Interlude X

Defeated and humiliated, Phoros'malmislar had no choice but to flee the Land of Infinite Void. Rallying the Acolytes of the Violet Gaze had been a long process, and his forces had completely dissolved as soon as they were freed from the Mighty One's control. He'd come so close, only to lose everything. The Void Empire was shattered for a second time by two Walkers of the Blue Pain. And there he was, retreating to their loathsome homeworld in search of the one person he could still trust.

It took him days to travel north from where he'd arrived, in an old stronghold which had once been used by the Groundskeepers. He was still able to teleport, though his injuries made it an excruciating process which left him exhausted every time. Once he'd finally reached his destination, he could barely stand, and he dropped to his knees on the hard stone floor.

He had gone to a place at the northern edge of the Land of Blue Pain: an underground bunker belonging to the remains of the strangest army he'd ever met. Blue Walkers comprised the entirety of their ranks, yet they opted to garb themselves in black robes and helmets which hid their identities. Phoros found their attire disturbing, and more than a bit offensive; they looked like they were wearing the shed exoskeletons of Void Walkers. One of the odd soldiers was leaning against a wall of the empty, dim chamber, designed specifically for him to teleport in with ease. He opened the single metal door and shouted something down the corridor to his fellows. Their language was unintelligible for Phoros, but he could tell his presence had been expected.

"How would they have known I was coming…?"

Heavy footsteps approached. A few of the stone blocks around the door had to be broken for the army's mysterious leader to enter. Clad entirely in black armor, and hiding his visage behind a deep purple visor, he was an utter enigma to all. Even his race was a mystery, for while he clearly wasn't a Void Walker, his enormous and bulky figure was distinct from the rest of his army.

"You've seen better days," he remarked, perfectly speaking the Infinite Void's language. He said something to the lackey who'd been waiting in the chamber, and the young soldier scurried down the hall, leaving them alone. "It has been some time, Phoros'malmislar. What brings you here?"

Phoros sighed. "The Walkers of the Infinite Void remain disorganized. I had done my best to unite them under a strong leader once again, yet there were many who resisted." He grit his teeth, the embarrassment of his defeat fresh on his mind. "A pair from this world and a lowly Keeper of the Hallowed Grounds destroyed everything I had built."

"Ha! And now you come crawling to me for help."

"And what is it you have been doing?" he hissed. "Your army is a shell of what it once was."

The two of them had met by pure chance about two decades prior, when Phoros was in the earliest stages of organizing his Acolytes. This person, calling himself the "Mouth of the Banished King," was in a similar predicament, going into hiding with the remnants of his own forces after his unsuccessful conquest of the region. He'd been surprised to learn the Mouth could speak his language, but the pair had formed an unlikely bond when they discussed their mutual bitterness with the rest of their worlds. The Infinite Void had failed to appreciate what the Mighty One could offer them, and the Blue Pain had apparently denied its rightful ruler his throne. Phoros wouldn't have called them friends, or even allies- neither was particularly interested in helping the other achieve their goal- but he'd always felt a mutual respect between them.

"Our circumstances have changed," said the Mouth, crossing his arms. "We have made new allies from the Lands Beyond the Bright Sky, and they also seek the upheaval of this realm. They are… quite impressive, I must admit. Their army possesses innumerable soldiers, unrelenting ambition, and unstoppable motivation."

Phoros perked up. "Then they could surely spare their forces to take back the Land of Inf-"

"That world is of no use to us now. The Void Walkers will be left to their own devices. Their involvement in this new conflict would be an unnecessary annoyance."

He growled, struggling to find the right words. "How could you overlook this opportunity? If the Infinite Void is not united… if it is not made strong… then are we to simply accept the calamity? The deaths, the carnage wrought by the Wicked Two! We are to LET THAT GO?!"

Phoros glared at the Mouth's visor, which was dark enough to hide any detail of the face beneath. He had no idea what expression the man had, or whether the impassioned words had made any impact.

"There is no justice to be found in the Land of Infinite Void." The reply was slow, and the Mouth was looking right at him. "Not when the true enemy is here."

He laughed, full of bitterness and spite. "Your 'true enemy' has nothing to do with what is best for my race."

"I would not be so sure. For you see… the Wicked Two still live. They are here, in this region of the Land of Bright Sky and Blue Pain."

Phoros froze. "That… is impossible. No race but mine could be nearly this long-lived."

"It appears they have some means of evading death," the Mouth replied. "Even so, you are incorrect. The Wicked Two stole something very important when they left the Infinite Void… an egg, the spawn of the Dark Queen. The hatchling would be more than capable of surviving to the present day; their race could outlive even your own, several times over."

"Then… there is still hope!" Already, his head was awash with ideas. "If we could find this hatchling-"

The Mouth cut him off again. "If you are considering seeking out the child, you should concern yourself with another question. The Dark Queen was guarding an egg, but surely she did not produce it alone. There must have been another parent… one who would also be searching for it."

Phoros nodded, already seeing the problems he would face. "Yes, yes… this other parent, it would be on the hunt for the Wicked Two as well. I must be quick to find them first. If the Wicked Two are here as you say, then I will lend you and your new allies my support. So long as I can claim the egg or the hatchling, of course."

"I'm afraid you will be doing no such thing." The Mouth had maintained a relatively flat tone, but this time there was a marked irritation in his voice. "You see, their kind possesses incredible mental power. The Dark Queen commanded your race using a hypnotic enchantment expelled with her breath, but she had another ability: she could communicate without words, and from long distances, using only her mind. It was how she delivered orders to her hypnotized army… and how she relayed information about her attackers to the second parent of the egg, the Dark King."

Warning, after warning, after warning. Did he think Phoros would be deterred from his ambition? He'd sought to form a true Void Empire for his entire life, and he wouldn't abandon it just because "He of the Abyssal Tyranny" was potentially on the loose. He would find the Wicked Two, take the egg from them, and raise the hatchling to serve him, and then his plans could begin anew.

Before he could say anything, however, an enormous hand clamped around his neck, lifting him off the floor and pinning him to the stone wall. Phoros wheezed and panted, frantically clawing at the Mouth's arm, kicking his feet, trying to pry the armor he wore apart, but he could not so much as leave a scratch. Still too exhausted to teleport again, he was entirely helpless.

"Would you like to know something odd?" asked the Mouth, in a deep growl. "The Dark Queen recently, inexplicably, began to communicate again. Her voice was mangled, her words without meaning. No higher thought drove her speech… as if she were a mindless corpse."

His exoskeleton bent and cracked, and he struggled to draw breath. The Mouth only squeezed harder as Phoros began to feebly rake his claws against his helmet. His visor had been too dark to see through, but there was now a pair of bright violet spots behind it, glowing fiercely. "And now, the Banished King demands justice for what you have done to her."

Crunch.

The Mouth of the Banished King stormed back through the hallways of his underground stronghold. He left Phoros'malmislar's corpse where it was, for an underling to clean up later. No longer would he trouble himself with the goings-on of the End; he'd dealt with the Enders of Man more than enough for his liking. Now that the Dark Queen Siljeanol was dead twice over, attempting to wrangle them back into a stable army would be a waste of effort.

Her partner, after learning of her first death, had tried and failed to do just that. He had been exploring the furthest reaches of the End when she was attacked, receiving psychic visions of her enemies up until the killing blow was struck. By the time he returned to their nest, the intruders were long gone with Siljeanol's lone egg, and a mob of furious Endermen had amassed to face him head-on. He'd lacked his partner's ability to control them easily, having been away for so long, and thus the Endermen overwhelmed him. Critically wounded, the Dark King Zolomaris fled to the Overworld, never to return to his former territory. And so he became the Banished King of the End.

"Excuse me, sir-"

The Mouth shoved past the Forger grunt who'd tried to speak to him, in no mood to humor them. He kept moving through the fortress' stone corridors, single-mindedly making his way toward the throne room where he could find some solace. His head pounded; the great injustice was fresher on his mind than ever.

While the Banished King had escaped his Ender pursuers, his prospects hadn't been much better upon his arrival to the Overworld. Siljeanol's killers remained at large, yet Zolomaris' injuries were too thorough for him to hunt them down until outside assistance presented itself. Even then, by the time he was in any state to explore their homeworld, his prey had all but disappeared.

The Mouth knew the true nature of the great injustice, of course, because he wasn't a "Mouth" at all. None could ever speak for the Banished King but the Banished King himself.

Zolomaris refused to give up his search, and before long he heard whispers of travelers possessing an unusual black egg, far to the north. Immediately he set out to find them, assembling an army to aid his hunt: the original Ender Forge. Marching after his targets to a land once called Lux, he waged a brutal war in the hopes of drawing them out. Yet the inhabitants had proven more resilient than he realized, for even as his forces went about killing off their leaders, they remained unified in the defense of their home. Zolomaris' army was fought off, and he himself suffered an injury which drastically reduced his hypnotic control over the Ender Forge's soldiers. Once again, he had no choice but to remain in hiding and await a new chance to take revenge for his partner.

The timely arrival of the Usurpation Army gave him such a chance. His enemies in Lux were thrown into disarray, and he'd also heard whispers of unimaginably powerful warriors causing trouble for the Far Landers. Even better, he was able to catch their scent during the Battle of Incursia, recognizing it from the psychic sensations Siljeanol had shared with him. The Usurpation may have had their own goals, but as far as he was concerned the Ender Forge would be directing its efforts into tracking down the two killers.

At last, he reached the throne room. The rest of the derelict stronghold was small and cramped, but his chamber was tall enough for him to stand up straight. A deepslate throne sat atop a podium of chiseled stone bricks, and he took a seat with an enormous sigh. He idly wiped a few splotches of Phoros' green blood away from the smooth, refined obsidian plating of his armor.

"G-Great Speaker? Forgive our intrusion…"

Even seated, he was tall enough to look down at the assembly of nervous Forgers who'd followed him into the room. He'd overlooked them entirely on his way there, yet they hadn't gotten the hint he was not to be disturbed. "What have you to say? Be quick about it."

One grunt was brave enough to step forth, holding a sheet of paper. "The Usurper Commandant Blue is requesting your presence in Incursia."

Blue? It had been a month since the attack, and he didn't think he'd spent more than an hour in her presence in the interim. What was she so interested in? "Did the Commandant elaborate on this?"

Two Forgers whispered to each other, then one of them pulled out another, much larger sheet and stepped forward. "A report has been spreading among the Usurpation soldiers that something… strange was in the city during the battle. Commandant Blue was able to produce a composite sketch; she wishes to know if you have any information about this."

The grunt showed him what was on the paper, and he stared at the image. It depicted a hulking creature, humanoid in stature yet grossly out of proportion. A long tail dragged behind it, and it was covered in what appeared to be black and purple scales. Two enormous eyes leered at him, and he found he couldn't look away.

"…I have never seen this before," he said, as slowly as possible. He stood and took the sheet for a closer inspection. "Certainly, we have nothing to do with it. I will meet with her as requested… now, begone. All of you."

They looked at each other in confusion. He snarled and brought a fist back on his throne, smashing it clear in half. "NOW!"

The grunts didn't need to be told again, practically tripping over one another in their scramble to vacate the room. When he was alone, he let go of what little restraint he'd maintained and utterly destroyed the remains of his throne. He only mustered the will to look at the paper again after the stone had been crushed to powder and pebbles.

He would need to put out an even higher priority search notice, this time for high-ranking Illager magicians. There was no mistaking what- who- the misshapen creature could be, or how she had gained her grotesque form.

"Lajenazol… those brutes… what have they done to you?!"

The village was silent.

One could have called it a ghost town, were it not for the party of Illagers loitering around the outskirts. They'd arrived not to attack the place- there was nobody left to attack- but to wait, as more troops were teleported in.

Raid Captain Mordred walked between the overgrown, abandoned houses with a slow, cautious pace. His crossbow was loaded and held tight, even though nothing there would have possibly threatened him. No villagers, humans, or golems remained, and there were no wild mobs to be found either. Even so, he couldn't shake a feeling of trepidation as he made his way toward the center of the town, where an empty well stood surrounded by a road of cobblestone.

His presence had been expected. Five Illagers in black robes with gold trim awaited him, each surrounded by a squad of vexes which flitted about and cackled to themselves. The evokers were identical, from their clothing to their aged and wrinkled faces. He came to a stop a few blocks away and kneeled before them. "It is an honor to meet you, Your Excellency. I am Mordred, Captain of the Dune Raiders."

The quintet of sorcerers before him were no mere evokers. One of them, hidden among his lookalikes, was the supreme authority of their entire order, the High Evoker. He was the oldest, most powerful Illager in the world, and his word was law. Whichever evoker was truly him almost seemed incidental, for all five of them had the same body language and demeanor, their eyes locked onto him without blinking.

"Welcome, Mordred," one of them replied. "Your forces are the first to make it here. I offer my congratulations. You may rise."

He stood, but gave them a salute. "Thank you. I organized my outpost as quickly as I could. A summons from you is not to be ignored."

Another evoker spoke next, in the same low monotone. "Quite so. It is… unfortunate, that we must draw the bulk of our forces back here, and undo much of our southern expansion. But the situation in the north has become too dire to overlook."

Most of the Illagers were stationed in the northern reaches of the Overworld, and their presence became thinner the further south one traveled. Morded personally was proud to lead one of the southernmost clans, expanding their territory ever further, and communication between the disparate groups was infrequent, unless a larger than normal raid was to be conducted. Yet months of increasingly desperate calls for reinforcements from the Frontier Guards in the north had forced a response at last, and he couldn't imagine what they were having so much trouble with.

A third evoker asked, "Does this empty settlement perplex you?"

"It does," he admitted, lowering his hand. "There aren't any signs of an attack. The place seems to have been abandoned many years ago, but otherwise it's in reasonable condition."

"There are others like it nearby. Some large cities, others small villages," replied the second evoker. The five of them must have shared a thought process, by some means Mordred couldn't fathom. "All directly south of the Lux Kingdom's remains. Curious, is it not?"

"I fear I don't understand what you're getting at."

"These abandoned places are related to our task at hand," the fifth evoker in line said, dragging a hand along the well's side. "They were… visited, decades ago, by MT-Endra-1. It would appear he swayed the inhabitants to join him."

Mordred had been a child at the time, freshly initiated into the Illager Order, but he vividly recalled the news of their latest experiments. The "Mob Turner" project had been implemented in a few scattered mansions, with the intent to form beings which could infiltrate human settlements. The creation of new bodies for wild mobs had been successful, but he remembered overhearing grumblings from visiting witches and evokers about how the Turned were not living up to expectations of strength and loyalty.

One ambitious clan excitedly reported they'd found a unique test subject to use: a black dragon hiding in a canyon, so heavily wounded he was barely alive. Eager to show off their latest project, they sent updates to other clans far and wide, detailing progress on the beast's new body. The messages abruptly ended one day, as did all contact with the clan. Search parties sent to their mansion found only the skeletal remains of a forest, razed to the ground, and no survivors were ever discovered. It was deemed the greatest disaster in their Order's history, even greater than Nightshade Manor's ruin from centuries earlier.

"I am not certain how long MT-Endra-1 has been in the north," an evoker went on, "but he now calls himself 'Mouth of the Banished King' according to our spies. Furthermore, there are confirmed reports of Fragment Construct H-01's presence."

Mordred smiled. "They're in the same region? That'll make hunting them down easier. Luck must be on our side, what are the chances of that?"

"You may be surprised how high they are," said the fifth evoker. "It appears H-01 was in possession of an Ender Dragon egg until about sixty years ago, when he lost it to Raid Captain Gawain's hunting party, who brought it back to their mansion for study. They hatched and Turned it, designating the creature MT-Endra-2… but the subject has since been lost to us as well."

"So, H-01 and a pair of Turned Ender Dragons are all chasing each other down in the north," Mordred replied, understanding why so many Illagers had to be gathered. "The search for them will draw attention… we'll need to work around the inhabitants."

"Not quite. There is another reason we are assembling such a force." This time, the speaking evoker had a graver tone. "The Frontier Guards' pleas for assistance are not due to our lost assets, but to the return of an old enemy. Hordes of humans from the Far Lands have breached the border wall, and are now intent on dominating the region."

Morded's stomach sank. The implications were painfully clear to him, for every Illager's greatest fear centered around the dwellers of the Far Lands.

"We are mustering as many of our soldiers as we can and marching north to join our legions at the border," said the first evoker. "A second Usurpation Army has arrived. This time, we will not let a single one of them escape with their lives. Their defeat will send a clear message to any would-be invaders: the Far Landers are not welcome in our Great Haven."

Illager Calendar: First Day of Seventh Moon

Year 622 After the Far Lands Incursion