With each step that he took, he felt the need to bend over and throw his guts out. The headache was getting worse. Soon he was standing in a large underground chamber with walls and floors of marble.
Every wall was carved with either runic dialect or pictures of a wolf clad in fearsome black armor, it was King Night perhaps. And in front of him stood a magnificent tomb, the burial place of King Night. But he didn't have the time to be awed by the sight, cause the once impenetrable tomb was now wide open, the slab of stone that once held it together was in pieces, on the floor.
The tomb was empty, the corpse gone. There was also a sword somewhere near the foot of the tomb. But the thing that scared Li the most wasn't the broken lid or the empty sarcophagus. It was the absolute feeling of dread and death emanating from the coffin. It was the source of the black aura that enveloped the people of the city.
Li felt like he was about to die just by standing there, his head was on the brink of collapse and he felt his whole being starting to fall apart from the dreading miasma, He could not move.
Gripped by fear, a realization dawned on him. 'A tyrant' The thought was so outrageous, his mind refused to accept it and his body seemed to agree as his knees collapsed and he fell to his legs. All the sickness and all the feelings of wrongness were right.
The people were not people at all, not anymore. They were slowly being consumed and turned to it's puppets. But what could he do? They're long gone, six months of its influence had turned them the mindless husks, and that's why he felt no soul in those bodies.
And what is he going to attack? The corpse of the King was nowhere to be seen. He himself was slowly turning into its puppet' The strong headache he felt at the start of the nightmare, the unease that kept growing in his heart. It was just too much.
With each moment that passed Li was bombarded with emotions, with memories not his own but Aian's, that of the people of the city. He was surrounded by death and the dead had not moved on, pleading for him to do something. To kill them, to make them free. The surge of memories and the cacophony of voices was so immense that he lost himself to it, letting it wash him away.
***
After some time passed full of panic and a sense of impending doom, He slowly sat upright and looked at the stone coffin with an unreadable expression on his face. He stood there staring, thinking. Contemplating a harsh choice, the only one he had.
After a while, he moved to the foot of the coffin and picked up the sword that had been there all the time. He brought it to his face and looked at his own reflection, then it began to shift and turned to an image of a werewolf. He moved it to the center of his face, silent like he was swearing an oath.
He began to speak, his voice firm and full of authority worthy of a King "I solemnly swear on my name not as Li, but as Aian, rightful Ruler of the Selim Kingdom, brother of King Night, wolf of the Night, Bringer of Peace that I will slay the Terror that had fallen upon our land and free my people of its grasp, though death may claim me, and you in turn, the flame of freedom will forever burn" as if approving his words, the sword began to glow with beautiful white ethereal sparks and disappeared, followed by the melodic sound of the spell.
[Congratulations you have received a Memory.]
***
He needed to move and fast. His plan needed a lot of time and preparation and he had to do it in a way as to not alert the defiled King Night. He has the tools for it as well, the books of sorcery that belonged to Aian. After studying them all night his plan began to form.
I need people, the ones that are not yet turned Hollow, the army should suffice. I'll select them myself tomorrow. Li thought to himself, eyes tired but determined.
.
.
.
He summoned the soldiers under the pretense of helping the sick, using it to place them exactly where and when he needed. he dismissed the soldiers afterwards, they needed to prepare for his instructions and he himself went to work.
Slipping past the soldiers he went to every house and corner of the land he could and carved a set of runes on their surface, away from prying eyes. You had to have knowingly been searching for them and still you couldn't find them, he was very thorough in his job.
After 4 days of this insidious task, he was finished with all the runes. They were made by himself after his studies and made to be very durable and to channel energy twofold. He was very proud of himself for doing all of this in this short time frame.
His mind and body were tired, his headaches had gotten worse in the past days and it was getting harder and harder to stay awake. There was no sign that his enemy had suspected anything which was a relief. By now all the people were gathered where he wanted them to, Now he just needed to activate the enchantments.
.
.
.
.
Standing alone atop the palace, was a lone wolf, looking down at the city below him, silent and still.
Then, He bent down and started to carve some strange runes under his feet and activated the enchantments. then he poured all the fire he could create onto the runes as it began to hungrily devour them.
At first, nothing happened but suddenly it began to shine with a bright orange color, pulsating slowly at first, then it began to quicken in rhythm as he poured more and more. suddenly it burst with a bright flash of white as all of the carved runes followed and began to illuminate the city with a furious white light, and then they burst forth.
First Li was blinded by the light, then the stone beneath him crumbled and he was thrown into the air by furious shock wave. Then was the fire but by now he was knocked out cold so he didn't feel any of it.
You see, he had made a mistake while creating the corresponding runes. His intention for it was to channel his fire and release it in another place but when he was making it, he'd skipped a few parts just to speed up the processes which made it quite unstable, instead of releasing the stored energy twofold, the runes exploded with up to ten times the amount intended for them. In short, it went scorched earth.
***
Li was awoken as an unbearable heat crashed into him, he got slapped to the side by its force and crashed into a crumbled building. Groaning from the pain he began to move, or at least he tried to.
He was currently buried under the scorched debris. With a deep breath, he exploded upward with a burst of wind and crashed heavily to the ground.
Turning to his side, he violently threw up, There was some blood mixed with it as well. He couldn't help it, the explosion plus the influx of information and memories of the dead had overwhelmed his mind and body, He felt like dying.
'Yeah, dying sounds very nice right now' but he wasn't finished still, the tyrant remains.