[Omen of the Witchblade] Chapter 91 — All or Nothing

Quest Update: All or Nothing

Objective: Maintain the Black Fence by keeping Jacob, Camilla, Shrubley, and Smudge confined to the Hall of Martyrs (0/1).

Reward: Increased favor among the Lormar Covenants.

Runes of Flesh, Plague, Dark, Omen, and Devour aspect experience.

(100) [Copper Rune Coins].

Divergent Objective: Sacrifice your plague beast in the Ritual of Black (0/1).

Reward: Contact with the Outer Plane.

Audience with Stymhalzt.

Nymasolth licked her lips hungrily. She was desperate to show up the other Covenants, but they had agreed to a plan. Now the Shard saw fit to offer her and her subjects a way out.

A small voice in the back of her head warned her, the plague beast is all that is keeping the dreaded Magi occupied. If we withdraw it, there is no telling what will happen.

Nymasolth adjusted her black shawl, richly embroidered with the screaming faces of those she had already sacrificed. A fragment of their souls was bound within the dark fabric and would serve her until her demise, which she did not foresee happening for many centuries.

With Stymhalzt’s assistance, she might never see that day come to pass at all.

Yok’sal had been adamant about keeping this so-called “Black Fence” plan intact. Yet, if the opportunity presented itself, could any of the Covenant Elders deny their patron’s call?

Would they even be worthy Elders if they did? In a way, the Shard and her patron were testing her.

What did it matter if the other covenants suffered when her own would be elevated beyond them? They would be worthless worms to be ground under her obsidian heel at her leisure.

In the end, it took Nymasolth a little more than a few seconds in her private study to come to a decision. Sacrificing her plague beast, a gift from the Vile Covenant, would be a worthy sacrifice.

That was clearly all that was missing. A proper sacrifice. They had already thinned the veil enough with the blood of the innocents watering the very stones of this once-hallowed place.

Nymasolth looked up from her altar at the back of the cavernous hall that could have housed the hundreds of thousands that used to be part of her Covenant in the days of proper Lormar.

Her numbers had dwindled, along with every other covenant. Worse, she was relegated to this squishy, fleshy prison. Her true form was a larval reflection of her master and patron, but it was a work of art compared to this soft doughy sack she currently inhabited.

She rubbed her long, graceful neck, reminiscing when she used to have large bulbous poison sacs to spew deadly toxins at her enemies. Now she didn’t even have mandibles or a hardened exoskeleton, just flesh and pointless hair all over.

In places that didn’t even make sense!

A man in ratty black robes shuffled his slippered feet up to the base of the steps and fell to his knees in proper prostration. “Mistress, the Magi are pressing the outer battalions. We await the support of your dreaded plague beast. What are your orders?”

This was the moment of truth. Trust in the loathsome Vile Covenant, or have faith that her true master will deliver her salvation?

It was no choice at all.

“Send everything we have against the Magi, but deliver the plague beast to me, personally,” Nymasolth instructed. That Audience with Stymhalzt would be rightfully hers, and all the insidious glory that awaited.

There was the barest hesitation from her underling, but he knew better than to question her. Bowing and scraping, he left the room through the hidden side exit.

Nymasolth cast her hooded gaze across her prison for the last time. She would ascend to the Shardrune properly, leaving behind the fools that dared to call themselves her equal.

The altar was split off from the rest of the cavernous space by a wide and impossibly deep rift. Only one path from outside led to the altar, and she had been thorough in its obfuscation.

The rest of the wide cavern was filled with countless pillars the size of tree trunks. Upon each pillar were supposedly the names of martyrs from wars long lost to memory and time.

A fitting place to rip open the veil. So much death and loss was a powerful catalyst when properly utilized by one with the right knowledge.

I will carry them no longer, Nymasolth thought to herself. How she hated that Shae’kathoth knew so much. She thought about recalling her most loyal vassals, but the Putrescence Twins were too valuable to lose should things go awry.

She would keep them far away from this place.

Plans often went wrong when dealing with Magi. Even still, the Twins were fortunate they would not serve in the same capacity as the plague beast.

Nymasolth would betray it all to achieve that most profane of Audiences.

The sound of fighting echoed through the main hall by the time her plague beast was delivered to her. The gruesome thing had four arms, two ending in delicate human hands, and two others in gruesome crab-like claws covered in blessed black carapace.

How she craved to return to her proper form in the image of her lord.

Bound to her will, the plague beast reared its handsome mandibles, dripping with poison. They clacked together, confusion evident upon the creature’s prickly brow above its single compound eye.

“Rest easy, my love,” Nymasolth said soothingly. “You will join with our lord before the rest of us. Lie down on the altar and prepare yourself. You will be celebrated among all our kin as the Sham’blinka, the opener of ways for the worthy.”

Such a sacrifice required more than her usual tools. This was personal. Her plague beast was bound to her very soul. Killing it in the name of her lord was the ultimate gift. And any proper gift was suitably personal.

Shutting her eyes, Nymasolth summoned her available aspect skills. A grim smile blossomed on her full lips. If there was one thing she loved about this new reality, it was the aspects.

Gone were the days of painstaking adherence to strict study and training. She could learn impossibly strong spells simply by reading a scroll or finding a kindling branch.

And they were so delectably cruel. A true reflection of her own blackened heart.

She used several skills in quick succession, blocking out the tidal wave of pain with a chant to her patron that would otherwise cripple her frail human body.

Aspect Skill: [Rend Flesh]

Aspect Skill: [Contort]

Aspect Skill: [Retrieve]

Aspect Skill: [Gore Weapon]

Sweating profusely, Nymasolth gripped the gruesome weapon of blood and bone in her free hand. Her other was a useless husk, harvested of all that it could offer.

There was no better tool suited to the task.

She raised the sinuous dagger, still dripping red with her own blood over the first of the plague beast’s five hearts.

“You alone will behold the cold majesty of Ayldi-Roon, first among our kin, be glad!”

With buttery smoothness, Nymasolth’s sacrificial dagger slid through the plague beast’s armored carapace over its chest. An explosion of power surged through her veins and spiraled up into the cavernous ceiling high above.

“Take joy, my child!” Nymasolth shouted gleefully, stabbing a second heart.

Each time her knife slid into the creature’s armor with ease, furthering her twisted desires to take proper Audience with her lord once more. This was the right path to take, she knew it in her very bones.

The darkness high above her head began to twist and warp as the growing power battered at the veil between realities, but with only two more hearts to go, she already knew there was a problem. This Shardrune was stronger than anything she had seen before.

Unseen forces were at work, preventing the ripping of the veil. Already, they were undoing her work. More death would be needed to fuel her ascension.

Focusing, with her plague beast barely clinging to its tormented life, Nymasolth used [Binding Recall] to bring all those underlings she had branded with her mark.

A heap of bodies appeared at her feet clad in black robes, many bleeding or missing appendages. Several screaming from some wound or another.

“Feast!” Nymasolth cried.

Black veins crawled up the necks and faces of her loyal subjects as the plague beast drew in their vital essences.

Oily smoke flowed out from their noses, mouths, and eyes to join the plague beast.

“Rejoice!” she screamed in ecstasy, stabbing her dagger into his fourth heart.

Somewhere in the middle of so much screaming and writhing, there was a tiny voice that said, “Aw, nuts.”

Nymasolth was too lost in exaltation to pay attention to the small voice of one of her dying underlings. She gripped her one good hand around the dagger and thrust down for the final time.

Just as she expected to feel the buttery smooth slide of her dagger into her plague beast’s carapace, something jarred her already weakened arm.

Her blade rebounded off something hard and metallic. Her eyes flew open, seeking the disturbance, only to find a very small green shrub holding up a peculiar pink shield with a giggling face drawn on it.

“I am Shrubley, the monster adventurer! I have come to stop you!” the shrub, who could apparently talk, yelled at her.

“And I am Smudge!” the pink shield cried.

Nymasolth mentally commanded the plague beast to grab the foul green thing.

Weakened, but unable to resist a command from its mistress, the plague beast grabbed Shrubley with its large crustacean pincer. Unfortunately, it lacked the strength to crush the creature.

In fact, it could barely hold on to the wriggling shrub as it called out, waving sword and shield around. “Do not do this! You are going to harm the Shardrune!”

“Precisely,” Nymasolth said wickedly. “Once I have opened a rip, I will make sure your soul comes along for the ride. My lord will be hungry when I meet him. He is always hungry.”

Shrubley flailed, his bright yellow lamplight eyes going wide at the threat. Nymasolth, pleased that her affairs were in order, raised the dagger again. Before she could plunge it into the plague beast’s last heart, Shrubley’s flailing became too much for the monster to hold back.

Shrubley’s momentum rolled the plague beast over on the altar, inadvertently causing the last strike that would kill it to miss.

Nymasolth howled with rage and lunged for the plague beast’s heart, but Shrubley was faster. Using his small body attached to the beast’s long arm, he was able to shift the creature again by using it like a lever.

Nymasolth saw what was happening and lunged once more, but only managed to rip into the plague beast’s hip as it rolled off the altar table.

Before she could get around to the side, it hit the stairs and picked up speed. All the while, Shrubley screamed his bushy head off. They rolled faster than Nymasolth could catch up to them.

The Elder watched in abject horror as Shrubley managed to wriggle out of the plague beast’s claw and cling with his branch-like limbs to a crack in the stairs.

Severely weakened and without the strength or sense to stop its roll, the plague beast rolled right off the stairs and into the chasm that separated the altar from the rest of the cavernous room.

Nymasolth shrieked in righteous rage, turning her gruesome dagger on the small shrub. “You will pay for that!”

She thrust the dagger down on the defenseless, ridiculous, and utterly incomprehensible little creature for its interference. It deserved to suffer for a thousand lifetimes for its meddling!

“I am sorry,” said a small, very sad voice.

Nymasolth couldn’t quite understand what was going on. Her arm fell limp to the side. Her sacrificial dagger landed on the steps beside her with a moist and meaty plop.

Two glowing lamplight eyes, shining orbs that somehow conveyed a deep sadness, stared out at her from the depths of glossy green leaves.

Nymasolth gasped as coldness stole the life and strength from her limbs. She tried to ask a question, to curse the creature before her, anything, but she could not summon the strength.

How?

In her last moments, Nymasolth’s head drooped, and her vision narrowed upon the simple wooden blade thrust clean through her chest.

Oh.

Darkness closed in around her. A vile, oily hand of dark smoke reached through the thinness of the roiling darkness above and ripped her soul free of its mortal shell.

Nymasolth knew true terror as she joined her once beloved patron, whom she had failed so spectacularly.