The deal was sealed, an alliance won in blood of those who had dared stay in the way. Malachite shook hands with the Overlord, and allies they had become.
As night fell, the Overlord delivered her prisoners to Malachite, and was indeed handsomely rewarded in lien for her efforts. The Overlord had no need of the prisoners, and she figured her new ally might have some use of them. Despite how evil they were, she did not want to kill them if she didn't have to. And she did very much want the money. She felt her power grow. It felt good.
Yang had explained to her what she wanted to find, namely more artifacts which were a priority. While Malachite was looking for more information, Yang had returned to Kuchinashi to seek out the Magic she and Gnarl had sensed.
Gnarl's senses being still sharper than her own lead them, and they found themselves to another passage outside the city, through the Northern Mountain Pass. When she was this close she too could feel that out of the two artifacts that were in these mountains, one of them was a Spell Totem of some sort, the other neither her nor Gnarl could identify.
Gnarl assured her that he knew where to go, sensing that the area in which the weird artifact was held was once a place full of great magical power.
The pathway lead into many different parts of the mountains, and one of those paths led them to ruins of a very old village. It seems it was a dig site, many holes everywhere.
Yang could sense the artifact in the ground, and had her Minions did it up.
The artifact was a silver necklace with a blue jewel embroidered on its centerpiece, and gold surrounding it.
"Hmm", Gnarl muttered to himself, "it seems to be imbued with some sort of area of effect possession spell". Gnarl was silent for a few more moments, as he kept sensing the necklace. Suddenly, he said with urgency, "Destroy it, Master! Now! Hurry! Or at least toss it away!"
Hearing the urgency in his voice, Yang threw the necklace away, but still within her eyesight.
"What's wrong, Gnarl?", she asked,
"The possession spell that is within the necklace is specifically designed to target Evil creatures, sire", Gnarl explained, "I can't tell what kind, but, sire, be careful, the spell is powerful, and it's range is…worryingly large."
"Couldn't we use it against our enemies?", Yang asked confused
"If it would work on our Evil enemies, we could.", Gnarl said, "But what if this was placed her on purpose? Or at the very least, what if someone can use Evil Magic to use this artifact and reverse its magic's course?"
Yang thought about it, and gasped.
"Then I could be possessed!"
"Now you see my urgency."
Yang thought about it
"I don't want to destroy it…but you're right, Gnarl", Yang agreed finally.
She gathered all of her Evil Energy and pushed it all into the necklace willing the energy to collapse it from within.
It shattered.
Yang fell to her knees as she heard the howl of millions of Grimm in her mind, and a pleased laughter from a powerful woman.
It lasted only a moment.
Yang slowly got to her feet.
"What…what was that?", she asked.
"We have either just made a very good friend, or empowered a powerful enemy.", Gnarl replied, "Perhaps this was a weapon to combat her?"
"No…no matter…The TOTEM, GNARL!", she focused on her rising anger at her weakness, and issued demands, "My head…Lead me to the TOTEM! Now!"
Gnarl nodded and lead on with words. The pathway they walked on lead them into a mountain, wherein they found a very small cave with…
"Are those…trolls?", Yang asked incredulously
The two trolls slowly moved towards her.
"Indeed, Sire.", Gnarl responded, "vile creatures. Kill them, and the spell is yours"
The trolls were as fat as they were tall. And they were pretty huge indeed.
Yang ordered mentally the Minions to get behind the trolls while she distracted them. She shot out two fireballs, once for each face. The trolls screamed in agony, as their faces were heavily burnt. The Minions attacked from behind, and hit and stabbed wherever they could reach. Some even jumped on top of them to attack. After some more stabbing, and a few more fireballs, they were dead on the ground, their Life Force collected.
Before Yang was a spell totem in an image of a rabid dog. She created a Tower Gate and attached the spell to the Tower Heart.
"Frenzy, Sire!", Gnarl explained, "It's a spell that increases the amount of damage the Minions do well as increasing their ability to take hits and reducing the damage taken by them"
"Very useful spell", Yang thought to herself, as she returned to her base of operations in Mistral to wait for further contact from her ally.
With a bit of time refreshing her lost magic and stamina with the powers of the Tower Heart, and electing to push away what had happened in Kuchinashi until later when she was ready to confront it, she went back to Malachite to see if she found anything.
And indeed, she had. She had found rumors, which Malachite doubted, of yellow glowing lights coming from caves east of Mistral. The reason for the doubt was the source of the rumors, which was some crazy guy claiming to be driven to insanity by the lights he saw.
Still, any hint towards one of her Evil artifacts was a hint she was willing to pursue, and it helped that the location was relatively close by, just an hour of walking past the exit of the city.
Following the lead led her to the desert part of the Kingdom, and soon after to the mentioned cave. From inside she could see the yellow glow of the spell totem, and her senses could easily sense it too.
"Careful, sire", Gnarl warned her, "if the crazed man is at all correct, we should expect resistance".
Yang shook her head and laughed lightly.
"He was crazy, Gnarl", Yang simply responded, "I mean, really? Driven insane by this light? It's not doing anything to me"
She continued making light of Gnarl's warning before he interrupted her.
"You like stories, don't you, Master?", he asked in a serious tone, "Then let me tell you one. About the Third Overlord".
Yang immediately stopped what she was doing and started to listen. Anything related to the Third Overlord, Lord of Hell himself, was probably very important. "And cool", she thought, "you can't forget cool".
"Back when the Third Overlord had first started his path towards his Evil Reign, he met a farmhand.", Gnarl started, "who was convinced his pumpkins were plotting to kill him"
Yang tried her best to not laugh, but a smile nevertheless appeared on his face.
"He carried this conviction all the way to the Third Overlord's victory over the entirety of the known world, and all the way to his invasion of Infernal Abyss", Gnarl continued, "It is in there when the Third Overlord met him for the second time, kidnapped the farmhand was by the Wraiths of the Infernal Abyss"
"Infernal Abyss is what Gnarl calls Hell", Yang remembered in her thoughts, "and the Wraiths were the Evil dead servants of the Lord of Hell, who back then was the Forgotten God"
"The crazed farmhand", Gnarl continued, "turned out to be right".
Yang thought she might have misheard Gnarl.
"The pumpkins were indeed plotting to kill him.", Gnarl then shook his head, "Many good Minions died fighting those pumpkins, Sire"
"I…", Yang started, before pausing and trying to come up with something to say, "I have no idea what to even say to that. It sounds insane"
Gnarl nodded.
"Indeed, Sire", Gnarl agreed, "and I don't mean to imply all pumpkins are plotting to kill us, but some definitely are, so do be careful in the cave. You never know what you will find inside"
Yang decided to trust Gnarl's wisdom on this, and carefully ventured inside the cave. Upon advice of Gnarl, she cast her senses inside to try to get a feel of what's inside.
She immediately recoiled, and stepped outside of the cave.
"The damn crazy guy was right!", she exclaimed before asking Gnarl, "What the Hell was that thing?"
She had sensed a powerful creature inside the cave, and what worried her more is that it was a powerful magical creature. It didn't feel distinctly Good or Evil, although it did have some leaning towards Evil. Her newly sharpened senses allowed her to get a feel as to how the creature looked and it made her want to vomit.
The creature was best described as a floating eyeball, with four tentacle-eyeballs attached to it at the sides of the original floating eyeball, and a bunch of tentacles coming from the lower part of its body.
"Hmm", Gnarl mussed, "that creature seems to be called a Beholder, Sire"
"Beholder?", Yang inquired, "Is this some pun on the fact that it's an eyeball monster?"
"Very likely, Sire", Gnarl agreed, "Many do consider puns to be Evil."
"Shows what they're missing", Yang thought to herself, "I'll keep all the puns, and they'll have none!"
"Be careful, Lord, the Beholder is a dangerous creature, very proficient in teleportation magic and several offensive magical branches too."
"Do they have a weakness?", Yang inquired hopefully.
"One, Sire.", Gnarl hurried to explain, "they can only concentrate on one spell at the time. If the creature uses teleportation magic to summon allies to its side, then it can't during that time attack offensively"
Gnarl thought for a bit before adding, "Make that two weaknesses, Sire, as they are rather fragile. Take down its summoned allies, and use the Reds to destroy it in the meantime!"
Yang nodded, before casting her senses in the cave again, seeking more information about what is inside.
The cave was small, containing a pathway downwards before opening up into a wider area with the spell totem and the beast inside.
Yang gathered her nerves, called her Minions, and moved inside.
"Reds!", she commanded, "Attack the beast! Browns! Let's take care of its allies!"
"For the Overlord!", the Minions cheered, and they rushed to obey.
As the first of the fireballs from the Reds hit the Beholder, it turned to them, noticing them, and began its summoning spell.
"Creepy", Yang thought to herself, the sight of the monster making her sick.
The spell was completed in a burst of blue flash, and where the blue light once was stood several darkly dressed, and lightly armored assassins.
Without fear they rushed the Minions, who with several of Yang's fireballs made short work of the assassin's, even if they were annoyingly agile. Their weakness compared to huntsmen was a breath of refreshing air for Yang.
The Beholder looked displeased, with his tentacle eyes narrowed, damage visible on its body from the Reds' attacks.
It started summoning again, and finished the spell much quicker summoning just one enemy instead.
The enemy struck Yang with fear.
It was a giant made from rocks, the height of three full grown men, and the width of two. It's eyes glowed with burning red hatred, and she could feel the Evil radiating from it.
"Rock Giant, Sire", Gnarl said with worry.
"This is bad", Yang thought to herself with unease, "Anything that worries Gnarl is usually really bad for me".
"The rock body allows it to take quite a beating, and the reach of its arms are hard to avoid", Gnarl warned her.
She had no more time to play games with the Beholder. She launched a few Evil Missiles at it, using small rocks lying around, and finished it off with a fireball to its face, Reds shooting their attacks at it too.
With the Beholder dead on the ground she turned to the Rock Giant slowly approaching her.
She commanded the Reds to attack the Giant from afar, while she decided to make use of her new spell in this fight.
She cast the Frenzy spell she had acquired from the trolls, and her Minions started to glow with green color, as a green mist settled around them before quickly vanishing.
She commanded a majority of her ten Brown army, seven of them to go behind the beast while Yang and the rest distract it, and get on its back to do some damage where it couldn't easily reach them.
She felt the spell slowly start to drain her mana. She had to do this fast.
She commanded her three Browns near her to attack the giant head on, while she and the Reds annoyed it with a combination of fireballs and Evil Missiles.
The plan worked, and her Browns started to attack the beast's back and head. The Rock Giant tried to swat the approaching three Brown's away but they managed to dodge in time.
After a few minutes of careful commanding of her three Minion attack force, dodging the attacks, and attacking when able, as distraction was the main priority, they were beginning to see results. Cracks started to appear on the Giant. Noticing this, the Giant decided to fall on its back, to crush the enemies clinging to it.
Just before its back reached the ground, it stalled in the air. Yang had extended her arm towards him, and with great effort and visible strain had suspended him temporarily in the air. All the Minions regrouped on her command at her location, and the Giant dropped. The green glow vanished from her Minions.
This last stunt sucked up all of her Magic.
"What were you thinking, Master?", Gnarl cried out, " Minions are supposed to be expendable. You are not"
Yang ignored him as she desperately began thinking up a plan.
She had a crazy idea.
That was good, those tended to work.
She commanded her Minions to get on top of the Giant who was lying back to the floor sand hold its hands in place.
While they were doing that, and struggling greatly to contain the might of the Giant, Yang got on top of it too, summoned all her strength, and began slashing at the cracks that her previous offensive have formed.
With each slash the cracks widened, before, "Damn!", Yang exclaimed loudly, as she and her Minions were tossed away as the Giant managed to get up.
The Damage was done, however, and it looked like one more good hit would take it down. She had the Minions rush it to distract it, which worked, and she used that distraction to throw her Great Sword at its midsection.
It pierced through, and the Giant was now nothing but a pile of rubble.
She and her Minions cheered at their great victory, as she used them to take the new Spell Totem back to her castle.