Completed Something Wicked This Way Comes

[Zakarias]

The progression.

How the term turned his blood to fire.

A spin of his sword, a flip of his long dagger, a roll of his neck and his head did bow as he raised his saber in salute. The winds whipped wilder. His brass bells rung bright.

"Reaper born of Blight," he near prayed. "Come low the winds this night," he sprang forward, with zephyr's burst, sword's point aimed at the shade as wind burst forward behind his thrust. A vortex spear thrust from the jab, and would shoot straight and farther still, punching through branch and brush and stabbing through trunk in clean hole.

Let his magic, most foul, taste the winds of dusk.

Elinyra Derwinthir

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

Quickly, silently, the reaper spun on her heels, ducking low as the zephyr-formed spear ripped through wood, foliage and air with a dull roar. Her shroud flickered and danced around her like a hungry black flame, blurring her outline against the backdrop of falling debris.

The next thing the jester would see was a strange dark disc flying at him - the scythe spinning as it coursed through the air towards his position, its wielder just behind.

Zakarias

 

[Zakarias]

Upon the wind's currents, the Red Jester did ride, his long limbs bent, sprung, and popped his long length up in vertical stride, limbs tucked tight as he spun and whirled around, his eyes ever fixed on that black cloaked Death. Her cyclone of winter's grasp that shred through all it passed. Trees withered and died, crumbled and fell beneath the wind's howl.

He would land behind her, light on his feet, sword flicked up, long needle blade flexed with the sharpness of the motion. A flick across, a swipe down, and wind cuts sliced out, one flat, one tall.

He bound back, knees bent him low and low to the ground, leveled his sword and took aim for a dashing thrust as leaf and dirt and pine needles rode about the energies that flowed and gathered round him.

Elinyra Derwinthir

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

The jester's strikes sank into the void of that shroud that pulled relentlessly at his life energy. It was impossible to tell if his blows had landed in the depth of that shadow. It simply drank more of the life around them until the nearby trees and shrubs and creatures were no more than husks of decaying organic matter.

The wind howled angrily around them, but Zakarias's enemy was a silent as a spectre. The scythe came around with but the barest movement, as if it had no weight. The reaper slammed it down between them. Snow and earth cracked as a wave of death energy spread out from where that occult blade split the ground.

Zakarias

 

[Zakarias]

Were he a mortal man, then likely he would be just as dead and dry as the rest of the life around the pull of this... thing the druid had become. Mindless and sheathed in his power. His own powers, drained and swirled out from him. Were it not for the lines of ley.

The progression.

Its long scythe blade slammed against the earth, hooked beak cracked the mantle of soil. Despoiled the ground itself.

Did she drink the very ley? Had his depravity gone so far as to submit the very flows of the world's magick to his vision. The mad fool. The proud blind idiot.

The miasmic web splintered and cracked the ground in violent web. His eyes narrowed, and he jabbed his weapon forward in three quick thrusts. Let the force of each pointed wind blast jet him back and back and back again to avoid the crush of death's wave.

The wind struck forth in javelines, only she was not its target. Her changed weapon their mark. So stabbed into the earth between them. Were she there behind it, then all the better as the howls blew through.

Elinyra Derwinthir

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

A loud crack followed in the wake of the javelins as one of them tore through the scythe's handle, separating the deadly blade from its bearer. The reaper fell back in a rain of splinters, the shroud drawing closer around her physical form even before a second javelin collided with her and sent her flying into an icy snowbank.

A moment of hesitation - perhaps all that was needed for him to end this.

Zakarias

 

[Zakarias]

Breath came full and deep. Posture low, legs bent and ready to push, to spring and jump, away and away as far as the wind would take him. For what was the wind in the face of Death made manifest? But a harbinger. But a bringer. But not the thing itself. No.

The once druid had crashed. Her weapon shattered. Still, the pull and pull. The drain.

His eyes narrowed and he stood up, sword and dagger in hand. He sheathed the short blade and closed the gap. Felt the pull grow all the more. Felt his life trickle away. Grain by grain. Drop by drop. Leaf by wilted leaf. He glowered at the fallen druid, between her and her shattered weapon, he pointed his sword down at her, and with the other hand, took hold of her scythe.

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

The remains of the fearsome weapon did Zakarias little good. The blade dissolved back into the ether from whence it came and the blighted wood of the shaft started to crumble away in his hand.

As he drew close to the fallen druid, he could see the shroud had weakened. The elf's face was visible, half-covered with a woody epidermis, her eyes staring straight through him and the sword that was poised to kill. She didn't move, offered no pleas for forgiveness nor snarls of contempt. Only emptiness.

Because Elinyra had no way to prove she was still there.

Zakarias

 

[Zakarias]

"How you have changed and turned, Druid of the old wood," the Jester lamented. "A thing that has forgotten its roots," he laughed with sorrowed and angry all the same. "Just another one of his things," He raised the blade of his rapier, its golden hewed dart silvery with the bounced light of snow come along.

Yet there it was, the pull and pull of death. He smiled behind his mask. No, it could not be so simple as this, could it?

Forward. The Jester thrust the sword forward. At the exposed skin of her neck.

Elinyra Derwinthir

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

A hand like a treebranch reached up to catch his blade and yanked it downwards with all of the elf's weight. The blade pulled down, not into her throat but into her shoulder. He could feel the resistance of the bark skin on the point of the blade for a moment before it cut into flesh. Yet she still pulled, upwards, lifting herself on the blade until she grasped his hand with her other one. Her cursed hand released the blade to join the first to hold Zakarias's grip firmly on the hilt.

The drain on his life energy intensified with her touch, trying to rob his sword arm of its strength. The shroud enveloped them both like a nocturnal fog, casting the world around in complete darkness.

Except for the earth below; cold, solid and... cracking?

Zakarias

 

[Zakarias]

His eyes grew wide with glee. One hand trapped, the other free.

"My, oh my," he said through ragged and rasping breath, as he felt the softness of flesh there beneath the bark skin shell. Felt his arm wane and wither, were it not for his font, like torrential stream come quench the roaring black flame, it would likely have crumbled and fell like all the life around them.

Only he was no mortal being. Duanann born.

One hand trapped, his other reached for his dagger, pulled it free with a spin, struck the blade up over their heads as he came close to her face, his sword still sheathed by her muscle and bone. He drove the long weapon in as starlight and moonglow ran across his dagger's point.

"Can Death still die?" he asked behind his painted smile.

The sharp dagger shimmered and shown and light bounced and rippled across its edge, with a flick of the wrist and a trick of the fingers, the knife spun in his gloved palm. The blue jewel affixed to his red crown cracked, its magical light shone out in beams.

Rays of the night sky danced across his red frame and her shadow wreathed form. The dagger's point, happy and hungry as he pulled himself toward her with what strength still tried to flow back to fill the withering life from his sword arm. He plunged the moonlit dagger, its star-fire tip aimed for her heart.

Elinyra Derwinthir

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

His foe kicked upwards at his chest in an attempt to detract his aim. The dagger scraped the skin of her cheek, drawing a line of blood up the left side of her face. The thing that had been Elinyra recoiled as the enchanted weapon cut into it.

At that moment, dead and dry roots each as big around as a wyvern's tail erupted from the ground, destabilizing the earth beneath them and reaching for Zakarias's limbs with the fury of a forest possessed.

Zakarias

 

[Zakarias]

A jerk, a kick, all through the emotionaless mask that half showed behind the blighted shadow.

His dagger slipped, just wide, as the earth itself broke beneath them. But he was no creature of the earth. No creature of tree and tangle. Tall and strong as he was, he held the druid up with his half-dying arm, yanked her close to slammed press, and as the roots, large and vicious and wrathfull as they were. How could they ever hope to catch a feather on the wind?

The dagger spun, raptor quick, point down as the blue gem shattered and his red horns fell away.

A burst of wind spun beneath his feet, in that space of breath where earth came free from his feet. and Zakarias, Moon Blessed, Wind Dancer, Illusor of Dusk, shot into the air, like an arrow loosed from a titan's bow. His sword, a clutched claw, dug into the filthy grub that was His thing.

Sparkles of light, trailed like comets tail behind him as he ascended, and he laughed an laughed as tresses like night's sky, shimmered with stars.

"How about up here?" he asked with wicked glee, as the winds carried them higher and higher into the sky. "Hmm, Druid Done?" His mask still fixed, though his strange skin did glow about its edges, red crown fallen, stared into her eyes with his star-fire gaze. "But you did see my dagger dance, didn't you?" he laughed, as he was buyoed by the wind beneath his feet, held her up with his sword.

"You play with no mortal," he grinned wide beneath his mask, and bent toward her as his eyes burned all the brighter.

Thing that she was. Had she mind, primitive or not, he would enter its maze.

Elinyra Derwinthir

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

Elinyra's body hung in the air, impaled by the jester's blade, caught in an endless cycle of wounding and regeneration from the font of life energy stolen from the fae. Looking at her face, the jester could see the cut on her face was slowly healing. Within those eyes - emeralds clouded over, overtaken by another's will and power, the real Elinyra laughed.

It was midsummer's eve deep within the muddled memories and feelings of a mind damaged by the mage's spell and desperate for sanctuary. Safe from the outer violence within her inner world, Elinyra giggled as Ayslin adjusted the wreath of flowers on her head. She batted him away with a playful grin and inspected the antlered headpiece adorning his disheveled hair.

"That looks... honestly pretty ridiculous," she said with another laugh.

"What, really? I rather like it."

With a shake of her head, she grabbed his hand. "All right. Well we'd better go help with the preparations or the archdruid will have us sweeping out the barrows again."

"I could think of worse company to sweep floors with," he replied and passed by her, planting a kiss on her cheek.

Memories of innocence and light, dancing and mirth replayed over and over again in the strange timelessness of the mind.

Zakarias

 

[Zakarias]

It was a careful balance. To walk within a mortal's mind while the strange workings of a fellow Fae twisted and turned and tore away at the fabric of his very life. Bit by little bit.

But the hag had rested here for many an hour. The rites were performed, and the wind itself flowed in accordance to the ley. He, but a conduit through which it passed. From the moon and the gales. Down through the earth and the waters.

Twist and take, take and twist as her malignant form did, the ancient blood took quicker to the stream of life that swirled about them. But for how much longer, a part of his mind did ask.

Within the Druid's mind, however, he was met by a scene of warmth. A scene of love and peace. Like a bright spring day. A crown of flowers adorned her hair, and a man pressed his lips against her cheek.

For to be so free again. To love. To want. To feel the warmth of life all around. Far from the cold cruel claws of the winds outside. The grasping roots and vengeful thorns, but shadows and specters that danced against the light.

He strode closer to the happy pair. A specter in their realm. No bells to sound without his crown, but his mask, cracked and painted as it was, still hid his truest face. His eyes, watched, and his ears listened, and the Jester crouched there and felt. The longing. The Sorrow. The old wound of a time long lost. How he knew it well.

Elinyra Derwinthir

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

Musical Selection for this scene

The scene blurred into a memory of a nocturnal gathering. In a circular clearing surrounded by tall stones engraved with the sacred druidic symbols, beneath moons full and bright, ceremony met celebration. The ritual bonfire was lit, sending warm embers up to the summer sky as the elves danced, chanted and sang in reverence to the coming summer solstice.

Music and passions ruled the night. Babes were named, handfastings performed in a meadow filled with stars and cricket-song. Elinyra smiled as she and Ayslin both took up the colorful ribbon that would bind them. A year and a day. A lifetime, perhaps, in the promises spoken between them.

Hands clasped, their foreheads pressed together, the newly married couples danced in slow circles as if to halt the currents of time for only a moment more.

Like storm clouds marching across a blue sky, something shifted in Elinyra's mind. The memory faded into the haze of dreams to be replaced by another; beneath the ground, in a chamber of a cave turned structure by the druids living there, she was watching her mate busily sorting through a pile of supplies set out on their bed.

"You are packing quite a lot for scouting, aren't you?" she asked as she stepped into the filtered light that shone down on their chamber from a system of tunnels and mirrors above.

Ayslin stopped and looked up at her silently for a few moments before he answered.

"I'm.... going, Elinyra."

"Now? But-" she paused, biting her lip in trepidation as her greeting smile crumpled. "Tomorrow is..."

"A year and a day," he finished, his eyes avoiding her searching gaze. She opened her mouth to ask, but couldn't quite get any words out.

He sighed heavily and took a single step towards her, finally meeting her eyes with a frown. Slowly, as if he was ripping the strings of her heart out one by one, he explained: "I'm sorry. My heart is pulling me away from the circle, and I cannot ignore it any longer. There is a path out there I must tread still, and... there have been rumors of skirmishes with the Dreadlords. They could use my skills."

"No! I will not allow it!"

"My mind is made up. Don't worry for me, I will be careful. I wasn't trained as a cad'nwer without reason." He smiled gently at her. She shook her head as if to dismiss what he was saying.

"What about the circle? Your oath to protect it?"

"I am protecting us all. There is a great evil out there threatening our people, one that must be faced. The other cad'nweren have agreed that this is upholding my oath."

"At least take me with you!" she pleaded. He took another slow step, put his arms on hers and lifted her chin with one hand to face him.

"No, Elinyra. You are a talented healer, but you are not a warrior. The circle needs you. Besides, your roots are here. I shall return, one day, but you and I both knew that this wanderlust of mine would take me away sooner or later."

Elinyra wrapped her arms around herself as if to ward away the ache in her chest. She looked into those eyes, those eyes she knew so well. Finally, she knew she had no choice but to relent.

"You always were a wild heart. You are sure this will bring you happiness?"

"I am. I wish us to part on good terms. I will carry our time together with me always. I pray that you will do the same."

He released her chin, and she slowly nodded. He kissed her forehead and turned back to his packing.

"Fare thee well," she told him as he left what had been their home. Alone, she spoke in a trembling whisper what she'd been holding back for his sake.

"Please don't go...."

The scene grew dark, as if a passing cloud outside was eclipsing the gentle light that fell over her shoulders. Another darkness was taking hold, deep in her heart.

---

The memories moved on, though there was no longer any warmth to them. Only a scene of carnage and confusion one early autumn night; humans and elves screaming, shouting, fighting, dying as the forest went mad.

Ayslin had taught her well how to use a bow, and Elinyra used it this night. An arrow plunged into the eye socket of the dire badger that was ravaging one of her peers, but it did not relent until she'd placed two more in its throat.

"Redalen! Radalen!" she cried, pushing the animal's corpse off of the bloodied elf, her hands ignited in white light as she tried desperately to mend the other druid's wounds. The human settlers who'd seen the first of the attacks had lit their own possessions on fire to try to scare the animals away, filling the road with choking smoke.

"Thank you Ovate," the cad'nwer managed between fits of coughing. "Please see to the others - they need your help more than I." She managed to sit up and cast Elinyra a cracked and bloody smile.

Other beasts were coming from the woods. Some were the natives of the deep forest that were but rarely ever seen, and others sylvan creatures that seemed to have leaped from the pages of fairy tales. All wrath, all madness.

"Go back to the circle! Go find the archdruid!" another's voice carried through the halls of the druid's consciousness.

The memory flashed by faster, more fragmented as Elinyra sprinted through the woods. Out of the corners of her eye, in the corners of her mind, she saw the shadow of a great elk like a ghost that appeared and vanished in shafts of cold moonlight.

---

Outside, the shroud of shadows around Elinyra's body grew. The death magic surrounding them flared like a fire rekindled, almost seeming like a physical presence trying to push Zakarias away. Her arms that had been reaching vainly for leverage presently shuddered. Her cursed hand released the sword's hilt and shot upwards.

The scythe exploded from her hand like a thorn on a rose and she brought it between them. Either he'd have to release the sword, or lose his hands.

Zakarias

 

[Zakarias]

What a thing he had just seen. What a story left to unfold. And there He had been. Cloaked in his dread elk. The bastard.

The jester couldn't help but laugh. To have held on to love so dearly, and yet, taken in all of this.

Yes. He supposed woe was a quite a thing. To feel so powerless in the face of... well all of it.

He laughed louder in his bones. In his flesh. Felt her arm stirring, his sword so plunged into her, his mind so linked to hers, he felt her magicks moving as the scythe came to be.

His mind bled out of hers and his grin grew wide behind his mask, his strong arm flexed and strained but his magic came to the quick. Where her roots dug into his skin, where his blood did drink into her cowl's despoiled bark skin death, his winds came slice and push.

Down came the scythe. Out jet the winds in pushing blast. His sword's blade snapped in two as she flew off it and cut right through it.

Would she sprout wings next? The Red Clown wondered. With all the trees turned to ash, what strong bough would catch her now?

He looked to his own arm, twisted and weak, with hilt of his broken sword still in hand.

Oh, how he laughed all the wilder as he felt to the ground. Slow as a feather made to fall.

Elinyra Derwinthir

 

[Vyr Taethiras]

Shadows trailed behind Elinyra like a funeral procession as she plummeted earthward, the rapier's blade still buried in her shoulder. It appeared that the stone and soil would close the final chapter on her life.

The ground seemed to have other ideas: an overgrowth of something not quite plant, not quite animal, not quite natural erupted from the dead woodlands with a cacophony of cracks. Collecting together like the tendons of a hand, the overgrowth reached out and carefully arrested her descent.

In the middle of this aberration of flesh-merged-plant stood the puppetmaster, his hand engulfed in indigo-hued ley magic as it moved with the same motion as his creation. He curled his fingers into a loose fist and brought his hand slowly downward, and the vines acted in accordance, setting the druid's motionless body down beside him.

With a motion of his index finger, one of the vines broke off from the mass to wrap around the rapier blade. He jerked his finger towards his palm and the vine pulled the remains of the blade free, dropping its bloody length in the melting snow.

With another motion of his arm, the blighted vines broke apart and receded into the ground. Vyr glanced from the red stain where the sword lay to where Zakarias had returned to the ground.

"Zakarias," he spoke with restrained animosity. "Find another mortal to entertain yourself with."

Zakarias

 

[Zakarias]

Long, calm, stride, after long, calm, stride. Zakarias strode across the wind, as if he descended a great staircase in graceful, bounds-turned-steps. Until his feet touched the ground.

"Oh, but Vyr," he said with his starlit dagger still in hand. His main of midnight sky flowed across his shoulders, and his pale white mask, with half-twisted smile painted across its smooth plane, only made his bright eyes glow all the more intensely. He leaned forward, like a hungry beast. "This one you've found, is so... much fun." His head sprang back, spine bent as he laughed.

Giggled forward, until he was tall and straight. Silent. He stood with his heels together, sheathed his broken sword, and spun his enchanted dagger round his wrist, caught it in his palm. Point down at his side.

"That I could chance a meeting with you, well, all the more delightful," he raised his wounded hand up, stared at his marred limb, partly withered away. But the green light of ley swirled about his wounds. And he could feel the slow return of its vitality. "Tell me, Vyr," his eyes cut across to the other. "Do you plan to kill everyone and everything for your sick little quest, hmm?"

Vyr Taethiras

 

[Vyr Taethiras]

Vyr took a moment to consider the other fae, glimmering and bright, in perfect contrast to his own power. The visage of a past that no longer mattered; like the psycho-mancer's jibes - ephemeral voices in the rising storm.

"Would it be more fitting to allow the mortal races to destroy the whole of Arethil through their malice as they did to the Eldyr Tree? Hunt their gods to extinction while they bathe in each other's blood?" He cast his gaze down to the fallen druid. Not a spark of empathy in his eyes - only a cold calculation lined his once ageless face. He'd once said as much to the nobles of his former court, to be ignored for the sake of their idea of the Long Game. They hadn't been there to see the destruction wrought in that sacred place. Or they were too vain to care.

"Death comes to all things... and yet the world continues. Alters its course, in time: a river dammed will one day overcome the walls pressed against it, when enough rain falls."

Zakarias

 

[Zakarias]

Zakarias let his foot come to ground. Felt the drain of Vyr's pull try and wrap around him. But with his crystal gone, that thing that kept his own lines from reaching out in full to the worlds magick about him, his drink of the energies was just as deep. Just as potent.

"And what, old friend, are you?" he raised his still healing hand, and pulled his white faced mask to reveal the pulse and blue sea of stars that flowed across his own skin. "The wall, or the rain?" He smiled, though it was a sad thing.

"You let your pain turn you into something no different than them," he raised his mask and looked over its painted smile, twisted to frown. The cracked eyelets that went up and down. "For you robbed one," his eyes found the Blightcaller. "Diniwed," he barked a laugh, sharp and cruel, and threw his mask at his fellow.

"You despoil the old growths, for what?!" he showed his teeth. "You culled those who defended the wild lands," he shook his head, and thought on those elven forms he had found mangled with withering change. "To sate your pitiful misery, and nothing more, Vyr,"

His people too. But he supposed that was what made Vyr's madness all the colder than his. All the more detached. Zakarias had always been tied to the mortal realm in a way no fae of pure blood could understand. ​

Vyr Taethiras

 

[Vyr Taethiras]

Vyr narrowed his eyes at the so-called red jester through his tirade. He'd heard similar judgments from other duanann, when he was banished forever from their farce of a court. It made no difference then, and it certainly would make no difference now.

His arms, still limned in indigo light, clenched at his sides as flakes of snow alighted on the tattered remains of the cloak that draped over his face. Rotten as the honeyed words he used to believe so long ago.

"Neither. I am the fire that razes the forest to the ground. I am the answer that you - that they - failed to be. The courts are content to watch and wait. I will no longer sit and watch while the weeds take over our garden. I will reap this land and sow life anew."

He glanced over Zakarias's wounded arm, then back down at Elinyra's unconscious form.

"Did this humble 'defender of the wild lands' cause you trouble, Zakarias?" Just a trace of a smirk crossed his face. "She isn't even awake."

Zakarias

 

[Zakarias]

The taller Duanann born's eyes narrowed with a knife sharp glee. "Please, Vyr, don't flatter yourself so," he showed his healing hand, and flexed its muscles once more. "It sickens me," Felt the strength coming back. Slow and slow. The sea of stars at seemed a cosmos contained by the veil of his own skin was slow to flux. White star fire poured from the wounds the blight arm had caused, and sizzled and sank into the snow below.

"Proud fool that I am, I nere thought myself above harm," his eyes flit back to the cowled man.

"Yet that is the real difference between you and I, is it not?" he breathed hot through his teeth, the winter winds dancing about him and stirring the snow of winter up in stormy flurry.

"You want everything now," he laughed. "Cleansing fire, reaper, sower, no no, you are just a small minded coward, Vyr," Zakarias smiled, wistful. "Only a little more lost than I," he laughed. "Though twice as ugly, I'll give you that much," The Red Jester looked to the sleeping druid. "What was she to you, Vyr?" he asked solemn. "Just another sad broken thing you could spread your roots through?"

Vyr Taethiras

 

[Vyr Taethiras]

"Bold words for one who hides behind his mask and music," was Vyr's only reply to Zakarias's continued attempts to provoke him. Just as aggravating now as then, only his venom was more practiced. Vyr, on the other hand, was tired of pointless games. If his kin moved to do something, then so be it. If not, then their prattle could fade into eternity for all he cared.

Reaching out with his power, he bid the blighted vines to pick up the half-transformed reaper. He took her into his arms, only deigning to give Zakarias a cold glare in response to his last question.

"Hwyl fawr, Zakarias."

Zakarias

 

[Zakarias]

"Wait, Vyr," Zakarias called out. His eyes on the druid he held like prized kill. "If you are so sure of your work, why not let her decide?" He bowed his head, and gestured to the pool of burning star blood that shimmered and flamed upon the despoiled earth.

"Let her wake, and let her choose what she will," He smiled, half sweet. "My blood, should be enough to heal her wounds, yes? With those little gifts of yours," He sprang back, in show. Snow kicked up in trail of mist that glittered like a jeweled curtain behind the the the color of the night's sky. "Come then, fire starter, let your ember dance alone!" he laughed.