To Shield the World (Warhammer High Elf Mage Quest)

Death to the Shaman


Honor is much to you.

Tethia's life is more.

You may not be capable of speaking with Indrast and Indiron at the moment, but you do manage to share a meaningful look with the two gluttons. Their red eyes born into you as you point at him, point at yourself, then point at them. The gold and jewels worked into their fur and particularly into Indrast's mane jingle and shake as they nod, and get low, preparing to prowl. Tethia, behind you, begins weaving the scraps of magic she can, attempting something, even as you start to hear your allies approaching the sanctum. Whatever else happens, he will not survive.

You can only hope this works.

Then you rise up from the bush, drawing Deathclaw as you do. The white of the blade's steel glints in the sunlight once more, bright and resplendent in this frozen pit, purity seeming to drive away the wretched shadows of this place, even as the rubies worked into the pommel and the gold on the crossguard catch it and reflect it about as well, yet more light that forces the shadows away. The Winds are slim things, but they shift and bend under the weight of a real wizard, calling, asking you for your help and for some kind of freedom, sluggish as they are.

The shaman only nods as you approach, beginning to thud the haft into the black dirt, breaking through the snow. His muscles subtly shift, in ways unnatural: a less keen eye may miss it, but to the gaze of one who studies the Aethyr, to the gaze of one who has been hawk and wolf, bear and bat, it is unmistakable. Flexing, stretching, push and pull in odd ways his body was never meant to move.

"Your blade. It's much like my spear, isn't it?" The way he speaks is much, much, much too relaxed for somebody who's about to try and kill you, for somebody you're about to try and kill.

"Your spear exists to kill." You enter your guard, sword point forward, left leg back, right leg forward. "My sword...it's a tool of justice. A tool for the righteous. It exists to protect, from the evils you and yours serve, human. Never doubt that, creature of Chaos, creature of lies."

"Is that why you fried me like an egg? Why you killed--"

"Everyone of your people who died today was a slaver, or willing to toss away their lives for slavery. They are wolves. They have no right, none at all, to complain that shepherd has finally kept them from threatening his flock. Now save me your prattling noises, and fight me like you promised, for I should rather catch that thing to the gut than bandy about crooked words with the servants of daemons and Chaos and raw, unthinking greed."

Sweet Asuryan above, protect you from chatty slaves to darkness.

The two of you circle each other, for a brief moment. Water falls from the pine needles and lands on the dirt, making a slight drip, drip, drip as it does. The distant smell of ale and juniper berries and blood fills the air from the hall, and you can hardly tell why, and more than that you don't care. All you care about right now is winning, and you turn your considerable attention towards him.

Warrior of Asuryan: 79+20 (Primeval Fire) +15 (Deathclaw) + 15 (Swordmaster Training) + 20 (Indrast and Indiron) =149 Vs. 3????+?????=111 (My Place of My Power, My Secret)

He moves.

He moves fast, at that. His spear lashes out like a gray tongue, the steel glinting, the sound like a whip whistling through the air as it approaches you, cutting through the very winds themselves it seems. It comes right for your heart, angled towards the fire at the center of your being, Fast, resolute, a good blow; he would not be remiss as a member of the shield wall that came with you, perhaps even as a leader. You will not lie.

But.

But you are faster. You side step once, pivoting backwards on to your left foot, then again on to your right. He overcommits, as is to be expected, and so you follow through with a horizontal cut aimed at disemboweling him, right at the belly, a good place to aim against the servant of the Tempter for there's a skill valley where they don't expect the basics. It's too boring, after all, too based on building the proper foundational skills rather than showing to the glorified child they worship, the glorified child they adore, the thing they let control them.

What is considerably less basic, however? Advanced tactics. Trickery and treachery. Deceit. You are no Silver Helm: you are a mage, a wise one.

There is a place for honor, and a place for victory. And all things in their place.

Should some Dwarf Lord come calling for your head, you'd duel the braggart sword in hand, one-on-one, as the Cadai intended.

But as Asuryan, bearing Ithildrom, proved as the Smoking Bull dared threaten His People and assail His Throne in the Heavens, there is a time for dismissive, contemptuous victory. Those not worthy of honor. Mercy, perhaps, if the mood strikes. Always justice, and always wisdom.

And in other cases, two White Lions.

His eyes widen as they come snarling from the bushes, appearing from two different directions, Indrast from the left, Indiron from the right, their fangs gleaming, their claws shining, their roars loud enough even your ears hurt. He manages to deliver a kick, and not a small one, to Indrast, and disengages his spear enough to jam the butt into Indiron's side, sending the poor creature rolling in the dirt mewling more like a common pussy cat rather than a creature that could fight a minotuar by itself and probably win, bigger than a horse and twice as loyal and twice as hungry, particularly these gluttons.

He is, however, less, capable of avoiding your attempts to cut him. Deathclaw winds through the air and carves into side, grinding and slicing through the armor, better forged by a better wizard for better gods and to better ends. To his credit, it does manage to keep him alive, turning a blow that should have left him at best paralyzed into just a particularly bloody wound to his side, pouring out something pink and purple and vile that splatters on the iron.

You watch, mildly disgusted but not altogther surprised, as the pink blood slides together with the metal, making a patch where you had slashed it open with your blade. It quickly hardens, knitting together into something that reminds smells faintly of poppies, even as he gasps and grins, apparently amused. "Oh I have missed killing your kind, elf. You can only torment the Maggots for so long before all the bloviating about "Grudge this" and "Ancestors that" gets boring, you know?"

You snarl. "There is something...deeply...wrong with you. Something crooked. Something twisted. I don't know if I can help you. I don't know if I want to. All I know..."

(Tethia Vs. The False Rune: 66+40 (Master of Qhaysh, Master of Eight Winds/100 DC)

Something Wakes Up...

"Is that I don't know if I want to."

There is a sound like shattering glass. Like metal being dragged against stone, against the dirt, against glass and against all other manner of things, high pitched and yet yowly rather like a cat.

A woman's voice, but a short, compacted, dense one.

"ZHUFUL! DRENG! NAI THAGGORAKI, NAI ZHUFDURAZ! UNBARAKI, UNBARAKI, UNBARAKI!"

You tilt your head even as he curses something that makes your ears start to tingle; if you were a lesser creature, less used to magic, your ears would probably be filling with blood at this point as is.

"Seems you've got another problem, hm?"

Several lights do flare up, but they are lesser, weaker things. Like a candle against a fireplace.

Warrior of Asuryan II, Electric Boogaloo: 21+70=91 Vs. 7?????+???????=156

He screams, and that is just about the only warning you get before he goes on the offensive. Fast, brutal, stabbing, striking blows towards you, quickly pushing you back, all trying to push towards Tethia, who, having broken the Rune enough, now shines with rainbow light as she tries to snuff out the others as well, and let whatever--or whoever--he has trapped in there out to vent her displeasure towards the Shaman for trapping her in the first place. The lions manage to get back up and try and leap at him again but he grabs Indrast by the mane and tosses him into Indiron, sending the two of them sprawling, yoweling, screeching again. You hear bleak laughter from somewhere as madness and determination fill his eyes, cruelty too, and he launches into a reckless, brutally fast assault, like wind itself, like rain and lightning. Your sword dances with his spear for brief moments, flashes of white against black as you just manage to parry, to block, to keep yourself alive. In spite of everything, you do manage to stand as a wall, a tower, for a brief moment against the enemy.

A brief moment indeed.

You see an opening. A flash, where he overextends himself for a blow towards your eye.

You take the attack, of course. What else could you do? Open his throat, and Shaman or no, he will die, there's not much bred of mortals that won't. It seems, indeed, to be the one certainty in this world: take the head and it's at least a good start. Even daemon or undead, though they may in some sense survive, are no longer a problem afterwards, for at least a time, and even just buying some time can be enough: Aenarion bought time with his war, and saved the world in the doing.

And you pay for it, this attempt to kill him. His spear lashes out, you just manage a sloppy parry, but not one that's good enough: the iron tip of his spear pierces your side, opening it, opening everything, sliding through your robes, through your flesh, through your everything.

It hurts.

But you are not helpless.

You will never be helpless.

You manage to deliver a spin kick with your boot and knock him back, forcing the spear out of your side as you do. Blood pour from the wound, plastering what remains of your robe to your side, staining the beasts that decorate it, the silks and wools of Avelorn and Chrace, all ruined as you bleed out your life's blood onto it.

He howls in joy and licks his spear, laughing, joyous rhapsodies of amusement, of pride, of something worse. You expect to see him heal, to see him recover, to see his own wound start to knit back together, as he watches you suffer.

But it doesn't happen.

He is simply enjoying watching you bleed. He is enjoying watching your suffering, and enjoying the taste of your blood.

Perverse. Deranged. Wrong.

Corrupted.

Beyond even Druchii, simply warped. Broken. Did he kneel to the evils of the world? Did the Shadow, the threat, the enemy, so good at lying, whisper hopeless rhapsodies in his ear? Was he born this way? Is it the influence of magic on him, of being so close to the source of the Wound?

Not that it matters. Idle curiosity.

Pity.

Cold certainty.

Defiance.

He will not touch Tethia, not while you can still breath, not while you have a sword in your hand.

Unleashing It: 1+40=41
(Miscast Table: 3)

Energy...whines.

Hums.

Builds up.

Tethia! The Winds whip and whirl and growl and scream as she tries to wrench them from the leash this monster has put them under and force them into shape, force them into substance, force them into reality.

But force...force is not the way of Qhaysh. Force is not the way of the Asur. Force is not the way of magic. And magic does not like being reminded of that.

There is a sound like paper tearing.

Luminous, pure, pristine prisms of light fill the air, fill everything. The humming grows louder, higher, deeper, richer. Power, so much power, power everywhere. Arcane Unforging, an attempt to break

And then the next you know, the world is light and sound and color and force and you are flying through the air, blood pouring out of you like a wine decantur.

You only stop moving when you slam into a tree. Your head spins and your ears ring, and the world remains prisms and rainbows and rainbows and prisms for brief moments.

Everything hurts.

Everything more than hurts.

Looking down, you have landed on your arm...roughly. Perhaps it's broken, perhaps it's not.

That can wait.

The good news is, the Winds of Magic flow again.

The bad news is, the Shaman's still alive.

He doesn't look much better than you, at least. Admittedly, wearing armor does seem to have kept him generally in one piece in the same way supping on magic has kept you together, but from the way his arm is dangling, it's definitely broken.

Tethia...

Tethia breathes, unconcious but by the Cadai still alive, by the Cadai there is still hope for her and for all of you.

Indrast and Indiron are alive as well. They stand in front of you, snarling and growling in the direction of the damn shaman, who has grabbed his spear and threatens you...no, not you, he is holding it in a guard but he is not looking at you. He is looking at what was his Hall, though now it's been turned to so much cinder and ash, more than half of it blasted apart. His eyes are wide and his face has turned white.

And it's not hard to see why.

There's a dwarf.

She seems...oddly familiar, and it takes you a moment to realize: she's the same figure as the one from your visions as you entered the temple of Asuryan.

Armor and all.

She looks at you in shock, as though she can barely believe it, but her eyes only narrow with...disgust and contempt and hate and rage as she sees the Shaman, who steps back, a bit of fear written in his face as he realizes things have gone very wrong for him very quickly, even as your own mind races to realize what the hell is happening.

She draws her ax, and it burns with bright fire.

[] This kill is yours. The honor...is yours. And it will be a cold day in hell before you let the haclad take it.
[] She was chosen by Asuryan. Let her go about her business.
--
Asur Culture Corner:

Learn Eltharin

Ithildrom: Silver Hope, Asuryan's silver bow which fires golden arrows. With it he wounded, slew and broke many foes during the great catastrophe, either partially or wholly casting them from the tapestry of fate: The Endless Malice, the Smoking Bull, the Paradox, and things nameless aside. It would be a rare thing indeed for him to turn it on even the Cytharai in comparison to those monsters, however.

No moratorium this time, just fucking go for it.