TWatGToN C11

THE WHEEL AND THE GREAT TOMB OF NAZARICK

A FAN FICTION BY BUF_BUODA

CHAPTER 11

AN: So, this will be the last chapter in this iteration of my WOT x Overlord universe. I've been unable to find enough of my former notes to pick this up again, so I decided to make it a sort of Prologue - after all, the Wheel turns.

I will be moving forward with the rewrite, but as a second in this series. Watch out for A Turn Rarely Taken. I hope this satisfies everyone, and thank you for sticking with me through this period.

In other news, I've gotten a new soul suck masquerading as a job. I'll write when I can, and will upload when I can. Please be patient with me - I know how much I hated GRRM for taking ages with his new books; enough to make me stop reading him altogether, so I understand the frustration. The new work will be quite lengthy whenever I release new chapters, so I hope that makes up for the long wait times.

Thanks once again.

Laim ran.

The sound of his painfully pounding heart filled his head even as terror fed feet that were numb from pain. He could hear the screams of the men that ran with him, and the otherworldly screams and gurgles of the nightmares that gave chase. A few yards from him, a scream of terror was cut off suddenly, as though something had been stuffed down the man's throat. He heard the thud of a body going down, and the gurgling that accompanied the sounds of rapidly breaking bones flogged him as he tried to put on more speed.

It was supposed to be a simple mission: go investigate the town that the tax collector had not returned from. Their unit had been mobilized to accompany the Royal law man as a dead tax collector usually meant rebellion.

As they approached the town via the main road, the lack of any traffic continued to make the men uneasy. He had ordered them into formation as he sent out a few scouts to investigate, and a messenger to take word back to the garrison.

Laim stuck his hands into his pocket as he watched the messenger ride away, rubbing his lucky stone as he tried to think of the next course of action. He had always been lucky whenever he went with the stone; yet he'd been feeling a growing certainty that his luck was going sour. The roads were too quiet, the woods even quieter, and the paranoia he was experiencing had no outlet.

His feelings had been confirmed when his second-in-command, Torvald, a solid veteran who retired from the Queen's guards, mentioned the lack of any animal life so far. The air felt heavy with a kind of mad hunger. All of his admittedly limited city senses were screaming at him.

His unit was supposed to be a simple one where bastards and seventh sons of minor nobles could gather military experience in a relatively risk free environment. They were not supposed to go up against mindless hunger so intense he fancied they could feel it as a pressure in the air.

For a moment, he considered turning them around. This was his last month here. The feeling was banished as he recalled the sneer on his "brother's" face as he pounded into the woman he suspected was his mother, her face slack with the drugs he'd fed her. He allowed the sneer to fuel him, keeping the fear at bay as the rage kept him warm, coiling around him like an old lover. He'd make his own luck.

A feeling of panic broke the rage's hold as he cracked the stone along some hidden fault, crushing the whole thing in his grip that had tightened in his anger.

For a moment, he simply stood there as panic and shock spun wild stories in his head about omens. Signalling Torvald, he passed the word for the men to make camp as he mastered his fear. He would wait for the scouts to return.

They never did. Instead, screams tore the night as monsters from the nightmares of mad men poured into the camp.

Something slammed into him from behind, tripping him. He stumbled, and his left foot caught in a shallow depression. He tried to roll with the stumble, feeling the slimy touch of many hair-like tentacles trying to dig under his leather armour. A few slithered onto the sensitive skin behind his neck, drawing an involuntary scream from him at the wrongness of the sensation. Barely any sound got out of the scream before a mass was stuffed into his open mouth. Something stabbed through the back of his mouth, and there was a sharp, blinding, pain drowning out the snap of his ankle as he fought for consciousness, willing his hands to come up and grab the intruding tentacles.

The pain faded as suddenly as it began, giving way to a sense of vertigo. He heard a sharp crack, and it took him a moment to realize that it was his neck, bent at an angle that was definitely unhealthy. The tentacled mass crawled over his face, passing his horrified eyes, and forcing itself into his mouth amidst cracks that he suspected were from his jaw. The feeling that he was falling intensified, and with a final jolt, 'Laim' became nothing but a flesh bag.

The biggest problem in Moraine's mind was how disconnected she felt from everything that might have been happening.
The negotiations with Ainz Ooal Gown had gone as well as could be expected. All her charges were with her, and safe for now. The Sorcerer king was very interested in their 'quest' - as he called it - and dispatched two of his subordinates along with them, as well as provisions, and a carriage. She politely declined his offer for mounts as well. If the mounts were anything like their name implied, she would not want to be caught riding them.

The blight had changed since they were 'away'. On the surface, it seemed the same. The heat was still unbearable. The stench of parodies of life caught between decay and cancerous growth permeated the air, even in the carriage. The air itself tasted foul. Otherworldly howls and barks still broke the silence at irregular intervals. However, there was now an unseen pressure on them - as though eyes were on them every moment. The pressure from their invisible watcher(s) might have been unbearable if not for the additions to their party.

The first was the butler Sebas. The hard, old man seemed at ease except for the slight wrinkling of his nose in disgust - as though the blight was nothing but a cesspool. He carried nothing - one of the few reminders for the Aes Sedai that the old man was anything but ordinary, or even a man. The second was a maid dressed in the same hybrid of armor and maid uniform as Yuri and Lupusregina, although of a different cut. She was stunningly beautiful; enough for Mat to forget himself, and attempt to flirt with the maid during their first break. Rand had stared incredulously at the flirting Mat, his obvious shock matched only by Perrin. The blush on Egwene's face was the only sign that the two Emond Field women were studiously ignoring the by-play. Moraine had been considering reprimanding the jovial prankster when the maid - Solution, as she introduced herself - began flirting with Mat in return.

"No, Solution. Ainz-sama insisted we do not harm them. You can't eat him," said Sebas suddenly, as though replying to a question.

Those were the words that turned Mat's smirking face white as Solution pouted, and reaffirmed Moraine's belief that anything from Nazarick was off-limits, regardless of how beautiful or human it might look. From the looks of the others, the message was received loud and clear.

Just imagining those two interacting with the rest of the world was nearly enough to make the Aes Sedai show her age.

Getting the maid to ride a horse had caused a stir. It had taken Sebas reminding her that the horses had been 'buffed' by their king - whatever that meant. The maid could be heard muttering about 'wasting their Lord's blessing on filthy beasts,' when their journey through the tear in reality's fabric began.

Lan was ahead of the group, scouting the path ahead of them. Moraine allowed herself to drift off, rehashing the details of all she was going to report to the Amyrlin, and what she was going to save for when she was simply talking to her friend Siuan. The whole thing still felt like the fever dream of a mad man, yet the two additions to her party, and the weight of the necklace around her neck served as a constant reminder that she was indeed awake and still sane.

The sound of Lan joining them brought her out of her recollections. The Warder rode up beside her, and spoke in a low voice.

"The Blight is more active than normal," he began. Taking Moraine's silence as an indicator that he should go on, he continued speaking.

"I would guess that the blight is mobilizing. Perhaps the battle for Tarwin's gap still rages?" he half-asked.

"There is little gain in making such speculations," replied Moraine, her voice just as quiet.

"Indeed," agreed Lan.

"However," he continued, "the thing that is most surprising is that everything in our path is giving us a very wide berth."

Moraine's raised eyebrow was her only reaction, but the Warder correctly interpreted it as a desire for more detail, which he supplied.

"The wild things in the blight are going out of their way to avoid us. The only thing we need now is to locate the green man,"

Moraine heard the unspoken question in her warder's voice. Lan trusted her too much to ask, but she answered anyway.

"The Green man responds to need, and our need is the need of the world itself,"

The venerable butler's answer to what must have been an unspoken question served to remind Mat of the stakes, and not a moment too soon in Perrin's humble opinion.

Not like he was surreptitiously ogling the otherworldly beauty.

'I'm just reminding myself. She might look normal, but she smells all wrong,' he thought as he adjusted himself on his horse.

He could see the Aes Sedai and her warder speaking in low tones

The soft cushion under him kept trying to lull him to sleep. It was only the feeling of the unseen watchers that kept him alert. He looked around again in an attempt to keep sharp, and that was the only reason he noticed the abrupt change of scenery as soon as it occurred. One moment they were in the sweltering heat of the Blight, the next, they were in a green field that seemed to stretch on forever. There was a faint breeze that carried with it the scent of wild flowers and the tinkling of bells. His hand fell to his axe just as he turned to look at the aes sedai, but the smile on her face relaxed him. Wherever this was, this was where they wanted to be.

Her next words confirmed it.

"We have arrived," she said. "Nothing of the Shadow may touch us here."

Perrin relaxed minutely, letting his hands trail up the handle of his axe, and away from it eventually, as he made to dismount though, the air changed.

An unthinkable pressure pressed down on them, keeping them frozen in terror even as his heart threatened to burst.

Bela took off as though running from the Dark One himself, dragging Egwene who was still on her along. The animal didn't take more than six steps before her skin simply boiled away, crumpling into a puddle of gore and blood. The terror's hold on them was absolute, even when he saw Egwene boil away mere seconds after the unfortunate animal. Reality twisted, seeming to boil as the edges of what he could see slowly peeled back like a piece of parchment whose corners were set alight.

And just like that, Perrin died in silence as the everlasting dark swallowed everything.

This iteration was a failure in a way nothing ever was before. The dance with his opponent and his proxies had just changed irrevocably. He doubted his opponent even knew what he did fully. He focused completely on the Parasite, ignoring the souls of the two strangers as they migrated back towards the tree whose roots now wound themselves around the Wheel. The Parasite was an infinitely more dangerous thing, and he would not allow it gain a foothold in this drama - even if he had to throw this particular game. Even if he had to burn it all down. He only had to win once, after all.