Champion of the Deep: doom knells death descends from on high

Or'do's breath came in shallow, pained gasps; his ribs burning with agony, his muscles knotting into ironclad cords that bristled and writhed beneath his skin as if they were themselves alive and eager to rip free, bursting out with the elated frenzy of a captive beast tasting freedom once more. He stumbled, leaning heavily against the wall, his palm leaving a streak of blood upon it for his skin had peeled and sloughed away, leaving bone and severed veins that spurted his life freely. The Deep was not his to command, not yet at least, and drawing on it pained him as nothing else could.

Never again. He stooped panting and coughing before the door of fog. Another disk of black fire crept from his hand, thin rings appearing at his fingertips and boring into the stones, wisps of darkness creeping from the cylindrical wounds and reaching plaintive hands heavenward.

Never again. Or'do slammed his fist against the wall, spraying shards of broken rock across his chipped armour, glimmering splinters glancing off his weathered plates or clattering off his gnarled flesh.

Never again! Or'do forced himself upright, quelling the tremors that rocked him, stoking the fire that killed as much as fueled him. Fire dark as pitch and cold as ice slithered from his pores, wrapping him in a blindingly dark cloak that froze the earth he strode and sharpened the wind his movements made into blades chilling and keen as steel. He strode through the curtain of mist, its veiled and innumerable hands caressing him as if trying desperately to hold him back, pleading with silent voices, weeping for the death they knew would come.

Each step knelled on the stone as he strode through, raising dark eyes to the figure hunched in the circular room's center, a beast whose flesh bristled with glinting thorns of steel, ribbons of black leather draping its frame, trailing from limbs whose joints coughed gouts of steam with its every movement, veiling eyes that glowed like embers in the darkness of its skull; staring out from a brow laden in small horns edged in coarse spikes. It unfolded fingers broad as his leg, and stood to tower over him, its immense frame at least ten times his height, its massive chest with its plates of mottled, mouldering bone at least a quarter that terrifying measurement. The Deep's Champion tiled back its fearsome head, terrible visage hidden among the ribbons of knotted leather as it opened wide its immense jaws and unleashed a deafening howl that reverberated in his bones, and rang with the solemn tone of Death's footsteps.

Or'do's blood froze, yet he lifted his hands and sank into a fistfighter's stance all the same. It mattered not whether Dark nor Deep nor the Gods themselves stood against him. He could not fail. This was the lie to which he clung, the hope that sustained him, the fragile promise that he could save Aleorn, and share again the glory of adventure, the warmth of friendship.

Yet somewhere he knew: only despair awaited him.