Private Tales In the Pursuit of Power

A private roleplay only for those invited by the first writer
Dauner was always dressed for the occasion, as long as it wasn't some long-winded noble, or formal occasion, in which case his casual attire could still get a pass. As such, he really didn't need to worry about blending in. Except of course for his charm. He'd have to keep that in check, again. Wouldn't be too good attracting a lot of attention, even if it's primarily attention from the ladies, which just so happens to be the kind of attention Dauner likes most.

Following Kristen, he mounted his horse, right after putting on his jacket. He left the newly crafted utensils there, since they were meant to be disposable anyway. They'll simply turn to mud the next time it rains, since the cohesive magic Dauner had initially applied to them would have faded by then.

"Well, that might prove to be a little bit difficult" Dauner responded to Kristen's last sentence. "I just can't see anyway a pretty girl like you wouldn't attract attention" he continued. "Now, then, shall we" he added, as his horse, as though on cue, began to gallop without him doing anything in particular to make it do so.
 
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Kristen felt a flush in her cheeks. Compliments, especially when so timed that they caught her by surprise, had the infinite capacity to coax that rush of color to her cheeks and its accompanying bashful look.

Now, then, shall we?

"Indeed."

She started her horse off of a trot, and it was but a moment's passing later when she came up with a playful response.

"Mayhap you'll attract the attentions of a whole flock of sorceresses in Ashol yourself, and we shall be made laden by their longing."

Away from Coogan's Depths and to the nearest road. And thus began their journey to Ashol, and to the dangers which awaited.

Dauner
 
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Dauner laughed lightheartedly at Kristen's response. He, more than anyone else, knew just how much truth there was in that. Back when he had yet to develop a method to suppress his charm, and make himself look no better than a slightly better than average handsome guy, he always had said flock of sorceresses do all sort of crazy things just to get his attention. But even now, considering this suppression is only illusory, should anyone possess the ability to see through illusions, they'd still be able to see through his suppression. Luckily for him, those with enough power to break his illusion are few and far between, so there was little need to worry about running into such people.

Those were chaotic times. Times he sort of missed. Dauner was starting to feel like reliving those good old days, where he could literally start a riot, just by appearing in a settlement with many a woman. Not now, though, the mission took priority. For now.

A few minutes into their ride, and Dauner sense something approaching from behind. It was fast too. As expected. Another one of the Titus' underlings must have figured that something had happened to Naya, and so sent out a desecrator to investigate it. The problem here was, the fact that there was only one desecrator would most likely mean it was of a stronger breed than the ones they'd faced so far. Dauner could as well just stop his horse and end the being, but where was the fun in that.

"Kristen, how about a little race. To see which of the three of us is faster" he said, counting the desecrator on their tails. Though it was still hidden from view by the distance and geography, it was fast. Faster than the horses, that was for sure.
 
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The three of us, he said. Well, that meant—

"You may come out from wherever you are, Khorvayne," Kristen called out to the trees, unamused.

No response, no flock of crows. The sorceress said that she would be near, but, so far as Kristen reckoned, she deigned not to show at Kristen's call.

She sighed. Said to Dauner, "I do not know how fair it would be to have her race as well, lacking as she does her own horse and with her magic being, I can only presume, quite a lot faster."

Unbeknownst to Kristen was that the third party invited to the race wasn't the sorceress, but the Desecrator Wraith currently on their trail. Forged from the dangerous union of three consumed souls rather than one, the result was a dark creature whose power was greater than the sum of three regular Desecrators. The Desecrator Wraith lacked legs, and therefore floated above ground, gliding silently along at frightening speeds. The creature may have been far behind them now, but that speed would bring it into view soon enough.

Dauner
 
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"Oh. It is not her whom I speak of. Of course, I'd love to run a race with her. Just a different kind of race" he said, his face revealing a little more of the lechery behind the sentence than he intended to let on. He then cleared his throat before continuing. "It appears Naya's pals are not too pleased with her fate, and now they've sent out a scout to investigate what happened last night" unsure of how they got to know what happened so quickly, Dauner just assumed that there was some sort of communication link between them, and Naya's silence was what prompted them to act.

"Oh, you can already see it in the distance" he said, looking back. It was hard to discern, but there was a tiny black dot in the far distance. It was moving fast, and growing more noticeable as it did.

"It's giving off a stronger aura than any desecrator I've ever seen" he added, turning his head to face the road ahead. "Keep up if you can, slowpoke" Dauner said as he urged his horse to run, securing for himself a head start against Kristen, and laughing, somewhat hysterically, as he did.
 
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"Wait-wait-wait-WAIT!" Kristen exclaimed as she heeled her horse into a gallop, though already lagging behind Dauner's headstart.

She had seen it, looking back over her shoulder once Dauner pointed it out. Keen as she was to slay the foul spawn, Kristen was also acutely aware that she was lacking any protection. And if it truly was as strong as Dauner said? She need only think back to the attack in Yslan, how close she had come and how quickly the sense of inviolability cultivated in the Chapel in Alliria (wherein she had suffered no damage whatsoever) dissipated once she had been struck by one of those Dark Bolts.

Perhaps other Dreadlord Initiates, in whom an unshakeable independence from ever needing aid in battle had been instilled, would scorn ever admitting openly, or even so much as acting positively in a way to suggest that they needed help, but Kristen was not such a one. Pride without tempering humility was a great, chasmic pitfall indeed.

So she urged her horse faster and faster, caught up unintentionally in the race Dauner had suggested in her attempt to at least keep up with him, if not come abreast.

And the Desecrator Wraith, that baleful creature, swept across the land at an astonishing speed, its black robes fluttering but its hood never moving an inch.

Dauner
 
Though unwilling to dispatch of the wraith immediately, Dauner saw it only fit to slow it down when it got too close, so that he could keep playing around with it, if only for a moment more. As such, after a few minutes of galloping forward, the desecrator wraith was now closer than ever. Close enough to begin attacking the duo, to say the least.

"Watch out for those bolts!" Dauner would warn Kristen, as the wraith began to launch a few their way. In response, Dauner would begin condensing energy in his palm. This would cause a visual phenomenon akin to spacial distortion, as the energy in the surrounding would be drawn in into a condensed ball of energy. Dauner would then toss it at the wraith, at which point it would explode violently, as all the condensed energy would be fighting to disperse. The shockwave after the explosion would, less violently, erupt outward, in the form of a gust of wind, blowing fast, even against Dauner and Kristen, who were headed in the same direction as it.

"Isn't this fun?" Dauner would ask Kristen, laughing heartily.
 
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"You needn't tell me twice!"

Kristen held the reins of her horse tightly, urging her steed to the left or to the right as needed, Dark Bolts streaming past her, some not so close, some all too worryingly close. Those ghastly, pallid hands flung Bolt after Bolt, the Wraith's only compulsion to serve whatever malicious master it was enthralled to and to kill any who stood in its path.

Some light dust from the road was kicked up from the hooves of their galloping horses, yet this was nothing compared the explosion of condensed energy. A haze of dust veiled the Wraith as a shower of leaves fell from their branches and fluttered in a verdant swarm as the winds from the shockwave took them. But the Wraith emerged as determined as ever, the creature able to shield itself from harm this time.

Dauner was making light of it all, as was his wont.

"Socials are fun! Dances are fun! Equestrian affairs are fun!"

Kristen, unused to Conjuring anything whilst moving at such speeds as they were, tried for a Withering Chain, directing it to burst out from the ground some meters in front of the Wraith and attempt to ensnare it. But the creature easily evaded the serpentine lash of the Chain and Kristen quickly unsummoned it as it was left behind.

"This, I say, is duty. Necessary action!" She flattened herself to her horse as a Dark Bolt streaked by overhead. "'Fun' seems an inadequate descriptor to me!"

Yet, for all these protestations, she seemed quite engaged in it all.

Dauner
 
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"You guys really don't know how to have fun at the academy, do you?" Dauner asked, as he pouted. "Dancing might be fun sometimes, but for men, at its core, it is a deadly battle to see who can get together with the prettiest girls in the room" he said with so straight a face, that anyone who didn't know what a dance was, would believe, and even start to share his view about the subject without much question.

"Socials, too, aren't necessarily fun, but they are a necessity. After all, no matter what circle you are in, it is necessary to interact with others. And riding is only fun when It's done with a pretty girl. Else, it's just a not necessarily fun, means to pass time" he finished.

Throughout his explanation, he dodged the dark bolts coming his way with relative ease, while completely ignoring the existence of the wraith on their tail.

"However, it is fun to run an obstacle challenge like this. It helps you hone your horse riding skills, all while training your senses, to better feel dark energy. And what better way to do that than when you might lose your life if you fail" he said, smiling, and then turning to look at the wraith. "Keep it up, blackie. You're doing a good job" he finished, as he uttered words of encouragement for the wraith.
 
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Dauner's ability to be nonchalant in a time like this was astounding. Casually did he run down his retorts, all the while as the Desecrator Wraith stayed in pursuit.

"We shall at this juncture have to differ!"

Fun, whatever its form (and to Kristen, it was most certainly not being hounded by a spawn of the Dark Ones), would come later. This was duty. Necessary action. Long had she come from her first mission, that utter disaster at Vel Acan wherein she crumpled into a terrified, sniveling heap. Here she had the wherewithal to remain firm. Determination, not terror, ruled the day.

And despite all her words to the contrary, a little hint of an eager, ready smile was the cornerstone of her visage—especially after Dauner taunted the creature.

The Wraith then shifted from hurling Dark Bolts. Already was it on course to catch up with them, yet the creature sped up even more. In those pallid hands dark, shadowy sickles manifested, and the creature swept up from its hover as though it had leaped and went sailing toward Kristen, both sickles poised to strike.

Kristen grimaced but acted with swiftness. She drew her sword, holding the reins of her horse with one hand, and prepared to defend herself, awkward though it may be from her mounted position and the Wraith descending down toward her from behind.

Dauner
 
"To each their own, I guess"

Dauner was more than aware of how his standards differed from what most considered to be the norm. Hardly anyone had gone through what he had. Lived as long as he had. Had the number of encounters and adventures he had. So it would be pretty damn hard to find someone who shared his views on many a matter.

Putting that conversation aside, Dauner turned back to look at the wraith, as it beelined for Kristen. Things were starting to look dangerous for his partner, but Dauner persisted in his decision to not strike down the wraith yet. First, he'd let Kristen deal with it, and see how she fares. A wraith of this level was not a problem for Dauner, but would prove a more proper learning material for Kristen. It would be rude to snatch that chance from her, so for now, he simply observed.
 
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The Wraith was a vicious foe.

One of its sickles it arced up high for an extended overhead strike, and it was all Kristen could do to hold up her sword for defense. With its other sickle the Wraith could not reach Kristen, such was the nature of the extension by it leaning forward in its flight, but it found another target just as good.

The horse's legs.

Kristen blocked the overhead strike at the same time as the Wraith swiped and cut off her mount's hind legs. The horse screamed in pain and its backside dropped to the ground. Kristen was thrown, and both she and what was left of her horse went rolling and bouncing through the dirt of the road, each dragged along by their momentum for a time. In her heightened alarm through the chaos of the fall she was aware of two things primarily: that she had held onto her sword, and that it had cut her inner right thigh. The warmth of blood from this thigh wound was not alone, tiny scrapes and gashes from so harrowing a tumble dotted her body beneath her garments, but this blood was by far the most copious.

Still, Proctor Magomo's relentless training kicked in, and Kristen flipped around once she had come to a stop on her stomach to face the oncoming Wraith. She sat up, but the Wraith was already upon her. As desperate as it was novel, Kristen thought to use her Withering Chains defensively to screen the blows, summoning two which burst from the ground between her and the creature and each hindering slashes from its sickles. That familiar damning hiss came from where the Chains touched the Wraith's arms.

Seizing the opportunity, she tried to thrust her sword forward into what might have been the Wraith's legless abdomen. But her weapon was similarly blocked by the creature's own magic, a deflecting dark shield manifesting and dissipating just in time to make her sword bounce off as if she had struck stone.

The best thing she figured then was to properly get back onto her feet and get some distance while the Wraith broke free of her Chains. So she did, scrambling up and falling back several paces, ignoring the pain of scrapes, cuts, and bruises throughout her body and holding at least a commendable guard stance.

Dauner
 
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Although, keeping a close eye on the situation, Dauner acted ignorant of the extent of the danger facing Kristen behind him, seemingly focusing on the road ahead instead. However, this would change when her horse was incapacitated, forcing Dauner to acknowledge the situation, stopping his horse and turning around. Yet he still wouldn't intervene just yet.

Kristen combat instincts were quite impressive, lacking only in experience. That lack of experience would however cause her to injure her leg as she rolled through the dirt, putting her in a bit of a disadvantageous position, as pain would now accompany her every movement. Adding to that, exerting herself would only worsen the wound, causing her to lose more blood as the fight dragged on. Yet, Dauner watched on.

Holding onto his scabbard in his left hand, he pushed the hilt of his sword out, slightly unsheathing it, but otherwise doing nothing. He wanted to see just how far Kristen could push herself, but was also ready to jump in if things got dangerous.
 
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Dauner was right; this one was not like the other Desecrators they had fought. It was faster, hardier, deadlier. Where she might have been able to face one of the other kind head-on, her magic and her sword more reliably able to make contact, the Wraith was an opponent she was not so sure she could beat.

But Dauner was here, and that very fact was emboldening.

As the Wraith cut away her Chains and the Chains slunk back into the ground and dissipated, Kristen figured her best chance was to debilitate the Wraith. Her Curses, she had come to learn, had a certain finesse to them. The more devastating the Curse, the greater the chance her target could resist it through willpower. So it was in her best interest not to push her luck too far. Slightly crippling the Wraith was better than trying to severely cripple it and failing to do so.

"Lethargy seeps into your bones," Kristen said, shaping the Curse, that pale light glowing in her outstretched offhand and a damning drone sounding as the spell manifested.

And it worked. The Wraith recoiled slightly in its gliding approach toward her, and its glide slowed by a small but not insignificant degree. Any edge she could garner for herself would be worthwhile.

Especially since she was unarmored and wasn't the best at blocks and parries. Though they were the same age, many of her peers in the Academy already had years of experience in training sword techniques, whereas she had only just begun after switching from the mace, her initial weapon of choice (and still a favorite). Even with the slowing Curse upon it, the Wraith's flurry of dual strikes was formidable and quickly threatening to be overwhelming. Kristen had to call forth more Chains to, in emergency fashion, block a few that she anticipated to be a little too fast for comfort.

She was getting pushed back. Giving ground to the Wraith. Only too late to notice that the Wraith was pushing her back in a specific direction.

Something chomped on her ankle.

"AHH!"

Her own slain horse, reanimated stealthily by the Wraith, the now undead animal scarcely able to move but more than able to reach out its neck and clamp onto her ankle. It wrenched its head and stole her feet out from under her, and down onto her back she fell, hitting the ground hard and the all the wind knocked clean from her chest.

The Wraith, a wily foe, shot a Dark Bolt back at Dauner with one hand in the effort to delay him while lining up a killing blow against Kristen with its other.

Dauner
 
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The show had come to an end, and so too had Dauner's rest. With Kristen at risk of a lethal strike, he was now forced to intervene. However, the wraith had other plans. Of the group, he seemed like he'd prove hardest to deal with, so if it could kill and reanimate Kristen, it might have a better chance to claim his life too. However, there was one factor it hadn't figured into its calculations, and that was the power difference between them.

As the wraith fired its dark bolt, Dauner grabbed the hilt of his sword. One breath later, silence befell all around him. The came the sound of a sword drawn from its sheath, bringing with it a projection of a slash, laced with lightning for increased speed. The slash cut its way through the dark bolt, dispersing it as it did, and made a beeline for the wraith, cutting off the hand that was preparing to fire a bolt at Kristen.

He then proceeded to dismount, calmly walking over to the wraith with his sword in hand. Whether out of panic or determination to see its job through to the end, the wraith pounced at Kristen. But Dauner wouldn't have that.

"Kneel" was all he uttered and magic swirled. Condensed air pressure came running at the wraith from above, smashing it into the ground before it could reach Kristen. But it wasn't enough to keep it down. It to get back up and reach for Kristen again.

"I said, stay down" Dauner spoke again, this time, gesturing his finger downward. This time, rather than air pressure, it felt more akin to weight control, or gravity, that came knocking down on the wraith, and keeping it pinned in place.

Dauner then walked over to Kristen, stabbing his sword into the head of her reanimated horse. "On a scale of 1 to 10 how fun would you say this experience was?" he asked jokingly, as he crouched to look at her wounds. But then he paused, and just stared at her face for a few seconds.

"You know what? I'm thinking of not letting you fight next time" he finally said, breaking his silence. "Seeing such a pretty face get this bruised up always makes my heart ache"
 
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What meager defense Kristen was able to raise with her sword, lying there on the ground as she was, happened to be unneeded—and this was for the better. The Wraith was crushed and pinned, and though the creature struggled it could not seem to find a way free from Dauner's magic.

The squelching sound of his sword plunging into the horse's head preceded the loosening of the teeth ensnaring her ankle. Kristen let out a relieved sigh. Blessed Aionus, her right leg had suffered dearly, what with the cut of her own sword and whatever further damage (she was almost afraid to look) the undead horse's teeth had done to her ankle.

...how fun would you say this experience was?

"What I can say..." she winced and tapped gingerly at her brow with the palm of her free hand, checking for blood, seeing some speckles of it from a scrape, "...is that it became progressively less so as the fight went on."

A different story it would be, of course, had she been able to handily dispatch the Wraith.

Dauner crouched and, as if prompted by her own checking, looked over her face himself. The duration of this seemed to Kristen much longer than it truly was, and were it not for the various stinging and bellowing throbs of pain from her wounds she might have made a shy face in return.

Thinking of not letting her fight next time, he said. But it didn't go where she thought it might go (though she ought to have known by now).

"O-Oh," she said, clenching her teeth as she with her flesh and blood hand held the cut on her thigh as though it could soothe the fire. "I did what I could to preserve myself."

She looked over her clothes, now looking every part that of a ragamuffin instead of a noble. She could only imagine the grime, the blood, and the unsightly marks which spotted her face.

"Yet it seems my drive for justice still outstrips my ability to deliver it."

Dauner
 
"Well, if this is of any consolation, I wasn't half as good as you when I was your age. You already possess a great deal of skill. All you lack is the experience to accompany it" he said as he conjured his water pouch over from his horse, through what seemed to be instant transmission. "As proof, I bet you'd fare much better if you were to face one such wraith again" he finished as he opened the water pouch.

He placed it over Kristen's head, and poured out the water, chanting as he did. "Cleanse the dirt that would sully, and purify the unclean". The water in turn, as though guided by magic, gently strolled over her head, hair and face, down to the rest of her body, taking with it, the dirt and blood that once rested on the areas it passed over, leaving behind it clean and dry skin, hair and cloth, and disinfected injuries. The resulting water was discarded as it had become a brownish red mess.

"Shine forth, little light of mine, with your healing gaze, like the gentle touch, that soothes all pain, through the essence of mine divinity"

Again, a light shone from his hand onto Kristen, slowly healing her newly obtained injuries, and numbing the pain as it did. The pain would however linger for quite some time after the injuries are gone.

Dauner didn't really need to utter any chant when using magic, as his magic had long ago evolved into a magic that relied solely on his will. He, however, still uttered his chants a lot, because it was fun, or at least, so he claimed. Most of the time, he'd end up using different chants for the same spell though, as to him, it was just a play of words. However, there are times when he chants incantations, mostly short, that are imbued with power. Those are his signature words of power, that amplify the effect of his magic, like with when he first said kneel when dealing with the wraith.

After the healing was done, he'd lift Kristen in a princess carry, and take her over to his horse, lending her his jacket once again, as he returned to get her things from her fallen horse.
 
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...I bet you'd fare much better if you were to face one such wraith again.

"Such is mine to hope," Kristen said. She was impressed by the touch of humility which preceded that bet; it was of great heartening to hear her progress commended by one so accomplished as Dauner.

But, what was more impressive, were the acts of healing and restoration performed by him. What started out as intrigue quickly became astonishment as the water and the light each did their part to relieve her of the wounds suffered by the Wraith. He had a hand for antidotes and presumably other remedies, that much she knew from Yslan, but she did not suspect him capable of outright healing magic!

It called to mind her own longing to be capable of the same. One day, in the sight of Aionus, she would be worthy to bestow Blessings. One day.

Kristen almost didn't find her footing after Dauner carried her over to his horse, so ensorcelled by the reveal of this new magic was she. Like an afterthought did she accept the jacket, just staring at Dauner with wonder. "How...you...my goodness, I did not think you had..."

She blinked a few times, a certain word truly registering just then.

"Did you say 'divinity'?"

Dauner
 
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In truth, healing magic was just a skill Dauner had picked up on one of his many adventures. He rarely ever used it, unless he was trying to impress a girl, or the situation was urgent, but he couldn't use his blood. Otherwise, Dauner only needed to feed the injured person a drop of his blood to accelerate the healing, and even bring back to life, someone who was already halfway into the embrace of death. It was but one of the many, 'less useful' skills Dauner possessed.

When Kristen finally broke free from her daze, she brought forth a question on a subject, Dauner was most enthusiastic about.

"Yeah" he answered straight on, without much of a time-lapse. Then he paused for a second to think. "Well, not exactly the same as that possessed by gods" he'd backtrack. "Whereas that of gods is of an existential divinity, mine is of a conceptual divinity" he said, purposefully phrasing it in a way that would prove hard to understand for most, without necessarily intending to make it impossible to understand.

He walked over back to the horse with Kristen's things, attaching them onto the side of the horse, before mounting it behind Kristen, and spurring it forward.

"To put it in an analogy, it's like the difference between a man of a wealthy background and one of poor background. Whereas the wealthy man was born with a golden spoon in his mouth, the poor man was born with a spoon of clay in his, and had to work very hard to turn his clay spoon into a golden one. The poor man in this analogy would be me, with the only difference being that the amount of work I need to put in is excruciating more. Add to that, that I am currently short of 20,000 years of progress due to it being sealed up after my clash with the void majesty, I'm afraid my divinity is mostly just divinity in name only" he shrugged.
 
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That cleared things up. Or...no wait...or did it? Did it though? She thought it did. To some extent. The analogy was easy to follow. Mapping the analogy onto gods and mortals was...a task...but this was what he and Khorvayne were chatting about yesterday night, so it was all akin to that. Right? Yet still the very idea was difficult to grasp. Was it possible? Oh goodness, did he say twenty thousand years? Was that a clue to his age or just a sly joke?

These thoughts and more pervaded Kristen's mind as she sat there in the saddle, the motion of the trees about them and the bobbing of the horse not enough to break her free of the her attempts to untangle and decipher what he said.

In the end, she relinquished the mind-boggling questions and smiled humbly and looked back over her shoulder to Dauner.

"Scarcely can I even imagine to what heights you aspire, trying, such as I am, to achieve not even mastery yet but a solid adeptness in my own pursuits—those of a more worldly scale."

She tucked back one of her bangs, gone astray from the wind of their mounted ride, behind an ear.

"I cannot help but wonder, since you are a man eminently capable: have you yet encountered a challenge here on Arethil? A match for the great power you possess?"

Dauner
 
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Dauner offered naught but a smile. "It is what it is. We all aspire to achieve the very top of our game. Some of us approach it one little step at a time, and some of us do so in giant strides" he said. "It is to an extent reliant on one's talent, but most of all, on their effort, experience and a little bit of luck"

Dauner had relied on a lot of factors to achieve the strength he had once wielded, which was now far removed from him. His talent played a part. But his efforts and luck were the most important factors. Thanks to his relentless efforts, his strength grew quickly, and thanks to his, should I say, rotten luck, he got himself in too many a perilous situation, and surviving those situations, aided in his accumulation of experience. Though faster than normal, it was still a pretty slow process.

"Hmm" Dauner thought back at all the encounters he's had since arriving on Arethil. "There have been a few people I think could put up a good fight with me as I am now. I was at Alliria during the siege that took place not so long ago. There I saw two dragons. One of them was aiding the defenders, which I deduced was the weaker one of the two, but the other dragon, which was leading the assault, felt much stronger. It even had a fancy name. The Emerald Death" he chuckled. "I think he'd be a tough fight. And then there was this guy I met, when I was in Fallwood. I think he's some sort of guardian of Arethil or something. He sealed off a part of my power using the world suppression of Arethil, but I think if he were to just use his own power, I could beat him" he finished, pausing to think some more.

"Well, I think I haven't been around for long enough to meet with Arethil's true powerhouses" he added.
 
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Dragons. Mystical guardians. These were much more the purview of stronger Dreadlords, perhaps even a few of her more outstanding and gifted peers in the Academy. Yet, as Dauner said and as she had come to know through the first harrowing year of her journey in martial and magical training, it was all done one step at a time. Those giant strides? Mayhap, if she could be so blessed, with Aionus's help.

For all those small steps and giant strides she had made or might yet make, Kristen knew well the fear nestled in her heart, that which was kindled the day of her kidnapping and the long days of captivity which followed. Helplessness. Sheer helplessness. Never did she want to feel like that again, and she wished for all the young girls of Vel Anir never to feel such a way, to protect them as best she could with service to the state and as a shield against the cruel iniquities of savage men and callous monsters. In this was the driving force behind her own pursuit of power.

And they, she and Dauner, were on their way now to dispense the proper sentence to one such man.

"It is my hope, then, that in Titus you find a foe most lacking, one who is all boasting and little substance—the quicker Arethil to be rid of his like."

With a sincere wish she looked back over her shoulder again, to get the measure of Dauner's gaze when she inquired:

"May I ask of you one thing, if it can at all be arranged? That I, in the name of delivering justice to all the Celestialist fallen, be allowed to slay him?"

Dauner
 
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Dauner had a slightly different wish for how strong this Titus should be. Dauner much preferred stronger foes. Ones that could push him to challenge himself, and grow even stronger. So he at least wish that, for all the noise Titus was making, he'd be strong enough to not make cutting him down a boring piece of overtime work.

"Certainly" Dauner replied to Kristen's request. "Although I do not know how strong in battle our foe would prove to be, I can at least guarantee, that the strike that robs him of life, shall be yours" he said. Boastful and arrogant though this statement was, he had the strength to serve as capital for both.

"Now then. We wouldn't want to miss our appointment" he said, giving his horse a kick, and sending it into a rapid gallop.
 
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OUTSKIRTS OF ASHOL​


There in the distance stood their destination, the city whose size and grandeur made it unmistakably the capital of a kingdom: Ashol. And within, lurking in some hidden and perhaps forgotten depths, was the madman Titus who held malevolent designs of sacrifice and murder for the whole of the Allir Reach.

Khorvayne had rejoined them (transforming from that flock of crows again) just a few moments ago before Kristen and Dauner had come to this vantage, if only to provide her commentary. Hopefully, in Kristen's opinion, said commentary was indeed all.

"One of the many jewels of civilization," she mused, "wherein thousands of soul await whatever destiny comes for them."

"Would it be somehow remiss of you to simply make a more benign observance?" Kristen said. "'What a lovely day' perhaps, or 'their architecture could look stunning up close.'"

Khorvayne smiled, unbothered. "Oh, but you've made them for me."

Kristen face was pressed into the flatness befitting the unamused. She looked back to Dauner, nevertheless moving on from the sorceress, and said, "You feel no danger of any sort? Striding as we shall be into a city thick with declared enemies of yours?"

Dauner
 
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"It is ever a pleasure to catch a glimpse of your refined beauty, Vey" Dauner spoke when Khorvayne rejoined them. He'd already picked a nickname he thought suited her quite a bit. Vey, meaning mysterious in his old tongue, while also being a part of her name.

Dauner looked onto the city that lay ahead of them. A grand city, if you went by the point of view of Arethians. To be frank, he'd seen better, much grander and more magnificent structures. He'd destroyed more than a few of them, much to the displeasure of their owners, which in his case were mostly kingdoms, empires and most notably, the church.

"Danger, I fear, is an ever present concept, that requires not my location to bare its fangs. I might be no safer within the walls of my castle, than I will be within Ashol" he responded to Kristen, offering a grin. "I fear not whatever danger may await, but instead, I look forward to welcoming it with open arms. For what is an adventure if not filled with exciting and exhilarating experiences" he finished, his expression perfectly portraying this thought.

"And besides, if things go awry, I still have my tongue, which you may find out is very multitalented" he said flirtatiously.
 
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