The lich seemed to come around, at last.

Having just finished another roasted chicken in the Red Dragon, Ayreg took notice of Renna, entering the common room. She was as she always was -- wrapped up in her black robes, bandages stretched across her face to hide the bare skull beneath. She took a seat elsewhere in the room, and Ayreg pushed his now-empty plate away. Rising to his feet, he walked over toward her.

Another man got there before him, gawking as he stared at her. Ayreg knew the feeling -- she gave off radiant vibes of evil. The same as he did, only Jodiah suppressed his. It simply wouldn't do to attract too much attention, as far as the death knight as concerned. Not yet, anyway.

Renna, on the other hand, seemed to live for attracting attention. "What are you?" the man asked, still staring like a bull-goosed fool.

Jodiah interceded quickly, a hand landing on the man's shoulder and turning him about away from Renna. He smiled as best he could -- and for Jodiah, that wasn't very good at all. "An interesting question, and not the kind to be asked, man. Run along now."

Ayreg clapped the man on the shoulder, and much to his immediate surprise, the man simply.. walked back toward the bar. Getting over the shock of the man actually obeying, Ayreg took a seat. He slouched lazily, exhausted from his work in the silver forge today, and the table made a loud, clattering noise as his booted feet were kicked up onto the edge of it, crossing at the ankle. He looked to Renna, first, to speak.

"I went to your little sacrifice, Ayreg." she said, her disembodied voice sounding as tinny and as hollow as it ever did.

She professed knowing of his past. Of his wars, of his defeats. Of even his clandestine home, Doomhammer Keep, far to the south in the deserts. As she rambled on, Jodiah remained stoic. Self-control was one of his chief virtues, after all.

"I wish... to serve you."

Ayreg's thin lips twitched, and the gaunt man's eyebrow raised slightly. He had a few questions for her, of course, as would be fitting to make sure someone has the right state of mind to even persue a goal. In the end, however, Ayreg was satisfied. She understood the two principle roles in the world which, at this stage, was the most important part of the process. Knowing and understanding the difference between those who embody power, and those who crave it.

Leaving her instructions on where to go in two nights, Jodiah left the inn to go there himself. There would be preparations to make.

__________

As the lich came out of the treeline and into the clearing, she was greeted with the burning a dozen or so torches, set up onto posts. Ayreg stood toward the center of them, facing her. His normal clothes had been exchanged for a flowing, black, hooded robe. He said nothing at her approach, merely stared with his steel-gray eyes. She was snipish, at first, as she has been for the past few times he had met with her at the Inn. He would have to break that.

He turned, black robe billowing in the bloody, flaming cold wind. An altar -- an apparent mirror image to the one he left for his sacrifice on Lover's Moon -- rested in the center of the circle of torches. Upon it was a woman, wrists and ankles lashed and staked to the ground, covered by a thick woolen blanket. It simply would not do for the centerpiece to die of frostbite before the main event. Unlike the sacrifice that night, though, this one was unscathed save for the rope burn caused by her squirming.

"You have made it this far, Lucy, on desire alone. You desire power.. you desire a legacy. You also desire to serve. A fine goal, but desire alone will not carry you the distance of your journey" he said to her, moving around to the opposite side of the altar.

"I will do what I must to become strong. I desire this power. I want to end this journey, and start a new, bloodier one!" Jodiah's thin lips twitched. She was far too eager. Something else he must break her of.

"Oh, there will be blood. This is not a sacrifice to The Nihil, much as it resembles the one I made. This pitiful, simpering meatbag will be your conduit to channel the power of the dead."

They spoke for several minutes of necromancy, then, cowing her with knowledge of the arcane she did not know. In every way he had been making her inferior to him, and they both knew this. "While not requiring devotion to them to channel the power, I can only hope it gives you an insight into the ways of Malfeas. When we are finished here, the power over life and death will be yours. The price for this power... is to become a Dreadlord, bound to my service." His face showed no emotion as he spoke. Gray eyes stared intently at her, hands folded calmly in front of him.

She fell to her knees, bowing her head in useless supplication, as if he was Kain Locke reborn or something of that sort. It would almost be amusing, if it were not so pathetic. "I am yours, give me this power."

But there would be one more test. A single question asked of her, the final test to ensure she understood exactly how The Nihil functioned, and what would be expected of her, "Is love the weakest of emotions?"

For a moment, the lich thought on it... Love is something she had never known. "No." she said, simply.

The mortal Ayreg, Scourge of Worlds, smiled. "You are correct. Love run amok has caused more chaos, death, destruction, pestilence, and privation throughout history than greed, pride, and anger combined. The weakest of emotions is mercy."

The lich faltered, "M-mercy?"

"Mercy is for those lacking will, and the faint. We can be neither on the path of shadows. There is only power -- and those too weak to seek it. You are ready now, Renna of the Dark." His hand swept down to the woman lashed to the altar. "Feast, and be made whole."

She seemed almost hesitant, at first. Ayreg watched, mildly disinterested. It seemed hard to stay interested in many things these days, he had noted earlier. He was almost sure this would revitalize him, but so far.. it did not. At length, the jaw of the skull parted, and Renna of the Dark ruthlessly savaged her bared teeth into the woman's neck, staining her skull-face with smattered blood.

A single black dot appeared from the right corners of Ayreg's eyes. In both eyes, it traveled horizontally across his face, through his pupil, and disappeared behind his eyeball again in the left corner. The Saa appeared only when channeling the direct power of The Nihil -- any fool can use magic, but it takes a special sort to use abilities gifted directly from their gods. It also exacts a special price on the user. The Saa being but one of them. Used too much, and too often, the Saa become permanent, and can be quite numerous. Damondred, one of his former Dreadlords, had four Saa permanently rotating his eyes. Ayreg would never be so bold as to use the power of The Nihil that much.

To raise a Dreadlord, though, that is the only place the power can come from.

His hand rose, palm outstretched toward her. There was a soft glow around his hand, at first, turning brighter as its aura grew. The sickening green of the ghost-light was interrupted with severe bolts of black strains, jumping about like tiny lightning strikes. It was gone almost as it appeared, fading into a faint shudder of the air around his hand. The woman's body disintegrated beneath Renna's face, and the particles of ash that was formerly her body began to swirl around the lich. The maelstrom lasted several minutes, individual grains of ash striking her body and burning themselves to the bones. She might describe it later as having the skin ripped, piece by piece, off her body, and then being burned alive.

Her body began to feel.. odd. Strangly whole, but not all at once. Like solid matter, thin, but solid nontheless starting near her core, and working its way out. Convulsions soon began to rock her, almost like a siezure, and the cause became clear. A burst of blood erupted onto her skull, and, somewhere inside, she knew it was her own blood. An artery had formed of the disintegrated sinew of the woman, and was forcing its way up into her skull, splitting off into a dozen smaller vessels. The pain became more clearer as nerves reformed themselves, shooting out in an entire network across her body. Convulsions wracked her whilst the muscles reached out, bonding to her bones, and pulling her in every direction.

Having lost most control of her body, she flailed about, eventually falling to the ground. The pain grew through her like a weed, and her partially muscled face stared at him, screaming, but his face was cold, and stoic.

Merciless.

As nerve endings wrapped themselves through and beneath, and muscle tissues bonded over them, the pain began to dull. She was still spurting blood everywhere, of course, as her circulation system hadn't finished reconstructing itself yet. Light erupted back into her world as eyeballs materialized out of the maelstrom of ashes, and her screams became more defined, and less hollow, as a fleshy tongue bonded itself to the cartilidge in her mouth. She felt like she was.. stretching, also starting from her core and working outward. As it did, it ended the pain where it spread to. Cold from the air began to prick at her, and she knew it was skin spreading across her body.

When it was finished she rose to her feet, arms outstretched to the sky, and she laughed like a maniac. "Death to all whom stands in my way!" she screeched, unaccustomed to having a normal voice again. She had never felt better.

For a little while. Ayreg continued to watch, eager himself now. He knew that this state would not last long, and the tax upon her body would be taken. A tax is always taken by The Nihil, when this power and status of becoming a lich is granted.

Inside her chest, a heart thumped proudly -- for only a few seconds longer. It stopped, quite abruptly, as did the blood flowing through her veins. The air became bitter, even in her lungs, but there was almost no pain. Her skin, healthy and pink a few seconds ago, began to darken, then lighten, settling into a dull grayish-green. It became thinner in places, as if rotting as she stood there, a hole gaping wide on the left side of her torso. Another, putrid and vile, on her right thigh. Spine poking out from her thinly-stretched back. She looked like a corpse.. and not a skeleton as she was, but one only just begining to decompose. It did stop, though, and left her face blissfully unaffected. Jodiah himself thought that was odd, but said nothing of it. The guise of death was upon her, though, if no longer the smell of it. Sunken eyes, gray-green skin.. she was, in Ayreg's view, almost pretty now.

Almost.

His voice rolled out to her, at last, after all was said and done. It was time for her to have a new name. As she was now bound to his service, the duty for renaming her fell to him.

The lich then came to look at herself. She had felt her heart stop, the skin of her hands darkened, the hole in her torso and thigh that seemed to resemble a rotting pit... But said nothing, all she could do was laugh, and laugh. Nothing more. Her finger tips went to her face, and touched the darkness of her hair which seemed to have a white tint to it now.

She bowed her head to him, the short hair falling over the hollow cheeks and sunken eyes of her face, "I am yours, My Lord..."

He had chosen a name, then, for her. One that might, one day, raise for fear and terror in the hearts of those who hear it than `Lucy` or `Renna` ever would.

"Arise... Lucretia, Dreadlord of The Nihil."