#lore? lore.

Bonus: Canon lore (when they were young)

At the edges of the clearing, blurry silhouettes stood unmoving, watching through the heavy rain, but she could not feel their gazes on her, nor on the skeletons that kept shooting from the ground around her, positioning themselves around the reincarnation like a defense squad – a near-impenetrable wall of calcium phosphate. Except for the one she was leaning against, none of them seemed to be paying attention to her either, but to the enemies surrounding them.

Carefully, she pushed herself back to her feet, clinging to the cool bone standing beside her as she took another look around the battlefield. Their opponents weren’t advancing on them, despite the advantage they would have given Lexa still hadn’t fully recovered from the attack that had shook the clearing. Instead, they all just stared at something – someone – stood in the center of the clearing.

Evelyn, panting, was kneeling on the ground only a couple of feet away from her. A dense black fog – their umbrakinetic powers, Lexa realized – wrapped around their legs like serpents slithering home to their master, retreating back to the Necromancer’s soul and away from the edges of the clearing they had sent them to.

At first, the reincarnation merely thought their friend was sensing for bone remnants buried deeper underground, but upon closer inspection, aided by a lightning strike that, like a paid actor, perfectly illuminated the kneeling Necromancer’s face, did Lexa notice the crimson staining their skin, the red liquid dripping from their nose, their ears, their lips as they struggled onto their feet, swaying on the spot with a hunched posture, their left hand that usually sprouted a dagger now tightly pressed against their side. There was a tension in their body that could rival the one in the air around them, but despite it all – despite the inhumane pain they must be going through – Evelyn’s expression was the epitome of tranquility.

Lexa’s face, on the other hand, was laced with worry. Since meeting them, she had never seen the Necromancer in this sorry of a state. Their finger tips, and the veins running through their hands and arms, had turned a shade of black she had not seen before, and the sclera of their eyes threatened to darken to a similar hue. A blade of solid shadow manifested in their free hand, its hilt decorated with bone that wrapped around their hand as if to ensure they became one. And then, they took a deep breathe, repositioned their feet, and rose back to their full height.

The skeletons around Lexa shifted closer to the woman, catching her by surprise, and drawing her attention back to the enemies watching them from the sidelines, silhouettes momentarily lit up by another wave of lightning strikes. Each of them wore a different expression, ranging from shock and disbelief to something akin to fear to an eerie indifference that gave her goosebumps.

To one side stood the Dark Riders, slowly retreating into the safety of the woods, clearly uninterested in starting a fight with someone whose powers nullified theirs in a matter of seconds – Erissa’s mind manipulation tactics were useless on the Necromancer, while Jay’s illusions were thwarted the second they came to be, burst into atoms by skeletal spires shooting from the ground as soon as the Dark Rider had created them. Sabine’s flames were useless against walls of bone, and while Katja’s ice was the most effective weapon, the Ice Queen couldn’t care less about Garnok’s demand to get his former Sinner back.

On the other side stood a pair of twins that Lexa hadn’t met before but knew from her friend’s tales about Dark Core: Human vessels that held fragments of Garnok’s souls, gifted with abilities that far surpassed those of the Dark Riders. The taller one, a man with blonde curls, was staring at Evelyn in shocked disbelief, hands bawling into fists as the glow of hellfire disappeared from his fingertips. Beside him, held back by the man’s hand, stood a slightly shorter woman, her disbelief mixed with frustration and disdain, furious that her spears of black ice had been destroyed by simple shadows.

A few feet away from the twins, obscured by shadows that did not belong to Evelyn nor the stormy evening, stood a face the woman had not seen before, dark eyes watching the Necromancer with an expression that didn’t reveal anything. Behind him, raven wings seemed to sprout from his back, though the reincarnation could not tell if they were real or a mere illusion, and the blade he held in his hand seemed constructed in the same way as Evelyn’s, though were their friend’s consisted of nothing but shadows, the man’s glowed as if it was made of pure light.

Only now, so many fights and altercations later, did the reincarnation realize why their friend was so special – why Garnok was so desperate to have them back. Why the Dark Riders were so hesitant to continue their missions whenever Evelyn made their presence known. Why Sands did his best to lure Evelyn back to Dark Core with fake promises and emotional manipulation.

The eldritch nightmare could create as many Sinners and Vessels as he wanted, but there was no way he would ever be able to replace a prodigy. There would only ever exist one Evelyn. Garnok’s first Sinner will always be the only one with access to powers that could rival the Gods, and there was nothing that would stop him or his lackeys from trying to regain control over them.

“Open a portal and leave,” a familiar voice called, and Lexa’s attention was drawn back to Evelyn, the Necromancer’s back facing her, “I’ll hold the line until you return with backup, understood?”

When Lexa hesitated to comply, Evelyn turned to glance over their shoulder, the reincarnation’s blood running cold when they locked eyes with them. “Did you hear me? Open a portal, leave, return with backup. Now.” Another heartbeat of hesitation, and then the Necromancer’s voice echoed across the clearing with a level of authority that Lexa hadn’t heard in a while, “I said now.”

And so she did. The portal opened almost effortlessly, and before Lexa could promise that she’d come back for her friend, one of the skeletons dragged her through to the other side.