Intricacies of Asymmetry

[Caden Law]

Generally, there is a problem that comes with trying to fight Evil Doers at their own game. It's a very simple problem, and it can be overcome, but there's always a downright rancid aftertaste left as a result.

Bad Guys tend to be better than Good Guys at doing Bad Things.

For historical and social references, Wizards of Salvar are already a morally ambiguous lot. Put on your classic nine-alignment Good-Evil/Lawful-Chaotic chart, they'd typically hit on or close to the more negative aspects of True Neutral. They were a lot fashioned by time and tradition to hold positions of status and power; they were the atomic bombs the King and Church would drop in a war and they were the true, not-always-blue weathermen who kept the blizzards at bay. Such responsibilities breed pride. Pride breeds envy. Envy breeds all kinds of compromises with any moral code. A Wizard could technically consort with demons even worse than what most Warlocks dealt with, and he could damn well get away with it if he played his cards right. There were only a few laws that truly could not be broken, and that there was even a dividing line between generic Wizards and Warlocks was because most Wizards knew how to terminally break the spirit of those laws without damaging the letters.

Sure, you have the moral hard-asses like that old rogue, Greyspine, but for the most part...

Bad Guys tend to be better than Good Guys at doing Bad Things. Because they've been doing it longer. Because they've got more talent for it. Because they've cut the deals and sold the souls and spilled the blood and dug out enough of an ethical pit that they can do it faster. And because most of them simply don't give a damn about the art of what they do; results are king.

Thus it is that, at the very same second Caden and Eledier were doing a half-hearted masochism tango across the thin grey line between Good and Bad, we do our own hop, skip and jump across the much thicker grey fog of doom enveloping the region of Tembrethnil currently controlled by Xem'zund's Death Lords. Back to the grubby little hedge-necromancer's Magic Tower, currently trundling along at a suitably glacial pace. More specifically, back to the Fallen Wizard's sanctum arcana -- more commonly known as a Study. With all sorts of books, ranging from a shoddy copy of the Tome of Nyan (written fifth-hand on catskin, obviously) to a book that had no name to be conveyed in any living language.

The Study also doubles, quite literally, as a War Room. If you'd like a proper tour, keep reading.

Firstly, note the eight sides to it. Two sides, exactly opposite one another, have doors. One door leads into and out of the Study, the other leads to nowhere you'd like to hear about. Five of the remaining six walls are occupied by shelves holding all those aforementioned books interspersed with the tools of the arcane; skull here, an exotic jar-thing there, stuff like that. The last wall was occupied primarily by a fireplace and a stand, holding Kholia's staff of power in place. Note that the staff is floating, and note that its holding consists of a heavy, sturdy looking chain.

Scattered about the floor in a perfect pattern are tables, not unlike what you'd expect of a mad scientist. There's a single old chair, moving about on sinuously ebon legs, and at the center of it all is an array forged out of bone-powder and tarnished silver. The kind that got that way due to an excess of bloody staining after it was set down. The array resembles an eight-point star, each corner tipped by a piece of vertebrae, and each hollow marked by the presence of an ugly glass jar fused to the floor. Try not to look into the jar. Something awful might look back at you. Or into you. Or both.

Within this Study, you will find two major players in our little fiasco, as well as a third slab of cannonfodder that's only barely worth an introduction.

First of the batch is Ghez Felhammer's personal succubus attendant, Passion Near, whose actual name is something that can yield multiple orgasms just by writing it and who Kholia refers to simply as Sion (which is actually pronounced Shun. It's a Wizard thing). Insofar as succubi go, she was quite literally the total package with room and longing for everything that goes in it, in any way it can be made to fit. Long, slender legs and shapely hips, pale skin and an hourglass figure, and breasts that were just big enough to outsize a normal woman -- complete with a perfect shape, the perfect look and feel of weight, and the perfect amount of jiggling and bouncing or lack thereof. Add onto this a face like your highschool sweetheart gone raunchy and just fucking bad.

Literally.

Now put on black lipstick and nail polish, color the hair stark white with curtains to match the drapes, and put in a single stud on the left side of the nose, then stick on an almost cute pair of devil's horns sticking out from somewhere behind her bangs. Add to this a heated, impassioned look and a constant level of arrousal that makes nymphomania look numb and unfeeling. As a foreword, Sion will likely spend most of this little Event getting herself off in the corner next to the fireplace. She's been using both hands and has no shame and no reservations about...pretty much anything.

And yes, that means what you think it means.

Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge.

Moving along, you'll find Kholia Horren. Who's trying his absolute hardest to ignore Sion's little schlickfest and failing quite miserably at it. Note the bowlegged stumbling as he moves from table to table, the constant gawking and the bitter little tictictictic of his mouth muscles. If you could see his eyes beneath that metal plate, they might be almost cartoonish in width.

It bears repeating that Salvic Wizards are downright infamous for sexual dysfunction. And Kholia's even worse than most for reasons you don't want to think about. Reasons that Sion is exploiting and appealing and downright sledgehammering all over the place.

"Will you please STOP THAT ALREADY?"

"Buuuuuuut whyyyyyyy--ee...ah...ah..."

Kholia's head tilted at a severe angle. He held this way for several seconds longer than could've possibly been comfortable. Then he straightened up, jammed a gloved hand into his pants and straightened that up too. Perhaps if his eyes weren't hidden away, they would've narrowed resentfully.

This was, after all, nothing more than a Look But Don't Touch teaser act. Ghez displaying ownership, among other things.

"Why did that barbaric oaf send you to me anyway?"

"NNNNNNNN..."

Kholia shuddered and willed himself to look away -- back to the centerpiece of the tarnished silver array, and the third principle player in this scene. There, in the space cordoned off by intersecting lines of bloodied metal and lit more by the glow within each jar than the emberlights of the fireplace, stood a zombie. One of a million or more. An Elf, height of five foot eight, very freshly dead since his eyes still shed tears and his blood hadn't even congealed yet. He was missing a fair chunk of meat from the side of his torso, his face had been maimed with scratching wounds and the back of his head had been broken open. A huge portion of his brain was gone. There were awful bite-marks faintly visible on what was left.

Once upon a time, this was a warrior fighting in defense of...somewhere in Raiaera. Probably somewhere close, since he hadn't been dead all that long.

Now look beneath the corpse to the thing that makes it valuable: Its still lingering soul.

Which was joined to countless others for the common cause of defending Raiaera.

Defenses are always lower when its technically friendly fire. Even when it isn't.

"Whatever," Kholia muttered as he rolled up his sleeves. "Silence, please."

Schlick.

"...whore."

"Yes!"

Facepalm.

Kholia finally, resolutely, and with great difficulty, tuned the succubus out entirely. A second later, he drew a rather large, vile looking machete from one of the tables. Then he began to speak as he walked in circles around the standing corpse, each stride quicker than the last.

"Hear me, O Watchers in Silence, O Kindred of the Tidebearing Queen. Hear me now, ye Oathbreakers of Old, ye Despots of the Shadowed Lady! I invoke thee, to do my bidding on this, the day of the..." Kholia had enough shame left in him to look a little indignant at this part. He mumbled the next few words. "...day of the screaming...inverted...mongoose. I INVOKE THEE! To do my bidding...to strike down but one of my foes -- and to do with him what you will.

"In the Necromancer's Name, I call upon you to strike at the Wizard Blueraven, Caden Law."

The Radasanth Reader delivers.

"In offering...and to slake your thirst between this lowly realm and yours On Shadow, I give you this Elf's lingering mortal soul."

Kholia didn't swing, as you might've expected.

He stabbed. Right through an eye, and then he drew back and hit the heart and bellybutton in turn. Only then did he finally take that swing, and you wouldn't think a scrawny, haggard, bitter old man could hack through someone like that, but he did.

The corpse fell, and the remnants of the Elven warrior glittered in the air afterward. They had his general likeness. And it didn't take long before they started mutely screaming as something dark and horrid began to blot out each and every single spark that made up that Elf's soul.

"Glory, Amon das N'jal, said the Fallen Wizard, signing a double cross over his center and left chest. Grim red light followed the movements of his hand, and the lopsided Hagalaz rune left in its wake was quickly and violently sundered to nothing by a swipe of the machete.

In the not too distant corner of the room, Passion Near came with a husky moan. In the all too distant reaches of Raiaera, someone died screaming.