Prologue

He lay face up on a cold stone table. The chains around his arms, wrists and legs were cold and tight, biting into his skin and freezing the blood. His breath misted above his face as he stared into the blackness beyond his sight. Four braziers were lit around the room, burning with a cold, blue flame. The walls were dark grey, bordered by grey edges that were inscribed with odd runes. Everything about the place was cold and miserable, dark and oppressive. He was completely at odds with his surroundings. In stark contrast his skin was healthy and almost golden, but fair. His hair shone like spun gold, and was spread around his head like beams of light. His eyes were enchantingly green, sparkling with intensity and power. His ears, shaped like leaves, made him recognisable as an elf, as did his angular face. He writhed again, naked on the stone table, making the chains rattle and strain. But like the thousand times before, they did not snap. They did not come loose. They simply cut further into his golden skin, letting fresh, warm blood trickle out, only to freeze over like a scab.

The door to the room, beyond his feet, slammed open and let in a new chill. This was not the chill of cold weather, the chill that made the air appear before your face or makes you shiver. This was a dread chill, like a dark creature, beyond perception, running’s its talons up your spine, stopping you breath with an ethereal claw around your lungs. This was a dread chill that inspired fear, made your eyes wide with fright, makes your breath catch and make your legs want to pump. He calmed himself; he was an elf, not a cowering human ignorant of the world. He layed his head back and looked up into the ceiling, dark and beyond sight.

“Paladin…” a voice whispered from the door, beyond his feet.

He closed his eyes to the voice. It was deep, dark, grating and rasping all in one, and echoed as if spoken by three men. The voice could only belong to one…

“Do you fear death?” the voice asked, its armoured boots thudding on the floor as it came to stand over him.

“Nay though I walk in the shadow of evil, I shall know no fear. The Light is my shield, my Aegis and my Sanctuary…” he began to pray, finding comfort in it as he would in his plate armour.

The darkness chuckled and laughed at him. It broke his concentration and he stopped, he still had faith, but there was nothing to pray for. The darkness would gain nothing from killing him. He dared to look to his right, where the darkness had formed into the shape of the voice’s form. Midnight armour, forged from the blackness of the cosmos and empowered by dread, suffering and anger stood almost eight feet tall. The segmented plates of his torso were a dark, angry red, and continued down in a tabard that lay over and between the legs. A skirt of plates ran down to the knee-plates, encompassed by an actual skirt of dark leather that swept around him on an unseen wind. The plates on its upper torso curved into jagged pauldrons. Dark flames encompassed the face, but swept back as if by will to reveal a simple piece of darkness that looked like a solid facemask with simple eye holes. Except there was nothing behind the mask.

“The Light guards my soul, Dark One, there is nothing you can do that would change that. You’d best kill me” he stated and resigned himself to lay his head down again, resolutely staring up into the ceiling.

“There are a great many things I can do…Paladin” he whispered back, waving his hand over the paladin’s body.

His body was encompassed in pure agony, unceasing and constant. There was no safety from it, no relief. It was pure, constant pain. He screamed until his throat bled, and screamed some more. Bones within his body shattered, blood vessels exploded outward. Beneath his skin, blood blossomed like roses, and then turned black like ink. Blood flowed down his throat, feeling like molten lead.  Blackness loomed from nowhere, encircling him and drawing him into unconsciousness.

…

“Wake, paladin” the voice rasped and grated, stirring him from a sleep that promised respite from the pure agony he had suffered.

He woke, and expected the agony to return. He was relieved when it didn’t return, instead his limbs were aching and stiff, as if he had slept for years. His head throbbed, blood pounded in his ears, and his eyes strained to open.

“I wanted you to be a willing convert, forsake the Light as it has forsaken you. Join me in a state beyond death. Join me in power, become my Dread Knight” the walking armour emerged from the shadows of the room like the spectre of death. 

“Never! The Light has not forsaken me. The Light be my armour in the fight against darkness. It is my sword and shield, for without it there is no hope.” He chanted in response.

His prayer was met with a chuckle.

“In time paladin, you will come to see that there is no defence against me. I am a power beyond imagining. The Light cannot stop me. And the Light cannot save you.” The dark armour declared.

He turned and stalked out of the room, the stone doors slamming shut with a resounding thud. The room became silent, leaving only the flames to crepitate, and him to breath, to fill the empty space. He was about to close his eyes, attempt to rest, before the door swung open again, not moments after it had shut. Once again the Dark Lord and Master swept into the room, his cloak billowing around him like a shroud of death and dread. He held up a large tome in his gauntleted hands, making the symbol on the front very clear.

“I think you know what this is…” he trailed off as the paladin felt his eyes widen.

The symbol on the front was unmistakeable. It was the holy circle of the Light, broke by jagged lines, symbolising a breaking of the Light. He strained against his chains as he felt his skin crawl. The Light would not save him from the darkness within the tome. 

“Ahh, so you do know what it is. The Light will not save you now. You’re only hope will be to join me. My armies of Undeath will sweep down upon the Human Kingdoms and scour them. Join me and you can rule in the Kingdom of the Dead. With your death, I can control you. This is your ultimatum; serve me willingly in death, or serve me as a slave in death.” The Dark Lord and Master pronounced his doom.

“The Light restores my soul. Light, lead me in the paths of righteousness. Though I walk in the shadow of death, I will know no fear. For the Light is my shield, my Aegis and my Sanctuary. Light have mercy on me, your faithful soldier. I bear the evil for my kind, that they shall not know darkness or fear. Deliver me from the shadow of death. You are my shield, against the darkness. You have taken me from the dust I once was, and to the dust I shall return” he lay his head back, at peace with his efforts to kill the Dark Lord and Master.

“Touching, but the Light won’t reach your soul!” the Dark Lord and Master declared and opened the tome.

Ice caked the walls and the blue flames fluttered and went still, trapped in time. He felt his breath catch in his throat, and struggled to move, the cold was oppressive and sapping. Flipping through the pages of darkness and evil, the Dark Lord and Master found the page he wanted, and layed a finger upon it. Darkness, like the tides, rose around the room, surging like water given form and blackness. The darkness coalesced into an orb that hung at the Dark Lord’s side as he approached the paladin, chained to the slab of grey stone. He dipped the tip of his finger into the darkness, and like ink, traced a symbol on the arm of the paladin. It was pain, like molten lead was being poured on his arm. He couldn’t move from the cold, but could only suffer in silence as the pain wore him down. This continued for hours on end, the Dark Lord continuously tracing symbols and runes of darkness into his skin. He passed out from the pain before the fourth symbol was traced onto his arm.

“Wake, paladin. It is time” the Dark Lord proclaimed.

The paladin could not move, for the cold and pain remained, and his body was too tired to fight anymore. His breath came in laboured, shallow gasps.

“Last chance; serve me willingly in death, or serve me as a slave in death” the grating, rasping and deep voice bore down on him like an oppressive weight.

“The Light….burn...you…” he managed to stammer out before he laid his head down and accepted his fate.

Light be merciful upon your faithful servant. He prayed and closed his eyes, but a force snapped them back open.

“Then you will be a slave!” the Dark Lord cried, as a blade slammed down into his heart from above him.

He gasped as the force almost collapsed his sternum. His heart beat rapidly to sustain his body, but it continued to tear and cut itself on the blade embedded within it. Dark blood welled from the wound, leaving red, ink like trails as it flowed from his body. Darkness blossomed from the wound like a spider web, beneath his skin. He felt a cold radiating from within himself, and felt his mind slipping away. His thoughts turned to ash and his eyes felt impossibly heavy. He drifted off into sweet oblivion.

…

He floated in the black void of the Outer Darkness. He was aware of nothing but himself, and his self was simply a thought, a feeling, a notion; revenge. Then came a sensation, a little tug on his spirit. He shrugged it off as phantasmal, and continued to float and ponder his notion. But the tug came again, it was insistent, and he could not refuse it. With a sickening rushing, what once would have been a sickening rush, he was thrown back into a body that was his, but had died. In death it seemed as though it was strengthened, his mind woke the runes and their dark powers altered his body. His bones became like steel, each individual tendon, ligament and muscle fibre became stronger.

He opened his eyes in a rush and a gasp as he took his first breath of undeath. My first, unnecessary breath… he discovered. He held his breath and did not feel the once comforting burn in his lungs that signalled he was mortal. Instead there was a simple implacable stillness to them now. He could feel nothing moving in his chest. In fact, he felt nothing. Nothing…

“No…” he whispered and was shocked. His voice echoed as if his body and spirit were talking, but were out of sync.

“Rise, my Dread Knight” the darkness whispered.

“No…No! NOO!!” he screamed, straining at his bonds as he writhed atop the stone slab.

He didn’t, or couldn’t, feel angry at the Dark Lord and Master for making him so. He couldn’t feel anything! He strained and heard the groan of masonry and with a sudden lurch on of his arms swung free, still wrapped in chains and trailing a chunk of stone. It was repeated three more times, with his other arm and then kicking his legs free. He lurched to standing, dropping to his knees with chains still draping him and stone trailing him. There were footsteps before him, and the same blade that had pierced his heart was point down on the floor. He looked upon it, looking for the first time at his reflection. His blonde hair was gone, now shock white. His skin was pale, so unlike the healthy glow it had been in life. But the greatest shock was his eyes. Once they had been sparkling emeralds. Now they were glowing, ice-blue orbs with faint, smoke-like wisps trailing from the corners of his eyes.

“NOOO!!” he screamed again, met only by the chuckle of the Dark Lord and Master.