Decart awoke as usual long before the sun. He’d been getting up early for so many years that he didn’t know how to sleep when the sun was risen. As he passed by the door to his daughter’s room, he thought of looking in to see her asleep, when she was at her most peaceful, but decided not. He’d let her sleep until the sun woke her. She liked that. Decart left the small farmhouse with a spring in his step that defied his age and joints. He waved merrily at the familiar shape of Cussop, the scarecrow that stood in the small wheat field beside the small farmhouse, named by his daughter.
Later when the sun was high in the sky, Decart sat next to his milk cows for company as he ate some burned bread and cheese. He started a half dozen conversations of so many topics, but the cows never took any interest in the aging farmer’s ramblings. “Ah, go to hell you stupid an’mals. You’re too dumb to know it, but when I’m gone there ain’t gonna be no one to feed you. Enly ain’t gonna do it, no way she is. Enly’s movin’ up from here she is. Gonna go to the city and find a nice boy, and she’s gonna become royalty I tell ya.” The cows just gave an uncaring moo in return. Decart threw the remainder of his bread at the dumb beasts, and they chewed on that for a while, still staring blankly at the farmer.
At the sound of footsteps, the farmer turned. Upon seeing his daughter emerging from the home, like a delicate white moth emerging from its cocoon for the first time, uncertain of how it was meant to fly with such heavy wings, Decart beamed. She was the love of his life, his only love since her mother died a decade prior. Enly was nineteen, and within the next month she would be leaving for Ensis’Lucas. Decart dreaded that day that meant he would be alone, but he wanted the best for her, and she would not find that here on this tiny farm. The old farmer raised an arm to wave to her, but his arm stopped as he noticed something amiss. Why was she running? If there were two truths to the world, they were as follows: The life-giving sun would rise each day anew no matter how dark the night, and Enly would never run for anything unless something was very wrong.
“What’s it love?” he asked as she ran up to him out of breath. Giving herself time to recover from her short sprint now that she was in the protection of her father, Enly said, “There’s someone beside the house, standing in the field.”
Decart kept himself from laughing as he said with a grin, “Oh come now, that’s just Cussop keepin’ de crows away. He ain’t nothin’ to be scared of.” Had she really been scared of something so benign? What a frail child she was.
He hadn’t done anything to calm her nerves. “No father, not Cussop. Something else is out in the field, watching the house. I saw it move I tell you! There was something wrong about it!”
Decart grabbed the closest blade he could and walked off to inspect whatever it was that had dared upset his daughter so. The small wheat field being on the other side of the small farmhouse, he was nearly there before he saw it. It stood where the scarecrow usually did; Cussop was now in shattered bits strewn around the field, as if he had simply exploded. The thing that was in its place looked to be like a person, or more a shadow standing up, more solid though. Decart stepped forward, brandishing the sickle before him like a knife. “What business do you have here wraith?”
The simple farmer knew of wraiths. They were supposedly like people but made of shadows and dark and magic gone wrong, and if anything was that it was the creature he saw before him. Upon receiving no response immediately, Decart went to ask again.
“What are you?” the black-skinned being asked aloud, though no mouth was visible to have asked the question.
“Decart Brigarn is me, and my daughter is Enly Brigarn. Now I ask again wraith, what business do you have here?”
Xir’ain again ignored the question that it did not understand. “Are there more like you?” the dark figure asked.
“Many,” the farmer answered without delay. “And if you don’t leave right now I’ll send for the deconstructioner in Ensis’Lucas to come out here and dispel you.” The threat was hollow, but the bluff usually scared of the smarter of the minor magical beings. The deconstructioner in Ensis’Lucas was the best in the south, and many a spirit and happening feared him coming to dispel them.
Xir’ain pondered this. So his enemy here was human, just like then. Then? When was that? Xir’ain found he could not recall what he had meant just a moment ago. Oh well, he could dwell on that later. Deconstructioner? Ensis’Lucas? Xir’ain was unfamiliar with such terms, but they seemed to refer to a weapon of some import. This human would know many useful things of the world Xir’ain found himself in. “Come to me,” he ordered the elderly human male.
Decart began to tell at the creature that he would not, but then he met the creature’s eyes and all his will to oppose fled him. Those eyes burned into his, blinding and evil, dark and brilliant, and he knew that he couldn’t refuse this creature’s order if he wished to survive. The ground beneath seemed to tilt, making him fall into those terrible eyes. Decart’s legs began to move underneath him, pulled in by the golden light that streamed in heavy curtains over the man’s mind.
“Father, no!” Enly grabbed her father, pushing his chest with all her strength in a futile attempt to push him away from the creature.
Decart felt something stopping him from obeying the golden light. What was it? He felt that his mind was sluggish, like he was forgetting something. Is this what a cow felt like when it had a thought? That was funny. The light was calling. He needed to obey it.
Decart looked down at the thing that impeded him, and it was then that Enly saw his eyes. Her father’s normally light blue-violet eyes were streaked with tiny scars of gold. In those blinded eyes she didn’t see herself reflected, the star in her father’s eye. The man didn’t see his daughter holding him back but the wraith, its black skin pressed against his own, trying to keep him from the light. And it was the wraith his killed, stabbing the sickle in his hand through its inky black skin. He had not expected it to bleed red. He had not expected it to scream out either.
Xir’ain watched in confusion as the elderly human male murdered his own daughter and then took his own life with the crude metal tool. Why had he done that? Xir’ain had ordered the man to walk closer, not to kill himself. What a waste. Even Xir’ain knew when a death served no purpose. The black runner that had swam with Xir’ain all the way to the structure now ventured out to stand beside its master.
“Eat it now?” the runner asked.
“Yes, I have nothing to gain from the dead,” Xir’ain said, frustrated with himself for not stopping the man.
The runner stalked over to the corpses. The runner knew what had happened, though he said nothing. The man's mind had succumbed to the fear that flowed from the master's golden eyes. As the only fear the runners and eels knew was death, there was nothing for them to see in the master's eyes that they did not already live with. The runner wondered what sort of fear the human man must have had to be affected so. Whatever the case, food was food, and fresh food did not stay. As it went to begin its feast, the runner noticed something unpleasant. After a moment’s inspection, it said, “Master, the small human is undead.”
Xir’ain rushed to the body. Alive!? Sure enough, the small female was not dead; her heart still pushed blood out over both sides of her dress every few moments. It was pumping, but slowly, weakly. Xir’ain grabbed the near-death body and fled back through the hole in the ground that marked the end of his dungeon’s arm, racing against time back towards his dungeon’s heart and the life-giving powers he wielded therein.
Bubbles escaped the human female’s mouth as fast as crimson blood escaped her chest, reminding Xir’ain that though he did not breathe, and his creations could breathe water, the creatures of the sun did. Hands full, he slammed his back against the stone ceiling, smashing it away. He brought his head above the surface of the black water and commanded himself to open his mouth. All the grass for a thousand feet fell flat towards the head of the black thing poking out from the ground as the air fell into his gaping maw. Closing the void and submerging again, Xir’ain forced the air into a bubble, kept in shape by the black waters of his dungeon. He stuck the girl’s head inside the bubble, pulling the black water from her lungs. After a moment’s pause to stare at the thing he was trying to save, Xir’ain took off down the tunnel again, pulling the girl and her air in his wake.
The runner would have liked to have stayed by its master’s side, but a fresh meal was far more important. It stayed behind to consume the farmer’s body. There would be no corpse or blood when the meal was done; nothing to have spoken of any ill happenings at all. As he ate, the runner eyed the large moo beasts as they shifted nervously in their insufficient shelter. They would go next.
First Construct: 3/3
Location: The center of the grasslands on the southern end of the continent, S17E02.
Dungeon: An underwater maze of black water, the only visible sign from above being a black lake with a diameter of a half mile. The tunnels spread just below the ground in all directions.
Minions:
100 aquatic imps
50 black eels (and counting)
20 black runners (and counting)
Infrastructure:
Dungeon Heart (underground spring)
Summoning Chamber
Resources: All the golden grass you could possibly want and an endless source of water from deep below the ground
Compendium
Xir’ain, the dark abyss. A layer of black skin over a bottomless void, Xir’ain is the soul of an old keeper of the void, but he merged with the first thing he came into contact with in this world: water. Now he is of the abyss, the void at the bottom of the blackened sea. Though his body is close to that of a human, any who see him would be put off by some unnamable wrongness in the fluidity of his movements. His black skin pollutes all it touches, and his mouth is the bottomless pit of the night sky. To look into his eyes is to be reminded of your childhood fears of what lurked in the dark, and to lose the false notion that you had somehow conquered those fears.