Completed Something Wicked This Way Comes

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

It had been Leorla who’d first found their quarry hidden away in some icy cave at the foot of Mount Greenhorn. Now that the mercenary company had assembled near the cave’s entrance, Gallin knew he had done well in hiring the scout. They would have probably never found this spot otherwise, tucked away as it was in this remote glen.

“Are you sure the hag’s holed up in here? We could just be running into a bear,” Shade the sneak whispered as they all crouched along the rock face leading to the cave entrance.

“I’m sure. Smell that smoke? Someone has built a fire nearby. And there’s humanoid footprints in the snow where someone’s come and gone. Barely visible, if you’ve got a good eye,” Leorla whispered back with a grin.

“It’s the Winter Hag alright,” Payn agreed. The mystic had been concentrating on a spell that was supposed to divine the nature of what they were attacking. Whether or not such magic did anything, only Payn knew, but the entire band was well aware that he got results.

“I can feel the death magic in the air,” he said grimly. “We’d best not take too long.”

“Onward, then.” Gallin unsheathed his axe and shield and led the company as quietly as was possible through the snow. At least the sound of their advance was muted by the howling of wind through the cave mouth.

Payn and Leorla had been right: the cold, scentless winter air was overtaken by the mildewy smell of rotting vegetation, rancid wood and damp moss. More than that, Gallin could feel every pain, every weakness in his body screaming in rebellion. The arm he’d broken a few years ago ached in a way it hadn’t in a long time.

The stink of smoke hung thickly in the air as they moved away from the airflow near the entrance and into the stagnant dark. Payn led the way now, summoning a dim light that would hopefully guide their path without alerting the hag to their presence.

The magician paused and turned back to make a hand motion at Gallin. Fire ahead. He dreaded to think what such a creature would be cooking over that fire, but he had to admit that it smelled enticing. A hag’s trick to lure in fools like them, he supposed. Although these ‘fools’ were well armed, combat-trained, and prepared to deal with whatever this creature could throw at them.

Soft firelight flickered off of the left wall where the narrow cavern forked and widened into separate chambers. Here Payn signalled again, this time for Gallin to take point. The warrior crept slowly forward, trying not to shift his armor with every movement, and looked into the smoky chamber beyond. Across a clump of stalagmites from them, a small fire was burning. Most of the smoke was rising from a small natural hole in one cave wall.

Shade nudged Gallin from behind him and pointed at the hole. Apparently he’d had the same idea – plug the hole and drive the hag from her lair. But Gallin shook his head and pointed off to one corner, where a lump of dirty cloth shifted and rolled over. Luck must have favored them today: they’d caught the hag sleeping.

Gallin made a special hand signal that his mercenary team had developed over the course of their missions. Too easy.

Zakarias

 

[Zakarias]

Come the cold breath of a chilled wind swept sonorous across the rock and stone throat of the cave. A low roll. A howl. Hungry as wolf and bear and mountain lion.

A sweet sound. Clean and clear. The chime of brass. Warm and small. Like little laughs.

Thunder cracked. Lightning flashed and a tall shadow stretched long across the floor in the pale-green after burn. Horned and twisted and flared.

Come the rumble. Come the rain. Hard and harsh.

It turned gentle. Temperamental. As winter winds could be.

A sweet string note rang from the mouth of the cave. The sound bounced and danced and multiplied against the stone walls in lunatic echoes that bloomed pink and purple and periwinkle across the eyes of all who heard. Across the nose, a sweet ambrosia. Nectar like peaches and cherries, summer sweet, strawberries. Bright and warm their flavors.

Pull and pluck across the bright chords of a lyre. They would feel desire. To turn. To see. To greet the Red Jester, twin horned and gold trimmed, with pale mask before his face, and painted smile turned up, pulled down.

Sweetly he played. And Sweetly they would dance. As storm winds whipped and thrashed outside the cold cave's dark cove.

Elinyra Derwinthir

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

Elinyra's soul waited with dread. It waited for the reprieve of slumbering oblivion to be overtaken once again by a cold and hungry reality. Dreams had visited her again; not the recurring nightmare of a dagger wielded by a twisted fae, but comforting visions of home. Summer meadows blended into memories of elven druids dressed for ceremony, a mysterious monastery and the faces of those she'd come across since she'd left the Falwood; the music of a lyre softly playing.

The warming blanket of dreams left a trace of melancholy as it melted away. Elinyra felt her aching limbs again. The deep chill of winter that fire and furs barely kept at bay bit into her face as she pushed her filthy blankets away. The scent of -

Peaches. Sweet cherries. The pure melody of a lyre's strings. A bittersweet tear rolled down her cheek as she opened her eyes.

She was sure she was still somehow dreaming - but here was the fire, flickering low. Its radiant heat felt real. The hungering pit in her stomach felt real. Then... where was that music coming from?

Elinyra rose from her bedroll. It was an easier task than it should have been. Even with meat in her stomach, that of the unfortunate bear she'd had to kill to feed herself, she should have been starving to death. But she wasn't. Vyr's curse was keeping her alive, if only to feed on her misery.

Donning her grimy and tattered walking cape, she came towards the mouth of the cave to see a surreal sight: four people were dancing before a masked figure in red. In the entrance to this gods-forsaken cave.

Zakarias

 

[Zakarias]

Dance and turn, laugh and yearn. For brighter days. Warmer winds and gentler breeze. Not the howl. Not the pour and the sheets and the harsh cold that sucked at the mouth of the cave. Hungry.

To steal. To take. Whatever warmth lay seeded in.

Family. Friends. Lovers. Lost. Left. Forgotten.

As the dulcet strings tingle ing tingle ayed, simmering, shimmering, bright as blooms come budding from flowers first breath. Petals popped. Pollen plumed, and bumble bees bumbled there way in to the nooks and crannies and buzzed their little bodies about.

The mercenaries laughed. They giggled. It was clear that they were not where they were. Not truly. Not to the proud druid, and the Red Jester. But a band of fools, caught in a spell of whimsy. Drunk on summer wine that ne'er touched their parched lips.

Pluck and strum and run across the silver strand strings of the old and ancient lyre. A thing made of bone. A thing made of death. For such sweet release was all that could produce such a true sound. Fleeting and ephemeral. Though wholly there for as long as it was. As long as the chords did shake, and the strings did hold.

The Jester's eyes came open, from within the dark pits that were the hollows of his mask, they shined. Like distant stars. Bright and silver and burning. Gleeful as they watched.

"Dance, yes, oh dance, brave heroes, brave hunters of the monstrous and dreary," the broad spread of his frame shook, the horns atop his crown bobbed and bounced and those bright bells that hung from the ends of the long red spikes did sing their small little songs. "Dance, and pull, true strength of will and skill,"

Bright steel came free of dull sheaths. And some bit of the light that shone upon the eyes of the mercenaries shined with a knowing horror. But on the laughed, and on they danced. Like puppets at the end of pulled strings. Eached pluck, each pleat of the lyre, saw their bones swing and shake and wheel about. Weapons wide by inches.

"Killers, most wild, and feral," the last words came sober. Came deep, as the Lyre's sweet notes came harsh and dissonant with his last strum. "So fearful of your size," another strum, another set of swipes. Wide as they missed their mark.

One of the hunters laughed. Loud and manic with horror as their arm swiped and their axe near hewn their fellow.

"Always something, bigger out there," the Red Jester said with painful sweetness.

Elinyra Derwinthir

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

Elinyra didn't know what to make of the humans nor the crimson-clad jester in this place, but she could tell the humans were in trouble. The sheer terror in their eyes belied the music and laughter ringing against barren cave walls; weapons whistled through the air in a twirling dance of death as the strange bard's music and words took on sinister notes.

Hunters, the jester called them. Killers. From Tatha, she imagined. She'd tried to create as much distance between her and that town as she could, but she had a feeling that day was neither forgotten nor forgiven. That day not two months hence when her curse had started taking human lives.

She felt that power now - taking, always taking. Weakening and killing whatever life had the misfortune to be near her.

"Leave this place! There is nothing but death for you here," she called to the dancers. Their eyes moved as one to the elf, but they continued to laugh and dance as if she weren't there.

She turned to the source of their domination. "What are you doing to them?" she demanded, her eyes narrowed at the ivory-pale lyre in the jester's hands.

Zakarias

 

[Zakarias]

His fingers never stopped plying their work, long and red gloved in fine velvet, the dexterous digits did dance across the instrument, like a spider across its web. And the music kept pouring. Soft again, as the Druid stood. Dark, death, draped around her. Tendrils of the corrupting growth spread about her like the brambles and vines of thickets and trees that would ne'er bear but the darkest fruit.

"What you will do to them, Oh Bringer of Change," his eyes smiled loud enough to show his pleasure. A blade dragged across sone wall with a wail come ragged from laugh-raw throat. "Tied to your fate as you are," the Jester plucked, and plucked, and strummed a final note.

The steel flashed and clattered and all the mercenaries clashed their blades. Like soldiers on display, their weapons made an arch, and their postures were stiff and uniform. Their smiles, twisted, as tears ran down their face.

Still at the mouth of the cave, the Red Jester gave the wild woman a bow. "Zakarias," he gave his name freely to her, for he knew the music still drowned the minds of the fool mercenaries. Wide grinned and giggling as they stood. Lightning flashed across the dark storm clouds. The rain fell hard. The wind bayed with a wolf's hunger.

Tall and horned, the Jester rose once more, bells rang gentle, and he plucked a new ditty. Calming. Soothing as warm rain. "Why hide, I wonder," the Jester thought aloud as he neared her. "Why beg these mongrels to flee?" His starlight eyes fixed on her, and did not look away, burning with a mix of wrath and amusement.

Elinyra Derwinthir

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

"Zakarias," she repeated as she looked around with a grim expression at the hunters he'd turned into puppets. At poses created with their bodies like a child might toy soldiers. Was it to save her from them? Or simply to torture them?

The jester now loomed over her, menacing but also curious. She looked up at him, unafraid of what stood there. Even if it was, perhaps, the last fragments of her sanity slipping away forever.

Why hide, I wonder, the Jester thought aloud as he neared her. Why beg these mongrels to flee?

"They're just people," she replied sadly, wearily. "They still have lives to lead and loves to love. It is their gift. It is not mine to take away from them." She questioned how much she still believed those words as she said them. How often they repeated in her mind like a prayer often spoken but hardly felt. She couldn't deny that the more time she spent alone in the wilderness - the more her body was consumed by this power - the less connection she felt with them. The spirits that once gave her solace had gone silent. The plants and beasts of the land had become more distant from her.

But she still knew deep down that it was right. Even if they'd come to kill her, she couldn't blame them for wanting to protect their own. The intentions of the mind-bending jester, though, were more suspect. The sensory temptations of the song, the capriciousness of the magic behind it struck her as all too familiar, and she wondered...

"Did he send you? Is he such a coward that he hides behind his precious blight?" A sudden spark of anger came into her voice, and her cursed hand balled into a wooden fist.

Zakarias

 

[Zakarias]

Step by long and steady step, the Red Jester drew nearer to the druid. bowed sweet beneath each arch of steel and dead wood, and the blades flashed down, like guillotines behind him. His eyes, still fixed, his hands, still played. Till the last arch was crossed, and the last blades came down in silver flash, and thunder clapped.

"No," he said simply, his fingers plick plucked a sad note. Strummed a sorrowful chord. A minor fall, and a major lift. "No one sends me," his voice rumbled hot, and his eyes smiled bright.

The chords of the lyre turned dreamy, slow, like ripples across puddles, across an endless plane. Grey, yet bright, white, yet dark.

"But he is a coward, I shall grant you that," there was a laugh in his throat, a tittering rumble. "To hide behind his blight," his eyes turned sharp as he looked down at her. "To hide behind you," his voice came low and harsh, near growl. Disgust.

But his eyes smiled again, and his masked visage ticked to the right, lopped to the side the twisted smile painted upon the pale white plate that hid his face. The many brass bells that hung from his horns and the red-gold twists of his garb set to jingle bright.

"No matter," he said, and now he did laugh, took long step and stood beside her. Bells tink-a-tink-tinkaling. A sharp heeled turn had him face the mercenaries. Straight backed and obedient. "Back to the show!" he laughed, and strummed a harsh and dissonant chord.

The mercenaries would snap free from the binds of magick thread. His spell still in their ear. Still wrapped and twined about their limbs, like the strings, unseen by the sightless marionette that stumbled about.

They would see not the druid. They would see not the Jester. They would see but the cave. Smell the scents of the fire. Sense the fear of the Druid. And the pull of death that swirled about her. No memory of the song or the dance. Just, a faint feeling. Like the distant ache of a curing hang over.

"What," the Jester said, confident they could not hear him. "Will they do, I wonder," he laughed some, his eyes on the heroes. "Let you run and keep the your wretched life? As you did them?" he turned his eyes to her. No humor there in. "They are just people, yes? With loves to love, and lives to live," his bright burning eyes went back to the mercenaries. "Let them choose then, what they will do next,"

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

Elinyra watched silently as the mercenaries regained their senses and looked around in a moment of confusion before glancing at each other with a communal shrug. They moved on, searching the cave for signs of her as she and the jester stood hiding in plain sight.

"If he didn't send you, then why are you here?" she asked. His words thus far brought to mind a kind of twisted sympathy. Or a dark curiosity.

Whatever his answer, she would follow the mercenaries like a wraith when they entered the chamber she had been living in. As they searched through her belongings with an uneasy alertness. After coming to the conclusion that she wasn't here, they finally spoke to each other:

"Nobody's home; but somebody's definitely been here recently," a copper-skinned woman clad in leather armor said as she stirred the warm ashes of Elinyra's fire with her boot. She breathed a weary sigh and rubbed her face with one hand. "Should we wait for a bit and see what shows up?"

"This doesn't seem like a hag's lair. Just some hermit's camp, if you ask me," commented the stout, muscular man who was investigating the bear hide that had recently been skinned.

"Place still makes me feel weird," muttered a petite young man as he picked up the druid's staff and weighed it in his hands. "Just being here seems to sap the strength right out of you. Even this stick seems heavy."

"Put it back!" the muscular man commanded him. "We aren't here to steal a hermit's possessions."

The fourth of the party, a wiry figure with unkempt hair and a set of spectacles on his face, finally spoke up:

"There are tales of hags having the ability to appear as beautiful women to lure victims to their doom."

"Well, that'll be Gallin dead then," the roguish young man retorted with a smirk at the stout one.

"Be serious, Shade! The Winter Hag killed eight people in Tatha. What do you think she'd do to us if she found us here?" the woman snapped at him, stealing his smile.

"I have to concur with Shade about this place. The death magic I sensed earlier is still lingering in here. Can't you all feel it? Like something is slowly stealing the air from your lungs? The strength from your limbs?" the bespectacled man said.

"I feel it," the one they called Gallin said with a frown.

What they felt was their life slowly ebbing away, Elinyra knew. She felt their nwefre spilling into her own stream, adding what lack of food and cold had stolen away from her. If they remained in this cave, they would surely die in a few hours... if not sooner. She hoped that they would just leave and give up on this place, having not found her there.

"Please just go," she breathed, although she had the feeling they couldn't hear her either.

"We'll set up a stand outside, far enough away to be safe from this evil magic. If something or somebody shows up, we'll decide then whether to continue this pursuit. At least we can see what we're dealing with that way," Gallin, whom Elinyra presumed was their leader, decided.

"And collect on that not-inconconsequential bounty," Shade added with a pointed look between the other mercenaries. The man wearing spectacles just shook his head with a scared look in his eye, as if he still had an inkling of recollection of the torment they'd suffered only a short time ago.

Elinyra sighed. At least they'd probably leave on their own, if she just stayed in the cave. With him.

Zakarias

 

[Zakarias]

"Ah," Zakarias sounded, half pleased. "They chose caution," he said smiling behind his painted faceplate. "Hide and wait, wait and hide," he sing sang. "How long will they hunt the Hag, I wonder?"

He looked to her, sidelong and dagger sharp. A pointedness whetted by the stone of amusement. Polished by curiosity.

"Will honest Winter claim them first?" his eyes flit back to the retreating backs of the mercenaries. "Or will another wind blow?" his eyes crinkled again. "Scatter them like the dust they are,"

Gently, with care and sweet tenderness, the Red Jester craned his neck against his shoulder. Bells chimed soft. He raised his lyre up against the crook of his right arm, and strung a sweet note with the long spidery fingers of his left. Like a song at jaunty festival, the sound rose and fell and rose and fell in quick little runs and rapid showers. Like rain and winds that whipped.

A song of storms. A song of torrents and whirlwinds.

The winds wailed louder. Their whipping howls like voices of a chorus. The shake and harsh timbre of the woods, tossed and pushed, cracked and snapped like wyld percussion.

"Why does the wind blow? Fair druid of the falwood?" He asked, as he went on with his work. His eyes closed, and his whole wicked frame stretched and bent and moved to the feeling of the music. "Why do our dear moons glow?" he asked with shudder of excitement.

Lightning flashed. Something cracked and harsher thunder rolled horrid outside.

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

The weather turned more volatile and dangerous with each crescendo of Zakarias's music, a reflection of the storm of fear and anguish raging in Elinyra's own heart. The earth trembled in the wake of every reverberating thunderclap that split the sky. Branches snapped in the merciless teeth of the wind.

She hardly heard the jester's questions, only the notes of the sinister ballad that laid bare the tiny candle she still held in her soul. Flickering, wavering, gone. Eclipsed in personal midnight. Shadows darker than the sunless cave seemed to close in all around her, blinding and suffocating.

"Enough!" she cried and reached out towards the sound of the lyre to put a stop to it. She couldn't see the instrument, its player, nor the flashes of lightning from outside. Panic swept in as she realized that she couldn't see anything.

---

Payn cursed as another crash of thunder exploded nearby, driving him about deaf. He and Leorla were stationed in a spot with the most direct view of the cave entrance, though he hoped that Gallin would call them off with this storm blowing in. Where in the blazes did this sudden storm sweep in from anyway?

Leorla muttered an exclamation beside him, but he couldn't make out what she said over the wind. It wasn't until she squeezed his shoulder and nodded towards the cave that he saw what inspired the look of alarm on her face. It was hard to focus on, to even think about, anything near the cave entrance, but he saw it too; a shade of some sort, blacker than the womb of earth that contained it, as if a piece of the deepest abyss was coalescing into a corporeal form.

"What in Arethil....?!" His exclamation was lost into the angry wind as soon as he uttered it.

Zakarias

 

[Zakarias]

Shadows stretched and reached and snatched at the ancient bone lyre. Tangled and twisted and crushed it in mess of vine and root and thorn.

Zakarias had managed a step back. His eyes wide with excitement. The storms still howled outside. The lightning still flashed.

A mad tittering laughter escaped the Red Jester, and he hopped from one foot to the other. Pranced as he clapped and his bells bounced and sang happy as his long red horns flopped.

"Good, good! Yes!" He cheered, some feet away from the changed Druid. "So, you've chosen, yes? Dear Druid?" his voice was sharp as glass. "You've chosen to cast out your people's ways?" his voice came with deep rumble. His wide eyes burned. Not with glee. With fury.

"You choose to become his tool?" they smiled, those twin silver stars that were his fiery gaze. "To hide yourself behind his power?" tall and long and strong as the Jester did stand, he held out his hands, palms up, and felt the energies of the ley well through him. "Blind and deaf to the evils you are sure to commit?" he hissed with sweet malice. "How very much like him."

Elinyra Derwinthir

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

The druid turned on Zakarias, spectral shadows gathered around a core of fury. Although her vision had gone dark, the world was coming into a strange sort of focus; an awareness of the wandering roots in the soil, the humans hiding in the woods, and most of all the mad laughing bard. She could see him for what he was, and that recognition prompted a bitter voice to whisper in the back of her mind. How dare this fae invade her solitude to sharpen his teeth against her anguish! To deceive and accuse!

"Who are you to speak to me of choice?!" she screamed at him. "Of casting a life aside? You know nothing!"

She hated him all the more for the possibility of him being right. She felt it winding around her heart, squeezing and tearing like thorns in her chest. A familiar heat coursed through her arms, threatening to erupt in violence at the slightest provocation. She didn't want to push the feeling away this time.

"Go away!" she growled, glaring at Zakarias.

Zakarias

 

[Zakarias]

His eyes set on her, cold and clear and there was no smile there in. "No, no, I don't believe I will," he said. Felt her tendrils twisting and turning neath the earth. Neath the stone and the dirt and all the world between them and the endless.

"You can try and make me go away, if you'd like, oh blighted one," he near laughed. But his eyes burned colder still. Sad to see the form before them. "Wreathed in shadow, born from a knife drawn against you," the winds raged quieter. Howls turned to haunting hums. Breaths, deep between the wet tears that fell from the clouds.

"And we can see who lasts longer, tied to the Ley as we are," he placed a hand across his heart, and let the other flare out like great wing before he bowed his head to her, low and near regal in its submission. As if servant to a monarch. Red ears flopped silly, and bells rang soft. And from his low bow he said sweetly in his sympathy. "The winter's greed, or the wind's wrath,"

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

She backed away from the jester, out of the cave and into the embrace of the storm. As if to challenge it to bring her low. She couldn't feel the piercing cold drops falling all around her, nor the stinging caress of the wind. All was devoured by the darkness around her.

She breathed in. She breathed out. She felt the blight inside, rising to the surface. And she, caught in the riptide, wondered if this was the end she'd been waiting for.

Behind her, she heard a whistle.

Zakarias

 

[Zakarias]

Zakarias heard the fleeing footsteps, and rose up. Bore witness to the form draped in shade and death, and felt his energies, so withered from her pull, slowly trickle back through his own figure. Each lungful of breath, giving back to him the strength of the world around him. For the lines of ley were many, and his blood bound him to their currents.

Even so. To think. His gift, had made her so strong. He laughed. Mad and hot. He laughed inside the cave. What would have happened, he asked the ghosts of his past, had she but chose to stand before him?

"How strange," he said with wicked amusement. "How horrid your game," he said to that twisted soul who had born such a fate upon this child of the Fallwood. And he stepped after her, followed the wake of her pull.

"Oy, there she is! The Hag!" a voice called out.

Magick swelled, and arrow shafts whistled and flew. One stray. The second closer still. The third-

With no Lyre, Zakarias could but watch. "What, oh what!" he called out. "Will you do next?!" he said with glee.

The storm raged still. Though the tress could still stand. Save those around her. Save those that withered and died and snapped and fell around her death winter's grasp.

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

The mercenaries' words were drowned in the howls of the wind, though Elinyra heard the familiar twang of arrows careening through the air. One of them, by masterful aim or luck, came right for the middle of her back; a killing blow that was swallowed up by her shroud.

"Stand back!" one of the hunters shouted, releasing a flaming core from his outstretched hands. A ball of fire expanded from the hurled spell, its approach marked with a sudden rise in temperature and the sizzling of a thousand raindrops evaporated in its presence.

Elinyra felt the spell's impact, even the halo of heat that burned away a shred of darkness. A distant pain. For a brief moment, she could feel the cold of the rain on her face.

Zakarias

 

[Zakarias]

Flash of fire, flight of feather.

The Red Jester laughed. A cruel and hollow sound.

"Run, run! RUN!" he called out. "Hide beneath his shadows!" he cried out as the flame seared clear the skin of darkness that wreathed around her.

It was through the dying woods that Zakarias danced. There only for a moment in the mercenaries eyes. But gone with the next twist of wrist and flick of hip. He could not change how they saw her. For her magick was too raw. Too wild. Too great for his whimsical wiles to hide. Without his lyre.

"Gods be good, ya'll see that?"

"Eyes on the Hag! She ain't down yet!"

Arrows loosed, and the big fighter moved closer, axe and shield before him. But as the distance between them closed he felt the pull on his mortal strings. Felt the cold chill of winter reach into his spine. He froze, wide eyed and stunned.

"Will you take their lives, dear druid?" Zakarias asked, in the corner of her eye. "Cast them aside?" there was no smile in his eyes.

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

Another barrage of arrows sank into Elinyra's shroud and withered away. Ignoring them, she looked up at the sky with a serene expression. The rain burned cold on her face, and she embraced it. The calm. The eye of the storm.

You can't escape Death. It is your fate, the other fae had told her. It had seemed such a pointless threat at the time, but now she understood. If she was to deny his path, she had to master it herself.

The shadows receded from the trees and the earth, but lingered on the warrior who'd charged up to meet her. The reaper turned towards him expectantly.

"Stop this. I am not what you think me to be," she said.

Zakarias

 

[Zakarias]

All the darkness drained from the earth. Pulled to the center of her weight. All of death, all of winter. Turned to reaper.

She stood, changed again, and Zakarias smiled wide behind the veil of his mask.

The hunter spat. "Like piss you aren't!" he re-gripped his axe. "You think we don't have eyes? Hag!" he didn't have the courage to charge, not like this, not with her vile magicks cloaked about him like a rain soaked pelt. He hid behind his shield, but felt how useless it was. "Hit her with another blast, Payn!" he hollered out.

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

Elinyra left the axe-bearer there. Weakened as he was, he was no threat to her. Instead she turned her attention to the mage, who had emerged from a crouched position behind a fallen tree to send a second fireball speeding at her.

Her weapon was back in the cave, so she reached out for the only one available to her as the circle of flame expanded and its flight crackled in her ears. In the blink of an eye, something grew from her bark-covered hand; not the limber curl of a whip, but a solid length of shadow and blight-wood. She swung the staff vertically before her, more out of instinct than any forethought.

The fire drove the shadows back with its intensity. Scorching heat licked at her fingers and face, its light blinding. For one agonizing moment, the fire enveloped her body. Then her staff came down and cleaved the spell in two, sending remnant flames hissing into the puddles around her. All of the remaining death energy surrounding the elf came together to form a curved, wicked scythe at the end of the staff.

Zakarias

 

[Zakarias]

The band of would-be-heroes grit their teeth. To have their mage's spell so easily cast aside.

Leorla had knocked a new arrow, was at distance, and still, she could feel her energies being pulled in by that hag. Some strange part of her mind telling to run forward. To give in. "Ya'll didn't pay me enough for this!" she barked out. "And as much as I like ya, Gallin, don't know if I quite like you this much," she growled beneath her breath.

But the wicked hag just stood there. Wyrd weapon in her hand. A cruel and merciless thing that seemed to scythe the very air about it.

Shade had worked his way to the hag's flank. A few poison coated knives ready and in his hands. He signed to Payne, he let out long breath, and was already willing a third salvo.

"What's the call, Gallin?!" The mystic called out through gritted teeth, the energies of a greater spell crackling and hissing around him.

Gallin grit his teeth, his strength robbed from him, he fell to a knee.

Zakarias but stood and watched, behind the downed warrior, eyes alight with glee as he eyed the sharp form of the once druid's weapon.

"Cull, oh cull, cold reaper true," he sang song. "Let long cruel blade, rasp and take, so spring may come, across felled fellows and hews" He raised a long finger, and pointed at the one sneaking to her flank. "Careful now," he teased.

Gallin signed something.

Shade flung knives. Leorla cursed and let fly aimed arrow, and Payn pulled up what power they could. Eyes glowed red hot as the lightning heads gathered above, flashed and sizzled and thundered.

A white light struck down from the heavens.

Elinyra Derwinthir

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

Elinyra, the once-Falwoodian druid, clung desperately to that moment of solace and sanity in the falling rain. She distantly recalled another rainy day when someone with a curse of her own had offered wisdom and understanding.

“I hope the same is true for you, Elinyra of Falwood. I hope your gods give you a choice."

The scythe swung around in her hands, catching the daggers and sending them ricocheting into a nearby tree stump. Her body followed fluidly, naturally, though it was not by the guidance of her mind nor any honed skill of a warrior. In fact she didn't notice the wide flight of the arrow beside her, nor the mage's preparation to attack. She was frozen in a sliver of time, in a conversation that seemed to span the pages of time and space.

"Gods or not, we all have our burden to carry, don't we?" the thought came only a split-second before a blinding radiance split the sky and burned all of Elinyra's thoughts into pain, and then nothing.

The druid was gone. Something awakened in her place. The seed of vengeance and wrath she'd been barely keeping at bay had dominion in her absence, and it knew nothing of the concept of mercy; only that nothing would stand against its singular purpose.

The reaper brought her scythe down on her closest enemy. Sapped of his strength, he could do little to resist. The blade passed cleanly through his body, leaving no wound in its path. Gallin's lifeless body collapsed in the snow without a sound.

---

"Shit!" Leorla gasped as the hag turned its attention towards her and Payn's position after dispatching Gallin as if he'd been no more than an insect. "Gallin's dead!" She wasn't sure how she knew, but she felt his soul pass out of his body somehow. Payn must have felt the same, for his face grew pale and his hands were shaking.

"Leorla, run!" she heard Payn say in a trembling voice. She could only gape at him for a moment in shock.

"I'll hold it off. Just get out of here, both of you!"

The hag was sprinting towards them, the deadly shadow weapon poised to strike. Payn raised his hands again, gathering what remaining energy he could to draw her attention away from his peers.

Tears streamed down Leorla's face as she ran as fast as she could. What else could she do? She wanted to live.

"Payn... I'm sorry..."

Zakarias

 

[Zakarias]

It was quick, brutal work, that the druid turned reaper set herself to. The mercenary with the shield, cut down, with a blade most strange.

Shadow and spirit and death given form. Passed through the cords of the soul. Severed them. Snapped.

"My, he would be proud, wouldn't he," the Jester in Red said behind his mask, content to stay and watch as he followed after the wild thing that chased like rabid beast after threat.

No want to eat. No need here, save for that of peace. At any cost.

A flash. Fire gold and red and bright. A boom. Crackle and hiss, branches and twigs, dirt and stone, sprayed and clattered and knocked all around.

The Jester drew his own sword, its long needle blade a thing made from mystical trees. Amberglass, turned to fine blade. A relic of his past life. His dager came next, free from its sheath as the cloud of dustand smoke swirled and blew. Away, away, with the winds howl.

"Suppose it would be best to put you down now, Druid turned Death," there was no joy in his eyes. No jest. Only bitterness. Only regret.

The mage was dead. The others fled.

The winds whipped forth, and buffted the shade that stood before him. The Hag. "Veiled in your skin of shadow. Could you see with your eyes? Hear with your ears? Or do those belong to him now?"

Elinyra Derwinthir

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

The reaper didn't respond to Zakarias's questions. The only words the shadowed figure spoke, in a thin voice barely resembling the woman it belonged to, were:

"Amddiffyn ly goedwinn. Amddiffyn ly dilyniad." Protect the Forest. Protect the progression.

She turned slowly to face down the slope that rose to meet the cave. She seemed either oblivious to or unconcerned with the jester's presence as she started walking into the woods in the direction the archer had fled, an ink blot on the perfect clean of the melting snow. An assassin set on a mission.

Zakarias