Apostles of Doom

Trevin chuckled. “The dwarves, orcs, and several other races would most likely agree with that. In fact, I have heard many of them say exactly that.”

Chapter 141

Nysegard, Thirty-Three Leagues from the Citadel: DOA + 16, Mid First Period

Ramses pulled his head out of one of the lower interior chambers of the runic obelisk he was working on. He, Exador and several other wizards, several of whom were liches, were working in a large laboratory that from appearances, had been a large grain storage room in a keep that the Storm Lords had acquired several weeks ago. The former commanders of the fortress had been more than willing to give the fortress over in exchange for some live flesh. Ghoulism was such an unforgiving hunger.

“I think I have the correct settings for tuning these to the new high-capacity mana pools that were delivered yesterday,” Ramses told Exador.

“Excellent. These things are going to need a lot of power,” Exador replied.

“The relay mechanism is quite impressive,” Ramses said. “I had never thought to circumvent the multiple mana pool restrictions by using a series of sequential fail-over pools, bridged by anima jar buffers containing sufficient mana to power the failover transition when the prior pool was depleted,” Ramses said.

“That is the advantage in being in the soul-sucking business, as the Storm Lords are; they find all sorts of interesting use for animus that the rest of us would never think of,” Exador said.

“Yes, and having no compunctions or hang-ups about the sanctity of life — or more importantly, souls — gives one plenty of animus to fill the jars.” Ramses grimaced as he said this. He personally found the operation to be ethically distasteful, even by his and Exador’s own standards.

“So,” Ramses began, walking over to look at what Exador was working on, “any luck on your end?”

“Some. The fact that we are only trying to use one warding facet makes things doable on this scale. Not even Lenamare could manage this sort of scale of warding with every tuning, or the variability. The calculations to balance the instabilities would be insurmountable,” Exador said.

Ramses chuckled. “I must say, I do find it amusing that Lenamare’s most famous piece of wizardry shall serve as the down payment on his and Freehold’s demise.”

“Indeed!” Exador grinned. “With the Storm Lords behind us, Freehold will fall not that long after the Citadel, and the book shall be ours for the taking!”

Library of Doom: First Period

Tom shook his head, watching as his tusks moved with head. “Thish ish hard to hold, ahnd haddar do shpeak,” he tried to say in his new orc voice. Antefalken had suggested they take breaks from Tom trying to shift clothes by trying different races. Currently he was working on his orc form; a form that admittedly, he had modeled on Orcus’s orc form because he was too embarrassed to ask an actual orc to stand still so he could stare at them and practice turning into them. It seemed too gauche and too personal. It would also have exposed weakness on his part, which was an odd thought because that had never been one of his concerns in school. It was just that now that he was leading a bunch of people, perhaps into battle someday, he felt he needed to project a strong image.

“Yeah, that’s horrible pronunciation, even in Universal,” Antefalken agreed, walking around Tom and studying his form.

Tom was only changing his physical form; he was in no way ready to try to shift both clothes and a new form at the same time. Therefore, he was standing in front a mirror wearing a loin cloth, with the Orcus-orc portraits surrounding them. It was rather odd how he had no compunction about going naked in his true form, yet as either Edwyrd or this new orc form, he felt an urge to shield his privates. It was weird and he had no explanation for it. However, that was the least of his problems; for the moment, he simply needed to keep his form stable.

“I fahnd id amahzhing dat Ruberd and Fuhrogg could mashter an unknown form zo easily,” Tom said.

“You know, if you kept a consistent speech impediment, I could probably understand you better,” Antefalken observed.

“Drying diffhurnt thingz to imbrove mah zpeach,” Tom said.

“Unfortunately, this is not something I can help with, since I can’t change my entire form.” Antefalken shrugged. “Maybe you could get Rupert and Fer-Rog to come back and teach you?”

“Rubherd did deach me furst dime,” Tom said.

“Kid is impressive; I have to admit that,” Antefalken said, shaking his head. “As, of course, is your situation. Has to be the fastest promotion from new arrival to demon prince in the history of the Abyss.”

Tom shrugged.

“It would lend credence to the Phoenix Cycle theory,” Antefalken added.

Tom suddenly expanded back to his true form, his concentration broken. Fortunately, the small loincloth had been only loosely tied around his waist. “Not you, too?” he asked sourly.