the old whip scars burned on his back, the lash that took his life and gave him unending torment
writhed in his hand, almost alive. Mallokh was a shade, a spirit given flesh and life in order to
serve his master eternally, but Mallokh disagreed, and murdered his master with the very tool that
brought him this suffering. He spent two centuries in search of a cause to follow, but the
unearthly presence that followed him always drove away only the most persistent souls.

He looked down at the whip in his hand, the scourge that had brought about his current state, and
sighed. It was an ugly thing, almost a cudgel really, with a circle of iron wrought into the end and
straps like writhing dark snakes tied around it. The whole thing exuded a grim aura, beyond his own.
Despite his appearance, and demeanor, he still followed the ways of his god, the one who allowed him
to take the pact and break free of his masters control. The one that bound him to the flail.

Reaching his arm around to massage the ancient wounds on his back, he knew it could only mean one thing.
His old master Grohulus would be free from the pit again, to wreak havok upon the world of the living.
The flail in his hand seemed almost eager, willing Mallokh to tear Grohulus' soul free from this realm
and send it back to the dark depths of the pit. The whip wasn't evil, nor good. Between two worlds,
cursed by one and blessed by another, it was balanced directly in the center and it craved a reset of
the scales.

Mallokh strapped the flail to his side, seperating it from him would prove impossible, as the pact had
melded it directly to his soul. He could drop it or have it knocked away from his hands, but it would
always seem to show up back in them when he needed it to. The scourge itself was almost indestructable,
nothing short of a clash between gods could cause harm to it. The energies that went into forging the
pact between his soul and the weapon seemed to have forged it into a whole new class of durability. It
wasn't all beneficial, however. Wounds inflicted by the scourge seemed to shock Mallokh as much as his
target. His enemy would take the physical damage, and he would take the mental and psychological damage.
The open cuts and gouges would rot before his eyes, and yet whatever he was fighting would be almost
unaware, while Mallokh would feel the terror and the shock of the necrotic magic seeping into their body.

At first, it was almost overwhelming, but after decades of experience in using the weapon, Mallokh
learned to harness the energies to use in combat. Using the terror and shock, he could launch pure
bolts of force and necrotic energy from his hands.

Mallokh grabbed a small hand mirror from his pack and took a look at his face. His skin was pale, and dark
blue in color. And if you looked just right, you could almost see right through his skin. His face was angular
with rough features locked in time. His eyes the color of shifting glaciers, so bright that they glowed
unnaturally inside of his hood. A beard was beginning to form on his face.
He was tall, taller than most men. And his martial lifestyle showed in his heavily muscled form. He grabbed a
vial of blood, donated from the count of a small town he had cleared of bounties, in the form of payment. Using
a drop of blood, and the mirror and a small exertion of will, the blood drop pooled out over the entirety of the
hand mirror to form a scrying portal. Mallokh focused his mind upon his scars, upon that familiar feeling of
emptiness and hatred, and the blood upon the mirror swirled slowly. Increasing in intensity, the blood began to boil,
the volume of the blood much more than a simple drop, and suddenly the mirror exploded in his hand.

Mallokh wiped glass off of his robes. Things were about to get interesting.