Lord Khepri and the Order of the Coptic Stag 1

The night was absolute. No stars in the sky filtered through the creaking forest canopy and the skeletal moon was hidden behind the horizon, though better the darkness than the horrors the cadaverous moon's light would reveal. There were no sounds of nature as in the forests of the Realm of Ghyran. No insects chirped or buzzed and no night birds called. The only sounds in the woods of Shyish were the howling of the wind and the creaking of branches. The horrors these sounds revealed were hidden from the sight of mortals who traveled the realm by the darkness of the night.

Lord Baltazar Khepri gazed unto the night with no mortal eyes. It had been many ages since he had been flesh and blood. Many centuries since his heart beat in his chest and blood flowed through his veins. He would occasionally get glimpses of memories from that time, but before he could tease out the meaning of these fleeting images they would be gone and he would soon forget they had occurred at all. These things meant little to him for they were not of the present and had no relation to his current purpose. The Grand Master of the Order of the Coptic Stag had been given purpose by his dark master Arkhan the Black, Right Hand of Nagash, Lord of All.

Baltazar sat atop his rotting stag Helhest, a gift from his master Arkhan. The two were as unmoving as a corpse. The only signs of his deathly reanimation were the two burning pinpricks within the hollows of his eye sockets. Near him, with the animated agitation of the still living, stood Marek.

"I don't understand what we are doing wandering around this blasted forest in the dark of night," proclaimed Marek. He and Baltazar had spent the better part of the night searching the dark woods and Marek's patients was wearing thin.

"Silence," Baltazar's voice echoed from the creaking trees as if spoken from the corpses of hanged men raised unwillingly from the grave. "All we require will be found in time," stated Baltazar in his corpse dry voice. "We seek the barrow place of Khoric of Maelthonia. And in it Khoric and his cursed followers."

"Yes, I am aware of whom we seek and why, but what good does it do us doing so in this dark night?" Marek replied in a less demanding tone.

"We are here because we are not the only ones who seek the tomb," Baltazar reminded the necromancer. Just as Baltazar spoke the words a mighty crash sounded through the forest, temporarily drowning out the howl of the wind. Marek jumped at the sound, but Baltazar merely turned in the direction it came from.

The necromancer's hands began to glow with amethyst power as he unleashed his spells of summoning. As in most locations within the realm of Shyish the land was ripe with corpses waiting to be summoned by those with the knowledge to do so. At the necromancer's beckoning the dead began to rise from their graves. The tomb of Khoric must be close in deed Marek thought, for the dead who rose were the guardians of the tomb of a king and no common warriors. Still Marek could feel the presence of more dead warriors beneath his feet simply awaiting his call to arms.

As the grave guardians rose from the ground the air filled with the sound of flapping wings and the shrill cries of hundreds of bats. From deeper in the woods appeared Marek's companion, Catherine.

Catherine had once been a student of Marek's, but in time she surpassed him in the necromantic arts and now had traveled beyond death to become a liche. Marek was envious of her power and was still frantically searching for a means to live on beyond death in a grander form than a walking corpse. As yet he had found no means to prevent the inevitable.

Catherine's eyes glowed with purple fire as she directed the swarms of bats overhead. "The beastherds move against us," her hollow voice echoed out from beyond the grave.

Beyond Catherine came the thunderous sounds of hooves as Baltazar's knights arrived and the continued howling of the wind announced the arrival of those in the Order who's form had become so saturated with death magic that they existed in an incorporeal state beyond the physical world.

The wraiths split off and traveled deeper into the forest at Baltazar's unspoken command, where he knew Oleksiy was waiting to lead them. Baltazar knew that the vampire lord only served under him because his master Baron Thaddius Finch commanded it. Baltazar didn't care why as long as he served.

Catherine traveled in the same direction in case Oleksiy had need of her power while Marek stayed behind to serve Baltazar in the same capacity. He knew once the full might of the dead rose he would be needed to help maintain them during the coming battle...