The Chronicle of the Pearl and the Ice: The End of Ruin N7
In the annals of the Third Age of the Black Lands, where myths blur with steel and magic, the song of the Fall of the Obsidian Citadel is kept—the one that men called the Seventh Ruin.
There dwelt the Archmage Juggernaut, Master of Monsters, whose cold iron sceptre dictated the will of beasts, and beneath whose shadow the Council of the Snakelegs—beings with human torsos and the tails of serpents—wove the warp of an eternal night.
I. The Whisper of the Shadow
For months, a nameless sorrow crept over the fields. Merchants spoke of an oppression that came not from the clouds, but from the very air itself. In the villages, dread took unnatural forms: lambs were born with scales instead of wool, and wheat crops turned to foul ash in a single night's vigil. Sentinels swore they saw sinuous shadows gliding between the trees, too tall to be men, too wise to be beasts.
OnixStone, the Necromancer King, and his wife, Queen Ayving, heard the lament of the land. To unravel the mystery, Ayving sent not riders, but her Cadaverous Investigators—beings endowed with Posthumous Perception, capable of questioning the dust and reading the memory of stones.
These trackers ventured deep into the Southern Magical Forests, lands that the Lords of Light had abandoned to their fate. There, in the heart of the corrupt woodland, they found Ruin N7, the nest where Juggernaut concealed hosts that only the minstrels in the oldest taverns dared to name.
Before such a threat, Light and Darkness made a pact. King OnixStone sent his word to the great Warlord, Blizzy, and an alliance of iron and spirit was forged beneath the banner of balance.
II. The March of the Two Captains
Two women of unyielding will led the vanguard: Ardanen, the Captain General of Blizzy’s Knights, and Queen Ayving, who marched in her husband's name with a frosty fire in her gaze.
From his obsidian battlements, Juggernaut summoned the Storm Generator. The skies turned a bilious violet and the roads dissolved into mire, prolonging the agony of the journey. Upon reaching the gates, the Archmage cast the Message from Hell, a whisper that withered the strength of the brave, and the Deep Horror, a tide of dread that froze ninety per cent of the soldiers, leaving them like statues of salt before the enemy.
But Ardanen, raising the Overlord's Spear etched with runes of ancient light, roared a defiance that increased her men's attack by ninety-nine per cent, shattering the spell. Beside her, Ayving cast the Monster Suppression Spell, draining the life from the ruin's chimeras and weaving a veil of health over the cavalry. In the thick of the fray, Ardanen donned the Mask of Horror, returning panic to the defenders, whilst the Necromancer Queen suppressed the citadel's defences with rites that shook the foundations of black stone.
III. The Clash of Destinies and the Harvest of Death
And it came to pass that, whilst the smoke from the spells of fear and suppression still clouded the skies above the Obsidian Citadel, the clamour of imminent war made the very earth tremble.
The alliance’s towering siege magic, unleashed in the form of a fearsome fifth-circle Trebuchet, descended like the wrath of the Valar themselves upon the high enemy battlements; eight thousand defending beasts fell crushed beneath the sorcery in a single breath.
Then, the great silver army horns of Blizzy echoed across the valley. The immense tide of his army advanced: legions of seasoned squires and peasants cleared the way for the elite of the Men of the West. Their Heavy Cavalry and valiant Knights in gleaming armour made the mire shake with their charge, whilst the skies darkened with clouds of bolts from the Arbalesters and the beating wings of majestic Pegasi.
But on their flank, Queen Ayving’s host presented a vastly different sight, devoid of the gleam of steel or the edge of swords. No fierce immortal warriors or dark riders marched there, but a dismal procession dedicated to arcane lore and the plundering of what was about to fall.
In the magical vanguard rose the dark and imposing Lords of Souls. Raising their staffs, these formidable Magi wove immense barriers of shadow and ethereal shields over the entire alliance; such was their absolute power that they managed to completely neutralise Juggernaut’s deadly defence towers, ensuring that not a single allied soldier fell during the fortification phase.
Behind the magi, floating like mist over a winter lake, came the Supreme Banshees. These Healers of Death bore no weapons, but instead chanted a mournful dirge that curdled the blood, awaiting their turn to snatch from death what belonged to it.
And closing the march, a countless multitude of Carriers waited in sinister silence: hordes of macabre, pale Ghoul Caravan Commanders, with wagons of bone and blackened wood, ready to devour and load the immeasurable riches and Black Pearls that awaited in the ruin, for their purpose was not combat, but harvesting.
Facing them, the Archmage Juggernaut hurled his beasts: formidable Iron Golems, throngs of Orco Combatants, and swarms of Burning Gargoyles and Needlesaurs. However, despite their brutal ferocity, the beasts completely lacked armour to resist the onslaught.
Thus, in the initial clash, the martial might of Ardanen, Commander-in-Chief of Blizzy's legions, fell like a hammer of the gods. Since Ayving's Carriers possessed no offensive capability and her Magi focused on the mystic arts, it was the human steel of the Warlord that overwhelmed the Monsters' non-existent defence. In a single, astonishing round, the beast's entire armada was annihilated down to the very last monstrosity.
Yet the beasts' claw-strike in their death throes took its toll, claiming the lives of those Carriers who drew near too soon, and thousands of Blizzy's soldiers.
It was then that the compassionate miracle of the rearguard took effect. On the human side, nearly 60,000 cardinals wrapped in golden light revived millions of souls of their brothers-in-arms. On the flank of darkness, Ayving’s Banshees raised the pitch of their sorrowful elegy; through the dark healing arts of the Undead, they restored un-life to their fallen servants, reintegrating them into their dismal caravans.
Once the fallen were restored to their banners, a final, dark rite sealed the fate of the blood-drenched field. Transmuting the immense graveyard of beasts left by Blizzy’s weapons, Queen Ayving extended her marble hands. Before the astonished eyes of her allies, the purest Necromancy infused an unnatural fire into the shattered carcasses. The wretched, inert bodies of the fallen monsters rose from the ground trembling, their eyes now alight with a spectral blue. Without will or former master, they became part of the tireless Undead Legion, whilst the wagons of Ayving and Ardanen began to fill with the spoils of the fallen empire.
But a final act was yet to come…
IV. The Debt of the Crystal Cave
Whilst Ardanen battered down the gates, Ayving infiltrated the sanctum sanctorum. Her path was not driven by gold, but by a wound opened eons ago.
In the days when OnixStone and Ayving were still of flesh and blood, their unborn child lay dying. Deceived by the Snakelegs in a deep cavern, the parents surrendered their humanity for a salvation that proved to be betrayal: the sorcerers sacrificed the child and condemned the progenitors to the immortality of the tomb.
Ayving found the seven patriarchs of the Council. Her elite assassins blocked every spell and, with obsidian daggers, slit the throats of the corrupt sages. But the Queen sought not their death, but their eternal servitude.
—Awake! —cried Ayving, and her voice shook the spheres of the afterlife. The corpses of the Snakelegs arched with the creaking of broken bone. Their eyes ignited with a pale blue fire, remaining chained as slaves without a will, guardians of Ayving's shadow for as long as the world turns. The vengeance of the Necromancer Kings was sealed in the book of destiny.
V. The Light Amidst the Ash
Following the rite, the miracle occurred. From the sacrificial altar emerged a pure luminescence: the soul of Ayving's son, finally released from Juggernaut's mystic confinement. For a fleeting, eternal second, the child materialised before his mother.
Ayving, whose skin was as cold as the marble of the tomb, felt a scorching human warmth emanating from the tiny figure. It was a touch of light that pierced through a thousand years of darkness. She watched the child ascend towards the Fields of the Sun, escaping the collapsing Ruin. That warmth awakened a spark of humanity at the core of her being that not all the necromancy of My Lands could ever quench again.
VI. The Twilight of the Ruin
Before the earth swallowed the citadel, Ardanen recovered Juggernaut's Magic Crystals, treasures for Blizzy's runic science, along with a scroll from forgotten eras and riches in iron and gold. But most sublime of all was the discovery of an incredible amount of Black Pearls, fragments of solid night and absolute power.
Ardanen and Ayving emerged from the dust cloud, leaving the abyss behind. One carried the plunder that would finance empires; the other, the peace of a liberated son and the servitude of her enemies.
And so ended the song of Ruin N7, in a balance of glory and shadow that would endure for as long as there were poets to sing it.
