“Resistance is futile, Behemoth,” another Arbiter added. “You cannot harm us. You know this.”
“I know,” the Sleeper agreed.
The Arbiters immediately forgot about him and bound me again in their electric shackles. Behemoth didn’t bother breaking them this time.
And again, just like in my vision, the main Eye expanded to fill my entire field of view and boomed out:
“Silence confirms…”
“I am not guilty!”
“We are willing to hear arguments in your defense, Herald Scyth.”
Choose your words, do not hurry. The Arbiters are patient, Behemoth told me telepathically. The Arbiters had finally pushed him to the side, closing their circle around me and cutting off all escape again.
I took a deep breath, then spoke calmly:
“I’m an ordinary human. I was subject to the undead curse when I killed Dargo the lich in the cellar of Nergal the Radiant’s temple. It was from him, not by my own will, that I got the Mark of the Destroying Plague. A little later, a messenger from the Nucleus appeared in Tristad and ordered me to infect the townspeople and open a plague portal. But I didn’t do it!”
The bodies of energy hovered, swaying slightly in the air. Even the crackle of their electricity quietened.
“For my disobedience, the Nucleus deprived me of my Mark and gave it to a sentient by the name of Polynucleotide. He was the one who opened the plague portal and brought the undead to sentient lands! My friends and I protected the city and destroyed not only the living dead, but even Polynucleotide himself, who had become the Herald of the Destroying Plague!”
“We know this, Herald Scyth,” the Eye said. “You are accused of erecting a Stronghold of the Destroying Plague in the Lakharian Desert, which opened the path to sentient lands for the undead legions.”
“I don’t deny it, but I can explain my motives. But first I have a question — why now? Why not back when I first opened the Large Plague Portal?”
The Arbiters were silent. Without waiting for a reaction, I raised my voice:
“I demand an answer from the Celestial Arbitration! Why now? Why not back when Shazz the lich’s huge undead army was attacking the troops of the sentient alliance? Back then I was undead too, and your sentence would have been well founded. Understandable! You, the impartial judges of Disgardium who instantly react to any violation of a registered contract, took so long to act? Why?”
The Arbiters began to crackle so loudly that goosebumps ran down my skin. That usually happened when they spoke, but now they weren’t saying a word. As if they wanted to say something, but thought better of it, changed their minds. An unnaturally elongated white spark stretched between the Arbiters, jumped from one to the next, but didn’t disappear — it froze, connecting them in a chain.
And then they all spoke as one, monotonous and lifeless:
“The priority for the influence of the Destroying Plague on universal balance has been altered. Source of change undetermined. External interference detected in the Celestial Arbitration priority list. Analyzing…”
The Arbiters sank into their ‘analysis’ or thoughts, and Nether knew what exactly their controlling AIs were considering. Probably the contradiction I’d pointed out to them.
In the meantime, I started to understand what had happened. Or rather, what might have happened according to the script.
Basically, an Emissary of the Destroying Plague in (Big Po or myself) opens a plague portal in Tristad. The one who completes the quest gets the rank of legate. Not Supreme Legate; his function is to open the way for the undead by erecting a stronghold in Tristad. The Destroying Plague begins to capture nearby territories, a global notification of the event is sent throughout Dis, and a huge crowd of players stands up to battle against the undead. The legate gets a new quest from the Nucleus — to find the cultists of Morena. Until this point, events have been underwhelming, mostly because Tristad is still a sandbox inaccessible to high-levels. The legate finds the cultists of Morena and turns them undead. Or if he takes too much time over that… Well, then the Nucleus takes control of him and acts out the rest of the script, making more legates from among the cultists.
I suspected that the choice of the goddess’s followers was not random. Morena and the Reaper were connected, and maybe that meant the cultists made particularly powerful legates. And then the fourth playable faction would have been officially launched — the Destroying Plague. Then the Arbiters would grab the player guilty of it. And it was all part of the gameplay.
In practice, things went otherwise. I was banned, Big Po opened the portal, but died at my hands, and all the undead in Tristad were cleansed. So much for the script.
Oh, it was no accident that the undead instance appeared on Kharinza, of all places! No, of course there were instances like it all over Dis. All the same, once the Nucleus saw where I was (after all, there was still a connection between us), I think it poured everything it had into that particular instance. All its plague energy.
So the new faction’s launch scenario proceeded by its own accord, and everything went as it did. Once it had me, the Nucleus took control of my character, but (surprise!) the new legate renegade wasn’t masterless, he was an Initial of the Sleeping Gods themselves! Behemoth cut off the influence of the Nucleus and I was able to control Scyth myself. In the end, instead of nine liches and cultists as legates, the Nucleus got nine undying
