Whispers
of one thousand dead one thousand times over echoed throughout the
chamber so cold it felt as if all the life had been sucked out of it
and doomed to reside in the dark pool from which the sound resonated.
There is more truth to that speculation than one would like to
believe. The pool was so dark that it made the ancient stone walls
look like clouds that were captured from the highest reaches of the
stratosphere, brought below the ground and made solid; so cold that
if the substance contained in that pool had truly been water, it
would have become ice so frigid that it would be beyond all hope of
melting; so deep that it had been rumored to extend to the reaches of
the underworld itself. However, no one dared venture to prove this,
for the arcane and supernatural mystery of this liquid filled chasm
was sufficient to deter even the bravest and most knowledgeable of
mages and explorers from testing their hypotheses.
Created in the
very beginning of time by Mortrius, the god of death, the chamber was
said to house the orc armies of Atem-Mentirius, the god of life.
After creating the Earth and putting so much of his power and energy
into perfecting the evolution of the planet's earliest and most
primitive organisms, Atem-Mentirius began to harbor a growing
resentment against Mortrius that increased exponentially with each of
his creatures that withered and died before his very eyes. His salty
tears watered the land and became the oceans and seas from which even
stronger and more resilient forms of life emerged. Nevertheless,
there always came a time when Mortrius would extend his ephemeral
plasma claws unto Atem-Mentirius's creations and with the swiftness
of a raging hurricane, but the gentility of a light breeze, take the
part of himself that had been invested in it under his dark,
translucent cloak and return that part back to Atem-Mentirius.
Though this allowed him to give life to another, more advanced
creature, the god of life was horribly upset that he had put a part
of his divine force into an object, made it grow and change and gave
it animation only to have its spirit later sent back to him in the
hands of that destructive demon, Mortrius. His heart bled as the
heart of his animals stopped, his eyes drooped and shed tears as his
plants wilted and withered away every winter.
Around the time of
the dawn of the human race, Atem-Mentirius had devised a plan to
unnaturally prolong the life of the population of the planet.
Disguised as a wizard, he taught every spellcaster he encountered a
series of charms and curses to give them immortal life. This
information spread more quickly throughout the Draconic-speaking
world than any other part before the invention of the Common
language, another one of Atem-Mentirius's pet projects. Its purpose
was to act as a carrier for the spells of immortality, but by giving
everyone a way to communicate directly with any race, it prevented
most wars and petty disputes, further pleasing the god of life.
Noticing that power hungry wizards and sorcerers had learned how
to cast spells they shouldn't have to prevent him from ending their
lives, Mortrius cursed them with decay that would progress naturally
so they would regret ever letting Atem-Mentirius's words into their
ears. Upon hearing this, Atem-Mentirius turned to the orcs, the
strongest and most advanced race of the time period to aid him in his
battle against Mortrius.
Though Mortrius did not have the power
to create new life, he did have the power to mutate existing
organisms in such a way that they could destroy another species. And
so he took the simplest one-celled amoeba he could find and
manipulated its genetic structure so that it fed off of the life
force of orcs.
It started out as an innocent cold that spread
unusually fast throughout the tribes of orcs aligned with
Atem-Mentirius. Soon the orc armies dropped like flies as the
succumbed to an illness far worse than the Black Plague. After death,
Mortrius took the spirits of the orcs to the dark pool to linger
helplessly until he saw it fit to either use them in an army of his
own or set them free to rejoin the Life Cycle. Those remaining alive
aligned themselves with him in exchange for their lives. He spared
them, but showed no mercy with Atem-Mentirius. He was doomed to stay
in the pool to be tormented by the very souls he had condemned to be
there, hiding in plain sight where no one with the power to release
him would think to look; underneath the castle that he had built and
inhabited since the beginning of time to wait for the day that would
never come; the day when he would be found. And set free.