Fable - Ask To Smithereens!

[Kazaban the Mad]

With crooked spire of arcane infused brick that had only been constructed two weeks ago by unwinding spell, a singular figure looked down from balcony at the shooting gallery that was the rocky terrain of the Spine. A number of scorched animal bodies were still smoking from vile green arcane energies. Birds, foxes, and a singular bear were devastated and still, aside from the whisps of soul that still lingered near them.

“I fear I have run out of playthings!” the figure cried loudly, dejected in cackling playsong tone, and turned to the stone statues that had recently assaulted his home. The first party that had survived his withering assault with upraised shield, shields that now were discs of stone raised in defence that were powerless before the mighty magic of the flesh to stone scroll that Kazaban the Mad, once simply known as the Green Evoker, had expended. Three adventurers who thought themselves up to the task of bringing down his endless power trip and insatiable lust for wanton carnage. Such a spell of the basilisk had not been cast in an act of desperation, it had been an act of vile personal amusement.

He simply wanted someone to talk to. Or talk at. Prisoners were so much more agreeable when their faces were in shock, Kazaban thought, so much more respectful of the grand purpose of liberating little patches of lands of life.

“Who to face? Who is worthy of becoming a smoking crater upon the blasted rock? I want at least one more bout before I move my tower to another place to scorch! Yes, yes! I know! That's it! Those of Anathaeum! I demand a parchment to attend me, it shall be done by my will, most good, most good!” Kazaban said and flung a hand towards the book shelf and at once, a scroll was plucked from it. Kazaban turned and unfurled the page, and his eyes glowed green and blasted out a message which was scribed in emerald green from his eye blast.

It read as follows.

Dear Dolts of Anathaeum, lovers of the five domains and supplicants to the teet that is the cow of magic you so cull with your idiot displays of valour! I am waiting for you, you blighted brigands and vagrants of honour, at the specified location below. Bring anyone you wish to assault my tower, and I will love to expose to you to the backside of my arcane hand! Unless you cower before my might, which is what I shall assume, and spread word amongst the magi that still have sense to fear me! Yours sincerely, Kazaban the Evoker. You may know me as mad, but I assure you, it is very much from power. See you around my lovelies! If you aren't too stooped over from studying just five domains, you fish born whores!​

The letter was affixed to a small crystal bird, who fluttered into life and made it's journey to the Captain of Helena, who would hear the voice of Kazaban read out the letter in exactly the mad, mocking and thoroughly insane style that Kazaban had meant it. As the bird left, Kazaban ignited a great gout of green flame down from the tower balcony at absolutely nothing at all, laughing gleefully to himself all the while.

 

[Helena]

Come the letter. The parchment unfold, and made to levitate by wizardry. Its spew of filth uttered out by a voice unhinged. Cracked and mad.

Helena shook her head as the words poured on. Smile wide, teeth bared as she rest her temples between fingers and thumb. Such madness. "Sheer insanity," she thought aloud. Were it only the letter, she might have ignored it. Thought it the trick of some aspiring illusionists, practicing their babblemancy. But she knew better than to dismiss it as the harmless fancy of the unhinged.

It was the name that struck a familiar chord. Kazaban the Evoker. Kazaban the Mad. Once of magi of some repute, for his thirst for knowledge was well known. Respected, as a thing of tenacity. Till things changed. Kept going on about his tower. His power. How he was the greatest, and the master here, and there and everywhere he went. Reports came periodically of his whereabouts. Of his tower. Of his murders. But tests to his theories and power.

As the last insult sounded in her office, Helena scowled. Suppose it was only a matter of time really.

She snapped her fingers, and the parchment caught afire in an instant. The flame, slow at first, flashed across the material with ravenous speed. Then but a mote of flame was left and it too sputtered out. Ash the only thing left behind.

Her eye fell to the bird. Such a beautiful thing. Made from a mind so lost.

Out came her own pen, and she wrote her own letter.

---

Knights of the Order,

A madman and a murderer has made his location known to us. Declared challenge against our number. Set forth, and put him down, before any more life is lost to his wanton depravity.

Kazaban the Mad
Risk Level: High
Insanely powerful wizard. Hold up in his tower. The tower is known to change locals. Proceed with extreme caution, and execute with due prejudice. He called us fish born whores.

 

[Kazaban the Mad]

The message was tethered to a mental link that let Kazaban know if it was destroyed, and upon it's destruction Kazaban cackled wildly and span in his levating chair, kicking in the air and hollering at the statues at the successful delivery of his taunting challenge.

“They blew it up! They saw my challenge and they burned it up from anger! Oh happy day, their five domained parlour must be ablaze with my words calling them, calling them, oh, what was it?”

He rapped his fingertips to his forehead trying to remember, and then was caught in a bout of maniacal laughter as he recalled.

“Oh yes, that was it!”

He cackled and bent over double with laughter, his fist banging on the desk that left scorch marks from the energy that spilled from the man.

The statues looked on with the same expression they always had these days. Laughter echoed through the barren land from the open balcony. The bear's skull collapsed into dust.

“What a joyful day to have fun, the knights of Anathaeum are set to run, all things are happy and all is well, it's time to blast some knights to hell!”

 

[Syr Guernot]

Guernot crumpled up the missive in his thick blue hand, veins across his knuckles popping. "Why, I'll show him what a fish-born whore can do!"

The pronouncement disturbed Edelbert, who lay in bed behind Guernot. The man propped himself up with an elbow and scratched his greying goatee. "I hope you're not about to do something rash," he said passively, as he watched Guernot put his boots on with a firm yank of the laces. They were the fireproof ones.

"It's a real quest," Guernot responded in defense, tossing the missive towards Edelbert. It fluttered down onto the blankets in an anticlimactic way. The he got up and pulled the white-petaled cloak off its hook. Guernot fastened the clasp around his throat and started shuffling around for his sword. Not that he was going to use it. Due prejudice was a phrase the Flame Pursuant knew well. It meant, leave nothing unburnt.

Edelbert hummed as he skimmed over the Captain's letter. "Well then, give 'em hell for me," he said, setting the parchment down. The death knight rolled into his pillow and pulled the covers back over his head.

---

Syr Guernot would report for duty wherever his Captain saw fit, steaming lightly with the arcane heat that he commanded... despite his aquatic origins.

Helena Kazaban the Mad

 

[Amalgam]

Meanwhile, somewhere in the Spine ...

One foot. Metal-bound toes gripped unfeeling at the stony soil beneath.

The other foot, placed neatly in front of the previous. The long barb that tipped the dusksteel sabaton dug mercilessly into the ground on which it stood.

Then, repeat. The first foot, raised again. A dusting of gravel shunted aside by the passing weight of the foot's owner as it descended.

It had been just over twenty-three years since Amalgam last stood within the walls of Astenvale Monastery. Almost as long since they'd departed in the company of Syr Caspian of the Dawn Sanctum on a mission of utmost import—though perhaps they hadn't known its import at the time.

There was no particular urgency to the armored figure's steps; merely a sort of robotic, measured efficiency. The trail to Astenvale stretched long ahead. At the current pace, it would be at least three days before the enigmatic knight's return, and that wasn't accounting for time wasted stopping for sleep or food. Not that Amalgam ever bothered to account for such things, of course. There was no need.

The distant sound of an explosion interrupted the Pursuant's measured pace, followed by the distant echoes of mad, cackling laughter ringing dissonantly o'er the nearby crags and cliffs. Gauntlet-clad fingers fell with deceptive ease to the hilt of the katana whose dark leather sheath hung at its owner's side, and the knight resumed their measured pace. Now, however, their unhurried steps carried them off the path, towards the stony face of the escarpment that loomed above, from behind which the faintest flickers of distant emerald light ever-so-briefly crept into view before dissipating away into the cavernous inverted depths of the mist-shrouded sky.

Astenvale had awaited Amalgam's return for twenty-three long years.

It could afford to wait a little longer.

 

[Kazaban the Mad]

Kazaban paced and drove sleep from his mind, for he was a man who was consumed by his power lust. Already he paced back and forth, back and forth like a man possessed by the spirit of power. By the demon of knowledge. His mother had always told him to sit still as a child, which he defied at every turn. He felt the stress upon his temples, the pressure. He reached out a hand within his wizard's tower and gestured a come hither motion to his alchemical components. The salicylic acid, through acetylation with acetic anhydride bubbled and boiled, and under Kazaban's magic did compress into a singular sphere of white. It floated towards him, and he crunched and cronched upon what he had created. He pressed his fingers to his temple and looked out to the view below.

The bear was still lingering. Smoking.

Kazaban cackled wildly, drunk with power.

"I wonder what I T R A would have to say about this display," Kazaban said, thoughtful for a moment while he rubbed his temples."

He grew infuriated at the thought, anger white hot within him at the mention of that sociopathic bitch.

"Fuck Itra!"

Kazaban the Mad made a claw with his hand and summoned a sphere of power. But even he was not foolish enough to take on a God.

Or was he?

And then he spied in the distance. A singular figure. Slow. Ponderous. With the gravitas of death. With the gravitas of crushing death.

He began to laugh maniacally as he paced back and forth to generate heat within his frame, and he smoothed his beard and hair. He looked within an arcane mirror of his own devising, a mirror which could be utalised by only the Fae. He knew he could phase through the mirror and communicate with the Fae realm, but such was not his obsession right now.

The Knights of Anathaeum was his obsession.

"Fish born whores, skeleton lords, why am I so sullen and drained!" Kazaban cackled and drew his hands from his belly, holding for five seconds, and then raise it up to fill his lungs with air.

"Eat this, you fools of the highest order?"
The spell was of Kazaban's signature color. The blue green which was his calling card.

"BY THE POWER OF KAZABAN DO I WREATH THIS FIRE, BY THE POWER OF ONE DO I CRUSH THE MANY, BY THE POWER OF..."
He felt the rushing pain as his energy overspilled through his body, wracking him with pain. But he pressed on.

"THE WEAVE!"

And then, from blackened nails and furrowed brow did Kazaban summon a wreath of chain lightning to arc out towards whoever dared step foot on his property. Which to Kazaban was everywhere he could see from his wizard's tower.

Somewhere, Murk Altov felt a twinge of pain within his temples.

Somewhere, Abalon Shallows pruned a bonsai tree.

Somewhere, Bubkiss Widewallow was laughing with Kiros.

Amalgam @Syr Guernot

 

[Amalgam]

Long hours had passed, unhurried and unheeded. Long hours spent climbing the winding trail. Long hours spent but an inch away from plummeting into one of the many perilous crevasses that split the uneven stone.

Ahead lay the once-calm wasteland of the plateau's smoke-scarred summit. A grim, forbidding tower stood atop it, looming above like some dreadful predator lying in wait. And from that tower, ringing out across the mountains like the very song of the winds themselves ...

"BY THE POWER OF KAZABAN DO I WREATH THIS FIRE!"

Amalgam's pace did not quicken. Nor did slow. The armored figure might as well have been deaf to the words that rebounded off the mountains in cacophonous revelry akin to their source's own.

"BY THE POWER OF THE ONE DO I CRUSH THE MANY!"

There was a curious ring of madness to that voice. It was the madness of one who knew he was mad, and who didn't care; the madness of one with the power to weave his madness into reality.

"BY THE POWER ..."

The very air seemed to hold its breath. Even Amalgam gave pause.

"... OF THE WEAVE!"

A split second.

A deafening silence.

And then ...

... cataclysm.

---

Already the Pursuant's black gauntlet was in motion, coming to rest with uncanny precision on the black-bound hilt at their side. Metal-bound fingers curled about it, forming a grip both delicate and firm.

Dusksteel sabatons set themselves against the scorched earth below, the blades at their ends planting themselves, cutting into the very stone. Joints locked; posture stiffened; and there the armored figure stood, firm and unyielding in the face of that which would remove them.

Now at last Gossamer left its sheath, a single clean motion that leveled the blade before its wielder. With a neat turn of the wrist, the katana's darkly translucent blade was turned and raised aloft. The tip dropped, pointing to the tower's apex with unerring accuracy as the sky above unfurled in a blinding mosaic of cyan and azure light.

All this and more in less time than it took to blink.

And from the sky came lancing down a wailing tempest of crackling fire, driven and delivered by the derangement of its maker and framed by manic laughter from the same. The very air seemed to sour and sting the soul, and wherever that dreadful energy touched down, naught was left but dust and ash and the reek of burning stone.

Above the lone knight, several bolts twisted and curved in the air, almost as if drawn to the lightning rod of the gossamer blade below. As one they struck, and all vanished from sight beneath the ensuing flash of blinding light; raw energy, breaking down the air about it into its most fundamental components. A deafening crack split the air; an unholy, unnatural thunder with the power to shatter glass and ears alike.

And then ... it was over.

---

A ringing silence slowly fell, the last reverberations echoing off the mountainsides for minutes entire.

Smoke rose o'er what once had been a grassy field, now scarred by countless pits and craters and the smoldering corpses of flora and fauna alike. The afterimages of that brilliant flash slowly faded; the air cleared somewhat of its foul haze.

There, in the center of a wide ring of bare stone scorched black as their armor, stood Amalgam. Smoke rose from their uncaring form; visible burns and pockmarks marred the pristine black leather of their garb; a red glow of raw heat was slowly fading from the silver embellishments that lined their armor. And yet there they stood, unfazed and unmoved still. Without flourish or ceremony, the armor-bound figure sheathed their blade and resumed their steady, unhurried pace, their measured steps carrying them inexorably toward the base of the tower.

 

[Syr Guernot]

Along the treeline, at the edge of the valley which nestled the wizard's tower, Guernot rode with the others. He sat upon his faithful mare, Nessie, one hand on the reins and the other gripping a blade. Though, the sword felt a little unnecessary, since the wizard was still very far away, and there was nothing else to hack or slash at.

With a shift of his bulk, he stilled his steed. Nessie huffed and stepped backwards with clomping hoofs, trampling twig and leaf, grass and smoking bone. In the field before them were the petrified and smouldering remains of those unfortunate enough to cross through the wrong valley at the wrong time. The whole places stank of rotten, roast meat. It was rancid. And Guernot even liked meat, in most forms. He had the teeth for it.

He scowled those pointy teeth of his and scrunched up his nose. "So far the worse challenge has been that smell," he said aloud to his compatriots. Foot planted in one stirrup, he swung off his horse and jumped to the ground.

Then, a flash of green. A smokey, sulfur smell in the air, charged with magic. Lightning landed right at Guernot's feet, scalding the grass there. Another bolt crashed over a knight's head, still on their horse, splitting a nearby tree. Guernot didn't know it, but he had diverted the direction of both bolts. That was the thing about lightning, it was too fast to react to. And that was the thing about Guernot - he acted before he could think.

Thunder cracked a few moments later. Scared poor Nessie witless. She reared and bolted back into the woods, which was probably for the better, considering the charred marks of flesh and grass smeared across the field.

What had happened finally hit Guernot a few moments after that.

"AH HAH! You missed!" he shouted, shaking a victorious fist at the tower in the distance. Except, his voice didn't carry all that far, so he was just yelling at an empty field. "Try it again, old man!"

Amalgam Kazaban the Mad

 

[Kazaban the Mad]

Kazaban placed gnarled hand against the side of the stone window as he panted, each shuddering breath wracked with dry chuckling as he thought the day already won. His lips curled in glee still even as others might have grimaced at the pain endured from such a display. He wet his lips and dragged his fingers down the window in spasms. A result from drawing the captivating and alluring chaotic energies into himself and casting it out with such wild abandon. A few more seconds of discipline could have prevented such an affliction, but Kazaban had long since abandoned such...inefficiency. Such an act of self preservation denied one the rush of harbouring so much power so dangerously close to one's own wellspring of spirit. And the pursuit of that rush, that heady high that had granted him the moniker of Mad, drove him onwards.

His eyes crackled with lightning motes as he peered out with wizened eyes. Eyes that were darkened by his recent expulsion of raw lightning energy. He frowned and snapped a finger repeatedly in the air when only one snap was required, so impatient and rude he was even to his own possessions.

A pair of spectacles, oft repaired by wands of mending, both as implements to fix them and spare parts to replace parts of the frame, floated sluggishly towards him, as if fearing another breakage.

Kazaban snapped his head towards the floating glasses and much like how a pigeon bobs its head, placed his nose into the bridge of the glasses. The nosepiece seized his face with a satisfying creak of wooden wands.

He blinked repeatedly to get rid of the darkness that plagued him. Another result of being so reckless with raw energy. The glasses did their best to improve his condition as he peered out in zoomed vision, each feature hyper zoomed and giving Kazaban much tunnel vision as he swept the crime scene.

Blackened grass, yes, good.

Blackened tree, ah ha, super.

Blackened bones, lovely, just lovely.

Black knight, excell-

Black knight?

Kazaban gave a low growl of manic irritation that rose in pitch, and he ripped the glasses from his nose and threw it against the stone wall. Another piece of wand fractured within the frame as the glasses clattered. They began to float away into the corner of the room, dejected, the cycle of abuse proven once again.

The one known as Mad shuddered as if someone walked over his grave, smoothed his hair back and quickly found laughter upon his lips again, wild laughter that abandoned sense and reason, the kind of hysterics as if something was abundantly obvious to someone ignorant in mocking peals.

“Oh this'll be delicious, if lightning didn't get that one, wait, one, wait wait wait. They sent only one? Where the hell are my glasses? They surely send more than one, they work in pairs, I swear on my murdering mother who bore me into this world a genius, if they've changed their modus operandi,” he declared as he snapped his fingers once again, forcing the glasses to return to their abuser. Once again Kazaban performed the ritual of bobbing his head to wear them as he peered out.

A voice croaked as a wooden mask, wreathed in peacock feathers and bejeweled in sapphires, offered advice.

“Cast your gaze to the trees...”

“Right you are Mister Mask!” Kazaban cried, deliberately disregarding the artifact's name in favour of his own way of addressing it, and cleared his throat.

He began to issue a low growl. This time it wasn't of irritation. It was of summoning. Globes of azure began to form at the corners of his eyes as if he were to weep the colour. Once again the rush, and the pain, claimed him.

“I spy with my two eyes, something ending by me!”

The glasses exploded from his face as tumbled down to the ground below as the globes around his eyes crystalised and issued thin lines of azure that scorched anything that Kazaban looked at. Like a razor thin and deadly, his vision raked across the land in wild abandon as he looked for the other knights, occasionally looking back at the dread knight that had resisted his lightning in the first place. He took a moment to write his own name as his perception scorched the grasslands, and continued to hunt.

“No, the other trees,” the artifact said with fatigue.

“I knew that!” Kazaban said and swung his vision wildly as he wielded his weaponised vision with much inaccuracy, yet much joy.

Amalgam Syr Guernot