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  1. #11
    Adventurer

    EXP: 5,298, Level: 3
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    Rogue's Avatar

    GP
    1,027

    Name
    Arianthe Vardis
    Location
    Corone
    There was a different world at the other side of the waterfall. An aged, dank world that smelled like sharp pine and sweet rot. There were no green growth here, but there was a dust and a thick layer of ash on the ground. They stood in a large hall covered in shadows with giant statues lining the two sides, and there were crumbling doorways towards the back of the hall. The air felt wet and cold, and she could clearly see Hruine shiver. Serves him right. What sort of idiot went into the river with all their clothes still on?

    He glared at her approach, and then snapped his fingers to start a fire. It glowed in the center of his palms. “I thought I told you to stay?”

    She ignored him. Her inner shirt was wet, so she stripped it off, fully aware that he was watching. He turned away at the first peek of her stomach. The bundle against her chest, however, proved to be mostly dry. She shrugged into her outer tunic and boots. Then she pulled her wet hair into a tight bun, and tied it with a leather cord. Much better.

    “Here,” she said, tossing him her cloak. “It’s dry.”

    He caught it with his free hand, and stared at her.

    “It’s dry and this place is cold,” she explained, peering at their surroundings. “You’re wearing velvet. They don’t dry well, or quickly. Even with a fire.”

    What sort of idiot wore velvet in the wilderness anyways? She hadn’t realized it at first, but it was blatantly clear once she started walking with him. It was surprising how little he knew about surviving the world outside in general. He was better than her in every way at magics and sorcery, better than anyone else in the Temple, but it would be a wonder if he survived outside of Temple for very long.

    He nodded eventually, and extinguished the fire in his hands. WIthout another word, he peeled off his wet things, and swung her cloak around him. She was not so polite about not looking, and stared at his muscled back in interest. He pulled up the hood too, and she thought she saw a hint of flush on his face.

    Interesting.


    “I’ll wait --” She had barely finished the sentence before the waterfall rippled again. Blond hair. It was followed by three additional ripples.

    Her lips snapped shut. Hruine’s back was facing the waterfall and he was wearing her cloak. She was half hidden in the shadows and darkness of the hall. She saw Darger’s blue eyes glint in the dark, catching sight of her cloak. She his hands moved towards his sword. She saw water drip from his toothy grin. He looked like a drenched snake about to pounce.

    She would have no better opportunity.

    “Help me,” she whispered.

    Without another word, she sprinted for doors at the back of the hall, even as she heard Darger roar and drew his blade, and the cacophony of his cronies footsteps.

  2. #12
    Adventurer

    EXP: 5,298, Level: 3
    Level completed: 8%, EXP required for next Level: 3,702
    Level completed: 8%,
    EXP required for next Level: 3,702


    Rogue's Avatar

    GP
    1,027

    Name
    Arianthe Vardis
    Location
    Corone
    She didn’t stick around to see what happened.

    No one picked a fight with Hruine because no one won fights against Hruine. This was a fact. Hruine never walked away from a fight until it ended and he won. That was also a fact. There were four of them though. She grinned as she sprinted away. This meant that either Hruine would walk away weakened, or Darger and his cronies would walk away with numbers reduced. EIther outcome would be in her favor.

    The thought of Darger and Hruine joining hands did cross her mind. Then she waved it away as unlikely. Hruine did not take well to being attacked from the back. She had seen similar situations back at the Temple, and not once had Hruine stopped to talk or listened to the other side.

    Even so, she couldn’t count on herself being safe yet. In the best case scenario, she would find the Diadem before their fight ended, and slip away quietly. In the worst case scenario, she should prepare herself to face the victor of this battle.

    Past the hall and through the door, there were two fleet of stairs, one leading up and the other down. The ones going up were in terrible shape, cracked missing entire stretches of steps. The ones going down were relatively whole. Arainthe went up.

    She remembered the whispers eavesdropped from Old man Taius’ office yesterday. The sanctum is up.

    The shape of this story was clear in Arainthe’s mind. Mistress Moore came looking for an apprentice, but did not announce it as such. Instead, there as an absurd quest to a little-known area in the forest surrounding the Temple. Old Main Taius then took Hruine aside and spoon-fed that rich bastard with information and a magic compass. Only one of them was ever meant to get through this game. The whole situation smelt like a set-up, a scripted game. She fully intended to destroy that script.

    Going up meant hopping up a series of circular stairs that grew thinner and more fragile towards the top. There were four floors, and the fleet of stairs stopped at each one. It was unfortunate that her eavesdropped conversation did not yield more details. Arainthe gritted her teeth, and set about exploring each one.

    Time slipped by as she carefully shifted her way through each floor. Blood pounded in her ears, blocking out sound. She heard the occasional roar or clang of sword against something else, which reassured her that the boys were still having fun. Soon, she was covered to the elbows with dust, dirt, ad grime, and her boots squelched with more than water.

    She did not find the sanctum on the final floor. She found it on the third.

    She would have almost missed it, if she hadn’t slipped and fell into it. There was a half-rotted wooden trap door in a small corner of a room, which opened to a musty tunnel. She fell into the trap door and decided to follow the tunnel, and it led to a sunlit chamber.

    The chamber was the only spot with natural light that she had found in all her explorations. The walls were still built from rocks, and there were manuscripts engraved on them in a script she did not recognize. Four small statues of a hooded, masked man stood at the four corners, and all of them were carved from some black stone with red jeweled specks for eyes. A large, circular portion of the roof was made from glazed glass, which served to let light in, and also colored the chamber in a reddish, brownish hue. The glazed glass painted pictures of old mysticism, ancient gods and demons with teeth rearing and claws bloodied.

    It was a beautifully well-preserved room.

    There was a small raised pedestal in the center of the room, and atop it sat a small crown. The blue gem in the center of the diadem twinkled.

    The roar in Arainthe’s ears came to a crushing halt. Ah, she thought in absolute silence. The Zaharberritze Diadem

  3. #13
    Adventurer

    EXP: 5,298, Level: 3
    Level completed: 8%, EXP required for next Level: 3,702
    Level completed: 8%,
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    Rogue's Avatar

    GP
    1,027

    Name
    Arianthe Vardis
    Location
    Corone
    For a moment, Arianthe could only stare at the Diadem. Then the world came roaring back, and she snapped out of her reverie. Victory was within her grasp, and it came more smoothly that she could have hoped.

    Except it didn’t.

    It didn’t, because her ears hadn’t heard the clang of blades and the roar of battle for quite some time, and Arainthe had not noticed. It didn’t, because Hruine had just stepped into the room with one bloody blade in his hands, and he was growling harshly. He was still wearing her cloak, though the cloak now spotted a large rip and was missing the hood.

    “Get away,” he said, voice guttural and coarse. His eyes were hard, his gaze leveled at her neck.

    “No,” she said, her right hand clenching to spark the power within herself, and her left reaching towards the Diadem.

    She had barely taken a step when he roared, and the sound stopped her completely. She flung the power collecting in her right hand, but it dissipated into nothingness before reaching Hruine. Then, it was as though some external power was enforced upon her body, sealed all her limbs and senses, and she could not physically take another step. She dropped to her knees and stayed there. Her mind battered against the force to no avail. She could only watch, silent and unmoving, as he stepped past her, and picked up the prize. Without looking at it, he folded the diadem into a pouch on his belt.

    The frustration and hate that swelled up inside her like a scorching fireball, and it was more intense than anything she had felt before. It found its way out her throat as a shrilled shriek, and that seemed to have partially broke the spell. She found her voice back.

    “No,” she gasped, still fighting. “No, dammit.”

    He glanced at her. “Weak,” he said. “You have no will.”

    She hurled insults at his back in every language she could think of. When that failed to draw a reaction, she asked him: “How? How do you have so much power still?”

    “I have will,” he said, carefully sweeping the rest of the chamber. “More than you. Enough to hold you in place.”

    She spat on the ground. “You know what’s on the line. I know what’s on the line. I want this. You have time. I don’t.”

    He found nothing else of interest and turned to leave. He paused at the tunnel’s doorway. “I don’t,” he whispered. “I don’t have time, and I want this more.”

    Then he left.

  4. #14
    Adventurer

    EXP: 5,298, Level: 3
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    Level completed: 8%,
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    Rogue's Avatar

    GP
    1,027

    Name
    Arianthe Vardis
    Location
    Corone
    The magic in the chamber disappeared as soon as Hruine left. More than just the force holding Arainthe in place, the magic preserving the chamber also dissipated. The world around her lost its light.

    The script on the walls became illegible, and the light from the roof went away. Mossy growth appeared on the glazed glass, and the pedestal in the center of the room rumbled and cracked in two. Only the four statues in the corner of the room remained.

    She picked herself up slowly and painfully, heavy with a sense of defeat. Victory was within her grasp, and then it slipped away. How many times have that occurred in her life? This was one of the worst and the hardest to swallow.

    Arainthe wasn’t sure how she stumbled back through the tunnel, and into the room that held the trapdoor. She couldn’t remember how she made her way back to the rounded stairways, and began her track down.

    Defeat was not a foreign sensation, and she had once known helplessness quite well. As a child with a single parent who grew up amongst the unsavory in the streets, she had tasted defeat in words and the physical. Then, when her mother passed away under strange circumstances while Arainthe was in her early teens, she had know helplessness intimately. She had her home and only family in one fell swoop, and had wandered lands with barely a penny to her name.

    Helplessness and defeat? She knew it more intimately than any of her fellow fool acolytes in the Temple.

    Then she found the Order of Mal’Talzin and the Temple of Praxeum, and a hint of a strange connection between them and her mother. It took every she had to force her way in back then. She was deemed talentless and had to trick her way into the Temple. Since then, with her continued survival no longer a question mark, she threw herself into the craft of sorcery, delving deeper with every breath that she drew. This was something that she could do, could be good at and control. With this, she could have a real future, and possibly a chance to investigate the past. She lacked will? Don’t tell her she lacked will.

    And yet, everything was slowly slipping away from her grasp.

    She growled once in frustration, and her foot stepped heavier than it should. The stair beneath her feet trembled, and the sound reverberated around her. Something above her cracked. Then something below her cracked. The next thing Arainthe, knew, she was falling.
    Last edited by Rogue; 09-04-2017 at 11:23 PM.

  5. #15
    Adventurer

    EXP: 5,298, Level: 3
    Level completed: 8%, EXP required for next Level: 3,702
    Level completed: 8%,
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    Rogue's Avatar

    GP
    1,027

    Name
    Arianthe Vardis
    Location
    Corone
    Her body twisted involuntarily in mid-air and her arms snapped up to guard her face. The debris that came crashing down with her struck her bared arms and back of her neck and drew blood.

    The sensation of falling gripped her heart. Wind struck at her ears. The whip-lash of fear that gripped Arainthe was startlingly strong, grasping her like some giant claw squeezing tight around her throat, her limbs, her chest. She couldn't breath and had to claw for every gasp of air. The fear sharpened that veil of dark thoughts thad settled around Arainthe. All that flashed through her mind were anger anger anger fear.

    What did dying feel like?

    Arainthe didn't want to know.

    She knew the feelings of absolute defeat and helplessness and even hopeless. She knew what it felt like to almost-have and then lose. She knew every shade of anger and frustration in between. She did not want to know how death felt.

    Death was staring at her in the eye. She was struggling to live, damn it. She barely had a past, and she wanted to have a future.

    Her teeth gritted, and she pushed away the crystalized dark feelings that were filling her mind. Hruine said she lacked will, didn't he? Instead, she drew her hands together, cusped them together, and willed to all the gods that she knew, pouring all her desire to live into her will. Power blasted out of her cupped hands, and she flung her arms downwards. The power materialized as a force that pushed her back from the ground, and it broke the velocity of her fall.

    Then, with a dull thud, she landed on her back.

    Her back exploded in pain. Beside her, debris landed, and some of it struck her face and throat. Everything hurt. She croaked.

    What did dying feel like?

    I don't know.

    But the will to live felt like unpleasantness and pain. Arainthe laughed in hysterical euphoria.
    Last edited by Rogue; 09-04-2017 at 11:26 PM.

  6. #16
    Adventurer

    EXP: 5,298, Level: 3
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    Level completed: 8%,
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    Rogue's Avatar

    GP
    1,027

    Name
    Arianthe Vardis
    Location
    Corone
    How many times had she almost-lost, and then found herself back up on top?

    She pushed herself off the ground gingerly and messaged her throat. Her hands hurt. Her arms hurt. Her shoulder blades hurt. She stumbled her way out of the stairway. Every movement was pain, but Arainthe was glad for it. This meant that she was still alive. And if she was alive, then the game wasn’t over.

    She was breathing, unlike the rest of the poor sods who had collapsed in the entrance hall of the Tomb. Huh. She knew something looked different about his hallway.

    They were the most vivid things in this hall. Nothing else were as red, or as wet as they were. She would recognize that head of blonde hair anywhere, even if the head attached had its eyes closed and were slashed with blade-wounds at several places. The body’s neck was roughly sliced, and it was the body closest to her.

    Three more laid in various poses around the hall. None of them were neat. They looked like they were mauled by some large animal. Vicious. Disgusting.

    She almost puked at the sight. Instead, she leaned against a wall, and heaved deep breathes. The logical part of her, though, expected nothing less. What else was she expecting when she left them with Hruine? Hruine had no ropes, no tools to subdue. His opponents were armed, and there were more of them. Hruine was vicious in fights, even back at the Temple, except an instructor always stopped the fights before it got too far. There were rules around these things in the middle of civilization.

    They’re not in the Temple now, and Old Man Taius had cautioned them about staying alive.

    Arainthe breathed sharply.

    The chill of fear that shot up her spine stilled her and silenced her pain. She understood something then, and the situation took on a new kind of gravitas. While she had the will to live, Hruine had the will to kill. She wasn’t sure if she could have done the same.

    The fact that he only subdued her in the sanctum chamber was a strange mercy on his part.

    Which meant that if she wanted to turn the situation around, if she wanted to get anywhere, she had to be more ruthless.

    Oh.
    Last edited by Rogue; 09-04-2017 at 11:28 PM.

  7. #17
    Adventurer

    EXP: 5,298, Level: 3
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    Rogue's Avatar

    GP
    1,027

    Name
    Arianthe Vardis
    Location
    Corone
    She searched the corpses before leaving, and found an interesting vial of powdery substance. It was on a chain around Darger’s neck, and the vial was completely unmarked. She sprinkled some of the content on a small colony of ants near the Tomb entrance and studied the effects with interest. There was little doubt that Darger had intended to use the vial on her.

    Suddenly, she didn’t feel as terrible about leaving their corpses out in the open.

    There was also a small blowdart hanging off Darger’s belt. Arainthe took that too. Then she peeled off her boots, made her way out of the waterfall and across the river, and back to dry land.

    Overhead, the day had began to fade. The shadows of the forest was growing darker, and soon there would be no light to follow a trail.

    There were little doubt that Hruine would be following his own chalk marks back. Arainthe, too, was sure that she could move faster, run quicker, and track his progress at the same time. She just had to be a little faster, a little earlier. He did better than her in the art of sorcery and magecraft, but she had the upper hand out here.

    She just had to grit her teeth and do it.

    She took off at a dash, darting through the trees, tracking Hruine’s chalk marks and shoe prints and the damage a man would do to the wilderness if he lumbered through it without care. She sprinted, pushing her legs to the limits.

    I have no will? Her teeth bared. I’ll show you.

    The Mistress had said that she waiting, and the task wasn’t over until someone actually brought the diadem to her. Which meant everything was still fair game until then.

    She should have realized this earlier. That would have spared her this trip. It could have spared her a lot more, too.

    She found him eventually. He had wrapped her cloak around him tightly. The night was coming, and the forest was getting colder. He was moving more slowly than she would have expected too, and there was a slight limp on his left leg.

    Good, she thought, and flashed to the side. Now, all she had to do was to circumvent him, and get back sooner.

  8. #18
    Adventurer

    EXP: 5,298, Level: 3
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    Level completed: 8%,
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    Rogue's Avatar

    GP
    1,027

    Name
    Arianthe Vardis
    Location
    Corone
    Sometimes the star aligns, and sometimes luck was on her side.

    She had pushed her body to its extremity, but she had made it back to the Temple before he did. The guards opened the front doors for and she clambered in, and she glared at them. Strangely enough, they shrunk back.

    Her hair was bedraggled even in a bun, and her tunic and leggings were ripped, stained with mud and other things, plastered to her body with sweat. The grin on her face was almost unhinged. Arainthe looked utterly unpresentable, and that was exactly how she dragged herself through the Temple, past various staff and fellow acolytes, and collapsed outside of Old Man Taius' office without ceremony.

    And then she waited for the evening and him to come.

    "Arry?"

    Tessa Ree
    , her consciousness registered, but Arainthe paid the voice no mind. Her dress and behaviour had drawn her a small crowd, and Arainthe was content to ignore it all. Instead, all she could focus on was the burn of her straining muscles, the heaviness of her breath, the cool wood of the door at her back, and lack of him in front of her.

    The crowd wasn't relevant. Nothing else was relevant except for what happened next. Her focus was razor sharp. Her fingers fidgeted with the small vial of powder and the blow dart, and then she grinned
    Last edited by Rogue; 09-04-2017 at 11:33 PM.

  9. #19
    Adventurer

    EXP: 5,298, Level: 3
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    Rogue's Avatar

    GP
    1,027

    Name
    Arianthe Vardis
    Location
    Corone
    The crowd did not draw away when Hruine appeared. Instead, it ebbed and flowed into a thin ring that half-circled the pair of them.

    First, there was a moment of awkward silence. "Move," Hruine said.

    "No," Arainthe returned. Then she blew a dart into his arm.

    There was a odd sort of humor to be found in the situation. While their audience watched in baited breath, Arainthe almost felt like laughing. Hruine slapped the arm where the dart had hit with an expression of confusion. He had probably never been blow-darted before. She hadn’t blow-darted anyone before him, either.

    The dart was dipped in the vial of powder, and it only took seconds for the effects of the power to kick in.

    And then she pitched the entire vial at him, watched as he flinched tried to pull his arm up to avoid it, only to break the vial and cough into the powder.

    Well, the bottle was quite fragile.

    Shillian poison. Made from a common plant that grew in the south of Raiaera. In small quantities, it was an anesthesia. In its powdered, concentrated form, it was a numbing agent. In large quantities… well, in large quantities, they called it the living death. It caused complete paralysis and decay of bodily functions until antidotes could be was administered. The worst part was that its victim retained complete awareness during the entire stage of paralysis.

    And it didn’t take long to work.

    She laughed as his muscles suddenly contorted, and his coughing turned into a rasp. His eyes were watery at the sides and blinking too rapidly to be comfortable. His arm twitched upwards, before dropping down. Then he was on his knee in front of her, and she did laugh.

    His will might be made of steel, but his wiles certainly weren’t. She fought dirty, when she fought at all. Nobody said this was a game of sorcery and magecraft. Her enemies planned making her one of the living dead. The man in front of her slaughtered her enemies viciously. And now, it was her turn, and what she chose contained a certain degree of madness.

    “You lack wiles,” she brought her face close and chirped at him, in a mirror of his quote to her in that sanctum. His eyes followed her, and the anger coming from him was palpable. Then, viciously, she pulled the pouch off his belt, and used his shoulders as a crutch to stand, ignoring the vehement protests of her own body. She didn't lack will. She didn't lack wiles either, and this time that gave her the upper hand. "I win."

    The door behind her opened of its own accord, and she heard a slow series of claps. Then a cold, frigid voice spoke with a hint of pleasure.

    “Well done.”

    Most of the crowd had strange expressions on their faces.

    ---

    The fall out of her actions were not extreme as she had expected, or perhaps they were just as extreme as she had predicted. Things turned out pretty well -- from her perspective.

    She earned her apprenticeship in the face of futile protests from Old Man Taius. It was offered behind closed doors, with just her, the Mistress, and the old instructor. The old man tried to argue that Arainthe didn’t quite abide by the spirit of the rules outlined for this game, until the Mistress shut him down with and glare and a point skirting around the fact that neither did he.

    Plus, it seemed like her new teacher appreciated underhanded viciousness and the sheer gutsiness of poisoning a fellow student in front of an instructor’s doorsteps.

    She wouldn’t find out what happened to Hruine until later, but she knew that he was alive. Old Man Taius wouldn’t allow his favorite student to die on his own doorsteps. The disappearance and likely demise of Darger and his three friends were laid at her feet, to which she said nothing. She earned something strange reputation, and her fellow acolytes began giving her a large berth.

    The Diadem was added to her new Mistress’s collection. Arainthe would later learn that Zaharberritze meant restoration, and it had powers beyond her comprehension, but that was another tribulation for another day.

    How many times had Arainthe almost lost and then ended up on top?

    Too many to count.
    Last edited by Rogue; 09-04-2017 at 11:43 PM.

  10. #20
    Legend

    EXP: 127,650, Level: 15
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    Level completed: 55%,
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    Philomel's Avatar

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    Name
    Philomel van der Aart (+ Veridian)
    Age
    30 (+10)
    Race
    Faun (+ Fox/Earth Spirit)
    Gender
    Female (+ Male)
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    Corone

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