The Awkward Potential Of Wizard Hallow (Solo) [Archive]

Hallow

03-12-12, 06:54 PM

“My dear, it is a delight to share your company this evening. However, I am not the sort of man to jump to conclusions about a lady’s pleasure. So, tell me something about yourself?” Ashley said wittily. He curled his lip into a dry smile as he prodded the corpse lain on his table with a well-polished scalpel. It made a squelching nose, a familiar sound to the necromancer.

Mirabelle Winston did not answer. An arrow to the neck had done away with any hope of a nice conversation several weeks ago. The wizard Hallow would get no satisfaction from his latest specimen, at least for now.

“Did you think that was humorous?” Malefor asked dryly, levitating with a blue cloak of mist swaddling his skeletal form several feet to Ashley’s left. The liche’s tone grated down Ashley’s spine, took its toll on his nerves, and upended his concentration without any effort. The undead mentor had taken far too long studying his every move.

The wizard shrugged, rolled his shoulders, and sighed, before leaning closer to inspect the strange way in which the skin broke where he pushed in his blade. On the shoulder and upper arms in particular, it seemed to split, tear away, and run and hide from the cruel instrument of his profession. It was unusual for the body to react in such a way to invasion.

“Ugh…”

In Ashley’s short tenure as a surgeon, before the sudden swell in the number of undead in Beinost had taken its toll on his obsession, he had never seen anything quite like it.

“I believe,” he began confidently, before he paused, more for dramatic effect than lack of intellect, “that the erudite Miss Winston, daughter to Lord Regal, was in fact a werewolf.” It was the sort of bold, brash, and revealing statement that Ashley had read about in his pulp fiction, and the reference to a particularly witty female writer was lost on Malefor’s less than literary mind.

“Riveting,” Malefor said dryly, his face devoid of any emotion.

In the city of Beinost, especially in winter, this was hardly surprising. There were stranger, darker, and deadlier creatures than lycanthropes and vampires crawling through the mist stricken streets. There were fouler, harsher, and more deranged men stalking the byways of the reformed city in the wake of the great necromancer’s war against the high elves.

“A once rather fetching werewolf, at that,” the wizard cocked his head as he admired the corpse’s still evident beauty.

Many of those dark creatures came around for tea and bacon sandwiches, and many more spent their nights wailing from walls and screaming at dock workers. There was little left to be seen that could shock a necromancer of the enigmatic Order of Hem; they were well travelled purveyors of altruistic dark arts.

“What makes you so certain?” Malefor floated closer to inspect his charge’s handiwork. His shrewd shard of bone that passed for a nose would have wrinkled in mock disgust, had he the skin and muscle to do so. He settled for a shrill wheeze instead, which ran down the wizard’s spine and upended his concentration for just long enough for the liche to enjoy his fleeting success.

“It is really rather simple,” Ashley righted himself and set the scalpel parallel to her arm.

“Oh?” Malefor chided. “It is, is it?”

Hallow

03-12-12, 06:56 PM

The sound of cold metal against the blood stained slate worktop filled the laboratory. On the surgical floor of the Tower of Ravens, this was a perfectly natural sound to hear. It clinked against the granite with a satisfying chime, and when the echo faded into the shadows above and below, Ashley continued his exposition.

“The scalpel is silver, you will note. You will notice that when I make an incision, the skin is tearing, fleeing, and running frightened from my blade.”

“I can see that, you klutz.” The Liche snapped.

Malefor made an attempt to look impressed, but it quickly faded. He reached out to pass his skeletal fingers through the scalpel. The sensation of fire up his arm demonstrated that Ashley’s observation was correct. Silver, like fire, was one of the most potent and effective weapons against the undead. It was also highly effective at damaging the regenerating flesh of the shape shifters; those amongst the citizens of Beinost inclined to become bestial things when the mood took them.

“Silver is anathema to the undead, especially those with a penchant for fur and steak…” It was a satisfying certainty in a city full of both; a trusty silver blade, a desire to die young, and a lot of whiskey was really all you needed to get by.

Ashley strolled around the worktop with his finger rested academically on his chin. His heavy hobnailed boots scuffed the already well-worn carpet. Though he had removed the black iron hauberk and full helm to conduct his work, his skin and robes were still abyssal, hard to enlighten even with the flames of thirty or so heavy candles. The church like light sources flickered and flamed on the corner of the shelves set against every curve in the tower’s wall. They cast their light on skulls and anatomical representations of mice. In the early hours of the morning, red, golden, and orange swirls danced over surgical tools and bubbling alembics.

Ashley was very much fond of getting the atmosphere right for an autopsy. Half of necromancy was the look, manner, and the effort you put into appearing as such. The rest, as he had quickly discovered, was down to a willingness to get your hands quite literally into the meat and bones of the school. It was as vocational as it got.

“What do you think killed her?” he asked his mentor.

Malefor took his time before he shrugged with disinterest. With a hum of power, lust, and ignorance he floated back several feet. He folded his hands behind his back, which were visible through his translucent torso. He held them in the small of his back to conform to the mortal view of anatomy. Malefor Kolwezi had contorted his body and folded in on himself too many times for it to frighten and disgust Ashley anymore; which in the liche’s cruel opinion was a terrible shame.

“If I were to hazard an educated guess…” he mumbled, his words balanced on a knife’s edge.

Ashley glared at him, or rather, through him. “Go on?” he urged.

“Well, judging from the lack of dried blood in her upper skull, and the dark ring around her neck; bruising in the ligature and muscle of the spine, I would say she was strangled.” The liche attested to his judgement by tracing a circle around his own neck, before he floated closer to the table to gesture at the woman’s mud covered hair.

Ashley raised a quizzical eyebrow.

Hallow

03-12-12, 06:58 PM

“How can you possibly know there is no blood in her skull chamber?” his tone of voice was high pitched, callous, and full of accusations. It did not take the liche much effort to realise he was being belittled with badly applied sarcasm.

Malefor snorted, “I can see things your eyes cannot. It goes without saying that I can sense things your soul can never witness. Have a look if you do not believe me!” he clicked his fingers.

There was a rising sense of irritation in the liche’s voice, which was becoming more hoarse and dry by the second. Ashley stepped back to the table defiantly, and pushed up his sleeves.

“Fetch me my saw Malefor, and I will do just that!”

Malefor nodded as humbly as a narcissistic necromancer could. He smiled too, as if he knew his pupil could not resist the goading rise to prove him wrong.

“It would be my pleasure,” the liche whispered hoarsely. The room dropped several degrees in temperature as he exerted his will over his spectral form. The candles on the eaves and bookshelves flickered, as if disturbed by an unseen breeze. Hallow, used to the chill of the Beinost climate, did not notice the change.

As Malefor floated to the back wall, he ignored the heavy shelves laden with tomes, and made for the section covered in instruments of cutting and bone-setting. Ashley leant closer to the corpse’s face, holding his nose as he approached. He traced the pattern he connected between the woman’s freckles, the specks of dirt, and the grazes on her cheek.

“Most interesting…” he said, to no-one in particular. He was too lost in his own thoughts to give credence to his non-existent audience.

The picture that the injuries painted of her final hours was not pretty, but Ashley admired the artistic merits of her death all the same. His analytical nature, his mind’s eye, and his keen sense for finding answers screamed an unwelcome truth at him.

“Malefor, I hope you recognise what you are saying. If you are right, you realise that means she was murdered I assume? You know what that would mean, do you not?” The wizard rolled his eyes, firing off a trio of questions to attempt to rattle the liche’s composure.

“No?” he joked.

“It means we have to do something about it!” Ashley proclaimed.

Murder, in Beinost, was not taken lightly by the self-serving necromancers of the Order of Hem. They had a duty to restore the city to its former splendour, and nobody, living or dead would get in their way.

Malefor returned to the wizard’s side with a ghastly sigh. The non-existent air made a nose as it passed up from his ethereal lungs and gullet, and mingled with the real air. Ashley held his nose for as long as he could. Whilst brandishing a long saw, used for cutting the curvature of the skull without tearing too much the flesh and hair surrounding it, Malefor become quite an imposing presence. The liche hummed with energy as he concentrated on his form to manipulate physical matter, a process which made the air smell faintly of rotten eggs.

“In this city, that does not surprise me.”

“Me neither, but what does surprise me is how a werewolf could let herself be murdered. Especially,” Ashley took the saw with a pause, a nod of thanks, and a return to his scrutiny, “by hanging.” He rocked in the nauseated state the scent of Malefor’s magic created in the poky chamber, trying bitterly to fight the need to vomit. Sick covered corpses were not the easiest of specimens to examine.

Hallow

03-12-12, 07:00 PM

The many werewolves of Beinost possessed all the typical traits one might expect of a lycanthrope. Their weakness to silver, banal obsession with the moon, and their insatiable hunger were legendary.

“I just do not understand…” Ashley continued his wistful thoughts.

Their pang for the thrill of the chase, their rage, and their enhanced strength and speed went hand in hand with other, more geographically unique traits.

“It just does not add up at all. If I had that sort of raw, unbridled power…” he seemed hesitant to tempt fate.

The dead of Beinost and the concentration of magic swelling out from the College’s battered spires allowed the werewolves much more control over their transformations than normal.

“Why did she not allow herself to change, do you suppose? Why would she just let herself be killed?” Ashley could not understand. He was so confused that his brow furrowed and formed little troughs; like a farrowed field ready for plantation. “It makes no sense for a proud and industrious creature like a lycan to give in without a fight.” His voice was wistful, remorseful, and pondering.

“Maybe she was guilty.” Malefor’s dry tone served to add poignancy to the meaning behind his words, as well as to display his dislike for the sentiment in the boy’s voice. Ashley took it for what it was worth. It was as much of a consideration for the human condition as he was ever going to get from the master necromancer.

“Nobody uses hanging to fulfil the laws of the city Malefor.” Ashley took a step back from the surgical table. “The high elves use swords against necks, the Drow use a guillotine, and the College utilises the Ritual of Hohhot.” The Ritual of Hohhot was a polite and highbrow name for standing in a circle around the condemned party, and ensuring nothing remained of him except his boots. “If it was a punishment, it was not a just sentence.”

“I did not know you studied law, too.” Malefor made no attempt to hide his bubbling sarcasm a second time.

“I am not a student of the law, Malefor. I am, however, quite well versed on simple logic. I daresay I am quite competent with reason too. They are two invaluable tools you abandoned long ago, when you gave in to the trappings of your,” he looked up from the corpse to dart daggers through the glowing figure, “talents.”

Ashley did not wait for Malefor’s inevitable, poisonous, and witty retort. He stood upright, clicked his spine to life, and set the edge of the saw against the front of the corpse’s skull. The points of the blade pressed against the skin, which turned a pale white under the pressure of the serrated blade. The wizard gritted his teeth before he exerted his strength. He pushed the blade backwards, forwards, and then quickly back along the same motion.

His stomach turned quite quickly, sourly, and without any concern for the wizard’s aversion to his own bile.

“That sound never ceases to satisfy me,” Ashley smacked his lips, using humour to sedate the spinning sensation, nausea at his own actions, and the rising need to run from the room screaming.

Hallow

03-12-12, 07:04 PM

A veil of bloody mist splatted against the opposite edge of the table.

“Fuck me…” he said, perhaps a little too loudly for his own comfort. He gagged, swallowed bile, and shivered.

The splatter marks traced a history of the blade’s motion through the bone, and marked its path on the cold stone of the surgical slab. In all of Ashley’s long years, frigid nights, and hard months as a student of anatomy, he had grown accustomed to what was supposed to come next. There was supposed to be a thick gush of blood, an untendered river flowing from the widening divide in the temple of the cadaver. Even though he balked at the sight, he was comforted in knowing his anatomy.

Silence.

Nothingness.

“Oh,” he mouthed. The lavender scent of his voice served to dredge away the ichors odour of iron in the absent blood. Ashley’s senses played havoc with his expectations.

Malefor was correct. There was virtually no blood in the upper recesses of the skull, and that implied that a perfectly ordinary autopsy was no longer going to end with an early night, a bacon sandwich, and a well-deserved pat on the back.

Ashley slouched with a vibrant sigh of defeat. He wasted no more strength trying to delve deeper into the mysteries of the werewolf’s demise. He gave up his advances into the cranium with as much blunt force as he had tried to enter it. The saw rested unceremoniously half embedded into the bone at a cocked angle.

“That is rather curious. Though I do not like to admit it, you were right, Malefor.” He stepped back with a sickly expression which was enhanced by the porcelain white tone of his skin. His own blood left his skull just as quick as it might have done from Mirabelle’s. Though Ashley had spent many moons exploring causes of death, it still hit home when the cause of another’s life ending dawned on him.

He sensed her final moments, her last words, and an intoxicating rush of pleasure bound in pain and breathlessness.

“Oh my dear Mirabelle,” he hung his head and rubbed rough Adam’s apple on his throat as if in sympathy, “who on Althanas did this to you?”

One of the main responsibilities placed upon the members of the Order of the Hem to protect the citizens of Beinost. They were tasked with the pursuit of justice, to serve the unfortunate victims of crime. When loved ones were found bereft of their lives in the turbulent restructuring of the city once called Anebrilith, the necromancers of the Order, dedicated to proving the school of magic was not entirely evil, came to the rescue.

“Is that not what you are supposed to be uncovering?” Malefor asked, his venomous tongue wagging, but making no mark on the wizard’s resolve.

A long war had seen to it that the art of necromancy was often misunderstood by those who did not practice it. Xem’Zund had done much to undo the respect the necromancers of old once had in Raiaera. Not all, as Hallow attested, wished to prolong their own life with selfish delusions of grandeur. Malefor did, by all means, but the Wizard Hallow longed only to make the lives of others worthy of remembrance.

“Have some fucking compassion,” Hallow snapped. “We have to help her…”

Hallow

03-12-12, 07:07 PM

“I may come across as somewhat negative, Ashley…but I think it is a little bit too late for that now. Would you not agree?” Malefor floated away from the autopsy table with a soft rush of silence.

The air seemed to ripple about his long, ethereal, and smouldering robes as he advanced. He came to rest at the foot of the spiral stairwell that which went both up and down into different levels of the Tower of Ravens. He turned back to face Hallow, as if he were pausing before ascending.

“Malefor could you-” Ashley’s words were cut short by an all knowing chuckle.

“Shall I prepare the Nocturne?”

Ashley nodded. He was too tired, distraught, and beyond reproach to question how the Liche knew what his intentions were.

The Order of Hem strived to utilise necromancy to help those trapped in death move on. This drive was the crux of their order, and it was the one thing they would strive to do above rhyme and reason. This was how they had worked for centuries, more so after the Corpse War. They longed to free the many thousands of spirits entombed beneath the city, circling in violent hell, and tethered to Althanas by the scars of war. Beinost was a shining example of how necromancy could be used for good, or at least, to benefit those left alive without corrupting the hearts of its practitioners.

In an ideal world, the Order would be praised for its efforts to rebuild Anebrilith proper.

Althanas, however, was less than ideal.

“You know that I wish only to speak to her, Malefor. I would not bring her back to life, because that is your foray, and I will be no part of it.” He said wistfully. He looked between corpse and spirit, and tried to reconcile his words with the feeling in his soul that backed it up with conviction. There was a hint of temptation in the air, and the Wizard Hallow fought it with every fibre of his being. He clenched his fights, trying bitterly to replace weakness with the sweet twang of pain.

Even though Ashley could resurrect her, given the recent timing of her death, he would never forgive himself for falling for the same allure Malefor had done. The liche had a brilliant mind, and when he had been alive, he had been the most prominent and practical surgeon in Raiaera, if not the world. That had all been undone when he had thought himself a god of mortality.

“So by help her, you in fact mean what exactly? She has already long passed to the afterlife.” The liche hovered up the first of the well-worn stairs. The granite glowed with a pale, sickly, and half realised light.

“No, no, no, I do not mean help her to live again. I mean help her in the sense that I want to avenge her.” Ashley enunciated his sentiment with strong hand gestures and a fiery smile. His face was plastered with altruistic zeal as he continued, “I want to find out what happened to her, why, and then bring those who were responsible to justice!”

Hallow

03-12-12, 07:09 PM

“Oh how silly of me. You are doing this for justice, of course! You are so fucking sanctimonious. What makes you think you have the right to interfere in the affairs of the living, Ashley? Are you not a necromancer?” he sniped, flexing his own skeletal fingers with raking motions.

The smell of rotten eggs intensified as the liche’s anger rose. Ashley wrinkled his nose.

“I am a human being!” the wizard’s eyes flared with a powerful hubris, a raging, purple fire that burnt bright, and then brighter still. Malefor did not doubt it, but he made no show or tells of the fact. His cold, spectral, and ageless façade remained impeccably intact.

“You are a petulant child; you must burn the corpse and be done with it.” Malefor floated up the worn granite stairs before Ashley’s temper caused more than just sparks to fly between them. Several books on the shelves burst into spectral flames, and the tower shook.

The silence that followed was arduous, awkward, and deafening.

It seeped out through the cracks in the wall into the cold night air like an insidious enemy encroaching on its victim. Ashley remained upright, rocking back and forth slightly under the strain of his heaving lungs, and festering with contempt for his mentor.. He took the breaths as if they were his last, heavy, and pained drafts of air. He used them as a mantra to keep his mind relatively sane under the pressure applied on it by the liche’s presence.

The Order of Hem took their obligation to the living seriously, viewing themselves justices of order where order could not prevail. They used necromancy, divine divination, and detective work to solve murders and mysteries alike. They were called upon, often in secret, when the city guard and authorities would not suffice. They found order, when the spell singer conclaves and council would, or could not. Mirabelle was a prime example of the sort of injustice the Order sought to eradicate. She was a victim of a black world beneath the surface of a regenerating city, and Ashley would be her champion of justice.

Or so he hoped.

“I am a human being…and I will find out who did this to you,” he conjured the strength to remove the saw from her skull with a hearty tug, before he set it down with a shaking hand onto the edge of the stained slab. Pus dribbled down her cheek from the wound. The decomposition process was well underway, bubbling in her innards with more vibrancy than the alembics that distilled poultices and potions throughout the tower.

He clenched his fists, gritted his teeth, and with the rage welling in the pit of his stomach, drew on the tendrils of shadow that swaddled his shoulders. With a curse under his breath, he sang with his heart, and brought into being the heavy black tome of magic. Within its obsidian cover all his secrets were entombed. In the steel clasps that held all the labours of his arts and the wonders of his world, Ashley hoped he would find justice for Mirabelle.

The Grimoire Graviga landed in a grandiose flash of arc light and azure shadows, and with a thud, it dropped temptingly open on to the muddied chest of Mirabelle Winston.

It was a fitting lectern for a preacher to attest to the word of his misguided Thayne.

Hallow

03-12-12, 07:10 PM

The Grimoire was a wizard’s soul given material form. Like his voice, it often took on a colour of its own, brandishing power in its appearance, and marking out a part of the owner’s personality for any other wizard to identity him or her

“Hello, old friend…” he whispered. Outside, in the shrill dark, banshees began to wail.

In the first few years of Ashley’s delving into necromancy, the Grimoire had been nothing more than a well bound leather book, possessing no remarkable qualities except its contents.

“Burros illumine,” Ashley shouted with a firm tone, releasing the trap glyph on the Grimoire that he had implanted in the spine to prevent other rival necromancers from stealing his secrets.

A silver vein of light ran up the middle of the page divide and died.

Silence.

Colour.

Power.

The first signs that the Grimoire had grown in strength had been iron clasps on the edge and a small simple lock. They had appeared overnight, following the first successful resurrection of a tormented soul in the sewer beneath the docklands. With each step into mastery of the necromantic school of wizardry, the quality of the metal and the solidity of the lock continued to improve. Now the mechanism was Liviol, bound in gold, and ensorcelled to be immune to all mundane flame and misfortune.

“Ahvaz fumes!” the wizard Hallow cast his arms wide, as if calling dark powers to his hovel. A thud carried conviction behind his voice, and for a moment, nothing happened.

The Grimoire cover had darkened in time, too. It had gone from brown, to purple, to dark blood, and to abyssal black in three years. It now glimmered in certain light and possessed a deep vein of colour that was not quite visible to anyone not inclined to the magical arts. It held in its form all the shades of madness, calamity, and death. To a necromancer, the Grimoire would have been a priceless piece of art.

An eruption of power danced out of the pages. A shockwave rushed over Hallow, and made the strands of the rugs on the wooden floor stand on end, and the air tingle with the same electricity found in the limbs of a man. It was life itself, bound, sprung, and reserved in a vestige to the onset of death.

“Argo Ahvaz thou,” Hallow clenched his fists and drew them together.

The moment his hands touched together the shockwave froze. Time itself continued, but Hallow and the Tower of Ravens fell through a crack into the space between then and now.

Hallow

03-12-12, 07:11 PM

Silence.

Power.

Destiny.

As the years passed by, the Grimoire had learnt to see beyond the mortal concept of existence all on its own. It had become an entity with its own thoughts, desires, emotions, nuances, and weaknesses. Hallow had taken to calling it by the name whispered in his dreams, screamed in his nightmares, and written in his mania at the darkest of hours and the brightest of dawns.

It called itself by the simplest of titles.

“Give life in the pursuit of death, Nocturne. Give shadow to sun and moon to light.”

Through the Grimoire Graviga, the Thayne of Necromancy himself spoke to his vigilant.

“Amara Ahvaz dar,” the shockwave gathered into Ashley’s clenched fists, a collapsing solar system of lights, sounds, and wonderments. The hundreds of bottles, instruments, and books arranged on the shelves shook and rattled in the absence of the force that should have hit them, as if the universe itself were ignoring the existence of the Grimoire Graviga’s presence, as if it were willing itself to spite Ashley’s power.

Malefor would have agreed with it.

In the maelstrom of light, colour, and sound, Ashley felt powerful.

“I will avenge you…” he roared.

In the sudden absence of the spectacle, Ashley found a sudden calmness of being. In all the rage he had experienced in the defence of Mirabelle, and the hatred of whatever cowards had treated her so; he had lost a grip on the very thing he was trying to preserve. He looked at the cosmic sphere of light surrounding his gathered fists, it’s light reflected in his eyes, cold, calculating opals in the twilight.

He set the energy go with a soft hushed exhalation, and extended his fingers as if he were letting a dove go as a peace offering to the stars.

The surgery faded from view, and the Tower of Ravens fell into the eternity of brilliant white that replaced it.

Ashley stood in the Immaterial, and waited.

Hallow

03-12-12, 07:13 PM

The loud bang drew the liche’s attention back to the surgery the very second he ascended into the above library. He sighed, hisses, and insulted in seven languages as he descended through the hardwood floor to check on his pupil. His passage through the floor caused a disturbance in the reality of the world.

Silence.

Power.

Rotten eggs.

“What in the…?” he mouthed.

Malefor had witnessed many strange and curious things in his long life, and the unlife that followed. From dragons upended in battle, to the fall of continents in his dreams, there was little the liche had not seen that could incite a riot of confusion and curiosity in the recess where his brain had once been.

He had never seen a man’s soul split in two before.

“Ashley, what happened?” he whispered a sullen attitude plastered over his withered features, bitterly trying to hide his surprise.

Ashley Turgor was stood over Mirabelle’s corpse, arms held close together in tight fists, head slumped forwards. Time about his cold and pale body was slowly freezing to the point where serenity took over. The Grimoire Graviga was resting on the corpse; open at the middle page which Malefor had long come to associate with the Rites of Burial, and of casting a spirit firmly into death where it well and truly belonged.

The striking thing Malefor noticed about this picture, which would have been a normal occurrence for this type of evening entertainment, was that there was someone missing from the picture.

The Wizard Hallow was gone.

“Ashley, can you hear me boy?”

He could not.

Silence.

Silence.

Success.

Daring himself to approach the temporal aura around his student, Malefor floated across the surgery chamber floor, and travelled through the autopsy table and contents. Bursting through to the other side in a swirl of mist and reforming hips, he reached out with a delicate finger, and ran it gently down Ashley’s right cheek. He stooped slightly to watch for a reaction on the wizard’s lowered features.

“As cold as I am bitter,” the liche muttered. It affirmed his many fears and warranted all his suspicions.

Hallow

03-12-12, 07:15 PM

When a necromancer conjured the will of Nocturne, be it for a truthful, honest purpose, or to wield his power to wreak havoc and calamity on the souls of the living and the dead, he played with his own life.

“Well, he picked his moment to take control…I will give him that,” the liche rasped.

A necromancer, in that moment of power and madness, departed the mortal realm for the Immaterial – left for the space between, ironically referred to as the waiting room of the keepers of death. Whilst Malefor himself had managed to block the process of ascension for his own soul, he retained the knowledge about how to travel there should he ever need to.

Ashley had travelled there, alone.

“I rather hoped to kill a few squirrels before this happened…”

The thought made his empty stomach churn. In the heat of the moment he balked, and his skin, which was typically icy cold, warmed to the point where the soft draught in the room from the battered, ancient walls on the right half of the tower rushed gently against his skin in a rush of sensory awakening.

The Immaterial was the one place where a ghost could be reminded about pain and physical yearnings. There, the material came undone, and those undone from the constraints of the material found themselves once again whole.

It would not be an easy journey to make.

“Ashley, if you can hear me, you have to listen to me very closely.” He leant into the boy’s ear and whispered magical tendrils into his brain along with his words. “Your alter ego has emerged,” which would require a long and lavish explanation if they pulled through this, but now was not the time or place for the thaumaturgical rhetoric of a wizard finally coming of age, “you have to fight him.”

Silence.

Failure.

Power.

Hallow

03-12-12, 07:16 PM

With a flash of light that defied description, Malefor jettisoned his reserved sorcery; a reserve he held in the middle finger of his left hand just for occasions like this. It collided heartily with the slowing time aura surrounding the young necromancer, and for a moment, it too slowed in its advance.

“Pyros immunitas,” Malefor whispered the word of power behind the spell, and watched as his energy pierced the résistance of Ashley’s circle of warding and clashed with the boy’s temple.

He had to pause for a brief moment to question wherever or not he went to the boy’s rescue out of spite, or out of concern. Neither eventuality was particularly appealing to the man that was once a doctor, a saviour of life.

With a flash of white Malefor left the Tower of Ravens behind, and came at last to be reunited with his body.

He ignored the intense compulsion to vomit.

“Hello, Malefor. I have waited a long time for this day.”

The voice of Wizard Hallow came at the liche from every direction.

“I have been waiting just as long, Hallow, for the chance to take your voice as my own.”

“Ashley will be so disappointed in you.”

“He is a bright boy, probably quite suspecting of my intentions.” Malefor cocked his head, admiring the form of his pupil with suspicious and distrust. The air smelt of daffodils, lemons, and betrayal. Malefor relished it like a fine wine.

The two titans glared at one another over a fifty feet divide.

Power.

Silence.

Power and silence.

Hallow

03-12-12, 07:17 PM

The floating black tendrils of Hallow’s Shadow Brand curled and whipped like excited tails, and Malefor clicked and adjusted the rusty bones in his newly freshened corpse.

“How shall we do this, then?” the wizard enquired. His voice echoed in the fabric of the spirit realm.

The blue energy of his ethereal form dimmed and faded.

“We are not going to do this now; I just came to tell you that the boy is mine.” The defiance in the liche’s words was powerful enough to shatter a skull, but the wizard was not swayed by it.

It fell away into the white backdrop that blanched the floor, walls, and the sky from existence. The Immaterial was a strange place, enforcing the sensation of a stable ground beneath your feet where none existed. It was as if you willed physics to be in place here, and thus they were.

“If you will not fight me, then I guess I can allow you to leave. I would hate,” the spectral image of the Wizard Hallow, or rather, the boy Ashley Turgor’s voice rippled. It swelled with a primal force that Malefor was excited by. “Hate to crush you without a thrill.”

“I am glad we understand one another.” The liche bowed. His skeletal fingers, slowly regaining strength, curled and licked the cold air of the spirit world as he made a regal, etiquette perfect display before his better.

Though ancient, the Liche knew better than to contest with the will of True Wizards.

There was a familiar rush of energy, wind, and vomit out of one's gullet, then a darkness.

Silence.

Movement.

Restoration.

Malefor floated on the floor once more, and winked at Hallow as he retreated back into the mind of Ashley Turgor.

The young apprentice coughed, spluttered, and then looked confused at Malefor.

"What the fuck just happened?"

Hallow

03-12-12, 07:36 PM

Epilogue

It took Malefor several hours to explain the process of Sundering to Ashley. The wizard, dutiful and observant, lapped up every word. Though they had seldom seen eye to eye through their brief history of activity together in the tower, now, the wizard could not help but fall under the liche’s sway. Malefor, for once, seemed quite sincere with his words.

“So, you are saying I shattered my own mind to deal with my inability to help the werewolf?” Ashley’s face spoke a thousand words, each one mistrusting of his own self-doubt.

“You,” Malefor licked his lips, “to put it lightly, went off on one. It is quite impressive, to see a wizard’s voice become so prominent in a man’s mind that it becomes it’s…well, its own entity.”

Ashley picked up his greasy, peppery, and delicious bacon trencher and wolfed half of it down in an animalistic fashion. He let the succour, meaty, and ravishing taste invigorate his sweat stained, tired, and broken body. Malefor could not help but draw an ironic comparison between the wizard and the deceased corpse on the surgery table on the floor above. The kitchen seemed to rock with ecstasy as the hungry soul devoured his meal.

“What colour was he?” Ashley raised an eyebrow, curious, but not enough to cease his consumption. The herbs that were drying on the pan rack overhead added to the atmosphere, a hedonistic scent of culinary skill that grounded him firmly on this plane. He still felt sick from the transition between worlds.

“Purple,” he liche replied, as he floated towards the door that lead into the tower’s cluttered hallway. It was a heavy, rotting, and iron divider between Ashley’s favourite chamber and the cold, comforting, and silent night air. Malefor longed to sleep, to rest, and to recover from all the melee of discoveries that had transpired in such a small space of time.

“Figures,” Ashley chuckled.

“It means you must be careful, before you go off on a philosophical detour.” He looked through, over, and around his own shoulder, and watched the wizard lick the salty fat from his lips, deep in thought.

“I will…” he replied, somewhat unconvincingly.

“Perhaps,” Malefor half melted through the door, his body tingled at the contact, “you ought to take up the Order of Hem’s offer of a sabbatical (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?22920-The-Near-Psychosis-Of-Ashley-Turgor/page2)after all…” he disappeared, leaving Ashley mid bite, mid thought, and somewhat incited to shout after his mentor with a string of curse words.

It was the natural response to hurl at the liche, whenever he was right, sanctimonious, and far too happy with the fact.

"Perhaps I should..." the wizard mused, dropping the remnants of his sandwich onto the floral plate with a sigh.

For now, he would retire, dream, and hopefully rise when dusk fell upon Beinost to tackle the dilemma of Mirabelle's corpse with a fresh pair of eyes. From what Malefor had said, there was much left to be done before they could put the remnants of the werewolf's life into the flames of the tower's furnace. He set the plate down on the thick and worn kitchen table, and rose with a heavy heart.

There was one thing a wizard hated above all other things; even death.

He hated knowing he had so much more potential, and all that stood in his way was his own blissful ignorance of the fact.

Revenant

03-25-12, 10:10 PM

Plot - 19

Storytelling (7) – Clearly a well thought out story that felt very personal to your character. Several good turns in the thread kept me interested in where you were going. Malefor’s meeting with Hallow was a bit-anticlimactic. I would have expected a little more from the buildup that you made. Still, all in all, an enjoyable read.

Setting (6) – You made a decent effort to describe the laboratory but I never felt fully immersed in the scene, especially when Ashley is in the Immaterial. You’ve given the description that it is a place of spirits but otherwise you’ve given me no picture of where it is or what it looks like.

Pacing (6) – While this thread kept me engaged, the initial scene between Ashley and Malefor seemed to move slowly. It dragged out a little longer than necessary, with the portion about the bloodless cranium being the first point that comes to mind. Try to work a natural progression of events into your writing to make it flow better.

Character - 19

Communication (5) – You used dialogue as the primary driving force behind this thread. This worked well in some places but not so well in others. A lot of the humorous back-and-forth didn’t really come off and I was never sure if Ashley and Malefor were friends, enemies, or what.

Action (8) – You used a continual stream of minor actions to keep this story going. They complimented the heavy dialogue well. The only thing I felt let down with was the confrontation between the liche and Hollow near the end.

Persona (6) – I had trouble getting a solid feel for where Ashley was at during this thread. Most of the time I had a good read on him, but there were times, like following the incident with Hollow, where it just didn’t seem to fit. Try to think about how you would act in given situations if you were your character.

Prose - 22

Mechanics (8) – I could only find a few minor issues. Good job.

Clarity (7) – I found most of the thread easy to read and understand but there were a couple of points that didn’t immediately process. When Ashley was describing the effects of silver on werewolves, you described it twice in a row, once in description and then immediately afterwards in dialogue.

Technique (7) – You definitely have a well defined writing style but it sometimes comes off as a bit overwhelming. Additional writing with this character will help you really get your flow down solidly.

Wildcard (3) - While your thread was an interesting look into the learning experiences that Hollow is going through, I feel that there was more lurking just under the surface and that you missed a wonderful opportunity to flesh out your character more. Also, remember that while the color you pick for your character’s voice is personal and a representation of your character, adding too much may be distasteful to some readers.

Total: 63

Hallow receives 930 exp and 120 gp.

Spoils requested:

25% resistance to magic for the Grimoire Graviga.

As I don't see you using your spell book as a fireball shield any time soon, granted.

Unhinged: Hallow is becoming increasingly pressured by his role as a 'good' necromancer - he is easy to manipulate, contort, and control. This means his alignment is constantly in flux, open to debate, and often untenable in a circumstance beyond his control. In short, he's becoming a bit mad.

Pending RoG approval.

+ skill grade with surgery.

Pending RoG approval.

Immaterium: Once per thread, Ashley can use the Grimoire/Shadow Brand to not just walk between shadows, but depart Althanas for the Immaterium, the spirit word. It requires concentration to activate, and a long time to return, but it gives him the option, should the discerning wizard, with many a foe, require sanctuary from the undead who wish to remain undead a little longer.

Pending RoG approval.