Underland - Chapter 1: Beneath the Earth

© 2021 Maxime Julien Durand / Void Herald

All rights reserved. Maxime J. Durand is the exclusive owner of this book ‘Underland’. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher. For permissions contact, send a mail at: [email protected]

Any perceived slights to specific people or organizations are unintentional.

Valdemar was raising the dead in the barn’s basement when the knights broke down the door.

He knew they were knights because of their metal footsteps above his head, and because his protective wards hadn’t alerted him to their approach. This implied the presence of at least one magician, and local militias couldn’t employ spellcasters.

The Dark Lords would never allow it. Just as they didn’t allow Valdemar to practice magic in peace.

Unfortunately, though he was no stranger to escaping from the law, the necromancer didn’t have time to flee these imperial lap dogs. He had already started the ritual and wouldn’t back down.

Valdemar had invested too much in this project to stop now. He had spent years of his life fruitlessly trying to decode his grandfather’s journal, consorting with criminals to get his hands on banned occult texts, studying Derro technology to fill the gaps in his spell… he knew it would work, if only people would just let him work in peace!

An otherworldly crimson light illuminated the dark basement, as the young warlock’s blood circle radiated with necromantic energy. A pyramidal, ox-sized machine of Valdemar’s design stood at its center, a pedestal of metal plates and pipes holding a triangular glass container. His late grandfather’s old, black journal rested inside it, working as a focus to summon what remained of the owner’s soul.

Or at least, that was the idea, but the spell demanded more. More power, more life.

So Valdemar, who had already lightly cut his thumb open to draw the circle, dragged an athame dagger from under his black robes and slashed his left palm open. Blood poured down his pale skin, and he applied it to the circle. The magical symbol hungrily drank on his life fluid, while the machine’s pipes let out crimson steam. The knights had moved right above his head, the wooden planks creaking below their feet as they moved towards the basement’s trapdoor.

“Stop this foul sorcery at once!” One of them called from above, but Valdemar ignored the order.

A translucent, greenish ectoplasm had started to form inside the glass and above the journal. The ghostly matter rushed through multiple shapes in quick succession as it gained strength, its surface so smooth and polished that Valdemar could see his own gaunt reflection on it. The necromancer’s short, messy white hair bristled from the ambient magic, and his ghost grey eyes had turned bloody red.

“I was right!” Valdemar grinned, as the ectoplasm coalesced into the shape of a skull. “My ritual works!”

Every illegal spellcaster Valdemar had met had told him that it was impossible, and yet here he had proved them all wrong! He had pushed beyond the boundaries of magic!

The sorcerer heard the trap door shatter behind him, and looked over his shoulder as lanterns cast light into the basement. A warrior in plate armor took a step down the stairs, the conical-shape of his helmet and the golden links around his neck identifying him as a Knight of the Chain. He carried a blue lantern in his left hand, and a sword in the right.

“Valdemar Verney,” the knight uttered with a deep, bellowing voice. “Cease this spell at once!”

“Don’t go down the stairs!” Valdemar warned him. Though he disliked knights, he didn’t want them to die either. “I trapped them so as not to get interrupted! If you trigger my spell, I can’t stop—”

Unfortunately, the hotblooded inquisitor ignored the warlock, and accidentally activated the hidden summoning array hidden beneath the steps.

A flash of violet light erupted from beneath the wooden stairs, and green tentacles surged from beneath them. They caught the knight’s legs by surprise and slammed the surprised warrior against the basement’s wall. The beast had fallen upon him before he could even raise his sword, and his lantern shattered on the ground, the ghostly fire within extinguished.

“You fool!” Valdemar angrily scolded the knights. “I can’t control it after it’s summoned!”

The monster that emerged from beneath the stairs was larger than a beast of burden, a writhing mass of tentacles with a single, loathsome red-rimmed eye at its center. Lamprey-like mouths opened all over the eldritch being’s limbs and attempted to reach the knight’s flesh beneath his armor.

“A Gnawer! He’s a summoner!” The captive knight shouted, before letting out a scream. A tentacle had twisted his sword-arm, and another violently struck his helmet. Gnawers were the weakest and stupidest of the Qlippoth extra-dimensional entities, but still far stronger than any normal human.

Unfortunately, these monsters only sought to feed after being called to the material world. The best Valdemar could do was to exclude himself from the menu when he set the summoning array.

“Release him!” Valdemar ordered just in case, but his summoned attack dog summarily ignored the order. Oh well, I tried, the sorcerer thought as he focused back on his ritual.

He could always interrupt his ritual and magically dismiss the Qlippoth back to its home dimension, but that meant a quick arrest and the destruction of his machine. Valdemar didn’t wish to add the maiming or death of a knight to his already existing list of crimes… but his work was too important.

Besides, he was already bound for prison, what was one more crime? In the end, his success would excuse everything.

While the knight struggled against the Qlippoth, the ectoplasmic skull beneath the glass started to grow ethereal skin and hair. At long last, Valdemar recognized the old, wizened face of his maternal grandfather.

“Grandpa, it’s me, Val,” the warlock whispered. “Come back to us…”

Two more knights jumped into the basement to help their struggling comrade; another Knight of the Chain, and a figure wearing the purple pointy hat and cloak of the Knights of the Tome over their armor. The latter didn’t carry either a weapon or a lantern, and didn’t need them.

“Begone, monster!” The Knight of the Tome shouted at the Gnawer with a high-pitched female voice, her hands shining with a crimson light. The flash forced the eldritch monster to release its prey, allowing the two Knights of the Chain to hack its tentacles with their sharp blades. “Begone!”

To Valdemar’s horror, the light of her spell started interfering with his ritual as well. His grandfather’s ectoplasm flickered, the machine’s pipes thrummed like a beating metal heart.

“Stop!” he shouted at the inquisitors, as the ectoplasmic face beneath the glass started degrading back into a skull. “Your spell interferes with mine!”

As his blood fueled the circle, Valdemar raised his free hand and dagger at the Knight of the Tome. He sensed her magical defenses flare to life, as he attempted to establish a mental connection with the blood flowing beneath her skin. Fortunately, she was a middling spellcaster and too busy focusing on her own spell.

“You are strong in the Blood, Verney, but you cannot hope—” The Knight of the Tome never finished her sentence, as Valdemar telekinetically slammed her against a wall. This disrupted her magic, but not quickly enough to save the Gnawer from a sword strike in the eye. The monster dissipated into eldritch smoke, and the remaining knights immediately charged at Valdemar.

They tackled him against his machine before he could retaliate with a spell, and forced his bloody hand away from the summoning circle. The necromancer’s shoulder hit a metal pipe, while his magical symbol shrank into nothingness. The absence of a blood source disrupted the spell.

“My ecto-catcher!” Valdemar panicked in despair while one of the knights twisted his dagger out of his hand and another slammed his face against the machinery. “No!”

But the damage was done. The glass container cracked while the ectoplasmic skull within screeched, its ghostly substance evaporating.

Within seconds, the blood circle vanished and the ectoplasm dissipated into green smoke.

Years of efforts and sacrifices, gone!

Valdemar let out a roar of despair and fury, as a Knight of the Chain put fanged shackles around his hands. The warlock sensed sharp teeth digging into his flesh and sucking his blood like leeches. He tried to telekinetically toss his attackers backward, but as more of his already depleted life fluid abandoned him, so did his magical might.

“Fucking cultist,” one of the Knights of the Chain said while hauling Valdemar away from his device. “When will your kind learn?”

“I’m not a cultist, you judgmental moron,” Valdemar protested. In response, the knight pointed at his black robes and the bloody dagger on the floor, to the warlock’s annoyance. “I was so close to bringing him back! You ruined everything!”

The Knight of the Tome had recovered her bearings by then, her eyes peering at the prisoner from beneath her helmet. “Valdemar Verney, you are under arrest for the importation of Derro technology, unlicensed necromancy, Qlippoth summoning, grave robbing, worshipping the Strangers, possession of forbidden texts, wounding a member of the Knightly Orders, resisting arrest, and forgery. What do you plead?”

“I don’t worship the Strangers!” Valdemar protested. First rule of summoning, never summon something stronger than you. “And I didn’t rob any graves!”

“You illegally reanimated the Hermitage family’s patriarch as a Mindless,” the Knight of the Tome replied.

Was that how they tracked him down? “I received authorization from the Hermitage family to animate their patriarch as a zombie, so he could keep working on their mushroom farm!”

Most necromancers usually asked for a cut of the zombie’s production as payment, while Valdemar had only wanted a quiet space for his summoning experiments, far away from civilization.

“An honest family whom you deceived, when you pretended to have a necromancer license,” said the armored witch. “You’ll go straight to Spellbane for this.”

“And the book?” One of her Knight of the Chain comrades asked, glancing at the journal. “Probably some forbidden magical text. We better burn it.”

Valdemar’s eyes almost bulged out of his skull. “It’s my grandfather’s journal!” the warlock shouted, his voice heavy with panic. “You mustn’t destroy it! There’s nothing magical about it, and the knowledge inside—”

One of his captors backhanded Valdemar in the face before he could finish, his left cheek and jaw feeling sore from the blow. The necromancer’s vision whited out for a second, and he could hear his own heartbeat slow down to a crawl.

“I will ship this document to Paraplex for study,” the Knight of the Tome replied as she smashed the glass container with her gauntlet, and greedily seized the journal inside. “Alongside your device and whatever notes we’ll find in that rat nest of yours.”

“You don’t know what you’re do—” The Knight of the Tome raised her hand before Valdemar could finish, his lips snapping shut on their own. “Mmm!”

The Knights hauled him outside the barn like a sack of flour, Valdemar’s eyes blurring as they set upon the Hermitage farm. Rows of tall blue mushroom trees stood around them, surrounded by green moss grass. The place looked so quiet, so peaceful, that the warlock almost considered falling asleep. The blood loss had exhausted him.

The black guard hounds protecting the barn watched Valdemar without a word, their will subsumed by a spell. The undead Roger Hermitage, a cadaverous corpse raised and animated by the necromancer himself, cut a purple mushroom without paying any attention to the group. His scythe was sharp, his eyes white and soulless. He would tirelessly work in death as he did in life, cutting crops to feed the living.

Valdemar’s eyes looked up to the dark rock ceiling three hundred meters above his head. Strains of luminescent lichen covered the stone, providing a dim faint light for the cavern’s inhabitants. This roof was the Empire of Azlant’s skies, the frontier of their civilization.

Only a frozen wasteland and an endless night awaited them on the surface, condemning mankind to eternal darkness.

I just wanted to see the sun, Valdemar thought darkly.

Valdemar spent the next few days in a daze.

Or were they weeks? Years? He couldn’t tell. The knights had strapped their naked prisoner to a wheel-shaped device inside a lightless cell, unable to move, unable to sleep. An iron mask covered his jaw, preventing him from speaking a word. Metal tubes implanted into his veins and linked to the machine drained him of his blood, replacing it with nutrients and chemicals. The potions kept the necromancer awake, but too weak to do anything but think.

Smart. For all the knights knew, Valdemar might have been an oneiromancer too, more dangerous asleep than awake.

But the wait slowly drove him mad. The prisoner tried to kill time by imagining new rituals or pondering ways to escape, but he struggled to focus for a long period of time due to the sleeplessness. The chilling cold didn’t help either, and the silence…

Sometimes, Valdemar could hear the sound of crashing waves beyond the cell’s barred window. The prison of Spellbane had been built in the middle of a lake inside the vast Domain of Alogi.

When the seven Dark Lords had wrested control of the empire, they carved out its vast caverns between themselves and called them Domains. Alogi’s ruler Ophiel was by far the most unstable of these godly sorcerers, an immortal body-snatcher. She raised a new fortress every few years in an attempt to create the perfect palace, but never felt satisfied with the end result. Spellbane had been one of her many abandoned projects, repurposed into a prison for spellcasters.

Valdemar knew it would be a temporary stay. The knights would torture the necromancer until they learned everything he knew, and then they would either execute or condemn him to the mines. In both cases, they would reanimate his rotting corpse for undead labor.

The Empire of Azlant didn’t waste resources.

Valdemar’s eyelids slowly rose, as they noticed a glow in the dark. Metallic footsteps echoed in the corridor leading to his cell.

Finally… by now, the promise of a sharp questioning sounded almost like a relief. Anything but the wait.

His cell’s door opened, a Knight of the Chain with a torch walking first into the dark, wet chamber. The multiple chains around his neck, each forged from a different metal, identified him as the prison’s guardian. Valdemar had learned that the hard way, when the man had strapped him to the wheel. A Knight of the Tome followed him, and a slender woman closed the march.

Unlike the two others, this one didn’t look like a knight. She wore a conservative outfit made of a dark red leather trench coat, a black shirt underneath, pants, and boots. Her face was the fairest Valdemar had seen yet, with pale blue eyes, chiseled cheekbones, and short, pale blonde hair. Her expression was as blank and unreadable as any mask though, and Valdemar noticed the sharp rapier and pistol around her belt.

Her visage looked familiar to the sorcerer, but he couldn’t put a name on her.

“That’s barbaric,” the woman said with a hint of reproach, her voice sounding as clear as water. By the Light, Valdemar would kill for a drink. “You’re killing him.”

“I wish, Milady,” the warden replied. “Never seen someone with a metabolism like his. We had to triple the usual doses to keep him docile, and he’s already building up a tolerance.”

“He’s probably a mutant of some kind,” the Knight of the Tome added, Valdemar recognizing her voice. She was the same witch who caught him at the barn. “Maybe even a biomancer who self-modified his own body.”

The blonde woman examined Valdemar with a quizzical look. The warlock held her gaze, his grey eyes cold and hateful.

“What can you tell me about his abilities?” the woman asked the inquisitors. If she could order them around, she was probably an agent of the Dark Lords, or maybe the Church of the Light.

Both spelt bad news.

Besides, the fact the knights called her ‘Milady’ also meant she was a noble of the Oldblood… and thus probably a spellcaster.

“He has very little training, Milady,” the Knight of the Tome said. “When he psychically struck me, he was all strength without precision. But the fact he could still maintain his ritual and attack me at the same time implies a tremendous natural talent. We didn’t take any risks.”

“So he’s an autodidact?” the noblewoman asked.

The warden nodded in response. “Any surviving Verney was banned from practicing magic after Her Imperial Majesty ordered their purge, as per the anti-cultist protocols. This degenerate probably self-taught himself from whatever wretched grimoires he could find.”

That wasn’t entirely true. The downfall of Valdemar’s paternal family had barred him from practicing magic unless he joined the Church of the Light or the Knights of the Shroud. In the first case, he would have spent the rest of his life in a monastery, forbidden from delving into the higher mysteries of the cosmic; and in the latter, he would have been ritually slain, raised as an undead warrior, and sent to perish again against the Derro Kingdom’s golem armies.

Obviously, neither option had sat well with Valdemar. He had inherited his grandfather’s dream, and sworn to fulfill it no matter the cost. Even if it meant violating imperial law.

“Why was he spared?” the noblewoman asked with clear curiosity.

“He’s a bastard, and only the main Verney line was wiped out,” the warden said. “Other branches had their assets confiscated and were subjected to heavy restrictions. We hoped to question him and learn more about his occult contacts, or have the Knights of the Mind open his skull.”

The prospect of torturing Valdemar certainly seemed to excite the inquisitor.

The noblewoman’s lips twisted in clear distaste. “I will have no torture on my watch,” she said. “Remove the mask.”

The Knight of the Tome slipped a key into the device, allowing Valdemar to move his jaw. He breathed through his mouth for the first time in what felt like years.

The blonde woman observed him for a few seconds, before politely introducing herself. “I am Marianne Reynard. I represent Lord Och, the Dark Lord of Paraplex.”

Lord Och. The oldest magician in the Empire, the third most powerful, and the supreme master of the Knights of the Tome. Wonderful. Valdemar wondered if this woman had come to order his execution in person on behalf of her dark master, or to send him to the mines.

“How did you…” Valdemar’s throat felt sore, and he struggled to articulate words. The chemicals in his body made him tired, so very tired. “Catch me?”

The warden snorted. “We’re the ones asking the questions here, mongrel.”

“How did you catch him?” ‘Lady’ Marianne asked softly, to the knights’ puzzlement.

“We caught his Derro tech supplier, Armand of Mantebois,” the warden said with a shrug. “He sold out all his customers for a lighter sentence.”

“Did you kill him?” The prisoner rasped, the knight shaking his head in response. Good, that meant Valdemar could murder that traitor himself if he ever managed to get out of here. If Armand’s betrayed associates didn’t get to him first.

“I have questions for you, Mr. Verney,” said Lady Marianne.

“You already took everything from me… even my notes.” Even his grandpa’s journal. “What more do you need?”

“Clarifications,” the woman replied, moving her gloved hands behind her back. “Our researchers have studied your device, and from what they gathered, you were trying to revive a lost soul using a ritual of your own creation.”

Valdemar kept quiet, which the noblewoman took as an invitation to carry on with her blabbering.

“What bothers our spellcasters, however, is that your spell contains no sign of necromantic magic,” she said. “You used conjuration instead. A summoning circle. It is well-known that all attempts at summoning souls from the afterlife have ended in disastrous failure, and yet… witnesses affirm that you successfully called an ectoplasm of some kind.”

“I wasn’t trying to summon my grandfather’s soul.” Valdemar’s own experimentations had shown that if there was a way to break the Veil between Underland and the afterlife, it would need far more blood and resources than he would ever get his hands on. “I was trying to create an… echo.”

His interrogator frowned in confusion. “An echo?”

Valdemar was sorely tempted to stay quiet and let her figure it out by herself, before deciding otherwise. If these people truly wanted an answer, they would have the Knights of the Mind steal it from his brain.

Besides, maybe a far-sighted mage could use the knowledge to pick up where Valdemar left off. The prisoner doubted it, but hope was all he had left at this point.

“Souls leave a psychic imprint where they go… especially in their most precious earthly possessions,” he explained. The journal had been his grandfather’s lifework, his constant companion since he mysteriously landed in Underland. “My plan was to gather that… that remnant of psychic energy into an artificial ectoplasmic body… the way some extra-dimensional creatures manifest one to interact with our reality.”

“So you tried to create an artificial ghost?” Lady Marianne asked, the captive warlock nodding in confirmation. To her credit, she seemed to grasp the concept. “I see. You used your own blood as its anchor to the material plane, since you were the deceased’s last living relative.”

“Yes. My ecto-catcher device would have prevented the specter from… dissipating.” Valdemar would have crafted a golem to house his grandsire’s replica if he could, but the material had proven too expensive. “I knew the construct wouldn’t have been my grandfather’s soul but an echo… but I hoped that he would remember some things from his past life.”

“For what purpose?”

Because I wanted to see my family again, what else? Valdemar thought. And because I couldn’t fully decode the journal on my own. “I had… questions about his home.”

The more he spoke, the deeper Lady Marianne’s frown. “His home?”

Valdemar sneered. “You won’t believe me… you’ll call me mad.”

Nobody believed him. At best, open-minded people entertained the truth without truly accepting it. At worst they laughed, or accused him of being a cultist. By now, Valdemar knew better than to open his mouth.

“I can’t believe your words if I don’t hear them first,” Lady Marianne argued, trying to put him at ease. Valdemar couldn’t figure her out for the life of him. “I will not judge.”

She would. But in the end… What did Valdemar have to lose? He was already doomed.

“My grandfather is not of this world. He came from another place. Another world that still has a sun in the skies.” And he had spent the rest of his life trying to go home, without ever succeeding. On his deathbed, Valdemar had promised to pick up where he had left. “I wanted more information about it. To open a portal.”

Lady Marianne’s expression turned into a blank, unreadable mask, while the knights behind her exchanged a glance. “What was that world’s name?” the warden asked.

“Earth,” Valdemar replied.

A short silence followed.

And then the knights burst out laughing, to Valdemar’s silent rage. Only Lady Marianne remained serious, her gaze thoughtful.

“Earth, like the dirt?” the warden asked with a mocking chuckle. “You cultists couldn’t find a better name for your pipe paradise?”

“Earth exists, you close-minded moron,” Valdemar said angrily, when he couldn’t take the laughter anymore. Somehow the rage made him stronger, dissipating the chemical-induced haze. “And one day I will find it. A land with a clear blue sky and where the sun—”

“Still shines, yes I’ve heard those words before,” the warden cut him off dismissively. “You’ll prove nothing, you madman. If you’re lucky you’ll spend the rest of your life and undeath toiling in the mines. Or maybe we’ll burn you. It’s been a while since we put oil on the pyre, and the kids love the fireworks.”

“No,” Lady Marianne said softly. “Release him.”

The knights stopped chuckling, while Valdemar blinked in surprise. “Milady?” the warden asked in confusion.

“Release him,” Lady Marianne ordered, this time more firmly. “He’s going to the Domain of Paraplex with me.”

“Milady, you cannot be serious?” This time, the warden didn’t bother to hide his displeasure. “He’s a cultist’s spawn, a bastard brood, and a criminal. You heard him, he’s deluded.”

“These are Lord Och’s orders,” Lady Marianne replied, her words sending chills down Valdemar’s spine. “The Dark Lord wants to interrogate him personally.”

He has read the journal, the prisoner realized, half with hope and half with dread. And if he believed even half of it…

Maybe Valdemar would get to see the sun one day after all…