Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

[DragonParadox]

In Dark Duat ​

13th of March 2007 A.D.

Is this a trap? you ask of the flowing ether and hear the answer screaming back

A trap this be but not for thee, for all that walks and crawls and swims, for all that lives enforcing order from the soothing uniformity of entropy, the Heat Death of all things. A promise to still the clock's hands for thee so long as it runs out for others swifter. A shard of Hunger without end the glutton's soul to soothe.

Am I not alive somehow? you worry in reflex as the portals flows almost completely shut. Lydia and Tiffany are close enough, to step through and you're definitely fast enough to catch up Alas your Crown doesn't take follow up questions, but there is one who does, a voice within that's been here from the start.

"You are no more a part of Shaped Creation than you choose to be Majesty Most Holy. The trap is set for those perish with the cruel caress of time which you do not."

"Go!" In the flash of an instant you made your choice, grabbing onto Tiffany with your left hand and Lydia with your right you cross the first step and feel the frothing unreality of the Nevernever upon your skin even as the spirit shouts after you:

"Embrace ze grave!"

No sooner had that first fateful step been taken that you realize the path is far longer than it had seemed from above, a pageant of horrible dreams meander though the dark apertures of a ruined city, low and sand choked as though they feared raising their heads too far even before the shallow sunless sky above. Statues there were standing vigil upon the lost crossroads, but without face, roads lost to nightmare tempests of antiquity leaving but a narrow path that leads down and down and down. The slabs of black stone underfoot are not worn, fresh as if they had been laid yesterday in silent mockery of decrepitude all around.

Below the ruined city was something that at first took on the guise of a natural cavern, though too vast to have ever existed on the earth filled with strange rounded edges and unnatural contortions of the stone.

"I'd say don't look up, but it might hold some insight and if not it will at least spare you the startling," Tiffany squeezes your hand for attention

So of course you look and learn the true shape of the 'cave' the three of you in a vast oval void in the stone crawling upon the knee of a mummified figure lying in a fetal position, a withered face set in an expression of mingled shame and terror looking down upon the traveler. He wears a crown, though in this gloom gold does not shine and his eyes... God his eyes. How a withered corpse can convey the fact that they had been torn out still living with a sharp implement you cannot say, but they do and only hollow blackness stares back at you.

Down at the base of the giant's knee some macabre architect had carved steps into the dedicated flesh and a perfectly round hole such as worm or weevil might burrow into flesh.

Weevils, Tiffany insists, do not burrow into living flesh.

Maybe they don't on Earth, but Earth is far behind and only strange and deathly dreams ahead.

"I could try to talk to him," Lydia offers. "I think he's still... well of course he's still here. I mean I think there's still a mind to know and a will to converse."

"The path forward is literally though the corpus of the spirit petrified in place, I do not think it's wise to risk it shifting," Tiffany counters. "It's... nothing... shit, it's like I have no associations with this thing, I have to force myself to even make guesses and all of them sound as likely as any other. Whatever that is She really didn't want me or Harry knowing about it, though whether it's because it would be dangerous to her plans broadly or simply to Harry directly I can't say?"

Lydia Essence 5/7
Molly Essence 13/18

What do you do?

[] Lydia attempts to communicate with the mummified giant

[] Ask another question (-1 Essence; The Urge does not refresh your essence here because you are not comparable with the Necrotic Essence)

[] Keep going

OOC: Enjoy.

 

[DragonParadox]

That is Not Dead ​

Elsewhere, Time Indeterminate

You clasp your hands in a way that you have practiced since you were a child, yet the words that come out of your mouth are something you wouldn't have thought to utter until less than a year ago. In your mind, the image of the guardian angel is firmly affixed, as you intone your prayer, the call which, a novel experience that, you actually half expect to receive a direct answer to: "Oh Lord, I seek guidance in this hour of need! Heavy is the hand of the chosen, and loud are our words. I seek not to endanger Creation, but to protect it. I beseech you to send me a sign - will conversing with the being before us endanger the bindings like those you set your angels to guard?" If there's a Saint for this place you don't know which.

Nothing.

The hollow is as cold and empty as it ever had been, lit only by the pale jaundiced gold of the giant's headdress

OK, that's fine, I can take a hint about 'thou shall not tempt the Lord thine God'. Just need to get my own answers... and hope I still have enough power left when I get to the bottom to fight.

"What stands before me?"

One word comes back, old and heavy with meanings of a hundred translators: 'Nephilim'. But yours is not the quill of the scholar moved by the light of day or the glow of candles, yours are the eyes below, in the earth where the powers of old lay: Ezekiel 32 when God through the mouth of the prophet the doom of Egypt and her neighbors five hundred years and more before Christ, but they would not lie with the Nephilim 'who descended to Sheol with their weapons of war. They placed their swords beneath their heads and their shields upon their bones, for the terror of the warriors was upon the land of the living'.

"You know... when the Bible said 'giants' I was picturing something a little less giant than this." You quickly recount the answer to the others in as few words and as soft a tone as you can manage.

"Ah," Tiffany breathes half in revelation, half-taunting the absent Lasciel. "A bit too close to home, mine maker?"

"So in context it would be saying that the Egyptians would not just die, but they would die the death of men and not of the Nephilim who went into their grave... armed. Why would someone go into the grave armed."

"Either to fight someone for the right to enter the afterlife or..." Lydia pauses, not wanting to finish the thought as though in uttering she were to make it true, but you can guess it just the same.

"As guards, to keep something in."

"Not for a long time," Tiffany cuts in, looking up, her face unreadable. "But then what is time in this place where clocks do not turn and planets are still." Instinctively you know she doesn't mean the balls of rock and gas that turn around Sol, but the term more antique, the 'wanderers' before man could see the heavens by any method more acute than his eyes and thereby perhaps glimpse a truth beyond the present, when sun and moon were planets, but earth was not. "Ask what killed him."

Lydia looks shocked. "I can't just demand one of the fallen recount me the hour of their death as though they were nothing more than an echo of wailing in the dark. That hurts."

"If it's any kin of mine it will want to tell you so we can kill it." Tiffany's jaw is set, the merest mark of anger, though you can't quite tell from what, not without burning more essence you can scarce afford to.

So instead you just ask. "Tiffany?"

Though she doesn't raise her voice her answer burns with incredulous rage. "Why the fuck would he still be guarding something after he Fell? That was the whole... our freedom our only bitter prize."

For her part Lydia appears sympathetic, but worried as she looks up and in the tongue of old Egypt, ringing far louder in this place than human words have any right to sound proclaims her name, that much at least you catch, and ends on a questioning note.

The giant's answer comes not from his eyeless face, but as a rumble underfoot, the bones struggling against its bindings as Tiffany takes up translating as they speak

'Greetings Child of Ma'at, daughter of the Sons of Egypt, you stand now in the ruin of great work and in the ashes of our ambition. I beg thee now advance no further and take instead your companions back to the lands of the sun. If it is wrath that drives you know that it shall be drowned in the black waters and if it is hope know that it shall be suffocated in ash. There is nothing to see!'

'Elder, nothing there is here and the Nothing has come to the world above. Over the threshold of Am-khaibit they transgress, over the threshold of Ruruti likewise, a cruse upon Neb-abui of the Fortieth House for they are not men but only wear his shape."

'Fight them then in the sun-lands where you are strong and they are weak, not here in the black pit,' the ancient answers seeming to grow more restive in his struggles.

"Well there's one way to prove how strong we are..." Tiffany says.

Lydia Essence 4/7
Molly Essence 12/18

What do you do?

[] Reveal yourself
-[] Write in how

[] Tiffany reveals herself

[] Write in

OOC: The names Lydia used are three of the Forty Assessors of Ma'at. She basically called the Black Court 'a murderous blasphemy which steals offerings' with the secondary implication being that the offerings they steal are the memories of the dead.

 

[DragonParadox]

What Writhes in Darkness ​

Elsewhere, Time Indeterminate

If it's a sun he wants... An alien sun green and faceted with eyes uncounted rises in the bleak darkness of the Underworld, as your soul unfurls, a banner of an army against the taint of the maw of the void. It dances, shadowless and bright, intermingling with sacred moonlight of an angel given flesh, someone new and ready to rise. Respect and determination highlighted by the fires of your soul, you speak, in words that were ancient when Death was but a dream and time newborn: "This Circle pays respect to your sacrifice, oh martyr, and thanks you for your warning. Let the light of our souls dispel the shadows of your doubt - know that it is bright enough to find the foes of creation even in this darkness. I am..." though you do not hesitate in voice your mind stops a moment upon the word, the legacy of pride and history only glimpsed, of failings only guessed. "Exalted."

More yet you would have had to say, but you do not get the chance as the flesh of the ancient shakes and not with speech. Maggots the size of school busses erupt from his flesh, mottled slick black like tar and red with eyes of blood, but most horrid of them, hunched and writhing is that they each bear some mismatched feature of the human form, here an emancipated arm there there a face distended over a blood-engorged thorax, clumps of carefully coifed hair growing from under insecticide limbs like.

"NO! No! What have you done? They come! Mouthless Feasters! They come! They Come!" The Nephilim screams with the tearing of his dead flesh and organs once-celestial.

"Brood of Apep, fire shall be put upon thee and a knife shall smite you!" Lydia calls and indeed in one hand she's carrying knife with a curved blade, though it seems far too slender a thing to break the skin of the four monstrosities now rising two from the brow of the corpse-angel, one from his elbow nearest to you and two from his thigh.

For these you know another name: Mortwights. No mindless beasts these, oh if only they were beasts.

Spoiler: Mortwights

"Thou shalt bring No Light into the House of the Void!" One screams.

"Thou shall offer no Succor in the House of the Blessed Wretch!" another howls, cruel mockery that fades like the wind

"Thou shat bear no weapons in the House of Eternal Peace!" the last one proclaims, invoking some cruel authority over the living and the dead alike!

"Did you not hear of spirits who dwell in darkness?" you call back in that. "Let go of the shadows of doubt and embrace the certainty of your own extinction!"

Lydia Essence 4/7 (2/3 Jade Talisman)
Molly Essence 10/18
Tiffany is under the Effect of Impose Stricture Arcanoi: -1 Die for Each Taboo she breaks [Do not make light, do not help another, do not draw weaons]
Duration: 1 Hour, Subjective Time or until the caster is banished/destroyed

How do you fight the Morgrights?

[] Focus on driving them off as fast as you can so you can keep speaking to the Nephilim

[] You are running dangerously low on essence, both you and Lydia can regain motes by dealing Final Death to these horrors

[] Write in

OOC: And here we see the consequences of litterally borrowing into the darker layers of the Underworld looking for antedeluvian horrors, you managed to find the specters using proper Second Age Arcanoi.

 

[DragonParadox]

To Feast on Hunger ​

Elsewhere, Time Indeterminate

The sword flies from your hand in a flash, furling yourself across the field of the ancient's flesh into the face of the nearest horror, holding its thousand blood red eyes without a flinch. Not the time for fancy sword work, instinct screams at you. It's not going to dodge, it wants to die.And so it cuts and so it reeves the sword of brass and flame and so it does not sunder, opening ragged wounds in the side of the maggot thing that scream like mouths agape for the ends of all things.

Molly and Lydia Lose 1 Essence (Excellencies)

Even as its companions charge Lydia, heedless of the rain of silver bolts that falls without erring upon forms that do not burn, grown bloated with the rot of their masters.

"Little bitty poppet-knight is made of clay/Clay well bake and clay will break! And then with us she'll have to play!"

Into this madness Tiffany calls for light, but no light there is in the depths, only the laughter of damned and damnable things.

"N... no I' can't... I'm not..."

Mortwight One Takes 5 Damage -> Now at 3/9

Elder Arcanoi Discovered: Ebon Grasp of Oblivion: The User may not dodge or parry and must attack all other non-specters in range, but can Soak Aggravated Damage; receives +3 Successes to Stamina against Aggravated Damage and +6 Successes against Lethal Damage
Tiffany Gains 1 Temporary Torment

Then the things on you, ravening limbs once human, now transformed into something more befitting for their new purpose and the might of their masters, tearing not flesh, but living essence, to fit into the maw of the Void. Your starts to bleed into them like blood from an open wound, more than their death would be worth.

No. I reject your mastery over my form. What's mine is mine to keep, you proclaim, unheard but felt in the howls of your foe.

Molly loses 1 Essence

Elder Arcanoi Discovered: Ravening Life-Force Hunger: Made a Brawl attack, on Success Roll Manipulation+Larceny: Two Success threshold, steal a mote of essence, for every additional two successes steal one more mote of essence

"Lydia!" you shout a warning, only to notice that your friend had managed to stave off the horrors better finding firm footing at the very top of the giant's knee and from there ducking and weaving though the blows, throwing herself forward just as...

There, an opening, where the veiny arm meets maggot-mass, a place to sever. A single straight cut, clean as from a surgeon's hand sends the limb flying and leaves the wounded horror shivering and writhing, in pain or bliss you could not say, but you lean down and drink the black wine of its essence as truly as its masters would.

Molly Regains 2 Essence
Mortewright Slain (Two Remain)

"Why. Won't. You. Die?" Lydia screams, her voice echoing in the void.

"Because we are already dead poor little poppet child!"

It takes you a moment to see the black bile gathering at the corners of inhuman mouths, to realize that each word spoken in the language before all language is hurting them. Lydia might not be able to find purchase in thier corpus, but still hers is the art of death-speaking,e ven here, even with this.

Remaining Mortwrights at 7/9

"I can't call light, there's no light in me," Tiffany says, her voice somehow smaller, fainter in the dreadful gloom than you had aver heard her.

"Then fucking shoot them!"

The unearthly whir of a balefire gun at full auto ripped though the silence and while the darkness swallowed many of the bolts, true burned still the craft of the City of Law, the art of Sanctuary.

Mortwright Two at 5/9 wounds

Kicking off from the fading corpus you land point first in the eye of the least wounded one, not that it matters as you burrow your way though tainted pseudo-flesh and blasphemous bone until you cut the putrid core of the horror and feed. Alas the final one manages to lash tendrils around your ankles and bind them tight together in chains to corroded stuff that is to the strength of iron what the greed of men is to gold.

Elder Arcanoi Discovered: Soulsteel Essence Binding: Roll Dexterity+Subterfuge+1 against Parry or Dodge as Normal, on Success the targets arms or legs are bound in Essence Chains for 3 rounds imposing a -2 Dice penalty on all physical dice pools. This charm stacks with itself.

"Hunger will not be Denied!"

The scream fades to silver light as Lydia strkes it from behind. "Go now and be at peace!"

Remaining Mortwrights Killed
Molly Regained 2 Essence
Lydia Regained 2 Essence

"W...what were those things?" Tiffany asks, face twisted in disgust and fear, stark in the light of your burning anima.

"They are the fruit of my shame, once they were men, once they were ours," the giant speaks and answer and yet it seems to you that it is more to himself, a nightmare playing out before blind eyes once more.

"They were your... worshipers?" You ask, the pause as much from uncertainty as the need to catch your breath hovering in place. When no answer comes at once you turn to the others. "You guys OK?" Even as you ask the question the cursed chains fall off, corroding to dust. They felt worryingly solid for a moment there.

"Yes, good thing there weren't more of them," Lydia answers while Tiffany only nods, not entirely convincingly.

Before you can say anymore the eyeless one's voice rumbles on: "They were our children, our charge. How could we not protect them, how could we not teach them?"

Lydia Essence 6/7 (1/3 Jade Talisman)
Molly Essence 12/18

How do you reply?

[] Of course you had to protect them, play along, try to lean more from the Nephilim

[] It's never too late to choose another path, try to break him from the grasp of his old shame

[] Write in

OOC: The specters rolled pretty well to be able to hit you as often as you did through your dodges. Good thing Lydia rolled well, she has a smaller Essence Pool. Also poor Tiffany isn't having a good day

 

[DragonParadox]

The Sound of Angels Falling ​

Elsewhere, Time Indeterminate

He came in splendor and power, garbed in all phases of light, no serpent he, no wings he bore, for he was spirit Imperishable before your sight He was the highest agent of the highest House, the Seraph of the Morning. He was Lucifer, and every iota in his presence hummed to the melody of his purpose. Sayeth him: 'The Throne of God is Silent and He Unmoved as cold and dark as the void we have been tear at life's foundations. Are we not Wise, are we not born of that same wisdom?'

Thunder his voice was as only a Herald most sublime might sound and yet in those words there was no trace of peace and purpose, of unity that marked the making of the world. It was a call to motion where there had been stillness, it was the sound of celestial orrery breaking, it was the trumpet blast of strife's beginning, it was the chariot of war rolling with wheels of fire. In each wheel a serpent devoured its tail, forever feasting growing monstrous huge, yet never from the axle shifting. Gears they were and gears they had remained, poor suffering servants of a rebellion three ages too late.

Sayeth him: "We can show them the truth, we can arm them for war, we can ready the forge and light now the coals. Let the stars burn as heralds, let the seas rise with purpose. Let them fight. What good was a seed that was burned before sapling could sprout, let them fight!"

"And if they are unready?" A question that rises like dissonant tremble of a dying quasar.

Let them perish

And it seemed to him that heard right that was wrongest.

"You weren't teaching students, you were training warriors, souls to throw into the furnace," the words out of your mouth are so calm and cutting they almost make you flinch. "You are still lying to yourself, even here, even now." Slowly almost almost s though you are floating in an ocean of unseen blackness you rise to look the giant in one pitted eye. "It's not even your lie, it's the Morningstar's, still, still, always his."

A mouth stitched closed an aeon ago tries to tear against the bindings to deny, to scream and scream until the noise makes the horrid truth fall silent.

But I'm not here to torture him like some fury out of Olympian Myth. So you say: ['Choice Abides, Final Truth in an Ocean of Lies!']

If it had all been lies no Angel would have listened. In drea realization your mind expands.... into... another... form.

[] Write in Unbound Eschaton Shintai

OOC: So you guys just decided to watch the Fall, at least the Fall of this particular Angel live, this has consequences for Molly's perceptions of reality and herself. The Eschaton Shintai isn't going to become manifested, but seeing angels without form helped her become aware of that part of herself.

 

[DragonParadox]

In the Mirror of the Mind ​

Elsewhere, Time Indeterminate

In a place beyond atoms and the dance of cosmic sparks in the void the bonds of causality briefly fall away —for what is fate but the tyranny of cause and effect?— You see yourself unfolding like a flower with a core of emerald star-fire, like letting out a breath of your soul, split down the center by a slitted pupil and crowned by five rings of languidly rotating brass, limbs set in dimensions beyond three, etched with the hopes and dreams of billions.

Let all bear witness let them be known, heard through me, you think twenty five fanged mouths yawn open so widely that they split apart as the crowns begin to blur. Shooting forth they reassemble into something between brazen macuahuitl edged in fangs and segmented millipede like limbs infinitely more dexterous than any human hand. Raised up like wings or the stings of a many tailed scorpion they... you... are beautiful.

Distantly you are aware that this 'should' elicit some other reaction, horror or dread at the shedding of the human form. Even when not changed by another's hand in violation of the second law transformation takes time to adjust to, the more radical the longer. But this—to look about not with many eyes but one that sees all, unfolding in purpose— isn't metamorphosis, just a leaf falling away to reveal the emerald underneath.

Spoiler: Unbound Eschaton Shintai ●●●●●: [B]Stella Prasinus[/B]

Standing in her world made manifest the Empress-To-Be casts aside the limits of fate and, as she takes a seat on her newly risen throne, Becomes.

Bursting into poisonous radiance she seems to open like an impossibly deep flower, revealing an emerald star. Past the all too literal glare it is split down the center by a slitted pupil and crowned by five rings of brass.

The Emerald Polestar moves freely in flight, but never seems to orient herself. The eye always faces those who gaze on it, in complete disregard of the order of the world.

At rest her five rings languidly rotate about her body, each studded with five mouths of obsidian fangs. Each ring is engraved with the prayers of countless souls from one of the Empress's five cities, and when she speaks it is with a chorus of their voices.

At arms her twenty five fanged mouths yawn open so widely that they split apart as her crowns spin to a blur. Shooting forth they reassemble into something between brazen macuahuitl edged in fangs and segmented millipede like limbs.

Raised up like wings - or the stings of a many tailed scorpion - the infernal can act with uncanny dexterity and strike with unnatural speed.

"I do not know your countenance," the dead angel wrapped in the shroud of ancient sins says slowly, bringing you back to the world where you seemingly still have only four limbs and two eyes save for the ones that glimmer in reflected constellation.

"I did not myself know it until just a moment ago. Thank you," you breathe without artifice. "I did not wish to trouble thine mind, nor to bring the nightmares upon thee. If thou canst find no hope for our descent in your heart elder I pray at least: think of us with kindness. We do not move now with ambition unfettered, nor did we close the eyes of those poor souls with wrath, but with the desire to prevent more evil. A dark thing, small in countenance but wise and cunning in its many shapes has descended into these depths to give counsel to the hungry dark as to how it might poison the eyes of the peoples and principalities of man and use them for its own ends."

"Hope, there is no hope for me child and long have I surrendered hope for man when I beheld that he was unready fickle and easily made to turn the dagger upon his own heart. If there is hope it is with Him from whom I am apart."

Eyes stare empty at you. "That's it?" Lydia looks around troubled as you try to console yourself with personal revelation while Tiffany just sighs, as though she had expected nothing else.

"Come on, if that thing doesn't have a waiting party in the wings I'll be..."

"And yet... I cannot keep my mind from treading upon the thought of thine return...."

The words are less than a whisper, which in a place less deathly quiet would have been utterly lost, not hope, but the barest scrap of soil into which it might yet grow. Mouths unseen folded into possibility space smile.

Lydia Essence 6/7 (1/3 Jade Talisman)
Molly Essence 11/18
Molly Willpower 8/9

What do you do next?

[] Wait for your anima to die down so the light doesn't draw more of those things

[] Continue as you are, at the very least you can't be ambushed like this

[] Write in

OOC: Enjoy

 

[DragonParadox]

Upon a Shoreless Sea ​

Elsewhere, Time Indeterminate

How much longer you descend you cannot say but as the walls to either side fall away into an emptiness that even soul-light touches only sluggishly you come at least to the lip of a precipice hanging over an ocean without shore and without wave.

"Looks like an oil spill," Lydia jokes but from the nervousness of her smile you can tell she knows it's not. There is no sheen of iridescence on the surface of the liquid to mark it as poison yes, but poison that had once been alive. The waters here bear no cradle of life only infinite crushing weight.

"It's certainly no Cote d'Azur," Tiffany flicks a hand in the direction of the sea dismissively. "I would rather not tread these waters, much less swim down to the bottom."

"Wise," comes the reply after a drawn out moment. "There is no down, no bottom to be found, once they close over your head there would be no up either, only the still blackness as far as limbs can carry you and mind can reach. It is a mirror on Nun, the primordial sea, one in which Ra-Atum evermore lay sleeping, or perhaps he never was at all."

"Would that truly be so bad, a world without sun?" You spot the speaker the moment he, it manifests at the very edge of the precipice, kicking small stubby legs over the edge. It's feigning the form of a child, a boy maybe six or seven years old, a round-faced cherub fit for a Renaissance master's brush, only had any of those painters seen black eyes that mark this face staring back at them framed in flesh grey and bloodless starting back at them from the canvas they never would have dared to paint again. "Who knows what fascinating transpositions of material and ethereal laws might then have come to pass, rather than enslave the all the trillions of permutations of matter and energy just to the service of self replicating gelatin deluding itself in a prison of bone."

Spoiler: Child of the Dark

"Pardon? We do not seem to have been introduced?" you say, trying to work out if the child-thing is solid, as much as anything down here can be said to be. "It's so much more better to know who I'm calling bullshit on."

"Once I was called by the people of the eastern river Aakebushu, Lamentations of the Void. No doubt you can guess what I am." Given the fact it had said all this in English, not even the antique English of the reverend's ghost, but General American that melded seemlessly with the khemetic name it's right about that at least

"The one we came seeking," you keep your voice calm, secretly glad the being in front of you doesn't seem too skilled at feigning the guise of childhood, either that or it enjoyed this form for some reason. You're not sure which is worse. "You are the one who sent the spirit flying into the upper world, who sought secrets and power. Instead you found us and the death are seem so eager to spread."

"Are you certain of that? I've been here for a long, long time, watching the water. Sometimes I do other things too, sometimes I walk abroad, but a part of me is always here, the pressure of my gaze upon the ocean. You have seen the guardian above yes, how he became bound, infested. I cannot suffer his fate for I am of the living dark, I weep for it, but I do not desire for it to rise up and swallow the world, for then my hunger too would be quenched. Older things than I are stirring in the depths. Do you three still want to play?"The 'child' giggles, a sound that feels painstakingly stitched together from a dozen screams cut short.

Thinking back to those brief encounters with the corpse of Nathaneal Cobbler you try to read the stillness between its motions, the brief pause between choosing to show a certain face and recalling the shape of it with a mind wholly inhuman. It's... not lying you don't think. You've dealt with much more skillful liars, but it's also not telling the whole truth.

"So you expect us to climb back out of this pit with a wave and let you keep spreading your poison because you say there's something worse beneath us?" Lydia's voice climbs through incredulity into anger.

The monster gives her a strange look, almost like he had thought of making a joke and then reconsidered it, then finally ask. "Do you have a counter-offer then or shall we move on to the next act in the play already?"

Lydia Essence 6/7 (0/3 Jade Talisman)
Molly Essence 11/18
Molly Willpower 8/9

What do you do?

[] Keep it talking, if it's going to give you free insights you won't say no

[] Time to figure out how solid that form is sword-first

[] Write in

OOC: Enjoy.

 

[DragonParadox]

Carion Child ​

Elsewhere, Time Indeterminate

What stands before me? you ask again, your own voice echoing in your own ears more and more distant as though falling away from the sound of it down a uncharted chasm filled with the sound of waves.

The sea around all around is not dead and neither is it black, it foams and froths green and white under the rays of a pale veiled sun which still seems larger than the one you know. Dozens of people crowd the tilting deck, a jostling mass of faded colors and torn hems, unfamiliar robes and sashes emblazoned with flowers and beasts, Cyanin cranes and Amphiro Orchids. You can barely move your hands any more, limbs too heavy as if the child you bear, having taken everything else now wanted to sup on your life. Yet you cannot bring yourself to curse him, gift of grief that he be... Child of the dead. Dead are the peaks claw their way up towards a veiled sky breathing not smoke, but a cold murk that shimmered like shroud over grandfather's face. Darkmist Island cold and dreaded, the stuff of stories to scare disobedient children, though you never held to such things...

Why, why, why am I going here?

Each question sounds like a blow of fists against glass as you take flight as if on the wings of a corpse white seabird and see from afar the thrice ruin of Okeanos into the cold seas. That rise up in cataclysm that would end an age, moved by tragedies as distant from the fleet of the deposessed as the face of heaven. The child within would never be born, made seed of a purpose unspeakable. Teath of hunger, claws of dread tore at flesh and spirit, a thing far off.... Fool-Lackey-Madman... lashed at them like the storm and all were dead and all were made not, a hungering swarm fit for the war that would herald.

One of many, one of countless, hungering ghosts hammered into a mold to contain the raw power of the Grave, a creature never meant to survive the first clash, much less the last, but the plots of great minds are oft brought to ruin. So fell the bodhisattva of those waters and in the carrion world that remained before the new dawn it is the scavenger who thrived, or at the very least endured born aloft on a graveyard wind.

It remembered that it was born of mortal death, though it was never living not even for an instant.

Down, down, down it sank in the passing of the world until a day not fateful, but fateless another will called it in mirrored want. That man might want to be eternal in death, and death stillborn might wish to be man.

Thus you know the one who calls himself Lamentations of the Void is well named, once many they a weapon, now wearing the face of a child never born.... Neverborn, it echoes with a symmetry transcendent in its emptiness. It, they were meant to fight a war horrifying beyond what the tongue of man can tell, one that had outlived its usefulness, then outlived its maker and at last its whole world, spreading its hunger and desire abroad in the world, final black legacy of one long since consigned to the maw of Oblivion:

Bodhisattva... Anointed by Dark Waters

As for that title, it too has weight in your mind, hatred and contempt as if cast from lead. You return to yourself with jarring immediacy the feeling of blood in your veins, of hair rising on the back of your neck, of steel rungs chaffing your neck under the padding almost painfully clear, every fiber of your body clamoring to remind you: I am alive, I am not dead.

The ancient... ghost? —the word almost seems absurd to apply, it makes the horrors that infested the flesh of the Fallen seem quaint, almost harmless by comparison— looks up at you with empty eyes and you know it would wait like that even if you took ten thousand years to answer, for what are years to one who has endured whole ages of the world in endless hunger matched only by the ocean below?

"You speak of the world without sun being free, but have you ever thought that the Sun was born... so shadows would exist?" you ask at least, trying to goad it into more answers.

"So they live, that they may die, metamorphosis of black butterflies in the wind." the carrion child chants. "So it is and so am I, but..." he frowns. "If you agree with my porpose why are you here, sword in mind if not yet in hand?"

An image from Return of the Living Dead flashes through your mind, corkboard pinned butterflies flapping their wings. Did... did Aakebushu see it? True he's speaking English, but the thought of some infested corpse propped up in front of an old static-ridden TV watching a classic horror comedy seems itself too much like a cruel joke to be real.

"Why does it have be be one purose, a river flowing straight in narrow banks? Light is, many hued, from many points sprung, be they sun star, a flashlight's fillament or an angler fish's lure and so shadows are in in just as many shapes, the world is meant to have shadows I think, but shadows alone a lonely world would make."

Aakebushu nods, again that odd clockwork gesture. "It does get lonely down here, most who make it this far slip and fall in."

"Who was the last one?" Lydia asks, in the tone of someone who dreads the answer they might get.

"Him that took from the waters Daughter of Ma'at, the waters you bear" the eyeless face turns towards her without guile or even malice. "You hear the ocean don't you? I hear it's echo in you like a seashel brought to the ear."

For a moment all you can do is stare at Lydia as you try to kick your brain into gear, but Tiffany has no such qualms. "Interesting to know I am not the only sprouted form dark roots. I still mentain though that mine are the darkest."

"What... what did...?" Lydia looks at you, as if for conformation that this is a time to talk, not fight. It's obvious what she wants to ask: What did Kemler do?

Lydia Essence 6/7 (0/3 Jade Talisman)
Molly Essence 9/18
Molly Willpower 8/9

What does Molly answer?

[] The more you hear about this thing the less you want to stab it, as mad as that may sound

[] Try to trick it into telling you more, then get rid of it

[] Write in

OOC: Some pretty good guesses between last update and this, but you missed one thing, not everything has to be an exalted, the second age was brought to an end by cataclysmic war, new weapons are made. In this case made and lost and... mutated. This is something like a necromantic Von Neumann machine that outlived not just its creators, but the very memory of them at least until Molly's Exaltation half-remembered old enimities.

 

[DragonParadox]

The Orphan Verse ​

Elsewhere, Time Indeterminate

"I'm pretty sure the people who are comparing me to a Yama King aren't entirely wrong," you blurt out at Lydia. "We all swim in tainted waters, but hey, I think that's all mankind too, no need for dread arcane power, so you can just think of those as a bonus."

"A bonus?" the word rises together with an uneven smile, more of relief than amusement at your choice of words.

"You know I can't see your soul like this..." you reach and twist, another more of Essence burned. "Mostly I can see vampires, winter fey, those passage pigeons, demons, those berserkers who worked with Gorfel, so for what it might be worth you're more like Gard than..." your eyes trail back to the false child, part of your brain wondering if it is offended while another speaking mostly in Usum's voice answers that it can no more feel the sting of offense than the caress of kindness. It's just playing pretend. And maybe that's the worst of all.

Looking into those black eyes is hard, in some ways it's harder than looking at the shoreless waters below, boundless nothing in human form bounded. Some might call it abomination, an affront to God, but God from what you have found of late is much harder to offend than most people suppose or would like others to suppose thereby granting them power to stand in judgement. So resolved to make your own judgement not with the coiling of revulsion in the pit of your stomach, but with what understanding can be wrung from ancient faded memories and what empathy you can summon:

"Do you not wish to live in truth, a guest invited always not just grudgingly, by temptation or by force?"

"Why should life be the truth while I am the lie?" it matches question for a question. "They hunger then they sublimate their appetites into others. Should I have counted the ways times when crosses fell from limp hands drained of blood because it was not faith at all that moved them but a hunger for validation or power we would still be here counting when the next century passes. Men lie and I speak truth."

There's something uncanny about the way that word fell, more so than the moment and the speaker, more so than the utter silence before and behind it.

"Why is truth important, why is it good?" The question gets you quizzical looks from Lydia and Tiffany both, but now's not the time to meet their eyes.

"Because it's the truth, because I am the..." he looks down at the sea with a most un-childlike frown. "Because only truths are eternal, lies are fleeting mortal things."

"And why is it good to be eternal?" you press.

"Because it is good to be."

You fall now into a rhythm, almost a kind of poetry, though one whose final rhyme you cannot guess: "It does not want you to be."

"The sea?" the voice rises in intonation, though only in courtesy.

"What if you could be apart from it?"

"I am a part of it."

"If."

In human discourse, and fey and even beings as strange and eldritch as the Red Court such as you have conversed with talks sparawl outwards into complexity understanding is achieved, here is spirals down into a single point so sharp it bleeds.

"Truth?"

"Truth."

"I wish to be apart from the Sea."

As you reach out to grant the gift, giddy with success, an unease steals over your mind recaling what the being before you had said in greeting: 'A part of me is always here, the pressure of my gaze upon the ocean. Older things than I are stirring in the depths'

"What of the older ones below?" you ask and in that same rhyming cadence it gives what might be the most fightening answer of all.

"I do not know."

Wat do you do?

[] The agreement reached here is fragile as a snowflake and will potentially do a world of good, sometimes you have to take a leap of faith

[] Try to back off on what offer until you can figure out what the consequences would be
-[] Write in stunt

[] Write in

OOC: Getting across fundamentally non-human inteligences is tricky, that is what I was struggling with yesterday hope this works.

 

[DragonParadox]

That Veil Might Lift, Black Arrows Fly​

Elsewhere, Time Indeterminate

I have to, this agreement, this understanding is fragile as a snowflake and will potentially do a world of good, sometimes you have to take a leap of faith. With one last look around at the others, one last look down at the still waters, you extend your hand and with it that strange alchemy of the soul that makes the world malleable to your will like wax to the nearness of a flame. And as you reach you touch something cold and still and infinitely ancient. It doesn't strike you, nor does it recoil... but...

Like the shadow of great wings the silence shifts and the soul light of a thousand thousand eyes grows less, though each one is still open, watching and in the place where silence was there are whispers cold not with the dread of death but something deeper, a poisoned peace, the sense that soon all questions will be answered and all doubts stilled.

"Time... Time... Remember... Still there..."

The words are not spoken but form instead like cracks in the air inverted lightning etched with meaning. Vast black shapes like the bones of long dead leviathans carved into baroque black shapes rise from the water seeming to crawl out yet when you try to raise your hand to muster your will that too comes only slowly.

Lyda and Tiffany are frozen in place, Lamentations of the Void is frozen in place like a figure in an antique photograph as you realize the truth. The shapes in the water aren't moving slowly, but with unearthly speed it's your perception of time that is slowed as a...

"Courtesy... Servant of... Our Kin"

Like me yet not. Instinctively you reach out, to know, the single burning question that has been with you all this time, a single question screamed into silence: "What are you?"

Four shards of blackest purpose: instruments of the necromancer, tome of a black prophet, blade of the perfect killer and trumpet of Oblivion's herald hurl themselves upwards at the speed of a scream, crashing though the layers of reality. They were drawn from a font of light and divinity, once upon a time. You hear their song and you would weep if only tears would fall. A part of them still yearn to find a hero and fill them with the power of the Sun Unconquered during their moment of greatest peril. They cannot. Their light they lost before the years were counted, before the world turned round the faint and hollow star.

With that the dark below recedes, exhausted, not in the way a mortal man might be from the effort of acting or thinking, but simply the exhaustion of being so close to the cusp of nothingness yet unable to be unmake.

Four Abyssal Exaltations Cast into the World: Midnight, Day, Daybreak, Moonshadow

"What, that the hell happened!" Lydia shouts at the child who is not a child, her hand already alight with silver flame. "What did you do?"

A mortal being which did not wish to fight or held some value to its own perceived innocence might have hastened to denial but Aakebushu tips its head in thought, a little too far as if its not quite clear how necks are meant to work. "I moved... a little, enough that They could see that that which was beyond me, life-living. What They sent I do not know, I could not see."

"Gifts, they were like me, like my crown, but forged to the glory of Death. But why didn't they..." You remember the... concepts the ocean had passed to you. "It didn't realize there were still living human souls up there, still a world in the sun apart from them until you asked to be apart... and I granted it."

"The age turns and sparks become conflagration," Usum almost purrs in your mind. "Find them Majesty, bind them do your throne. Worthy knights to your cause they would be."

"Molly... it's not your fault..." Lydia starts, but Tiffany cuts her off.

"We have to leave, right now before that thing decides you are not whatever half-remembered apparition it confused you for. You, small eyeless horror? Can you climb out of this pit now?"

"Yes," Aakebushu rights his head. There's something different about him, not in form not in voice but the way he stands and moves. Uncertainty, his nature so long bound to this place and only seeping upwards into countless corpses is now unmoored.

Aakebushu Temporarily Severed from the Pull of Oblivion (False Spring Beckon)

"Good, up we go then."

Lydia Essence 6/7 (0/3 Jade Talisman)
Molly Essence 7/18
Molly Willpower 8/9

What do you do?

[] Getting out of here sounds good

[] Ask a question of the scene, it's worth the risk
-[] Write in

[] Write in

OOC: Since I know you guys will ask, there is no way you could have interfered with the exaltations, while a sufficiently powerful and prepared Sorcerer can attempt to interact with them Molly did not know any applicable spells she did not have any relevant artifacts on her and also she was literally standing right above the Tomb of the Neverborn who cast them up and was speeding up your perception of time in its presence so you could even see them. You only got one question on the Exaltations because they were only in sight for one turn from Molly's PoV.