Drem Struntsyelf looked upwards at the spiraling reaches of the structure.  Gooseflesh rippled up his spine, as a true sense of evil seemed to engulf him in a blanket of darkness.  He sought out the necromancer Tchort Von Asmodia for some time now and had finally reached the domicile that held the lord.  Obsidian spires seemed to pierce the midnight sky and twisted trees groaned as if the spirits of long dead companions tried to warn him away.  A howling wind plastered the torn cloak to Drem’s body and each step he took forwards seemed to bring him closer into an abyss of despair.  The doorway loomed before him, inviting him in the same way a spider invites a fly into her web, yet the Knight Panther entered.  His callused fingers gently removed the hood that had hung over his head, shielding him from the fierce gales of this land.  The dark grandeur of the room startled Drem, and he gripped his sword tightly as if an attack was imminent.  Drem was young for a knight and had recently joined the Empire’s army when he heard about the evil wizard that plagued the land. Drem remembered Tchort from an attack against his hometown.  The haunting image of Tchort’s gnarled hand plunging a blood red blade into his love, Mohra, still haunted his mind.  He had come here to seek revenge for his grievance but the luster of his mission seemed to vanish with the light of day as the young man had entered the castle.  Twirling steps brought him into a gothic room whispering with evil that should never be known to mortal men, yet in he stepped.
         Deep inside of Drem a small tremor of darkness grew filled with the coldness of hatred and the heat of fury.  His muscles tensed and a grim frown appeared on his alabaster face.
         “Who do you hate?” A rasping voice boomed through the despair, hurling the words at him. Drem shivered at the tone of the voice but he yelled back, trying to match the voice:
         “No one!”
         “Who do you hate?”  The voice repeated louder with an even more chilling sense.  The reply was quiet this time, yet held the menace and soft loathing of one without love:
         “Who else? Tchort Von Asmodia...”
         “Do you know me?” The voice asked but was answered by a negative silence.  With that, the voice seemed to transform and embody a darkly ethereal figure wearing a billowing cloak.  An ash grey face with two glowing embers for eyes appeared from the shadow of the hood.  At once Drem knew, it was the necromancer lord, Tchort Von Asmodia.
         The knight narrowed his ocean blue eyes and kept himself from launching at the figure, “you…” The sorcerer’s mouth curled up into a predatory smile and he raised his bloodless hand.  He called on dark arcane magic and visions assailed Drem:
          The first was of Tchort, standing above a legion of skeletal warriors.  Each bony figure was armed with a sword and shield, together they began to march forwards.  Tchort rode upon a sloe-black stallion whose hooves were trailed by flames.  Great-scaled wings sprouted from its back, raven and rippled with indigo were its colors.    He drove the Pegasus high into the air above a small village, Drem’s village.  Within minutes the town was ablaze and dead figures littered the ground, the blood of his friends stained the nearby river red.  As he saw this, Drem strained to fight back the oncoming flood of tears.
          Without a moment’s wake the next vision came with lightning fast cruelty.  Tchort held his great blade above Mohra, clenched tightly by the magician’s henchmen.  The blade shown with the same sheen as the blood that stained the maiden’s dress.  The blade circled once, like a serpent preparing to strike, then it dug deep into her chest.  The scream that was ripped from her body could not shake Drem from the terror he saw.
          Third was the wizard’s tower that Drem had once trained in.  Tchort stood before his old master while Drem, and a crowd of other young trainees stood transfixed to the scene.  Black lightning spilled from the evil one’s hands and lit up the room.  Like twin ebony snakes, the magic struck the old man, sending him into spasms of agony.  Drem tried to run to his old friend but was frozen in place.  As the last breath was choked from the magician, Tchort turned and stared at Drem among the others.
          “Release your anger and you could join me,” Tchort said with cruelty in his heart.  Drem screamed out a refusal, keeping in the torrent of raw emotion that swept through him.  He would not drop his mental shields to the temptation Tchort offered him.
         The knight finally managed to cry out with the hatred that he had born for so long.  The knight ran towards Tchort, wanting nothing more that to hold the necromancer’s black heart before his face, and then crush it.  The visions were replaced by Von Asmodia’s demonic face again and with another maiden’s unconscious body in front of him.  Blood drenched the otherwise perfect figure and suddenly, the total stranger was Mohra.  Tchort looked invitingly to Drem to stop him.  The warlock stared deep into his soul, his eyes boring into the knight like two burning coals containing nothing but a fiery, unquenchable anger and malice.  He raised a curved sacrificial dagger above the girl and she appeared on an obsidian altar. It was perfectly formed by years of craftsmanship, sloping downwards into an oblivion of blackness.  Carved across its stand were demonic gargoyles, which seemed to laugh at his helplessness.  Tchort smiled cruelly and brought it down, slicing through her body into the black stone.  He then stepped around the altar with fluid grace and threw down the knife. “You can do nothing to stop me, Struntsyelf, you are powerless to continue watching your loved ones die while you stand and watch...helpless.”
         “Not this time,” Drem paused for a moment and continued, “Undead scum.”
The necromancer flinched ever so slightly yet remained cool.  “You cannot taunt me...do you know why?  I have already won,” as he spoke the body rose high into the air.  The hands moved as if they were still alive and the mouth smiled seductively to Drem.
          The knight growled and rammed his fist into Tchort’s face, knocking him backwards.  Without any hesitation Drem dove for the lost knife.  “Damn you... You can have me but at least respect her!”
         The sorcerer lay on the ground with blood flowing from a large cut in his face.  He tasted the liquid for a moment and then laughed at the warrior, “You were always weak.”  Tchort mused with a sadistic smile.
         A shiver of anger rippled through Drem’s spine and he looked from the blade in his hand, to Tchort, Mohra, and back.  “I’ve gotten this far,” he said as he swung in a backwards loop, bringing the blade through Tchort’s face vertically.  The smile split as the blade dug deep into his skull.  The darkness that the warlock had radiated swirled about like a full-force gale.  It surrounded Drem like a cloak, seeping into the cracks of his mind and splintering inside of him like knives of ice.
         Finally Drem gave up.  The anger and hatred that he had born for so many years, yet sought to contain, burst forth.  Despair swept through him, as he became what he had beheld and let evil rule his mind.  The rage of a billion demons flows out of Drem and the person he once was faded away.  The usual smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, always hinting to break into a Cheshire cat grin, disappeared and the light in his eyes were replaced with a cold dark abyss.  Instead of the crisp uniform of a Knights’ Panther, Drem was clothed in shadows and the warmth of his laugh was turned to a glacial coldness.
         After the heat of rage came a frozen cold.  Power and destruction were not the only thing he found in darkness.  There was a great isolation and sadness...there was fear. He now knew that these are what a disciple of evil finds even in his darkest triumph; a land without joy or love, only blackness.  The light had abandoned him.

Written By:
Helen Marshall