Marked and Judged
Thirteenth Day of the Twelfth Month 293 AC
The Shadow of Old Sarnor, Plane of Shadow
Benerro of Volantis had always been a man of faith, and as he had grown older and closer to the wisdom of R'hllor, he had become a man of peace also. One who would sooner bridge divides than than carve them deeper, but he knew well there were times to set aside the comforting light of the hearth and take up instead the blazing fire of war. This was such a time, this temple to horror and excess older than humankind was such a place.
It was not easy to tell one dragon from another in the mass of claws, teeth, and too-bright eyes, but he recognized the gash the High Speaker had managed to inflict with his magic in the lustrous hide of one of the smaller dragons as he tried to cast it to dust. Benerro knew it was the same one Lady Drekelis had stripped of many of the protections the priests of the Dark Queen, or their mistress, had woven. For a moment in the midst of battle, his eyes closed in contemplation as he called upon the Lord of Light, just as he had all those years ago in the temple gardens coaxing spark to kindling, "Thine is justice, Lord," he
proclaimed.
Light brighter than the sun at midday burst into being across the dragon's scales, and for just an instant he could see it fully revealed before them all. No hideous monster this, but rather beautiful, terrible, and deadly, and of course prideful beyond human understanding, yet beneath the gaze of He Who Is the Light of Life, even this creature could be judged and found wanting. Fire poured into its mouth and its eyes, pried through its scales and boiled away its blood. It smashed into the ground lifeless, seemingly untouched, and for a moment his fellows recoiled in shock.
Perhaps even my companions are shaken, Benerro thought sadly. The wrath of a god was a terrible thing to invoke, even when it was necessary.
Stone scraped on stone, a grinding sound that sunk into his bones, and beneath that sound a dreadful roar filled with the malice of a thousand curses. Fire, not red but leaping amethyst, poured from the maw of the altar rushing towards Benerro, too swift to throw himself aside and too strong to ward off in the moments he had left.
A hand on his shoulder... a moment of vertigo.
"One should perhaps not stand quite so near a goddess' altar when you spit in her face," a familiar drawling tone announced from beside him. It seemed the High Speaker had not only recognized the prayer, but guessed what the reaction might be, and instead of continuing to attack had already been weaving his own spell.
"The best of all wards?" the priest asked, lips quirking into a smile. A jest he had heard some of the older Mysterium mages use.
"An esoteric way of ducking to be sure," High Speaker Zherys replied as he flung one lance of arcane power at the elder of the remaining dragons, one at the altar still burning hatefully.
Both melted away, not shattered, not dead, but gone like smoke in a high wind, leaving nothing but bare walls of black stone and a mirrored floor that reflected their thoroughly bemused company. Only the corpse and the wounds upon their flesh remained to mark the battle.
"Did the
temple just slither away," the dragon Relath asked, sounding offended.
"The Shadow Plane can be shaped even by the will of mortals, though one is more likely to encounter nightmares than dreams in these darkened halls," Lady Caleris noted, healing a long shallow slash along her face and neck with the nonchalance you might expect from one dusting off one's robes. "What a god can make of it... well, I suspect we are about to find out."
"The carved coils..." the flame born Lady of Skane mused. "That
did look like a beast. Perhaps
She might seek to animate it. The wards against death curses are still parted, are they not?"
Slow nods were the only answer. Most of their company looked up at the passageway out of the empty room warily.
"Well then, what are we waiting for, that trophy is not going to kill itself." Tipping his head graciously to Benerro, he added, "Your god can keep that one."
OOC: I know that spell is supposed to be restricted to good gods by RAW, but I find that kind of silly. Any god should be able to smite equally, it's just that the definition of 'sin' would change depending on their creed.
