Murphy appeared on a vast plain of gray. The ground looked like a salt flat stretching out for miles before fading into a cloud-covered sky. Not a single blade of grass, flower, or tree was present. The air was thin and low in oxygen. There was no movement nor sign of a single living thing; only the slow roll of thick storm clouds. The freezing temperature was amplified by visible frosty breath. Her exhales were plums of white consumed by the gloom. She looked down at her copper armor, which looked colorless in the dim light that pushed through the thick clouds. 

The two wizards stood beside her looking in the other direction. Behind her, the rocky earth met a low mountain and on the slope of the hill slumped the crumbling remains of a structure. It was at one time three stories, but the top floor and roof had caved in. Dark empty squares of windows lined the intact second and first levels. No door bared the blackened rectangle of an entryway. 

Murphy wasn't much of a tracker but it was easy enough to see the single set of footprints that stepped toward the building and disappeared. 

"He went in there," said Melock. 

"Where are we?" asked Murphy. 

"A planet on the other side of the galaxy," said Tykö consulting a scanner built into his mechanical arm. "This world is in a state of nuclear winter, as are three other planets in this system. It's a near impossibility for that to be a natural occurrence. There's a powerful white dwarf star out there, this place should be a tropical paradise. Clearly, this world once sustained life." 

Tykö's glowing red left eye was the only color in the bleak black and white landscape. He glanced at the building and a thin laser beam tracked out of his eye scanning the structure. 

"The stone supports are unstable. There's a muted power source on the third floor and what I can only assume is the Necromancer moving through the second level toward the power source." 

"If we can see him—" said Melock. 

An explosion on the top floor of the building sent a shock wave echoing across the salt flat. The force of the blast knocked Murphy to the ground and pelted them with stone debris. The ruins were engulfed in a dust cloud. 

"There goes the power source," Tykö said still standing with his robotic foot dug into the earth. 

Melock was levitating a foot off the ground, his hair blown back, his face scrapped by shards of rock, and his bite wound stained the bandage on his arm black. 

The building pancaked in a crumbling collapse. A wall of gray dust rushed out and surrounded them. Murphy could hardly see her hand in front of her face. The thin air, now full of tiny rock particles, burned in her eyes. She missed her helmet left behind on Abraxas. 

"Do we assume he survived that?" she coughed into the thick fog. 

The beam of Tykö's eye cut through the murk. "He's in there digging around." 

A secondary explosion rumbled the ground under their feet, threw even more dust into the air, and an ecstatic howl sounded from within the collapsed ruins. 

"Was that good or bad?" Murphy said. 

"It felt good for him," said Melock. 

"Then it's bad for us," said Tykö.

A hurricane-force wind hit them in the face. After the initial blinding, mountains came back into view, dust blew away in every direction, and the Necromancer stood before the pile of rubble. He held a thick-handled ball mace with large black spikes jetting out of it in one hand and Sid's spellbook in the other. The sleeves of his robe were tied up like a samurai, revealing bony white arms covered in tattooed runes. The horrific designs were abstract and symbolic but gave an air of ancient long forgotten evil. His wrists and forearms were wrapped in elegantly designed iron gauntlets that left his hands free for casting. A smirk sneered up in the corner of his lipless mouth. 

Murphy charged him. Her hammer swinging back and wide sailed with all the force she had toward his ghoulish head. The Necromancer moved so fast it seemed like slow motion. His smirk grew, he misaligned his black teeth, and he opened Sid's spellbook to the Blow of Mighty Smite. Simultaneously, he twirled his wicked mace with his other hand and it connected with Murphy's oncoming gravity hammer. 

The vile mace wailed as it spun. When it met the hammer, it absorbed the force of impact, spun it within a magical centrifuge inside the spiked ball, and released an amplified blow back into the oncoming weapon. The result was yet another explosion that rocked the silent world. The chunky rectangular anvil of gravity hammer shattered with a sonic boom. The shock ran down its iron handle shattering it into splinters.

Murphy followed through hard in her swing and the impact snapped her bronze-plated gloves, numbed her fingers, shot stinging waves of pain up her arms, and sent her sailing back; literally knocking her clear out of her armored boots. She landed at the feet of the two wizards with a look of astonishment stunned across her face. 

Tykö raised his dart gun and fired every antivenom dart he had. The Necromancer maneuvered his mace with blinding speed and deflected all but one of the oncoming needles. He angrily threw his mace down, leaving its handle sticking up and its spikes stabbed into the earth. Carefully, he pulled a dart out of his neck and examined it. He looked at his own blood on the tip, licked it off, and flicked the dart into the rubble behind him. 

Melock placed a supportive hand on Murphy's shoulder and whispered, "I grant you the rage of a hundred barbarians."

She was on her feet again before she understood what was happening. It was as if the god of war himself had stepped into her body. Her muscles flexed like they were made of titanium. She felt hyper-energized. Her mind focused like a laser beam. The pupils of her eyes grew to black discs with light green halos. All she could see was the Necromancer. The ultimate force of evil. The target of her life's purpose. 

She saw a vision of the Necromancer bringing out from under his robe a naked human baby. She had the bizarre feeling that she was both the baby and its mother at the same time. The Necromancer cackled a maniacal laugh before biting into the baby's leg and gnawing it off. The baby screamed and the Necromancer proceeded to eat it alive like Cronus devouring his children. The gods were not always benevolent, especially evil ones. She let the hallucinogenic image burn into her mind. Was this Necromancer the god of death?  Murphy felt her focus falter, her rage stagger, her strength fail. 

"NO!" she screamed before charging forward barefoot and empty-handed. 

"No indeed," mocked the Necromancer with a flip of his hand. 

Murphy's body went rigid, her muscles stiffened, and her joints fused. She stood frozen next to her tormentor, unable to move or speak. Only able to witness her failure. 

She felt the cold of the doomed world, struggled to breathe the toxic air, and ignored the sting of her tears as they froze to her cheeks. Hopelessness seized her soul, anger warped into despair, and melancholy became her identity.