Beneath the Ruined Temple of Alainoth
weeks after the razing of Uthlyn's Church in the Commons
"What do you mean, no more farmers, imp?!" Dhalekar echoed in a metallic shriek from the cavity in his rotted throat, the vibrations from the enchanted stone embedded within flapped the remaining dry tissue in an way that grew more intense with his conjured voice.
"P-p-p-peasants, my lord! They have withdrawn from many of the outskirts v-villages; the C-Connlaothian soldiers are making p-patrols!" Bax, the fourth replacement of Dhalekar's assistant from the distant Xerodir, was ever loathe to bring this sort of news to his master's new ally, who seemed to have a complete misunderstanding of the value of his red-bottomed kin. "We have t-taken many, my lord, b-but these people in this realm, they are... are ... resilient?"
Dhalekar set down the intricate, bronze instrument in his bony fingers back onto his sea of charts upon the drawing roost in his laboratory. His tattered Nosferti silks flowed like a river of smoke as he descended in a footless glide to approach Bax, whom immediately began cowering and clutching his bestingered tail, and with a smooth gesture, the lich lifted the imp in a gentle levitation. "Then take the ogre; if patrols have come to this region, then their bodies shall suit my needs!"
"Y-yes of course, my lord!" Bax began whimpering a bit as he began slowly rolling in place without a means of stabilizing himself in the air. "But, but you demanded discretion, I am unable to break a command, even by a new one unless the first was dismissed! That was in the rules!"
The necromancer hissed. "You complain to me of your own negligence?!" His bones creaked as he waved his arm to his side, and Bax yelped as he found himself hovering over the rat pit, meters deep with squirming, screeching, modified rodent spies. "Perhaps you should join your predecessors then; I have not the patience for this!!"
"HEEEEE AAAHH NO NO NO, NOW NOW, MY LORD PLEEEAAASE - it was Goppul's doing, not mine NOT MINE! The mines, my lord, the mines!"
Dhalekar kept the imp in place, but began hovering towards him, his angered calling quelling a bit to give into restrained curiosity. "What are you prattling about- What about the mines?!"
"Goppuuuuuuul did it, my lord, not Bax! He feared you would kill him, a-a-as you did my lord, and rightfully so! His yielding of metal was too low, you were displeased!"
A groaning hiss. "By the prophets, whatever did that imbecile do before I gave his bones to Smiles?"
"He, he did as commanded, my lord! Increased production! However, he did not have the same command of discretion as loyal Bax, obeeeedient Bax! Bax follows the letter, my lord! Bax would never make the mines so noticeable! I saw it myself!"
"WHAT?!" The lich's voice pushed the limits of the stone, the shrill of the echoes even giving a small jitter in the surrounding undead laborer's resonance, as if they paused to cringe at the volume of it. With his free hand, Dhalekar reached out, and still standing meters away from the levitating devil, he pulled invisible strands and suddenly yanked his hand. With a terrible cry, Bax's left eye ripped from its socket, and followed the sharp gesture of Dhalekar's hand to go, careening, towards a heavy looking bronze gyro on one of the main tables - its rings had already begun spinning to impossible speeds, and almost hungrily it accepted the unwitting imp's offering, immediately and irrevocably rending it to an organic mist, which caused the device to glow with unsettling pink energies. Dhalekar unceremoniously released Bax into the pit of voracious rats, though he barely heard the imp's screams, so focused was he on the gyro as he glided over to it.
Within the gyro, very recent images of himself came into view, and with his skeletal hands the lich began manipulating the speed of the various rings, flashing to previous sights Bax had seen with the eye, until everything came to a dead stop. There it was, nestled only miles from Alainoth's ancient, thankfully well-hidden temple, was the site in which Dhalekar had ordered for his growing hoard of minions to begin extracting dense metals from for his purposes. It was, as the temple above his catacombs, hidden well enough by the growth of trees that lined the foothills of the valley that encircled Connlaoth, but true to the imp's words as he struggled helplessly for his life in the pit, there was a careless amount of expanding activity. Once living farmers and other country folk, the dead were toiling about all around the site, as if making any most direct path to the veins that were detected. Perhaps most dire of all, was the smoke that rose from one of the shafts. Whether it was Bax's predecessor or not, they had begun smelting right there in the mines itself for but a scant bit of productivity. Effective, of course, however, there could be little imagined to be an even more foolish beacon to their operations.
Dhalekar's fingers twisted into eachother into mock-fists, and his bones began to glow a sickly blue as he let out another would-be ear-piercing screech.
"WHERE IS SENKA?!"
