Shrine of the Dead God

A small fragment from The Scythe: Apotheosis, depicting Yrsafgar's conflict against the Cultist Lord and the fight to stop the awakening of the Cryptic Whisperers.

He approached the shrine with slow, delicate footsteps, despite his almost unnatural height and almost skeletal appearance. Vorvadoss was convinced that R’thothanoth was captured within the odd shrine-like structure, idiosyncratic to the Whisperers alone, make no mistake. The very metal it was forged out of, the weird silvery worm-like alloy paving the rhomboid floating prison, large as a fortress and with intimidating, deep, sickening green lights geometrically scarring the structure in chaotic but organised patterns symmetrically placed on either side with a singular crystal in the upper-middle part of it.

The Cultist Lord stopped before the gargantuan shrine, feet away from it. By either side of him were two slim pedestals of about a meter height each, with floating glyphs circling the top, that kept shifting and changing. Seven of them, to be precise, were floating above each pedestal. With an almost hesitated reach, Vorvadoss extended his heavily deformed, skeletal seven-fingered hands to either, looking up at the Shrine. “Great Whisperer… Primordial and rightful claimer of Nitidus… I bow to your will… return… and claim this world… before -they- do.”. Vorvadoss was about to sink his fingers in the glyphs when a gravelly, infuriated tone lashed out at him from behind. ”STOP! You mindless cretin!” Yrsafgar made a slashing gesture, after shouting his words as Vorvadoss turned around. In the exact same motion as his slashing gesture with an empty hand, an infernal whip of almost red fire crackled deafeningly towards the Cultist, slamming in his pitch-black robes and setting him off balance somewhat, but not enough to knock him down. One of the pedestals broke in the process as Vorvadoss stared at its destruction, trying to maintain his balance. Yrsafgar quickly followed up with his words. ”Do you have -ANY- idea what you almost released?! Don’t you dare destroy their work! I’ve had it with your petty ragtag band of lunatics!” Vorvadoss just about had time to recover, staring coldly at Yrsafgar despite having no actual eyes. Even so, Yrsafgar felt burdened mentally and physically just from the intense gaze of the cultist. “This world belongs to the Whisperers. This universe. The Null -is- the Whisperers, ignorant fool…” Before Yrsafgar had any time to react, Vorvadoss swiftly grabbed him in a constraint field of Null magic with the lift of his skeletal hand. With a lateral throwing gesture, Vorvadoss rammed Yrsafgar in the stony pavement. Small trails of blood left as Yrsafgar’s left side of the face grinded against the stone, as well as his knees and forearms “Your defiance is why there is no order.”, Vorvadoss retorted. Yrsafgar quickly attempted to get up, but Vorvadoss proceeded to further retaliate. The reddish skies of Mal’Adum quite literally cracked apart and from the crack descended a singular, black bolt of ramified lightning that struck Yrsafgar to the ground, burning into his back horribly. The magus was not dead yet, luckily. Vorvadoss swiftly moved towards him and hoisted him upwards by the throat, clasping his very cold fingers around it. “You will never return home.” The atmosphere sealed back together as Vorvadoss’ five eyes started glowing blue… Then the exact same tint of sick, deep green as on the Shrine. Only holding Yrsafgar by this point, one could have mistaken him as being frozen in time were it not for the slight tilt of his head afterwards. Yrsafgar stared at him with deeply hateful eyes as he felt the temperature lowering around him. Briskly looking around him, somewhat worried. Vorvadoss resumed. ”An audience is in session.” And with no other delayment, his eyes glowed a blinding flash of blue and instantly knocked Yrsafgar out, dropping him on the ground.