The groans of his wounded colleagues barely disturbed the heavy silence, their cries muffled by the sound of rustling leaves under the alien winds.
Derek's body lay cooling on the blood-drenched earth, his final expression of betrayal forever etched into his features. His life, along with the secret which had eventually cost it, was now Dante's.
A wish. The ultimate weapon. So vast were its conceptions that it nearly overshadowed the slaughter going on around them. Nearly.
Dante surveyed the four shadow puppets standing guard silence.
'His limit is five. He has a space to occupy.' His gaze fell upon the most rarefied corpse on the field: Derek.
He was strong. Strong enough to have had his power augmented by an artifact. His spirit himself would make a far more potent slave.
He stepped a pace forward, his boots squelching into the mud and blood. He placed his hand upon Derek's forehead. It was still warm.
They were all watching this, feeling a fear that could have been touched. It was different from raising goblins.
This was not simply animating a monster; this was enslaving the soul of a man they knew, whom they once called a leader.
It was an act against the prime laws of creation. It was sacrilege beyond what mere killing had been.
"
You thought you could be a king," Dante whispered into the corpse. "You were right. You will be the crown jewel of my collection."
Just his abboutn to close the eyes and to pull.
Ground spirits of Derek`s teammates had been dazed and putty for his manipulation, while Derek`s spirit was an inferno of pride, hatred, and most importantly--betrayal. It fought back.
A vicious psychic recoil flashed through Dante as he dragged the spirit out of the shell of his body. An agonizing and furious scream freshly reverberated in his mind.
It was a phantom pain unrelated to the body, yet closely tied to his soul. The raw, undiluted rage of a mighty will being battered and made anew.
The shadows around Derek's body had been twisting and writhing, but now they were even more thrashing. They were not simply ascending; they were forcefully constraining, hampering into the very image of being.
A figure was beginning to form, taller and broader than his other puppets. Perfect dark silhouette of Derek himself.
The form seemed to bleed a light almost crimson, a tarnished outline of the artifact that had given him strength.
The toil was colossal. It was as if property wrestling with a demon nested deep inside his own head. But Dante was the stronger. He was sovereign here.
With a final, head-crushing exertion of will, he splintered what remained of Derek's resistance and shackled his spirit to his command.
His new puppet rose tall. His fifth and final summon. The Juggernaut.
Task complete, Dante scanned his new army, a collection of the damned. They testified to his power and were instruments carrying out his will.
First, the Shadow of Derek, The Juggernaut. He was the masterpiece. Taller than the others, he crackled with a faint crimson aura.
He no longer had the sword of flesh but could manifest a greatsword of pure solidified shadow.
His powers were a cruel echo of what he used to be, a Spectral Strike with devastating force, while an Aura of Dread thrummed from his mere presence into the minds of lesser beings, striking unmitigated terror into them.
Standing next to him was the Shadow of the Wardcrafter, The Guardian. This puppet was, after all, his shield.
It was a stoical figure that silently flanked behind him and could conjure shimmering walls of dark energy with its Phantom Ward, capable of blocking both physical and magical attacks. It was the reason he could stand on the front lines.
Then there was the Shadow of the Phantasmist, The Deceiver. A slender twitching figure, it was always shifting at the edge of his vision.
It could weave illusions, create Ghostly Images to mislead and confound his enemies, turning the battlefield into a nightmare of his choosing.
Floating without a sound, the Shadow of the Graviton User, The Anchor, controlled him.
He could exert spectral force over a small area, magically imposed Weight of the Grave to slow enemies down to a crawl, pinning them in place for the slaughter.
And finally, the first shadow he had raised in this battle, the Shadow of the Toximancy user, The Corruptor. A hunched, seeping figure that constantly leaked a faint, spectral poison.
It could create a Miasma of Decay to drain an enemy's strength over time, a slow, insidious killer that complemented the blunt force of his other summons.
Five puppets. A juggernaut, a guardian, a deceiver, an anchor, and a corruptor. His own little dream team, paid for with the lives of his enemies.
He felt a cold satisfaction creep in.Here was true power.
But the price was heavier than he imagined. The backlash from enslaving Derek's furious spirit was not just an echo in his mind. It demanded flesh.
A sudden wrenching pain erupted in his chest, piercing like a hot iron pressed from the inside against the lungs.
This was a fetter to his five puppets, setting heavy chains to his soul, distorting his own life to sustain them, especially the powerful new one.
He willed him to suppress it. 'He could not show weakness. Not now. Not in front of them. His control was absolute. He was their leader, their god.'
His vision swam. The clearing's edges were blurring, and his teammates' faces faded into indistinct smudges of color. The strength drained from his legs.
He parted his lips to give an order or command to assemble the campsite, yet, instead of words, a hot, wet cough erupted from him.
He tasted copper.
Casting his gaze at the hand, this was now beautifully splotched with droplets of bright, crimson blood. His blood.
The world tilted beatifically. The horrified face of Erica was the last thing he saw before the darkness engulfed him as he pitched forward and crashed down onto the cold, unfeeling ground.
Terror flooded over the team. For a moment, they were but terrified students again, their once-invincible, monstrous leader suddenly becoming frail and human.
Erica's scream was the first assault on the silence. "Dante!" She rushed to his side with frantic movements.
Then she turned him over, shaking hands betraying her terror upon seeing blood that had soaked into his lips. "Rina, get over here! Now!"
"Masha was next, and the ordinarily calm girl was looking at him with a sickly hue of face now attained by kneeling before him: "He has pulse but too weak. What happened?"
Rina rushed to come forward and commandeered, "Get him on his back-gently!" Now she had the shaken-but-steady voice of a healer.
She had laid her glowing fingers on his chest trying to weave her life magic into him, but recoiled very shortly. "His mana... it's in chaos. It's tearing him apart from the inside. My healing, it's not working properly!"
"What do we do?" Eric asked in his deep voice, underlaid with uncharacteristic defeat.
"Just made command here, a fierce, odd clarity that came with that obsession," Erica continued.
She helped Dante position his head in her lap as she started to clean up all the blood on his mouth with her shirt sleeves. "To be warm, we need this. Masha, blanket up."
"Eric, Jin, guard. Talia, you have the best eyes, get to high ground and watch the perimeter. No one comes near us."
Her commands were crisp, and the team obeyed as if she were the master, despite being unleadered and frightened enough.
Masha and Rina put him on a bedroll and tucked him in a blanket.
Erica's hand rested on his forehead. She wasn't moving, strangely tender.
Down she stared into his unconscious face, folds of emotion disrupting terror, adoration, and an extreme possessive protectiveness.
At the moment where he lay absolute in weakness, that was exactly where her worship found its ultimate cause. No longer just a soldier in the army, she had become the guardian of its fallen king.