Hunger for Power

And then there was light.

Fleeting memorys slid before his eyes in a blur.

Men fighting and dieing, the merchant

who had double crossed him, for a hunk of... he couldn't remember what.

A house in the Skyfire isles. The face of a beutiful woman with a swollen belly.

Memories of his life, and of his death, and they all were suddenly washed away.

Gone in all consuming hunger that twisted his decomposing innards, and clawed at his exposed jawbone.

The being rose, and he shuffled, as though not trusting the forces that he wouldn't have understood even if he cared to that acted as mucles and tendons where there were none.

He smelled movement. Flesh. He followed it. The sent led him to his prey. Near the river. It wasn't looking at him. He grabed at it, and it struggled. He went strait for the what smelled like the tastiest bits. eventually it stoped moving and he knelt down to enjoy his feast. The hunger was almost sated.

And then as soon as it had left, the hunger was back. He needed more food. He smelled more food.

In the cave.

There was food in the cave. Something to quell the hunger. He had to feed the hunger.

He moved towards the food. He couldn't even smell it anymore, but he knew there was food here in the cave. There had to be food here, the hunger was leading him here.

Then suddenly the hunger subsided. It wasn't completly gone, but it wasn't driving him either. There was a new hunger, but it wasn't his hunger, it belonged to the cave.

But he was in the cave. He was the cave and now this new hunger drove him.

A hunger for peace.

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Lar-Kashin was not a happy mage.

Two servants were dragging the corpse of a third out of his workroom. He hated it when his servents were killed, that would mean work for him, trying to replace dead one in the first place was a task for another servent, but training the new one was irritating. The servent's he had for years knew their duties, knew how much he hated being disterbed, knew what he demanded. Getting them to fear him without becouming whining, knock-kneed, useless idiots took a delicate hand and he simply didn't have the patients for it right now.

He was of two minds about this new task. On one hand he hated reciving orders of any kind, even more so when they took him away from projects of his own, and especialy when they came form people that thought themselves better than him.

He snorted to himself. He would have taken over this pitiful rabble of gypsies with pretentions to civilization years ago, if it didn't require so much time and effort that could have be put to better use persuing knowlage and raw magical power. Besides why would he want to spend his glorious reign in a backwater forest going over tax

revinue when by enduring a little degridation now he could attain godhood later.

As for the so called Queen's request, he admited he was somewhat curious. He tried to put a rein on that curiousity becouse he knew it could lead him to be reckless.

The relic stood on the table in front of him. The stone table itself had power containment runes carved into it and surounding it were five obsidian obilisk's each three feet tall all with similar runes. Strung between the obilisk's was a red cord that had powerful dispell magic enchantments woven into it, and yet it was still leaking enough power to kill the pitiful oaf of a servent.

He leaned in closer to the relic. It realy was a grotesquely beuatiful peice of workmanship. The substance unlike anything he had ever seen before. Who had made it? To what perpose? It couldn't have been made from glass, metal, crystal, or even polished stone. Dispite it's smooth texture it refused to even be illuminated by the candels that lit his workroom. It was completely opaque, and yet something seemed to eminate from it. An unsettling feeling that disterbed even the powerful mage. It wasn't evil, but it certainly wasn't benevolent either, it wasn't natural.

It wanted something.

It wasn't greed.

It hungered.

An anguished shreek shattered his contemplations. He turned to see his two servents rounding the corner into his workroom, with the third *whoopsy!* their heels. Without giving him time to think, they snaped at him, and as he summoned a fireball blowing back the first of them, he assesed thier condition. Obviously one of them had been taken out of this room, dead a scant few minets beforehand. Their grusome pre-maturly rotted exteriors confirmed the senario: the third oaf had risen from his demise and had imediately infected the other two. Another fireball dispached a second of the undead oaf's, and Lar-Kashin was just prepairing a thrid one when he noticed that something else had claimed the last zombie's attention.

Somewhere in the melee the creature had turned to stare at the relic on the table as though it had been a sane sentient being, enraptured by the relic's twisted, yet perfect apperence.

Lar-Kashin looked at the eyes of this thing that had once been his servent. Lar-Kashin had seen walking dead before, they were a natural part of the world, but never before had he seen one ignore the call of the hunger, and much like the relic itself this wasn't natural.

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Preistess Tashi did her best to secure the door with what was left of her staff. They could smell her and it wouldn't take long for them to beat the door to smitherines. Tears left inroads in the dungeon dust and cobwebs that caked her face. The crypt had once been a ship, while some barbarian tribes burned their deceased leader's ships at sea, some just burried them, layden down with treasure of course which was why they were here in the first place. Her brother Volga, the strongest warrior in their village had assembled some of their friends and came to explore the earth sunken ship. They never even considered that the ship would be crawling with the remenents of that ancient king and his retinue of slaves. They were overwhelmed fairly quickly, and driven deeper into the ship. She looked around the room, desperatly, the pounding of her heart clashing time with the pounding on the door. She climbed onto a table and beat at the celing. No good, the ship was several feet underground, she would never dig her way out. She could near the wood of the door giving way, and looked around again only now realising where she was. She began to laugh wildly, she was in the gally, she would be eaten in the gally. She was all out of spells and her staff was broken, she was going to be eaten. A fist the size of a sledgehammer broke through the door revealing a familiar bracer. She was going to be eaten by her baby brother. She sobbed and grabed a rusty knife from a butcher block craotching into a corner as the door shatered.

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Lar-Kashin poked one of the three burned husks on his workroom floor with one of his staffs. The servent wasn't going to get up again that was for certain, but it made him even more curious about this mysterious relic of the Queen's. No. He smiled, the relic was his now. He resisted the urge to jump right into expiramentation, as the relic had already prooved deadly, even under such heavy protection. This would take some wit.

Finally he grabed three peices of cotton, dipped them in a silver leaf and whispered an incatation to them before throwing them in the air to settle floating around his table with the runestone. The bit's of fluff would serve as decoys reflecting exactly what he would do and confusing the sourse of his spells to any mental presence around him like a kolidascope. It would take a good deal of concentration, but he hoped the powerful death magic surounding the object would destroy his clones before going after him, giving him the necesary time to gather the information he wanted.

He settled into a trance, making sure to keep his mind free enough to work the kolidascope spell. The magic of the object itself was open and erilee inviting coaxing him to question it, it almost seemed a curious about him, as he was of it. He subconciously let his guard down just a bit, but it was enough. As the relic's magic closed in on him like a venus fly trap, his own last ditch protection spell activated.

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Back in the cave a scattered mess of lost souls moved their new hand. They understood that they were getting stronger. They understood that they had loured the creature here to inhabit it. They understood that peace was coming. They understood that they needed more vessels so they could go to greet it. They understood that they could sumon more of these creatures, who had once been alive, like they had once been alive.

And so they called.