Ghost Ascension, alternate ending

We already had the official ending for “Ghost Ascension”, but a few people have asked what would have happened had Caina decided to use the Ascendant Bloodcrystal. Enjoy!

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With a cry of ecstasy and despair, you stop fighting, and let the Ascendant Bloodcrystal’s power surge through you.

A pillar of emerald flame erupts from the Bloodcrystal, stabbing into the sky, and the heartbeats thundering in your ears grow louder, and louder, and louder.

The last thing you see, before the world dissolves in green flames, is Lucan collapsing.

Then the heartbeats go silent.

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LUCAN MARAEUS died when the Bloodcrystal activated.

ARK died when the Bloodcrystal activated, along with his wife and children.

THE EMPEROR died when the Bloodcrystal activated, along with the greater part of the Imperial nobility.

A million men, women, and children lived in MALARAE when Caina activated the Bloodcrystal, and another hundred thousand within twenty miles of the city.

Every last one of them died.

ANACEPHEON screamed in despair as he felt the Bloodcrystal activate. He had failed. His darkest creation had been loosed. And he would sit upon his stone throne in the darkness, alone with his guilt, until the end of days.

Preoccupied with the Bloodcrystal, neither Caina nor Lucan noticed the dark form, like a hooded shadow, rise from SOPHIA’S corpse and flee to the south.

A few years later, rumors said that Nikaedes had returned to Istarinmul once more, slaying with his blade of hellish bronze. But few men paid any attention to those rumors.

The dark power rising in the north held their attention.

Yet some of the rumors claimed that Nikaedes, in the moments before he slew his victims, liked to wax eloquent about the dark terror ravaging the ruins of the Empire of Nighmar.

It was, he claimed, his “finest work.”

With the destruction of its capital and the loss of the Emperor, the EMPIRE OF NIGHMAR collapsed into brutal civil war as the magi and the surviving nobles scrambled to claim the Imperial throne. Thousands died in the fighting, and hundreds of thousands more in the famines and plagues that followed. The borders collapsed, and slave traders moved freely through the southern Empire, while barbarian tribes carved out kingdoms of blood and steel from the northern provinces. But soon the factions had to put aside their differences and unite or face destruction.

Something worse threatened them.

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A light rain falls, cold water trickling down your face and neck.

A storm rages inside you, filling you with strength and power. You feel better than you have in years. You feel better than you have…ever. No more doubt, no more pain, no more fear, all gone, forever.

You open your eyes.

You’ve grown used to the noise from Malarae. Even at night, the city murmurs with the noise of a million people. But now it is silent.

Utterly silent.

The silence is beautiful.

You gaze upon Lucan’s corpse for a moment and start to laugh. The poor, pitiful fool loved you, and it brought him to his death. Well, you warned him, didn’t you? And he did get what he wanted in the end. His life force is now part of you, now and forever. The lives of Malarae are part of you, now and forever.

For a moment you feel something…grief, perhaps? Or is it guilt? But the raging storm within you scours away the emotions, leaving you cold and hard.

And strong.

You draw upon the dark storm within you, letting it fill you with power. With an act of will, you step through the netherworld, and reappear in the Grand Market below. Thousands of corpses surround you, cut down in the act of buying and selling. Men, women, children. Even the horses and the oxen lie dead. Even the trees and bushes stand black and withered.

You laugh, and more of the power fills you, green flame crackling in your fists.

And around you, the dead begin to rise, animated by your will. Pale green fires dance in their eyes, and Malarae is no longer quiet as the dead rise and stand at your command. Soon an army of corpses fills the Grand Market, motionless as statues, bound to your will and power.

You climb onto the back of a dead horse.

“Come,” you say, “let us make the world anew.”

The dead follow as you ride out of the city.

Mortal men are wicked, and cruel, and deserve to suffer…and you shall make them suffer from their crimes as they have never suffered before.