Fable - Ask Grievances & Regrets

[Chasmine]

For some reason his singing seemed to have a deterrent effect on the shades. Whether it was the shrill sound of it or the spiritual energy attached to the act, the words shunted them away like a foul smell. They did not give up chase, however, and continued to crowd around him - those at his back closing in until he turned and bellowed the song their way and buffeted them back again like a hearty sea gale.

"Keep singing!" Chasmine called to him, though he may not be able to hear over his own voice.

She was following the sound of it through the bleakness of the spirit realm. The portals lead to different locations of their domain and should she not be able to find the last open doorway in the ceiling, she'd have to take the long journey back to Gaage through the leylines... and that was not the preferred method for this particular situation.

To her, his voice echoed faint and hollow, as if emerging from underground like dwarven mining songs did from their mountain tunnels. Colichemarde still drawn, she shifted through this darker domain, unfamiliar with the maze-like system of tunnels it seemed to inhabit, and found herself at a crossroads of sorts with many paths to take. One such route the tune carried more loudly and she watched with curiosity as two shades came spilling forth from it.

Chasmine pressed forward, slicing her way through both and into the tunnel, then felt the sensation of departure from their domain and back into the living realm where she dropped from the ceiling, spearing a shade on her way out that had been looming over the top of Gaage.

She coiled and turned mid-air like a cat, driving her sword into the large portal, and yelled as she emitted a sudden burst of spiritual energy through her sword. It exploded, lifting the dim cast of darkness from the room. Daylight that had been filtered by its prior presence spilled in through cracks in the boarded up windows, cutting cleanly through the remaining shades. They screeched so loudly it cracked a mirror still left hanging on the wall by the wardrobe.

The ghost of Chasmine Gray crumpled to the floor, clutching the slash at her chest while catching her breath, "Nearly there," she said as the silence settled into the room with a welcome breeze.

 

[Gaage Eberwhit]

"SHAVE HIS BELLY WITH A RUSTY RAZOR! SHAVE HIS BELLY WITH A RUSTY RAZOR! SHAVE HIS BELLY WITH A RUSTY RAZOR EAR-LIE IN THE MORNIN'!"

Okay, he liked to think his signing wasn't that awful. The way the shades recoiled and retreated from his voice would have been downright insulting if they weren't ethereal monsters with a taste for his soul and a hunger to kill the only person in his damned group he actually gave two shits about. Gaage continued to turn his head and shout away at any of the specters who dared near him, and it was incredible how effective it was at keeping the ghoulish figures at bay. If he'd known about this, he'd have been doing it from the very beginning.

Chasmine's voice was still floating about, but he couldn't hear her very well anymore. She was muffled as if she spoke to him through thick walls, and he couldn't spot her either. Not much he could do about that; He had to have faith and trust she knew whatever the hell she was doing. Gaage's hands were full enough with crowd control, and by now he was darting around the room, blurting out more verses of 'Drunken Sailor' strategically in an attempt to herd the lot of them into one corner.

"WAY HAY AND UP SHE RISES, WAY HAY AND UP SHE RISES, WAY HAY AND UP SHE RISES EAR-LIE IN THE MORNIN'!"

For whatever reason, the longer he sang, the less it seemed to work. Either his voice was getting weaker or these shades were getting used to his velvety tones. Either way, he was back to alternating between singing and dodging agitated swipes. The spooky fucks were far too persistent for his liking, and before he knew it they had him surrounded, and it was clear that Chasmine had vanished, as she wasn't swinging that colichemarde around like a madwoman anymore.

Forced to drop to a knee to avoid a shade that now loomed over him with 'mouth' agape and hands reaching out to seize him, Eberwhit offered his only defense:

"P-put him in the bed with the captain's daughter? Earl-ie in the morning?"

No dice. The shade seemed to shake it off like the slap of a child. It didn't look good for Eberwhit until Chasmine made her grand return, dropping from the ceiling like a fuckin' ghost-ninja and cleaving right through the shade, before pouncing on the last portal with a cry. Something happened, a wave of power that shook the whole room, strong enough to knock Gaage back against the wall and onto his ass.

But by the time he regained his senses, it was over. The shades on this floor were gone, the pressure in the air had dissipated, and Chasmine lay still on the floor.

Quickly, Gaage slid off the bed he'd landed on and rushed to her side, dropping to a knee and starting to offer a hand before he realized that probably wasn't something that would help. He pulled it back, biting his lower lip, and instead spoke.

"If it gets more intense than that, we need a new plan. You're wounded, and I don't think I can handle any more than what I just had to deal with there."

His ember gaze focusing on the strange wound upon her torso, he added.

"I didn't realize they could hit you. I'm sorry. I should have been more careful."

Chasmine

 

[Chasmine]

Kind of him to offer his hand. An earnest gesture if ever there was one, given he'd done so without realizing he couldn't actually help her. Chasmine carefully collected herself and sat up, giving him an odd sort of look as he apologized. Where was this kind of care in the Academy when she was beaten to within an inch of her life by other Initiates on a routine basis?

That was neither here nor there, she decided, and was no help to their present goal.

"Everything spiritual can hurt me," Chas informed him, "I have spent the majority of my life running from them."

Now she could no longer hide behind blood runes painted across the walls of her room. There were not any safe spaces for her to go unless she took possession of an object that could hold her. Now she at least had a weapon at her side and she knew how to use it. Perhaps not masterfully, but with far better skill and confidence than she ever mustered at the Academy.

Her eyes tipped upward toward the ceiling and the top floor.

"It's up there," she said, her mouth hanging open slightly as she appeared to catch her breath. Chas pushed herself to her feet, "I do not think there are anymore open portals. Just the ethergate. Don't go near it."

She had no other words of wisdom or advice for she knew not what to expect. Without any further ado and no apparent fear to be had, Chasmine Gray soldiered on to the stairwell and up the next flight of steps.

 

[Gaage Eberwhit]

In that brief moment of Chasmine looking up at him with that strange sense of befuddlement at his apology, Gaage felt a pang of pity in his gut. Not because she'd been wounded, or because he couldn't help her up, but because he finally recognized what it was he'd seen in her eyes that made him so damned uncomfortable.

It was that momentary doubt, that questioning of his motives, however minute. Why would she trust him? He'd never been there for her when she was alive. Hell, he'd never even given her the time of day. To ask that she place any kind of faith in him when all that had changed was her state of being... it was a tall ask. Even for a ghost.

Gaage liked to think he wasn't the person he was back then, but perhaps it was too late for that now.

So, he lowered his hand and nodded solemnly as she brought herself up to her feet and set their next objective ahead of them. Chas had yet to explain what the hell an Ethergate was in any significant detail, but Eberwhit had long since given up on trying to get straight answers out of her. As long as he didn't have to sing any more shanties, he supposed he wouldn't complain too much.

"Bet Kristen Pirian would be real fun company for you then." Gaage quipped as he fell in behind her to follow up to the top floor. That girl was as religious and 'spiritual' as they come. He almost missed watching her bumble about pretending she wasn't devout in front of the Proctors. "Seriously though, if I can't get close to the Ethergate, what do I do up here?"

Chasmine

 

[Chasmine]

"Kristen is a lovely person," Chasmine remarked with a gentle ring of fondness to her voice she hadn't carried for quite some time now. Kristen had never once been cruel to her and had even come to her for advice. They were alike in many ways, as well. Beyond the nature of their magics, Chasmine had also joined the Academy quite late in her childhood (even if a few years before Kristen and of wholly differing circumstances). Neither of them had been well-received and neither of them had seemed to wish ill upon the other Initiates.

She hoped wherever Kristen was now, she was doing well. Or, at the very least, doing better than she was.

Alive, for starters.

"I am not certain yet," Chas answered Gaage as her ghostly, soundless steps and fluid movements carried her up the stairwell, "but it is my firm belief that we are about to encounter a lich. The signs are quite clear."

 

[Gaage Eberwhit]

When Chasmine's tone shifted up a bit at the mention of the Pirian girl, Gaage was a bit concerned he'd just indirectly insulted the one person she'd shown any fondness for. Luckily for him, Chas's fond memory of Kristen seemed to distract her from the context of his words, and he bit his tongue.

Real smooth now, Gaage. Try not to piss off the only person who's on your side, would you?

"She does have a good head on her shoulders. A lot sharper than some of us could claim to be." Eberwhit acquiesced. He wasn't lying either; Despite her somewhat ditzy personality, she had a better perception than most of the heavy hitters of the class any day of the week. "Probably why I'm standing here in a tower full of soul-eating specters and she isn't."

Gaage followed Chasmine up the next flight of stairs, trying not to make it too obvious he had little to no idea as to what a lich is. The word had been mentioned in class once or twice, but he couldn't remember much past it being a form of Undead. That, and you really didn't want to meet one unprepared.

"Liches are solid though, right? Meaning... I can actually hit them?" His magic wouldn't do much against the undead, but not having to rely on Chasmine to do the lion's share of the work would definitely be a boon. He was starting to feel rather guilty over the effort she was putting in. "Or should I take this last swig of water I've got and wet my throat for another rousing verse?"

Chasmine

 

[Chasmine]

There was a lot to be said about the reasons of why Gaage was standing in a tower full of soul-eating specters and Kristen was not. Chasmine did not think Gaage would really hit the nail on the head as to why, but it had something to do with not defecting to the exiled side for the sake of a single woman and remaining true to the Kingdom he was raised and trained to serve. Not that she was about to voice such things here and now.

She continued up the steps while he spoke, his words only accompanied by his own footsteps as they echoed up the stone stairwell.

"Liches are solid though, right? Meaning... I can actually hit them?"

"That's right," Chasmine replied, "but if you wish to continue singing I will not stop you."

She wasn't sure that a song would have the same effect on a lich, but there was no harm in trying. When at last she reached the top, it was on an open expanse of the tower's sentry level. Open sides span the entirety of it with only a few solid walls to speak of. There, at the distant side was a chest the size of a grown man and upon it sat the remains of an armored corpse. Decayed down to the bone, not but the metal pieces comprising its kit remained like a hollow chitin.

Chas paused toward the center, looking around with some amount of confusion.

"Curious," she said as if she'd found a strange bug, "I do not see the Ethergate. ...do you see anything strange, Gaage?"

 

[Gaage Eberwhit]

"I think I'm good." Gaage politely declined to continue his rousing rendition of Drunken Sailor. "I'd feel bad if my tone-deafness somehow killed you a second time." That, and he was banged up enough without losing his voice to go with it. Liches were tangible beings, and that meant Gaage could do this the old-fashioned way. He was much more comfortable with that.

Yet as they reached the top floor, there was no Lich waiting for them. In fact, the sentry level was sparse and empty, as though everything had been cleared out of it long before the rest of this tower had fallen to the horrors the two of them had just spent half of the day cleaning up after. Gaage still didn't know what an Ethergate was, but he had a hunch it wasn't something that was easy to miss.

"No bloodthirsty undead, no portals to another dimension..." Gaage hummed as he stepped forward into the room, spinning a knife in his hand as he looked around the empty floor. "Given the rest of this place, I think that actually makes me more nervous." Chasmine hadn't been wrong in any of her predictions up until now, so he had no reason to believe she'd started missing all of a sudden. Turning back to his incorporeal companion, Gaage points the knife back at the chest and the corpse. "Shot in the dark, but think that's our guy? Maybe the ethergate is... I dunno, in the chest or somethin'?"

Chasmine

 

[Chasmine]

To another Dreadlord or just another person entirely, Gaage's suggestion might've been met with a derisive snort or scoff. What ludicrousy, thinking that an entire ethergate could fit in a chest!

Chasmine looked at Gaage then looked to the chest and its current occupant, "You might be right. If I was not certain there was an ethergate up here I might think the chest is a mimic," she replied without any hint of humor or uncertainty, and made her way closer to them. She stopped several feet away and gave the carcass and its treasure a measured look of scrutiny.

Could an ethergate fit in there? She couldn't really say. She'd never seen one before personally. Who was to say what the limitations of magic really were when it came to these sorts of dark and unknowable things.

"Would you do the honors?" Chas stepped aside and gestured to it, clearly incapable of doing the deed herself in her present state. She might've been able to poltergeist it, but that would have required a great deal of energy that she'd likely need for what came next.

 

[Gaage Eberwhit]

A mimic? Like... a chest with a tongue and teeth? Gaage bit on his lip to prevent himself from saying aloud that he'd always assumed those things were made up to dissuade kids from digging around in other people's belongings. If Chasmine said they existed, then they probably did, and Eberwhit had no desire to meet one. Which was great, considering she was asking him to check and all.

"Sure, let the guy made of flesh and bone poke around the skeleton and see if it comes alive and tries to stab him to death." He joked, but the smile on his face betrayed any actual objection. Gaage wasn't actually worried about the possibility of fighting a Lich; They were made of bones, and even old bones had the slightest bit of life left in them, life that he could latch onto, as he'd learned from fighting the Vampires in Rostev with Edric.

The silence in the room was the eeriest part of it all, the way his boots against the floor echoed off of the walls and made him sound much heavier than he was. Maybe he should have started singing, just to break the damned tension a little bit. By the time he'd crossed over to the skeleton sitting on the chest, he was quite honestly expecting the corpse to jump to life and attack him.

"Knock knock. You have a moment to talk about our lord and savior, Kress?" Gaage quipped, raising a fist and rapping on the corpse's head with his knuckles. It was the equivalent of checking to see if the ground was trapped by walking on it, but Eberwhit hadn't gotten this far by being conservative.

Chasmine

 

[Chasmine]

Chasmine watched with tepid anticipation as the skull upon which Gaage knocked dropped forward and broke free from its body to tumble down into its lap and then fell upon the floor to roll to a stop between his feet. The lower mandible had unattached. Some teeth scattered about like marbles.

"I do not think he likes Kress," Chasmine whispered quietly to Gaage.

All in all, rather uneventful for such a spooky locale. The ghost moved closer to quietly inspect what tattered remnants of the warrior's armor remained.

"I believe he was a victim," she said, indicating large slash marks that scored the breadth of the once-living's chest.

 

[Gaage Eberwhit]

"Yeah? Makes two of us. Certainly ain't done nothing for me." Gaage mumbled, watching the skull as it rolled towards his feet. Picking up a boot he, kicked it along to roll behind him and stepped up to the chest. "Or you for that matter." He added as he dropped to a knee and leaned in to inspect the lock on the front of the chest. Briefly, he looked back to Chasmine. "Actually... how does that work? Being a ghost, I mean? Do you choose not to cross over? Or is it you can't?"

Quickly enough though, he waved off the question, shaking his head. "You don't have to answer that. Personal, I get it." Chasmine hadn't gone into details about the circumstances of her death, and while Gaage could be a mouthy, insensitive prick sometimes, even he wasn't stupid enough to touch that, especially when she still had reservations about him over their time at the Academy. "This thing is locked, but it's a piece of shit. Gimme a half a minute and we're in."

Pulling a thin sliver of bone and a forked metal pick from the collar of his coat, Gaage swiftly did away with the lock mechanism, and the chest popped slightly ajar with an echoing 'click'.

"Voila. Now, if this is a mimic, this is the part where I get devoured, right?"

Gaage stood and dusted off his hands. Then, he leaned forward, gripped the edge of the chest's lid, and opened it. What waited for him inside was something he'd never guessed was a possibility, beyond any of his wildest dreams...

Nothing.

At least, it looked like nothing. Only the bottom of the chest met his eyes.

"Hey, uh... Are ethergates invisible?"

Chasmine

 

[Chasmine]

An impassive look met Gaage's questions on why she had not crossed over. No answers arrived and, thankfully, he dismissed the curiosity anyway. He was right, it was personal, but also Chasmine had no real answers because in truth she did not know them.

Instead she watched with growing curiosity as he produced two useful elements from his collar of all places and set about picking the lock.

"What a wonderful trick," she remarked, never having once the mind of breaking-and-entering, nevermind the fact that Chasmine had often interloped into places she was not welcome or wanted out of mere circumstance or accident. In his moment of uncertainty she drew a faint smile, like a young child waiting with anticipation for the fun part of the story.

Only nothing happened.

And the chest was empty.

She approached to peer into the chest beside him, "I had not considered you might not be able to see it."

Perhaps being able to see ethergates was restricted to beings such as herself; those with the spiritual sight blessed to see all the wonderful and horrible things that came with it, ethergates included. This truly was a conundrum. Chasmine could feel the odious presence of something powerful and arcane here, on this very floor, but even she herself was stumped as to where-

A pale, white arm speared upward from the bottom of the chest, the hand attached ensnaring Gaage by the neck with an impossibly strong grip. Chasmine froze in place, eyes widening as she watched a heathenous creature rise up from the shadow within, lifting Gaage bodily off the floor as its massive form began to manifest out of the ether. The stench that came with it was so horrific it curdled the presence of wild vines growing through the windows of the tower. Its presence: oppressive.

Putridity formed as body, with lengths of dead, black hair reaching down its back to form a matted, tangled cape. Where there should have been a face remained not but puckered skin, like vertical lips pursed over a bite of sour lemon. Smoke banded along the sides of its skull, forming blackened growths of horn.

"Lich," Chasmine pointed, staring in awe. She'd been right - which happened more than most people would be lead to believe.

 

[Gaage Eberwhit]

Gaage had cracked his fair share of locks, though he hadn't had as much reason to do it since leaving the Academy. It was one of those skills that was better served towards after-hours mischief than practical use on the field as an Initiate, especially when you had walking battering rams like Zael or Ralene on your team.

Chasmine almost looked impressed by his work. It was as close as he was going to get, he figured, so he'd just have to take it.

"I dunno, I could see the other ones alright. Why would this one be any different?" Chasmine had slid forward to peek into the chest as well, and Gaage turned his head to cast a quizzical glance her way. She'd been on the money about everything they'd encountered in this building so far. If she said there was an Ethergate and a Lich up here, he was inclined to believe her, but... "Maybe somebody got here before us? Rushed through the dog and pony show downstairs and wiped out our Lich and Etherga--"

Eberwhit's words were cut off, replaced only by a choking gargle as a pale white hand sprung forth from the chest, wrapping long, bony fingers around his neck and squeezing down on his windpipe as an intimidating, ominous figure began to emerge from within the chest.

Oh, Nope. There he is.

Gaage raised his hands up to the iron grip wrapped around his neck, trying to push his fingers in between the Lich's hand and his throat to create some space to breathe. Nothing doing, this thing was strong. Gaage had fought Orcs with less power than this freaky fuck. All he could do was stare daggers down at the horned nightmare's wrinkled remnant of a face and try not to gag at the putrid stench. The way he was being held, he'd just suffocate on his own sick.

He kicked, trying to dislodge himself to no avail. Tears formed in his eyes at both the odor and pressure being placed on his neck. Blackness crept at the edges of his vision as blood flow to his brain slowed. Couldn't even summon up an ounce of magic if he couldn't focus, and he certainly couldn't focus if he couldn't breathe.

Chasmine

 

[Chasmine]

Enraptured by the sight of an honest-to-goodness Lich, Chasmine stared upwards at its hideous self for several moments longer than was probably healthy for Gaage. For a young girl who had spent the vast majority of her life running from all manner of horrible undead things, she'd yet to come face to face with one of these. Liches were nothing if not completely and utterly terrifying.

Chasmine was certainly terrified.

But Chasmine was already dead, and as Gaage flailed around trying haplessly to free himself, his boot managed to kick aside the skull of the corpse that once rested upon the false chest. The clatter of it smashing against the back wall brought the ghost back to the current dire present needs with a gasp.

Her right hand dove to the air at her side, manifesting in a green flash the sheathed colichemarde. In one fell upward swoop the fine spectral sword slashed clean through the outstretched arm of the lich, and it screeched a hellish, drum-splitting sound in response as Gaage dropped bodily back to the ground with the hand still cinched around his neck.

Its great horned head whipped around to look at Chas, the puckered stitch of its face gaping to bellow forth another heathenous roar between too many black-slicked teeth.

She shifted back, eyes wide as she stared up-up-up at the thing, "G-Gaage?" every part of her ghostly self trembled as like a mother drawing the attention of a predator away from her child she slowly plied the lich away from the chest and her companion, "Are you okay?"

 

[Gaage Eberwhit]

Whatever Chasmine had done to free him was lost on Gaage, by the time she'd cleaved off the arm of the wretched thing the entirety of his vision had gone fuzzy and unfocused. The fruitless kicking and thrashing had only served to expend his energy faster, and he'd resigned to his fate when he felt the wooden floor against his back.

The impact made him gasp, which made him realize that he could breathe again. His mouth opened wide, sucking in as much wind as he could, raggedly trying to replenish himself of what had very nearly been taken from him. When he could feel them again, he brought his hands up to his neck and pried the dismembered hand free of his throat, tossing it aside in disgust as the waves of pain his adrenaline had held back came washing over him now.

Fuck that was a close one.

"G-Gaage? Are you okay?"

If he didn't know Chas to be the only one in the room with him besides the awful Lich, he wouldn't have recognized her voice. Fear wasn't something one expected to hear from a ghost, and Gaage had heard almost nothing in the way of emotion from her since they'd reunited. Oddly, it didn't unnerve him to hear her sounding scared. As he looked towards her call, watched her as he slowly backpedaled away from the Lich, now with eyes on her instead of him, he instead knitted his brow in anger.

She'd saved him twice now, and it was time to repay the favor.

"Peachy..." He croaked out in a ragged voice, but his words couldn't have been truer. Chasmine had given him the tool he needed to dish out some proper punishment, and she hadn't even realized it. Pushing himself to his feet, Eberwhit reached down and grabbed the dismembered arm that had come down with him. There was one thing that his last mission with Edric and Mae had taught him, and now he'd put it into practice.

"Chas, get down!" Gaage wasn't sure if this could damage her, but he wasn't taking any chances. Aiming the end of the arm that had been severed at the Lich, he mustered all the magic he'd managed to recover in his brief respite through his palms and into the dead flesh, pushing it through until it reached the bone.

It was faint, but he could feel the last vestiges of life within the marrow. Eberwhit latched onto it, clenched his teeth, and let go. The jagged and broken bones within the arm rocketed out of the open wound like shrapnel, careening towards the lich at high speed.

Chasmine