Completed Greenwrath

[Zakarias]

How she struggled, how she fought, this little copper haired mouse caught in his trap. The geyser of steam, singed flesh, he knew because he could smell it, pig like, thick in the air of that most cloistered space. But before he could delight and taunt and jeer with a point and flick of rapier, the mouse, who faced her death with brave fire in her eyes, let out bolts of golden light that did streak toward him. Cadance caught the bolt flush against her chest, the magic force exploding against her chest and blasting her off her feet and to the wet stone floor with a hard thump, wand sent to skate across the room.

Zakarias hopped back, cat-quick, blade flicked up, its point traced a line and a wall of wind howled to his defense. Enough to slow the projectile, enough to let him see it coming and adjust.

But not enough to avoid it.

It slammed into him, set his bells to violent ring, and he reeled back, quick stepped to catch his balance, staff hand pressed to the place where the magic salvo had struck home. He was bent over dramatically, legs set to wobble as if on the brink to collapse.

A laugh roiled out of him, boiled, errupted as his crumpled posture swung back and his legs showed their unwavering strength. "Come now!" He said as he stood straight and tall anew, casually he dusted off his red garb with his sword hand, and he stared at Lechies from across the room. "You'll have to put a little more sting in your spells, sweet mage, if you hope to survive," he wagged his saber at her, like the long finger of a dissaproving mentor. "Here, let me show you what I mean," he hissed out, voice thick with menace.

He angled himself in a fencer's stance, and darted a step forward, cut the air, quick, once, twice, thrice. Low to the legs, up for the arms, and long across the chest. Blades of wind, thin and shimmering. Not all aimed at Lechies. One aimed for her friend with the knife.

The mushroom giant stared at the small human, or at least it seemed to stare at him. Then the sword in its arm. Its spore-cap no longer blue, glowed green again, and it enveloped the hunter, like a father might a child, and wind sliced at its mass.

 

[Lechies Delrio]

The only response Lechies had for Zakarias's playful barb was to set her mouth in a grim line, eyes slightly narrowed. His antics had never quite sat well with her, but for the sake of their alliance she'd held her tongue. Now though, she understood why she'd been so bothered. The bard's words fair dripped with malice wherever he directed them, as sharp as the steel and gale he wielded.

She was only glad that Cadence, at least, seemed to be down for the count. The poor woman sat unmoving by the wall where she'd collided, jaw slack, wand nowhere to be seen. Lechies supposed that Cadence's exhaustion hadn't helped; the woman had apparently toiled against the influence of Thurin's artifact for some days before their party arrived. The rest would do her good, even if it was involuntary.

Lechies only wished that removing Zakarias could be so easy.

Magic sang. Another triple salvo sped in her direction, whistling with deadly intent. Lechies did not expect she could dodge; she had failed the previous attempt, after all. Instead, she swept her other hand across her front, biting back a wince at how it throbbed, angry with burns, and raised her staff, its tip flaring green. An arcane barrier spilled before her, rows of gleaming hexagonal plates forming her defense.

It was a defense formed in haste, and therefore feeble. The first blow was enough to nearly shatter it, deep cracks making a fissure that spanned the length of the shield. The second blow destroyed it, and the barrier faded into a cloud of fluttering green motes. But the brunt of Zakarias's spell was absorbed; Lechies was knocked back but not off her feet, and no new blood was spilled.

She was winded though, and clutched at her belly, leaning on her staff for support.

"Wh..." Lechies struggled for breath. "Why are you doing this?! What's your stake? D... Do you make a habit of following well-meaning folk into ruins and robbing any treasures within?"

Vasha, safe behind the mushroom's broad bulk, was too stunned by the sudden rescue to remember to use his knife. The giant's groan though, pinched his brow with concern. Vasha tried to peer around the creature, see what was happening now--only to make a worried exclamation upon finding fresh wounds in the mushroom's back. Wounds it had taken for his sake. They glistened in the low light, weeping a sap-like substance.

 

[Zakarias]

"Why?" Zakarias parroted as he took long easy steps toward the mage, his rapier firm in his hand, its stinger point angled with a lounging menace. "You ask me why, while you stand amidst the ruins of those long lost?" he laughed loud and angry. "Why not ask instead, why proud elves turned to shambling bone?!" he glared at her, and went on walking toward her. "Do you know why, Thurin made his Wrath?" he smiled grimly at the mage as he lift the tip of his sword and pointed its needle nose at her throat. His blue jewel glowed bright, and if her mind succumbed to the power of its illusion, she would see the forests burning, and man and elf warring.

"They killed his brother, and his lover, sweet well-meaning Lechies," he said her name as if it were a curse. "Those who came before the foul pestilence that is that little town, growing and growing like the sickness it is!" Scenes of the forests ablaze, a lady elf dead upon the earth, arrows sprouted from her chest like a cruel mockery of flowers. A young elf, on his knees, tears run down his cheek, hot as he wailed. Another elf, who looked much like him, lay dead beside, sword fallen, gleaming like the blade they'd seen in the courtyard.

"Yes," Zakarias admitted with a low rumble of hate. "I make it a habit to follow the descendents of such well-meaning folk, who dare disturb the peace of those they forced to rest." He made to walk past her, with a flick of his sword that cut but the air before her as he strode to her side, his bells rang, soft with each step.

Tink, Tank, Ting.

 

[Lechies Delrio]

'Do you know why,' came the scalding words, as hot as her blood would surely run if his sword extended just a little further. Lechies held her words in her throat. She did not know why, but she suspected he would soon enlighten her.

Again, a strange shiver passed through the air, seeming to envelop her, wrap around her very mind. It pushed and pushed, like a school of fish fighting to break through a fisherman's net. Whatever it was, Lechies struggled not to let it overcome her. Even so, momentary flashes of sensation slipped past, and what she experienced horrified her -- the acrid stench of burnt wood and flesh; sullied steel being yanked out of new corpses; grief so absolute and suffocating that she wondered if her lungs would ever be able to draw a full breath again.

None of it was quite as painful as Zakarias's revelations, however. Here was his reason, and it was so simple. So timeless.

Revenge. Not for him, but for those long dead.

Or was it?

With a quiet noise of exertion, Lechies tore herself free of the illusion magick, stumbling forward a step before she caught her balance. She turned her head as Zakarias came to her shoulder, giving the red bard a glare to match his own.

"Were you one of them? Those fallen elves? Your recounting of events is so vivid, and your hunger for justice so ravenous, that I can only assume they were your brethren." Lechies drew herself upright, her new bruises causing her to wince. "I am sorry for your loss," she said, sincere in her sympathy, even as iron glinted in her eyes, "but the people of Tathholm do not deserve to be terrorized for a crime committed by their distant ancestors. Their only crime now is that they lived on, while those elves did not.

"Those who are gone can never return to their former glory. No number of destroyed human villages will change that. You punish their descendants, yes, but not for the sake of justice. It is only for your own twisted satisfaction."

Lechies swept her hand out, gesturing at Cadence slumped by the wall, Garuban crumpled in the water. Agony pulsed in her wrist, spreading up her palm. She had yet to look at the burns and did not want to.

 

[Zakarias]

Her words panged through his ears, harsh and rattling.

"Satisfaction," he echoed, the word a drop from the well of his mind. He laughed, hot, barking, mad. "Justice!" He cried out, as his whole frame shook, his spine arched as he threw his head back, the sound that came from him, full throated and merciless in its glee. Quick, his whole whip of a body snapped back toward the mage, his silver eyes wide and hot as they burned, their stare so wild it was as if he would eat her with his eyes alone.

"Your lives are fleeting, short," he flicked his blade, pointed at Garuban and Cadence in the zip and twift of the motion, and with a wind-quick step he was but a stride away from the mage, his needle blade's point aimed at the soft flesh just beneath Lechies' chin. "Always thinking of the I, the being alone," his bright fire eyes flashed lightning as they narrowed, and he pricked her chin with the sword, let blood well against the steel, if only just a drop. "You cannot fathom what it means to lose, for loss is but part of your meaningless life," he let his blade fall again, and stepped past her. "Know, dear Lechies, were it not for my own twisted satisfaction,"

The mushroom giant rose, with a tremble in its limbs, its head stared at Zakarias as its sap-like blood ran along its wounds. It made toward the Jester and the rod. Compelled by a wordless duty to act. To stop this intruder and his scheme.

Zakarias glared, and set low in a stance as he whipped his sword up, air swirled before him, made corporeal by the power of the swelling ley magic. And he thrust the weapon forward as the mushroom sentinel charged him, the jester's eyes mirthless as deadly force punched clean through the construct, through its magicked core, the crystal cracked and shattered.

The guardian fell with a crash against the water. Motionless, arms outstretched toward the jester in its last act.

"Know," Zakarias went on. "that you would be dead," his smile rang clear in those words. And he walked toward the exit, with a tink, tank, ting of his brass bells.

 

[Lechies Delrio]

She did not flinch as he drew blood, did not waver as that single drop slid from her chin, hot and itching, to run down her throat and soak into her collar. But oh, how her limbs went heavy. For the longest moment, Lechies was certain the blade would bite deeper, that the last thing she saw would be eyes of molten silver branding their rage upon her very soul.

Then Zakarias stepped away, and she allowed herself a quiet, shaky breath--only to stiffen once more as the fungal giant advanced. Its steps shook the chamber, the waters at their feet sloshing to and fro, ancient dust sent scattering from the ceiling.

Zakarias's answer was calm, and utterly devastating. The swell of magic reverberated through Lechies's bones with a sharp tingle akin to silverware striking a glass cup. She could only stare, awed and aghast in equal measure, as the guardian was struck down.

The bells jingled so clearly in the sudden quiet.

Distantly, the most righteous part of Lechies urged her to continue the fight--to avenge the great mushroom; to protect Tathholm from this madman. But she couldn't bring herself to move. She knew--her chances of victory were slim, empowered as Zakarias was by his wrath and stolen artifact. Was she truly resolved to die for this cause?

'Coward,' came the thought, and it hurt as badly as her burns and bruises.

'There's still so much of the world left to see,' came the reply. The sentiment rose from deep within her, sonorous with its comfort, soothing with its logic. 'Do not die here. Stand down.'

At the other end of the room, Vasha trembled mightily. There lay his savior, dead, while the red bard walked on with prize in hand--Thurin's staff, the source of the village's troubles, the whole reason they had ventured into this peril... The reason Garuban lay unmoving by the entrance. If Zakarias left, all of this would have been for nothing.

These were the emotions Lechies could see playing across Vasha's face. His knife hand went tense with telling purpose, and Lechies's stomach dropped.

"Don't!"

But the hunter was already moving. He charged for Zakarias, vaulted over the mushroom's corpse, and descended upon the bard, knife flashing like a serpent's fang.

Lechies cursed. She threw out her hand. The water at Zakarias's feet churned briefly. Crystal chimed a warning, and then the water began to freeze, intent on climbing up his ankles and shins to anchor him in place.

 

[Zakarias]

Oh, but he did.

And Zakarias would hear him. Feel him.

Splish, splash, pitter, patter

As all the rain poured down and ran across the ancient stone of that temple, he would sense the hunter, sad and lonely and full of that sweet sorrow.

How he stirred. How he moved. Quick as a rock let fly from a boy's sling.

But Zakarias was quicker.

As crystal came creeping across his boots as he spun around, up his ankle, thin still, fragile, delicate, cracking and breaking but trying to grow on. Zakarias sprang. Wind swept around him, cracked the ice, if only just, it kept it from climbing up, but more than that, it pushed the hunter back. Almost held him in place, if only just. Enough to let the Jester take aim, his silver eyes wide with a primal intensity. An ancient evil. A thing that comes from fester and rot. Alive in dark places. Covered only by cracked and pale masks.

If the man was a snake. Zakarias was lightning. A flash. A strike, white and hot and through the space between the ribs. Cleanly. It punched through. Cleanly, it stuck out from the other end. Straight through the heart.

Vasha stared at him in disbelief, eyes wide. Not with horror. With fury. He moved his arms, as his heart stuttered and spasmed and tried in such miserable fuitility to pump through the obstruction of steel blade. Vasha let out a choked rage through gritted teeth and swiped, like a child in frustration to a much larger brother. Once, twice, his knife tried to cut the Jester, who just held him up like some little creature he had speared at the end of a stick. Each jerk, each movement, only had him slide further down the blade.

The hunter's arms swung one last swipe, and then went limp. His knife clattered to the ground.

Lechies' ice crept slowly, inch by snail's inch up Zakarias' calf. The Jester's arm was gashed with shallow cuts. His blood, hot and steaming, poured out, but he seemed to care little. Gale winds still howled about him, and he flicked his arm down, a gust pushed the body off his sword, and smashed the ice about his feet in one swell. His eyes locked with Lechies' own once more. How they smiled bright with his hateful glee.

"Self defense," he teased her. He held his sword low and twirled the green jeweled staff in a wide and showy arc, as blood dripped from the tip of his sword, his own mingled with Vasha's, he bowed deeply, as a showman does to his audience. "Now, if you would be so kind as to let me be on my way, Lady Lechies," the words were magicked. Ordered submission. Demanded surrender. "I have much and more that demands my attention," he said, as if a scholar in need to keep an appointment. He rose up and stared at her with a sharp and narrowed gaze. "Unless of course," heat came back into the the cold of his voice. "You wish to continue our dance?" He Angled himself, sword arm, bloody and slashed, toward the wizard, staff hand toward the exit.

 

[Lechies Delrio]

It was over so quickly. His second victim now, lying in a crumpled heap beside the first. A crimson flower bloomed from Vasha's chest, its petals tinging the floodwater beneath him a murky pink. Lechies wished she could look away, but the reality of what had happened forced her eyes to remain open. To witness how easily a good, strong man could be reduced to a corpse.

She had come here to help Tathholm. To save them. To find the source of the village's woes and seal it away or destroy it. But now she had a dead hunter on her hands, and her goal was clutched in the grip of a madman--a grip Lechies sorely doubted she had the strength to break. The gulf of power between them was too enormous--no, more than that. The difference in their resolve was astronomical. Such was the magnitude of the red bard's hatred for humans.

Again, duty and cowardice warred within her. Was she prepared to become victim number three? To die here in futility for the sake of her quest?

A foreign weight settled in Lechies's mind, trying to veil her vision in pink, coloring Zakarias's words with a peculiar sweetness. Even as she fought his influence once more and pushed the magick away, the very fact that he had tried to ensorcell her was, in a bizarre way, comforting. Self-defense, he'd mocked, but it seemed he truly would not trouble himself with killing her if she let him leave in peace.

'Stand down,' the sentiment echoed. So logical. Almost pleading. 'Survive.'

Survive, and... See to it that Garuban and Cadence lived, at least. And maybe, if the fates were kind, hurry back to Tathholm and warn the villagers of the reckoning that would soon descend upon their home.

New quests. New goals she could not complete if she was dead.

Lechies dropped her gaze, unable to look at Vasha any longer, and even less able to match the storm in Zakarias's stare. She knelt in the freezing water, laid her staff down, and put her hands on her knees.

"... No. I do not wish to continue." She spoke with the quiet, broken voice of the defeated. "Your conviction proved to be the greater between us. So, leave with your prize, and-"

She paused, choking on her words. Failure sat bitter on her tongue. "And may the gods judge you fairly for your deeds."

 

[Zakarias]

He laughed at her farewell. "May they indeed," he said and bade her a salute with his rapier before he sheathed the blade at his hip and stepped out the ornate door that had sealed the chamber in. His bells jingled softly, and softer with each moment that passed, until they were no more, and only the sound of the rushing water and the trickle of rain echoed through that most silent place.

When the party would climb out from the chamber, and make their way out from the temple, they would find no raging woods or trees ready for war. On the contrary. The woods were stilled. Back to their natural calm.

What they would find, however, was a new mushroom headed sentinel. Tall as the fungal guardian that watched over the chamber, it stood before the entrence of the temple, inert. Though its shape was longer, more jagged. Harder with horns that menaced and threatened greater than the natural construct they had encountered down below the temple structure. Were they to approach, it would alight, blue glow about its cap. It would not attack them. Only watch. A slab of wood, swordlike, clutched in its tangled hand.

If they pressed the being, then it would stir to action and defend the temple.

Beyond there would be no such constructs. No such threats or warnings. And when the woods came clear, and Tathholm came into view, they would find it at peace. Without trace of the wilds come to siege. And as they neared, they would hear a jaunty tune, rise and fall, rise and fall, like the very winds of the storm they strode to haste against.

 

[Lechies Delrio]

As soon as the bells faded away, Lechies took up her staff and moved to rouse those unconscious.

Cadence was first to wake, twice disoriented by her brief tenure as Zakarias's minion and by her sudden meeting with the wall. Lechies recounted all that had happened. While the other mage was visibly horror-struck by the part she was forced to play, Cadence quickly swallowed the severity of their situation with admirable fortitude.

Together, they woke Garuban as well, and... He reacted precisely as Lechies had feared. Unsteady from his blow to the head, and perhaps refusing to believe his own eyes, he stumbled over to Vasha's body and fell to his knees beside his brother. His hands roamed the corpse, ignoring the coldness of flesh as he checked again and again for a pulse, deaf to Lechies's attempts to explain that she was so very, very sorry, but the rest of the village was in danger and they had to leave now, and save proper respects for another time.

In the end, she had no choice but to allow Garuban his necessary minutes of grief and rage and promises, before he finally settled into a terrifying silence.

When they at last emerged from the depths of the temple, and found a new fungal guardian to greet them at the entrance, Lechies thought at first that Zakarias had installed it there as a final ploy, one last game for his entertainment. But the creature didn't attack them, and they didn't attack it, too busy with the crucial task already before them. The party set off into the forest, into the rain that still fell, cold and biting despite Lechies's renewed waterproofing charm.

Or perhaps her own mounting dread had frozen the blood in her veins. Where Lechies had expected to find fierce resistance from greenwrath now guided by a mad bard, the forest was completely docile. The trees sat still, harmless as they'd ever been, and no ivy or thorns lashed out at them as they ran, desperate, along the path that would lead them back to Tathholm. Surely Zakarias knew they would follow him, and would have taken steps to make their passage as difficult as possible?

Garuban seemed not to care about the contradiction, his face a picture of stone, Vasha's sword in his hand. But Cadence looked as nervous as Lechies felt, her gaze and wand arm jumping from one spot of greenery to the next, paranoid and exhausted.

'Something's not right,' instinct murmured in Lechies's gut, and it sharpened into a roar as they neared the village.

Magic oozed from the place. She felt it even before distant song touched their ears--song infused with the same wild, gleeful energy that was Zakarias's signature.

"Hurry," she urged the others, voice high with apprehension.

 

[Zakarias]

Come in to town, they would find few around. But the music, yes, the music they would hear. Loud and clear, it would lilt and run, jump and flourish before it fell and it dove and it rolled. All the while the rain went on in its downpour. Thunder cracked and lightning flashed. And the sound of hurried footsteps would come before them, splishing and splashing across the wet road like a stone set to skip across the surface of a lake.

It was a man. A villager. Likely someone Garuban had had pints with, or who Cadence had warded off after one too many attempts at charm spurred on by liquid courage. Stocky and heavy set. He looked to be crying. Loud and mad. As he drew closer, the sound that came from him as he stumbled recklessly, even bumped into them, crashed! He was laughing. Blind to them. He went on, laughing loud and violently, then he cried deeply and sorrowfully.

Garuban grunted, and shoved him away. Hard and without mercy. The man crashed against the cobbles and went on with his mad wails. Picked himself up and stumbled away.

The music was loud still, only the lyre had gone silent. Fiddles played on. A lute even. But that ancient sound that came from bone. That sound they had heard in the temple, that had bounced off the walls and spun the tale of the Green Wrath, it was gone. Yet its magic lingered.

Elbion trained eyes would see its trace, pink like flowers and butterflies, spread hear, floating there. Violent and electric pink that spread thin in the rain. Spread by the music, the tune, jaunty and mad and manic. Rising and falling.

In the town square, most of the village was gathered. All save the children, who watched on, hidden in the doorways of their homes, eyes wide with confused terror as their mothers and fathers, grandpas and grandmas, danced and sang and laughed and cried beneath the pouring rain.

Beneath a statue of the hero of Tathholm, Rangorin Volke, were a band of musicians. Locals who knew how to pluck strings and bow their fiddles well enough. Their minds seeded with deep magic. Magic beyond mortal kind. Fae magic.

Should they inspect the musicians. No harm would come to them, save the hurts and pains that came careless bumps, or knocks, or knees that came with those so possessed by dance and glee. They might even see the inscription upon the base of the statue. Rangorin Volke, who vanquished the Elven Witch, Marowin. Lower still, they would see the pale mask. Cracked as it was, twisted smile painted wide and purple across its visage, like a wicked scar, bruised along its edges.

All those people caught in the mad festival would dance till they died. The musicians too, would go on till their fingers fell off, or their knees gave out. Less the brave heroes of Tathholm break the spell. The pink mist that clouded their minds.

And as a the final trick, the true show of skill and the last flourish of the show, the likes of which only masters could figure out, well, when it came to names and recollection, they, Garuban, Cadence, and Lechies, would find no one in Tathholm who remembered them. Not by name. Not by deed. Nor would their names ever leave trace in the minds of those fine people of that fine place.

 

[Lechies Delrio]

Their confusion upon coming through the village gates was short-lived once they realized that Jacke the drunkard was not alone in his bizarre revelry. Despite their best efforts, no words or actions could sway the villagers from their frenzied dancing; it was as if the three of them were invisible, ghosts with no voice or influence, cursed only to witness. No spell that Lechies or Cadence attempted did any good, either. Lechies had little talent in breaking weaves of the intangible variety, and while Cadence had been able to dam the magic from Thurin's staff back at the ruins, this was well beyond her capabilities.

The sun fell behind the rooftops, and their chance to save Tathholm likewise fell closer to impossible.

Cadence borrowed a horse from one of the farmer's stables and sent Garuban riding off to the next town to ask help from their mages. Better he spend his restless energy on something useful; here there was no bard to stab, nowhere to direct his anger.

As darkness descended, the two of them did what they could. Lechies herded the children into the chapel and distracted them with displays of parlor magic, while Cadence prepared stew and passed the bowls into small, shaking hands. They tried to at least give water to the villagers, but gave up after several bruises from thrashing elbows. As the rain finally ceased, and stars poked through the clouds, some few villagers began to fall. The elderly first, their hearts unable to bear the strain any longer. As the first rays of light broke through the trees, some of the other adults dropped as well, feet and joints bloody, having danced themselves literally to death. Then the constant music lost its flute, as the woman who had so expertly wielded the woodwind slipped off her seat to land in the dirt, and her companions played on without her.

Still, Garuban had not come back.

Morning passed to afternoon, to night, then again to morning. Some of the older children shut their grief and fear behind brave masks and helped dig graves in the small cemetery behind Tathholm. Cadence and Lechies took alternating shifts to carry the dead as they fell.

The song thinned as the day went on, the musicians finally succumbing to the stress of their grueling merrymaking. The last to go was the fiddle-player, his instrument's closing note ending in an awful screech as his bow slipped from the strings. Only then did the dancers stop, and fall down in puddles of their own sweat and blood, chests heaving.

An hour later, distant hoofbeats signaled Garuban's return at last, with a whole party of mages in tow. Lechies was glad to discover no small number of them were healers, for the village's injuries were many... though the dead were many more. She and Cadence passed the task of succor onto their rescuers and at last allowed themselves the oblivion of proper sleep.

In the end, fewer than a quarter of Tathholm survived, not counting the children. With so much tragedy and trauma scarring their love for the village, those who remained decided they would remain no longer. After a few days of rest and recovery, they packed up their belongings and joined the mages on their journey home.

Cadence and Garuban did not follow. Even with the music gone, it was clear that some trick of Zakarias's still lingered, for their once-friends and neighbors were unable to remember their names no matter how many times they were spoken, forever consigning the two to the status of strangers. Lechies offered her company wherever they decided to go next, and together they made for the nearest portal stone to take them to Alliria.

They parted ways in the city's streets. Garuban mentioned finding work as a mercenary, though hints of vengeance still darkened the hunter's eyes. Cadence set off to find the cursebreakers' guild, that she might prevent something like this from happening again. Lechies checked in with the Greendawn Academy, recounted the story to her concerned associates, then collapsed into bed.

She would dream of silver eyes and howling laughter for weeks to come.