Pandora

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The trials were going well this time around. All the initiates had successfully accepted Mother’s gift and developed festering plague, seeming to endure it admirably. Yes, they were going very well indeed. Until dawn of that accursed day.

On that day, the meditative silence of the trials was finally broken by agonized screams. Two of the initiates were beginning to succumb - a Mirror of no real standing and, more worryingly, a young Imperial named Pandora. The Mirror lay prone - pale and sweating. Meanwhile, Pandora shrieked and writhed in agony, tearing at her eyes and flesh with frantic abandon. Of course, the overseeing Necromancer was disappointed, but they had expected this; it happened every trial.

When they approached to neutralize the incoming Ghouls, droplets of Pandora’s blood splattered across their hide, and burned. It burned and burned and burned. Immediately their flesh was inflamed, blood vessels bubbled and burst at once beneath their skin. In a panic they called for Mother’s aid, to pull the disease from their blood, but it persisted somehow resisting their call.

How could this be? Was this new infection Mother’s will? Had they been abandoned?

Again and again they called to no avail.

As the illness took ahold of them, the Necromancer rasped hatefully, “By your will, Plaguebringer, I shall perish in vain,” then they grinned full of malice, “But by my will, I shall be the last to receive this gift!”

Raising shaky arms to the sky, they called upon magics they’d long ago forsaken after leaving their glacial homeland.

By this time, Pandora’s once brilliant white scales had turned an angry red, swollen with sickness. She continued to scream and writhe on the ground, never seeing the wave of frost before it washed over her, encasing her and all the other initiates in ice for eternity...

Decades later the frozen monument of the failed trial still stands; the shame of all Iceborn Necromancers. It is a place shunned and avoided for its accursed fate. Unbeknownst to all, in its neglect – the magics that encased it had lost their power.

Dormant no longer, pale, frosted eyes blink away encrusted ice crystals. With an echoing crackle, the being pulls itself forth from its icy tomb, uncaring of the skin that sticks and tears away. Shaking its mighty mane, it looks around…and sees nothing. Unperturbed by its apparent blindness, the being struggles to recall what it was doing prior to awakening.

“Pandora,” a voice seems to whisper, “Make Mother proud.”

At once her warped mind understands. Yes, I must share Mother’s blessing.

Every step she takes beneath Sornieth’s blazing sun slowly thaws her virulent pathogen. Frostburnt flesh slakes off, allowing rivulets of blood to spill forth and stain the earth.

Soon all will fear the agony of Pandora’s Blood.