Chapter 18: The Last Gift of The Dark Mother
The revelations Corvin extracted from Serian’s mind reshaped his understanding of necromancy and of Lloth herself.
Elarith had once been a living Priestess of Lloth, a commanding figure not just in title but in knowledge. She lived during the early Sundering, a time when planar boundaries frayed and the Evolving Nightmare was first glimpsed across Verthalis. Lloth, perceiving the threat for what it truly was, chose not to intervene. Instead, she withdrew from Verthalis altogether, vanishing into the folds between planes, knowing that even her supremacy might not halt what was coming. What Corvin now knew shook the foundation of common belief: Lloth was never a true goddess by divine birth, but an alien entity from a realm far beyond the comprehension of mortals. Where magic and technology coexisted in seamless supremacy.
Compared to the mortal species of Verthalis, Lloth had been a superior lifeform, her very presence bending the rules of mortality and magic alike. And she had not died, nor ascended. She left. Voluntarily. Her final act before departing this world was to bestow fragments of her knowledge, necromancy included to a chosen few.
Elarith was among them.
With secrets that would warp the minds of lesser beings, she chose not to build schools or leave written tomes. Instead, she trained a select few zealots she handpicked and forged through unrelenting ritual and devotion. Her understanding of necromancy was not rooted in forbidden chaos, but in structure, bilogical clarity, and purpose. Her vision was clear: undeath not as curse, but continuity.
Every necromancer she trained was bound to her vision. And when they fell to age or blade, Elarith preserved them, not as mindless undead, but as functional extensions of her legacy. They retained memory, identity, and loyalty.
The undead in Serian’s laboratory were not random creations. They had all once been students of Elarith herself. When death came for them by blade, age, or failed experiment, Elarith raised them again, whole in mind and memory, preserving their intellects as guardians of her legacy. They continued their work with clarity and purpose, unbroken across centuries. Each taught the next generation of zealots, each a candle ignited from Elarith’s original flame.
Corvin stood in the presence of a network centuries old, self renewing, patient, and terrifying in its clarity. These were not mad dabblers in undeath. This was a dynasty.
And it had thrived unnoticed beneath Umbraveyn’s soil.
From Serian’s memories alone, Corvin had already begun piecing together the hierarchy and nature of the undead around him. As the weight of that knowledge settled, he turned his focus inward. His daily limit of thirty spores would be well spent here.
He began with the weakest of the undead necromancers. One by one, he sent his spores fine threads of intention and hunger. Latching them to withered minds and waiting souls. None resisted. None noticed.