Necropalypse: The River of Souls

"Hmmm... you may emit too much mana residue. Hell, I can pinpoint your location and I am not even sensitive to that." Herst shrugs at this comment. "Anyway, just rub it in blood. The pain you felt was the mask tapping into your emotions so it can express them. If you end up having to battle with it on, try not to get too much blood on it... Gets awkward fast like when you are fighting with your enemies trying to kill the leader and have them witness your disguise fall away... I hated that job."

Herst stows the masks away and after tapping various parts of his cloak, pulls out a bag that should not fit in a pocket.

"I do happen to have a makeup kit for touch up jobs, if you want to play with it further. The masks operate on ancient blood magic techniques so the flesh of the mask appears like skin, it's just as soft, so avoid any face injuries as well but the trade off is that anything that scans for mana won't pick it up... I think that's all the warnings I need advise. Oh, and I guess take this for emergencies in the event you need the facelessness but lack anything that bleeds." 

Herst again pulls another object from another pocket, a vail of what appears to be blood.

"Oh boy, all this face shit is weird."

The bounty hunter looked at the mask that was on Ren's face. Squinting, as if to take a better look. 

"How much blood is required to remove it anyway?"

"Mana residue? Must be from the mana bomb we set off earlier. Or from the mana core in the ornithopter..
I'm not a magic user so I'm certainly not emitting anymore than the average person. No, I know why it doesn't work, same reason why none of my past attempts worked."

She shrugged and took the vial of blood. Which she then used to take off the mask.


"Thanks for trying to help though. It sounds really handy, it just doesn't work on me. Not having a face is the price I paid for having a life at all." She ran her fingers over where her cheek once was and sighed. The dark pattern on her non-face once again crept slowly along her skin. "Alright, we shouldn't waste anymore time. Let's see if we can get in without tricks. If that fails we can always sneak in. But if we handle this well enough we won't need to resort to that."

She headed towards the castle gate. The castle had a moat that once seemed to be filled with water but now there were only puddles and mud. In front of the gate was a large bridge built with large blocks of black marble. The castle walls were almost as dark as the sky above but were only stone. Both the bridge and the walls were heavily worn down. The scars of the war were still easly visible even though it had ended over twenty years ago.
As the group walked over the bridge the guards called out to them. "Halt, who goes there?"

Reganya stopped walking and replied." We are representatives of the ChaoZ Guild, Allies of the DCGF. We have urgent bussiness with Empress Valkyria." She held up a badge with the Guilds symbol on it.

"WE ARE NOT HERE TO RAPE AND PILLAGE, I REPEAT, WE ARE NOT HERE TO RAPE AND PILLAGE."

The bounty hunter yelled at the guards, somehow assuming that such an acclamation would settle any doubts.

"I think that helped!"

Rol nodded slightly, waiting for the guards response.

(Gotta hate not getting emails)

Herst remains silent and seems to be ignored by everyone but his companions.

"..yes Rol, that helped a lot. Thank you." Reganya said calmly without a hint of sarcasm. The context implied sarcasm enough anyway.

The guard looked down at the group silently for a short while. As if in doubt.
"..Yeah. I don't think I'll let you guys in. If you want to speak with the Empress you'll have to make an appointment first. If you make one now she'll be able to see you in.. about five months."


"..Five months? We can't wait that long."
"I'm terribly sorry but our Empress is a very busy woman. I'll have to ask you to leave."
"Look, Val might not have 5 months left. Hel, it might not even have a month left. The undead are rising again and the Empress might be the only one who has a clue as to how to stop them."
"The undead? Surely I'd have heard if that happened. Either way we can't just let random strangers into the castle. Even if you say you're in a guild, you could be lying. Or you could be working for the enemy. I won't say this again, you need to leave or you'll be forced to leave."
"Let them in." A female voice sounded from above, out of sight.

"Huh? .. Oh yes, right away Ma'am! The Empress will see you now. Proceed through the door and follow the hallway to it's end to the throne room."

The gate slowly lowered.
"See? I told you guys they'd let us in."

Rol put his thumb up when Ren stated her not sarcastic-sarcastic statement. He was about to say something stupid again, but was interrupted by voice of the Empress.


"Damn that sounded out right cryptic."


The bounty hunter followed the directions the guards gave the guild, but not before asking as loud as he could:


"Yo, is the empress like a 10? Or is she all dead and shit which makes her like a 7?" 

Herst remains silent, seemingly to faze out of importance to the locals. Possibly a method to sneak into places in broad daylight or a way to seem unimportant enough for the need to address his presence doesn't exist.

Either way, he ignores the people as they seemingly ignore him.

"Are you saying Doomy is a seven? As for his sister, I have no idea what she looks like. But I guess we'll find out soon enough."

"Hey don't talk about my sister like that! .. Or about me either!"

The gate closed behind them as they argued. For a second the hallway turned completely dark. "What the.." Suddenly all the torches in the hallway lit themselves, illuminating the hallway again. "Automatic torches? Cool."

When the group entered the throne room the torches went out and the door closed behind them, again. Three large windows on both sides of the room made it slightly less dark. But the dark stone walls, the black carpet and the dark clouds outside did the exact opposite.
On the other side of the room a large throne stood, also black.
"The empress must really like dark and black stuff.. Where is she anyway?"
The throne, just like the rest of the room was empty. And the only door was the one they just came through.

Herst remains in the background, seemingly inactive and unimportant while he observes from under his hood. The darkness hides nothing to him but he remains silent.

"Nah, Doomy's judgement is all on you Ren, I don't roll that way.. I think."

When the hall turned completely dark Rol sighed. "We are totally gonna get jum-" but he was interrupted by the torches. 

"I like this colour scheme. Hella cheerful."

The bounty hunter looked around, not seeing anything. 

"Maybe she's behind her throne and will make a cool entrance by like throwing smoke pellets and getting on her throne while we can't see her and it'd be all epic..." He ranted then faded off.

"I apologize for making you wait. And for my guards outside. Finding smart and reliable guards that can fight properly is almost impossible these days. So I had to compromise."

The voice seemingly came from nowhere. "Unlike my guards, I have heard the rumors of the undead rising again. It didn't exactly surprise me with Death dying and all. The death of my aunt itself on the other hand was much more surprising. 
Some rumors say she died when the wraith king tricked her. Other sources speak of some dark creature killing both the wraith King and my aunt. And then there's those that say a certain Guild was responsible... Your guild to be precise."

As the voice was speaking the light slowly seemed to fade out of the room. The throne and the farthest walls disappearing into the shadows.

Herst is busy trying to not attract any attention so he can freely and open stare and observe everything, so he batters not an eyelid at any changes thus far made.

(Because he need to know what he is dealing with before he can act accordingly to the situation.)

"Well, a byproduct of our guild really. No longer of association."

The bounty hunter explained.

"At least I don't think so, I hope not."


Rol yawned. Then asked without anysense of transition. 

"So, know anything about death flow or whatever it is called?"

"Yeah, Like Rol said. A group called Necropalypse, under leadership of the wraith king , attacked the ChaoZ guild. ChaoZ defeated them but when the wraith king died.. Death came to collect his soul. And that's when that dark creature popped up. Together with it's mistress Cuccoruler and they killed both the wraith king and Death before disappearing again. We swear ChaoZ had nothing to do with it, we just got caught up in it all."


"I see. Nice story but its kinda hard to tell if you're telling the truth or not."


"Yeah, I get that a lot. The lack of face can be a bother sometimes."


"In either case, your story seems to be consistent with what my spies tell me. So no worries."

Immediatly the shadows retract and the room becomes visible again. With the Empress standing right in front of the group suddenly. "Sorry about that show. I just had to be careful, I'm sure you understand."
Her smile made her look kind of innocent. Her armor however gave off the opposite vibe. It was full of spikes which made it look rather threatening. The crimson color only added to that, it did match the dark red color of her hair nicely though.
Her armor seemed rather heavy for a small woman like her, but it's weight didn't seem to bother her. She was the same height as doomy, who himself was the shortest member of the guild.
Her pale skin and dark blue eyes didn't show a hint of decay. It's safe to assume that she's very much alive and not undead like her brother.
Also, she's a total 10. (rating, not age..obviously. She's around 25? I can't remember the timeline and I'm too lazy to check. But she looks around that age anyway. Art may happen one day.)

Herst may have reacted. Hard to tell due to the hood. 

But he still maintains a relaxed posture, if one notices him despite him seemingly invisible in full visibility.

("also, she's a total ten" fucking reminds me of the borderlands text snippets when you face a boss. 10/10 -ign)

Upon finally seeing the empress face to face, the bounty hunter nodded. 

"Solid ten. If that incest thing I was talking about earlier happens, it'd be weird, but not impossible to understand." 

Rol gave a quick thumbs up to Deathy before scratching the back of his head. 

"Right, so death flow? Still wanting some information about that." 

Roltharus lacked a je ne sai quois when talking to royalty, oh wait, I do know what, he lacked common sense. When talking to anyone.

"Death flow?"
"Don't mind him, he's..Honestly I don't think there is a word for what he is, in any Valean language. And if there is, I don't know it. Either way he's trying to ask about the river of souls. He's just not very good at communicating, or anything else for that matter."

Reganya went on to explain what Mekheris had done and all that stuff I'm not going to repeat here.


"So we figured, If anyone knows about the river of souls, it must be Death's niece. At least we hope..?"


"..you blew up a pyramid with a mana bomb?.."
"..Yes."
The Empress stayed quiet for a while.
"It seems the rumors about your guild are true.. But yes, I do know something about the river of souls. And the location of it's source."
"Really? Phew, I was gonna be worried if you didn't. You were kind of our only lead.."
"Well then I have good news.. and Bad news."
"I don't like the sound of that.."
"Yeah, me neither. And I'm the one telling it. So the good or the bad first?"

"I feel we should know the bad first. Then the good news can cheer us up. Maybe."

The bounty hunter put his thumb and index finger on his chin as if he were stroking a non-existent beard.

"Okay. Bad news, while I do know about the soul of rivers and it's source, I have no clue as to how to fix it or how it works. My aunt was very secretive about this stuff. Only direct family and soul reapers that finished her training were told about the river and it's source. But she never told anyone anything about it's mechanisms. Apparently she once did start taking students to one day replace her but she deemed most of them unworthy and gave up years ago." The empress sighed.
"The Good news, You won't have to travel far to find the source. It's located underneath this castle, in the catacombs."


"..Somehow that bad news outweighs the good news by quite a bit.."


"It gets worse. Lately the source started acting weird."
"Weird?"

"Normally the source is shaped like a giant orb of energy. It didn't do anything but sit there floating a few inches off the ground. It was eery. But lately it's been pulsating. And it's shape has become more irregular. I wasn't sure what to do so I sealed it off. Without disrupting the river of souls of course. But for some reason I feel like I've been sitting on a ticking time bomb. And then I heard about the undead coming back. At first I thought I accidentally had cut the flow of the river but if Necropalypse had to build that pyramid then I doubt that was it. Maybe the source just can't stay stable without Death since she was the one that created it.."


"If that's true then we're all doomed. If I was Death I would at least have put in a safety measure to keep this from happening."
"Maybe she never thought she would die? She never seemed to worried about it. I mean she's been around for centuries. It seemed very unlikely that she would pass away anytime soon and yet.."

Meanwhile Doomy is standing back silently with a sad expression on his face.

"DO WE THROW DEATHY IN THE ORB?"

Rol asked exuberantly. 

"Or would that be bad?"

Not that anyone notices, but Herst facepalms, and his hand is rendered unseeable as it passes under his hood to palm his face.

"Shuddup Rol or I'll throw You in!" Doomy yelled.

"Hmm, My aunt did often say she was going in, whenever she went to the orb. I always thought she was joking. But maybe you can go inside.. If you can then maybe you can find out what's wrong inside. I've never tried it, the orb always creeped me out too much."
".. I would say it couldn't hurt to try, but in this case, it might hurt a lot. But if we don't do anything.."

Suddenly the doors behind the group fly open and a guard comes running through. "Ma'am! There's an army marching up to the castle! They don't look friendly!"

Finally, Herst seems to exist. He seems to be bouncing on the balls of his feet in excitement and is wriggly his fingers in anticipation. A mad excitement coats his words.

"Finally something I understand. How many? What alignment are they with? More importantly, can I fight them? Been a good while since I've let loose, I don't want to miss this opportunity." 

His hood has by now fallen but he is still wearing the mask that hides his true face so he minds it not.