Hello fellow fans of Auriga! I want to share a story which I wrote. It's about one of the most memorable Endless Legend game sessions I played. Lots of interesting events happened there and it inspired me to write all these words.

Disclaimer: 1) Universe of Endless Legend and its characters belong to Amplitude Studios 2) I'm not native speaker.

Enjoy!

Too Many Monsters (1/3)

​Kuula had to admit that the unknown builders had done a good job.

Everything in the semi-dark hall suggested to him that he was in an underwater cave, but not in the pleasant type of cave that dreamers would imagine.

The massive walls, carved of holey grey stone, seemed damp. The arches of the ceiling were jagged and uneven. The lack of light made the air in the room seem murky green. It was not an underwater cave, and there were no currents, there was only an unpleasant drought.

Kuula couldn't help thinking that cold drops could fall on his head at any moment. It was very unfortunate - now inattention could cost too much.

The burly creature opposite him blinked all his different eyes. It felt at ease, leaning on an ornate golden staff.

It felt like the master.

 "Do you know Orosou?" Sklera asked, the blue ridges on his scruff moved like gills that drew water.

Kuula nodded cautiously.

 "Your tribeswoman failed ‘my’ mission. And was captured."

Kuula knew her, and for a moment he felt a twinge of sympathy.  He had never thought shenanigans of fate brought her too to this salt-smelling, unfriendly land. But the moment of weakness was short-lived. Why had Sklera informed him about it? He didn't do anything without a reason. Failure of Orosou couldn't be a reason to share precious information with a landman. Sklera certainly did it because of the strange whim of his race. The Morgors believed that all beings of the same race were connected.

But certainly not as tightly and faithfully as the Morgors themselves.

They were a race of telepaths with a single mind and they had emerged from the depths of the oceans less than a decade ago. For centuries Auriga had already been relentlessly torn apart by a dozen races, but the Morgors had surpassed them all in a very short time and had gained a bloodstained fame. Suspicious, cruel, unable to understand those who did not possess a single mind, and therefore despising the ‘one-minded’ inhabitants of the land, they became the scourge of their neighbours and the nightmare of the inhabitants of the coastal settlements.

They weren't enthusiastic about communicating with the land-dwellers, unless someone mad would count the massacres as communication. The only exception were the mercenaries, whom the Morgors eventually accepted as a handy tool and eagerly invited to sign contracts.

Sklera had explained all of this to Kuula, without hiding anything, on their first meeting. Sklera, a half-mad commander who owned his own network of informants made up of telepathically intimidated creatures of other races. The way he had inflated his shapeless body might seem amusing to someone but not to Kuula. He wasn't amused at all when Sklera had proudly and arrogantly told him about 'his' telepathy gift. And 'his' had always meant the entire Morgors race. 

Kuula was a professional infiltrator and assassin from the Forgotten Ones. But he was an ordinary human and could only guess what the words ‘single consciousness’ meant. But looking at Morgor creatures, he caught himself thinking that the merging of their minds had gone wrong. They had not merged their talents. They merged their anger, anger at those who had dared to slip away to land and evolve without them. Evolve into beings so different from them! And that anger was directed towards every creature of Auriga.

 "That's unfortunate," Kuula said. He felt uncomfortable under the gaze of a dozen constantly blinking eyes, these weird spheres of murky crystal. Other races considered blinking and losing eye contact a weakness. The Morgors came from the depths of the ocean and could not afford such prejudice because of their physiology. Maybe it made them angry. Sclera's slimy eyes blinked, wetting their surface profusely, and his inhuman face seemed more and more irritated with each glimpse.

‘He expects to see more anxiety about the fate of a kinfolk,’ Kuula understood suddenly. It was irony. The Forgotten's upbringing prescribed to show as little emotion as possible. At least, in the face of everyone who wasn't a friend.

Kuula forced his facial muscles to relax, lowered the corners of his mouth and shifted his eyebrows. Deceiving Sklera's expectations would be foolish and unprofitable.

“What happened?”

“Too many monsters,” Sklera muttered, and Kuula chilled inwardly. There were only a few creatures which were called ‘monsters’ by the Morgors. 

“What was her mission?”

"To kill the governor of Yegh so that 'I' could finally wipe it off the map. It's a Necrophage lair. They are experiencing bad times. Because of 'me'” said Sklera, and Kuula thought he saw a smirk on the ugly face of Morgore. "Only the governor keeps this monstrosity from chaos and cannibalism."

 "A volitional personality,” Kuula nodded with respect. "And not one of them."

"It's good that you realize that. You are the next."

Kuula had been ready for this from the very beginning. Morgors didn't make appointments with drylanders for no reason.

"Who are they?"

"You will find out,” said Sklera, and his jaws twitched like they were trying to form a squeamish grin. "You want 'my' money so you will find this out by yourself."

***

His departure was several hours later. The ship was waiting for Kuula on the small mollusk-strewn wharf. Looked like Sklera had been fully confident that the mercenary would accept their contract and had taken care of the transportation in advance.

Kuula was glad to leave the Morgor settlement, he disliked Meruan as much as its inhabitants. Every piece of this country gave a sense that the Morgors did not like this land, this dry soil, but used it to gain strength and get their wet hands on other inhabitants of Auriga. To reach them and drown in their own blood.

The city of Meruan bore the mark of its sullen creators. They had the same smell - salt and rotten fish. Its buildings looked like primitive piles of underwater rock, yellowish barnacles covered it like lichens. And algae. Algae was everywhere, braided, crumbling, sticking out of every crevice. It made the city mired in malignant dreariness even more unwelcoming.

Kuula loved beauty - as much as his vocation allowed. Sometimes it favored his wishes: Kuula had used to have a contract with the Fierce Mages and had seen their cities full of spires and spikes. He had visited the Molraez, magnificent creation of Broken Lords and a chance to admire its beautiful castles before the city was burned and assimilated by the Morgors.

These short moments were part of the payment his customers were unaware of. The settlements of the Forgotten, Kuula's homeland, had nothing in common with luxury and swagger. Their nation, a nation of spies and shadows, could not have gleaming spires or stained glass windows that shimmered like rainbows. Their architecture was based on two principles. Functionality and stealthiness. Their settlements were faceless, and a person, who saw it for a while, couldn't recall its look and structure. These principles had served well to the Forgotten. Their lands didn't share the fate of said Broken Lords and their houses were still safe, not scattered in black ashes.

But they too fell on hard times.

That is why Kuula wandered among the monsters. For the yellow dust that could buy help for his people. His new mission was not much different from the other ones - an unpleasant errand from disgusting creatures and a tightly stuffed sack of dust in the end. Maybe this time the sack would have the smell of the swamp mud.

***

The voyage to Yegh lasted about three weeks. Time to time a glimpse of the image sneaked into Kuula's mind. It was a chained woman held in oozie moat. Kuula tried not to dwell in the vision - he had no rational reason to rescue Orosou. He was not her friend, just a mere acquaintance. The best way to help her was to complete his mission. With the governor dead, the city of Yegh should fall - the Morgors would do everything to see it in ruins. If Orosou survives, she would be released. But the odds were against her. Kuula knew that the necrophages were starving. They might have consumed her long ago - and that was not the worst fate for those who got into their insectoid limbs.

Kuulu had never been in the lands of the Eaters of the Dead, but he had learned all he could about them long before the mission. He feared them even before this mission and now he was even more afraid of the fact of facing them.

***

City of Yegh could easily fool naive and unaware creatures. They would probably scratch the back of their heads and ask “Isn't this place already in ruin?”.

It was a deception, primitive yet very convincing. The area was strewn with huge shards of stone and had no resemblance to a settlement. But if one would look properly, they could recognize a pattern. Then they could notice the dark spots of entrances at the foot of the stones. It led to underground labyrinths, dark and hopelessly confusing. Sooner or later, the eyes of the unfortunate one who dared to descend there would catch a glimpse of the shine. The shine reflected by membranes, dense like the skin of Ursa. Cells of the hive.

A few more steps inside, and one would notice the silhouettes of workers and soldiers maturing beneath the matte surface. The tunnel would curve aside and lead out into a big smelly room, where something would blacken. It would be best not to know that this 'something' is a cloud of insects swarming over a pit of corpses. A heart would skip a beat when understanding comes. 

The buzzing of flesh-eating beetles would fill the air. A quiet crunching of chitin. And a poor creature, mesmerized by the horrible sight, would be dragged into the pits. If they are lucky, they will become food. If they are not, the queen will lay her larvae in their corpse, and not-they-anymore will join the army of the necrophages.

Kuula had to use all the skills he had if he hoped to avoid such fate.

Too Many Monsters (2/3)

He approached the city cautiously and steadily, the way a spy slowly gains the trust of his would-be prey. The ship that had delivered Kuulu had slipped underwater, but the mercenary suspected that another Morgore watcher was lurking nearby. A slippery, weak, cunning creature that didn't want to engage in battles. It probably had delayed the message of Orosou's failure; and now it was here to inform Sklera about his success - or demise. No risk at all: the race of telepaths with fused minds could exchange news faster than others could breath.

Kuula spent three days hiding in the shadows pretending to be the one with the meager landscape, its dry bare rock. He watched the Necrophage patrols. The chitin-clad guards may have lacked the discipline of the other races, but their hunger, the insatiable hunger that made their tiny bug eyes burn with an eerie fire, made up for any lack of skill. The few Necrophage leaders who were said to possess developed intellect were mutants and aberrations. The rest of Necrophages were led by hunger and their instincts of natural born killers.

The Auriga's inhabitants didn't like each other. They could vow anything, but even the Drakken who called themselves ‘the diplomats’ stabbed their neighbor in the back or took up the torture instruments when the amorphous 'greater good' of their kind demanded so. But the Morgors and Necrophages still stood out. In what way? Kuula was used to analyzing and comparing potential contract givers, so he could give a semblance of an answer. The races of Auriga could hate each other, could turn their weapon on each other, weave webs, but it was the Morgors and Necrophages who had the hatred in their blood from the very birth. As if someone had deliberately put it there from the very beginning.

It was almost amusing that one monster hired him to destroy another. Kuula, however, was no laughing matter. He watched and carefully timed the patrols' rounds who emerged from the labyrinth by means of two soldered flasks containing tiny glasssteel crystals. The crystals had another use, they emitted a faint yellowish glow and could help him in the depth of maze should he find himself in pitch darkness. Next to the flasks, in a hip pouch, was hidden a precious compass bought from the Vaulters - in the depth of the mazes Kuula would probably have no way of navigating by the sun.

Kuula slipped into the labyrinths at dawn on the fourth day, hoping he would see the sunlight once more. By this time he got eternal disgust towards the stink of the green ooze - he had to cover himself with it head to toe to hide his scent from the keen sniff of the Necrophages.

But the ooze did its work: patrols did not notice him. Kuula waited until the chattering of their mandibles subsided. Then he went deeper into the intricacies of the maze.

Kuula saw the governor on his fifth day in Yegh and cursed the Morgors for their secrecy. He got all the explanations suddenly: how the foreign Governor had survived among the crowds of the Eaters of the Dead, and how he had maintained discipline and order. The governor was surrounded by a blue shimmering, smoke-like aura, and he couldn't be confused with any other creature. His armor, once shining brighter than fire, was now cracked and rusted, but the massive figure of the Broken Lord still projected strength and towered over the mutants in chitin. And not an ordinary Broken Lord: the austere pattern on the polished breastplate told the name to anyone who had the slightest interest in the affairs of the Ember Plains. Kuula, whose short name was not marked by any titles, recalled the name of his target in a twinkling. 'Target'. It was a bold word and his skills for a moment seemed feeble. But his skill should not fail him. It should be enough to lead him to victory and to the reward.

His target was known as Anwyn Wainbridge and in years gone he used to be one of the most brilliant strategists of the Broken Lords. Despite the ridicule of ill-wishers he had tried to find a cure for the malady that had afflicted his race and turned many of kindren into fleshless souls chained to armor.  But things changed. Some said that a dark shadow had fallen over his mind during one of his expeditions to the North Ruins where he travelled in search for a cure. Others said his mind had been crippled by the disasters that had fallen on his homeland. His Molraez and many other cities had been destroyed by the Morgors, and some said that the days of their kingdom were numbered, and it would not be two winters before the Amber Plains would kneel before new masters.

Now Kuula could judge for himself. Anwyn Wainbridge was driven into madness and despair deep enough to keep company with the Necrophages, but was still sane enough to rule them with a rod of iron. Necrophages couldn't consume fleshless ones  - but Anwyn Wainbridge still had all means to intimidate them.

Kuula huddled in a small niche in the wall and lurked, listening to the governor talking to the dozen necrophages around him. They were within easy reach. If Kuula's target was not the Broken Lord, his dagger would have been already sticking out of the governor's throat.

“No," Anwyn rumbled in response to a threatening demand: the Necrophages wanted to eat the workers that were not assiduous enough.

The petitioner's giant chitinous pincers snapped grouchily, his venomous stingers moved at the level of the governor's head.

“I demand it," the necrophage gnashed, moving toward the governor.

There was no warning. The Necrophage's silhouette split in two, and the bluish doppelganger rushed away, struggled for a moment, then shrank and disappeared in Anwyn's outstretched palm.

Even time itself stood still for a moment. Then the Necrophage's body sank to the floor like a clump of ooze. Kuula realized he had instinctively clamped his mouth shut with his palm to prevent his rapid breathing from giving him away. He had seen many things, but not the devouring of soul essence.

"You will follow my orders," Anwyn growled. The necrophages grumbled in discontent, their claws clenched. But a moment passed and they tilted their heads.

"We will follow your orders," a dozen mouths hissed out. One of them stepped forward, but its target was not the governor, it was the body of his dead kindred. The claws snapped, tearing a chunk of flesh from the corpse, bringing it to the creature's mouth…

That happened again. Kuula blinked in disbelief as he saw the ghostly doppelganger being torn from the body of the insolent Necrophage. He could bet that the Eaters of the Dead were as surprised as he was.

"I didn't give you an order," Anwyn said, ignoring the frustrated rattle of pincers and mandibles. He did not lay a hand on his weapon, the gleaming pillar of pride in a swirl of slime and mutations, and his boldness was a sheer madness in Kuula's eyes.

The Necrophages did not lash out at Anwyn.

"Will you let us eat their bodies?" one of them asked at last, a small one with bloody-red chitin.

"I will," Anwyn said and strode away - without a mere look at the scavengers who rushed toward the corpses.

***

Killing the Broken Lord was a tricky task, but the strained relationship between Anwyn and the Necrophages could tilt the balance in Kuula's favor. He had no illusions: the fate of Orosu, whose trail he still had not found, was a comprehensive caution. If the Anwyn had a reliable guard, not only a body of metal, Kuula would never have a chance to kill him.

Kuula expected that sooner or later the noble governor would wish to spend some time without his insectoid subordinates. It was only a matter of time, despite all the willpower of the Broken Lord. The day will come, and Anwyn Wainbridge will be full of controlling the distribution of workers and supplies, of checking that the patrols do their jobs, of making the soldiers hone their skills and not tear each other’s throats.

And then he will go to the only place suitable for rest. Into an abandoned hall with a half-collapsed ceiling, through the holes in which natural light dared to come. 

It was probably a natural disaster that pushed away the soil and allowed dry air from the surface to enter the hall. After examining the walls, Kuula came to the conclusion that the new conditions were lethal to the Necrophagous larvae for whom the room was built initially. Who knew?  Maybe the Necrophages were all in all capable of regret and considered the loss of their offspring a tragedy, and therefore didn't rebuild the room again.

But it was not about Necrophages and their feelings. In this hall Kuula found something that made his heart beat off the line. On the layer of whitish dust there were clearly visible prints of heavy boots, which could not belong to any of the Eaters of the Dead.

The wait had lasted almost two weeks, and they had been hard on Kuula. Necrophages scurried back and forth, sometimes too dumbed to move logically. Kuula heard they had received bad news about the other swarm, but that didn't make his days any brighter. He hoped it wouldn't give them the idea to scour the labyrinths for spies. Sometimes Kuula thought that the hive was trying to drive him insane, and the stench, which he should get used to, seemed more and more unbearable with each passing day.

He was desperately hungry. Like any of the Forgotten, Kuula was able to cut his diet and eat the dry rations, prepared according to secret recipes, for many days and still be capable to think and act effectively. But his food supplies were nearly gone. Kuula could not return to the surface, and the substance the Necrophage workers were eating seemed too dangerous to consume. From time to time his thoughts returned to Orosou, who was languishing somewhere in these mazes, perhaps, in some oozie cell. She fared far worse - if she was still alive.

Anwyn was in no hurry, and one morning Kuula began to ponder what is the best course of action. There were too many Necrophages in these tunnels and to attack them meant to sign a sentence for himself. That was merely unacceptable. But retreating now meant to lose his progress - and maybe chance to succeed. Kuula's experience had told him to leave this place - and not to leave his fate to chance. Dust was not worth it. If the labyrinths were not such a mad tangle of tonnels, he could find another way to succeed - free the prisoners, find exploits in enemy technology - but it was not the case.

Kuula was still lurking between sticky cocoons and sorting through these arguments that night. The night he noticed that Anwyn sended his guards away with a relentless gesture.

Pinch of pixie blood powder was put under the tongue - and Kuula came out of hiding, mentally asking his ancestors to watch over him.

***