Long Way Away: The First Verse [Talea, Valeria, Leoman]

[EloHim]

The swipe worked, the earth went away from under his legs...and as he was falling to the ground a glimpse of sanity returned to Leoman, before the utter horror filled his eyes. The rest of it all was but one fast event with only Ven being witness to the horror that ensued. The iron door opened, a gust of hot air creating a passage through the darkness...only for the red spectral tentacles to stretch from the pit below through the doorway towards the pyromaniac.
They quickly grasped him and swooped him away into the other room, between the sun and black abyss below. From there came a fire. A promised reward for the new servant.
A pillar of flames surrounded Leoman enveloping everything around him. The skin and muscle started melting off from his bones in several places, and those bones started to turn black. The fire was not mindless, there was the intent behind this mangling. The heart...where it was beating before now was a hole of black, like someone shot a burning cannon ball trough it. The eyes melted as if they were eggs, suddenly freed of their shell, poping in their place and sliding down the burned skin. The left leg, now was nothing but a burned piece of bone, missing everything below the knee. The right hand was skinless, nothing but a burning muscle. The belly... the skin and muscle covering whatever was inside was gone in an instant and beneath it...the guts were seemingly burning on the inside like a freaky lamp,burning holes in the tissue...
And as the soundless screams of pain followed, One could see that the flames were burning through his insides, burning away his very soul, taking everything that was important enough and leaving nothing but fire in its place… The body started falling, disappearing out of the view down, down into the darkness… to the rest of them. The iron door swung and closed shut, becoming red hot...

The darkness dissipated. The runes melted away, the shadows of ash and soot fell to the ground, as they were. Whatever spell laid on this room was now nothing but an echo of mad laughter of a thirsting god.
It was over.

But the mission didn't even came close to completion, for the group or rather the duo of those still alive didn't knew anything about the source of the tracks.

[Spookery 💉]

It happened so quickly; she barely had time to register it. Crimson tendrils from the other room snatched Leoman from the floor and into the room with the pit. The flames were so intense she could barely look as they consumed him. She shielded her eyes, trying to watch what was happening to him, but she could only make out a dark, disintegrating form in the blaze.
"Leoman!" she called out in horror. But it was over as soon as it had begun. The door slammed shut with what remained of him inside and glowed a searing red. Valeria stared at it for a moment, trying to grasp what she'd just seen, then turned to Talea to see her collapsed on the floor, blood pouring from her jaw.
"Are you alright?" Valeria darted over to Talea and crouched in front of her. She dropped her halberd to the ground to reach out and hold the woman's shoulders. "Talea?"

[EtherealNoire]

An effigy wrought from hellman's gates was all that spoke of Leoman's bargain. Such foolish longings struck, and now forever barred behind  iron were its inferno could not mar their flesh. Yet the blaze still seared against her jaw, a jagged stripe of fire that pulsed with every motion of her head.
Perplexed, Talea drew three ivory digits along the mark, and marveled at their crimson stain. Blood? Twas wounded from such glancing strike?
Yea, though she pined to correct her errors, the mortal woman pulled her from her thoughts.
There could not yet be a time for reflection. She must see accomplished first the will of Night.

"Fret not my fate. In time, all wounds must heal." And as she rose, thorns withdrawing into her shadows, the faded scar across her eye concurred. She knew the cost of oblation well.

Sparing one parting glance at her tattered lock whilst it burned admist the ash, Talea drifted towards their egress, her focus only for the voice within her mind.  Night's bidding for communion come yonder eve betwixt the graves.

[Spookery 💉]

Valeria sighed in relief to see that the woman was alright, if a little scraped up. She pulled her hands from her shoulders and set them on her own knees instead as she crouched there.

"...I suppose we must still scout the remaining hallway," she added reluctantly. She certainly did not want to after watching such a gruesome demise, but such was her duty. She scolded herself for letting her guard down. The crusader rose to her feet and nodded to Talea reassuringly. "We will be swift. We will be alright."

[EtherealNoire]

Soot and bones crumbled into ash beneath each step and billowed through the corridor on wings as black as death. Caliginous, it swallowed them in its tide, urging them forth into its darkened bowels where Talea tred in silence. Its hunt could not claim her, nor quell the gelid fury wresting her soul. Where light asphyxiated, she abided. And where Night's call echoed, so she would follow. 
Soundless, she padded through the murk, copper locks glinting as if still engulfed in flames, and where her cupped palms cradled the endless darkness, an opal glow ignited, weaving starlight in the gloom.

[EloHim]

The dark corridor was mostly empty,occasional holes and cracks in the walls showing the oldness of the place.
Then...a faint clang of chains...and a singing. A lone male voice in the dark.

"I'll follow the stars when the sun goes to bed
Till everything I've ever known is long dead.
I cant go back home...cause i wanna be free.
Someone tell the others what's become of me."

The source - an iron grate in the left wall of the corridor. Behind the grate - what looks like a big cell containing a few people, all dressed in nothing but ragged cloth. The man closes to the grate is the one singing. He dressed similarly - rag covering his head and shoulders, and torn pants on his legs. As the duo comes closer he doesnt seem to notice their steps .

[Spookery 💉]

She hadn't been expecting to see more living things down here (well, if one could count what they had just fought as living). Could these be the people that had gone missing? Or at least some of them? Valeria was wary as she and Talea neared the cell, gripping her halberd tightly and keeping it at the ready, then tapped the blade against the bars.

"Pardon," she called out. She kept her voice firm. The singing was eerily beautiful, but she did not come to be serenaded. "I am Valeria, Vengeance of the Light. Are you in need of aid? Were you trapped here?"

[EloHim]

"Boys...am i hallucinating again? Or we dead finally and get to see two redhead angels to take us away?"-the man behind the grate raised his head, trying to take a good look a the two women.
"Blimey...you aint hallucinating, man, they are really here..." - a voice from within the dark room, few men raising their heads.-"Or maybe those masked bastards finally decided to drive us completely mad...not that there is any point to that...heh..."- a few grim chuckles sounded from within. 

"If you are real...if you are not with them...please keep your voices down else the guards will try to see what's going on..."- the man got closer to the grate, his thin hands covered in what looked like dirt grasping the bars.- "Why are you here? Has someone sent you? From outside? Please, speak... its been awhile since we had any decent company besides ourselves."

[Spookery 💉]

Valeria drew closer, looking further down the hall in concern and gripping the halberd more tightly. These men certainly seemed like real flesh and blood... She inspected the bars to see if there was any locking mechanism to them.
She kept her voice low as she answered them, as requested. "We were sent by the estate to scout the area," she explained. "The road leading here was causing travelers to disappear. I don't suppose those would be you lot?"

[EtherealNoire]

Shrouded in silence and the pull of shadows, Talea lingered near the warrior of Light. She leant no words to the captives’ laments. Only a soft glow emitted from her cupped palms like a candle against the Night. It settled in her eyes whilst she gazed off into the murk, ever watchful for what may lay in wait beyond, and as she stood betwixt the iron and the skull atop her brow, so too did the hollow ivory appear to watch. Like a creature in hunt, they stalked the twilight, poised to face all those who claimed desolation’s might.

[EloHim]

"Travelers...Ha. We aint no travelers. We're luggage. Have no names, just callings: Am Shegar, Eved, Rob, Servus, shariha...So many names for nameless unpaid labor, hehehe... We have no home, have no one to look for us or remember who we were. Used to have price tags... but those bastards took even those." - a voice from the right side of the cell. Upon closer inspection one could see that those people had metal collars and their arms and legs were shackled and all those metal shackles were connected by a branching chain. Slaves.
"Those traces...those were cages on wheels. Slavers brought us here from...some city, i dont even know the name of that. They brought us here, handed us to the robed men in skull masks and left. They took some of us to where you came from... the rest of us are here." - explained the man in front of the two.
The bars were sturdy,none-budging. This window was the back of the cell, no locking mechanisms, nothing. The door was on the other side.

[Spookery 💉]

"I understand," Valeria answered gravely, looking at the door and window beyond her reach. "Did you all come in through that door there?" She nodded toward it. "And how many of them are down here?" She was fairly certain she could take on a small number by herself, so long as they weren't accompanied by swathes of other guards. The crusader straightened up. "We will release you," she stated firmly.

[EtherealNoire]

Talea too inclined her head in grim resolve, darkness fleeing from her features against a wash of silver. The stone, one from ancient knowledge, held secrets great as the Night held souls. Few understood its might. Though small within her palm, it granted the strength to vanquish corruption, and in her eyes, that strength reflected twice fold. She would avenge them. She drifted forward, wavering between sight and gloom while her fingers coiled about the bars, fleeting in touch yet granting comfort where words alluded her. Their kind perish not alone.

Turning amidst the Light Warrior’s vows, Talea withdrew once more into the nest of shadows.

“Thy path shalt ne’er end here.”

[EloHim]

"Yes...And there are not many of us...not yet. That's why I urge you not to."- The man behind the bars leaned onto the metal, his hands covered in what seemed like dirt at a first glance.
"Listen. The slavers will bring more of us here soon. A lot more. Those masked bastards seemed to pay a lot of gold for us to them. They talked about some…large sacrifice, a ritual that should happen like... 10 days from now… On the Solstice. They gonna bring a lot more others till that day. And...there is a lot more people guarding us...You two will be overwhelmed in seconds. Go back to where you came from, bring more men...crush them when they least expect it. But don't sacrifice yourselves over a small bunch.”- the man near the bars urged them, and one could assume everyone agreed with him, for none provided any opposition to his words. On the contrary, some other voice from the cell seem to agree with the man.
“Yep, you two will certainly die if you go further. The slavers left one of their...guard...things… to ensure we don't escape before everyone is delivered. It walks these halls...and sings...and there’s sand, that follows him...Eugh...gives me the worst shivers, the pale bastard. Checks on us every day...Oh shit… you must go… please, go now! They must not know you’ve been here or they gon get more guards...”

The reason for those words at first was unnoticeable...but then… They could hear it, all of them could… far away deep within the corridor… something...was humming a tune with a very low voice.

[Spookery 💉]

The noise from the end of the corridor sent an unpleasant chill up the back of her neck, but Valeria was torn. Her heart beat against her ribs, wanting to fight whatever was down there and to free these people now, but the urgency in their voices spoke volumes. They had no choice. Whatever was humming down the hall was unnatural--that much she knew. She reached back to grab Talea's hand, ready to bolt, and looked at the slaves with her face contorted in concern.
"Promise me you will be alright until then," she said, then tugged at Talea's hand. "We will return for you. With more of us."