Open Chronicles Thirst of the Ascended

[Alicia Blackbolt]

Spoiler: Music

“Perhaps I can,”

Alicia turned her head in surprise. Another one?

“Play whatever part you wish but don’t get in my way like those cultists did.” At that, the drow darted, trying to draw his enemy’s attention as much as search for an opportunity to sever a wrist.

"Noted," Alicia barked, fishing out a raven-feathered bolt from her quiver.

Staying away from this creature, leaving these dark elves to handle things?

That, she could do.

The obscuring of her smokestick had run its course. While it rendered her dangerously visible, it did make it much easier to locate the final gem. Loading her crossbow, she made her way to it, then whirled to the creature, her cloak snapping in a dark arc.

That bastard had nearly blessed her with his ritual kris. A nasty gift, to be sure. She didn't like to leave debts unpaid.

The butt of her weapon snapped to her shoulder, taking aim. She pulled the trigger with grim satisfaction. Sending the broadhead bolt right into his ugly mouth.

The creature moved strangely. Not like a regular beast or human. Fluid, like some strange deepwater creature washed into the cistern, arms slicing through the air, fingers stretching and testing their claws. It stared at its own drifting arms for a moment, as if in fascination.

This languid, snarling meditation snapped when a bolt flew through its open mouth and sunk into its palate. It barely reacted, didn't even utter a cry of pain. But it did turn its head in a rapid jerk, noting the trajectory - and crunched the bolt between its teeth.

Like a snapping crustacean, it suddenly swiped at both Feyrith and Zyndyrr, mowing forward, three claws for each. Its remaining hands traced the outlines of a silent spell: a spinning, six-pointed star of white flame forming there, drawn from the forge of its white-burning ribcage and eyes. This arcane energy whirled in Alicia's direction, and she rolled aside as long as she were, narrowly avoiding it.

It carved more than a few inches through stone and the tail end of Alicia's cloak before dissipating, white cinders still flickering in the heated scar. Alicia gasped sharply at this destructive magic and the mess it made of her cloak, but soon her eyes found a much worse sight - the last ruby on the floor, sliced in half. Now a cut sphere of red, its one side still smoking and glaring with cinders. It seemed the flagstones weren't the only casualties of the spell.

Her worried gasp turned into a groan of dismay. Quickly enough, her mind went from imagining scorched limbs to the waterfall of coins clattering out of this gem's value.

 

[Karskgorak Fiend-Crusher]

“AND SO THE HUNTER’S MARK FINALLY SHOWS ITS HIDE!”

Karskgorak charge through the remaining wraiths, towards the many armed demon. To the side he noticed a tall dark figure he recognized as that foul blooded swordsman Afanas. Karsk had heard the quasi-vampire had returned to hunting after a stint of book reading in Elbion

though catching up with a man he swore to kill was hardly pressing, as the many armed demon glanced over at Karsk with empty eye sockets.

The old orc stopped in his tracks with a stomp that shook the cistern to the same extent as the flagstone destroying the altar.

The demon wound back one of its arms as Karsk readied and drew his blade from its heavy wooden scabbard.

The blade was wrapped in a tempestuous pale light, growing to the size of a zweihander as Karsk muttered Mantras in Orcish.

The demon swung down with its claws but was deflected in a flash of light by Karskgorak’s sword.

The sword left no cuts on the demon’s hand but it seared in pain after coming into contact with the pale light.

“a spirit blade stings with more than just cuts!” Karsk shouted, as he drove his sword into the ground, driving up a wave of stone that launched into the fiend as it briefly recoiled.

 

[Feyrith]

What her blade form held in power and swiftness was truly ailed by a lack of control. Feyrith's head cleared momentarily to find her blade sunk threw the cultist. It hadn't been her intention none of it. She had certainly felt some small desire to halt the woman being sacrificed but that had been a passing compassion. What she had really hoped to do was nip the madness of the ritual in the bud before it could blossom into further chaos. In that she had failed spectacularly.

bolts found another cultist who lunged for their hired ally. Piercing his chest and safeguarding Feyrith, one even motioning to the mercenary that she could take shelter within their phalanx should she wish.

It was no small relief to know that reinforcements had arrived. For in her blunder they would surely need it.

In the time it took her to pull her blade free the sputtering man had already incanted some such to finish the deed. Silently she grumbled all manner of curses in her thoughts. It might have done her some good to hear the thanks of the would be sacrifice begrudging or not. It might have softened the blow a little.....but she had little time to process it had even been said.

“And who are you!?”

Zyndyrr beckoned the other figure with a quick flourish from one of his weapons. Purple-skinned. Female. Drow like him. Didn’t matter anyhow. He was a bit sick of these interruptions in his business.

Nor did she have time to reply to the Drow. Not that she would have answered even if he had asked more politely instead of waving a weapon.
No before anything else the woman had called to attention the rising form that Feyrith was staring down with a similar dread.

Alicia paled, then hissed almost as vehemently to Feyrith:

"Could you kill him again?"

As if to cosmically mock her, the arcane being transformed garishly into a skeletal form of many more arms than those she had failed to clip.
The male Drow called for an assault on the arms. She couldn't agree more and especially had no intention of 'getting in the way' she was more than happy to leave such a monstrosity to him and the assembled hunters.

In her hesitance to advance on the eldritch creatures Feyrith had found herself nearly caught in it's swiping claws. Between the Arcane attacks and the Orc carving up the ground beneath them Feyrith was doing more dodging than anything else. Amidst the keeping out of steps of the cracks in the marble she caught sight of the would be sacrifice lamenting the broken ruby. Perhaps she was devout.....or perhaps she had simply tried to take a consolation prize only to be swiftly misfortuned. Feyrith stood a step behind the phalanx of the sun emblem guards, her sword reflexively up.

Alicia Blackbolt
Zyndyrr K'yoshin

 

[Emmeline Hildebrandt]

Emma caught Feyrith’s valiant effort to free Alicia from the corner of her eye and found solace in the woman’s movements, content to focus her own efforst elsewhere in the battle that unfolded before them. The shattered altar was enough to spare the woman’s life from immediate danger, but only that. Still stunned from the guard’s bashing, the injured swordswoman and then her blade was cut free at the hilt. The warning heeded.

It was an unusual need, almost familial… almost feral. It was the sort of need that had brought her onto the watch long before she’d ever joined Noct Yaegir. That hunger drove her to pick up a sword in the first place, when she was but a youth herself.

“I am here only to see that life is not loss unnecessarily,” the woman returned, and it was the first time she’d spat venom back at another so coldly. Her lips twisted bitterly, the sundered blade released to clatter to the ground. “Gut me, if you wish. But that woman needs assistance and you’re a damned fool if you think the danger has passed.”

With one less blade to rely on, the woman twisted around her newest assailant, ducking forward toward Alicia once more. There was something wild in those pale green eyes, as if the Noct Yaegir woman saw a ghost of her own past amongst the cultists that they’d picked off. And she had—the siren song that brought them all to this altar sang a different tune to the swordswoman than it did to the others, and for Emmeline she simply needed to see that Alicia still drew breath.

Then, the cultist completed his ritual and Emmeline cursed. Her fingers tightened around her remaining blade, pale green gaze fixed on the abomination that towered in front of the woman whose blood became the final ingredient in the madman’s macabre incantation.

Emmeline said nothing, though one might think she could perceive Iskander’s anger and surprise at her actions by the way she hesitated just briefly at the creature. She’d seen things of its nature before, and she knew the damage it could do. “We don’t have time to bicker now. Your man isn’t dead. If he can fight still, now is the time.”

It was only after these words that the madness in her eyes finally seemed to calm; whatever insanity the cultists had beckoned seemed to falter with the shattering of the altar. The consummation of the ritual meant its litany’s hold on the would-be heros weakened. She lifted her chin and charged forward again, this time toward the creature, her gaze seeking any sign of weakness upon its magicked body.

 

[Afanas]

Feyrith
Karskgorak Fiend-Crusher
Alicia Blackbolt
Emmeline Hildebrandt

Afanas scoffed—a sound sharp as flint struck steel.

“Scatter!” he roared. “Behind the pillars, all of you! Drag the broken clear! If they breathe, they fight another day. If they can’t walk, carry them!”

The order flew like a thrown axe, no time for questions.

He turned then, slow and deliberate, his black eyes locked on the demon. A sneer split his face, peeling back lips to bare fangs, the flesh behind them dark and slick as wet tar.

Without looking, he reached and clamped Karsk’s shoulder.

A sword dropped into his waiting hand. It did not fall—it came, like a hound to heel. His fingers wrapped the hilt, and the blade settled along his shoulder like a resting vulture.

"I’ve got a plan," he said.

"But I need you to keep that thing in place. Take its legs. One, both, I don’t care. Hobble it. Cripple it. If steel fails, bury the bastard—snare it in the stone. Don’t waste breath or blade on the arms. Let it swing. Just see it doesn’t run.”

One of the red-plated knights seized a fallen comrade, blood ran from the man’s side where silver had found flesh. Without pause, they dragged him behind the nearest pillar.

Another knight broke from cover, his crimson armor catching firelight in jagged glints. Only his eyes showed, bright yellow and steady, beneath a visor wrought in the shape of a snarling dragon’s snout.

He raised one hand toward Feyrith.

“Back,” he said. His voice was flat, metallic through the helm. “Lord Commander’s orders. Put distance between us and that thing.”

He turned to Alicia, gaze unreadable behind the visor.

“Take your friend. Move fast. It’s already seen too much of us.”

 

[Zyndyrr K'yoshin]

Spoiler: Music OOC

Scatter. Stand back. Get behind the pillars. Take cover. It didn’t matter. The words of others pierced like daggers in Zyndyrr’s ears but that was just because of his adrenaline. Otherwise he ignored them and focused on what his eyes told him amid the rush of blood.

There was some undead soul before his sight and, when all was said and done, the tall twisted thing with eight long arms sailing on a sea of blood was just a contract to an assassin. No more or less and forget the legs.

So the K’yoshin transformed, not into a macabre monstrosity to match the monster, but into a shuriken. He whipped like the wind, cut across the distance, dodging, flipping over the limbs that swiped toward him. Those claws were sharp. So were his swords. They could carve as much as roar.

The drow’s feet found ground while his target was busy launching a shuriken of white fire for another person. That kept its other limbs distracted. After Zyndyrr landed, with no cinders on his cloak that would mean absolutely nothing in the end, he continued the dance.

“Thanks.”

It was all the assassin expressed as the orc moved forth. His sword tore toward the creature, zweihander or otherwise, repelling the attack and yelling. At that very second, Zyn sprung into action. He had been biding his time, waiting for the right moment, and this orcish oaf provided the perfect opening.

As the horned beast’s limb began to retract from the orc’s swing, Zyndyrr leaped, hacking and slashing. He ripped his blades this way and that way, became a whirlwind, and watched how steel enchanted with a drow’s deep magic peeled a hand from a wrist.

There was a hiss, and the hiss became a roar, and Zyn could feel the anguish and the anger in his target. “Maintain your distance if you wish,” he beckoned this makeshift alliance. “Orc!”

Twirling his scimitars, flourishing his swords for no other reason than to taunt the demon, the son of K’yoshin grinned something vicious. He would take his target’s head before the end. “AGAIN!”

Karskgorak Fiend-Crusher Alicia Blackbolt Emmeline Hildebrandt Feyrith Afanas Petrus Ritus Iskandar

 

[Alicia Blackbolt]

The demon continually roared at the severance of its hand, its eyes flaring wide. The severed hand bled star-white liquid and seared the stones, potent as any acid. A sea of swords surrounded the creature, but Alicia could swear it only looked affronted by this imminent doom - if any emotion could be read in the skin stretched taut over its malformed skull.

The roar transmuted back into the defensive hiss of a giant snake, snorting through the hole where its nose should have been, bending low, protecting itself. The wave of broken stones and spiritual agony from Karskgorak had disturbed its balance, forcing it to rely on its arms to steady itself. It flung back the advancing drow, the Noct Yaegir and the crimson guards with a mighty swipe of a claw, buying itself precious seconds . . . to leap off their little island, now strewn with broken bodies, smashed stone and scattered candles.

Like some pale spider, it caught a nearby column with four, backward-stretching arms, hanging from on high in the ceiling. With this distance earned, it pointed down at its enemies with the limb that Zyndyrr had robbed of a hand - and as if in mockery of their efforts, black spines began to push through the bleeding wrist.

A terrible scream shredded the air. Unnatural and discordant, it pained the living, while summoning the undead. What remained of weakened wraiths flooded the island, attacking anything in sight. And while these minions could buy it time, an unearthly voice droned a long, sinister evocation of words, its remaining, three hands shaping a ball of jet-coloured energy, arcing and spitting with amethyst lightning, contracting and expanding erratically . . .

As for Alicia, she had had quite enough of this. A woman with pale green eyes had reached out for her, and while Emmeline Hildebrandt had meant to save her, Alicia mistook her efforts for someone trying to capture her.

Time to leave.

She sneered at the white cinders that kept devouring her cloak and flung off the dark calle from her shoulders, revealing a lithe, leather-bound body armed to the teeth with strange straps, potions and mechanical gadgets, dark-brown hair whirling wildly as if struggling to keep up with her rapid movements. Snatching the last ruby, she rushed for the edge and leapt - straight through an ascending wraith, coming out of nowhere.

Burning agony, all at once. Like jumping through scalding mists from a hot kettle, only magnified hundredfold.

She broke her fall in the waters with a wounded tumble. The waters, at least, had lost most of their heat. But as she dragged herself up to her feet, the wraith pursued her, smelling blood. Or perhaps more accurately, crisp skin.

 

[Petrus Ritus Iskandar]

Spoiler: Soldiers

Shields thick enough to serve as the walls of a whorehouse would envelope Feyrith and shield her from the jet-black foulness the creature unleashed. The worked metal being scarred and marred by the fel magicks on display. The phalanx abiding by the Lord Commander Afanas 's words and pulling the Drow mercenary back into their tightly-coordinated ranks. The sergeant would pull up his visor, a middle-aged human with a scar on his left cheek and a very impressive broom-handle moustache would raise his enchanted sword and, intoning a word, magic would begin to flood from the blade with vine-like motifs down the length of it's bevel.

A soft song to nature would act as a bulwark against the creature's darkness, though weaker and at a disadvantage it would nonetheless spread an invigorating sensation to those nearby and even begin to slowly knit wounds upon their person. It was, of course, a slow regeneration. Not something to let them stand toe to toe with the foul beast, but enough to give them a reprieve should they so wish it. As the sergeant held his blade aloft like a tuning fork resonating with it's own magical song he would duck down to speak to Feyrith in a hushed, coarse whisper.

"Well now Miss, seems this routine patrol has turned into something much more interesting..."

A wry, not-at-all amused grin split his features even as the phalanx loosed another volley of four crossbow bolts at the offend abomination. Long spears prodding and keeping it at bay as the soldiers of House Iskandar set to their work.

Zyndyrr K'yoshin
Emmeline Hildebrandt
Karskgorak Fiend-Crusher​

 

[Feyrith]

"Understood!" she called back to the Crimson knight.
She gladly allowed herself to be pulled within the rank of house Iskandar they tightened their formation.
'get some distance' was a welcome order. She was well aware that her choice to join the guard might call her to truly put her life on the line. Still she hadn't been quite prepared mind or body to do so this night in particular.

Even within their wall of enchanted shield the arcane shriek resounding off the marble walls set her teeth clenching. It was painful enough that, had she been of lesser discipline, she might have abandoned her sword to clamp her hand over her ears. Luckily before she could make such an embarrassing blunder another melody rang out. It's softer tones chasing away the pain and dread, easing a few aches she hadn't noticed.

Calmed her eyes met the sergeant with her most courteous frown. Or rather her eyes met his mustache first.
That sort of thing was still an unusual sight to Feyrith, Male Drow didn't seem to have the knack for growing them. Impressive indeed.
"I hasten to think I shall be reminded of it every lament of a slow night here forth. "
She replied with a tone just as wry. Feyrith had the feeling that the other soldiers at the guard post weren't going to believe a word of her report on this.

She caught a glimpse of the fleeing cultist?.. unfortunate bystander?..gem enthusiast? whoever she was she was scrambling about quite unfortunately. One of the Noct Yaeger seemed to have reached out a hand but the woman fled like a frightened rabbit chased by a rogue wraith. If she could just skirt the flank of shields to make a run fot eh exit she would be home free but Feyrith wasn't sure the woman could see that in her panicked state.

Her eyes moved back to the assault on the creature her stance renewed, ready to move should either advance or retreat be called for.

Afanas
Petrus Ritus Iskandar
Alicia Blackbolt

 

[Karskgorak Fiend-Crusher]

Karsk tumbled across the dusty floor as the blow from the demon had sent him flying several yards. A moment of distraction had let the monster land on him, as his attention was stolen by that murderous drow.

That scrawny elf was starting to become an annoyance besides just being a despicable murderer!

“But I have not the time for such distractions!” Karskgorak blurted out. Though he knew that if the drow again drew near, the orc would strike swiftly with his blade. Any more consideration, Karsk could not spare the scum.

Karsk dashed over to a nearby stone pillar, cleaving a section free of the floor and ceiling with rapid strikes of his glowing blade. Then, with a powerful kick, he sent the massive chunk of pillar flying straight towards the four armed demon.

Landing back on the Cistern floor, Karsk himself didn’t waste even a moment to charge back in. He trailed behind the pillar and rushed back towards the demon.

“That blasted Afanas better have a worthwhile plan, else I might just be forced to bury this terror under the city above.”