Life.
Each time, warbands united to become something greater than themselves. They walked together, mismatched in attire and ideologies, united for the common purpose of bringing down a creature otherwise beyond them, individually.
Men and women of all ages, no warrior spared for this plight. This would be the fourth time trying. The sun was high. The shadows were low. The ground rumbled with marching feet as they closed in on the black-iron castle. Not a cloud reigned above them, no beasts stirred save for the ones in their service. The land turned from green to grey with each passing step.
Some of us wore solid suits of armour and woven metal, wielding gleaming, polished steel. Some in cloth, choosing instead to arm themselves and support others with their magics. Some were in leathers, and some were in no uniform altogether, a collection with nothing in common but a goal.
To topple the tyrant in his tin tower.
They would be warbands no longer, they would become civilizations, kingdoms, cultures. No longer would they stand life under the threat of conquest. No longer would the undying black despot be a constant reminder of their fragile mortality, generation after generation.
Lionas stood at the front, his wife and daughter a step behind him, leading his warband from the foothills of the Great Mountain. Lightly armoured, focused more on offensive prowess than anything else. Most wore furs and straps of leather to hold them together, with sparingly few bearing dull iron over their shoulders and arms. A collection of spears and shields dominated their arsenal, a few carrying bows and fewer still carrying shortswords.
They passed over a ridge, finally, and it came into view.
The Immortal Bastion.
The ground beneath them was all hardened soil and cracked rock, nothing had grown here for centuries. They'd entered the heart of his empire, unbeating, grey, devoid of anything but the will to spread its influence and consume. Ever step brought the horizon closer, the army of armies venturing deeper into this inhospitable land.
It took them the better part of two hours, such was the scope of their combined alliance, but they eventually managed to form up around the front gate of the black citadel. The collection of living beings opposing the undeath stretched for miles in all directions, hearts beating as one. Lionas was still some distance away from the centre of it – his forces quite a ways to the right – but he stood proudly at its helm, eager to be a part of the force assembled to rid the world of the monster housed before them. Behind the gate and walls was a city-fortress of spires and towers, climbing higher into the sky the further back they were.
At the centre of the gathered armies, a woman in golden armour stepped forth. Lionas didn't know the name of her people, only their reputation. High-minded, elitist, but admittedly proficient in battle. He couldn't hear her words as she shouted them up to whoever manned the walls and the black gate, but he could guess their meaning. It would be a proclamation of war, a cry for victory.
She called out, and the armies waited.
At first there was no response. The dead wind was silent and the black city was unmoving.
Almost a half-hour after the declaration, the gate started to rumble. The entire structure began to shift, opening slowly and with the gravity of something much heavier than itself. As they opened, a single, lean figure emerged. Its gait was somewhere between a limp and a confident march, not quite resembling one over the other and becoming unsettling in its uncertainty. As the figure came closer, Lionas could barely make out the gaunt features beneath the dark robe and hood, weighty chains hanging off their frame.
An exchange of words began between the creature and the golden-armoured woman. They spoke for what must have been just shy of a minute before she drew her sword and slashed through the others unguarded chest, sending him to the ground. Only dust bled from the wound, but the figure seemed to be otherwise dead.
"The gate is open, take the Bastion!" He barely heard, followed by the resounding roar of a thousandfold warriors.
However, as they took their first step, a greater one was heard. The sound of a drum began to pound, perfect in its rhythm and foreboding in cadence. A few seconds later, a chant began to accompany it. Using human words, but being made by what did not sound like human mouths. Lionas looked up at the walls and saw hundreds of glowing eyes looking down at them, staring without blinking. He felt a chill crawl up his spine and cast his eyes towards the ajar black gate, watching the swirling mist behind it.
A silhouette appeared. Not human, far too bulky and tall. Lionas swallowed and tightened the grip on his spear, trying to level his breathing. He watched as those at the centre of the armies readied themselves, they would be the first line against whatever was emerging from the fog.
What emerged were horns, and metal.
A great, hulking bull wrought and clad in iron, each step leaving a deep mark in the ground. When it breathed, black smoke filtered out of its nose and mouth, masking most of its face in a dark fog that only betrayed crimson eyes and massive, curved horn. It stood so tall that the shoulder would have been almost twice the height of an average man, looking down on the armies as it approached them.
Atop its back was another figure, a rider proportioned to match the gargantuan aurochs. He too was wrought and clad in iron, though rather than merely being framed by it, it seemed to make up his frame entirely. Metal plate that was synonymous with muscle, inelegant and brutish, but crafted with an inhuman level of care. One hand gripped reins of chain, the other hefted a colossal spiked mace over his shoulder. A horned helm to match the spiky, edged aesthetic of the body, eyes of hellfire and scorn for those beneath him. Behind him, cloaks of cloth and chain mail swayed, like a rolling thunderstorm in the walk of a god.
The allied humans had called out for the Iron Revenant, and they had received their wish.
Mordekaiser was before them.
Lionas remembered moving in, leading his company at the helm. He remembered holding his spear high to strike between the plating of the bull, the roar of men and women around him as they collapsed upon their enemy.
Then he remembered being hit by a single swing of Mordekaiser's mace with such force that it felt as though his soul was rent from his body.
When he woke, the battle was over. He frantically looked around to see for any survivors, away from the Immortal Bastion. All he saw were corpses for as far as the eye could see, smashed and bloody, some beyond even being recognizably human. He pressed his hand against the ground to push himself to his knees, and as he tried to catch his first breath, he choked. A hand shot up to his throat to ease himself, but his fingers grasped at nothing. His throat now bore a hollow gash, half of it torn out and barely holding his head up, gored out by one of the spikes on Mordekaiser's weapon.
As he conducted a review of his body, he found more wounds. His helmet had caved in so hard that it had pierced his skull and would be impossible to remove without tearing his head apart completely. His chest had suffered similar hollowing damage as his throat, exposing wayward-pointing ribs and a shredded lung. The furs over his body had become soaked in blood, likely not only his own. There were only three remaining fingers on his spear-wielding hand, having lost the outermost at some point, possibly even after he had been struck.
It all hurt beyond what life could force a man to suffer through, and yet he was somehow still alive, suffering through it.
Panic gripped him as more memories came back. He saw the familiar garb and armaments of his comrades litter the battlefield around him. He saw faces he knew, faces he'd shared drinks with and sparred with. He rose to his feet and looked for the faces of his family.
He found his wife's body not far from his own, her stomach rent completely out and the left side of her body flattened by the bull's trampling. Half of her face had been torn away, Lionas only recognised her for the charm around her neck he'd given her when they had wed. Tears failed to come, he only felt the pain of his destroyed body.
His daughter however was nowhere to be found, and that gave him hope. It was fleeting, but bright within his broken chest.
I'll break that too.
A voice was in his head, not his own. Deep and low, with an air of arrogance one couldn't build over a single mortal lifetime.
You're mine now. I own your soul, I own your body.
Mordekaiser's will flowed through him, forcing his arms and legs to move against him. His three fingers curled around an unbroken nearby spear, yanking it from the dirt, and his legs began to move.
Your daughter. Find her, kill her. Bring me her corpse.
Lionas's pathetic spark of self was smothered by Mordekaiser's black influence, commanding, dominating. He couldn't resist the command.
Death.
Kalista saw all this within the space of a second as she looked upon Lionas's face. One of many, a crowd of tormented souls in Mordekaiser's magical shackles. Each one a story of pain, and fear, and domination.
Her own crowd of souls followed her as she waded through Mordekaiser's amassed armies of the dead. Even her fragment of the Black Mist shrunk away from the ones around them, doing their best to cling to Kalista's footsteps and shadow. While the souls under her command had suffered similarly in life, there was no pain in their deaths.
That, and she took no pleasure in the pain. Mordekaiser revelled in it.
The revenant had taken the greatest of castles that the Shadow Isles had to offer for himself. It was in ruins, as the rest of the isles were, but there was an air of grandeur and self-smug arrogance that could fit only the black iron conqueror.
There was a blown-out tower upon the furthest reaches of the isles, atop the highest hill. Kalista scaled it with ease, using her nimble body and deft movements to traverse crags and shattered structures. Everywhere she went, dead eyes watched her, unblinking. Soldiers from across all the world and throughout several eras told a tale of Mordekaiser's reign.
Each time she looked into their eyes, she saw their fates, like Lionas, squeezed into a second.
When Kalista had reached the top, she looked out behind her. From her vantage she could see the rest of the isles, clouded in the thick of the black mist and the green glow of lost souls. Isles that had once seen brighter shades of green, of life. Isles that she supposedly had visited during their better days.
So Yorick had told her, at least.
She turned to face inward, to the centre of the ruined tower. The floor was cracked in more places than not, giving the warrior a view into the abyssal chasm below. The fall wouldn't kill her, it would just waste time in returning to the top. At the centre of the floor there was a throne, flanked by two pillars wrought of black iron. The throne itself was smashed together from various wartime paraphernalia; weapons, armour, and the bodies of the conquered dead.
Slouching dismissively in its seat was the wretched existence she had come to see. Both arms rested upon the flanks of the throne, fingers curled against the metal. His body was charred and dented, scars cut into it as marks of pride. A great mace rested just within reach, propped up against the throne. The armour had seen better days, days where it hadn't looked out from a ruined tower over a ruined land, but from an overbearing fortress upon an empire of malice and death.
Yet, as Kalista gazed into the crimson eyes blazing inside the horned helmet, she knew to be wary. She knew to avoid conflict with this one. She knew that amongst all the greater Shadow Islanders, none were mightier than Mordekaiser.
He glared down at her, waiting for her to speak. She sought him out, she owed him the first word. Through her ever-hardened face and grit teeth, she spoke.
"We…I…need your help."
He said nothing.
"You know these isles in a way no other does. You can speak to the Mist without-"
"Kneel." He said.
Kalista was caught off guard, her Oathsworn Mist snarling and shaping itself into spears and blades. A part of her agreed with it, she was no trifling spirit seeking an audience with the king of iron conquest, but another part – the Kalista part – was willing to sacrifice pride for the sake of her quest. She weighed her options, and decided to kneel. Her Mist retained its aggressive shape, but adopted a defensive posture around its lady, keeping the situation civil, at least for the moment.
As Kalista touched her knee to the ground, she looked up and began to speak again. "Mordekaiser, you alone are not a slave to the Black Mist as we are. You are not bound to it by the cursed fate of the Ruined King, and are not limited in how you can interact with it. Our…my memories and identity are fading, my duty to mete out vengeance becoming more than just duty."
"One thought drives us." The Mist said using echoes of her own voice.
The conqueror shifted in his throne, moving his weight to one side and leaning against his closed gauntlet, resting his elbow on one of the arms.
"If you would-"
"No."
She paused and gripped her spear slightly tighter, choosing her next words carefully.
"Revenant, you-"
"No. I neither care nor care to help you. Get out of my sight."
Kalista grit her teeth but maintained her composure for the moment. Her fragment of the Mist however, was less tactful. It swelled and shifted into a platoon of spears, surging through the air towards the revenant. Each blade pointed downwards at their target, aiming for the joints in his armour and the holes in his helmet. A shriek was heard, and the Mist lunged forward.
Only to be wrenched to the side and crushed into the broken floor, all without a single movement from Mordekaiser.
From Kalista's kneeling body, the Lady of Vengeance sparked to life in a flare of outrage, calling upon her Oathsworn and lunging forward. She conjured a great lance in her hand, drawing it back to strike at his sternum.
In response, Mordekaiser casually raised his index finger from the arm of his throne, conjuring a spectre of black magic, instantly tearing the Lady into a hundred shreds of scattered soul. She fluttered in the wind, all at once across the sky, before losing her sense of self once again.