The moment he left, he beheld the chaos. The city was aflame, and the mainland folk ravaged the streets with swords and spears. Women and children were cut down by the natives who had followed Egorias and his group back to their island. They were to be paid back for the city they had burned, and then some. There would be no prisoners, there would be no negotiation. They would all be killed.
This gave Egorias the perfect cover he needed to flee the scene of his grievous crime, and to blame it on the invaders. He did fight to protect the city, and later would meet up with Evorlette, who knew nothing of his murder.
Egorias would soon become the only survivor among his kin.
* * * * * * * * * *
There were ten victims of horrible fate, now. Prye, Falden, Ketsu, Karet, Tymathaen, Amaris, Rend, Evorlette, Imerre… and Egorias. Having completed his dismal remembrances, Egorias, the sole survivor, was now ready to die and pass on into the next world.
But he would not.
As his mind slipped into death, he found something there, something in the blackness that hangs between worlds. It was a thread, a thick cord that bound him to the land of the living. This cord would not allow him to die. It clung to him like a desperate lover, begging him not to pass on. And as he examined it, this cord that bound him to life, he found that it was black, blacker than night, blacker than onyx and shadow and anything he had ever known.
That cord was the color of vengeance. On its unbreakable lengths were written runes, runes of promise. They spoke of a forgotten magic, a magic which one might use to rebuke death, to master it and make it one’s own ally. With it, the cord promised, he would be able to reclaim his friends from death. He would be able to create an army that served his every whim. With it, he might burn down every city of the so-hated mainlanders who had killed the ones he loved.
The cord spoke of a magic of undeath, of binding one’s soul to the material plane. It spoke of a magic called “Lich”.
Egorias heeded the promise of the shadowy cord, and found that his soul returned to his body, bit by bit, as he listened to the words. But as he returned, he felt his body become cold, lifeless, dead. He was no longer a creature of life, or of death, but something between.
He had become the Lich King, Zegorias, Lord of the Dead— an avatar of vengeance.
