After a leisurely afternoon of eating, harvesting life force, and having fun with his slaves, Zephyr, along with his merry band of minions, entered Evernight forest. Every step he took deeper into the cursed place reaffirmed why it was named such. The whole creepy woodland hellscape smelled of rot and death and gave off the lingering feeling that someone was watching him from every shadow.
"Gnarl, tell me what you know about this place." He tried not to show that this place scared him in his voice. But the fact that he was actually asking for Gnarl's advice was a dead giveaway that he was not feeling as invincible as usual.
"Evernight forest was once filled to Elvin magic. Creature and plant existed harmoniously amid leafy canopies and sun-dappled pools. Yeck! Now it is dank, dark, corrupted... Ooh, I like what they've done to the place!"
"Of, fucking, cores you do." Zephyr's nerves were calmed somewhat when he found a tower gate early on, but what came next got him right back to creeped out.
"Who trespasses on this once verdant soil?" Said a creepy ethereal voice, coming from just a few feet away. When Zephyr moved in closer to investigate, what he found was truly ghastly. Two floating spirits drifted over, seeming to be as curious about him as he was about them.
"What creature has the dreaming brought forth? Alas Oberon, is truly sickened!" Before Zephyr could even scream at the abominations, Gnarl made his unwanted presence in his head known again.
"Elves, even dead ones, can speak telepathically to all magical beings, sire. Lazy creaturs!" Zephyr did not even yell at Gnarl to shut it. He was too struck with terror by the fact that real, honest to badness, ghosts were looking him and his minions over like they scraped them off the bottom of their shoos.
"It must prove that it is not a manifestation made flesh!"
"If you are of the earth and not of the mind, seek out the one-horned beasts."
"Once they bestowed healing, but now they crave the blood of living creatures, all living creatures." As the elven ghosts took turns saying cryptic and scary shit, one of the minions got excited and started yelling.
"Blood... Blood... Wooo Hooo!" The spirits ignored the over-eager minion and continued their ominous speech.
"Release them from their pain and return here. Only then will you learn more of Evernight's sorrow." Zephyr did not spend a moment in the presence of the ghosts any longer than he had to, rushing off to where they wanted him to go. It did not take him long to find the one-horned beats they talked about. A maddened unicorn was sitting down in a clearing, feasting on the flesh of what looked like a dwarf.
"Sloppy, over-rated pit pony's! Elves, I despise, but not as much as bloody unicorns!" By the time Gnarl was done screaming in Zephyr's ears, the beast had spotted them. It rose to its full height and looked like it was ready to fight.
"Aaaaahh, horsie wanna play!" The same exited minion from before yelled as the unicorn charged them. The fear that Zephyr felt before had vanished in an instant, this was an enemy he could kill, and that was all he needed. He willed his minions to scatter as he sidestepped to get out of the path of the unicorn, having his reds pelt the beast in fireballs as he did the same. Whatever dark powers that corrupted the once noble creature also seemed to empower it, as it continued its attack even when covered in flames! When it charged again, Zephyr again sidestepped the evil thing, this time swinging Dragon nail down to decapitate the monster in one swing. As the beast's corpse tumbled to the ground, he rose his ax into the air and roared in triumph. After harvesting the beast's horn and lifeforce, Zephyr and his minions moved on. Spotting another one, he found his road blocked by a bit of a lake covering apart of the path.
"Although your imposing form may enter water, your minions cannot! Well, they can... But they will drown in a rather amusing way. You must find them a bridge across."
"You mean like that root right next to the stream, captain obvious!?" Zephyr willed his minions safely to the other side before charging the unicorn, this time casting slow on the beast, making it a much easier kill than the last one. He spotted what looked like a spell, this one having a minion head on it; he had his minions grab it while he had others activate a magic bridge of some sort.
"Aw, a new minion spell!" The elderly creature said with gitty enthusiasm.
"I don't suppose you know what this spell will do, right?"
"No way of knowing until we get it back to the tower master." Accepting Gnarl's answer, Zephyr fallowed his minions that were carrying the spell back to the tower gate. Watching as they placed it on the pad, sending it back to the tower. And almost on cue, Gnarl was ready to tell him what he found.
"The anger spell gets your minions all riled up, sire; it also increases their health and armor!"
"Another excellent find, maybe entering this haunted hell hole wasn't such a bad idea after all." Zephyr was almost in a good mood after reclaiming the spell, a mood quickly ruined by having to return to the ghosts.
"The beasts are slain! Alas, it is only a brief light that shines within this darkness."
"Listen to the forest... Its sadness will tell you more." Not feeling comfortable talking to the living dead, Zephyr moved on. After smashing his way through a barricade made of bords and skulls, he was confronted by strange monsters that erupted from the ground. They looked like rat-men, no bigger than a halfling, with bones sticking out of them, a rat skull for a head, and a little bow that it fired its boney back spines at him with.
"Well, that thing sure as fuck isn't winning any beauty contests, fuck um up, boy's!" Zephyr chose this as the time to test his new minion spell, and the effects were pleasing. His minions chopped and smashed their way through the skull-rat hordes, even as more and more of the vermin rose from the dirt, his minions just as quickly slaughtered them.
"To fight the dreaming is to fight the wind, the leaves on the trees, the birds in the sky. It is everywhere." Lamented an elvish ghost as it floated into a clearing where a rather peculiar looking tree grew. Just looking at the vile thing hurt Zephyr's eyes; it was clearly the source of the corruption. Upon closer inspection, there was not only a magical shield guarding the tree, but an elf growing out of it, or maybe it was growing out of him; he couldn't tell. Finally, Zephyr got the courage to ask a ghost floating around one of the roots.
"What the hell happened here?" The melancholy spirit looked at Zephyr as the minions gathered around it, sensing that it was storytime.
"Oberon Greenhaze once traveled the land vanquishing great evils. But when last he returned, our geat hero lost his taste for battle. When the dwarven invaders came, he would not fight. Oberon's blade became dull, his bow-string brittle, and he would not wake from his slumber. Around him grew this tree, swaddling him in its branches. Then the dreaming came. Oberon gave form to his blackest of dreams. They drove out the invaders. The tree grew over the place where the invaders entered our lands, but it's roots drew power from the forest, corrupting all within."
"So... Sad..." One of the minions said before giggling at the misfortune of the elves. Zephyr looked upon the sleeping elf, feeling like he knew him well. Just like with Melvin, just like when he saw his own face, the elf was someone he knew but couldn't remember. Zephyr looked around, fallowing one of the roots past a barricade, and find a large glowing bulb of sorts. As usual, Gnarl felt that he needed to make his unwelcomed thoughts known.
"Hmmm... Oberon... Catchy name... That elf is protected by a powerful shield, master, the roots give it energy."
"Really, Gnarl!? You don't say! Well, maybe I should get on that then!?" Zephyr willed his minions to destroy the glowing node, joining them in the smashing, hoping that violence would improve his mood. The moment it stopped glowing, the whole root it was attached to withered into ash, surprising one of the ghosts.
"What? What is happening? The tree... I feel it quivering!"
"She shield is weakening! You must destroy the other rood nodes, sire!" Gnarl screamed in Zephyr's ear, not improving his mood any. He then had an evil idea and walked over to the ghost.
"Um... Excuse me... Can you touch things?" Zephyr was still very much afraid of the ghosts, but if what he had heard as a child was right, this could be quite the opportunity.
"We can indeed interact with the living world, dark one. Why do you ask such a thing?" Zephyr had to gulp before asking his next question.
"T-Then you can help me save your forest. You and the other ghosts can seek out and destroy some of these glowing root nodes. And when that shield is down, we can cleanse the corruption together!" He pointed his ax at Oberon to emphasize his point to the spirit, but the ghost seemed unconvinced.
"For one claimed by inner darkness, your cause is noble. But you will have to continue this quest alone. The fallen of Evernight will not help you in this fight." Zephyr looked the ghost over in confusion.
"Are the creatures of the dream able to harm you?"
"If the dreaming could vanquish us, it would have."
"Then what is stopping you from taking back your forest?" Fear was quickly replaced by annoyance and anger as Zephyr was questioning the phantom.
"To what end, stranger? The elves of Evernight are no more. All that is left of us were taken to dwarven lands to die as slaves. We have nothing to fight for. We have only our despair."
"If that lazy elf was out of the way, I could go into dwarven lands myself and rescue your people!"
"Yet you need the help of the dead to stop a sleeping tree. You offer only false hope, dark one. Begon from my presence." Zephyr was about to burst a blood vessel talking to the ghost. He had never seen such a pathetic creature before in his life.
"Fine! Laze around and do nothing; that worked out so well when your hero did it!" Zephyr then turned and walked away from the useless specter, grumbling as he did so.
"If it would make you feel better, master, The dwarven lands are no dought bloated with the spoils of war! If we can get that overgrown weed out of the way, it could be ours."
"No, Gnarl! No, it doesn't!" Zephyr marched down the newly formed path, personally chopping down every nightmare monster that popped up. Rage and spite carried every blow of his ax. Walking down the track, he saw something odd, little creatures, that looked like minions, but green.
"Green minions! We are in luck! They have a resistance to the poisonous plants of Evernight. You must find their lair." Before Zephyr could even say hello to his new minions, skull-rats burst forth from the ground and scared them off.
"Greens smell! Greens smell! Poooooo!" HA, HA!" One of his minions laughed as they killed the nightmares. Zephyr couldn't fallow the greens through the poison field, so he continued down the path in hopes of bumping into them again. He made his way through a winding path through what he could only describe as a swamp before stumbling across some skull-stags performing some sort of profane ritual.
"Look there, master! Poison pods, delicious sauteed in a splash of demons bile! Deadly, of course, so perhaps they'd be more useful for dispensing a touch of mass carnage?"
"Fuck that! I'm going to take the fuckers down myself!" Charging across the water, Zephyr killed one of the nightmares with a fireball. As the other two were trying to resurrect their fallen friend, he took both their heads off with one swing of his ax. His minions cheered as he savagely took down the monsters. Strangely enough, the life force he collected from the stags was blue. He continued to rampage through the swampy terrain, killing nightmares left and right as he went. He then spotted the greens again, they ran into a cave, but he also spotted a mana object and a stone bridge he could activate like before. He made sure to claim the tower abject and replenish his horde before fallowing the greens into the stinking cave.