skills incalculably. By doing what no Necromancer had thought to do before curse myself in creative ways I had given myself incredible power.
Almost, that is. Just before the final incantation was cast, a rat revealed himself. A surviving Oranbegan mage had remained hidden out of sight as his comrades were being killed around him. He had stayed hidden while I was making my preparations, I assume hoping that either Oranbegan mystics or heroes would interfere. But when he saw that I would complete my binds before anyone could have a chance to intervene, he chose to undertake a risky manoeuvre. He struck out of cover and caught me by surprise, my mind focused on the overcomplicated spell I was casting. He managed get close enough to me to plunge a Spirit Thorn straight into my heart. I had embarrassingly fallen for the most basic of Oranbegan soul-stealing techniques. Normally, that would have been the end of me, but the circumstances were in my favour.
A spirit thorn carries the bearers soul when wielded by an Oranbegan mystic. When plunged into the heart of a victim, it sucks out their soul and replaces it with that of the wielder, essentially taking over the victims body. That, however, only works on simple humans who are not strong enough to resist and do not have protective wards keeping their soul in their body. Against more powerful enemies, soul extraction by means of a special ritual is first required, so that the mystic can more easily invade the now empty body. Against someone as powerful as me, even soul extraction would not work because Im warded far too well and my binds are far too strong. Necromancers in general are among the most difficult people to perform soul extraction on because of the unnatural bonds their souls have with their bodies and the ease with which they control them. With me being an incredibly powerful Necromancer, the only way the circle could hope to invade my body was to kill me and then invade my body before its magical affinity dissipated.
What that meant for the mage who injected his soul into mine, however, was very certain doom. Not only was his puny willpower not enough to even budge me out of my body, but I was in the middle of casting a curse that would plain disallow my soul to be e taken out. However, the Oranbegan had been cursed, himself, and by none other than the Demon Prince, so I found it impossible to consume or control his soul. Simply put, he wasnt undead, he was immortal. Such was the Oranbegans curse to haunt the broken hallways of their sunken city for all eternity as living wraiths, never resting and never finding peace. I had long since found the Oranbegans to be beyond any sort of Necromantic control, and because of that and the way he had entered my body, there was nothing I could do to destroy or cast him out. And as we struggled, my curse finally took effect and locked not just me, but me and the Oranbegan inside my body.
That was a rather unfortunate turn of events and one that, in all of my planning and preparation, I had never even expected. But as we vied for control of my body, both of us unshakably entrenched, I found something interesting the Oranbegans willpower was rather very lacking. And while he was viciously struggling for control of my body, I found that I could dominate him quite easily. Indomitable will is key to a Necromancer, as the souls he controls are constantly trying to resist his power and break free. Crushing their will and their independence is just a natural part of Necromancy. So here I found myself trying to dominate a soul bound sternly to a body. Ignoring the fact that it was my own body, this was little different from controlling a recently-turned undead minion. Here was a soul I wanted to control, trapped in a body and bound to mine. With that in mind, I applied the same technique I used to control my undead, and the Oranbegan soul responded.
Once that realisation had been made, it proved to be very easy to subjugate the foreign soul inside my body and suppress it to a point where it did not interfere. However, I couldnt very well have an alien soul in my body. That was dangerous, uncomfortable and would cause me a lot of work and strain just to exist in peace, as I had to constantly work to maintain the soul suppressed. At first I started looking for ways to remove it from my body, but several very strong forces made that impossible. I tried to consume it, but Oranbegan souls are immortal, so that didnt work. Finally, it occurred to me that I could try a soul merge. This is a rather very difficult technique that melds two souls into one, where both retain their memories, personality and sometimes often their own will. It is not even a Necromantic technique, so on top of its own difficulty, Id be trying to use magic from a very different school. However, the soul merge had one curious feature it was easier the more willing the souls were to merge. And since I had almost complete control over the foreign soul in my body, that would make the spell very much easier.
The soul merge was one of the many techniques I had studied off the Oranbegan books of magic while I was still waiting for my power to build up. It was one of the techniques which had intrigued me, so I had spent a lot of time looking into it. With that knowledge, I was confident I could pull it off. To prevent myself from polluting my mind with unworthy thoughts and memories, I wiped the mind of the other presence in my body clean, and it was quite receptive. Now it was just a blank soul that I could merge with so I could get rid of it. And in my mind, I cast the soul merge spell with but a thought. It was strange that magic should work that way, but that didnt occur to me at the time. All the same, that was the last thing I remember.
The next thing I remember is waking up in what looked and felt like a dungeon. I found myself in a rather large, dark room, surrounded by enchanted runes. I immediately recognised this as a magical barrier. Unlike the Oranbegans wards, I could tell that this would contain all of my power. But all of my power was, much to my surprise, almost all gone. It seemed like the curses I cast and my mental battle with that Oranbegan soul had really taken its toll on me. Before I could even wonder what was to happen to me, a man came into the room and addressed me. Although his face was different, I immediately recognised Akharists aura. He explained that the hero squad he had sent to stop me had not been able to stop my ritual, but that when they had finally made it to the main chamber, they had found me down and unconscious with a spirit thorn sticking out of my chest.
It was then that everything came back to me. My mental battle with the Oranbegan soul had occupied my entire attention, preventing me from noticing how I had lost consciousness and how heroes had taken me away and placed me in a very well-guarded prison built just for people of great power. Akharist told me that I had been out for well over a week after the incident. He went on to reprimand me for using the Oranbegan people like that, for corrupting their minds and playing on their fears. He spoke with great self-righteous indignation for a traitor who abandoned his own people and bit with surprising ferocity for the weakling who spent an eternity feeling sorry for himself. I just let him carry on speaking until he said all he wanted to say and left. The fool had come to show me the error of my ways, but as always, he had badly underestimated my power.
Akharist and the fools who listened to him believed that a prison could hold me. And in my weakened stat, perhaps they were right. But as always, I would not stay weak forever. And this time, there was nothing that could go wrong. I had finally achieved my immortality, and in a way that was impossible to undo. From here on out, all I had to do was wait for my power to build back up again. And I had the time and patience to wait for as long as it took.
