View Full Version : The Hand That Feeds (Solo)
The Hand That Feeds (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwhBRJStz7w)
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PS9YoEAhakU/T6FburI91mI/AAAAAAAABdU/fg94PETjN-g/s1600/the-hand-that-feeds.jpg
Set after Night of Debauchery (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?24066-The-Night-of-Debauchery&highlight=Night+of+debauchery).
Thus ends all affiliation between the Tantalum Troupe and the Ixian Knights.
It was a cold, dreary, and overcast day. Although the sun still tried to shine down over Ixian Castle, it felt dark, dank, and miserable. The few halcyon bolts that pierced the clouds faded before the grey horizon’s immensity. It was the perfect weather for the occasion.
“I would live a thousand lives of misery, just to spend one happy life with you,” said a longing bard. The sombre words lingered in the air. They were vibrant, burning, and pious recollections intended to give warmth, light, and purpose. “I would say it a thousand times, if it made it come true.” He would. He had. He would do it again.
Ruby smiled weakly in response. Once upon a time, the recital would have fuelled her with pride and revelry. She would have found just the strength in his words he hoped she would. Only loss kindled in her heart now. The opportunity for contemplation was over.
“Is now really the time for that?” asked Lillith. “Tarnishing its memory with what we are about to do seems self-destructive.” She shuffled her geta over the rugged flagstones. Despite her façade, the assassin was nervous, for once in her life, at the prospects that lay ahead of them.
The sun continued to set to the east, and the warmth of the afternoon began to fade from the countryside. Lillith was growing uncomfortable, and her skin bristled with goose bumps beneath ill suiting cloth. She tried to keep warm as best she could by staying on the move. Her tiny motions kept muscles limber and senses alert.
“Is there ever not a time for I Want to Be Your Canary?” the bard asked. He was shocked at her question. Somewhere in the distance, a low rumble broke the horizon’s solitude. He looked in its direction, curious, meek, and skittish.
“That is not what she meant, Duffy,” Ruby interjected. She glared, though he did not look at her to feel its wrath. He had learnt to ignore her wiles long ago.
To a man born of song and creation, there was always time for beloved lines. This was especially true if they were from the very first play the troupe had learnt. It was in their way of life now. It was their blood, their memory, and their signature. Every one of them could perform it with perfect recall. In many ways, he had become Marcus, the love-struck protagonist. Ruby in turn had become Celia, the not-so-in-distress damsel.
“I know…” he sighed. He dropped his gaze back to the earth, and for a moment, considered how to respond. He glared scrupulously at the cracked rock, bespeckled with rust coloured blood and ardour. He then turned his attentions to the great bulwark fortress that safeguarded them. For now, the enemy beyond the gates remained a pale threat. That sanctuary would not hold forever.
The castle remained standing thanks to the ancient stonework that surrounded them. In the wake of the Cult’s attack (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?24066-The-Night-of-Debauchery&highlight=Night+of+debauchery), Sei Orlouge had gone to great effort to organise repairs on the foundations. His quick-witted response to the devastation ensured that they could stand against an enemy for another day. For once, Duffy was glad for the Ixian Knight’s organisational forte.
“So then…” Lillith waylaid her question when she clocked her sister’s blithering scowl. She fell silent. Her resolve and disgruntlement were swiftly undone and her grimace became a subservient smile. She played with the latticework sleeves of her tunic, and ruffled her high starched collar.
The awkward tension continued to grow in the courtyard. The four founders of the Tantalum stood at the four corners of a compass, defiant and cocksure, but uncertain of their place.
Arden, resplendent in amber, watched the others silently.
Lillith, abyssal in black, looked back and forth between siblings.
Duffy, clad in a long black overcoat that engulfed his lanky, waif like form, continued to plot.
Ruby, aglow in red cloth that outshone her ageing figure, cleared her throat.
“I do not know why you are maudlin’ Duffy. I do not want to know.” She did, but now was not the time. She would have to sate her curiosity over gin blossoms and an ember hearth on another night.
“When does he not?” Lillith chided. She fell silent again as soon as Ruby looked at her over her shoulder.
The Spellsinger unfolded her arms and let them hang by her sides. “This is not the end of days for us. There will be a tomorrow, and then, a new opportunity.” Finally finding her composure amidst the atmosphere, the Spellsinger began to bob back and forth on her heels. New life coursed through her veins. Her crimson locks flapped casually with her motion.
“For us perhaps, there will be a …” he sighed, “continuance.”
“That is the spirit!” she clucked, perhaps a little too soon.
“The same thing cannot be said for the Ixian Knights and their kin.” Nothing about his annunciation instilled belief or hope in the Bard. If anything, it drained his will further still. The last of the colour ran visibly from his cheeks, leaving him pallid and wraith like in the encroaching twilight.
Ruby wrinkled her nose. “The Castle, you mean,” she corrected. Her belief in Sei’s plan was concrete. Thus, she remained determined to prove her point. “I daresay Lord Orlouge will not take all this lying down.” Ruby unsheathed her single-edged sword into her left hand. “He will have a trick up his sleeve won’t he?” Though she tried to sound doubtful, Ruby was almost certain of that.
“Maybe…”
“I am positive ’e does…” She had her doubts reassured by Sei, assured by the Hero of Radasanth himself. This perverse yet necessary deed was a strategic withdrawal. Without their bravery, it was not possible – the alternative was unthinkable. There would be layers of his plotting that even they would not be privy.
“What if he doesn’t?” Exasperated and taunted by demons, Duffy turned sharply to face the troupe. With an authoritarian stance, he rested forwards onto his black lacquered cane, palms atop one another about its polished, spherical tip. He broke into a furious scowl, forcing each syllable into a bark. “What if his effort over the last decade was a worthless exercise?”
“His exact words, Duffy, suggest it wasn’t.” She cut her sword through the air. It sang a high note. “This is a tactical retreat that serves a greater purpose.” Ruby quoted, her lips curling into a warming expression of earnest truths. “You know how much we all love serving a greater purpose,” she said sarcastically. It was all they had ever done.
“I am tired of it…” Lillith moaned, not quite recognising the sarcasm.
“Well I still believe in it,” Ruby slouched, “bitterness aside. It is hard to find hope in all this sorrow, but we have to look!” she cried.
“Sei’s efforts have served only his own agenda, no-one else!” Duffy snapped. His emotions let blue ribbons of rage flicker into life about him. Ruby stepped away nervously.
“They were very, very, valiant efforts,” Ruby cut across his solemn prow.
“That is neither here nor the-”
“-I would like to remind you of one thing, Duffy.” She cut him short. “They were ideas that you approved of whole heartedly at the time!” she waved and shrugged her arms haphazardly. This was a conversation they had wanted to have, but had been too afraid to accommodate for years.
“I did not agree with the war, Ruby.” He lifted the cane, then drove its tip into the stone with an angry thud. “I always supported his endeavour to make the island a better, fairer, and more just place for all. I cannot fault that ideology, by any logic…” The correction was facetious, and Ruby rolled her eyes in response.
“Oh well, in that case, you are my hero!” Lillith chipped in, her tone poisonous. She could remain a spectator for only so long. She had had enough. “What does it matter now? It is done, dusted, and very old news.” She trailed off when she realised she was being stared at again.
“You were saying?” Ruby erred.
“There is a veritable army of opposition on the far side of that gate,” she reminded frankly. She pointed at the indomitable watchtower, by way of drawing the obvious to their attention.
This was an undeniable truth. Even though they had yet to examine their enemy, the sounds on the horizon were becoming more and more prominent. They had fought in many wars over the last five centuries to recognise drumbeats, marching songs, and footfalls in their hundreds. They all pictured a different shade of a war-torn nightmare in the back of their minds. Not one depiction was accurate, but all steeled them for the coming task.
“You know full well what they are here for. You know what they will take with force if we do not stand in their way. You know what they will do to us if we do try and stop them.” She stomped her raised heel, sarcastically mimicking Duffy’s strop. She did not wait for him to respond to her question. “They will destroy us. That is all. They are not interested in theatrics, or the semantics of a depressed rogue’s quest for love…” The assassin regained her composure with style.
“I am not doing it for their benefit, Lillith,” he replied sullenly, and with a pursed lip. The Akashiman had always been more blunt and direct in her approach to problem solving, but now, she was well off the mark. Even Ruby looked at her sister expectantly, wondering where she was going.
“So who are you doing it for, Duffy? Which paragon or saint will feel the benefit of your pitiless self-sacrifice?”
“I…” Duffy mumbled. He could not quite find the words.
“Who will benefit from this masquerade? Blame and theology will only go so far to ease the pain.” There was little need for Lillith to voice the true nature of her meaning. It was loud enough for all to hear and lacked any tact or restraint.
The sun descended low enough to cast shadows of the two tall towers down onto the courtyard. As if it were a wailing call, the sound of marching seeped through the five-foot thick gates. It permeated through the cracked stone, over the ancient and well-defended walls, and around the rising heights of the castle’s upper reaches. The Alliance that sought to eradicate the Ixian Knights in its moment of weakness was upon them.
The troupe had one purpose in all of this madness - stop them.
“I want to know that all our efforts today are worth it,” he said meekly. “I want to know we are doing the ‘right’ thing.” A great thud filled the air, which caused the trio to flinch.
It was the immestakible sound of the crude yet effective siege bombards the Empire had used in their attempts to reclaim the prosperous southern port of Jadet. Duffy started to whistle in time and tandem with the first barrage. They saw the explosion long before they heard it.
“Shit…” Arden said, his vigil finally broken.
In the silent eruption of light, the troupe all turned on their heels and stared at the now blazing roof of the castle’s infirmary. The crack of thunder that followed dredged the air and anger from their lungs. It was a klaxon to the end, the brewing bitterness between them drowned out by its call.
They watched smoke spiral up in devilish wisps, each plume engulfed in flames and falling debris. If Sei had not foreseen this siege, the casualties from that single thirty-pound shell would have been unthinkable.
The troupe remained silent, mourning the loss of their confidence.
A flurry of arrows descended onto the Castle. They were unlit, but just as dangerous, and fell with the intent to kill like steel rain about the trio. None of them moved. None of them flinched. Even as the second wave came, they remained unpaved by the proliferating shafts. Arden’s blood magic lingered around them, guiding the steel tips away from flesh, shaping time’s advance in the troupe’s favour.
“There goes the idea of outnumbered, but never outgunned,” Ruby said dryly.
They looked at the flames for a few moments more, before they could no longer stomach it, and turned back to look at the gate in unison. It would be at least another ten minutes before a second shell fired, if their knowledge of the civil war was worth its salt.
“Whatever the man’s reason, Duffy, we promised Sei that we would buy the Ixian Knights time to flee. We promised them we would come to their aid one last and most certainly final time before we rid ourselves of this organisation forever.” Lillith unsheathed a tanto and took it into the confidence of her right hand.
“You made that promise in earnest, Duffy…” Ruby added, as if her sister’s word were worthless. Her condescending tone drew her dagger-throwing glare from the assassin.
“Ruby, Arden, and I aim to make you keep it.”
“This is that hour of reckoning, Duffy. Now is the time tha - ” Lillith stopped mid-word as Duffy raised his left palm to object.
“I understand,” he said. “I guess I just do not appreciate what we are doing. It seems strange, to leave even though it is what I want. Even though that is wise, it seems…weak.” His self-disgust was palpable in every hesitation.
He realised now that they would not let his self-doubt get in the way of their success.
Only two hours ago, the last wave of citizens and castle guardsmen had entered the infirmary cloisters. It was the start of a long descent down the spiral stairwells of the castle. They would go down further still into the tunnels and subterranean catacombs that would lead them out to safety. Duffy doubted he would be able to convince anyone on Althanas that their fleeing was unwise. It was a brave effort to lead the less fortunate and less physically able family of Mystics to safety and a better tomorrow.
“Let us think on it when all this is said and done,” Ruby pleaded.
“That is sound advice,” Arden said. He clenched his gauntleted hands into tight fists. The growing sense of anticipation swelled in his stomach. In the back of his mind, he heard a tiger roar.
“We have only to hold them back for a few hours at the most. We can collapse the tunnels and fulfil our obligations to the Prophecy once and for all.” Ruby took a brave step forwards to rest her free hand on the shoulder pad of his battered old overcoat.
“We can then go home,” Lillith continued. “This time it will be for good, forever, and amen.” The Spellsinger stepped away.
“It would be great if we did go home at last. What happens if one of us dies?” There seemed to be a bitter attempt to undo the sister’s work in the Bard’s voice. He refused to be incorrect.
“Then we die, are reborn, and nothing happens.” Ruby rolled her eyes. “Except for the shopping spree to find a new wardrobe that inevitably goes hand in hand with reincarnation.”
“Just because we cannot truly die Ruby does not mean we can just throw our lives away as if they meant nothing.”
“So do not get yourself damned well killed, you great oaf!” Ruby practically roared, her cheeks reddened to match the flames that danced over the castle infirmary. “No fucking heroics, you hear me?” She advanced towards the left gate tower.
“You know I already mind up my mind to be the sacrifice.”
“So shut up and do it,” she spat. “I am going up to the crow’s nest to see what we are up against.” Ruby turned to her sister. “Will you check on the portal?”
The assassin nodded and skittered away up the grand temple stairs into the still burning ward. Free of sisterly burdens Ruby turned back to Duffy and faced the Bard head on.
“You do not need to remind me, or to ask me to not. I know what I am supposed to do, really, I do. I have thought about nothing else for weeks, perhaps months.” He flicked the hair non-chalant from his eyes, which gleamed in the twilight. If Ruby had dared to think it a possibility, she might have considered Duffy to be crying.
“It is a choice-” she began.
“-It is a choice I have had to make, and I have made it.” Duffy cut her off before she could worm her way into his subconscious with her oratory.
Ruby sighed.
She started to understand his frustration with their predicament. They had been asked to afford the knights an escape, but in turn, they were being asked for something much, much more than mere delay.
“If you do not want to sacrifice yourself for the ritual Duffy, then by the will of Tantalus, do not do it. Let me take the fall, let me be the conduit, in your stead?” Ruby tucked her hair behind her fiery features disdainfully, as if to say she would prefer to be reborn anew. She had found freedom in death once before, and had no quarrel with finding it again.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because…” unpaved by her offer, Duffy took his cane into his right hand, and waved his left to augment his emotions with action, “it is my life and my failure that weakened the Ixian Knights. It is my fault the barrier failed when the Cult attacked.” He flicked his hair from his eyes. “It is my responsibility to atone for my sins.” He turned the silver knob with a grip of his forefinger and thumb until a hidden mechanism clicked.
Somewhere in the distance, the plot thickened.
“What sins do you mean? Duffy, you did nothing wrong. No matter what allegiance and fealty you owe Sei, your heart and soul have always been focussed on protecting your First; your’ loving family.” She watched him pull the tip of the staff from its cane, and place the ring that was set between tip and top on his right hand index finger.
“I meant that it was my fault that I was not there for Jensen.” Ruby’s enthusiasm died dramatically.
“Stephanie’s death (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?23895-In-the-Shadow-of-Oblivion-(Closed)&highlight=shadows+of+oblivion)was not your fault…,” she whispered, softly, emphatically, and daintily. There was humility and acceptance in her tone. She knew she was treading on dangerous ground.
“I did not say it was, but I should have been here. I should not,” he rubbed the cold band of metal on his hand, “have been festering in the xenophobic beyond.” By which he meant Raiera, helping the elves with their undead oppressor (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?23405-Beneath-Stars-Ablaze-(Closed)&highlight=across+oceans+blue).
“Is that truly how you feel?” she asked. Her eyes watered slightly, a swell of adrenaline lightning intoxicating her every inch. She had never really talked to Duffy about the incidents that transpired here when Cassandra had descended like a killing wave to Concordia.
Duffy nodded.
He set the tip of the cane back on the length of wood and screwed it back in place. He leant on it in his typical, waif like manner. The weight off his shin put him at ease, and the pain, which rose as his temper did, faded into nothing more than a distracting and old familiar friend. He stood, watching and waiting, and hoping for a quick resolution to an awkward moment. He was stuck for words.
“You do not have to help anyone. You did not have to help anyone at all. Especially the Bladesingers,” she said firmly.
“No, but I will. At least until the time comes when Arden and Lillith are ready to tackle the Knights of Scara Brae (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?23601-A-Fake-Empire-Falling-(Closed)&highlight=fake+empire+falling).” There was bitterness and old resentment in his words. In the absence of warmth in his bones or heart, he settled on a cold, longing stare.
“Will you ever change, Duffy Brandybuck Lysander Bracken?” she turned away before he could make light of an otherwise stinging accusation, and continued to walk to the tower. The sound of her heels clipping impractically over the flagstones faded as a second whistle loomed.
The very moment she vanished into the doorway at the base of the tower in a swirl of silk, another explosion broke the skyline on the far western corner of the castle. Duffy felt only a light vibration through his boots, and placed the point of impact somewhere negligible – perhaps the guardhouse, or some long abandoned stables. Both were long vacant, and both housed nothing more significant than memories, spiders, and dust.
It did not take him long to rerun the conversation he had just had, and less time still to arrive at the logical conclusion. This last stand, this last reprise of his captain hood amongst the Nine, stood to end more than just long-standing allegiances and friendships. This promise and chaos stood as a turning point between the happy last days of the Tantalum troupe, and the coming age of strife that lead to more than just the toppling of Sei Orlouge’s tower of pride.
Darkness would follow whatever happened here today.
With one last forlorn look at the burning remnants of the infirmary roof, with its blaze reflected threefold in is jade-ringed eyes, Duffy resigned himself to his fate. His duties and his role in the prophecy still confused him, and he did not quite believe he had allowed himself corralled into this scenario.
As a third hail of arrows clattered down across the ramshackle rooftops, another long whistle began to scream the portent of fire, brimstone, and ruin. A battle cry broke over the gates, which could only be the arrival of the army at the gates proper, and their siege ballast and battering ram along with it. They had little time.
Duffy smiled weakly, and said something he immediately regretted, “welcome…”
His feeble greeting echoed softly over the cobbles, bouncing over the dust and dew. He wondered how desperate the Alliance was to enlist such industrious artefacts against a now inferior enemy. He pictured a flaming maw at the end of the ram, long resembling of all the great sieges he had read about in his long years.
“So much for having plenty of time to prepare,” he said, straightening his right knee to drive his stance low. He cast his cane to one side and pressed his palms flat against the cold stone of the courtyard. “By grace, virtue, and creativity, I call upon the harrowed spirits of the Ancient kin.” His tongue wagged loosely around the poorly translated Akashiman given to him by Arden.
It would have to do.
Instantly, every part of him felt warm, kindled by the sanguine bond between the lingering Heidegger barrier and the castle. The forest swayed in the wake of a venerable awakening, and the trees danced with new and spirit laden life. A night of debauchery and loss months ago had become a potent weapon to parry the advances of a virile enemy now. The smell of warm, rusted, and oiled iron swarmed into his nostrils.
“Tantalus Meir ratta, I offer life to the loam to weld your legacy in defence of my kin.” The second line of the blood ritual once bound oni to temples and Elder gods to providence and law. With Tantalus as the namesake, it would be Duffy’s servitude that empowered the epoch of Lao Sheng.
A crack of thunder broke the bard’s concentration, followed by a peal of lightning that drove the clouds apart. Cobalt veins of power ensorcelled the sky. The black smoke overhead began to swirl in a maelstrom of movement, forming a spectacle to backdrop the unravelling history below. A solitary eye formed amidst the hurricane, centred directly above the chanting bard.
“The ancestors may rest by my hand, called into servitude for one final conflict, before they are allowed to rest eternal. Only then shall they stand in the jade palace for time immemorial.” His battered form began to accumulate energy, and he recited the verse again, draining all enthusiasm and potential from the castle into his own glowing limbs.
With Duffy’s vanishing strength, Arden felt a newfound urgency. With quick footed advanced, he made for the infirmary on his own agenda. Everyone was en-route to their objective, everyone was swift to forget the troubles that simmered away beneath the surface. The mithril plates of his ornate armour scraped over one another, their structure not quite as fine as the resplendent mail of the High elves, or the ensorcelled breastplates of the gnomes. He clanked up to the infirmary door and slipped inside. His red hair streamed flames in his wake, his heart pounded, and his blood lust rose.
With intrepid, defiant, and cocksure advances, Ruby made her way through the entrance corridor. Finding confidence in the sanctuary of the tower, she broke into hastened steps with a rush of blood to the head.
“Come on now Mrs Winchester,” she encouraged.
She ascended the stairwell up to the crow’s nest atop the watchtower in growing delirium. It was narrow, dark, and difficult climb, the constructed steps were far too tall for her lady-like composure. The Spellsinger cursed the obviously male mind-set that had built the castle, ignorant of heel and corset a Bladesinger typically wore into the midst of battle.
“Just a little further…”
When she burst out into the domed outlook, her face was as red as the hemmed silk of her dress. She trundled forth, Lucrezia still gripped tightly in her hand, and slapped her free palm onto the well-worn battlements.. She indulged in several deep breaths to catch the soul she was shedding.
When she got her breath back, she leant out into the unknown.
“Good gods…” she wheezed.
Whilst she had very much expected an army over the wall, she had not quite envisioned the beleaguered Ixian Knights facing what she saw. The Alliance, though it knew the castle would be all but undefended, had called on every splintered thread of loyalty to gather its host. The Spellsinger’s eyes flashed with flames of worry as they danced back and forth between the almost majestic tapestry of banners, standards, and fluttering heraldry.
Her knowledge of Scara Brae’s duchies and dukes was nigh unparalleled, but Corone’s hierarchy was infinitely more complicated. Of the thirty or so banners gathered beneath the immestakible tyranny of the Empire’s rule, she recognised only four. Jadet, Underwood, Gisela, and the Collegiate of Seafarers – the merchant navy’s freestanding army that patrolled the trade routes Corone most relied upon in times of war.
They had all been former allies in another life.
Beneath each of the flapping symbols there were some six hundred boorish faces, all arranged under the light of the tree canopy’s cover. They were the frontier banners, men from the agricultural heartland of the island. There were ranks upon ranks of them, armed with pike, spear, and bow. Though banner’s insignia, he or she all showed signs of fear, armed each chiselled desperation, and inexperience. Ruby shook her head in disbelief.
“Farm hands and town guardsmen,” she whispered, careful not to raise her voice. She clutched her knees, kept her hair, and turned watchful eyes on the army from within the bow rests. She found herself sighing from emotional fatigue. “Innocent, for the most part…”
Ruby knew enough about war to know that the first wave was the sacrificial lamb. The first hundred, ten ranks of ten, would press onto the gatehouse in the wake of rubble the siege ram would leave. She closed eyes and pictured their momentary elation as they filed into the courtyard.
Then the Heidegger Barrier would reveal its hideous nature.
There would be no man left standing in Concordia come sunrise.
A single, diamond-like tear rolled down her left cheek. She would shed only one tear. It swelled with the sadness of a thousand sobbing weaknesses.
“This is pointless,” she said, though her saddened tone swiftly turned into an intonation of loathing and anger. Though there were innocent once, they had made their choice in life. She, here and now, had made hers. “It is their prerogative,” she said, wiping her tear away as a vigil for the lost. She paused, and then continued her count of what amassed against them in the vast beyond. She could only make out so much of their enemy, before the treeline became too thick to see through.
It was more than she could quantify. It was more than she feared. It was more than she thought possible to defeat.
As expected, lingering in those trees, covered with tents, tarpaulins, and tanned leather rolls were the Shinar captains and the siege engines. Ruby had no doubt in her mind that in the shadows, with broken backs and blisters, countless slaves would be dead, dying, or well on their way loading the great machines with bombasts and ballast.
Although the army was an alliance, she doubted the brutal hand of the island’s savage ruler would ever stop cracking the whip. The whip cracked for far too long. Some of the soldiers were there by choice, still angered, perhaps, by the sudden cessation of the long-standing war. Many would be there by statute, command, or sentence.
They were slaves to the law, as much as to their need to draw blood, to kill, and to seek vengeance.
Even by a god, the Emperor was well on his way to regaining control against the common enemy that had sought to undo its ironclad grip on all facets of Corone’s infrastructure.
The charging flame of a third shot knocked Ruby's thoughts from her mind. Her nerves got the better of her, and she dropped from view with a sharp intake of breath. Her back scraped against the rough inner wall, and she grit her teeth against the unceremonious descent. The dusty, well-worn stone offered her little comfort.
“Argh,” she wheezed, recognising the cold pang of blood beneath the folds of her now tarnished dress. She jolted painfully, closed her eyes, and silently counted for the lightning that always came after a roll of thunder.
“For the love of the Thayne,” she wheezed, picturing Arden, Lillith, and Duffy in her mind’s eye. “Please let us succeed.”
All across the castle, her siblings were en-route to their objectives. She knew they would be enchanting, singing, and inciting rebellion. Magic, madness, and malady would descend over Ixian Castle, and over the forces beyond the wall. There would be screams, loss, and melodies sung before the last light faded from the world.
Swift death is all the Empire would get, for daring to bite the hand that feeds.
Meanwhile, down in the cold and fetid catacombs, Arden Janelle stood in silence.
“Hello, old friend…” he said softly, as though he were scared to wake the still rotting dead that lingered in the darkest corners of the unhallowed labyrinth.
“I am sorry we met so strangely last time…” It was the only way to state his remorse. It was the site of the last battle between Cassandra Remi’s Cult of Blessed Torture and the beleaguered Ixian Knights. In almost total darkness, the swordsman seethed with anticipation.
At the apex of the deep stairwell, the darkness had engulfed him, leaving even the cold façade of the assassin wavering. He felt drowned by the eternal night. He had walked for almost a mile before it faded in the distance, opening into a thirty-foot long corridor that lit by six torches. Archaic stone pillars and mausoleums to long dead mystics broke the monotony of a smooth, well-worn mosaic wall. Here and there, the once resplendent depiction of history broke away, revealing battered plaster and wooden slats in their stead.
Arden took a pious moment to remember all the horrors he had witnessed here that night.
“Never again,” he vowed. He started down towards the far exit, which lead into a subterranean temple conclave beyond. Though he had said the exact same thing countless times, after saving Kyla Orlouge’s life, and Jensen’s, too, for that matter, the swordsman meant it.
Not long ago, the Ixian Knights had used this exact tunnel to make their retreat. Arden could see the shattered remnants in the dust layer of a thousand hurried footprints. He wondered if they had made it out already, and just what the Mute intended to do next with his newfound freedom. Whilst he had been more than forthcoming about today’s plans, beyond the tomorrow, the troupe were very much in the dark, and very much untrusting of their former superior.
Schemes were afoot, and plotting thick in the air.
As soon as the swordsman crossed the threshold into the chamber, two things changed. The first was the temperature. Even beneath the peals of thick, expensive, and turgid Akashiman silk, Arden could still feel the chill of the chamber’s eternal night as it cut witheringly into his bones.
“<I plead for the kami to sustain me…,>” he mumbled, a thick accent bolstering his ancestral resolve. The leather bonds that kept his limbs taught began to creak. His mithril plates glazed over, as the vapour from the surface become a microfilament of ice.
He clenched his teeth and tensed his jaw in response. He dug his chin firmly into the folds of his cowl to try to keep out the on setting fatigue. He breathed through his nostrils heavily, to try to keep them alive, and observed the channel of chi about his body for signs of weakness. He conserved energy this way, an old spirit warder method of keeping warm through igniting one’s soul with clarity.
The second change came in the form of a sudden mood swing. Arden’s demeanour went from cold to jittery. Whilst he was a stoic, calculated, and dedicated ombudsman of the criminally insane, he started to feel as if his role in the grand scheme was precarious. Even with his decades of training, of facing demons dark and fire, his heart skipped a beat just at the thought of the relics that lay ahead. At the heart of the cavern, surrounded by six newly erected pillars of iron, a shrine would contain even the strongest of the Oni.
There, the Heidegger Barrier hummed the Song of Ages (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?21779-Little-Miss-Monocle-(Closed)/page2&highlight=duffy+bracken).
Shaking his head at the memory of Jensen Ambrose’s premature death within the hellish innards of the barrier’s new home, he stood defiant for a moment, briefly rekindling his resolve. He pictured the glowing runes that had ensorcelled the iron maiden they had chosen, for its malefic, and then the grand explosion that had tied the ritual together.
“There is no turning back,” he said, in deep, resounding Tradespeak. He clenched his fist.
With a sharp intake of breath, he broke into a run along the long, spidery corridor, each step towards the ancient torture device arduous, each advance to the lake that surrounded it, a lifetime between swordsman and salvation. He felt a swell of energy in the pit of his stomach grow and grow as he neared the source of power beyond.
He smelt blood.
After the shrine fell when traitors infiltrated the castle, Arden had seen to the construction of a much stronger defence. When the corpses vanished, and the smell of rot vanquished, he had explored the catacombs beneath the castle in search of the most venerable, yet fetid, of squalors to rehouse it. The site he had selected had been there long before the castle above.
It was perfect.
It stood on a two hundred-diameter altar of stone. Like a dais-pledging fealty to the gods, its presence dominated the ancient underground tributary. Except for the torches mounted on the iron pillars about the shrine, which acted like a beacon for the lost, the cavern teethed beneath the night veil of near perpetual midnight. Not even the sun’s rays could pierce it, save perhaps for the brightest of its zenith.
There was only one path from the castle to the island, which housed the altar. A sister path lead away from it, on the far side, though Arden had never ventured further than the Heidegger itself had. The Ixian Knights had taken that route, easy to collapse in the event of certain pursuit. It’s presence in Arden’s vision was comforting – it meant that Sei and his family had escaped, and that, despite all things said, and all things done, he still trusted the troupe to do as they had promised.
Truth was a powerful weapon.
Arden took a deep breath as he stepped over the threshold between the castle, and the shrine. His lattice wrought boot touched the bridge, and instantly, he felt invigorated. He remembered the potency of the shrine’s aura, and bid himself be wary of the tricks it could play on the unwise, the foolish, and the ignorant. Its ephemeral nature could undo a man’s mind, given half the chance.
“What are you doing…?” he questioned.
It took a great deal of effort to not wretch as the smell of death, quite immeasurable, swelled in Arden’s nostrils.
The shrine smelt of remorse, a thick, clinging aroma of yesterday. More so, it smelt of a thousand pints of blood long congealed, turned to ichor, and then to fossilised murder. Even though Arden was more than used to killing and its spoils, the overwhelming urge to flee gripped him. This was darker than anything the underworld of Scara Brae could set upon him, more deranged than his darkest nightmares.
“Tantalus guide me,” he erred, resorting to the common tongue, lest his Thayne desert him in his hour of need. He edged forwards with considerably less haste. His cloak, dripping with damp, hung heavily on his tiring shoulders. As he made his way across the bridge, the rickety structure creaked, chipped, and cracked, even beneath his paltry form. The age of the Concordia relic revealed itself.
“By blood and by oath, compel me to kneel,” he said, doing just that as he finally stepped over the double lines of the rune-filled circle.
Whispers in the dark replied in silence.
“I pledge fealty to the heritage, the blood, and the life.”
“We will speak to Them,” replied a thousand vassals, spirits tied to the world beyond worlds.
He dropped to his knight’s stance before the towering presence of the iron maiden, head bowed, and the echo of his descent ringing in his ears and in the far-flung shadows of the cavern.
He waited to be recognised.
The guardians of the Heidegger Barrier, far more potent and cruel than he, nor any of the Mystics, would have to be heard, appeased, and sated before the enchantments of the Heidegger could be altered to a man’s ends.
He waited to for an audience.
The third fiery shell ploughed through the rooftop of the observatory tower. The Spellsinger heard it, and closed her eyes. Her face, usually composed, became a tortured vision of anticipation and fear. The shell struck, and the sky shook.
“Oh god…” she mumbled.
Though Adolph had crumbled it’s foundations during the bout of giant slaying that was now legendary amongst the Ixian Knights, it’s needle like remnants stood proudly over the castle, untouched by Sei’s reparations and hasty repairs. Arden had told her all about how the giant had used half the tower as a battering ram, but the stubborn drill instructor had laughed it off.
Boulder sized pieces of rubble erupted skyward and flames engulfed the once mystical orrery at its peak. Aftershocks and explosions, potent gunpowder kegs in the tower’s base set alight, tore the rest of the tower’s structure apart. However, the tower was a signalling station, and as a roost for Adolph to bark his drill commands, its days numbered, spent, and withering away.
Ruby counted three heartbeats after the racket down before opening her eyes. She glanced up through the watchtower’s southern face at the pillar of flame, and could not help but grit her teeth. If they continued pounding the castle in such a manner, there would be no castle left to besiege, never mind to save. All their efforts undone before her eyes, and they had barely even begun to halt the Alliance’s advance. They had barely even started cutting a swathe through the advancing horde.
“No more needless, pointless suffering,” she said. Though she thought she sounded defiant in her head, she muttered it meekly, devoid of conviction and full of self-doubt.
The castle fell silent, though only briefly.
“No more recklessness, or measuring of wits,” she clenched her fist as tight as she could about her sword’s hilt until her knuckles turned pearl white.
“For the troupe,” she sighed. “For the Ixian Knights,” she rose, defiant at last, and turned to face the army, “for anybody.” She released them only when they began to ache, and when the skin turned red again, stretched to its limit.
Arden heard the cry and exhalation of air through a half formed mouth long before the corpse that made it moved. He tensed, suddenly aware that he was very much not alone. About the altar, jutting out of the stagnant waters, the long deceased fallen sons stirred. Broken bones ignored, squashed brains were uncased, and necrotic flesh writhed with new, potential life. Arden glanced nervously around, eager to make certain the creatures were not crawling out of the primordial waters to deny him rite and right. He did not wish to engage in swordplay with those who had trained the very best of the Ixian knights in the many beleaguered and forgotten arts of war.
He would have fought with history itself.
“Dare you test my mettle, old man?” he said, with dry and parched lips. “You know my voice, and my heart – let me pass.” His tone, usually dry and turgid, softened to take on a venerable, yet pleading quality. He dropped to one knee, pleadingly, desperately, and piously.
There was a harsh crack, like a thousand shins and thighs breaking once again, then the sound of a hundred corpses subsiding back into the shadowy depths. Arden waited until the reformed silence drew a sigh from his lungs, and then pushed him upright. Sweat was beading down his back, sticking his tunic to his spine.
The ancestors had listened, and abated their wrath for their master.
He half wished that were all there was to it. Blood Magic, however, was as steeped in tradition and law as the land it had sprung from long ago. If he wanted to call on the contents, and thus the power held within the iron maiden’s cavity, then he would have to sway the stars themselves to acquire that right. If they gave up now, they would come back twice as strong another day.
Arden would deal with that problem when it arose.
“It is never easy…,” he mumbled, as he reached for the gothic iron handle on the right chest plate. With a heavy clunk, it gave way, and with a heave, it swung open noisily. As a rusted vault cracked open, the Heidegger spilled its secrets over the bloodied circle.
The smell of blood in the cavern intensified, until the air became so thick with its scent it threatened to overwhelm his senses. The taint lingered, whispers of horrors in the dark filled the air.
“Hello…” Arden said, fondly.
The iron maiden was large enough to hold and stay the Enigmatic Immortal, and from the screams and groans it emitted when he opened it, Arden assumed many other giants of legend and titans of history besides. Its innards were ample, and proven an effective storage vessel for all the curiosities and relics that formed the reliquary’s power base. With a soft smile, eyes a glow, reflecting the content’s power, he began at the bottom and worked his way up through the trinkets, naming each in turn.
Soon enough, the names would have faces to them.
Below the revelation in the crow’s nest, and far above the hallowed trial in the dark, Duffy Lysander Bracken was fighting a different sort of war. Without the strength of Arden and the conviction of Ruby, he was beginning to find the complicated, sundering ritual taxing. Whilst he had volunteered, nigh insisted he fulfilled this obligation himself, he was now very much in need of that spurned support.
“I am sorry, friends…” he said softly, unheard, but heartfelt all the same.
Together they could have raised an army and saved the castle long before the gates breached by the encroaching armed forces. Those days of union were long gone, though, and Duffy could not watch his friends die for his ideologies again. Too many times through history’s long march had the Tantalum allowed others to take the fall, when it should have been him to do so.
“But not this time…”
The time for sacrifice was long gone.
“Winds blow,” he began, eyes aglow, “and rains fall, but the passing of blood is eternal.” With deft hands, most surgeons like, he produced an abyssal dagger from the veil of power of the Aria. The hem of his military overcoat began to flap in an unseen breeze, a spiral of gusts that rose up from the stone. The warm of the air then vanished, and nothingness returned to the space around the bard.
Slowly but surely, he held out his left hand, fist clenched into a tight ball, and his palm upwards. He tilted his arm so that his sleeve dropped down his arm, exposing his slender wrists, and thus his veins, for all to see. His stomach convulsed, nerves finally taking their toll. He looked at his skin, pale and cracked, and nearly vomited. They ached in response, as if they knew just what he was about to do. A swarm of butterflies spiralled in his abdomen, their wings inciting hurricanes to form in his resolve.
“Today is a good day to die,” he said.
To revive the barrier, and hinder the advance of the Alliance into the castle, an offering was required. Just as Arden had offered up his brother’s life to ignite the spark that became the shield around the troupe’s old home, the Prima Vista, Duffy had to give his life to reprise the strength of the ancient magic here. Even as an immortal, the prospect of a slow, agonising, and tortured death was abhorrent. It felt more despicable by its seeming pointlessness.
He was beyond argument now. It was pointless. It had to complete.
“As any other…” he continued, and then pressed the edge of Wainwright’s Dagger against his wrist.
At the back of his mind, Duffy quickly realised what a hypocrite he had become in his self-loathing. If his miserable life was so precious, and all life worth saving, then why was he using Blood Magic, which thrived off suffering and death, to do so?
After the darkness of the day, there would be a resplendent rebirth. Duffy would rise like a phoenix from the flames, a creature borne from the soot and the mire. Come sunrise, the bard would inhabit a new body, one he would have no control over as far as appearance was concerned. He could literally become anybody from history, fiction, or myth. Perhaps, just perhaps, he would become nobody at all; an insignificant life as a reward for centuries served tirelessly. That, though, was a worry for another day. He would likely deal with his regeneration as he always did – indifference and mirth.
“Be done with vagrant heart, and live once more in servitude.” A flash of red light surrounded him, king crimson flame of archaic power. A second flash, stranger effervescence still quickly followed. “Swear fealty for but an hour to me,” the light bowed him almost to his knees, as an invisible dagger, hot as hell, pierced his belly button with a serrated edge.
Time seemed to stop, for just a second.
On the other hand, what? an unseen choir of violence asked in reprise.
“In exchange,” he roared, tears streaming down his cheek as his last bastion of resistance crumbled, “for a lifetime of freedom!” The very word caused the spectral blade to tear upwards with phantasmal force. It served as accepted of his offer, as much as it did payment. Blood magic called, after all, for blood to empower its potent impact on the world.
We accept. They said, their voices together strong enough to break the strongest of souls.
Still impaled upon their physical touch, Duffy felt himself heave, as he flew skyward. Flesh, muscle, and sinew tightened together into a wretched, gaping wound. Guts and tendons became exposed; haphazardly spilt like a fishmonger preparing his evening meal. A cyclone of red energy, darker and more rust-like in hue than the lights, began to swirl around his suspended body. It was a crackling, cackling, and maddening maelstrom of evil spirits.
Somewhere in the shadows, a cruel, wicked face smiled. With subtle lips, and a sadistic glee, she stepped out from a portal’s light, bowed to the Akashiman who spurned her into the castle, and took a deep inhalation of the stagnant air.
“The dead walk…,” said Cassandra Remi.
Their gnarled, contorted, and withering grimaces seemed to both laugh and cry at Duffy’s marionette corpse. Twenty feet in the air, arms splayed wide, and head snapped back, it appeared as though he had fallen from a great height onto a needle thin spike. Blood was streaming down in spirals about the shaft, forming a double helix of sacrifice. It touched the ensorcelled courtyard and seeped into the stone, as if some dark force were dredging it down into the dark.
Drawn to the Mistress of Torture, and to the legacy of Lao Shang in the Heidegger coffin, the most potent spell wrought in aeons began to work its sweet betrayal against the good faith and honour of the Ixian Knights.
Duffy felt his stomach explode, vomit pouring from his every orifice, and screamed one last time as he realised what he had done.
When another fiery projectile streamed past Ruby’s’ skyward gaze, something primal in the Spellsinger’s soul sang. It, as if brought to life by the flickering flames of their enemies, swelled in her chest. The catapults would have burst into a conflagration, had she been near them. She gabbled, convulsed, and inhaled. Her ribcage expanded and contract. A rush of blood to the head briefly stole away her sense of self. In an instant, she vomited a ball of thick, black, and toxic smoke. It rose vertically, as if born aloft by magic. Ruby slumped, hands abandoning her blade, and fell to the tower floor.
She looked up just in time to see the smoke change shape. It formed the figure of a fledgling bird, and streamed after the debris in a spiralling flight around the descending rubble. It hunted its prey through the Concordia sky with an eerie song pouring from its wispy beak. It was an unforgettable sight. Ruby’s own soul, moving of its own accord, burnt bright into her memory. It would forever leave the taste of charcoal and dust on her tongue, and wrath and passion in her gullet.
“That isn't going to be pretty…,” she wheezed, the wind all but burnt from her lungs.
The young phoenix pursued the debris with fervour. Much smaller, much lighter, and much more agile than the projectile, it took little time until it’s scintillating eyes locked onto a weak point on its spiralling surface. With a crane of its fire mane neck, it vented the last of its heat and burst forwards.
“Please…” Ruby pleaded.
The phoenix vanished into the stone, a little flourish of sparks trailing in its wake as its light died, and its momentum was absorbed into that of the Alliance’s barrage. For several endless seconds, nothing happened. Ruby remained transfixed, desperate, and sweating through her corset. The hulk continued to descend towards the far side of the castle once it carried through its apex. Gravity took a hold, and Fate sealed the barrack’s fate. No tempest or storm could avert its path now.
“Please…” she sighed. All the strength left her.
Then, something wondrous occurred. The lifeless lived, and the fires within the ballast trebled in intensity and ferocity. As it began to descend, the walls below dancing with gold and blood rood, a piercing shriek drowned out the sounds of battle. The projectile exploded.
Duffy, more or less beneath it, felt the full force of the concussive shockwave. It burst out in rainbow colours and tensed every molecule of air in the forest. The bard though sated and sickened with the power coursing through his every inch, driven to his knees. The ground cracked, and his back crashed against the bloodstone unceremoniously. His head caved noisily on the ridge of a bloodied groove.
Shards of rock and smouldering pumice rained down over the courtyard, infirmary, and towers. Their cinder hearts burnt brightly, and the smoke plumes bellowed in a hundred mini spirals. Beams and gargoyles smashed asunder beneath the descending cavalcade, the castle’s battle worn visage earning a few more war scars in the process. The greatest piece of rock landed atop the infirmary steps, and rolled noisily on the merit of its bulk straight into the grand doorway. Rock met wood, and stone arch met a blow that would have toppled lesser structures.
With an ominous crash, anyone who had ventured into the inner sanctum of the Orlouge household became a distant memory.
Duffy opened his eyes; his body alight with fires of pain that would eclipse the fires all-round the castle.
Only his willpower prevented him from slipping into a deep, endless sleep.
Arden looked up in the deep dark, the resounding echo of moving earth alerting the swordsman to danger.
Only his fearlessness prevented him from fleeing into the depths of the unknown.
Ruby stood upright, every inch of her shaking, and appeared defiant from behind the bulwark of the castle walls.
Only her love of life kept her in view of an army all too eager to strike her down.
“People of the Alliance, listen to me!” she bellowed. Her hair, no longer deep, luxurious red, danced flaxen in the encroaching dusk. “You are not welcome here!” Weight was added to her threat by divine proclamation, the Aria echoing in every syllable. Every pair of ears in the advancing mass of troops heard her clear as day.
Several hundred pairs of eyes scaled the indomitable walls. Several hundred pairs of accusing eyes blamed solely the foolish woman before them for their troubles.
Her only answer came in the form of a volley of arrows. Hundreds of bolts, each one slighted with a motley assortment of colours, rained down like steel death.
Ruby shed a single tear as she smashed into the ground, her instincts driving her out of sight. The battlements exploded with a flourish of sounds, metal against rock, and wood breaking in air as they bounced harmlessly away. She cowed to protect herself from the dancing lucky shots that started to fill the circular bowl of the tower’s peak.
“I take it that didn't hit home…” she seethed.
One solitary thought crossed her mind. Her tear would be the last one she spared in their memory. The last of the Alliance, desperate and weak, would die in their pit of arrogance. Innocent or not, they would not be spared if they entered the courtyard. Too much was at stake to let ‘following’ orders undo decades of righteous work by the Ixian Knights. Although Sei Orlouge was a fool, and an egotist, Ruby Winchester knew no man’s charity deserved such unjust riposte.
They would learn humility in the harshest of manners possible.
“Don't say I didn't warn you…,” she whispered, making for the stairwell in a flicker of flame and dancing lights. Her lingering heat still kept her warm. Her heart still beat noisily in her chest. Her eyes sparkled with malefic and intent. She felt no longer weighted. She felt freed, and she felt ready to fight. She scooped up her discarded blade with renewed vigour as her dusty boots scuffed over the arrow-laden floor.
She descended into the stairwell, back down to the courtyard, sword in hand.
Beneath her feet, the tip of the advancing battering ram penetrated the tunnel that lead to the main gates. Pushed by the strength of two hundred broken men, slaves and criminals, it arrived at its destination without fanfare. In ominous silence, the whip of its master cracked, and the vast, bull headed pole veered back.
“Heave!” he roared. His voice was cruel and haunted.
The sound of metal colliding with once open and welcoming doors thudded throughout every glade and grove in Concordia.
Arden lowered his gaze back to the iron maiden. The echo of the projectile crashing into the building over the head finally faded. He watched the last of Duffy’s blood trickle down through the gold-laced veins in the contraptions casing. The vials burst into bright silver light. The offering renewed their potency by the bard’s sacrifice. They broke into a rattling chorus, as if each were shook by ghostly hands. Arden felt his chest tighten, and his heat skip a beat, as if the air in the room vanished.
The quicksilver in the essence of his blood magic gave the vials their colour, but something else, much older, made them move. He dropped his eyes to the ichor-strewn floor. The rock lingered in carnal refuse from the war with the cult, months ago. It was by now long congealed, and the swordsmen remembered that amongst the primordial soup, the Enigmatic Immortal’s life force lingered too.
“I accept your gift with thanks, brother,” he said reverently.
The mourning screams of all the lives taken in the name of the barrier began to seep out of the coffin. Arden frowned, remorse taking hold for just a moment. He felt guilt and regret swell in the pit of his stomach, his taught muscle flexing uncomfortably at the memory. He had allowed the brawler to suffer so much, whilst was so bent on revenge and bloodshed in the hour of need.
He remained silent for a few moments. Content with his vigil, he reached for the coffin’s right door half. His fingertips tingled as power, primal and raging, coursed up his arm. He paused with hesitation. He had to ask wherever or not he was truly powerful enough to contain whatever force they were about to unleash. If he made the slightest mistake, it would be their lives at risk, and not just the lives of the Alliance host. He shook the doubt from his mind forcefully, and pulled it close with a calamitous crash. The echo of iron rim against ancient, cracked, and weathered stone would echo in the forest for centuries.
“It is out of my hands now,” he whispered, lest the still teeming shadows hear his weakness.
He reached for the second half of the door and straining, he slammed it shut as well. There was an anti-noise when it closed, an explosion of silence than shortly made the cavern deathly still.
Nothing happened for an age.
The swordsman grew so tense his muscles tightened over his skeleton so rigidly they threatened to shatter his bones.
A thin golden light ran down the iron maiden’s join. It sealed it shut tighter than any lock, and more adeptly than any grand evocation or rite.
“It is in their hands now…”
Inside the Heidegger, thirty vials cracked. Only hairlines appeared at first, until the spell gained levity and momentum. All at once, they exploded, a chorus of devastation that penetrated the sanctuary and shield. It ripped out across the countryside, triumphant, and thick with portent. A red mist formed, a veil of holy disorder rime-bound and ensorcelled. All the history of Akashima stood behind it, adding strength to a legacy older than the castle itself.
In the coffin, dancing amongst the spikes, thirty kami danced and frolicked with fleeting freedom. The madness of the blood magic and Duffy’s death consumed them quickly, and they turned on one another in reckless, cannibalistic abandon. In the wake of the bloodshed, thirty reborn, vengeful spirits rose upwards, united as one powerful and wild hope.
His debt to Jensen repaid, Arden dissipated in a maelstrom of white light.
Ruby broke out into the courtyard, arms flailing, and hair eschew. She had the time to turn, and stare in horror at the collapsing gate, before magic took her and lifted her into nothingness.
She swooned.
She vanished.
She was safe.
Duffy, just clinging to life, spat a gobbet of blood that oozed from his lips. His eyes glazed over just long enough to see his mistake made right. Things moved in the mists of his delusion, given form by the spirits that rose from below at the behest of his soul’s offering. Thunder rolled overhead.
He cried out.
He shook.
He died.
He vanished.
A fell wind danced through Concordia. Lillith stepped away from the portal just long enough to count. Remi gleamed at her, daggers literally forming from her glare. The assassin could only smile, her rouse intact, and their plan complete. Without further rapport, she clapped her hands.
Remi’s vial, filled with her husband’s blood, burst into life beneath the castle too. Given levity by her presence, it would become a truly horrifying foe for the Alliance as they careened into the castle courtyard. Lillith watched the goddess reel backwards into the portal, her voice trill, and her screams sycophantically uplifting her hearts.
She smiled.
She nodded.
She vanished.
The wind washed over the army as they filed into the castle. The battering ram, swiftly abandoned after it knocked aside the gates rattled in the wake of hundreds of marching feet. The instant several hundred made it through the legacy of Lao Sheng and the Tantalum troupe’s promise to old friends came to life. The terror unleashed caused several of the younger soldiers to drop dead in their stride, pale skin dancing with the silver light of the rising moon.
Thirty red spectres formed all too familiar features, spread out like a mercenary force around the bloody pool where Duffy Bracken had fallen. They flickered with energy pulsed with war, and screamed with rage. Blood danced up through the floor, filling each phantasmal image with the memories of the being that had offered it to the Heidegger, the life force of the raging spirits reached its zenith.
Each of the faces contorted in unison, and at the very front of the army of doppelgangers, a most unexpected sight greeted the generals of the Alliance.
Sei Orlouge, with bloodied lips, smiled a wicked welcome.
Epilogue
Three Months Later
“I don't know what to do, Ruby.” Duffy said, longingly. He set the quill onto the rest to his right, flipped the inkwell’s lit closed, and leant back in his chair. It creaked as he tried to get comfortable.
The spell singer pursed her lips. She rested her chin on her hand and slouched in her own piece of curiously built furniture. Her new study had architectural and cultural from all over the world. Nobody was entirely sure what sort of people had given form to the crooked chair that was allegedly ‘in vogue’ on the island this month. Ruby was still debating wherever or not it was going to end up in the hearth of the lounge.
“Do you need to decide this now, Duffy?” she sighed. They had been discussing the outline for a new play, quite happily, until the bard had succumbed to his inner thoughts at last. “We are so close to setting out a good shape to something wondrous.”
The study seethed with excitement, contempt, and possibility. It also seethed with the heady scent of wine, wood smoke, and sweating occupants. Outside, winter raged, and snow fell thick over Scara Braen cobblestones. It was a level of discomfort necessary to avoid freezing to death in your own skin.
Pensively, he nodded. He took up the quill, an eagle’s tail feather, and renewed the ink. He scribbled the agreed upon line onto the journal, his spidery hand writing childlike, thought the content grave and adult.
“It has just been pressing down on my shoulders for months.” He barely managed to form the end of the word and circle a full stop before he became overwhelmed again. “Do you at least have any advice?” He looked up from the page, eyes glimmering with vulnerability, and hand shaking with nervous tension.
Ruby tapped her chin in thought. She turned to the fireplace, and watched the flames dance with malice and glee in the iron framework. It had been giving her trouble, too, but she had never really applied herself to finding a solution. Duffy had always been able to get the troupe out of these sorts of predicaments. She guessed it was high time they returned the favour.
“If you truly believe your dream was more than a dream, then we should acknowledge it as truth.”
“I am certain it was an omen,” he sighed. “Perhaps precognition is too strong a word…” he looked up at the large bay windows on the north wall, which looked out across Market Square, “but I certainly feel as if something bad will happen if ever we return to the Ixian Knights.”
Ruby had heard his account of his dream enough times to believe him. She wished those horrors on nobody, not even their worst, cruellest, and most arduous of enemies.
“We need to find a new direction. Before that, we need to make sure all of our affairs in Corone are settled.” She gave the matter further thought. Leopold would object, at first, but he would come round in time. Arden and Lillith (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?23988-Flower-Drum-Song-(Closed)&highlight=flower+drum+song)would be safe enough in Akashima whilst they wrestled with their own problems. The orphans and extended family that gave the plays their weight had never left Scara Brae to begin with. They were already her, at home, and waiting to breathe life into the arts again.
“I am already glad to see the back of it,” he grumbled.
“Pleasing as that is, I am not as flexible as you. I will need to discuss the matter with Leopold, to ensure he is able to withdraw from Radasanth.” Her business mind was not as keen as her husband’s was, but she could see the merit to freeing him up for his endeavour in Salvar (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?23980-By-Rook-Wrath-amp-Ruin-(Solo)&highlight=rook+wrath).
“Is that really required?”
“At the very least, he needs to appoint a deputy to work there in his stead.” She pictured Jeren (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?24013-Hire-And-Hire-He-Rose-(Closed)&highlight=hire+and+hire+he+rose), and smiled warmly.
“I take it that means you will come back to Scara Brae?”
This was the real reason Duffy wanted to hear her thoughts. For centuries, the Tantalum Troupe had been a double act. He was the leading man. She was the leading woman. In the last few months the troupe had performed, nearly two years ago, she had been absent. Their audiences were considerably less enthusiastic about what they witnessed. He had gotten quite the taste for rotten tomatoes that summer. If she was not coming back, there was no point.
Ruby smiled. Her meekness belied her excitement. Though she had fought hard to find a life for herself overseas in the elven heartlands, she had been foolish. She had been an elf, once. She had been a spell singer feared and renowned in Raiaera. That was a lifetime ago. Her place was here, by his side, and at the front of the stage.
“You will need a Cornelia, won't you?” she chuckled.
They stared at one another for a while, locked in a staring contest. Duffy gave in first, eager to move on, but Ruby remained fixated with him. There was a glimmer of recognition, or perhaps worry, in her eyes.
“Ruby…” he hummed, “what is…what is wrong?” he asked, as he turned to look at the wall behind him. The painting that hung there, eschew, was exactly as it always had been. There were no shadows and no dancing lights to distract her. He turned around, tried to avert her gaze, and then slumped. “Please, stop staring.”
The spell singer rose from her chair with grace. She moved across the floor, her black heels silent over the red carpet. Slowly but surely, she pressed her hands against the edge of the robust desk, and leant in towards the bard. It was less a seductive advance, and more of a scholarly approval.
“The question isn't ‘will I come back’.” She rested a finger against her lips to stop him from objecting. “The question is, are you, Duffy Bracken, ready to be Marcus once again?”
It took Duffy a moment to pluck up the courage to speak. He had to think the words in his head, to make sure they sounded right. He had to make sure they would sound convincing. Self-doubt had become a security blanket for the bard in recent months. Faith, hope, and belief were things he was starting to forget.
“I have been ready all my life,” he said at last. The strength of conviction in his voice warmed the room.
“Good,” she said sullenly. She leant back and made herself comfortable. “Now, tell me…do you have a title in mind?” she raised an eyebrow quizzically.
Duffy, in his element, and the horrors of the ritual long behind him, smirked. “I think, given the decisive blow we delivered, that ‘The Hand That Feeds’ seems appropriate.”
“I think that is perfect!” she broadly smiled. After the empire had tried to bite the hand that sheltered its people, the metaphor was not lost on Ruby.
Skie and Avery
05-11-13, 04:48 PM
Plot
Storytelling - 7
I was sitting on the couch with Zook as I was reading the second and third pages of this thread and when I got to page 3 I looked up at him and whined that there were only 4 more posts to read. The story had weight to it, made me care, and was blooming with current canon.
Setting - 4
You really faltered here, and I am disappoint son. In the courtyard I often felt as if your characters were in the middle of an empty room with cobbled floors. You did better at the altar with Arden and the tower with Ruby but there was still a distinct lack of immersion.
Pacing - 8
Your pacing here was really spot on. There weren't any dragging moments, though sometimes I did feel as if the story moved too much and I had to slow down and really linger over sentences to get the full effect, though that seemed to contribute mostly to clarity than pacing itself.
Character
Communication - 10
In my time on Althanas, there's an unspoken (well, sometimes spoken) rule about 10 being an impossible goal. However, I gave a 10 here because this was perfect. Your characters interacted in a believable way, interrupted each other, argued and pleaded. Ruby had her own tonal inflections that were believable and organic, and while the other characters didn't share them, I never had to guess who was speaking, and the other characters weren't given ridiculous accents to make them somehow unique in the same way that Ruby was unique.
Action - 7
Those darn clarity issues dragged this down a notch. There were a couple of times when the action was marred by my need to stop and decipher what a sentence was trying to say or who someone was/where they came from.
Persona - 8
Prose
Mechanics - 6
Mostly solid but with glaring slip-ups such as, "It served as accepted of his offer," and the irritating (to me) habit that you have of not putting together word + like with a hyphen. You say something like, "most surgeon like" and I just wanted to grab a pencil and fix it. "Surgeon-like". Dammit. Definitely make sure you proofread for some word soup misspellings and wrong word usage.
Clarity - 4
Like I said, there were a lot of issues here. Rushing and omission definitely were the big factors here. It would have been better if there were more than just passing mentions of Cassandra. She seemed important but I really have no way to tell, or even know what she did. The epilogue was problematic in that I wasn't sure if the dream was the thread, or something separate. I expected Duffy's new appearance to be described because it had been mentioned in his thoughts before he sacrificed himself. Nope. Nothing. Lillith's contribution was also really downgraded in favor of Arden and Ruby and while during the thread I was so enthralled with what was happening I didn't notice it, when you mentioned her and Cassandra at the end, I felt confused and misled somehow.
Technique - 8
What you did write, despite not being laden with description, was fantastic. There were turns of phrasing and plays on words that really shone. I'm still dazzled by "rite and right" in one of the Arden posts.
Wild Card - 8
One of the best threads that I've read in a while. Thank you. I will be seeking out more.
Total - 70
Duffy Bracken receives 2128exp and 336gp
Arden Janelle receives 784exp and 168gp
Ruby Winchester receives 653exp and 140gp
EXP/GP added. Move pending the decision on the JC status of the thread.
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