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Let's Give 'Em Some of That Oblivion; [P] One of Aeyliea's characters
Topic Started: Fri Aug 2, 2013 6:25 pm (369 Views)
Keelin
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They brought him in. The human boy couldn't have seen more than seven winters, but he was a lot smaller than expected. Shy, too. Keelin waited. His parents nudged him over to the corner where she was sitting. "Can I see your hands?" The patient expression on her face was uncharacteristic of her. He looked away, hugging himself to keep his palms hidden. A mop of dirty blond hair fell over his eyes. "You're sick and I can help you. I just need to look at your hands." Keelin lifted her head just enough to peek from under the wide brim of her hat. Following his furtive glances revealed the issue. One of her hook-swords stuck partway out of her longcoat; she casually tugged the garment tighter as she shifted her weight on her chair. Keelin wore her orarion in its traditional configuration, draped across her shoulders, which -- unbeknownst to the people in the room -- was very unusual for her to do.

"She's a priest, Evan. If you do what she says, you'll feel better." The boy's father looked the most shaken up by the situation. He remained at the front of the room's small group, watching closely as Keelin accepted Evan's little hands. The bandages were removed first. Then she turned his hands over so they faced palm-up, revealing a grisly sight. The skin was crusted over, dry, and coated in streaks of violet and black that couldn't be washed away. A narrow spur of bone poked out from the pad of his right hand. It looked like a tooth.

"Does it hurt?" Keelin murmured. The boy looked conflicted for only a moment. Then he nodded. Without looking up, she spoke to the adults crowded in the small, stuffy room. "What did you do to the figurine? Did anyone else pick it up?" Her fingers wrapped around Evan's wrists. The curling gold tattoos on the knuckles of her right hand began to glow faintly. She took a glass container from the inside pocket of her longcoat.

"No," Evan's father replied. "I put on my falconer's gloves to handle it. Several suggested we throw it into the sea or bury it in the forest, but our deacon said it was best we move it to the church."

"Burn your gloves and bar the church," Keelin said.

"...Pardon?"

Chin down, Keelin's eye met theirs. The healing energy radiating from her hand was forcing the tangible corruption to bubble out of Evan's pores, letting her scrape the thick ooze into the glass container. If she had used her concentrated holy spell directly on top of the corruption, it would have driven it into his bloodstream where it could have moved to any other part of his body. She didn't like to think about how she learned this. "Do you think the building being a church is going to help at all? All you did was put a demon-corrupted object in a place that every person in your village visits regularly." There was neither gentleness nor patience in her manner now. Keelin could swear that religion made people stupid. She scraped the last of the corruption out of Evan's palms, leaving cracked but clean skin. They would still need to use surgery to remove the tooth. "There. It won't spread anymore, at least."

While her earlier words settled in, another villager blurted out, "Why won't you heal the others?"

"Evan was lucky that only a small area was corrupted, and on the ends of his limbs too." Keelin screwed the lid on the glass container tight, held it up to the light to look at the writhing mass of corruption imprisoned within. She still had no idea how to destroy it. "I want to spend my time better than trying -- failing -- to do something I'm not cut out for. Ask your deacon?"

The villagers exchanged uncomfortable looks, prompting the elf to raise one eyebrow. It took a little coaxing to get them to admit what had happened. "Our deacon has... well, cloistered himself in the church. Kept claiming to get visions from an angel."

The restrained force that tugged at the edges of Keelin's lips wasn't one of relief or friendliness. It was ever so slightly predatory.

"It's true," said Evan's mother. "He called a town meeting and told everyone that he was going to purge demonic influence from the city. The angel was going to tell him how, so we had to follow his instructions down to the letter."

"And then he locked himself in the church living quarters. We had no idea what to do. Then you arrived, thank Heaven."

Keelin stood, stowing away the vial and then shoving her hand into the pocket of her longcoat. Evan hid his face in his mother's skirt. "There are three things you ought to know about this." She held up three fingers. "Number one. It's very likely something demonic is living in your town. After all, that figurine was an heirloom that someone had to corrupt -- it wasn't just brought here by some outsider. Number two. If you don't bar off the church and start evacuating Sandy Cliff, everyone is going to mutate and die from the spreading corruption. Even your precious deacon."

"And number three...?"

"That deacon of yours is probably going to summon an angel to take care of your demon problem."

A collective quiet fell over the room. To these devout followers of the Forward Path, that revelation was almost like telling a pagan that they were about to meet one of their gods. Scripture told stories of mortals losing their mind when faced with the perfection of the Stewards -- the fancy name they called Celestials. Less extreme reactions described were symptoms like uncontrollable tears of joy, compulsion to fall into a bow so low that the supplicant "eats the dust of the earth," and blindness of indeterminate duration. Of course, Keelin knew those reactions were a little overblown and, if even present, limited to powerful Celestials existing unrestrained in their true forms.

Maybe she shouldn't have told them that last point. Based on the looks in their eyes, a handful of villagers were going to want to stay in Sandy Cliff and ride out the danger. It was the way they relaxed after being told, like somehow the angel was going to come in and fix their problems without effort. It was all so easy. A crutch. The moment a higher power came into play, they turned their minds off. Keelin stood, touching the brim of her hat in a passing gesture of farewell. "You must evacuate, if only to get out of the angel's way. I won't say it again." They parted to let her exit first.

The house where little Evan was living was part of Sandy Cliff's extensive side-streets. In the middle of summer, this part of the Plains was dry as a bone. A dusty wind tugged at Keelin's vibrant white and blue orarion as she mounted her horse. It was too busy crunching brown grass to notice, so she pulled on the reigns to get its head up and led it down toward the main drag. It was a hot afternoon, but the cicadas were silent and the streets of town were eerily abandoned. All she could hear was the wind whistling between the rooftops. Wisps of white streaked the sky. Such a harmless-looking town, this Sandy Cliff was. Little mudbrick houses lined up neatly in their rows, a main drag going through the middle, the church its only landmark.

They're going to realize soon enough that a demon could only survive here by hiding among them, Keelin thought. When that happened, she'd be able to tell. Small communities like this had their ways of... resolving such issues.

For her purposes, it didn't much matter what they did. When the deacon made his move, she would be there to reap the crossfire.
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Marcus Devor
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Behind them, the plains stretched an interminable distance to a horizon that had remained as unvarying as the weather. The muggy heat of the plains seemed oppressive after the relative cool of the mountains, mountains where he had been born and raised. For two weeks they had traveled in heat that beat unceasingly from dawn until dusk, and even in the evening it seldom relented more than a hair. And all that long time, they had traveled in a land that stretched green and golden from one horizon to the next.

It had been long, rolling hills where each shallow valley was home to a narrow creek, its waters reduced to a sluggish, muddy trickle more often than not. Trees lined those banks thickly, trees and undergrowth that snagged at the legs and arms if one tried to push through them. Fortunately, the narrow track they had followed since leaving the eaves of Norwood was seldom impeded by such wild growth. It was little more than a wagon track this far into the relatively empty plains, the rutted road bed hard packed by centuries of travel, beaten down until it would barely raise dust and the heaviest rains could hardly put more than a skim of mud on them. Of course, it had not rained, not once, in all the time they had been crossing these vast lands.

Before them, the first of the handful of farms this side of Sandy Cliff. Dalen thought it an odd name for a town built on the prairie, where the soil tended towards claw and the closest thing to a cliff was an undercut bank of a stream shrunk by the dry season. But then, he also could scarcely believe that everything was so dry, when the air felt so full of moisture that he should be able to wring water from it with his hands. Despite that humidity, dust blew in the ceaseless wind that rolled across the grasslands. Even the blazing sun could not bake the moisture from the air. It certainly did not seem to be drying the sweat from his face, though the endless wind, at least, could cool him.

Well. This seems an interesting place. His traveling companion had a mellifluous voice, deep and rich and completely out of keeping with the apparent look of a warrior he maintained. Dalen knew that jet black armor was merely an affectation of the Lord, and that the Lord himself shunned battle almost in its entirety. Almost, unless it was pressed upon him. Still the one encounter they'd had while traveling had not seen the man draw his sword.

Dalen frowned, but the expression quickly melted away. He had been about to think, once more, that the Lord was perhaps a touch too brutal, a mite unforgiving. Still, he could not blame the man. It had been a long trip, with plenty of time to speak, and the tale the Lord wove about his situation was as captivating as any Dalen had ever heard before.

"Once I was a man of peace," he professed one evening as they sat around a low fire, watching the hawks circle in the sky high overhead as the molten sun crept to the horizon. Sky the color of burnished gold, heat of the day stubbornly refusing to be diminished by the encroaching night, the Lord lounged by the fire, tending the pair of rabbits that had been taken earlier in the day. "And then one day, when I was minding my own business..."

He had been summoned by some sorcerer and granted unimaginable power in the process. All he had to do was defeat this man's enemy, and he would be free. Only, the wizard was a liar and a cheat, and the war never ended. Always there was another, and then another. The summoner died, and just when he thought himself free, another came to take the chains of his fate from his hands, and bound him to this world. It was not until the Lord himself attempted to take the reins of his life back into his own hands that the story turned ugly, and even in victory there was the bittersweet taste of defeat. His enemy defeated, they had still managed to bind him to the place where Dalen had found him.

"I have been there ever since, forever a prisoner with no hope of escape and no way to redeem myself."


And so, perhaps, the brutality was called for. The Lord was nothing if not brutal, but the causes seemed fair and just, even if Dalen himself was not entirely sure why. Whenever he tried to question, or think things over, though...

His mind returned again to the events just outside the eaves of Norwood, and inwardly he shrank away from the memory. He could not consciously recall every detail, but what he could recall was grisly enough.

Six bandits had waylaid them as soon as they stepped foot on the plains, and the Lord had simply laughed in their faces. Dalen himself had stood rooted in place as the six fell upon one another with a manic frenzy, killing all but two in a few short minutes. The Lord had stood there, smiling, as one of them took a knife and stabbed his fellow a hundred times or more, until with each thrust a ribbon of flesh came free, until the other marauder had no face that was recognizable, until even the bones of his chest were in a million pieces. Until the blood of the dead man soaked the earth and turned it dark, and even then the man continued to attack the corpse. Until the Lord walked over and, grabbing him by the throat, killed him with a surge of strength, crushing the mans neck in a spray of blood.

To him, then, it had seemed only right, only natural. They had intended them harm, and now they would harm no one. And yet, that night as he lay asleep, he had vivid nightmares regarding the incident, his own hands closing around a throat with a sickening crunch. His own hands on the knife hilt. When he woke with a start, it was all gone, all the way down to the strong sense of wrongness he'd felt over the whole ordeal.

It was, after all, only right that those who preyed on the weak get their just reward when they find a lion in the clothing of a sheep.

A Servant resides here, my young friend. Perhaps he will know something of your sisters wehereabouts.

Dalen cocked his head to one side, looking at the Lord. Sun beginning the final leg of its slow arc, his shadow stretched long on the ground behind him. There was no shadow extending from his companion, but Dalen never seemed to notice that, anymore than he noticed the lack of dust or distarbance of grass and anything else where the Lord walked. Here? But...this is no where. No where at all.

The Lord grinned as if at a joke that only he knew the punchline to. The stink of his presence fills my nose, young one. He is here, somewhere. And he is not under the compulsion of another, for i would smell it were that the case. For a long moment, though, the Lords face was grave. Whatever else he sensed from this town he did not say, though Dalen thought - for just a moment - that he knew what it was. It tickled his mind, but before he could grasp it, it fled back into the recesses and was lost.

Dalen shrugged. He knew, deep down inside, that he should be thrilled at the prospect of finding his Sister. Something told him that, not long ago, his sister had been his entire world. Only....only now, it was hard to think so. Now, when he thought of Luna, it was with distaste. And that reaction, he was fairly sure, was not the proper one he should have.

And it was strange like that. Since meeting the Lord....well, things had been different. It was not something he could consciously put his finger on, anymore than he could consciously think on. That was part of the problem, of course - anytime his mind wandered too far from a certain run, things became vague, clouded. It was hard to think of anything other than his current quest, and even that quest was muddy and hard to define.

He shook his head to clear the cobwebs. Even skirting around the problem was enough to muddle him as if he'd been drinking too much.

Come, Dalen. Let us see what we can see. The Lord started forward, and Dalen found his own legs moving to follow suit. Strangely, he did not recall wishing to walk himself....
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Keelin
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The inn's balcony room cost extra, but it was still cheap as dirt. She was surprised that they even had a bed-and-breakfast in this middle of nowhere town, much less one with a balcony room with a view of Sandy Cliff's main street. She'd asked the proprietors, a childless couple living on the lower floor, how much business they got. Apparently they brought in just enough gold from the occasional traveling merchant, run-of-the-mill traveler like her, and locals wanting to eat a good breakfast that they were able to cover the cost of maintaining a large wooden building like this. Keelin sat balanced on the two back legs of her chair, legs up and folded over the balcony's railing, enjoying a cigar. So far she'd stayed here for two nights, always lounging in this spot whenever she wasn't poking around town or healing people's corrupted kids. It was peaceful. Superficially.

Keelin's free fingers slipped into the inside breast pocket of her longcoat and pulled out the thick glass vial she'd used to collect Evan's corruption. The marbled black and dark purple substance, writhing inside its confines like a living thing, was iridescent in the sunlight. She scowled at it. Wherever her fingertips came in contact with the vial, the corruption pulled away and collected on some other edge of the glass. Why was I immune? But that wasn't nearly the most important thing she could be thinking about. More lives hinged on answering an even simpler question: how could such an infectious force be purified?

"Keelin!" It was the voice of Evan's mother from street level. The elf's eye tore away from the vial. She didn't know how to describe that kind of tone she'd just used.

"Something wrong?" At this point, Keelin was really slacking on her whole 'friendly traveling eremite' gimmick and reverting back to her usual personality. She'd already gotten the information she needed, so there was no use putting up a religious farce anymore.

"There's a lone traveler approaching the town. Roland spotted him. What should we do? Turn him away?"

A traveler? Huh. That was unexpected. She couldn't imagine someone wanting to travel long distances between towns in this kind of weather. "Well, I guess you could tell him the truth? That your town's full of ambient demon corruption and everyone is planning to evacuate before a huge battle literally tears this place apart?"

She didn't much appreciate her black lightheartedness. "If you say so."

Holding her vial low at her side and puffing her cigar with the other hand, Keelin watched the town. She thought nothing of the traveler and focused instead on the quiet church steeple poking over all the other rooftops. Just what the hell are you planning, deacon, that would make you want to abandon your flock like this? It takes a pitiful, desperate group of people to follow my advice. She guessed it didn't matter. After all, it made her job that much easier.
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Marcus Devor
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Dirt and gravel crunched under their feet as they walked into the town proper, leaving the last of the few, scattered farms behind them on the rutted track. The sun was slowly completing its arc in the western sky, casting the land in shades of gold and honey. That late afternoon quality of light was often difficult to describe, as shadows stretched long behind them, and the sultry heat reached its peak, and then slowly began to ebb, and wane away. The cicadas took up their sonorous whirring from the scattered trees and before long the coyotes out in the farthest fields would begin to cry to one another, voices raised in mournful song.

But that was neither here, nor now. Now, he walked down the street of a town that barely deserved the name. Mud bricks homes stood to either side, roofed with thatch that looked as dessicated as everything else here. The narrow street that led through the heart of town passed by only two major structures in all its short length; a large wooden inn, out of place amongst so many dwellings made of brick and other material, and a cathedral or church, its top spire rising high above the rest of town, and gleaming pale white in the rich light of later afternoon. Dust stirred in the street as the endless wind gusted briefly, but aside from the dust nothing moved in the streets. The town seemed abandoned, even if it did not feel so. No children played in the streets, no locals talked over fences or under porches. A heavy silence hung over everything, the weighted and bloated feel of a storm that has not broken yet. Dalen looked to the sky, and mismatched eyes did the same. There should have been towering clouds, lurching so high that they hit the ceiling of the world and spread like water poured on a rock, lightning lancing between banks, rain coming in a drowning deluge. But there was nothing, just the storm-to-be feeling that defied explanation.

This is not the work of the Servant. Gold and blue eyes regarded Dalen uncomfortably for a moment, and then the head they belonged to shook slowly. The Great Lord turned his head, taking in all of the abandoned-seeming town. There is other ills at work in this place, things I could not sense before I stepped foot upon the soil of it. Surprisingly, there was an edge of anger and frustration in Avanths voice. Dalen could not begin to fathom what would cause such, but before he could ask a question, a voice broke the unhealthy silence from behind him.

"Excuse me?" He spun around, alarmed, and the woman that had come upon him stepped back quickly, sudden fear plain on her face. For some reason, that fleeting visage of terror left Dalen feeling...warm. Curious, that he should feel happy at anothers fear. The feeling melted away as quickly as it had come. "Excuse me, but....you need to..."

Yes? What do you need, mistress? Where are all of the people, woman? The thought was distant. And the answering thought was less so, but more disturbing. Hiding from whatever it is that you seek here. Hiding from you, if they knew better.

"Um....is there someone else with you?" Her question made Dalen raise an eyebrow, and he turned to indicate the Lord Avanth that stood by his side. When he turned his head, though, the man was nowhere to be seen. All that could be seen was an empty street, rutted from merchant trains passing through at whiles, and houses with windows shut and locked despite the intense heat of the afternoon.

Dalen stood, and shut his mouth. Where did he go? Suddenly, the question seemed relatively unimportant, and he dismissed the concern that had sprang up in his head and heart at the lack of the older mans presence. There....is not. I am here, alone. Relief flooded across the womans face, but there still seemed to be a touch of anxiety. Dalen ignored it.

"You need to go, mister. This place isn't safe. The elven lady said so, and...and we've no reason not to believe her. You need to go." The woman wrung her hands, her expression stating she would rather be anywhere than here, talking to him - telling him to go. Dalen raised an eyebrow, and her words cut off.

I am just passing through. I have no business in this place, he lied, and she seemed to t ake his words for truth. "That is well, sir...I am sorry to ask you to be on your way, but it isn't safe. Not safe. She said so."

Before Dalen could reply, she turned and ran from his presence, back down a narrow side street. For a moment, Dalen wanted to follow her. He began forward to do so, when a hand fell on his shoulder.

Do not trouble yourself with that village woman, Dalen. She is nothing to do with our business here, and we must be about it quickly. Danger hangs in the air here like this damnable heat.

Dalen turned around swiftly, and found the Lord in his dark armor standing there, as if he had never left. Any thought of questions puffed to mist in his head, and drifted lazily from his conscious thoughts. Suddenly he had no desire to know where the Lord had been during that entire conversation, and just as suddenly he knew that Avanth had gone to look around the village a little, and had returned for a purpose.

Why would she try warning us off?

The Lord shrugged casually, and turned. Dalen followed suit. As I said, do not worry yourself over the little people of the world. You wish to find your sister, yes? Then let us find the Servant. He may know something, and if he does not...well, then. One bridge, one problem at a time.
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Keelin
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Keelin didn't realize she had fallen asleep until a gold-plated vision startled her awake. She'd napped with arms folded, head bowed, hat tilted over her face. It was getting dark -- and cold. It felt like needles were stabbing into her missing eye. Smarting, she looked out over the balcony. Her left eye saw the streets of Sandy Cliff just as lifeless as before. At the same time, her right eye saw blurred golden forms running in droves through the golden streets, pushing each other to get ahead, carrying children, mouths open in silent screams. She put her hand over her left eye and watched the world through the painful, gaping hole in her face. There was no useful information other than what she'd already predicted: that the community wasn't going to evacuate after all. It was yet to be seen whether they'd disobey her orders or just wouldn't have enough time to pull it off before everything started going to hell.

This was assuming what she saw was even going to occur in the future. Her missing eye's strange sight had no sense of time. Past, future, it was never really clear when it happened.

She stood up and worked feeling back into her stiff limbs. Midway through stretching her arms, the elf caught sight of something in the corner of her eye. Her whole head turned toward it, and she even walked to the edge of the balcony and put her hands on the railing to get a better view. The outskirts of town were lit up. Shutters on houses were closed, candles barely visible inside windows, but the flickering lights on the far end of the street looked like a gathering of torches. Her ears even picked up the low hum of talking from that direction.

It wasn't their evacuation. That was for sure. No children crying. No one moving away. "Rhaich," Keelin cursed. In a hurry she put one hand on the balcony railing and vaulted over. The fall from second floor to first wasn't far; her landing was almost graceful. Orarion wrapped around her neck like a scarf, she ran down the street. Grabbing her horse from the stables would've taken too long, and she needed to figure out just exactly was going on as soon as possible. Keelin had her suspicions.

She hit the edge of the crowd and no one noticed her. Black shadows and bright lights marred everyone's faces, made them look cruel and ugly. All adults of the town. Before they had a chance to answer her, groaning wood and sounds of exertion caught all their attention. A tall stake of wood appeared over everyone's heads. Keelin watched it falter on its way up, recover, and then was finally stood on end.

They had finally realized.

"Who is it?" Keelin asked a woman she gently tapped on the shoulder.

"Rose," she replied. Evan's mother.

The elf just looked confused. "Really? That's who you picked?" Admittedly, she could have phrased that a lot better. Not that she cared anymore.

"It had to be hiding among us somewhere. In fact, Rose's husband was the one who turned her in. It was their family's heirloom that got corrupted, after all."

The tips of Keelin's lips turned down. She crept to the middle of the crowd to get a better look at the proceedings. Men and women piled sticks at the base of the stake. Two teen-aged boys kept Rose off to the side, holding her tight by either arm. The sight just amused Keelin. She knew that even if the lady was a weak demon, she could break out of that grip with no effort at all. Her eye scanned the faces for signs of Eamon, Rose's husband. His motivation for dooming his own wife to a witch's fate probably made a good story. Not that she had time to chat with him. What she needed more than anything was to pick out who the real demon was, if it wasn't Rose. This was the moment when everything was going to hit the breaking point, and Keelin needed to put herself in the best position to destroy both sides.



"P-please... hear me..." Deacon Andrews crawled prone toward the pulpit, leaving streaks of red and black blood on the marble. Violet corruption clung to the cracks in the floor, stained his robes, eating at the threads like acid. His exposed flesh had tightened to knobby whorls. Using the base of the steps, he pushed until he was sitting up. His eyes, sclera dyed red, turned to the front of the church and sought comfort in the statue of the Archangel Zelael, eight wings outspread. Andrews wished the Hill-Shaper would enfold him in those wings and take him away from here, off to the place where the pain and corruption couldn't reach, into the waiting arms of the rest of the Stewards in Heaven.

He mustered all his remaining strength to shout at the statue. "Hear me, Ri'miat! I did everything you told me to!" The holy man thrust his hands to the sky, bearing the fingers he had cut off, mutated extremities that had to be removed. He had even cut the corruption out of his body's interior in order to make his body a worthy tool.

Will you sacrifice more than just your body to obtain a place in the world beyond worlds? The angel's voice in his mind sent an overwhelming wave of relief through him.

"Yes! But will Sandy Cliff be saved?"

I will save this town.

Tears welled in Deacon Andrews' eyes. He could die happy knowing that his community would be safe. His suffering was adequate punishment for the mistake he had made. He thought the holy ground of his church would suppress the demonic corruption in the Adamson family's heirloom, or at least long enough for him to find and banish the demon. When his body exploded with unbearable pain, limbs snapped and searing light cut into his eyes, he was glad.
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Marcus Devor
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Darkness came slowly, the sky turning golden, and then varying degrees of purple as the sun touched the horizon and began to slip from sight. Myriad stars winked into existence over his head, such a collection as could never be seen anywhere where people gather in number. But here, out in the wild lands, it was visible for any to see.

The side streets of the town were little better than the main, and there were not many of them. Dalen didn't understand what he was doing, precisely, but the Lord was the one doing the searching, not him. He was along for the ride, along for answers to questions that had been eating at him like canker sores for weeks. He was almost afraid of the answers he would gain, but said nothing of his fears to the man who had led him this far.

Something inside him, however, questioned everything. It was a seed, a spark, and barely worth noticing. But it was there. Who is this man that you have allied yourself with? Why do you stay by his side when brutality is about the only thing he seems to want, or enjoy? Deep within his mind, far below the surface of his thoughts, that small voice spoke, increasingly often. Dalen was aware of it, but despite that awareness he was not able to answer those questions. He was not even, really, able to acknowledge their presence at all, as if something held his mind from those dark queries. They were not for him to ponder, and he only wished he knew why.

Why would this...Servant...be here, of all places?

The Lord laughed, low and rich. Sometimes, when their bonds are broken, they do not return to the Abyss where they belong. There are many of them in this world, unchained by the wiles of the men and women who once summoned them, and they work to sow darkness and discontent anywhere they are found. There was amusement in his voice. He walked, eyes searching quiet, dark buildings intently, as if there was anything to see other than peeling paint and dust, wood bleached by years of sun. And they can be found anywhere.

Dalen nodded. Was it, then, that this was a specific creature that the Lord wished to find, or would any suffice for his purposes? Dalen did not know, and could only guess at the unfathomable cant of his companions thoughts.

They turned down a narrow side street and came once more to the main drag. Dalen turned his head, and at last paid heed to the growing, low murmur of sound that had been growing for long minutes. In the twilight darkness he could see the glow of torches, and the Lord turned his gaze in the same direction that Dalen now did, his eyes lighting with interest. Interesting. The Lord strode forward, darkness seeming to wreath him as he walked. Dalen stared after him for a long moment, then followed wordlessly behind.

As they approached the gathering, torches raised to cast light on the wooden stake that had been erected in what must have passed for a town square, Daeln turned questioning eyes on the Lord. The Lord affected not to notice, so intent was he on the proceedings before them. His lips curved in a bloodless smile as he watched a woman being dragged forward, rope tossed from one villager to another. He knew what was going on here, and the hilarity of it never once touched those mismatched eyes that gleamed in the last touch of the fading sun.

There were easily sixty or seventy people gathered around the stake, its base piled with wood and flammable materials. Dalen saw at first, uncomprehending, and then realization dawned in his eyes as they manhandled the woman he had seen earlier up to the top of the pile, roughly pulling her arms behind the pole and tying them savagely in place. She struggled wordlessly at first, under the watchful eye of most of the town who looked on with either impassive faces, else hopeful. He did not understand the light of hope in those eyes, as men with torches came forward.

It was not at the woman to be burned as a witch that the Lord looked, however. He scanned the gathered crowd impassively. Almost impassively; that bloodless grin never once left his face as he searched one, and then another. Suddenly, he grinned.

I find amusement in the way you humans handle things, Dalen. So quick to cast doubt and aspersion upon one another when things go foul and no other obvious explanation can be found. These fools have a rabid dog in their midst, but they cannot find him. So instead, they pull an innocent and call her the monster they seek. Indeed, amusement filled the Great Lords voice as he spoke, and before he was even half finished he had started forward. Dalens legs moved of their own accord, and for once he didn't care.

The crowd did not even notice his approach. Most of them did not, anyway. But one did, a tall man with wide shoulders and sun darkened skin. As the Lord approached, he glanced up the street, then turned his disinterested gaze back to the woman about to be burned - and then jerked his head back. His mouth dropped open in an 'O' of surprise and disbelief, but he was able to master himself rather quickly, all things considered. Instead of fleeing, though, he turned and continued watching as if he had seen nothing out of the ordinary.

The Lord, and Dalen, walked in lockstep until they reached the edge of the crowd, and it was then that the people nearest Avanth began to shy away, stricken by sudden and unreasonable dread, shapeless and unexplained. A small open space sprang into existence around Dalen as he walked forward. The Lord fell in beside him, close enough for their arms to touch, and the crowd wordlessly closed behind them, leaving them in a bubble of space that not a single person would willingly cross. Their passage across the crowd was as a ripple in a pond, and if any glanced in their direction, they quickly averted their eyes.

All except one. The tall man kept looking in Dalen's direction, unease quickly reaching fear, but he remained rooted in place, hoping that the anonymity of the crowd, or perhaps the presence of others, would protect him.

The Lords unpleasant grin never slipped once.
Edited by Marcus Devor, Sun Aug 4, 2013 5:08 pm.
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Keelin
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Demons took human skins all the time. Some, she knew, could shapeshift. Others had to literally take bodies. How convincing their disguises were depended on the ingenuity of the demon, as far as Keelin could tell. She looked around the crowd, trying to see if she could spot someone acting strangely. There was one. On the other side of the group, people kept parting around a man she didn't recognize. He was on the move and looked like he had a clear destination in mind. Keelin watched him, more interested in him than poor doomed Rose. If Evan found out his mother was being burned at the stake thanks to his jerk of a father, he'd be a sad, traumatized little guy. He was too young to reach the conclusion that would be inevitable later on: that the world was a damned brutal place to live in.

Now it was time to tie Rose up to the stake. Keelin at this point was convinced this strange man was the demon she'd been looking for, so now it was her turn to make her move. She weaved her way through the crowd, hoping she'd arrive in time to get in position. A villager grabbed her arm as she passed. "Can't you exorcise her?"

"My sect didn't even know that demons existed until recently," Keelin said, and she was speaking the truth. She shook her arm out of his grip and kept going.

The mayor stepped up to the base of the stake. "I can't give a long, moving speech at a time like this. This demon has torn apart our sense of community, sowing illness and suspicion. Tonight, this suffering ends." He held out his hand and received a torch.

Someone near Keelin whispered, "How do demons react to getting burned?" She caught part of some bullcrap response about black flames before she was out of earshot.

Come on...

She hoped they'd picked the wrong lady. The mayor threw his torch into the tangled base of the stake. The dry sticks caught fire like nobody's business. Rose screamed that she was innocent and struggled, trying to move her feet away from the growing flames. Keelin kept an eye on the proceedings while she edged a little closer to the suspicious man.

The temperature of the air dropped all of a sudden. Everyone noticed the change. A collective "What the--?" rippled through the group. The sun going down had helped with the heat a little, but within seconds it was chilly enough that Keelin could see her breath. That was when ice crystals burst out of the ground beneath Rose's stake, killing the flames. A wave of frost spread through the area, dusting everything with ice, clinging to beards and eyebrows.

A monster from nightmare crawled over the nearest rooftop overlooking their gathering. People screamed, and Keelin sensed the herd mentality tensing, threatening a stampede. It was a drake-sized quadruped made of glowing, organic ice. Soiled and shredded deacon's robes clung to it like rags, as did the blown-out skin and bones of a human being. Its lower mouthpart split into multiple pairs of serrated chelicerae, and inside of its empty eye sockets and throat was a bright light. It chirred and growled from under the hood of the deacon's face, flaring up a halo of smooth ice and liquid light. The way it moved, how its joints articulated as it slunk down the side of the building was too smooth to belong to a creature of this world.

"The wicked cannot pass judgment," Ri'miat's voice echoed, quoting from the Book of the Artisan. It shook its head like a disappointed parent. "Sandy Cliff has erred greatly. Does it deserve to be saved, as is Deacon Andrews' dying wish?"

A man in the crowd with sun-tanned skin couldn't take it anymore. He screamed and bolted down the road. A stampede triggered, everyone scrambling in different directions. Someone shoved Keelin so hard she swore and nearly fell over.

"I see you, demon Sodepaarsak," the angel purred.
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Marcus Devor
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The crowd bolted like a herd of animals scenting a predator closing in on it, and the wild tide of fear that leaped from soul to soul sent all running. All, that is, except for three figures that stood their ground, boulders amid a flood. Dalen did not even notice the people that ran into him and bounced, as if running into a wall of stone, and they noticed it no more than he. He walked in a straight line towards the demon as the creature threw its head back and forth between the angel and the Great Lord himself, torn between which it should fear more.

And then, it....changed.

Flesh tore in a splatter of blood and ichor as bones elongated, protruded from places that had not sported limbs before. Thorax extending, the beasts body elongated to ten feet, and six, seven, eight limbs sprouted in gouts of black blood, four slamming to earth with wickedly sharp talons curling about what could only be feet. The neck stretched to grinding and popping sounds, like crackling knuckles only ten times as loud and a hundred times as sickening. A human head atop a three foot neck distorted, then changed as well, skull grinding and crackling as the face elongated into an almost equine appearance, but instead of a horses mouth it was like an aligators, triple rows of razor sharp, inward curving teeth gleaming in the light of the stars overhead. Power thumped from the creature, dark and unwholesome, as it rolled its neck. Joint popped loudly, and four arms raised in a defensive stance, three-fingered appendages with talons slightly more delicate if every bit as sharp as the ones on its feet. A spiked tail stretched from what had been a tailbone, and only then was there silence, with the ruin of the shape it had worn laying in pieces about it.

What had been animal fear turned into wild, uncontrolled panic. People bolted, droipping what they were carrying, grabbing children - if they even had the presence of mind to do that small task. The crowd was torn with the mad desire to be anywhere, anywhere at all but here. From her stake, feet badly burned but still alive, Rose shrieked in primal terror, eyes wide and rolling, struggling against her bonds until the stake she was tied to glistened with her blood, her wrists rubbed raw and then further, until pink bone showed. She showed no sign of the incredible pain that must be present; she only sought to flee, same as anyone.

Dalen stopped, and the Lord laughed coldly. You think to scare me, Servant, with your paltry visage? You mewling worm, you are not even fit to gaze upon the magnificence of the Nameless, and yet you stand here to balk me with your true form. Avanth cast a glance at the angel. It was dismissive at best, condscending at worst. I see you, Ri'miat, soiled by the blood of the possessed you consumed to come to this place. Know my name, and know fear itself, Angel. The Ravages of the Great Lord cannot be forgotten even so long after they were felt, not here, not in Celestia. Be gone from this place, Ri'miat, for the Servant Sodepaarsak is mine. Laughing, the Great Lord raised a hand. Power swelled, power dark and alien to this world, power that belonged elsewhere. The air pulsed once with it, and something caught the angel full on in its chest, shattering the top of the roof it stood on, that and the entire upper half of the building itself. The ice angel flew backwards quite some distance, landing afoot and sliding to smash into another building in a gout of dust and broken timber. Dust lay thick on the air as the roof finished falling in on the first structure, the one the angel had been standing upon. Several people were down, too, crushed to death by that unseen force. The Great Lord did not care.

He walked slowly towards the chitinous black shape that spun in disbelief from the angel it had contemplated with fear a moment before. Teeth flashed as it spoke. "The Emissary cannot be free! Cannot! It cannot be, you are gone, gone, gone. Were gone a thousand, a thousand times a thousand years ago. How do you walk the world, walk in the light, the light, Foul One? It cannot be, cannot be."

The beast raised a clawed hand, and darkness, suffocating blackness fell upon Dalen. It felt like the antithesis of light, liek the opposite of life. But it could not touch his flesh, nor that of the Lord. Avanth's mismatched eyes gleamed with mirth, even as his words rang of condescending glee. It can, it can. The Emissary on this world walks again, Servant. You and your kindred stand on the brink, the very brink. And you know your fate. You know why I am here, young or old, why I come to seek you out.

Inwardly, Dalen waited. The moment of truth, the moment he had been waiting for during the long trek out into these nameless parts. The fate of his sister - he would be able to find out what had happened to her, if she yet lived. To his mind, he saw and felt none of the fear that floated in this place. He did not hear the words his companion spoke, as if they were too wrong for his ears to catch. Or simply because something stood in the way of comprehension, refused him his right to hear what was being done with his own lips, his own hands.

The creature hissed, and lunged forward as the darkness was pushed away. Claws leaped forward to grab the Great Lord round his throat, but where the claws touched the visage of the Emissary, they passed through empty air. The three, glowing red eyes of the beast before him took on an almost comic diseblief, even as the angel that had been rudely blown from its perch stirred behind. The next strike was at Dalen himself, rather than the shadowy man-shape wearing black armor.

The Lord raised his hand. Dalen raised his hand. They both closed on a black, chitinous limb and twisted ruthlessly, and unseen bones snapped and ground within that grip. Sodep shrieked in an alien way, like needles piercing into their minds, the minds of any present. "No, no, no! This is my place, you cannot have it. You and your stinking angel friend cannot have it, will not have it. You will leave or be destroyed."

Leave? Friend? You mistake me and my purpose here. You know why I am here, demon. The beasts eyes widened in surprise, and then in fear.

"Telling you I will not, will not. I will not tell you, will not."

You will, or another of your kind will. Eventually, if I must pull every black piece of you apart, bit by bit, I will find the answer I seek. The Great Lord was oblivious to Keelin at this point, and only gave a perfunctory notice to the Angel as it gathered itself again. Probably angry, but the Lord cared nothing for that. Dalen, at least, could be slain by the hand of any of those present, but the Lord was immortal.

Untouchable. The loss of a pawn now, while devastating in the short term, would be an acceptable price to pay for the knowledge he would pry out of this accursed beast. His smile was bloodless and inhuman, but then he wasn't exactly a human anyway.
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Keelin
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Ice crystals rained from the wall of the opposite building at the point of impact, but the angel Ri'miat hit the ground on all four feet. It just so happened that the strike had twisted around his upper body, broken at the place where his spine would be. The being didn't seem to mind as its remaining parts cracked, half-melted and reformed, putting his neck and head back in its normal place.

Keelin's eye was as wide as it could go, focused on the place where the angel had gone. Nothing else in the world existed right now. She couldn't appreciate how she now lived in the chaotic situation her eye had predicted just hours ago. In fact, as the power gathered in her missing eye socket she actually walked straight between some kind of demon lord and the scum brute he was trying to interrogate, ignoring everything they were saying to each other. Her hands remained in the pockets of her longcoat. A two-dimensional rune traced itself into existence floating just in front of Keelin's missing eye. It flared with golden mana as the Celestial inscriptions interlaced to become something between a pattern and an entire canto of Scripture encased in a series of rings.

She aimed into the rubble of the half-destroyed building. Collapsed beams obstructed her view of Ri'miat. Not for long. Unluckily for him, he was a big, unmoving target with a very distinct coat of glistening bluishness. A tiny pinpoint of hyper-condensed light formed at the exact center of Keelin's floating rune. It grew larger. It hit critical mass in seconds.

The demons' conversation was interrupted by a deafening boom. A wide beam of compressed, magical light shot from the rune, pierced the building, and struck Ri'miat where his neck met his chest. The angel screamed. Keelin watched him through the smoldering hole she'd made, the edges of which were still glowing red-hot, pieces breaking off and joining the rest of the ruins. She turned to begin walking around the obstruction of the building. On her way she grinned and cocked an eyebrow at Dalen. The whole gesture was playfully wry as if saying, "You do your thing and I'll do mine."

"Nice quote of Scripture, angel! Book of the Artisan, Chapter 12, part of Canto 3!" Keelin strolled around the corner. Ri'miat had an unhealing hole in his body dripping with a mixture of water and liquid light. He lurched forward, movements not any less smooth than before, but slower, more calculating. She had a staring contest with the angel's beady little light-eyes.

"An apostate slithers out of the woodwork..." Ri'miat snarled. "Distracting me for your so-called Great Lord?"

"Eh? Oh!" Keelin laughed. "I have no clue who those scumbags are. Hah! Like I'd follow any Lord." Smiling at the angel, she opened her hands to either side of her body. Glistening hook-swords appeared in her palms from a flourish of cloth ribbons. "Looks like they have their own issues. Eyes on me, angel. I should be the one you worry about."
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Marcus Devor
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What am I doing? The voice was very small, but even so it was strong. So much stronger than the...the thing that held his mind could possibly understand. Hemmed in on all sides by power that was not necessarily dark and evil nor good and pure, he could not touch his own mind or body, not directly. He stared, mentally, at the barrier - thick and powerful - that had been raised against him. All he could do was watch with a certain amount of horror as the creature inhabiting him used his body for its own devices. He could not hear or see, precisely, what was going on...but whatever it was, he did not like it.

That fragment of his self shrieked in silent rage as some kind of power, alien and unfathomable, flooded through his mind, energy that could not be described and at the same time was...impure. Not evil, just...not...right. In that moment of animal rage, he threw himself at the barrier encircling all that was him. It gave, bending under the assault, but held. For now. Dalen did not stop fighting, though, and if the Great Lord noticed his frantic assaults on the shell he had erected around his host, he gave little indication of it.

Three glowing eyes regarded the Lord as the creature back off, casting its horse-shaped head this way and that, taking in everything. The flaring light of another strangers attack drew attention from the Demon, and in that moment of inattention to the lord, he glided forward, sinuous and deadly as a snake. A fist into thorax, neck, and arm all connected with a crunch of inhuman power, cracking chitinous exoskeleton with ridiculous ease. Sodap shrieked in bestial pain, danced away swiftly on its multilegged body, hurling curses most profane and dark as it went. And then, unexpectedly, it leaped fro ma standing position, overtopping the collapsed building to come alight near Keelin and the ice angel, red eyes gleaming with death. The beast snarled, and began to gather some dark, light eatting power. Apparently the demon thought its chances with the angel, facing another already, were better than that with the Great Lord.

Avanth opened his mouth to give derisive comment to the fleeing Servant, and stopped. His eyes glazed over, and he stood stock still, held in place as he suddenly noticed the furious assault on the warding he had erected around the rightful owner of this body and - incredible as it might have seemed - could no longer afford to ignore it. A hand twitched, and was stilled. A new battle raged, but inside rather than without. Sweat popped out on Dalens face, and his eyes blinked once; they were clear and youthful rather than ancient and unfathomable. For a moment only, and then the veil of incomprehension drew over them once more.
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