Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Welcome to Imythess, the border between dreams and reality. We hope you enjoy your visit.

Imythess is a creative writing board where you narrate the story of a character in the medieval land of Imythess, on the planet Chaon. Each topic is an opportunity for your character to interact with the world and its peoples by cooperatively writing pieces of a story with other members, one post at a time. We call this role-playing, because you assume the identity of your character as if it were your own.

In order to play, you must register an account for each character you would like to write about, and begin their tale by filling out their basic profile information: Race (human, elf, demon, etc.), class (warrior, mage, etc.), physical appearance, and any other personal details you would like to describe. You are also encouraged to come up with some background history information for what your character's life has been like up to the point at which their story in Imythess begins.

There is no approval process or application required to join, so long as you follow the rules then you are free to write whatever character details you choose. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free.


Create a character now!


If you're already a member, you can log into your account below:


Username:   Password:
Reply
The Long Road Home
Topic Started: Sat Aug 24, 2013 3:03 am (853 Views)
Taiaka
Member Avatar


Taiaka shrugged, "If dat be the way your people say 'thank you for saving my life," he tilted his head and held up his hands, slowly backing away, "Den you be welcome." His smile was flippant and lazy, but he hid his face behind a wiry cascade of dreadlocks as he bent over and plucked his breast plate from his makeshift nest. He put it over his head and drew his arms through, chin to his chest and years of practice showing as he took a deep breath and began the arduous process of latching to his body.

"Ah think Ah may have solved that problem." He spoke in between breaths, belting and twisting, contemptuously settling into his armor. Glowering and stiff, Taiaka, figuring he was about as comfortable as he was ever going to get, dropped into a crouch in front of the fire. "There be a'tunnel back dere." He pointed at the lopsided pile of pelts, stare lingering for perhaps a second too long and the chuckle he gave sounded hollow.

He dug around inside the innards of his bundle then, features thoughtful if not for the tension around the corners of his mouth, and pulled out a piece of parchment. He flattened it across his thighs and licked the tips of his thumb and index finger. When he leaned towards the fire and plucked out and half burnt twig, his eyes flashed with green shine and he smiled, "While you be sleeping..." He told Luna all about what he found on his impromptu excursion, sparing no detail about the lake, crates, or the path leading off north. He did however, leave out the part about seeing shadows dance like paper dolls in ecstasy. All the while he spoke, his gaze was focused on the parchment and he scribbled away with the charcoal tipped twig.

"So, when you think you be ready." Taiaka looked up and tossed his pencil back in the fire. It caused a burp of embers to erupt. He set the parchment on the palm of his hand and leaned around the flames with a groan to show his artwork to Luna. Instead of a simple, smudged drawing, the lines had lifted off the page to become a three dimensional image of the location the old scavenger had just described. She could see where the tunnel narrowed and where she would have to climb, and where she would have to squirm on her belly to make it through.

"Should be easier for you, smaller den me." He flicked the top of the image, "beyond 'ere I dun know. And it be dark. You see in dah night, yah?" Taiaka knew that such an incomplete map would be of little concern right now, but the scavenger was savvy (and not too fond of being underground, away from his Stars) and was adamant about not getting lost beneath a mountain. That, and he knew a lot of people who would pay a sultan's fortune for a chart detailing a way through that hellish storm...depending of course, if there was anything worth salvaging from Nefut.

Taiaka set the map down, absently held his hair back from being singed to ash as he reached across the fire pit, and retrieved his metal cup.
Offline Profile Quote To Top
 
Luna Moore
Member Avatar


She gave a wan smile of appreciation to the grizzled scavenger, completely missing the flavor of his comment. Again. She'd likely have missed it even if she were clear headed, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. She was not. She listened in silence - of course - as the man described what he had seen while she lay passed out in the cavern above. A lake of emerald green, chilly as the grave, and a cavern large enough to be found fit for a cathedral, all strewn with the detritus of long gone traffic. She sat silent, surprised that such a place could exist so close to home and not have been discovered by the villagers long since.

And it could be well that they had discovered it a long time before, and simply said nothing of it. Its purpose was as much a mystery to her as it was to Taiaka though, and she added nothing to his assumptions of its use. All that mattered was that it lay beneath a hundred, or maybe even a thousand feet of rock, and the storm did not beat into it like a knife edge, as it did on the surface. It was a gamble, but it was a far better option than trying to face the gale. She was sure that whenever the wind stopped blowing, all that would be found of either of them was corpses frozen solid where they had finally fallen, overcome by the unnatural elements.

By turns, she managed to lever herself to her feet, leaning heavily on the staff. She stared at the odd pile of rotten furs and pelts, lost in her own distant thoughts that muttered like skeletons in a closet, incoherent mutterings she could almost understand. Almost. Coughing, she swayed over to the passage, and bent low, clutching the staff to keep herself upright. And pushed away the obscuring obstruction. The passage was as Taiaka had said - dark and cramped, filled with the musty smell of the underworld, that and old stone. She maintained her tenuous link to the realms beyond, drawing power through her mind and body in a thread no thicker than yarn. It was enough, maybe - she held a hand out, and a flickering orb of light appeared an inch above it. When she dropped her hand, it remained, though it faded and flared fitfully and continuously. She smiled weakly at the scavenger, the faint currents in the air twisting, warping. I cannot see in the dark, but I can bring light to places of shadow. She only hoped she sounded nearly as confident as she wished. She did not like the yawning darkness of that crawlspace.

Without waiting, she got to her knees shakily, and began to crawl an inch at a time through the confining darkness. It was extremely difficult to do in a dress, for it caught on every jagged edge of stone that press in from all sides. It was a matter of minor miracle that she managed to make it at last to the far end with only a few tears in her skirts and blouse, and not a spot of blood about her person.

When she came through the other side, the pale gleam of her sorcerous light filled the massive chamber with its dim, fitful light. Stalagmites gleamed wetly on the ground, water slowly coursing down their flanks amongst the glittering minerals that made them. From the ceiling came the mirror gleam of water trickling towards the stalactites. All the detritus that the scavenger had mentioned lay before her, along a narrow track that had been beaten into the stone floor along the edge of the subterranean lake by the passing of countless feet over countless years. The path disappeared among rocks tumbled dwon from high above in one direction, and was lost to the fitful light of her orb in the other.

Which way? Her words sounded strong, but already she felt fatigued from the shrot trek, and knew there was certainly more ahead, and possibly more strenuous even. She swayed slowly as she leaned on the staff, looking back into the dsark opening of the passage and awaiting Taiaka's eventual appearance. Which way, indeed?
Offline Profile Quote To Top
 
Taiaka
Member Avatar


He stood there, his arm across his chest as he picked at the scrape on his elbow, his gaze someplace else, his mouth slightly open. Luna disappeared into the crawlspace, but her words lingered both in echo and meaning. But I can bring light to places of shadow. The old scavenger knew she probably meant it literally, her wit was dry as it was. Still, it struck a chord with Taiaka: it was something a famous character boasted about in an ancient Lask'Ban myth. A pride cometh before the fall story told to children whose moral speaks of knowing one's place and not sticking your nose where it doesn't belong. In it, a young, idealistic, priestess challenges that the blank night sky, the blackness in between the Stars, should be painted. She goes on a bloody campaign to accomplish such, as is common in Stargazer children's tales, and ends up becoming a Djinn's concubine. But the protagonist is always going on about bringing the light, blaspheming relentlessly ultimately, and only confirms that sometimes the shadow is there for a damn good reason.

It was the basis for most of Lask'Ban religion. And boy do those people take their Stars seriously! Taiaka had been back home just recently and he had seen that nothing had changed; perhaps he was biased, but they were primitives to him, animals. Theirs was not a beautiful culture to be preserved by the Academy, but a xenophobic abortion best left alone as we cross our fingers and hope they continue their brutal civil wars and eugenics. The conflicts were borne from the stagnation of their faith, the castes of people based on when they squirmed, mewling, from their mother's wombs: This was the worth of a Lask'Ban. Not deed, nor demeanor, determination, or talent. Only birthdate, only your constellation mattered and it would follow you for the rest of your life.

As much as he hated his people, Taiaka had still lived in the umbra of their beliefs for much of his life. He doesn't have a constellation, he was given the blackness in between as his patron of hope and guidance, an empty hand. And so, like the story suggested, he decided to paint it. The priestess in the story hadn't figured out how to do it, but the old scavenger did; he covered his shadowy skin with vibrant tattoos. And he had to use special inks, pigments not found in Lask'Ba. Therefore he had to travel the length and breadth of Imythess, something his kin are not, and never will be, willing to do, to bring light to this shadow. Taiaka overlooked some things in this moment, things like being forced into the desert at thirteen years old by his own mother because of his birthday and the stigma attached to it. He had not questioned her decision for a very long time; she was a priestess herself, she spoke for the Stars. But Taiaka had been a man for a very long time, and he discarded much of what his clan had tried to teach him. The language remained, it was what he thought, in and that could not be changed. Many of the stories remained with it. There was not much for a boy of the Empty Hand to do except hide in the deep jungle, scavenger, and read.

Taiaka let whatever offense he had imagined slip his mind and checked his gear once more, making sure he left nothing behind, before following Luna into the crawlspace. He covered the signs of their egress as best he could, stuffing dusty pelts back into the hole until he could no longer see the dim morning light of their cave. He could not see the Girl-in-Blue's light either, which was probably for the best. His features had soured and the last thing he wanted was to be accused of looking up her skirts. It worried him that, with all his gear, it would be much more difficult to navigate the rocky sprawl. And it was. He barely squeezed though last time when he was half naked and lightly loaded; he may not have felt how he scraped up his elbows and knees last time, but as he ripped away the forming scabs, the old scavenger certainly felt it now. Growling, he wriggled through, only twice feeling as though he would get stuck and perish beneath a mile of stone. The fear helped him move and eventually he poured himself through the last of the tunnel and landed with a thud in the wide cavern.

Looking as disheveled as Luna did haggard, they made quite the pair standing there on the banks of Green Lake surrounded by disembodied shadows. Taiaka couldn't stop himself from letting his eyes roam around the chamber, anger not fear showing on his features; even from within those dark shadows, and a few days worth of stiff stubble on his upper lip and chin, it was easy to see he was frowning. And sweating. The tip of his tail peeked out from the bottom of his skirt, the knob of matted fur at the end twitching as if the animal attached to it was stressed in some way. And he simply would not keep still. He was pacing and sucking his teeth when Luna's voice swept over him, cooling the sweat on his brow and his arms.

For some reason, Taiaka did not believe that Luna did not know which way to go. Her inexplicable desire to march right up that mountain, storm or not, left little room for second guesses. The old scavenger had no doubt that these tunnels would eventually let them out at the foot of the Nefut valley- barring, of course, an impassable collapse. Taiaka, as his eyes darted around the cavern, wondered if perhaps someone had taken precautions against this very scenario. They would have to wait and see.

After all, there was only one way to go anyway. There was another path near the far edge of the lake, but it was blocked by boulders as large as camels- it went roughly east anyway and Taiaka had a sneaking suspicion it might have been simply another access route to the surface. His gut instincts were usual correct in matters like these and so he was wont to trust them.

Ceasing his restless pacing, he touched Luna's elbow and pointed with his chin towards the far, northern passage, "There." Taiaka said, over pronouncing the Th sound, before trotting off without another word. He picked his way over the chunks of stone and looked down the tunnel. It was wide enough for them to walk comfortably two abreast and the rough ceiling was high enough so that Taiaka did not have to hunch over to walk. Here and there, large boulders would force them to go single file, but the old scavenger insisted he take point and would not back down from the decision.

Other than their steps, the silence around them held court, every whistle and wheeze, creak of leather or chime from the trinkets in Taiaka's hair, echoed around them. It made him nervous, something he did not try to dismiss, or hide from Luna. When the passageway narrowed and began to slope downwards, turning sharply west before making a graceful curl back north, the old scavenger paused and drew his short bow from his back. He was sweating in torrents now and kept having to wipe around his eyes with the back of his leather bracers; he could not tell that the temperature had risen about twenty degrees since the chilled air of Green Lake cavern. Beyond, the incline became even steeper and it was difficult, even for Taiaka's cat eyes, to pierce the darkness. Wrong....

"Ah don't like this." It was an obvious statement; he couldn't have been more tense, his lanky body squared against the warm darkness coltishly, blood dripping from his elbows.
Offline Profile Quote To Top
 
Luna Moore
Member Avatar


The stranger gave the impression of a cornered badger, one that had tightly controlled its fear and its anger both, only moments from unleasing them. The moments dragged on and the unease continued, but there was an admirable level of control in the older man, which seemed for some reason to be right, and expected. Visions of a face in the woods, on some distant day in the past, sprang to mind. They held no meaning for the redhead; in this timeless place beneath the stone of mountains, timeless except for the great weight of age that pressed in at all sides, she could only be aware of the chill that clung to the air like a cloak. It touched her skin like a lover, pebbling it with gooseflesh, tried to press itself into her flesh, to curl around her bones. Her teeth wanted to chatter, but she resolutely clamped her jaw shut, though it tried to cramp, though the involuntary reaction to the cool air was one that was all but impossible to overcome.

She nodded faintly when the tailed man indicated the northerly passage round the emerald waters of the underground lake. Nascent fear wormed its way through her belly, almost overwhelming the sensation of a hook in her guts, drawing her inexorably forward. That unseen leash wanted her to walk into the green waters of the lake, water likely as frigid as possible without being frozen, and then walk through solid stone. Pulling. Yanking. Her limbs trembled with the desire to give in to it, to walk across fathomless water and through solid rock. Instead, she followed the dark man, labored breath catching and crackling in her chest.

The path wended very little at first, before plunging down into unthinkable depths. They had been so very high in the mountains - the pass into Nefut from either end was among the highest in all the mountains, a reason for its seclusion - and now it seemed the road would lead them downwards. A feeling began to soak into the air, somethign formless and ephemeral. With each step it waxed and waned, and for great lengths of dark tunnel, with nothing to light their way but the fitful glow of her sphere of light, it vanished altogether. At first she could not think of what it was, precisely. And then the strangeness of it struck her in a different light, as a pathway in her mind opened and allowed her to see it for what it was.

The cavern was stretched. It was not something that could be measured, not by any means that the world had ever come up with or, truthfully, ever could devise. Suddenly it occured to her that, hundreds or maybe even thousands of feet above, a storm of deifacted power raged, biting at the ancient bones of the mountains, strippign the earthly flesh away and leaving naught but bare stone - the bones of the world - bare to the sunlight, if sunlight could penetrate that terrible cloud of power. Power, such power...she could feel it in her bones, beckoning once more for her to add her little flow to the greatness that swirled above. But it was not the flood that raged overhead that gave her pause, overawing her with its savage beauty.

It was what waited beyond, beyond the swirling tumult of mana, wild an unchained.

Sheh ad learned that mana existed as part of the world, generated by living things, imbued into stone and dirt, even into water and fire and things that did not live. But..perhaps generated was not the appropriate term. Living things condensed mana as they were born, taking a small part of what was already there to fuel life. There were as many opinions of the subject as there were people that had them, but it made a kind of sense. Mana made the living alive - if their souls were just as important to make them truly alive, it was mana that bound the corporeal flesh to the insubstantial spirit. Nothing made mana, it was simply there.

But something was pouring an immeasurable amount of it into the valley overhead. If not created, it was being drawn from somewhere, and the sheer overwhelming volume of it was enough to stagger, enough to render an unseen watcher insensate from shock. Luna, with her latent abilities only begining to awake in truth, could feel it. It was as if a God or Goddess had come to earth, and even now gather strength. There was so much power above them that one could feasibly destroy half a continent in a single blow, or eradicate a city so that it had never been. And the churning tide seemed to rage with an increasing gait, as if it had been building momentum for a long time.

It had. Luna could feel that, too. For months, for many months. It had begun simply enough, overwhelming but still within the confines of mortal understanding. But rage had made it so much more.

And now...

The increasingly oppressive heat in the cavern did not touch her. Ice seemed to have taken up residence around her bones, and nothing she could do would stop the growing chills that swept through her muscles, all aching in protest of the exertion she exacted on them. Sheh ad stopped sweating a long time before, and the ashen pallor of her face and sickly sheen of her eyes spoke louder than the swaying gait, hunched against her staff more often than walking upright, ever could. The sound of her footfalls mingled and melded with that of the scavengers, echoing strangely in the confines of the passage. The catch in her breath, and occasional cough, turned strangely in the air, air that was suddenly fraught with a primordial sense of danger. Taiaka's medicine was already wearing off, an hour or two since being administered. Nullified, maybe, by the power than hung, nearly crystalized, in the air?

Suddenly the darkness ahead of them became more menacing. the light from her magical sphere did not penetrate it as it should have, as if it ate the olight as it was emitted. It should have illuminated the passage for two or three dozen feet beyond; instead, it only illuminated the way for ten feet. If that. Beyond, all lay in thick darkness, oppressive and malignant. Luna would not step into that thick-as-molasses absence of light before Taikai, as she had gladly allowed him the right of point thus far.

It....it reeks....it feels... She searched for words, and could find nothing that would give light to what she felt, tasted, sensed ahead. Reality had been drawn thin here. Very thin. The strain of whatever was happening above was testing the very nature of reality itself to the brink, and Luna dared not think of what. I don't like it, either. It sounded weak to her ears, as it did heavy with exhaustion. She did not shift a foot towards it, swaying slowly where she stood at its verge, waiting for the dark man to go forward first.
Offline Profile Quote To Top
 
Taiaka
Member Avatar


"Right," Taiaka mumbled, "sacrificial goat it is," said with a sigh, giving a wan smile as he looked Luna dead in her pretty brown eyes. Truth be told, he was like a spooked horse that refused to take another step, not wanting to go down into that darkness out of instinct and guile. But what could he do? Kick Luna in the ass and send her tumbling down? No. It would be better if he found his bullocks in the bottom of his lemon yellow shawl and showed a little backbone. Better for everyone. Right? After all, what's a little death between friends?

The reward center of Taiaka's brain lit up like Striberg in Midwinter; he promised himself freshly laundered sheets and a sack of butterscotch hard candy, a tour of the brothels of Balefire and a gallon, no two gallons, of fermented goat's milk. He bribed himself the entire time he took those five ill-fated steps into the tarry blackness.

He did not look back.

Raspy voices, like gossamer strands of lost sanity, spoke to him from the black and faceless void. They consumed him, speaking directly into his mind, sounding like someone was crumpling up pieces of dry parchment. And there was a whir, a throbbing that sounded as if he had two seashells pressed against his ears. An insatiable roar that, at first, he thought was the blood moving through his veins, pushed by raw adrenaline. As he moved, step by slow step, further into the inky darkness, he was reluctant to accept that the sound was not a product of fear, or dreamy hallucinations of a fearful mind, but a tangible reality. And there was the scent of desert jasmine, unfettered and as pure as the tall green stalks that grew wildly in in the Istan arroyos. (Taiaka did not know that this scent was being released from the tattoos beneath his armpits. So, when he began following it, delving deeper into the darkness, it surrounded him. It filled up his senses and drew from memory banks long forgotten by arrogance.)

The disembodied words, whispers really, spoke in a legion of voices. Many but one, disconcerting, but warm. Taiaka thought he heard his own name being called, over and over again, yet every time he sought out the voices, he found only deep, impenetrable black. He was not accustomed to his eyes betraying him in the dark and he swung his head from side to side as if trying to clear away the cobwebs of a hangover. It didn't help, the depth of the shadows was too deep. Yet, there was a sort of kinship there, that warmth, like slipping into a hot bath before slitting your wrists; a comfort despite the fear, a preternatural calmness that usually came before drowning.

It was only then he realized that he could not breathe. Or, more frightening, he had simply forgotten to. When he tried to inhale, as if sucking on his clove and Bana root cigars, he found that his lungs felt as if they were filled with syrup, that this darkness had a consistency all of its own, a pressure and a specific atmosphere that his diaphragm could not overcome. The legion of voices purred at him, speaking the lines of the dramatic plays that the old scavenger had been tapped to preform in, prompting him to speak his own part as if an anxious audience was waiting, judging.

"When I awoke the dire wolf, six hundred pound of sin, I found him grinning at my window, and all I said was 'come on in.'"

Taiaka shook his head like a dog with fleas in his ears, and snorted, as was his cued response from the Dancer's Nest playbill. The part of Taiaka Vin'Kai will now be played by a shadow of his former self. He saw the audience waiting in their red velvet seats, their faces covered with thick, beaked masks worn by pox doctors and crept deeper into the darkness of the tunnel, stage left to his confusion.

"Please don't murder me," said Legion, and Taiaka's body went cold. This was act two, where the princess begged the dire wolf for aid. The old scavenger reveled in this rendition of an very old fairy tale because the wolf eats the pale, beautiful princess at the end (they always applauded when the wolf scooped the maiden up in his furry arms and opened his mouth, bearing his teeth. He'd then, in a practiced bit of stage magic, make the princess 'disappear' beneath a cloak of fur. The only reason Taiaka got the part in the first place was because he could change his skin into that dire wolf. His talent for acting was abysmal at best)

In the black tunnel, Taiaka's shift was as dramatic as if he was on that crescent of stage in Balefire; the dark skinned man magically transformed into Wolf. His bow dropped to the stone floor, and his chest filled with air in order to speak, "Oh but the wolf came in and I got my cards. We sat down for a game. I cut the deck to the queen of spades, but all the cards were the same." Said Taiaka the Wolf. He could still hear the whooshing in his ears, the ocean in a different, savage way. He trembled.

Luna would have no trouble hearing his deep, accented voice despite the fact she could not see him through the murky blackness. He did not sound stressed, but the words he uttered were strange to say the least.

According to the script, Taiaka would have to snatch the princess up and remove her from the stage. The actress, Mira, would always giggle when the wolf picked her up in his strong arms. Once, she even laid her head against his chest. They ended up having a lurid tryst in the dressing room that night, something they never spoke of again but caused them to be awkward enough on stage that Taiaka was replaced by a mangy werewolf with an impeachable resume.

But the princess did not leap into his outstretched arms now, here under Storm Mountain. But Legion did not stop whispering to him either. Nor was there the appreciative applause from the bored, tipsy audience. Taiaka took a bow anyway, his broad wolf shoulders dipping, his angular muzzle touching the hot, damp ground. He himself felt hot and damp; sweat matted his fur and he panted and trembled to the rhythm of his heartbeat. There was an adulterated kinship with the inky void that surrounded him, reflections of his own black soul, a cracking that formed where his guilt met his resolve. Unfortunately, there was very little resolve left in his soul. He was listing, lolling, padding across the stone tunnel floor in search of quiet, in search of cool waters and the musky stink of sweaty women.

SNAP! Taiaka howled, the sound being one of pure pain and surprise. The bear trap, laid out by those that beat a hasty retreat in the tunnels, closed around the old scavenger's forelimb hard enough to sever sinew and snap bone. He smelled copper. Tasted copper. Saw a pale blue light ahead of him that reminded him of a winter's dawn. He wanted to move towards it, get swept up by its calming embrace. But the trap was chained to the floor within the swirling darkness.

He laid on his side, bleeding, while Legion talked in circles and the shadows pressed down on him as if they had substance and weight.
Edited by Taiaka, Tue Sep 17, 2013 3:58 am.
Offline Profile Quote To Top
 
Luna Moore
Member Avatar


She bit off the question that struck her as soon as he spoke. The concept of sacrifice did not exactly click with her. Oh, she knew what sacrifice was, but why would someone sacrifice a goat, and how?

Taiaka stepped into the living murk, and within a few paces vanished. Luna did not move, gently swaying where she stood, the chill of the cavern seeming to seep into her bones ever harder, for all that the air was warm and damp, here. Her thoughts kept drifting to that invisible hook, tugging, pulling, inside. She had not given it much conscious thought, but standing alone in the dark, with nothing to give comfort except for a shimmering orb of light that threatened at every breath to fade or vanish, she had little better to do.

She had studied quite extensively the libraries of the Academy. They might not have been able, or more likely willing, to train her, but she was a strong enough woman. If others would not give her what she needed, she would find other ways. She had, after a fashion. Within the wealth of knowledge accrued over uncounted centuries, she had discovered hints to using the power she possessed. The methods that the men and women of the academy went about it were at strong odds with the way she had to do it. There was no recitation, there was no gathering of power or complicated gestures or rituals, not for her. She could feel the muted battle as it raged at the edge of awareness. Magic for her was a war without mercy, and endless fight to avoid being crushed, scoured, swept away. And it was either there, or it wasn't; once there, it had to be forced to do what she wished, and the art of making it work seemed to be tied to a form of artwork in and of itself. The subtle weavings, complex patterns of varying elemental threads was the key to everything, and she knew she had come to understand barely a tenth of what she could do.

And was already terrifying for what she did know. And equally as horrified by what she was capable of.

Still, within those vast volumes and scrolls, books and manuscripts, she had found a few fragments detailing compulsions. And she very much feared that she was under such a compulsion, though who could have done it and why were as much a mystery as how.

Abruptly, she came to herself, the strange words of the shapeshifter drifting thickly from the darkness ahead of her. She blinked, dark eyes set in ghostly pale flesh strainging to look into the murk that turned her light inside of paces. She hesitated, and began to step forward...but did not, not until the howl of pain echoed strangely through the gloom. She nearly jumped out of her skin. She stepped forward reflexively.

Her staff touched the inky blackness, and darkness swirled, sending tendrils of oozing murk out to enwrap the wooden shaft and then engulf her.

---

"He has turned against us."

The woman who spoke had hair as blue as saphires, gleaming in the pale light of dawn. The room they stood in was built from some white stone that she didn't recognize, floor polished to mirror brightness and columns and walls equally polished. A great window on the west end of the room overlooked verdant forest, vibrant greens dominating the canopy of trees at least a hundred feet tall. Luna could not recognize any of them by a specific kind. The leaves were strange, and so was the bark. The air was wrought with fragrant smells that had never been experienced by the girl herself, though the blue haired woman seemed unconcerned by it, or the view, standing tall and clothed in gray fabric that clung to every curve, not hinting at anything but boldly proclaiming. Beyond the trees, a city rose some distance away, spires rising to dwarf the trees that surrounded it, flat sided buildings every bit as polished and brightr in the light of a new day. There had to be dozens of those immense buildings, some of them more than a thousand feet high.

"We knew that he would turn against us in the long run, Komarin. He touched that power in the War, and knows its strength. It should never have been called to this world. We could have defeated the Others without that bastards help." The speaker was a tall man, wearing a coat of odd cut and trousers equally as od. His dark hair was at strong odds with eyes that could have been nuggets of gold. He radiated a quiet power, but it was not precisely the quiet power of someone used to command. Luna could feel it - it was a force very much like what she now tou-

She didn't touch it. The power pulsed in her, distantly, but here and now she could not feel the war, she could not feel the sweetness coursing through her veins. The man touched that power, and so did the woman, and all of the others sitting or standing at the long table that occupied the center of the room, carved wood that polished dully in the bright light. All of them radiated that power, and Luna couldn't help but quiver and quail at the feel.
Every single one of them could snuff me out as if I never was, and they could do it without breaking a sweat!. Any one of them could destroy an entire city with what they held in their minds, in their hands. Luna could barely contain half of what they did, maybe a little more.

She didn't want to.

"The Fallen One has gained many allies it seems. Just ten years gone there were very few who would listen to his twisted call, for the memory of the War was strong, then. Not so, now." Said a gray haired woman, eyes still bright despite apparent age. Somehow Luna had the feeling that age meant nothing to any of the people in this room.

"And you still sit here and prat amongst yourselves, as if Jared were not more than a dozen miles from here. You are all idiots, struggling to hold to the old ways. They are gone, dust, forgotten." This time the speaker was a diminutive woman with eyes the color of amethyst and hair as polished silver. She stood a good deal shorter than anyone else in the room, though the power -she- radiated was of quiet command and fury. And the echoing mirror of power that throbbed through that one was considerably stronger than most o those in the room, save one. "He has already destroyed a third of the Guard on the High Road. He moves at the direction of the Nameless One, and the Nameless means to see all of our bones bleaching in the sun."

"Your ardor is commendable as always, Seska, but one man cannot be powerful enough to face many of the High Mages at one time. We have time to deal with him, and then his master as well." Komarin replied drily. She looked out the window, and sneered. "The Nameless has already tried us a few times, and has never managed to pierce our defenses."

"You are a bunch of fools, sitting in your tower of ignorance. When the sonofa[removed] blasts your impregnable walls down around you and flays you alive, you will not be so complacent. The damned....whatever he, or it, is, has changed. It is not what we knew it as during the War."

"With all due respect, Captain, you are a leader of our war-mages, not a leader of our people. It is for us to worry about what to do, and you to worry about how to do it when we tell you."

The young-seeming woman, face red with indignation, sniffed loudly, and turned from the table. She bore a sword at her waist, a gleaming blade thatr seemed almost etherial in the bright light of the hall, almost as fluid as the flowing hair from the Captain Seska's pretty little head. Several of those at the table turned to watch her go, unreadable expressions on her face.

"That one will cause us great trouble some day."

"She has already caused us great enough trouble, Kerri. Already caused us more than she imagines..."



Breath whistled and gurgled in her chest as everythign seemed to slam into her all at once. The vision, the cold, the darkness, her lack of breath - all at once. She had come many steps beyond the edge of the darkness, and now the path behind her was completely engulfed in darkness, lost. She stood in a small sphere of light, a few paces across with her in the center of it. And the darkness tried to send tendrils out, to touch and consume the light she held in her hand.

She fell to her knees for a long moment before staggering with extreme difficulty to her feet. She had to use her staff to support her weight, for the light-eating gloom seemed to sap some of her strength from her as much as from the light she wielded. She took long moment to reorient herself in the darkness, and then began tentatively forward, mind whirling with images of places she had never seen before, people she wasn't sure really existed. And the...feeling of it....told her that those images and scenes were from a long, long time ago. And when she thought of long ago, she meant like the cold wind blowing down from the day of creation. Old.

Dazed, she didn't notice Taiaka until she tripped over him. She stumbled and nearly feel face first to the damp floor, only just managing to catch herself. The man lay on the ground with a massive iron contrivance attached to his arm, all teeth and springs. Blood had pooled around the injured limb, and bits of shattered bone gleamed pink in the fitful light.

She gathered flows to speak, but they would not form properly. The darkness masked sounds so effectively that there was really nothing to alter, no background sound to twist subtly. It was as silent to her as death itself - the roaring of surf did not touch her ears as it did Taiakas. Just a complete absence of sound, save for the soft scrape of her boots on the gritty stone.

He seemed to be coherent and awake, but she did not pay him any mind. It was obvious that the trap was painful, for she could sense it coming off him in waves. She knelt, once again nearly falling over in exhaustion that would not leave her, and examined the device. She reached out and touched it, grimacing at hot blood smearing her fingers as she tried to grip both of the jaws and force them apart. It didn't budge, not so much as a millimeter. She looked at Taiaka in consternation - then paused, frowning. And then let the flood of magic come again in full measure, raging through her blood, filling her with life and death.

It was silly, but she worked the element of air into thin cords of power, and then wrapped steel round with them. It took a few moments of concentration, but finally she had a firm grip or at least as firm a grip as she could expect with something as insubstantial as pure elemental magic. Without the expectation of success, she seized both knotted threads, and pulled with all her mental might.

The trap exploded into pieces of steel, springs popping loose as the jaws themselves were torn from their hinges. Blood flew as the teeth let go of unbroken bone, and shards hit the floor as well. The man lay insensate, either blacked out from pain or else simply in shock. She bent down to look at the wound, and blanched, though anyone watching wouldn't have been able to tell. It was a bad injury, something that could kill it if wasn't properly treated. The power still swelled in her until she felt fit to burst, but as she readied flows to fix the ill of the man, she hesitated. The darkness...it seemed as if it lay in wait. Suddenly she was sure that if she tried to enact something that might heal the wound here, that the darkness would taint what she did, and the result would be...

She grimaced, and groaned silently as she straightened a little. All she could do was drag him along - there was a portrait of light, blue-white, and it seemed at once distant and close. It would have to do. Grabbing the arm that wasn't injured, she hauled on him. He was heavy - too heavy for her to pick up, and unconscious or otherwise absent of mind as he was, she could not rely on his own power to propel him.

It seemed like hours of agonizing effort, labored breath crackling with each inhalation and exhalation, leading into fits of coughing that brought of greenish and brown phlegm flecked with the bright crimson of fresh blood. Her sides ached from coughing, and every breath felt like fire in her ribs, a sharp pain at each drawn breath. It was really only minutes, and the patch of light turned out to only be twenty or thirty feet beyond where the shapeshifter had been laying. Backing out, hauling on the prostrate shape that seemed to still have no strength to move under his own power, bright faylight assaulted them. Almost immediately, as the blackness vanished, the oppressive power seemed to diminish and then fade, though something like it still twisted the air subtly.

She didn't bother to exult in it. Once they were both clear, she dropped on her rump, wheezing and gasping for breath, and then took the broken arm, bent at an odd angle from the rough treatment. She laid her hands on it, and only then began to work on the complex flows involved in healing, and felt more than saw the sinews and muscles writhe beneath his skin as they knitted themselves back together, blood oozing from the gash as new skin sewed the break in his skin shut. Bone crunched and twisted until the lim straightened itself. And then, of a sudden, it seemed as if it was weeks old, well healed if still tender looking.

The truth was, it was probably a great deal more painful than just a little tender. The body was not meant to be healed in such a way, and even if the flesh was no longer torn, a visceral memory remained in the nerve endings, and in the mind. There would be pain, great pain and discomfort. But at least he would be able to use the arm, and at least infection would not take his life before one of the greater healers of Imythess could see to it.

She settled back, sighing silently, choking off a fit of further coughing from the simple exhalation. And blink as her eyes finally focused on her surroundings, the immediate concern having been taken care of.

The sky overhead was a dazzling cerulean blue, without so much as a single cloud to mar it. But a thousand feet up a wall of stone steeply angled, a blue, white, and gray wall loomed, wind howling and rolling blocks of ice and snow, twisting and snapping tree limbs which swirled in the blizzard before being tossed to the outer, calmer edges. The sheer power of it was awe inspiring, a force of nature caged and crafted to do but one thing. Keep everyone outside from coming in, and keep anything inside from getting out. But as awe-striking as that was, in and of itself, it was but a shadow on the devastation that surrounded her.

The passage they had followed beneath the mountain ended in a jagged hole, stones piled precariously to either side. The deep darkness of the tunnel opened out into a bowl at least eight or nine hundred feet across and probably three or four hundred feet deep, its bottom filled with crystaline clear water. An impact crater, of sorts - the only reason she could see the swirling wall of winter fury above was because every single tree all the way up to that wall of wind had been toppled on its side, blown outward away from the site of the impact. It was the same in every direction, and the destruction went on for half a mile before the first few trees started to dot the devastation, standing upright with limbs blown off at first, and then running back into thick woodlands once more. The mountain pass could be seen to the west, though that road ended now in an abrupt cliff, part of the road blasted away to leave a sheer five hundred foot drop into the scree of broken stone at the base of the cliff. At least a mile of the road had collapsed under some tremendous assault, though the damage had been done some time ago.

She turned wearily and looked into the valley. Carpeted in green save the occasional pit that marked some colossal blow, it ran into the steep sided valley. And there, at the base, an alpine lake shimmered under the brilliant blue sky of midday, and a village of small size stood some mile distant from the chilly waters. But between the water and the village, something else rose, now. Something new.

Luna gaped.

It was a tower, or at least the beginnings of one. It looked to be of stone, and impossibly built beside. Luna had never seen Stonehenge before, or any monument like it, but it appeared that the tower was only three or four stories high at that point, and looked like concentric rings built atop one another in the same fashion as that World Wonder. And just as an iron filing, had it a conscious mind, could tell where the lodestone was that was pulling it, Luna could tell that was the source of the tugging, and the source of the almost totally unfathomable power that lay in this sheltered valley. It dwarfed that of a deity. It dwarfed anything she had ever heard of, ever felt. And she doubted very much she would be the only one.
Offline Profile Quote To Top
 
Taiaka
Member Avatar


Taiaka was aware. Perhaps not fully conscious, not awake in any conventional sense, but aware. Aware of Luna's cold hands on his wrist, present as his smooth leather armor grated over rough stone, cognizant of his own desires to remain within the swaddling darkness. He had breathed in it like poison and it worked through his body like a summer sickness, an intoxication that paralyzed and numbed him. He would have cried out for Luna to leave him there, and tried more than once to voice the request. But the whooshing in his ears had coalesced into an invisible hand whose fingers, dark and prodding, filled every hole with a savage wit. Only when Luna dragged the old scavenger into the warm bath of sunshine did it let go- and it did so reluctantly, like a child begging their father to play one more game, pleading for one more bedtime story, tugging on his hand to stay behind...

Tugging. Pulling. Yanking. Breaking.

White hot pain quickened his every sense, his right arm the focus, Luna's hands the crux. Taiaka laid very still, eyes screwed shut, lips pulled back from his teeth. He was given back command of his limbs, his breath coming easily despite how it hitched in his chest, yet he found himself too tired to move. "Just leh me sleep." Taiaka managed to mumble, his voice dreamily distant. Things were coming too slowly, sensations were muddled and memories felt alien; had there truly been an audience in the darkness? Had I played the part of the wolf? SNAP.

He bolted upright, head swimming, and tried valiantly to stand. But his legs felt like rubber and his equilibrium was off; he fell, collapsed really, more than once, scraping and scurrying with a look of sheer panic plastered across his black face. Pale eyes went blank and wide, his pupils dilating until they left only a hair thin band of blue iris: He seemed to look right through Luna. He pulled his arm to his chest and cradled it against the contours of his armor- the pain was maddening, it was if his bones were made of broken glass. He trembled. Tears streaked down his cheeks yet his features remained oddly impassive. Still, he tried to clamber away and he ended up crawling on hand and knees through his own streaks of blood back towards the dark tunnel. He curled himself into a shallow recess of stone, half in shadow, half in the warm sun.

He turned his back on the vista, on Luna, and seemed to be trying to worm his way into the rock itself. Finally, he stilled, his head leaning on his shoulder, his shoulder against the stone. But he kept mumbling to himself in a harsh whisper, repeating the same phrase over and over again: "Do not curse the sky, as you would curse my heart."

Eventually, the old scavenger's breathing slowed and his whispers stopped. It was as if he was shifting again, although nothing about his person changed; his body seemed to relax, his spine straightened, and senses returned. He wiped his face with the back of his good arm, somewhat unsure as to the purpose of his location, and once again tried to stand. This time he was successful and he did so almost nonchalantly. His pupils were pin pricks as he turned to Luna, adjusting the lay of his equipment across his chest, ignoring the fact he was covered in blood. He smiled at her and the smile looked wrong. He seemed to be paying very little attention to the sweeping landscape before them (it reminded him of those cheap paintings that hung in seedy taprooms- the colors too bright, the brushstrokes wild).

Taiaka moved towards Luna then, though he did turn his gaze back towards the yawning tunnel once more, before sitting next to her. His arm was threaded through the strap of his lemon yelow bundle and it hung there limply. (He was once again sweating, a product of the pain from his injury. Pain he would never let Luna see. Though, for some silly reason, seeing his own blood mottling her dress and staining her hands made him happy.)

He slowly fished his silver cigarette case out from his bundle, once again offering it to Luna before snapping it closed, stare wandering over the broken pines and sparkling waters before it came to rest on the standing-stone monument (if Taiaka would have been in the skin of something with hackles, they would have risen.) He put the thin brown cigar between his lips and produced a spark from his thumb...a spark that erupted into a great plume of fire. He pulled his face back just in time to save his eyebrows from a good scorching. His cigar turned to ash except for a tiny nub near his lips, yet his wrong smile remained.

"Is it too early to say 'welcome home'?"
Offline Profile Quote To Top
 
Luna Moore
Member Avatar


She blinked tiredly at the panic-stricken expression, and the stranger actions of the old scavenger before returning her gaze to the valley below with fever-bright eyes. She couldn't help but feel the thick air around her, like syrup or molasses in january. Thick with power, so much so that it felt close to crystalizing out of the very air itself. So much power. It beat like a drum, counterpoint to her own heart, slow and exceptionally insistent. She wanted to open herself to more of the power, to feel the sweet rush of it as it poured through her mind and body, eager to be given a ship, a purpose, a task. Something held her back, though. An intuitive warning.

Her eyes settled on the stone structure and blinked as she watched a stone heave itself into the air, and with delicate precision, place itself at the top. For her to even see so clearly from so far away hinted at the immensity of the thing. The flows that wrapped it and shifted it were just as clearly visible; great bars of power that could do...

What? She shuddered to contemplate it. She shuddered anyway. The air was crisp and clear, and very cold - her breath hung in the air despite the bright sunshine and the cloudless sky. It was well and truly winter here, or very late autumn. There should be snow on the ground, feet deep this high up on the slopes. There was not. Just bare ground where there wasn't trees and undergrowth to contend with, and the rocky scree at the base of ridge and mountain, sparsely grown over if it held anything at all that bore root or leaf.

She shook her head at the sudden offer of one of the thin brown tubes that the shapeshifter smoked. She was partly startled but too tired to show it or care; she had not heard him approach, had not seen him approaching either. She did jump, though, when he tried to light it - the amount of power he hd used, an alien power to her, had started miniscule and then erupted into violent life, as if fanned aflame - literally - by a stiff wind. She stared at his fingers warily, mentally searching for what she was rapidly come to realize was an innate sense for magic, its practice and its presence. Anything Taiaka could possibly be doing was completely drowned out by the crescendo in the valley below, intense weavings that dwarfed anything she had ever seen or heard of. Whatever those workings were for, they transcended epic and went into the realm of the purely obscene. But it was clear that whatever intended effect they were to have, they had unintended ones too.

Luna focused on the scavenger, and frowned. A smile that never reached his eyes, which were serious and strange and completely out of keeping with the smile spread across his lips. She looked into the valley and shook her head. This was not home, not anymore. It hadn't been since the strange sickness came and killed everyone here, or near enough everyone. It was where she had been born, and raised. But there was nothing of familiarity here anymore. It was as strange a place as if she had never visited it in her entire life.

Movement caught her eyes, down in the trees. After a few moments it resolved itself into the shambling shape of a nightmare, arms dangling with the flesh so rotten and bloated that where bone didn't show it looked as if it were a puffy scarecrow walking in the light. The raven-pecked face, lacking eyes and much beyond stringy bits of black meat, stared fixedly at nothing as the undead creature wandered, searching for something to feed its insatiable hunger. Luna could feel the magic that drove the thing, and blanched (which was difficult to tell, for her flesh was already ghostly, ghastly pale with a bluish tinge to her lips). Coughing, she pointed at the shambling horror. I think someone wants to welcome us home, in any case.

And now that she knew what to look for, she could feel that presence and hundreds more like it wandering in the woods and throughout the valley. The signature of the magic that animated them was strong as it was repulsive. She looked again at the stone tower that was slowly, so slowly being constructed, and wondered. What is going on here? And why?[/color] The visceral memory of that animal hatred and terrible consciousness in the heart of the storm returned to her, hauntingly real and present. Why am I here? I shouldn't be here!
Offline Profile Quote To Top
 
Taiaka
Member Avatar


He was growing accustomed to Luna's voice, the intimacy of its breathy touch against the nape of his sweaty neck. He wondered if it was for him only, that anyone else standing there would hear just a gentle hushing of wind, or nothing; Taiaka wondered if it would crawl up their bodies like it crawled up his.

It was her voice, and their meaning, that took his eyes from the valley. He was especially interested in the...thing...that was building itself. The old scavenger had nothing in his vast memory that he could compare it too. He had once seen a minaret pull itself from the sand and rebuild itself from the bottom up, complete with yellow and blue panel mosaics depicting flying snakes and jaguars. But this thing was different. To Taiaka, it felt alive. And when he squinted real hard and opened himself up to the telltale peacock hues that represented the Naw, he found that it was difficult to look at. He did not feel directly threatened by it, but instead had an instinctual, nearly animal, impulse to put a much distance between it and himself as possible. Still though, there was something satisfying about watching it, appreciating it as something undefinable. Dangerous.

But perhaps, it was not as immediately dangerous as the lumbering raggedy-man that wound through the trees. It was certainly something more tangible. And when Taiaka looked past the wretched monstrosity, he saw more on them; just a handful of them, scattered, shadows moving behind spindly, broken trees...

Taiaka knew this poison. Grew more and more confident that he knew the closer the thing got to them. It was remarkable. Modern warfare at its finest. What better way to protect something of value then by guarding it with deeply rooted taboo and the most basic of human phobia? The old scavenger felt giddy. He was hyperventilating and leering down at the O'aku, the zombie, indifferent to Luna for much too long a time.

Then, "We cahn't stay here." But where were they going to go? He wanted to stay away from the Stones-That-Make-Themselves, this was an unchanging variable, but the space between where they sat and the village proper was wide and deadly.

Taiaka turned his pale eyes to Luna, "We fight, or hide but we cahn't stay here." He stood, scanning the landscape once more so he could draw it on his map, and flexed his right arm. It was sore and stiff, but whole, and he needed it because he needed his bow...He had lost his short bow in the blackness of the tunnel, yet was not concerned- the ritual to summon it back into his command was easy enough, assuming he could gather the proper materials. It could wait. In the mean time, he would be forced to use his cumbersome longbow. Unless he planned on staying in one place and snipe, which was a tactical impossibility, it would be useless and so, he left it strapped to his back. This left him with only one option. And, he thought, it wasn't an entirely bad option.

He licked his lips, right hand making a fist over and over again, it was clear from his tight features that he was thinking. The smile had disappeared and was replaced by a pensive stoicism; his thin lips formed a straight line as his Adam's apple worked up and down in his neck. "We 'ave all day to get into town." His eyes searched her face as if seeking the stubborn resolution that had brought her up a mountain. Taiaka was going to assume that Luna would still be deadset on wandering the streets of Nefut. Just as he was dead-set on looting it. Ripe, so ripe.

Something fluttered in the recess of his mind, a ripple of notions. The Girl-In-Blue looked sickly, her pallor and eyes feverish; they had not eaten and he had not slept more than a few minutes; it was cold, skin was raw and chapped. The old scavenger seemed to sigh, his breath lingering around his face as if giving substance to his indecision. He tilted his head, one side winning out over the other: "Ah can make the O'aku stay away from us." As if to show her, Taiaka's attention turned to the dirty scarecrow ambling towards them. He held up his banded hand, an expression only defined as sorrow crossing his face, and ordered the O'aku to freeze with a flick of his index and middle finger.
Offline Profile Quote To Top
 
Luna Moore
Member Avatar


She felt the subtle power swell in Taiaka, watched as the scavengers gesture froze the shambling undead in its tracks. It stood still, like a puppet hung by immobile strings, and maintained that pose for a good moment or two before collapsing into a rotting heap of bones and flesh. Anyone who saw it now would have assumed that whoever it was had dropped dead right there and been mouldering for a week already. Luna stared at the thing with tired eyes, breath slow and labored.

She could feel the power still entwined in the flesh of the thing. Latent, hidden, suppressed but not vanquished. It had been made to sustain itself indefinately, and shy of...of what? Destroying the remains of a villager to the point that it could no longer function as a body, she supposed, it would continue to wander aimlessly, seeking anything with warm blood flowing through its veins, be it man or beast. And it would kill and devour that flesh or, failing that, bit and infect others with that poisonous magic. It was malign and evil in intent. There was no other reason for the deathless to walk the land except ill purpose, and whatever design had granted these men and women and children life beyond the grave was unclear to her.

It was clear that they were not under direct control. The scavenger, from what little she had seen and felt, did not possess the magical faculties to wrest control from someone who held the reins of a spell firmly in their grip. Undoubtedly he could do similar to any of them that approached, but the woods were full of them, and there could be as many as two or three hundred of them wandering the trackless forest ahead of them. Getting to the tower would be perilous at best, lethal at worst. Not understanding how she knew, she still did know that so much as a scratch or a bite from the walking dead would be fatal.

And destroying them would attract unwanted attention from the Spire that rose.

Can't stay here. Can't go back. Tower is close though, we should be able to make it there quickly... She stopped, realizing what she was saying. The tower, not the town. That magnetic pull drew her onward into the valley, but it was not centered on Nefut at all. The spire of standing stones, four levels high, called to her soul in a language she did not understand, but her bones understood them quite well. Come. The way forward is through us. That is what it seemed to say, wordlessly, formlessly. She felt her tired feet stir as if to heed that clarion call, but resisted it. It was difficult, extremely difficult.

She gathered power to weave her words again, but before even the first syllable could be formed, the ground beneath her quivered, pebbles and gravel dislodging themselves and sliding towards the crystalline water below. The earth moaned, low and sonorously, and before she could further react, the ground high above their heads shifted, mountain side coming apart in splinters of granite and limestone. Slivers of rock the size of houses collapsed in clouds of dust as first one, then five, then fifteen slabs of unshaped rock flung themselves from the billowing cloud of dust, racing down the mountainside as if an avalanch on an invisible cushion of air. They overtook the real avalanch, stone and topsoil spilling and churning and uprooting trees by the dozen as it went, and as they moved they seemed to shape themselves as if under the powerful stroke of some rock-slicing razor. Each stone was, by the time it thundered down the slope a hundred feet ahead of them, smooth as polished glass, three feet thick, fifteen feet long, and four feet wide.

She didn't have time to watch as they lifted themselves above the tops of the trees, forced aloft by flows of power that defied logic. The thundering scree and refuse cast off from their quarrying tumbled right behind them, rock and trees and dirt and gravel thundering thirty feet away from where they stood. The avalanche struck the clear water below, throwing it high into the air, before the muddy mess slid to the base of the slope, burying more trees in the process. The new slide was four or five hundred feet wide, and obscured by billowing clouds of choking dust that set her into a violent fit of coughing that ended with her on the ground, struggling to find her breath again as the dust cleared.

Down around the tower, dust had encircled the entire structure, obscuring it from sight. She could see, through watering wide eyes, bits of stone much smaller than those flying boulders that were just now arriving below, fly into that cloud of dust. The obscuring mist swirled away as quickly as it had formed, and revealed well-set walls enclosing the monolithic lower two stories of the spire. A door, small and almost indistinct at this distant, stood open at its base, and above, the fifth level came together, stones standing of their own accord in a slightly smaller circle set atop the fourth. The feeling of power that filled the valley increased, leaping to heart-stopping levels that surely transcended the deities of old. Surely!

Long moments went by, filled with silence only broken by loose stones shifting on the new fan of broken mountainside. Luna lay on the ground, curled in a ball around her chest, which stabbed with pain with each breath now. I feel it pulling me, old man. Pulling me, pulling me, summoning me. I have to go to the Spire- that was its name for certain, though she did not know where it had come from or how she knew -have to go. But I don't know why, and I don't want to go. I don't even want to go to Nefut. This place is bad, really bad...but I can't leave. It won't let me go...

She uncurled slowly, still fighting monumental pain but unable to do aught else but deal with it, or her rapidly worsening condition. The air was chill, if clear, and though her blood and body burned hot with the hellfire of fever, she felt cold. Cold for the fever, cold for the fear that blossomed in her mind. She didn't want to go to the Spire. She didn't want to face the force of retribution that waited there. She stood, but it was only her staff that allowed her to stay upright, as she swayed slowly, ignorant of the expression on Taiaka's face. her eyes were fixed, red rimmed and underlined with dark circles, on the Spire that even now pulsed with ever more power.

In the woods, a hundred O'aku, hearing the distarbance on the mountainside, descended on their location, driven by the need to feed, mindless in their investigation and every bit as deadly as the insistent heartbeat of deifacted power pulsing through the valley. And worse things than they stirred, beasts long asleep opening eyes with slitted pupils, peering through a curtain made suddenly very thin and unsubstantial by the accretion of so much magic...
Offline Profile Quote To Top
 
Taiaka
Member Avatar


He'd tell himself that the reason he threw himself to the ground and curled his body around Luna's was accidental in nature. That his intentions were not to protect the brown eyed Girl-in-Blue, but to save his own skin from the shards of rock that rained down on them. Yet, he would not deny the fear that welled up in his belly like so much ice water, or the instantaneous awe once the peril had passed. The old scavenger could not tear his eyes away from the invisible masonry- even as they burned from the flecks of mica and gritty dust that flooded the air. And he was on his feet, gaping at the Spire and breathing hard only moments later, 'accidental' contact with Luna all but forgotten. All except for her heat.

Her voice was as unexpected as the words she spoke and the old scavenger narrowed his eyes at her as she fought to stand. He had the sudden impulse to kick her staff out from under her and watch her crumble to the ground. Instead, he simply offered a closed mouth series of chuckles and rubbed his right arm.

"Ah've had it all wrong this entire time." Taiaka licked his lips. They were dry and cracked and his habit of biting at the skin with his front teeth had cause a line of blood to trickle into his chin stubble. He looked over to Luna, canting his head to the side, "All this time Ah imagined Nefut as a scavenger's holiday. Ah would bring out sacks of your dead mother's silverware and smile as Ah did." He paused to exhale; his black features unapologetic as he held out a hand, closed an eye for a flat perspective and pretended to pluck the village from the landscape with his fingers.

When Taiaka returned his gaze to Luna's face, his frown was accompanied by a slow shake of his head. "Ah don't want to go either. Now. Certainly not wanting to go to the Spire particular- probably the last place on Chaon Ah would want to go. It pull, pull, pull you. It push, push, push me. It don't want me there, Ah don't want to be there.

"But den Ah be thinking, all the O'aku, all this power-" He gestured absently, cupping his hands in front of him as if trying to hold onto a handful of sand, "How much could your mother's silver be worth compared to whatever is in there?" Taiaka saw the door at the base of the tower then and let his arms fall heavily to his sides, resolved to something only he knew.

"And den Ah be thinking maybe Ah already found my prize." He was looking at her, standing very straight and stiff. "Maybe Ah punch you in your face and you wake up on the shores of Istan with a broken jaw and a collar around your neck, the key around mine." Taiaka turned his attention back towards the Spire, clasping his hands behind his back.

"One could argue you saved me back in dah tunnel dark. Though Ah am sure Ah could've chewed through my arm quickly enough before bleeding out. One could also argue Ah saved you from freezing to death on the mountainside." Taiaka's watched a handful of O'aku try to find purchase on the loose scree beneath them, falling over on rotting limbs but never giving up. He wondered how many of them had been summoned up the mountain as well, only to be caught in the same trap.

"So, we're even. But despite how much Ah be sweating, its you that burn with fever."
Offline Profile Quote To Top
 
Luna Moore
Member Avatar


Its you that burn with fever...

She could feel the fire burning in her body - had been able to feel it since before crawling through that passage in the darkness, a mountain sitting on top and fathomless depths below. It was killing her as surely as the cold that Taiaka had carried her from had been killing her. It was, perhaps, some remnant of that killing cold, a direct result of the sorcery that held the mountains surrounding this valley in its implacable grip. Fluid half filled her lungs, and every breath was an agony of stabbing pain, even as it was difficult to gain. She felt...stretched. Thin. The world around her seemed a hallucination, but in all probability that was simply a product of so much raw mana sloshing between one wall and the next, caught and held by a will as yet unfathomable.

Did she dare attribute the occasional flashes of insight, the images and fragments of some great story, to delirium? No, she couldn't. They were too lucid, too real. All of this was too surreal to simply be a fever dream. She was not laying in a bedroom, curtains drawn, with her mother pressing a cool cloth to her forehead and singing lullabies to calm her dark nightmares, those nightmares coming to life before her eyes when awake and in her dreams when not.

And yet, the whole situation was a nightmare.

You thought to come here and pillage the dead of their silver and baubles? Her tone was not far from incredulous. If there was a piece of silver or gold to be had in the whole of Nefut, I would be surprised. A poorer people you would have a difficult time finding, here or anywhere else in Chaon. You are after something else, something other than what you say. Certainly not after me.

She looked at the shambling dead, unable to reach them though they tried so hard, so valiantly. It was all wrong, all so terribly wrong. In any case, are you completely mad? You want to enter that....that...the Spire?! Can you not feel it? She turned unsteadily, limbs weak and listless. She could. It pulsed like a bonfire, so strong that she couldn't believe that all the world couldn't feel its growing, budding power. But shot through that was a dark stain. The Spire was intended to be pure, but its purity was marred by a dark streak of necrotic power. She could only identify it as necrotic because it had a similar flavor to that of ther O'aku that wandered the valley, though the peculiar flavor of it was just slightly different.

Whatever the case was, she knew that the Spire was not, in fact, building itself. There was an owner within that structure, carefully compounding weaves and wards, drawing strength and placing it in stone. That....building....has an owner. And you want to go and simply knock on the door? Or is it that you want to sneak in, and steal right out from under their nose. She stared at him with fever-glazed eyes. I might be sick, but you are the one who is delirious...

No, she was not a prize to be had anymore than whatever lay in Nefut or in the tower itself. The thought of being made a slave to Taiaka had fled her mind as soon as he had uttered it. Somehow, she didn't quite think that he could accomplish that, not in this place, not at this time.
Offline Profile Quote To Top
 
Taiaka
Member Avatar


"Maybe Ah am delirious, Luna, maybe Ah be mad," he glowered at her, each word accompanied by a puff of mist. He did not raise his voice, though the tone of his words had grown severe, the octave dropping, the pace quickening "But owner or not, we have little choice."

Of this he was sure. Taiaka saw their options as limited; perhaps they could go back the way they came, but he was sure they would not come out clean on the other side. For some reason he knew, just knew, that the darkness in the tunnel would not let them pass- it was a door that only swung one way. He could change his skin into something large and gifted with flight, perhaps fly away home...But he seriously doubted he could make it over the swirling storm wall. No, this place would not let them go that easily. Regardless, Taiaka realized he would probably be forced to change shapes no matter what they decided to do. Luna had shown no signs of arcane ability and if they planned on going to the Spire, they would have to be quick, lest the O'aku get to them. Taiaka could not have her stumbling down the crumbling slope into their waiting maws. And although it was against his code to be ridden like some pack mule (or majestic gryphon), he would make an allowance- after all, who was she going to tell? You are after something else, something other than what you say. Certainly not after me. Yes, certainly. Although Taiaka was anything but certain.

Taiaka turned away from Luna for but a moment to steal another glance at the Spire. Slowly he turned around and stepped behind Luna. When he spoke, he did so by leaning down and whispering his harsh words into her ear, "Such a shame to go back now after we've come this far, Luna. But Ah am no thief. Not in any sense you can understand. So, you're right. We go and we simply knock on the door. Do you truly doubt that we will not be allowed in after you've been pulled this far by a silent carrion call?"

He lunged forward and wrapped one arm around her neck and the other he held against her chest, palm flat over her heart. Taiaka pumped as much healing energy as he could muster into the act, his grip so tight that she could no doubt feel his own hammering heart against her back. He figured if the ambient strangeness changed a spark into an inferno, that it would also change his mending cantrip into a torrent of unbridled, curative magic.
Offline Profile Quote To Top
 
Luna Moore
Member Avatar


She opned her mouth to protest, to reply, to do anything even as his hand snaked around her neck, his hand pressing into her chest. And then magic hit, raw, primal magic like the that the ancients had use, unrefined and powerful It drove the breath from her chest in a rushing, rattling gust that splattered greenish phlegm down the front of her dress, onto Taiaka's arm. It thrust thought aside, made her eyes bulge in their sockets.

Awareness snapped away from her like a piece of clothing ripped from the hands, stinging her mind. It tore at Taiaka's mind too, and tore it to flinders as well.

***

A dozen men and women in flowing robes stood, evenly spaced around the interior of the Tower. Each had their hands pressed to the wall, and a rippling, terrifying torrent of power swelled through them and into the living stone, granting the smooth, polished walls a luminous glow like moonlight. It bathed the interior of the tower in a washed out light, not quite like moonlight, not quite like darkness. Runes and glyphs glowed where they were etched into either wall or floor. Glowed, pulsed, lived.

She found herself standing in the middle of a chamber at least a hundred feet wide, an dozens of feet tall. Four staircases spiraled up from the main floor, and the door to the outside world stood barred, bound by mythril and adamantine, gleaming with the power that those who stood around the chamber poured into it.

She found her eyes drawn upwards, and then found herself drawn upwards as well, walking against her will. Little more than a ghost, a thought, unreal to the players of the terrible drama that even now ran its course.

She found herself standing in a small circular room and she knew it was near to the top of the spire, grand windows opening out onto a world bathed in blood-red light, smeared by soot and darkness. Her eyes too in the panorama, stunned to shocked numbness at the sight they she beheld.

The world bled fire. The sun lay low to the horizon, where jagged mountains scorched black yet stood, fingers of stone reaching for the sky in agonized pleading. It was as if the very ground held its twisted hands up high, begging the sky for surcease, pleading to know why, why? The land all around was sere and desolate, pock marked and lifeless. An ancient memory of green growing things came to her, of rivers that had run with clear, cold water where empty, cracked beds now lay. Oceans that didn't heave and shift with every passing of the sun, the land retreating or advancing with the passing of the hour, salty waters mostly devoid of life as the land was mostly scoured clean of the living. And out there, the minions of the Fallen one still worked hard. She could feel the spidery webs of power that they threw at the Tower, feel the stress the defenders were almost overwhelmed to keep away. They were losing, losing, and the world was dying as they died, killed by their very attempts to save it.

She turned away from the window, not wishing to see the destruction of an entire world laid out before her. Her eyes fell on another one like those below, a woman with flowing, fiery red hair, wearing a dress of odd cut and with a staff in her hand. Her back was turned to her - she was focused on something altogether else. Power made the air feel greasy, the tin-taste of magic in such raw, unrefined abundance making her sweat. The woman released something, and she could see the woven magic. Could see it, when she had never seen anything anyone had ever done before. She knew it too, for what it was - Starfire. Flames lanced down from the heavens, intense flames. More intense than Demons Dire, more penetrating, more powerful.

And suddenly, that woman spun around and looked her in the eyes, face to face. This one could see her. Wide, light colored eyes regarded her, shocked, before anger filmed them over again. Mot-


***

Awareness crashed back into her, along with her breath. Her eyes still bulged as the last of the healing washed through her, leaving behind an exhaustion that quickly faded away as the moments ticked by.

But in that singular moment of reawakening, she felt something. That presence, that will that drove the storms...it was like an eye, and suddenly she felt its attention fall upon them, a great suffocating weight. ....Starfire.. An intense, and overwhelming presence seemed to fill the ground, the air, every breath.

You do not belong here, child of the Fallen. Begone!

The words were inarticulate, not spoken, seeming to arrive in her head - and presumably Taiaka's - without ever passing through her ears. She pushed away from Taiaka's grip, frantically, already knowing what to expect.

The sky overhead seemed to tear in half, and long seconds before the blow landed she could feel the blistering heat of the magic. And then it struck, turning the air to liquid fire, vaporizing the stones they stood on, catching tree's alight up the slope from them and below them as well. Catching O'aku aflame, whom paid as much heed to the fire consuming their rotting flesh as they did to the fact that they were dead.

Pain assailed her. Brilliant, maddening pain, white-hot streaks splintering her consciousness into a million shards. She shrieked soundlessly, dropping to the ground and thrashing wildly. By some miracle her clothing did not combust, and neither did she, though she could feel her limbs twisting and charring, fingers curled into blackened stumps.

And then it was over, stones cracking from the intense heat radiating from them, at war with the cold mountain air. She lay panting on the ground, eyes as wide as they would go. And then she sat upright, suddenly, looking for the odd scavenger with eyes filmed by tears of pain.
Offline Profile Quote To Top
 
1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous)
ZetaBoards - Free Forum Hosting
Free Forums with no limits on posts or members.
« Previous Topic · Dragonspine Mountains · Next Topic »
Reply

Top RP SitesVote for Imythess at Top Site List Planet
Top Site Lists
Misty Woods created by Helena & Cory of ZNR