Face of Heresy
Tenth Day of the Seventh Month 293 AC
You do not take your eyes of the warped figure, but your mind is elsewhere:
"Report." The thought is less than a word but Mereth and Leto hear it just the same and understand your meaning.
"Their breath is ragged, though they think it mere mortal ailment..." There is a moment's clinical hesitation as the Fallen weigh the suffering before them in the cold balance of their long ages' experience.
"They have time, though not much of it. Minutes..."
The decision weighs upon you like a mountain. How much is too much? How long can you stand here trading words with this monster? Yet how can you not for the sake of others yet unknown? Whatever the one before you might be, he has proven himself canny and strong enough in sorcery to be at risk even to your own thoughts thrice warded by crown, talisman, and dragon's blood. And so you do what brief months ago would have seen rankest madness, you trust the word and judgement of a baatezu. You answer to cold-eyed lord of this desecrated place: "It seems unmannerly to do battle like a pair of barnyard thugs scrambling in the dirt, knowing not each other's name and purpose," you offer.
"So you count the host as needing to explain himself when you have so rudely interrupted his plans?" There is an edge of carefully-crafted mockery to the words, the mark of one who thinks you enthralled by pride.
A pity to leave such a tool idle. "Host?" you scoff. "How bold you have grown, oh decrepit spider. If you would make a trade of it, so be it. Ask what questions your prying eyes could not witness nor your withered ears could hear that thou may know the inevitability of thy fall before your miserable life is reaped at the last." Just about what Waymar would say... no, what he would have said two years ago when he was yet young and chivalry had not yet been tempered by the stern practicality for dozens of battles. Let him think you a fool boasting like toad in springtime.
"Where dost your magic spring from, dragon-man?" There is no hesitation in the words. "I feel power beyond power upon you, more than common sorcery can account for."
You lie with deft skill and an easy heart both. You speak of secrets gained in Qarth under the guise of Master Lieu, of philters drank in secret and lore pilfered by night. Grand are those lies, just as he might expect, but brief also that you not run the full span you have been allotted down spinning yarns. Then it is your turn to question how he came to be here in a desecrated hall to the Many-Faced God.
The answer you receive is as disquieting as it is honest, if you are any judge of men. "I did not break it but built it so from the start, a shattered circle for a shattered world, a sign of death undone, vanquished. Many are the faces I wore and many the deeds greater than thy pitiful line of kings. I have seen the truth of death... it does not come for all, nor should it as the Faceless Priests whisper, but is instead an ailment to be cured, a dragon to be vanquished."
A chill runs down your spine, not from the feeble jab at your pride but something far more insidious: a gleam of kinship. Have you not turned death's hand aside from those you loved? Have you not undone its touch? Do you not even now plan to live if not forever then at least near enough as to make no difference by the measure of humankind?
More does he speak this most troubling host: "Wherefore must we all bow to the whims of divinity forged in the petty hopes and small-minded fears of the churning crowds? Slaves were those who first served Death and slaves they remained even onto their dying breath. I do not take faces to kill but to live. A pity I cannot have yours...
yet." Silence falls expectant upon the red-ringed moment when battle is joined, but still you do not take the bait. "I will enjoy breaking you as I have enjoyed few things, dragon-man."
No sooner had the words been spoken that you hear Mereth's words in your mind once more:
"It grows swifter now... the man goes blind, the woman struggles to speak..." Another pause, this one less contemplative and more pleasantly surprised.
"Demons at last. Something worth drawing steel on..."
With that you launch yourself upon the foe, Dark Sister at the ready and all but humming in eagerness in your hand. As you charge you roar, the sound fit so
shake earth and sky, and yet your foe does not even flinch... as though the blow had never been. Only then do you feel it, not the gaping screaming hole you had witnessed before but a subtle
stilling, the absence of all magic. The veil having served its purpose, your foe drops it with a thought, revealing dozens of enchantments below, none stronger than the
warding to bar all life from the thing's presence. As close as you were when the spell surged back to life it would have sent you staggering back, perhaps even flat on your face, had it not been for one small thing—you are a dragon though you wear no scales now, and the cloak of tainted gold is still about your shoulders though in the guise of silk.
Dragonsteel alight with
amber fire conjured with the last of your legend-granted strength cuts at the dark hood to reveal a face out of nightmare, pitted and burned, withered yet not dead, wispy white hair that might have once been silver... its eyes weeping blood and flame:
I... See... You... Syrax's Get...
The words strike like a hammer blow, the crown upon your head suddenly heavy as lead, and you know yourself in the presence of something touched by Valyria's Sorrow, by the Fifteenth itself.
The magic takes hold, and suddenly the dreadful figure is trapped like a fly in a coffin of amber, one you are not sure you
ever want to crack.
"The deterioration of the mortals has halted. The demons still fight!" Mereth calls.
What do you do?
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OOC: You can't see an Anti-Magic Field with Arcane Sight because there's no magic to see, until that is the caster dismissed it as a free action, resuming the duration of all their buffs.
