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Post by rosallora on Feb 10, 2020 12:34:37 GMT -8
She didn't know that disgust in anything could be so viscerally felt, and she didn't know just how firm she was in her convictions or virtue until she saw his face and was able to keep herself together. He was a leper: she knew this. She had seen their faces before, their ruined limbs, their gangrenous looking bodies and their brokenness splayed out before her like a mystery she couldn't solve. His eyes were surrounded by black and rot, the lines of his face more carved than anything else. She wonders how long it had been since that skin had seen the sun. And now, it never would again. This cave. He had chosen it as his final stony bed, and not the soft and open arms of some fen or prairie. That is what he had said to her - to lay him down somewhere so that perhaps something sweet could grow from the sour form of his body.
Then, the thought whispers in the back of his mind, perhaps he mistakenly believes that this will not be his final resting place.
And then he says it outright. Life. Life within the cave, within that abyss. His mind just as far gone as the rest of him, just functioning well enough to keep his mouth and limbs moving. She feels the burn of tears down her cheeks as he turns from her. As he says what no one had.
Something inside her grips and sparks, pushes out a strange friction in her limbs that demands movement. She feels herself move, propelled by determination and a heart that wishes to follow him into the dark. No. Not into the dark. She wants to light his way. She wants to prove herself, to be the torch that was carried, to be the glow of safety, of divinity, in the most infested of places. If this was to lead him to his death, he would not perish alone, he would not fade into this dark and be bones at the bottom of some stone crevasse.
And when her hand reaches out into that empty, yawning thing, it is not what it should be. She is not consumed by the cold void. Instead, she glows against it. Her palm radiates Light, true Light, and though it should scare her, it should deserve prayer and devotion and the joyous shouts that miracles do, she feels instead a sureness, a radiance, that pulses throughout her. This is right. This is true. There is nothing to delay what is to come: life, or death.
"Roard."
She casts off light like a small flame, golden and growing more sure by the moment, her light flickering against the crags of the cave. It flares in her eyes, it warms the tips of her hair hidden beneath the dirtied white veil. It flows from her to the head of her mace, and it nearly bursts aflame, the top glowing like bright embers. The vestal steps, unhurried, but with a command with her limbs that is... new. And strange. She walks until she is beside him, then lifts her mace to illuminate the way.
"I will not leave you."
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Post by Kidney on Feb 10, 2020 23:33:25 GMT -8
Roard's face did not shift from its stoic look of determination, aimed towards the glowing Vestal, who chose to stay. The leper shifted in place a small bit, and looked ahead, the crusty cave loosing much of its frightening maw-like appearance. Encrusted with parasol-sized mushrooms and moss that looked more like mold, Roard found little fear remained of what could have lurked in the mine's entrance-terrors.
She lit his way, literally. Roard offered one more glance. Toustain. There she was, pious, loyal, strong. Vesta blessed her, finally, with something tangible. "She lives." He said, looking back from within the cave, to the gray, snow-stricken sky. "She lives."
The blessings of Vesta upon the two, golden light alongside them, the two delved into the cave, a steep decline into rocky darkness, with many bits of stripped bark that covered the ground in a semi-decomposed mulch. Ahead of them, the tunnel grew slightly wider, but more and more like a cave than a mine, less and less life occupying its reaches. After some time, the two arrived at what appeared to be a widening room of stone, at one end existed a iron door, slightly ajar. Light poured from the crack into the room around them.
Mulch gave way to sand, and the low ceiling reflected the bitter light back to the ground. A seeming mirror of crystal covered the entire ceiling.
Footprints appeared in the sand.
The ceiling rippled in the same place, like water.
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Post by rosallora on Feb 11, 2020 14:55:26 GMT -8
Toustain holds up her mace as the torching ends glows against the dark. The sand, smooth and silty underneath, is a strange, new texture underneath her boots. It shifts with her. It reacts to her actions, and when she sees the ripple in the sand beyond them, she does not falter.
She steps forward, the light pulsing outwards; she sees in her upper peripheral how her twin in black glass is doing the same.
"I am Toustain Royer. I am a servant of Vesta, a vessel of her will, I am imbued with and filled with her holy light, both comforting and scorching, both radiant and overwhelming, both filling to the soul and blinding to the void. Whatever obstacle here will step aside. I am here to do the work that should be done. I am here to fulfill an oath, and you, nor anyone else, will bar me from this. You will part from my shadow... you will go from the Light. Or heaven help you, I will take this mace, this torch, and I will smash you to cinders."
She has never heard her voice like this before. Its echoes, its volumes, how it sounds when bounced against stone. It does not shake. She is the Light that flows through her. She would see this man to the end of this journey.
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Post by Kidney on Feb 11, 2020 18:05:31 GMT -8
Silence. What once held so clearly and so acoustically the foundation of Toustain's challenge, fell quiet. The sands shifted once more. Across the crystal ceiling, the ripples perfectly reflected the movement of something ahead of Roard and Toustain. As if in twain, Roard stepped beside Toustain, staring ahead, trying to summon the imagination to characterize this formless presence. Cast adrift into the sea of nothingness still lingered the everpresent flame of Vesta, and on its edges, mere inches from its bright flaming torch, the light bent.
A hand materialized from nothing, translucent and clawed, its alienly-long digits pointed past Toustain's face, and to the leper at her side. In this, each finger but one curled back, a gnarled point aimed at Roard's chest. His heart.
Words echoed from nothingness, as quiet as a whisper, but everpresent. So undeniably truthful, cursed, real. "Both ahornah pass, mgng uh'eor ehye ephaiepgoka Iiahe f' mgepahch'."
As quickly as it appeared, the something within vanished, along with its hand. Beyond the two, beyond what once was, the door opened wide. Lurking within the doorway was a tall robed figure. Maroon robes obscured a thin body, and from its soiled shoulders rose mushrooms that shaded the monstrous man from darkness and light alike. His hooded head peered to the two, and his eyes glowed like winter embers, bright, beady.
"Both may pass. But one will exit differently than said one entered. A rough translation."
Roard gasped.
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Post by rosallora on Feb 11, 2020 18:57:54 GMT -8
She didn't know what to expect, but it wasn't this. This... this was a necromancer. There was a pure putridness to the air, it flowed through the clear crystal of the room and stuck in her nose despite the cloth separating her from the outside air.
"Exit... differently."
She sees the figure before her. Its wrongness, its terribleness. And she looks to Roard, his creaking form. His last chance. No, he didn't come here to die. He brought her here to... to do something that the rest of the would could not do. To bring him back to what he once was.
To defy death. To defy life. To defy the sickness that had infiltrated and infected his body, stealing the years from him in mere months. She stands still, silent, stony, looking at Roard. If he had chosen this path - the path away from what life had given him... he'd been robbed. He had come here, he had nearly fallen apart doing everything right. His last act, his last battle.
"Go, then," she says softly. "If... go, Roard."
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Post by Kidney on Feb 11, 2020 19:18:45 GMT -8
Roard's head cast a gaze to the Necromancer. The robed man threw one back.
Without a word, Roard advanced on the man. Over his shoulder, as if he could carry it not one moment longer, his fingers dislodged from his hands, and the cleaver fell behind him, half buried in the sand. Roard did not flinch, did not cry out. He could not feel them anymore. No emotions, no pity. The Rot had found his brain, and he felt his gaze cloud with each advancing step toward the artificer of undead oblivion.
The Necromancer meekly extended a hand to Roard, a symbol of trust. "My dreams found you well, Roard of Bad-"
Roard seized him by the throat.
The warbled cry of the necromancer was choked out halfway, and as the leper lifted the spellcaster from the earth he treaded upon, he carried the man into the room in front of him. With each step, walking grew harder. It was as if after all this time, Roard's body had finally given out, all at once. He carried the sputtering Necromancer forward, into the craggy room ahead. What laid within was little more than a meager living quarters.
What Roard's eyes laid upon was the prize.
A crevasse. A crack.
To each of its sides was a gaping maw, the width of a dinner plate, and filled with needle-like proboscises. Betwixt them both was a crack that grew taller than Roard, and oozed mud-brown pus. The pus had crystallized in a small wall near the bottom, and the rest pooled there, shifting in slow-motion. Beyond the pus-encrusted edges, a membrane thrummed quietly. In accordance with a heartbeat. Roard's. The Necromancer forced out a phrase, one that Roard repeated. "A soul for a soul."
The Maws craved, and the Amber membrane beat. Root-shells sat around the room, and covered the floor. Roard asked but one question. "How."
"Give...up the body you have. And the Vestal's soul."
This sentiment echoed into the crystal room, and so did Roard's response.
"No."
There was a grand crunch. The Necromancer stopped sputtering.
The neck felt soft in Roard's hand, mashed into a red pulp, and leaking red flesh from the sides, soaking the crushing claw that was Roard's last hand. He approached the Maw to the left, and rammmed the head of the Necromancer within its needled contents. A second crunch and a screech filled the rooms, and what remained of his head was ground to pulp and suckled into nothing. The next step, Roard assumed, was a sacrifice of his own. He approached the second Maw.
Doubt clouded his mind again, but, his hand still crept closer to the hole, meaty suckling mouths at the end of the proboscises threatened to attack him now, curling out of the Maw in an attempt to catch his hand while it lingered outside. Roard spoke again. "Toustain. Remember. I cared for you above all others."
He rammed his hand into the Maw.
His cry filled the entirety of the rooms, and his subsequent screams of pure agony followed, and what followed them was pure silence.
Roard's body lay lifeless against the floor, handless, his inky blood oozing fresh from the Right Maw. Behind the membrane, a cloud of red obscured the amber contents.
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Post by rosallora on Feb 11, 2020 19:30:04 GMT -8
It was as if it was all happening far, far too fast. Demands, denials, and death. Words that fell on ears that would be the last to hear them, and the last to keep them. The robed figure was nothing on the ground, a body with no life in it, a soulless heap.
And then, beyond... another.
She takes a step forward, then another, passing into this second room filled with void and despair. She does not understand what has happened, not quite. But there is a friend, and he was dead, his body lifeless and not in the gentle arms of the sweetgrasses or the warm earth, and she could not move the corpse. It would be a death sentence to herself, and he wouldn't want her to ruin her own life attempting to take a ruined body to a final resting place.
The necromancer here was dead. Its guardian... it had not spoken, nor struck out against her. The vestal falls to her knees, her eyes locked on the heal of bandages and armor, the sword and mace hitting sand as they fall from her aching hands. She bunches her fists against the soft, yielding surface below, taking a handful of the speckled stuff and watching it run from her palm to the ground again. Her shoulders sag. The sand divots with small spots of wetness as she closes her eyes. There was a new darkness, the only illumination coming from the distant, ambery clods of... something, in the walls. Her mace fades into a cool, inert state, her own determination snuffed as Roard's life was.
Yes. She thought she would be leading him to his final place. But she didn't expect for it to be anything like this. Her breath stutters in her chest, her throat tight and hot. The vestal slams a hand against the sand below, particulates pricking her palms. She gasps out a small, wrenching sob.
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Post by Kidney on Feb 11, 2020 19:44:09 GMT -8
And then, there was silence.
Followed by the beating of a heart.
The room was a quiet space, untouched by not a speck of dust, yet ancient as the stars. Books and tomes half-eaten by insects cluttered the desk to the leftmost side, and the bed that lay to her right was a heap of moth-scarred fabrics and feathers. This cretin left his life and dignity long ago, thrust into an endless cycle of death and redeath. Ahead of her beat the heart of the amber-red membrane, a pus-dripping vulva of darkness. Or was it an egg?
Something within her stirred again, a flame-fueled friction of the very morality of her entire being. But something, something unknown, yet as familiar as the mother's touch, forgave her.
Light began to glow from within the membrane ahead. A dim, soft yellow light that grew brighter and brighter. Her mace caught flame for a fraction of a moment. And in that moment, the sea of red that once obscured the oddities within the cravasse were thrown to the side, and the shape of a man wider than the necromancer, and just barely taller, pressed itself against the membranous skin. Light flowed from behind it, and its long hair floated above his head.
There was a grand rip.
A roar of pure, unadulterated emotion crashed against her mind, and in a wave of embriotic fluid that soaked her to her bones, a crashing man slammed her to her back, and rolled over her, and landed beyond her. Her eyes were dotted with stars, but as she blinked them away, she could see a figure, lying on his side mere inches from her.
His form was strong, but soft. Fat blanketed over hardened muscle and healthy tissues. A few long, thin scars drew themselves across his back, but asides from them, he was as pale as a newborn, and unblemished as one. His breathing was rapid, but began to slow, and his ooze-covered hands reached for nothing, yet everything. She could see, stuck to his back and strewn across his shoulders were globby locks of auburn, wavy hair. He was a giant, standing hands taller than her, should he had been standing.
About as tall as Roard.
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Post by rosallora on Feb 11, 2020 21:42:13 GMT -8
She's knocked and swallowed and spat out again, the woman left coughing on the sand, soaked through with strange water and blood that tints her white robes further into pink and orange. She spits, the foul taste of something slightly bitter on the tongue spewing from her mouth. She pants out a few breaths, tears washed away by whatever had come over her. She supports herself on her elbows, her eyes wide with disbelief as she looked at the man that was beside her, limbs akimbo.
She looks towards the wall where the thing had burst, a cluster of white bandages and abandoned armor still laying there. And yet, she asks, voice shaky, tentative... "Roard...?"
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Post by Kidney on Feb 11, 2020 21:49:38 GMT -8
The single greatest...he had ever felt.
Roard looked to his hands, tears streaming down his face. The sound of Toustain's voice nearly brought him to a screaming sob, and he shot up, sitting far up and turning to her once more. Had he had any less restraint, he would have hugged her tighter than he had ever held any other person in his entire life. But modesty screamed through him, and he covered his delicates with two hands, cupping them and shielding them from Toustain's eyes, though they had been on a small amount of display for some time.
He scooted away from her, his wide, soft, rosy-cheeked face flushing a heavy red, crying, face twisted into a look of sheer jubilation that Toustain could have never deciphered before, and would never fully understand now. "TOUSTAIN!" He roared, jolly, laughing heartily. "Toustain! I can see you!"
He cocked his head to the side, looking around, but only on Toustain, locked to her. "You're shining!"
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Post by rosallora on Feb 11, 2020 21:56:25 GMT -8
His voice was so different. Unhindered by the effort that it took to push air through lungs and through vocal chords, throat no longer raspy and raw, his tongue able to form the words he needed without conscious effort - it was as if she was talking to nearly a different man entirely. It was smooth, warm, it was jubilant. He was jubilant. She can't help the smile that overtakes her face when he says her name, when he tells her that she's shining, and through she doubts that she still is, she will allow him to think of her as such. Just a slight bit of holy vanity, just for now, and soon that will fade as the literal glowing had.
"It was my mace that was shining, truly," she replies, and she heaves herself up. She is doing well not to gaze at Roard's body, but it was quite a thing she'd never seen before (Roard or otherwise) and the curiosity welling up in her was hard to ignore. Still, thankfully, he remembered his own modesty. Toustain picks up her mace, then extends a hand to him. He looked... untainted. Unsullied, by the land. And though her hands were still wrapped in linen, she does not think about infection at all. Only helping a friend to his feet.
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Post by Kidney on Feb 11, 2020 22:08:14 GMT -8
Roard aimed a glance to her hand. Linen. Soft, white, rough, maybe? Roard cocked his head to the side, looking down to himself, and removing his hand from his crotch, to grab her hand. Unfortunately, this revealed half of his delicates, and he looked away from both himself and Toustain, and as soon as he got to his feet, he covered himself again.
He looked to his body.
Rotted, fetid. Roard couldn't take his eyes off of himself. Was that even himself? How could that have lived? Roard, in this health, could not begin to understand what him from moments ago could have done. It was lost on him in the surge of smells, sights, and Toustain. He looked back to her, her face, her eyes, her form. Every part of her was as great as he had imagined. "Toustain..." He said, looking to her. "You are shining." He said again, smiling wide.
"You."
He poked her in the chest. She was so warm. "I knew you could do it." He smiled, chuckling, deep, like floral thunder. "I knew you could!" He got louder, laughing now. "I KNEW IT!" He roared, jiggling just enough, soft, chubby form exposed to Toustain. Though, delicates mostly obscured by one large, callused hand. "I told you!"
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Post by rosallora on Feb 11, 2020 22:15:20 GMT -8
She can't help her laughter or the flush on her cheeks at his assertion and the finger jamming lightly into her breastplate. He was so sure of her, surer than she'd ever be. "Alright- alright. Yes, the Light has finally... rested on me, alighted on me... it has. It has, Ser Roard, now please. Let's be utterly gone of this place. We can take you to the abbey and put you in some clothing and... well..."
She begins to walk, removing the veil from her head. She offers it behind her, allowing him to use it. The air nips lightly at her skin, hair releasing from its covering to rest about her face. "I suppose you'll leave, then? After all you've cured that horrible sickness that took so much from you. What use would you have for staying in this dark and accursed place?"
She passes into the black mirrored room, seeing herself briefly as she looks above. She is not as bright as a bonfire but there is a glow, a candle's flicker, a sign of hope. She feels it in her heart as she walks, despite how she knows that now she will lose Roard in a different way altogether.
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Post by Kidney on Feb 11, 2020 22:25:20 GMT -8
"Well, I guess."
Roard looked confused to the veil, and grasped it very quietly, and very softly. He seemed very odd, and allowed himself a moment to recollect his thoughts. He seemed scared again, and slowly put the veil on his head.
The next moment brought him back to reality. "Oh." He said, slowly yanking the veil off, and then trying his best to cover his delicates with it, walking alongside Toustain, and looking up with her. "Oh, I did not see that." He said, looking down and away from it, "I don't like reflections." He wheezed, coughing a small bit, and following her again.
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Post by rosallora on Feb 12, 2020 3:46:34 GMT -8
"So modest. You have no reason to fear mirrors anymore, other than a few scars." The vestal continues on, leading him out of the dark cave and into the oaken wood, where a dusting of snow had already settled on the ground. The air had a bite to it, something that was even more obvious now that be adrenaline of battle had fully worn off.
She realizes belatedly that she left the sword laying there, when the Guild could most likely use it to train someone new. But she doesn't want to go back, worried that whatever fair luck had taken to them for now would disappear the moment that she hesitated on anything. She doesn't like that he has to walk on the bare ground as they make their way back to the Abbey, but there isn't much choice in the matter. " Well, we will take care of you until you decide to leave. I will be sure of it."
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