The torrent of chaos was ripe, and the Rhy'Dinians now knew fear once more.
Her name was not spoken, but silently whispered to those who ventured out at night, praying that they won't become a target for the hungry Betrayer. And that is how things should be.
Not screaming and ranting about the next 'big party' ? or the next big hunk of man to show up and flirt himself around the whores of Rhy'Din ? no... No, they ought to be screaming with terror as Renna melts from the night's shadow with a wicked, clawed gauntlet drenched in blood. With her face smeared with the life essence that flowed in a variety of colours from hundreds if not the thousands of different races that called this city, their home...
Her new arsenal of puppets ? the Sisters of the Black Flame; the suicide child-soldiers, were a great asset to her designs, but were too few in number and too fragile. Their bodies; although a mishmash of flesh and machine, could simply succumb to a single bullet wound or a well aimed strike of a sword or knife. They were, after all, mere mortals infused with a bio-mechanical virus.
But before the Black Flame, before the Vindicator, there were the Black Monks...
These Black Monks, are a walking skeletal product of Necromancy and Daemonology that were born from the remains of the dead ? a hideous creature, that Renna accumulated, numbering into the thousands over the years of her reign of chaos and bloodshed.
They appear much like any other walking skeleton you would come to imagine, in various shapes and sizes due to the variety of races that have fallen before the Betrayer, all wrapped up in that familiar, monk-like black cloak. They beheld no weapons, for their skeletal claws were enough to rend most flesh apart, possessing barely any magical power except for the ability to become one with the shadows. To simply move form place to place ? as if the shadows were used as some kind of gateway... To ambush and surprise their victims... To slaughter their Dark Queen's enemies where they stood.
Despite their ability to re-form after being shattered apart, the Black Monks were not without their weaknesses. There were always corpses wherever the Betrayer tread, so Renna would never batter an eyelash if she lost several hundred of them just to kill one man. They were the merely the pawns ? lambs to the slaughter ? the loyal Undead servants of the exiled Emperor of Negzarcurgis.
They were her foot soldiers.
? But almost all of them fell into the same imprisonment as she, when Zarcurgis was sucked away into the singularity that created her limbo-like realm. She was fortunate to escape ? all thanks to Edward Batten, but unfortunate nonetheless that the gateway could not had been sustained for longer... Others could had escaped. Others that could have turned the tide of her plans much earlier on.
It matters not, now. She had one final ace up her sleeve. And this ace had been laying in wait in the great deserts far beyond Cadentia for five whole years. For, during her slow rise to recognition in these lands, Renna travelled to the deserts several times, and always with a score of Black Monks to follow her in, but never to return.
Renna's booted feet waded through soft sands, leaving a trail of footprints that stretched out behind her as far as the eye could see. With a heavy cloak wrapped tightly around her form, she walked up the side of a dune that dwarfed the rest around them.
Once she had reached the top, swirling magma eyes glanced about to regard the never ending desert, and then, as she recognised the two dunes sandwiched close to each other just in front of the mountain of sand she stood upon, her lips pulled into an insidious smirk.
"... Your Queen, returns you to unlife," she lifted her hands before her, "To serve me once again as my cohort of death. Shake the sand from your old bones and push up towards the burning sky, for our hunger, is what sustians us. Rise, my Black Monks! Awaken from your sleep, and serve me once more!"
A dark blue mist leaked from her gauntlet, moving out towards the two sand dunes. It wisped against the wind, pouring into the sand, as the flow of the vapor intensified, seeping deep into the ground, searching for the hidden corpses that were buried there.
The Pentagram insignia that was carved into the flesh between her breasts, had started to glow, as the earth begun to shake beneath her feet. Then, as if spurred on by the call of their Queen, a legion of clawed, skeletal hands ripped up from under the sands, scambling against the surface as to slowly pull out their rotting cloaked, skeletal remains from their unmarked graves. As their skulls yawned out from the dunes, their wraith-like hiss echoedthroughout the desert in a ghastly choir of death.
Renna made not a sound.
She simply grinned, as the dunes became flooded with the living dead.
Her name was not spoken, but silently whispered to those who ventured out at night, praying that they won't become a target for the hungry Betrayer. And that is how things should be.
Not screaming and ranting about the next 'big party' ? or the next big hunk of man to show up and flirt himself around the whores of Rhy'Din ? no... No, they ought to be screaming with terror as Renna melts from the night's shadow with a wicked, clawed gauntlet drenched in blood. With her face smeared with the life essence that flowed in a variety of colours from hundreds if not the thousands of different races that called this city, their home...
Her new arsenal of puppets ? the Sisters of the Black Flame; the suicide child-soldiers, were a great asset to her designs, but were too few in number and too fragile. Their bodies; although a mishmash of flesh and machine, could simply succumb to a single bullet wound or a well aimed strike of a sword or knife. They were, after all, mere mortals infused with a bio-mechanical virus.
But before the Black Flame, before the Vindicator, there were the Black Monks...
These Black Monks, are a walking skeletal product of Necromancy and Daemonology that were born from the remains of the dead ? a hideous creature, that Renna accumulated, numbering into the thousands over the years of her reign of chaos and bloodshed.
They appear much like any other walking skeleton you would come to imagine, in various shapes and sizes due to the variety of races that have fallen before the Betrayer, all wrapped up in that familiar, monk-like black cloak. They beheld no weapons, for their skeletal claws were enough to rend most flesh apart, possessing barely any magical power except for the ability to become one with the shadows. To simply move form place to place ? as if the shadows were used as some kind of gateway... To ambush and surprise their victims... To slaughter their Dark Queen's enemies where they stood.
Despite their ability to re-form after being shattered apart, the Black Monks were not without their weaknesses. There were always corpses wherever the Betrayer tread, so Renna would never batter an eyelash if she lost several hundred of them just to kill one man. They were the merely the pawns ? lambs to the slaughter ? the loyal Undead servants of the exiled Emperor of Negzarcurgis.
They were her foot soldiers.
? But almost all of them fell into the same imprisonment as she, when Zarcurgis was sucked away into the singularity that created her limbo-like realm. She was fortunate to escape ? all thanks to Edward Batten, but unfortunate nonetheless that the gateway could not had been sustained for longer... Others could had escaped. Others that could have turned the tide of her plans much earlier on.
It matters not, now. She had one final ace up her sleeve. And this ace had been laying in wait in the great deserts far beyond Cadentia for five whole years. For, during her slow rise to recognition in these lands, Renna travelled to the deserts several times, and always with a score of Black Monks to follow her in, but never to return.
Renna's booted feet waded through soft sands, leaving a trail of footprints that stretched out behind her as far as the eye could see. With a heavy cloak wrapped tightly around her form, she walked up the side of a dune that dwarfed the rest around them.
Once she had reached the top, swirling magma eyes glanced about to regard the never ending desert, and then, as she recognised the two dunes sandwiched close to each other just in front of the mountain of sand she stood upon, her lips pulled into an insidious smirk.
"... Your Queen, returns you to unlife," she lifted her hands before her, "To serve me once again as my cohort of death. Shake the sand from your old bones and push up towards the burning sky, for our hunger, is what sustians us. Rise, my Black Monks! Awaken from your sleep, and serve me once more!"
A dark blue mist leaked from her gauntlet, moving out towards the two sand dunes. It wisped against the wind, pouring into the sand, as the flow of the vapor intensified, seeping deep into the ground, searching for the hidden corpses that were buried there.
The Pentagram insignia that was carved into the flesh between her breasts, had started to glow, as the earth begun to shake beneath her feet. Then, as if spurred on by the call of their Queen, a legion of clawed, skeletal hands ripped up from under the sands, scambling against the surface as to slowly pull out their rotting cloaked, skeletal remains from their unmarked graves. As their skulls yawned out from the dunes, their wraith-like hiss echoedthroughout the desert in a ghastly choir of death.
Renna made not a sound.
She simply grinned, as the dunes became flooded with the living dead.