- Location
- Madness realms
Oh man I'm hype for the thrilling conclusion of drunk man among the edgy elves, one way or another I am sure it's gonna be awesome.
Warhammer Fantasy: A Dynasty of Dynamic Alcoholism
- Thread starter torroar
- Start date
- Mature
-
- Tags
- warhammer warhammer fantasy fantasy intrigue happens male protagonist ck2 quest belief stronk count of cannons drunken wisdom foes in the shadows graf of guns (guns) if you have a question check the front page first it begins... mountain vietnam ogres paranoia rising unseen enemies everywhere use the search function before asking waifu wars wake the bull
Doomed Wombat
Let's go Darling!
- Location
- Dancing on wires!
Happy thanks giving and all the very best to you and your loved ones.
DocMatoi
Theoretical Lover of Girls
- Location
- within 2 hours of the White House
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Thank you, torr. glad to have you here as well
- Location
- United States
I agree. Then we have "drunk man and friends travel through demonic Scandinavia to reach Russia" to look forward to.
Happy thanksgiving
iggyfan
Verified Man-Thing
- Location
- Kentucky
You forgot about the "drunk man and friends befriend an obese frog and a bunch of ancient aliens worshipers" arc.
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- Pronouns
- He
I wonder if there are, at least on a minor level, some kind of thanksgiving celebrations in the empire or karaz ankor to celebrate the alliance between dawi and humans?
Maybe thorgrim could introduce one of the humans prove instrumental in saving the everpeak
Maybe thorgrim could introduce one of the humans prove instrumental in saving the everpeak
You forgetting the 'drunk man and adoptive niece crush land an island onto deamon market' followed by bunch of short kings getting backrubs from enbearded dwarf-like-thing'. but the frog part is definetly gonna result in head rubs.
Also.. Is it weird that I'm hoping on Gwen gaining an intrest in Sotek? He's a war god who demands blood be spilled. Yet his core doctirne is efficiency and purpose of fighting... he may prove theraputic...
- Pronouns
- He/Him
User's Choice Awards Nominations: Best Ongoing Quest
This is the nominations thread for Best Ongoing Quest for the 2024 User's Choice Awards. Get involved and nominate your favourite threads!
forums.sufficientvelocity.com
I believe this is well worthy of nomination. If you share that belief, please vote over there.
Thanks for alerting, Eva!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
You're welcome. 😇
... Rocket Propeled Granades...
Is it just me or are those easier to create than actuall bullets?
Rockets are Cannon after all, even if not yet...
Is it just me or are those easier to create than actuall bullets?
Rockets are Cannon after all, even if not yet...
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iggyfan
Verified Man-Thing
- Location
- Kentucky
Maybe if your talking about the modernish type invented in the 19th century, but we're not anywhere near that tech level. Bullets of the sort that the Empire uses can be made by any idiot with a bullet mold, a fire and some lead.
We have grenadiers and thunderbringers, so maybe with a bit of drunken tech we can build a proto rpg. Though I feel like making mortars would be a intermediary step.
Also, I was just looking through char sheets and came across this. as this ever discussed? Not very unexpected and I suppose not the worst trait. I hope it won't grow into something nastier. *inhales copium I'm sure the grandparents will handle this so it won't become problematic, once they return.
Edit: Just realized spoiler part of family branch may mess with quotes. I was speaking about Wolfila's twin sisters, Stephanie and Freya. Here's their trait "Trait: Outgroup Distaste - Has been noted by the castle staff to prefer those they know, becoming standoffish and even rude with those they don't. (-2 Diplomacy To Those Not Considered Friends or Family)"
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One intermediary step that I expect is clockwork detonator for granades to make them more popular among soldiery.
Thing about rockets is that fireworks classyfy and once ignited it evectifly flys itself. the buety of simplicity and all that.
As for mortals? Honesly have no idea what it would take. given that technically we already have such. Sure medival grade mortals were shite on anything that was not siedge, and even then not very good.
ignition (preferably mechanized rather than open flame) stabilization and targeting... does not that much ofa strech.
One problem? Ostland got not expierience with rocket tech... that may be Altdorf experimental...
still , not a bad idea.
Spikes, Horns, and Stone 29
GM: I understand if this one's a bit, uh, hairy. Apologies. It's been long enough, and I'm exhausted.
Spikes, Horns, and Stone 29
The Temple of Khaine has descended into complete bloody anarchy. If it were in many other circumstances you are sure that it would have pleased the God of Murder quite a bit. However, given the disgusting malforming of the God's sworn priestesses and servants into a writhing screaming ball of flesh and limbs upon his altar, and the furious flaring of red light throughout the air that is visibly starting to be contested with a too-sweetly scented pink and purple mist, you're relatively certain that there is only one deity getting pleasure out of this. The sound of stone cracking and snapping is growing louder from up above, but despite your original expectations you aren't seeing chunks the size of wagons crashing down anywhere. That you aren't is no reassurance either, especially when it comes to Gods and their doings. Especially Chaos Gods. There are cultists of multiple Cytharai still in the fight, but some of those same cultists now show their true colors, as is the perfidious ways of their true masters. Other Druchii nobility turn on each other, on commoners, on the lower levels and the high. Only some facsimile of the class stratification is visible at this point, and even that is beginning to become subsumed.
Because why make an infiltrating Cult and work on it for decades to centuries if you're only going to focus on one level of the ladder.
"If we can get her without fighting Alyssa for it," you stress. "Get out of here, let her deal with all of this, we could go, go now. You said we can't beat Alyssa right now. Could you beat those three other sorceresses near the docks?"
Hultressa's nose flares as a dark light flashes in her eyes before she pointedly cracks her neck from side to side.
"Those three? In my sleep," she sneers as she strides past you, inhaling deeply and then planting her staff firmly onto the ground.
A bright light, without heat or sound, appears at the top of Hultressa's staff, an unmissable sign that gets a more than a few eyes even as the fighting goes on from the finely attuned senses of the Druchii. Shortly afterwards, the light winks out with a particularly targeted clap of sound like a distant peal of thunder. It is oddly muffled by the helmet and extra layers disguising you, but then everything is. It is further confused in terms of direction before you realize that she somehow directed the actual path of the sound itself so that it very obviously reaches the crown of the altar where Alyssa still hunches while spitting and snarling fury. The Supreme Sorceress has, if you do not mistake it, quite simply cracked. How much she has, however, and how much sense remains to her, is what remains to be seen at the moment. She's certainly still cognizant enough to whip around with a rictus of hate on her face, zeroing in on Hultress and the rest of your group instantly.
"Twenty percent," Hultressa announce, her voice a loud booming thing which causes her newly purchased slaves to wince and clap hands to their ears and would have made you wince if not for all the layers around your head.
Alyssa is far, far away.
It says something that you can see how blown out her pupils have become even from here.
Though it is mostly because they shrink back down to pinpricks as the words register.
Alyssa is, quite obviously, not the only one who hears. The rest of her sorceresses similarly whip around, though they are also quite clearly focused on the growing fighting all around them. The distraction costs a great many other Druchii as well, but in the end, elves are elves. What might have ended up killing a human soldier in a moment of weakness of confusion causes only wounds instead, as inhuman grace and dexterity work to keep them alive. Blades scrape and tear against armor, fists and fingernails pound and dig into skin and flesh. A few Druchii stagger about outside of the terror-created perimeter, clutching at themselves, red splattered around their mouths and elf-meat in their teeth. But a great many heads crane, a great many ears perk, even amidst the fighting that would overwhelm your average human swordsman. None dare actually outright stop what they're doing, those that would, would die. Some slaves have fallen to the ground, whimpering, others are being used as shields, and much to your disgust some of them are actually trying to defend their masters. It is those you pity more than any others, that they have the will and wherewithal to fight, but have been so broken in mind and spirit to do so in defense of the Druchii.
(Temple of Carnage: 55-Morathian Foundations(35)-Supreme Seductions(20)+Rival Goddesses(20)+Outrage(15)-Promises Kept(15)+Druchii Prides(20)+The Unswayed(10)+Aquafarms and Deaths(15)-Opportunism and Confusion(10)=55/100)
(A Mind On Knife's Edge: 81-Supreme Strain(20)-Shell Crack(10)+Knowledge of Wealth(10)+Distracted Focus(10)-Incomplete Triumph(10)+The Sheer Audacity(15)+Wanton Greed(5)+Lack of Violence(5)-Stymied Fighting(10)=76/100)
"Excuse me?" Alyssa whispers, her voice a too-sinuous thing against your ears, a sort of lingering echo and sensation that you find singularly unpleasant.
"You heard me, Alyssa," Hultressa affects a bored tone, sniffing slightly.
A single gesture from her, and the terrors not-so-gently shove out an even larger perimeter than before.
"What are you trying to…you think…," Alyssa's chest heaves a bit with each harsh word before she breaks off into a maddened cackle.
"That," Hultressa stabs a finger at a now thoroughly panicked Sadrina, "Is a Handmaiden of the Everqueen. The Winds have literally been woven into her by the Everqueen herself. I want to tear her apart to see what makes that work."
Alyssa blinks a great many times in too rapid succession before with a mighty inhale she visibly reaches out and grasps the reins of her own mind hard. Her lips peel apart in a grin that could have been carved open with a knife as she does a strange little half-slink and slouch.
"You have done such to Asur before," is her rejoinder, one eye still subtly twitching, her head swishing to the side every now and then to keep an eye on the fight that is still ongoing. "A great many, even."
Sadrina, who cannot possibly know anything about Hultressa at this point that you do, does not look particularly pleased to hear that information amidst the rise of a particularly entrenched Cult of Pleasure.
"And?" Hultressa says archly. "None of them has been a Handmaiden. Not one. Not ever."
The terror-maker raises up one hand, making to examine her articulated gauntlet and metallic claws there as if inspecting the polish that is not there. About fifteen feet away, a devotee of Slaanesh guts a fellow Druchii with one of her blade-heeled shoes. , reaches into their opened abdomen, and tears out their still beating heart and thrusts it towards the sky. The Slaaneshi cultist is then tackled from behind by another Druchii who utilizes the spikes and blades across their helmet to eviscerate their skull with a vigorous swirling of their neck that makes your own ache just to watch.
"I'm sorry, I thought this was an auction," Hultressa continues, putting her hand back down and looking meaningfully to Sadrina. "That, there, is an item up for sale. I want it."
(Temple of Carnage: 67-35-20+20+15-15+20+10+15-10+Distracted Alyssa(10)=77/100)
(A Mind On Knife's Edge: 70-20-10+10+10-10+15+5+5-10+Pride's Demands(10)=75/100)
"And yet as you so intelligently caught, this is a Handmaiden," Alyssa sneers, stamping her staff down.
Black coils of electrical energy appear to bloom into visibility that writhe around like living creatures around the cage. Sadrina looks ready to scream, but doesn't with what must be incredible self-control. She cannot avoid doubling over in the cage, clutching at herself, but she does not dare let herself fall to her hands and knees. Pinpricks of sweat appear on the Asur's body, her entire body shaking with the pain that has just been forced upon her, but you can see even from the bottom of the pyramid that she slowly forces herself to straighten as Alyssa dismisses the Handmaiden once more. Sadrina is breathing hard now, but with clear effort she once more forces her arms down to her sides and raises her chin high, starting to slow and regulate her breathing as you watch.
"One I would prefer is as undamaged as possible!" Hultressa stresses, eyes narrowing, the power of her voice and stature transforming what could have been written off as whining as more of a dangerous warning instead. "The point is to tear apart as pristine a product of the Everqueen's workings as possible, not some damaged broken thing."
Alyssa gives a haughty laugh and rolls her eyes.
"Obviously," she drawls. "And yet, you offer such a paltry price."
"Paltry?!" Hultressa rejoins with outrage.
"You would pay barely more than you did for those wretches," Alyssa gestures with her staff towards the Whitewings and a wide-eyed Kerillian who is busy staring at the carnage unfurling across the temple grounds. "That's an insult!"
"You know damn well how much wealth I offer," Hultressa snarls. "How much that is!"
A bolt of dark amber energies, energies that you still remember coursing over Asrai in their thousands, slams against one of the other Coven sorceresses, who lets out a screaming yelp as it manages to get past her shielding spells. It is not a fatal blow, or at least not an immediate one, but the spectral spear is quite well lodged into and through the meat of her left thigh. Screaming, the sorceress wraps her hands around the unholy energies of Anath Raema and crushes it out of existence with motes of Dhar and pink-purple energies pouring from her. Summoning forth a series of black spheres around her head, the sorceress unleashes a salvo of doombolts down into the fighting to try and kill the servant of the Savage Huntress that managed to strike at her. Alyssa's scowls at the sight of it before she turns, glaring, back to an unamused Hultressa.
"You know, dear terror-maker, do you not think that your contributions might be more immediate?" Alyssa points out with a warning tone.
Hultressa's rejoinder is immediate.
"The usage of my terrors has, is, and will always be a transactional affair," Hultressa sniffs before shaking her head. "Even Screamtaker accepted that."
"For one, Screamtaker is dead, and secondly, tokens of appreciation and miniscule fees were all that was given to you, as Supreme Sorceress to subordinate," Alyssa's dark aura flares larger as she speaks.
(Temple of Carnage: 52-35-20+20+15-15+20+10+15-10+10=62/100)
(A Mind On Knife's Edge: 69-20-10+10+10-10+15+5+5-10+10+A Dangerous Prize(20)=92/100)
Hultressa shrugs and shakes her head, a smirk on her lips.
"What I can say? It's a seller's market. Speaking of," she points towards Sadrina again. "If twenty is so insulting, then thirty? What, do you want an artifact? Or…," Hultressa's mouth hangs open for a brief moment as she apes the appearance of revelation itself. "Ah…perhaps…"
Your sorceress ally holds her free hand, palm upright, before clutching it closed and then releasing it while conjuring an illusion above it. Immediately, Alyssa's gaze locks onto it, as do her sorceresses though their attention is far briefer as they return to the fight. Other Cult of Pleasure members nearby are distracted by the sight of it, if only so briefly, before returning to the fight. Around you the more 'normal' Druchii seem to surge in that momentary lapse, but the overall combat is still far from over. Not that you would be confused as to why. You feel yourself almost shudder, almost, at the sight of what is being projected over Hultressa's palm. The Druchii lets the screaming head of a daemon float in her hand, a mere representation of the trophy that she still has locked up in her chambers. The one that you only felt somewhat secure being nearby to thanks to the sheer depth and power of the defenses surrounding it.
It is not just a head, or at least the real one isn't.
"You would release the Exalted Herald?" Alyssa says with naked want in her voice. "Into my custody?"
"I would expect you to keep it from bothering me again, but yes," Hultressa says, sounding bored before her gaze sharpens. "Even if you plot to shield yourself beneath Morathi's shadow after the decree of the Witch King, I doubt she would deign to do so if you let it raise up the Legion of Rapturous Agony to attack the Ark again."
Alyssa flaps her hand as if the concept of one of the most terrifying things you've ever heard of is barely a concern.
"There would be no reason for it to do so, none at all, especially if it were aligned properly," she says, breathing hard. "To add its Legion to service of the Undeniable would be…,"
"Traitorous whore!" A starvation-thin Druchii emerges from the scrum and throws himself at Hultressa with arms outstretched – each phalange grossly extended out of his skin and flesh by a foot to form gleaming claws of bon – while his stomach has become a gaping mouth ringed by teeth.
Kerillian and the Whitewings, well two of them, swirl about in fear but before they can do more than that the terrors act. Where once there was a leaping Druchii servant of the Cytharai God of Famine, there is now several pieces of meat and gristle that plops onto the ground and rolls from previous momentum. A bloodshot eyeball covered in cranial fluids bounces against the ground and bumps up against your foot before splitting apart into several halves that rapidly deflate and flatten against the stone. You didn't know that cultists of Estreuth could do something like that, but then, the intricacies of what the Cytharai offer their believers is something you've never much wanted to learn too intimately. Either way, the blessings didn't seem able to stand up to the masterworks of Hultressa's chosen practice. The fact that such horrific transformations could have been utterly mistaken as mutations brought about by Chaos, or very well could have been, does little well for the image of the Cytharai in your mind. Verena's Wisdom, it is difficult to imagine just why in the world the Asrai and Eonir might worship Cadai and Cytharai equally.
"Alyssa!" Hultressa says loudly, clenching her fist and dismissing the illusion. "Do we have an accord…or not? I would rather we complete our business now, so you may go about yours, sooner rather than later!"
Alyssa's breaths are sharp and fast, eyes darting from the cage to Hultressa and back again, then finally looking out at the fighting. Or, rather, at something which draws Hultressa's attention as well, and therefore the rest of your little group. The fighting has gone on long enough, it seems, that more Druchii have arrived from the rest of the Ark, and have begun rushing in through the gates with weapons drawn. The Cult of Pleasure that has infested this Ark has clearly been doing so for a long time, and quite thoroughly, but if it could have ruled openly before this point without being challenged it would have done so. So you are not particularly surprised to see a good number of the Druchii arriving falling upon those who appear to be most openly Slaaneshi, the increasingly thick and too-sweet fog of the Prince of Excess' power strongest near some of them. But, at the same time, as if waiting for just the right moment, there are just as many other Druchii who follow right behind their comrades only to plunge blades right into their backs.
"I will want visitation and examination reports regularly," Alyssa finally hisses. "And you will-,"
"I am going home, Alyssa," Hultressa flourishes her hand dramatically in the air and huffs. "You and I both know that you do not require my aid to win out here. My position, as ever," she stresses the word sardonically, "Is one of neutrality amidst the Cults and nobility. Besides, I was there right alongside you at the top of the Tor where Screamtaker failed. As for the visitations and examination reports, sure, fine, but I won't be giving much of such without a proper subject!" She finishes with a pointed look towards Sadrina.
The Supreme Sorceress of the Claw of Dominion gestures out at the carnage with a curt gesture.
"And you think not fighting will ease your passage?! To refuse to show your loyalty in the here and now?"
Hultressa's sneer becomes an acidic grin.
"Are you offering me payment for my services, sister?" She asks sweetly, making Alyssa's nose flare with a reflexive angry inhale.
"Fine!" Alyssa spits, and then with an angry gesture, levitates Sadrina's cage with her magic before none too gently throwing it towards Hultressa who has to stop it from crashing into the stone with her own telekinetic efforts. "Get out of here, then!"
Sadrina does not seem particularly pleased by these developments either, of course, especially because the violence of her travel down from the altar causes her to bang into the bars. Which, in turn, results in the kinds of painful effects that you witnessed previously in the side temple. She lets out a pained wail as she clutches at her head and drops to the bottom of the cage the moment she makes the lightest contact with the bars, and writhes in pain even after Hultressa carefully floats it down to the ground. You can't quite tell if the murderous scowl on Hultressa's face at the ill-treatment of her prize is acting or not. If it were simply Hultressa the Druchii, she could just as much be angry that the slave she purchased is literally no longer in pristine condition thanks to a tantrum of the auctioneer. As a woman desperate to offer up a rescue of the Handmaiden to the Everqueen for the salvation of her daughter's soul, any damage to said Handmaiden at all could also prove a massive detriment to her efforts. Either way, she quickly begins waving her staff in small circles while speaking in the tongue of magic itself standing next to the cage. Up above, the Supreme Sorceress turns her back entirely on everyone else and begins focusing upon the screaming ball of melted together limbs and mouths that used to be most of the remaining Brides of Khaine. She raises her staff, and a truly sickening amount of corrupting power begins to flow from her staff as she begins to chant in a foul tongue loudly enough for you to hear. Immediately, the other sorceresses move to cover her, adding their own chanting and power to whatever the hell is going on up there.
"I should be demanding a discount for not deactivating the cage properly," Hultressa growls under her breath before with a final grunt of effort, the dark red glow surrounding the cage begins to dissipate. "Finally," she sighs heavily before grimacing at the sight at the top of the altar, where even more sounds of strange cracking and groaning, like bones the size of trees being cracked and ground down, is filling the air. "We must leave. Now. Grab the cage, I dare not open it here and now."
Tears of blood forced out of her by the cage's spellwork have driven two small trails down Sadrina's cheeks but the Handmaiden stubbornly drags herself upright with aid of the bars now that they are no longer causing her pain for simply touching them. Her eyes shift around rapidly, scrutinizing everyone, lingering for a moment on the Whitewings and Kerillian before narrowing suspiciously at Johanna and Hultressa. Though even that does not last too long before she stares at the shortest and widest of the terrors present, which is to say, the terror that you are pretending to be. She does not look at your face, guarded by the helmet and more layers within and without, but rather at the rather recognizable blade of Brain Wounder which for all intents and purposes appears to have been magically fused with your hand. Another affectation by Hultressa, of course, to further mock the husk you pretend to have been transformed into, and a dominance display that a masterwork of dwarf craftsmanship is hers to do with as she wishes. Wounded horror and rage fill the Handmaiden's face, and you can see her well-tanned skin take on a darker amber flush across the whole of her naked body.
"Monstrous…abominable…," she hisses at Hultressa, doing her level best to kill her with her eyes alone. "May Drakira Herself-,"
"I'm fine, actually," you interrupt quietly, and Sadrina practically chokes for a moment on her own acidic hate and baleful thoughts. "This is a rescue attempt."
The normally gregarious Asur is speechless.
"Brace yourself, Handmaiden," Johanna grunts before she outright picks up the entire damn cage without even slightly bending her knees, making you boggle inside your armor before she flips her grip and produces some chains to loop around the bars so that she can strap Sadrina literally to her back like a traveling pack.
A traveling pack made up of a taller than usual elven warrior and a dense and heavy stone and steel cage that could kill a man by gently falling on and subsequently crushing them.
"We go. Now!" Hultressa commands urgently, pointing with one finger, and immediately the terrors begin to silently force a path forward, regardless of which faction the Druchii around you might be.
(Time To Go: 2+Terror Guard(20)+Imperious Presence(10)-Uncertain Allegiances(5)-Anarchic Violence(10)+20-15+10-10-New Arrivals(15)-Increasing Desecration(10)+Urgency(5)=2/100)
(Depths of Depravity: 15-Well Prepared Sabotage(15)-35+Absolute Desecration(10)-Bled White Numbers(10)+Rage of Khaine(35)-Sacrifices Aplenty(10)=-10/100)
But before you can get more than a few steps, there is a resonate cracking sound. Not of stone, or at least not entirely, but of reality itself being partially flayed open. Deep, insane laughter from Alyssa fills the air before it is joined by a number of sensual throaty voices that drift in tone, masculinity, femininity, and elsewhere altogether. The tingling, rage-inducing red air throughout the Temple of Khaine is suddenly awash in a new wave of pink-purple fog that smells of too many things for your brain to even begin trying to properly process. It is such an excess of sources as to be almost maddening. There is a gravimetric draw to the source of it all, one that makes even Hultressa and the near mindless terrors to turn their heads. The fighting throughout the temple stills in a way that even the incredible audacity of the sorceress did not, and for many it is not by choice. The humongous ball of writhing living bodies that had once been more than a dozen Witch Elves has split down the middle, like an egg hatching, and yet within there is not blood and viscera, but instead a swirling portal to madness and monstrosity. To the Realm of Chaos itself. Long fingers with deadly long nails have already wrapped around the edges of that slit in reality, and from it, daemonettes of Slaanesh have begun to pull themselves through out into the temple grounds. The very stone around them, splashed with blood from so many sacrifices as to be dyed a dark red, begins to wobble and throb like something living, changing in hue to something altogether unlike that of Khaine. The bottom of the vast statue itself is beginning to be affected, the stone and metal making it up wrapped with ropey tentacles of pink-purple flesh that begins to extend itself like a living carpet.
More than a dozen daemons emerge in a near instant, and then more still, until finally a trio of them are quite literally squashed aside with squeals of pain and delight by a much larger daemonette with a waterfall of pink flame as hair tied off with a bow made of interlinked babies' hands. A vast single horn sprouts from one side of the head, yet it is notched and trammeled as to appear like a twisted flute or pipe from an organ, while a splendorous dress – no, not splendorous, damn the daemon's power – a horrific dress made of supple skin with artful tattoos of devotion inked upon them covers a surprising amount of its daemonic body from sight. A digitigrade foot with sharp talons is briefly revealed beneath the dress as it pushes itself to the forefront dragging with it an absolutely enormous harp. One that seems to writhe, pulse, breathe as she sets it up, and for that matter is fully connected to a rapturously happy looking man who's arms make up the bottom half and from whom the strings sprout up from within his own body. As if his very veins and intestines have been braided together for each string. The daemonette looks upon the temple and sneers proudly as other daemonettes start to pour out of the abruptly larger portal before tossing its hair of flame before dragging one hand across the strings and producing a sound like a dozen children screaming in song that washes out across the temple. Devotees of Slaanesh cry out in ecstasy, their foes in pain.
The sounds are almost exactly the same.
"No," Hultressa grinds her teeth, and raises a hand before a shimmering half-sphere shield appears around your party.
(Discordant Harmony: 47-Infernal Rapturess(20)+Hultressa's Defiance(20)+Prepared Defensive Enchantments(10)=57/100)
For the first time so far you get to see a terror fall, much to Hultressa's alarm. Three of her terrors were not within the shield she hastily cast, and blood liberally pours out from their helmets as they stagger to their knees. One of them does not get up at all, while the other two stagger badly and require rough aid from the other terrors to help them upright one more. The terror that fell on its face is not dead, you don't think, but its writhing and strange muffled grunting is not a good sign either. Hultressa gestures at it, first once and then a second more furtive time before grinding her teeth before shaking her head and marshalling your party to keep moving without it, simply abandoning her abomination as a lost cause. But that single discordant note is not the end, because of course it isn't. The daemonette leader, for that is the only thing you can assume it to be, has a great many strings strung into its harp, and looks to be ready to play more. The only thing that stops it, however, is it reaching out with one hand with seven fingers to reach out and draw the attention of Alyssa who draws close without nearly the kinds of deference that a lesser cultist would show to a servant of their chosen God you might have expected. But then Alyssa is not some Slaanesh-blinded idiot fop with a single chamber of depravity beneath their manor, as the Witch Hunters have confronted before. This is a many centuries old elf with an immensely powerful and well-developed cult, who at least based on some of your conversations with Hultressa has outright contested and overcome powerful daemons before.
"Damnation," Hultressa growls, "A Herald, already?!"
"Powerful, too," Johanna grunts as you keep trying to push your way through the fighting. "Maybe Exalted."
Kerillian whispers a few curses in Fan-Eltharin, while the stumbling Whitewings swear in guttural Bretonnian.
"Come on, Breonna, come on," one of bastard daughters says frantically to their companion, even now still having to mostly drag her and keep her upright. "Please!"
"She's broken," Johanna shakes her head after giving the mute Bretonnian the barest of side-glances. "Too broken. Might as well save her the trouble and send her on."
Two of three Bretonnians whip their heads about at her with angry snarls on their faces.
"How dare you," one Whitewing whisper-cries at the vampire, "How dare-,"
"She's not even moving her feet on her own," Johanna says coldly, and though you cannot see her expression with the mask and hood and magic, you doubt you'd recognize it regardless on the face of the one you once upon a time called friend.
What's worse is that she's right.
The Whitewing, Breonna, hasn't even lifted her head up after getting out of the cage, and is practically a living sack that her two friends have to carry between them, her toes and nails smacking badly against the stones as their grip on her keeps slipping.
"She'll live, she'll survive," the Whitewing replies stubbornly, but Johanna just shakes her head and makes to keep moving while glancing over at you.
"You know as well as I do that sometimes, the mind leaves if the body won't," Johanna says to you.
"Eldyra came back," you reply weakly, Sadrina's neck almost snapping with how fast and hard she turns to look at you.
"Oh, sure, sure. But that took longer than we've got," Johanna snorts. "Based on the stories I got, at least."
(Daemonic Perception, Daemonic Desires: 27-20+10-Tired Hultressa(10)-Cracked Strain(10)+Anarchic Grounds(10)-Increasing Reinforcements(5)-Sisterly Sadism(10)+Appearance of Authority(10)+Promises Almost Always Kept(10)-Powerful Herald of Slaanesh(15)+Careful Protections(10)-Consecration Desecration Growth(10)-Suggested Scrutiny(10)=-13/100)
(Trying To Leave: 82+20+10-5-10+20-15+10-10-15-10+5-Dead Eyed Weight(5)+The Newest Servant [Frederick Martial](19)=96/100)
"To Erith Khial's Cunt with this!" Hultressa snarls and snaps her fingers. "Anyone in our way dies!"
In an instant, the terrors cease just pushing their way, and with low inhuman growls unfurl their weapons. A pointed look from Hultressa has you pushing your way forward as well, and you'd swear that Brain Wounder's runes had been dimmer but moments before the terrors smoothly open up a gap for you. Sadrina's eyes on your back are like two burning suns, but you can't pay too much attention to that, and instead finally, finally, get to turn your weapon on some damned Druchii. The slaughter that begins is incredible in its scope and swiftness as the many-feet long blades, thick spiked maces, and a Runefang start to hack and slash and bludgeon to death Druchii in the scrum keeping your party from advancing. It doesn't matter if they're Slaaneshi or not, though you try to kill at least somewhat more of the former than the latter simply out of hatred for Chaos, but blood splashes across you and new pained screams fill the air as you get to extract some small measure of vengeance for all that the Druchii have done to the world. The sea is not parted so much as hacked through, your passage one of torn off limbs, shrieking dying trampled beneath the feet of others, and elven bone exposed to open air while awash in their own blood.
Where before it seemed you were nearly doomed to be trapped in an inescapable quagmire of religious infighting, you find yourself more than halfway across the temple grounds towards the doors and some possible form of freedom. From here, all you have to do is get past the doors, force your way past anyone coming to investigate, and get back to the Tor. With Hultressa with you, and the remaining terrors, her authority and threat should hopefully be enough to manage that at least. Once you get back Eldyra and Gwendolyn then your wife and the others, just one of the repaired ships in the harbor could be enough to escape with. Even if that fails, with a brewing civil war, the flying beasts, distracted sorceresses, something can be done to actually escape. Not to mention whatever the hell happened with that quake earlier that shook the entire Black Ark. You made plenty of bombs, but it would take you literal years of production with far higher-grade materials to even come close to a fraction of whatever in the hells that was.
"Keep going, keep going!" Hultressa shouts.
Another Druchii dies, then another, as you continue forcing your way out alongside the other terrors. More daemons are pouring out of the rift, and more of Khaine's statue is beginning to become tarnished and transformed. There are less and less Druchii directly in front of you, less fighting each other, a steady wave of Slaaneshi dominance beginning to overtake the fight. A sinking feeling pierces the rising hope in your heart, and starts to drag it right back down as you see all of it, hear all of it, feel it in your soul. By the time that a translucent wall of sickly lilac energies splashes out of the sky like an overturned bucket directly in front of your party, you're hardly even surprised. Even less so as an ominous purple-pink glow falls over your entire party.
"OH SISTER!" Alyssa says with enough brightness in her voice to scald the eyeballs as she strides across the air atop what looks like musical notes made of layered together lips and tongues that briefly fade into and out of existence. "One last question before you leave, hmm?"
As she comes closer, you can see one of her eyes twitching uncontrollably.
"We are bargained and done, Alyssa," Hultressa shoots back, even as she grabs her staff with both hands and holds it just shy of threateningly. "Besides, as I told you, you have things here well in hand."
"Of course, of course," Alyssa nods, a wide smile on her face baring all of her teeth obvious as she walks atop the disgusting organic sigils. "Yet, I just…do have one last question?"
She then points directly at you with her staff, her face a rictus tableau of fury.
"Four hundred years of seeing terrors made of all races across this world…and never have you left one of them with a soul intact after the process was complete, not after your apprenticeship with Fal-Naiana was complete."
The remaining non-Slaaneshi Druchii continue to fight but they are being overwhelmed, forced into shrinking islands of defiance centering around the remaining Cytharai Cults. As far as you've come, however, your group is forced to come to a stumbling, frozen halt with the barrier in front of you. It is not so long, so wide, so tall as to be utterly impassible, but you won't be leaping over it anytime soon let alone trying to run around the farther sides. None of which concerns you nearly as much as seeing the sadistic grin on Alyssa's face as she stares down at you. Hultressa is too well-practiced to simply freeze up in shock or surprise. Instead, she takes a slow breath and sets her shoulders while looking up at her sister, her grip on her staff firm and jaw set. Johanna looks from Hultressa, to her sister, and then sighs and lets her head hang a little, while Sadrina in her cage has adjusted remarkably quickly and now simply largely focused on her former captor.
"And you know all about the intricacies of my work, then, Alyssa?" Hultressa sniffs, cocking her head. "Or, no, wait," she taps a finger against her lips. "You never had the talent for it."
Alyssa's snarl is a clogged, choking thing as she hunches forward slightly with the left eye still twitching.
"I know what I can sense, Hultressa!" She spits. "As does the Muse of Agony!"
At her mention of the daemon, her eyes briefly glow with the power of Chaos.
"Flayed, torn, shredded, fragmented, sold, devoured, and more!" She flings her arm to the side before it once more points accusingly towards you. "But intact? No. No…no. It would not suit your professional pride, sister! Kerrmieryon, for six hundred years?! No. So there is more at work!" Alyssa declares triumphantly, an absolutely insane gleam in her eye now.
To all of this, Hultressa is quiet for a moment.
"…are you denying my purchases and our bargained exchanges-," she begins calmly before Alyssa laughs her into silence once more.
"Why bargain and scrape for some of your resources when I can possess all of them?" She asks with a sudden calm utterly at odds with her twitching and snarling prior. "You give me no loyalty, your cause your own even against Screamtaker. You forego swearing new oaths to me, speaking of your precious work! You leave the soul of a Ylvathoi, one who dared defy the Druchii and placed one filthy step onto our Ark uncollared, intact! No, sister," Alyssa places a hand against her chest and her voice becomes a sickly woebegone thing, "I tire of your secrets, your distance!" Her expression then becomes something altogether more twisted as she smiles. "I will remove both between us. What is yours shall be mine, as it always should have been by all rights."
"Shit," Johanna mumbles quietly, barely audible even with how close you are to her.
"If you wished to rekindle our bonds, you could have picked a better time," Hultressa says even as she lifts her staff from the ground and places both hands on it, a dark black glow beginning to emanate from the head of it. "And 'by right'? Really? By right of what, falsely perceived superiority? By right of being a few years older?"
Alyssa doesn't blink.
"By right of conquest and blood, sister."
Behind you, more daemonettes are breaking through and past the few remaining knots of resistance, giggling and skipping joyously as they come with blood and viscera splattered across their bodies.
"Starting with you. Then I will reclaim rest of my property. Then I think I shall have to see what you have been keeping from the rest of us. Screamtaker let you live with far too lose a hand. I intend to rule differently."
"Is. That. So," Hultressa inhales slowly. "Terrible standard to set for future business practices and auction etiquette, Alyssa, but I suppose I hardly should have expected better of you."
The Hohenzollern Dynasty is at its strongest and most numerous in generations. You yourself are a patriarch to a great many children, who themselves have many children, a handful of which are old enough to start considering marriage and children of their own at this point. Not that you would say they must act to do so, it is just that you are aware of it. Perhaps it is that, the experience as father and grandfather, that informs your mind as to what is to come. Or perhaps it is being a child with many siblings yourself, even if you were thrown from Wulfenburg early on in your life. You certainly observed plenty of interactions maturing in Jegow between those bonded by blood and otherwise. The knowledge of what is most vulnerable about another, and the willingness to use it. Or perhaps it is from some other sense or knowledge or experience entirely.
"Your insults pile ever higher, Hultressa," Alyssa sniffs, cracking her neck from side to side with dull pops, baring her teeth. "But do not worry. You can, and will, pay for them. After all, as all the Coven swore to you upon her birth, we shall never give Gwendolyn to the Cult of Khaine."
The Supreme Sorceress runs her tongue along her teeth without blinking.
"But your sins may be forgiven after she is given to Slaanesh-,"
(A Refutation: 71+Mother's Rage(15)-Slaaneshi Empowerment(15)+Hultressa Horrorheart(20)-Alyssa Voidreaper(20)=71/100)
A solid column of Dhar spikes upwards directly at Alyssa to smash into a suddenly appearing violet and blue shield of magic, before the column begins to splinter apart and form dozens of smaller bending tentacles that sharpen into spikes that plunge towards the Supreme Sorceress at different angles. Different bending half spheres flicker into existence, bubbling atop bubbles like churned soap to form interlocking layers as a defense, but even with all of that Alyssa is quite visibly and quickly forced upwards and to the side. Meanwhile, a good third of the Dhar pouring forth from Hultressa peels off and slams down like an unruly child's fist to shatter the barrier that had been blocking your way, while another third spills outwards and then fizzles into a gaseous wall that causes the delighted giggles of the daemonettes to turn into delighted yelps of pain and ecstasy as their unnatural bodies begin to melt and burn.
"Okay, so we're doing this now," you mumble as the terrors let out inhuman gurgling roars and start rushing forward against the daemonettes that had begun to try and surround you.
"Come on, then!" Johanna bellows with an amount of volume that is actually somewhat shocking before her entire body is wracked with hideous sounds of cracking bone and grinding wet flesh, bulging from some internal well of mass and meat within her now spilling out from within like filling sausage casings and force her size another foot higher and wider at the shoulders.
With a loud clang, the cage is placed back down roughly onto the ground before she grabs the haft of her Cathayan halberd near the very bottom with one hand.
Both sorceresses are too busy screaming wordlessly at each other while throwing about their magic to do much else.
"Well then," you grunt before turning over to the cage and its quite obviously concerned occupant. "Watch it, don't know how strong these bars really are."
As it turns out, Brain Wounder hacks through the no-longer-so-enchanted cage with relative ease. Not to say that there isn't any resistance at all, which is disturbing in its own way given that you've sliced through plate armor and boulders alike with less strain, but it's not like it was entirely unexpected either. This was clearly one of the more special cages that the Druchii have made, but it still doesn't stop the cutting power possessed by a masterwork of Alaric the Mad. The moment she is no longer so utterly confined, Sadrina is out, uncaring of her nakedness as she sweeps you up in a brief hug before leaning down into the bodies of the slain Druchii cut down in your group's effort to escape that cover the ground. An acceptable enough shield is scooped up and straps tightened over one arm with two swift movements while a wicked curved blade finds itself in her hand. The Handmaiden takes a short breath before glancing over to your other rescued compatriots.
"What are you waiting for? Arm yourselves!" She barks, melodious voice sharpened to a razor's edge.
"Dance with us!" A daemonette cries out coquettishly before spinning around on one hoof and accelerating faster and faster like a deathspinner while still coming towards you.
(Fighting Forward: 47+Remaining Terror Guard(15)+Dangerous Assembly(35)-Dancers of the Wailing Waltz(20)-Broken Sister(10)=67/100)
(Vying Sisters: 66+15-15+20-20-Hultressa's Exaustion(5)=61/100)
Johanna hops upwards and then sweeps out with her Cathayan weapon, and leaves behind a burning trail in the air where the blade passes, strange and foreign runes blazing to life along the blade's edge. Brain Wounder beheads one daemonette, who's bouncing head laughs and coos affectionatly at you even as it bounces along the ground, the body continuing to fight before you split it down the middle and finally force its metaphysical integrity beyond maintenance. The terrors carve and cut and smash, but sustain wounds themselves in turn that you really wish they wouldn't. Sadrina, apparently truly kept as pristine as possible in her imprisonment before her presumed torture and mutilation later after the Auction, leaps into action as well while darting in and out from the far better armored to cut and stab where she can. Kerillian has no bow to fire with, but she's found a Druchii sword and knife and is using them with almost excessive speed to cut and stab what she can. The only ones who fail to contribute nearly as much are the Whitewings, both Bretonnian warriors grimacing and keeping back to try and guard their barely moving third, who will not take up arms even now that you are all under direct threat no matter how much her peers plead with her. Meanwhile, a spectral wave of spikes and blades and hooks comes flying through the air to smash into a deep sparking azure barrier hastily conjured by Hultressa, who grits her teeth at the effort required, her arms trembling with the effort while she keeps moving within the center of your group.
Every step forward towards the gates of the temple and the rest of the Ark is one hard fought.
(Fighting Forward: 81+Struggling Terror Guard(10)+35-20-10=96/100)
(Vying Sisters: 38+15-15+20-20-Hultressa's Exhaustion(10)=28/100)
"Back…OFF!" Johanna bellows gutturally, and then leaps directly into the masses of daemonettes coming from behind and momentarily disappears in the mass of bodies before great sweeping flame-trailing strikes start killing groups of them at a time.
The Handmaiden, on the other hand, pushes forward with Kerillian behind her, the two of them throwing all of their elven prowess and dexterity on display. There is, despite everything, a strange grace to the movements of Sadrina's shield bashes and bladework, while Kerillian practically appears to have gone feral like a beast in her frenzied stabbing all while a flat-out incomprehensible tirade in Fan-Eltharin escapes her mouth. Her imprisonment does not appear to have done wonders for her temperament, but at least she's actually fighting, unlike the one Whitewing who's still being haplessly dragged along by the other two, who are barely contributing at all with the terrors still standing and fighting. In the end, you end up being the one forced to guard the rear for those daemonettes able to get past Johanna, and also to protect the damned Bretonnians, who are by this point outright screaming for Breonna to do something. You'd settle for her standing on her own two feet at this point, her grip is water and oil anytime they try to press the hilt of a weapon into her hands.
Even with the Whitewings practically useless, you finally make it to the gates of the falling temple.
The expanse of the Claw of Dominion stretches out before you, though you cannot miss the plumes of smoke elsewhere on the Ark and the sounds of fighting that are going on around you aside from the temple proper.
But then comes a terrific concussive force that nearly bowls you over, and you turn just in time to nearly be bowled over yet again. Hultressa lets out a pained scream while you watch as a lightning bolt strikes her in the side and sends her to the ground, a feeble raising of her staff able to shield her from a second with a barrier that then shatters as a living serpent of black flame wraps around her right leg and begins burning her through the armor, superheating it and beginning to melt it. An especially large and powerful doombolt is conjured by Alyssa to crash directly atop Hultressa, who momentarily disappears beneath the magical missile with another scream as the very ground is cratered around her. It also outright sends the Whitewings bouncing and screaming themselves, the sheer malefic and unholy heat and power of it burning their naked skin and flesh beneath. Breonna simply flops to the ground while the other two try and stand once more, but two of the terrors are definitely gone. You aren't even done blinking the afterimages from your eyes before the daemons are on you once again.
(On The Cusp: 39+Remaining Terror Guard(5)+35-20-10-Alyssa's Attentions(20)=29/100)
"And as for the rest of you! You will worship me as your mistress and savior!" Alyssa screams with glee before she reaches out with a hand and then wrenches it backwards.
A swirling mist of purple and pink appears with her gesture, steadily solidifying into what looks like chains with spikes sprouting from them, a great mass of the stuff that begins to shoot out individual lengths from the greater bundle like gunshots.
"The hell we will!" Johanna shouts from amidst a dogpile of daemonettes.
(Jet Sphere Spell Negation Attempt! 1d6=3! Success!)
(Emergency Restorative Internal Cache Activated!)
An object, small, black, and thrown at near blurring speeds impacts the spell's epicenter and then erupts into a shower of glittering black dust. Then, to your uncomprehending eyes, the magic quite literally appears to fizzle out. Or rather, no, fizzle into the glittering black which is now sweeping away in the wind of the air. Like a lighting bolt being grounded, the magic itself is being grounded away into whatever the hell it was that was thrown, and the spell simply ceases to be in a manner that you normally would only ever imagine possible with the work of a runesmith. Or, perhaps, a wielder of magic that working specifically to dispel another's workings. Regardless, the result is the same. The magic is banished, even if momentarily, while a still breathing Hultressa is revealed in the small crater, badly burned but still clearly living. Then a burst of pure cleansing Hysh appears to erupt from somewhere inside of her, and Hultressa lets out a gasp as her wounds begin to heal as she pushes herself somewhat with one arm, a deep grimace on her face.
She makes to snarl out something before the blood drains from her face as she looks to one of the skulls on her belt.
Or rather, one of the skulls which is now crumbling away.
"No…!" She wheezes out with naked horror in her voice before it turns to fury as she glares at Alyssa. "You can't have-!"
"Can't have? Why not?" Alyssa tosses her hair and snorts. "Did you really think your wards so powerful, so mighty? You might have endeavored to strengthen them before, but hells, little sister. I've broken them before!" She laughs triumphantly and then with an idle move of one hand seems to command the daemonettes to actually draw back a bit, leaving a fierce-looking Johanna with glowing green eyes with tears and rips carved through her disguise.
Even through the armor, you can see Hultressa's eyes narrow to slits.
"…it was you," she says flatly.
"Indeed," Alyssa smirks.
"…why?" Hultressa strains out even as she slowly stands once again, the terrors and Johanna momentarily keeping the daemons back. "I knew it was either you or Screamtaker…,"
"Oh, she helped," Alyssa shrugs one shoulder, that cruel smirk only intensifying. "The rivalries of the Cytharai are myriad, little sister. Did you never think, for one moment," she taps a finger against her forehead, "That to steal from Khaine's table and strengthen Hekarti might be a powerful gift?"
"You did all of that, to me," Hultressa seethes, her exhaustion and wounds seeming to drift away beneath fury, "Stole my will, my choice, my body, all so that you could CUCKOLD KHAINE!?"
Alyssa just laughs like a rainstorm of glass shards at the utter violation and anger in her sister's voice.
"You played your part well, nurturing her, but if you think about it, preparing you as I did, and her father," Alyssa splays her arms wide with a wicked smirk on her face. "Why, I am the originator of her creation. I am as much her mother as you! Even now," she lazily glances up at the Tor of Dominance. "My servants will be retrieving her so that she can be properly raised…at my side," she smiles indulgently as she looks back to Hultressa, who is almost vibrating with her barely leashed emotions. "Thank you for keeping my daughter safe, but your services in that regard are no longer required."
Hultressa is breathing, hard, head whipping back and forth from the Tor and Alyssa.
"Unless you really think you can save her," she smirks. "You can certainly try, but given your state, I doubt you'll get far even if you can get to her."
Everything that you know about Hultressa, all that she's said, all that she has shown whether intended or not, tells you what her choice will be. She has lived for over a thousand years. Has struggled with the levers and pressures of the society that the Witch King, his bitch of a mother, and others have built and kept in place. The things she's done, the monstrosities she's unleashed and enacted across the world, most likely outweigh the good that she's been able to secretly manage. On the one hand, she did all of this in the hopes of gaining the aid of one who would vouch for her to the Everqueen, on the off chance that you were able to escape at all. But all of it, or perhaps none of it, matters as much to her as her daughter's life. She has been wounded and healed, she is tired before and now even more so after. But you know as well as anyone the sheer lengths that a parent might go to for their children, the limits that can be temporarily broken.
"Choose, sister. Your daughter, maybe, or those you sought to…I don't even know, save somehow?" Alyssa turns her nose up as she looks down at the rest of you, scoffing loudly. "As if you could run from me on my Ark."
Then a clarion clear voice, like the tone of a perfectly wrought silver bell, chimes in.
"There are those who resist you, even now," Sadrina says, drawing herself up with stern serenity and unabashed dignity even with her nakedness splashed with the blood of the Druchii. "Across the whole of the Ark. You may think that your Cult of Pleasure can claim victory, but it will not be so swift, nor so complete, as you may desire."
The confident ease disappears from Alyssa's face as she regards the Handmaiden.
"Do not think to dictate the workings and intricacies of the Cytharai to me, prancing wretch of Isha! Once our conflict is done, the Cults shall return to function and form as desired! The joining of the Undenied has carved free an opening anew in the depths, from which a new wellspring of strength shall add to the power of the Druchii!" Alyssa proclaims, one hand curling into a claw that wrenches at the air and drags it closer to her.
The gaze of many dance between Alyssa and Hultressa, the latter's breathing gone ragged, eyes squeezing shut as she gathers up the crumbing remains of the skull on her belt as whatever sympathetic links it held to her own wards continues to dissolve along with – presumably – the wards themselves. How long has Alyssa been planning this, you wonder? Was it because of your actions on this day, and that of others, which caused her to disdain waiting any longer? How swiftly was she able to communicate her own signals to the Tor of Dominance? How many other sorceresses remain in the Tor even now, the Coven spread throughout the Ark and maintaining its capacity to float and move beyond those who attended the Auction? However and whenever she set it in motion, it had to have been fast, done sometime after she'd decided to openly reveal the Cult of Pleasure. But in the end, that doesn't matter nearly as much as what comes next, because one way or another, you were only at the gates of the Temple of Khaine and not further out into the urban landscape of the Ark proper.
(Mother's Choice: 17+Burgeoning Genuine Friendship(10)+The Grand Plan(20)+Handmaiden Present(25)-Shattered Wards(15)-Exhaustion(10)+Lingering Ishan Compassion(15)+Reached The Gates(5)-Knowledge of Alyssa's Capabilities(20)-Threatened Daughter(35)+Protected By Terrors(10)+Armed Eldyra(15)=37/100)
You are a husband to a wonderful wife, father to a number of children, and have presided over family gatherings including a great many grandchildren. You have attended many meetings with family friends of two different provinces who have their own families. It is no idle boast to say that you are, perhaps, exceedingly well experienced and practiced in many such matters, though there is no such thing as perfect parenting for all children are destined to be their own people even if some pain is withstood in the course of it. But you aren't entirely sure you would need any of that to know what choice is going to be made in the next few seconds. You can see it in the bunching, the tensing of the body beneath armor and layers visible in its intensity, the grinding of metal caps and plates against each other as fists clench. Smell it in the air as Dhar does not simply waft but simply pours outwards from Hultressa to the point that it rapidly ceases to be discernable solely to those uniquely cursed and blessed with Witch Sight and outright becomes physically palpable and present in a scouring black event horizon, a corona, a halo, of pure crushed together Winds of Magic with a will and strength unknown to those without a certain sort of love in their hearts.
Hultressa raises her head, and deliberately looks away from Alyssa, which causes the Supreme Sorceress to tilt her head and scowl, and looks towards you.
Not Sadrina, who you suspect realizes what is about to happen.
Not Kerillian, who is still looking about so quickly around her that you think her neck is about to snap clean off.
To you.
She meets your gaze, and you meet hers, and you know. She knows you know.
You are a man of not inconsiderable intelligence. You are capable of multitudes, of complexities, of holding contradictory information and emotions within yourself simultaneously. So it is that you rage, you rage like you almost never have before, at what is to come. So close, now so far, denied with a goal in sight. You would spit fury, scream, curse, and more. But so too do you give the slightest of nods, and the most helpless of smiles beneath your helmet and armor. Because you know, and you understand on the most base and primal level, and on that level, you cannot help but approve. How could you not? After all that you've done, that members of your family have done, and friends as well? And so you rage, you laugh, and you can do nothing more than watch as that almost catastrophic upswell of power grows stronger and stronger until the stone around her begins to crack apart and even somewhat dissolve. Two more of the skulls on her face begins to crumble away into dissolving dust, but the clouds of particulate sparkle and shine before visibly flowing into Hultressa's body, absorbed at rapid pace.
"You will never have her."
It is a whisper that reaches far and wide.
(A Departure: 86+15-15+20-20+Daughter Under Threat(25)+Skull Storage(10)+Skull Storage 2(10)+Dual Directions(10)=141/100)
A black sun rises on the Claw of Dominion, that great edifice and chunk of primordial continental shelf which has sailed the seas of the world since the Great Sundering.
It grows, and grows, and consumes light inwards with a gravity that beggars belief.
Color itself is drained from the world around it, sucked inwards into depths that do not exist on a plane that cannot be fathomed, your feet dragging forward unbidden by that strange power, everyone around you doing the same even as they try to resist.
Then the black sun blooms like a flower with petals that spins like a rotating sawblade, and each petal extends out dozens of feet in less than a blink of an eye. You are grasped by it, and it burns you like lye scrubbing you raw even through two layers of armor, but you cannot resist as you are dragged. As all of your companions are grabbed and spun and wrenched with bone-creaking speeds and strength forwards and through the gates of the Temple of Khaine. More petals extend outwards, and what they touch does not burn, but simply ceases, disintegrated on contact. An entire swathe of daemonettes do not even get time to let out one more ecstatic moan or groan of pleasure at their pain before they are gone. The gates themselves cease to bar your path before you would have struck them and are instead flung far onto the streets in a tumbling roll. A roll accompanied by many other coughs and exclamations of pain and surprise as the rest of your party is unceremoniously deposited onto the streets, surrounded by Druchii in combat with one another. Some of whom were bowled over by your violent transportation and arrival, but many more are even now fighting one another. The speed of it all, the violence of it, meant that you couldn't even see where or what happened to Alyssa, but you can certainly hear an absolutely piercing howl of pain and hate which goes beyond mere inhumanity. Or, in this case perhaps, inelven? For what you can hear is a guttural, raging sound that to your ears sounds nothing more and nothing less than outright daemonic.
"HULTRESSAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!"
"Up and at 'em!" Johanna calls out, already back on her feet, before with a wide sweep of her Cathayan halberd she clears the immediate area around you all before with a gruff and uncaringly rough gesture outright yanks Breonna the Whitewing out of the arms of her fellows. "You two were absolutely fucking useless back there trying to help this one. Get your shit together!" The vampire barks angrily at the Bretonnians.
"That was…what…," Sadrina says slowly, shaking her head even as she parries a frothing made Druchii's strike with her acquired shield and lashes out with a kick to the side of his head that sends him to the ground.
"That was my friend Hultressa," you inform her with a grunt as you shake out your stinging aches and pains. "Stolen from Tiranoc at one point. Wants to go home, been trying, hasn't been able to, tried to make a gamble of it. Daughter's cursed by Khaine, wants the Everqueen's help to uncurse her."
The Handmaiden of the Everqueen's eyes lock onto you, as in fact does the pure dark spheres of Kerillian and the confused looks of the Whitewings. Johanna, at least, is focused on helping you begin to push forward through the crowds you've found yourselves in. A welcome thing considering that there is a loud explosion back towards the Temple of Khaine, and a few plumes of sickly purple-pink smoke that are rising in the air as well as wordless yelling that even from the rather considerable distance that whatever the hell that last burst of magic was you can tell comes from Alyssa. The Supreme Sorceress seems to be rather expectedly furious. But then comes other groans and whimpers, and all of you look down to find, much to your surprise, a number of others that appear to have been caught up in the spell. Given their general states of undress, the clear signs of abuse on all of them, some with clipped ears, a missing eye or fingers, all of them are clearly slaves. All of them, also, are clearly elven. They, just like the rest of you, were not particularly gently moved, with red raw lengths pressed across their bodies where solidified Dhar had wrapped around them like spiked chains and rope, but they are in fact here before you. They are but some of those you saw out in the Auction, likely just those that were close enough. Still, it's something.
"W-what-," one mumbles with a hand pressed against her forehead, a hand with all the fingers reduced by one joint length.
"Mistress?" Another cries out plaintively, his entire torso a ruined wasteland of scar tissue.
"I am…alive?"
There is a crackle of…something…before Sadrina stands amongst them and with incredible gentleness helps one rise to their feet. Despite her nakedness, despite the blood covering her, there is something otherworldly to her countenance as they look upon her. In so many broken gazes, places that have gone utterly dull and empty of light for who knows how long, there appears the tiniest visible spark as some small measure of that something that Sadrina carried within her passes to them. Within seconds, all of the slaves are looking at her with absolute awe, rising to their feet and unconsciously helping others do the same.
"Stand tall, Asur," she says to them sternly, "Stand proud."
"W-who are you?" One, a one-eyed Asur man who visibly looks weathered and withered, asks her with one trembling hand reaching out to her.
No one in her state should be capable of presenting with such majesty, and yet she does it all the same. Despite it all, a heady sense of calm and comfort emanates from her as she reaches out and clasps the man's hand and hold it tightly.
"I am Sadrina, some call me the Goldenquill," she says with a fierce smile. "Handmaiden of the Everqueen. And you have never been forgotten."
Tears begin to pour from the face of every single one of the Asur slaves as they sob while crowding her.
"Touching," Kerillian says snidely and making them jump and turn to her in shock, "But mayhaps we can bask in Isha's love in a place of safety?"
Only then do the other Asur start to notice the rest of you, shying away from you particularly. Not surprising, given what you look like. Though you do note that none of the other terrors appear to have been transported out with you. Hopefully they'll cause at least a modicum more damage back there if they really were left behind.
"Johanna!" You say, looking to the vampire who glances your way past the unmoving Whitewing on her shoulder. "Where in the name of the Gods is my wife?"
"I can try and lead us there, but who knows if we'll make it," she huffs grimly before nevertheless taking the lead.
"Stay close, stay safe!" Sadrina commands the Asur with you.
Given how deprived many of them appear to be, you have the unfortunate realization that they're more likely to be liabilities than assets in the fighting to come.
(Chased Through the Ark of Madness: 27+Significant Depopluation(20)+Cytharai Leanings(10)-Morathian Foundations(35)+Two Armies One Ark(10)+Grudges and Vendettas(10)+Band of Heroes(35)-Supremely Pissed(20)-Pleasurable Preparations(10)-Exalted Herald's Call(15)-Asur Slaves(5)=27/100)
The Claw of Dominion has gone insane.
How swiftly did madness and anarchy seem to spread here!
The Cult of Pleasure has been infesting this Ark for a long time, from top to bottom. It's the only reason that you can think of for how many of the Druchii are already fighting in the name of Slaanesh. The statue of Khaine was so large that it was practically visible from anywhere on it, you suppose that watching as it literally began to melt and twist into something more appropriate towards the Prince of Excess was a good a sign as any for them to bring out their knives. At the same time, you see just as many Druchii who are not visibly aligned with anyone but themselves, their houses, their own causes. Your rudimentary knowledge of Eltharin falters here like it has before, but you know the terms for vengeance, for hatred, for revenge, recompense, and so on, though the sheer scale and complexity of what certain Druchii are ranting at each other as they fight goes past that limited comprehension. Fires spread, smoke rises, and there appears to be no better time for grudges that have been building for likely longer than your lifetime to be finally dealt with. So focused on each other, they can hardly defend themselves easily from your small party trying to get by. But there are a number of them, even if they are not all purely military combatants but instead angry Druchii civilian equivalents.
All of which, frustratingly, makes it difficult for you to actually move quickly through the streets.
"This is definitely the most Druchii I've ever killed personally!" You rant as you ram Brain Wounder right through a brilliant defensive guard maneuver and into the heart of the Druchii facing you, "And almost the slowest I've ever moved across a battlefield!"
"Get out of our way!" Kerillian spits before descending into rapid-fire Fan-Eltharin curses as her blades dance and flicker into every bit of exposed skin and flesh she can find.
"That way, down that street!" Johanna points before lashing out with her halberd's blunt end and crushing the chest of another Druchii inwards with sheer bludgeoning trauma.
(Chased Through The Ark of Madness: 40+20+10-35+10+10+35-20-10-15-5-Emergent Legion(5)=35/100)
"Daemonettes are coming from up behind!" Kerillian shouts from nearby, popping up onto a pile of fallen crates while dual wielding repeating crossbows that she's scavenged from who knows what dead body on the ground. "Lots of 'em!"
"They found us already?!" You can't help but shout in frustration as a Druchii with a glowing brand of Slaanesh just above his navel tries to gut you, only to find that whatever meager blessings of his chosen God could convey to his sword isn't enough to stop Brain Wounder from carving through metal, skin, flesh, and bone.
"Don't seem focused entirely on us," she answers back before firing a few more times with each repeater, "More just spreading out into the Ark!"
"She is sending them forth to aid her followers in securing control over the Ark!" Sadrina shouts as she beheads a Druchii, then kicks the head into the head of another charging Druchii to keep them just off balance enough for her to disembowel them. "So long as that Herald plays their song, the portal remains open, and she has reinforcements aplenty to shore up her strength!"
"How can she possibly think this is going to go well for her!?" Johanna snarls as she slices and stabs with her halberd one-handedly with monstrous strength.
"They were saying something about an Undenied, some sort of…decree? Something!" Is your helpless answer.
"The Witch-King has made alliances with the forces of Chaos before, there is nothing and no one they will not stoop to utilizing if they think it is to their benefit!" Sadrina says as she blocks one blow with her stolen shield and sweeps the leg of her attacker out with one of her powerful legs, "If something has changed in the court of Naggarond regarding the Cults of Pleasure, I have not heard about it!"
Her blade skitters into one throat, and then another, before she turns back to you with a deep frown on her face.
"But I am not the Shadow King, nor am I of his Shadow Warriors," she shakes her head. "If there is information to be shared, then I have not benefitted from it as of yet."
"Let's proceed with the idea that Alyssa isn't suicidal in doing this," you grunt as you keep fighting.
"Oh sure, nothing like fighting while depressed!" Johanna says with a harsh laugh.
(Chased Through The Ark of Madness: 54+20+10-35+10+10+35-20-10-15-5-The Chorus of Ecstatic Agony(10)=44/100)
"Bad news," Kerillian whispers to you as her shoulder thumps against yours, the two of you momentarily fighting side by side as you try to cut a way through a rampaging mob of Druchii chaotically tearing each other apart.
"Say it," you growl as you block a strike with Bokdrungni, the outer shell of terror armor well savaged enough at this point that the gleaming Ledstahli within is more than visible.
"Remember the daemons from before?"
"Aye!"
You both duck in unison from a vicious two-handed sweep with a heavy cleaving blade before cutting the offending Druchii's legs off before killing him.
"Well, I think that now they're heading for us specifically."
Spinning on your heel, you look and find a tide of giggling, laughing, screaming, singing daemonettes coming down the street. Some of the Druchii are spared their attentions, some even outright helped to their feet and slapped on the ass to get moving again. Others are only able to put up some small amount of resistance as they are torn apart. By teeth, hoof, claw, finger, whip, or otherwise, the daemonettes kill. At their head, however, is a larger daemonette than the others, not quite to the point of the Exalted Herald and her harp, but a third arm protrudes from the small of their back that ends in an even larger claw than the others, while their hand with actual digits on the end is busy fondling its grotesquely exaggerated genitals as they are literally sprinting forward.
With seven eyes locked squarely on you.
An involuntary shudder runs through you as you watch as its mouth produces seven separated tentacles instead of tongues that lap and rub themselves all over the daemonette's face.
"Come on, come on!" You snarl as you turn back to the Druchii in your damned way.
(Chased Through The Ark of Madness: 33+20+10-35+10+10+35-20-10-15-5-Growing Chorus(15)=18/100)
One more street.
One more corner.
There are bloody Druchii everywhere.
You step over the dead, master and slave alike.
You fight through the living, loyal and corrupted both.
Still, it is not enough.
Not enough to get away from the tide of daemons behind you.
"His soul! Oooo~!"
"So delicious, so handsome, so ugly! It stinks, let me eat it, let me?!"
"Scream! Scream louder and hard and fast!"
"Let me show you, let me feel you, and feel me!"
A cavalcade of some of the filthiest things you've ever imagined, and plenty more you never have, spills forth in a babbling tide from creatures for whom lungs and air capacity are largely just suggestions. The most laviscious prostitutes in the Old World would be as innocent babbling children compared to what the daemonettes are screaming outwards. They both plead and offer up delights and experiences laced with the taint of the Realm of Chaos itself filtering through the air. The more there are behind you, forcing you, Kerillian, and Sadrina to fight in the rear guard as Johanna keeps leading the group onwards, the worse it gets. The air that was previously full of the scent of blood and smoke and fire is beginning to find itself supplanted. Not replaced, not entirely, but rather the smell of reality itself seems to leave all bounds of normalcy. A hundred different incense scents, concoctions of perfumes that are outright revolting and impossibly enticing, the stink of sweat and spice and sugar mixes with rotten meat and salt and spoiled things. An excess in the extreme that has your eyes watering, tongue feeling slightly swollen in your mouth, nose suffering from so much that ought to have rendered it blind to all scents is seemingly not being allowed to do so.
Then they are on you.
"GET OFF OF ME!" You roar, tearing them apart with Brain Wounder, but every single one that falls back is replaced two-fold.
(Predator Pointed: 47+Creeping Exhaustion(5)+Frederick Martial(19)-20-Song of Scintillating Delight(10)=41/100)
(Master Rune of Skella Valayadottir Activates! 6! Success!)
The runes on Bokdrungni flare brightly enough to temporarily blind, and this time the shrieks of the daemonettes show no pleasure or satisfaction at all as they recoil backwards. It is just in time as well, as the masterwork of Kragg the Grim once more shows its worth as it wrenches itself into position as a screaming doombolt of impressive size slams directly into you. Or rather, it would have, quite possibly obliterating you outright or at least tearing apart your armor, were all of that tainted magical energy not swallowed up by the gauntlet itself. The sudden openings in daemonettes around you lets you see your attacker, who flies atop a Dark Pegasus now, but the sneering furious face of Alyssa Voidreaper is unmistakable. Though that fury turns into shock and frustration as you through a purified bolt of magic right back at her, all the hideous strength she'd pumped into it refined and returned through dwarfen artifice.
"Guess it was too much to hope you died back there," you mumble as the Dark Pegasus lets out a scream of pain as she throws up a shield just a second too late to fully deflect it.
"You will suffer a thousand years before you are allowed to die, wretch!" Alyssa screams. "You and all the rest of your pathetic band!"
Then two more sorceresses arrive, following their mistress, their staffs alight with terrible magics upon their own steeds.
"Take them!" Alyssa screams before pointing her staff once more.
Glowing spectral chains and oily black tentacles spew outwards from those staves right down towards you all.
(Jet Sphere Spell Negation Attempt! 1d6=5! Success!)
(Master Rune of Skella Valayadottir Activates! 4! Failure!)
(Master Rune of Skella Valayadottir Activates! 3! Failure!)
(Minor Wound Sustained! Light of Summer Activates! 66! Success!)
There is a muted thump and pop similar to the last time that Johanna threw whatever it is to dissipate a spell, but unfortunately there are three sorceresses rather than one. You also appear to have, whether because of your clearly closer assosciation with Hultressa, the fact that you were part of the group first, are in fact yourself and rather openly so with Brain Wounder out and soul intact, targeted a bit more heavily. The air is driven out of your lungs as a solid wave of seemingly solidified air slams you into the ground onto your back, your armor taking most of the damage quite handily, but scraping you against the ground, nonetheless. But you don't get much time to even contemplate that before you are touched by a spell you'd really wished not to ever experience again, one that in fact the last time you suffered it came from the touch of Hultressa, in a darkly ironic way. Bars of pure white-hot flame insert themselves around your body before connecting into a painful cage that prevents you from moving, forcing a scream from your mouth. The only thing keeping you from almost passing out from the pain is the fact that your armor is Ledstahli, and is holding up incredibly well against the pure flames of Aqshy surrounding you. Your eyes, unfortunately, are not so well guarded, and you can feel your vision being literally burnt out of your sockets from the bar almost directly pressed against your forehead. Even through your forced shut eyes, it is quite literally actively blinding you. Some of the pain fades as you feel the Light of Summer activate, but it can only do so much when you are still actively being burned.
"Frederick!" Sadrina calls out in horror.
"I have the brute caged, mistress!"
"The hell you do!" Johanna roars before there is the sound of stone crumpling and crackling.
(Surrounded By the Chorus: 94+20+10-35+10+10+Reduced Band Strength(25)-20-10-15-5-Hymn of Pain and Pleasure(20)=64/100)
(Alight, Midflight: 65+Johanna Martial(20)-Band of Tired Sorceresses(25)+Surprise(5)+Stored Celestial Flames(10)=75/100)
You can't see, not with the blazing bar of light in your face. But you can hear. Quite well, in fact. You can hear as the sorceresses let out shouts of surprise and the beating of a fourth pair of wings, as well as the tearing of flesh and splattering of blood. You can hear and smell, all too well, the daemonettes as they press in, some of them leaving lingering touches on your body that is not covered by the burning bars of Aqshy, and each one enrages you with how your flesh is prickled by gooseflesh. By pleasure, much to your hatred, your body forced to betray you by daemons. By pain, something you would seize on more readily to keep your head about you, only you know that this is as unnatural to your senses as the opposite being placed upon you. Kerillian is still talking, still shouting, still fighting, but desperation grows in her voice all the same. Sadrina is similar, her rallying shouts and sounds of effort growing more harried, more exhausted. At the very least, you can hear the Whitewings fighting, you think, Bretonnian is a very recognizable language. But then you hear the Whitewings screaming for their ally, for Breonna, to get up and do something, anything, and once more you realize that their comrade's broken mind has formed an anchor around their necks. Their love, their bonds, are what has helped them survive in an often harsh and cruel world, but right now it is anything but helpful.
"Disgusting beast!" A sorceress cries out.
A wordless screech akin to that of a bat rings out in response.
"Someone…aaaarrgh…get me out of this!" You scream out, straining to try and do just that, even though every single one of the solid bars of fire burns at you harder and harder through the Ledstahli.
Metal slams and scrapes and hisses as it is superheated against the bars as someone tries to do just that.
"Damn it! Druchii forge-priests can't make anything for shite! Glaikit bastard suckling grubs at Ereth Khial's teats!" Kerillian screams out above you, an audible tremble in her voice. "I can't – it's not working!" She punctuates each syllable with another smash and clang, superheated miniscule fragments of the blades in her hands scattering across your Ledstahli like hissing rain.
"Kerillian! The daemons- ah!" Sadrina screams out as you hear the distinct sound of skin and flesh being hacked into.
"Breonna! For the love of the Lady, get up and fight!"
(Surrounded By the Chorus: 84+20+10-35+10+10+(Bleeding Band of Heroes)20-20-10-15-5-20=49/100)
(Alight, Midflight: 72+20-Bleeding Sorceresses(20)+10=82/100)
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I can't-," Kerillian is muttering over you as she tries again and again to cut at the magical bars now thoroughly melting through the Ledstahli.
"I get it, I get it!" You shout back, grinding your teeth through the pain. "Don't let yourself die!"
"Damn you all!" The Asrai screams as she throws herself away from you and towards the daemonettes instead.
Another scream fills the air amidst everything else, but this one is high above. Difficult to hear amidst the dozens of daemonette throats uluating as they like with moans and groans and whispers, but audible enough. Hot blood sizzles and pops like fat on the bars of solid fire locking you in place, falling down from the sky, before what is definitely an arm comes flying down to smack you across the face, still twitching fingers dragging sharp nails across your face before becoming trapped between two of the bars of fire. Your nose immediately becomes suffused with the stink of burning skin and flesh, of scorched and burnt bone, and you are relatively sure you know what just happened in the sky. A conclusion that becomes much more certain as you hear vicious curses in Druhir and a cruel monstrous laugh that sounds vaguely like that of Johanna.
A hand trails alongside one of your thighs where the Ledstahli has almost completely burnt away despite attempting to reform, setting your skin aflame in an entirely different way.
"Look. At. You," a throaty voice, fluctuating between that of a man and a woman with each syllable, murmurs in your ear with an unnatural echo. "So…violent. Such a brute. But oh…," more hands appear, clutching around your head and poking fingers through the slit for your vision, "A brilliant little gem of a mind as well!"
"Get the fuck away from me, daemon," you hiss at what you know has ensnared you now.
"Fuck? I'd love to!" It chortles, a new sizzling sound accompanying the most mouthwatering roast pork you've ever smelled as you feel a slight pressure near one of your arms against the flames. "Ooh! Nice and hot, these," it titters as it apparently burns itself on purpose. "But your soul? Now that is interesting. Shot through with gold, but so roughed up, so many hands!" It laughs in a way that makes something flutter in your stomach despite yourself, your conscious mind warring angrily with the physiological responses that the creature of damnation solidified is forcing upon you. "Passed around like a party favor! So many others have touched you, had you…,"
A mouth full of humongous triangular teeth literally bites through the Ledstahli helm before a tongue covered in barbs laps gently against your cheek – and even with that gentleness you feel skin scraped raw and bloody.
"It makes me jealous!" It whines like a child. "It makes us all jealous!" It huffs like a young woman. "Why did they have you before us? It should be us first, us second, us forever!" It growls like a jealous lover. "We want it all, WE WANT IT ALL!" A monster demands as you feel hot breath against your bleeding cheek and hear a thick tongue slithering out between teeth.
A series of whistling precedes multiple crossbow bolts presumably striking the daemon in the head, splattering you with its blood though you can't see for shit outside of the flames in front of your eyes.
"ENOUGH OF THIS!"
(Master Rune of Skella Valayadottir Activates! 2! Failure!)
(Major Wound Sustained! Light of Summer Activates! 29! Failure!)
(Jet Sphere Spell Negation Attempt! 1d6=1! Failure!)
The only other time you have felt like this, it was when you were being keelhauled in the waters outside the Cathedral of Manann in Marienburg. This time, however, you are in the air. The wind does not merely whistle, it screams at your sheer velocity. The burning bars of flame are essentially welded to your skin now, and so come with you much to your screaming pain. The world passes by around you, your senses only able to tell you so much without that vital thing called sight. There is the beating of wings, the flapping of feathers and something more leather, and hard breathing. Down below there is still fighting. In fact, you can't miss one pair of wings coming to an abrupt halt while accompanied with a fizzling pop and whoosh of magic being cast out into the world one more.
"Shit!" Johanna curses from shockingly close by before you realize that she was flying.
Then, you realize that all of a sudden she is falling, down and away, another string of curses becoming more and more faint.
"Take him, take him now!" Alyssa snarls from nearby. "He'll know what my sister has been up to, or close enough to it. Put him in the chambers!"
"B-but Mistress, what about the Handmaiden? We-," another sorceress begins to say before there is a keening guttural snarl so thick and wet you suspect that rivulets of spit would be coming out of Alyssa's mouth right about now.
(Sensible Slaaneshi: 88-Supreme Sorceress(20)-Significant Prize(10)+Elven Arrogance(10)+Sisterly Sadism(15)+Legion Arrival(10)+Already Cracked(10)-Gluttony(10)=93/100)
There is a certain way that some people talk, you've come to realize, when the bounds of sanity start to fray a certain amount. When the line between the mind and emotion start to blur, something you've experienced yourself. You've heard it amongst flagellants aplenty, as well as some of the Slayers of the dawi, those who have gone fully zaki in their desperation for death. You've heard it in some Shallyans who refuse to believe that some of their patients have gone into Morr's embrace, of siblings on the battlefield after a battle is over finding the bodies of their siblings. Of mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, of family in all its ways attempting to refute death itself. To put it simply, you know the sound of someone just cresting over the hill of sanity reasonably well.
Alyssa appears to be stretching right across that line, if her words and the tone behind them are anything to go by.
"You think I cannot take her myself!?" Alyssa shrieks loudly. "We have daemons aplenty! I am mighty enough without either of you! Go! Now! Return for the rest of the prisoners that I will take, and then we must set about restoring MY ark to rights!!!!!"
"Just kill me now, if you think you can!" You spit, but the bite of your words is lost with the air being pushed clean out of your lungs as your current captor, whoever they are, goads their mount into furious flight.
(Jet Sphere Spell Negation Attempt! 1d6=1! Failure!)
The wind whistles by as you are dragged across the skies, the sounds of widespread combat coming from all there is below you, without anything approaching from behind or below.
"This is not what we were promised," a sorceress hisses under her breath.
"You shouldn't believe the lies of the Chaos Gods, any of them," you growl at her, but she scoffs in turn.
"You know nothing of the mysteries of Slaanesh, Ylvathoi," she spits at you, the gobbet splattering right against your currently skinless cheek.
"Stuff the filth's mouth shut, do not let it speak unless it is to tell us of Hultressa's treachery!" Another sorceress speaks up, though this one's voice is clearly pained.
The source of the arm, you would suspect.
"How about I tell you how you can die!"
Despite your best provocations, however, they refuse to respond to you again before you feel their Dark Pegasi land on stone with clattering ironshod hooves and huffing whinnies. Chains upon chains are looped around you, heavy ones that snap closed and shut with quiet thrums and remain too-cold to the touch even after they are placed against your skin, Bokdrungni torn off of your arm in the meantime. The moment the chains lock properly, it feels like your strength drains out like water, leaving you like a limp kitten. There is tearing, much of it violent and angry, which rips your Ledstahli armor apart until finally they find the strongest portions from which it might regenerate itself continually, and those are cast from you as well. A blindfold replaces the blinding bar of fire as the chains replaced the others pinning you in place, and you are dragged violently across the ground with muttering Druhir all around you, just quiet enough that you cannot catch it. Enough so that the Light of Summer would have gone to work healing it if it were not stripped from your neck and thrown aside as well.
Finally, you reach a room, and with a vicious shove are forced onto a slab, your limbs locked in place with further chains and cuffs with razor sharp blades and spikes formed within them that cut deeply and severely with the slightest pulling against them.
There you are left, growling and angry and truly imprisoned for the first time upon the Claw of Dominion, heart pounding in your chest, in darkness.
Utterly alone.
Or at least that is your thought until you hear a hefty bit of wet sniffing and snuffling from somewhere nearby.
"Hnngh…fresh meat…," an inhumanly deep voice rumbles quietly, the sheer basso behind it instantly recognizable to you, though there is a strange strain to it you can't recall ever hearing before. "Nice and bloody, too."
"An ogre," you growl, heart still pounding angrily in your chest. "Is this her plan, then? Chain me down like a meat on a hook?"
A new voice enters your awareness next from somewhere else.
"Hah! He wishes!" A gruff man scoffs in thickly Norscan accented Reikspiel. "Old Witherskinny over there'll eat rocks if they give it to him!"
"And who are you then?" you ask, having to restrain yourself from rolling your head about to try and find the source more quickly.
"ME? Hah," the Norscan scoffs and sniffs loudly. "I am the master of sight and sound, shepherd of flesh and bone, blessed of sight beyond sight, guide and destroyer-,"
"A Vitki, then," you cut him off with a groaning sigh. "Wonderful. A Chaos worshipper. Unless you aren't?" You ask with a bit of hope.
"Wh-you- no!" The Vitki, the shaman-sorcerer of the Norscans, sputters. "I serve the great Tchar, and soon enough, I shall be free of this place!"
"Hah, small meat's said that one before," the ogre growls, droplets of what you hope is just drool splattering onto the ground in the distance after he speaks. "Name is not Witherskinny, gonna eat you first for dat!"
"And what is your name then?" You ask with a sigh.
"Hah! I," there is the sound of chains clinking, straining, and if you really focus on your hearing, the sound of flesh tearing slightly, "Is Grunk! Mighty Slaughtermaster of der Manglefists!"
"Not that there are any Manglefists left, is there, Witherskinny!?" The Vikti chuckles lowly, getting a loud snarl from Grunk.
"Not anymore your tribe either," Grunk says with dark satisfaction, making the Norscan snarl in turn.
"…wonderful," you sigh to yourself as the two start arguing with each other about how lowly the other is.
Chains clink and clatter all the while in the distance, enough so that you are coming to realize that the chamber you are in must be somewhat circular, at least to accommodate all of this different sources of sound.
"Tell me…boy…," a rasping voice that almost sounds as old as time itself makes itself known, each word thready and almost forced just to get out, "What…primitive…discipline…do you…claim mastery of...?"
"He is touched by Ghyran most of all," the Vitki immediately says, "Drenched in it, time and again."
"Cold, like the higher peaks of the mountains," Grunk disagrees, "In his marrow, crack it open, suck it down, you'll see."
From somewhere in the room you hear something growl-hissing, a snapping of teeth and lips that you quite simply cannot make sense of.
"Speak plain, scaled meat!" Grunk complains.
"Instability stabilized, intact without functional internal access," hisses the whatever the hell it is with.
"Stupid-foolish lizard-thing speaks true," a chittering voice speaks, making your growl and your anger burn brighter once again.
A fucking skaven of all things is here!? And what does it mean lizard thing?
"No magic, none, nothing! This one has nothing to call upon, no, no…it must-keep secrets that it still wants, yes-yes!"
"Much as it disgusts me to do so, I must agree," a woman speaks up from elsewhere, though her Reikspiel is strangely rusty, the accent behind it strange. "This is no wizard, sorcerer, warlock, or otherwise. He has simply been…affected by more magic than most mortals alive. In the Empire at least."
"God's save me from this insanity," you mumble.
"Oh, no, no, no. No Gods here, sweet thing," the woman chuckles. "Save for Atharti. Or, perhaps, with Screamtaker dead, and her daughter replacing her, Slaanesh."
"And who are you all, then?" You ask helplessly, even as you feel the rivulets of blood starting to trickle out of you from the many manacles.
A deep, throaty chuckle answers you first.
"Why, we are the secret to Screamtaker's success. The reason for her vast magical knowledge, her overwhelming dominance that has allowed her until recently to stave of all challengers and stymie even the thought of doing so. I suppose…," chains clink for a moment. "You could call us the Supreme Sorceress' Living Library."
"Aye, southling," the Vitki laughs with all the joy of the gallows. "Each of us has been here for a long, long time. Many years."
"And none of you tried to escape?" You ask even though you have a feeling you know the answer.
"Of course!" The woman says with a light laugh, "But each of us has been…," her voice become a much uglier thing for a moment, "Humbled. By Screamtaker's enchantments."
"Cannot access magic, cannot call upon Old Ones," the hissing voice speaks up. "Elven chains and draining difficult to find workaround."
"In that…there is…not…one," the almost eldritch-ly old one speaks up again.
"I don't believe that," you growl, only to hear an absolute chorus of chortles and demeaning laughter.
"Screamtaker's masterwork, my sweet new meat," the woman says, loathing and laughter in her tone. "You can tear yourself apart aplenty on those chains, but you won't escape. Not even if you fully degloved your whole limb of skin, flesh, and muscle down to the bone."
"Pinned to soul, to-to bone, damned elf-thing, heal-restores after pain, yes-yes!" The skaven chitters angrily. "Abominable, Moulder-kin secrets, assuredly!"
"Blood feeds it, new meat," Grunk grunts, "Pain feeds it. Feeds you, keeps you bleed-able. Long as she likes. But doesn't feed right!" He manages a weak roar, the chains rattling hard, and this time you do hear the sound of some flesh tearing, as well as him snuffling and slobbering all over himself with open desperation.
You have a dawning sense of what the Vitki's insult of 'Witherskinny' really entails.
"Must you, Grunk?" The woman sneers, but her superior tone wobbles just a bit at the same time, a deep hunger in her voice as well.
"So that makes you a vampire, then," you say, almost shaking your head before the collar around your throat starts to do more than prick the skin.
"Aye, sweet blood, Kakhe herself is here, chained," the vampire sneers again, teeth gnashing as she confesses to it. "Chained as Kakhe has been for too many years. Eldest of all the prisoners of Screamtaker, save for the Liche Priest over there, Soya."
"Do not…speak…mine name…abomination…of Nagash…!" The 'Liche Priest' spits with desert dry lips.
"Nagash this, Nagash that, bah!" Kakhe scoffs, "The First Necromancer was not so great as to not fall, and to the sweet blood's own God-King! Regardless!" She says with a new clattering of chains, "Propriety must be maintained as a guest to mine realm-,"
"Your realm-place?! Hah, dead-thing is foolish!"
"Interrogation and experimentation chamber is domain of captor," the 'lizard' adds tonelessly, voice as unemotive as Anna herself.
"How dare you!" Kakhe shrieks.
"Hey, lizard, would that make you a Lizardman, then? From Lustria?" You call out, trying to ignore the argument starting up between the Vitki and Grunk, as well as the skaven and the vampire now.
"The warm-blood perceives correctly despite its deficiencies," the Lizardman says flatly.
Shit.
They really can talk.
Hultressa wasn't lying about them.
"Lizardman, then, you oppose Chaos, then?" You ask, bereft of little else to do at the moment. "And what's your name, anyhow?"
"Correct. Purpose is to guide troops, divine signs, fulfill the Great Plan of the Old Ones," it admits, and for the first time so far it shows emotion in the sheer reverence it seems to have for the 'Old Ones'. "Identifier divined as Kkha'rdluk'li'fe."
"…right," you mutter. "And Screamtaker captured you?"
"Failure," Kkha…just Kkha, you think, notes emotionlessly. "Ambush not divined. Saurus decimated, magically overwhelmed by elves. Not according to plan."
"Same wiv us," Grunk inserts himself flatulently into the conversation. "Spikey skinnies came outta nowhere, right when we wuz about ter claim the Challenge Stone and smush Valdir's little tribe to mush!"
"By Tchar you were not!" The Vitki – Valdir, apparently – snarls, "We were about to slaughter the lot of you, and emblazon the monolith with the symbols of the mightiest of the Gods!"
"Treachery brought low the rat-man, in case you are wondering," Kakhe adds sardonically, "As if it could have been anything else."
"Lying-treacherous Paskritto!" The skaven screams aloud angrily, "Will search-find you one day, yes-yes, will pay back a thousand fold your betrayal, hrnngh!"
"As for myself, they came and found my tower – how Screamtaker never deigned to tell me, the bitch," the vampire huffs, "Though I believe they simply raided the coastline of Nehekhara and stole Soya right out from the Tomb King's retinue."
"All so she could interrogate you all about your magical secrets? You didn't try to keep her out?"
At that, the conversation in the chamber seems to die off quite rapidly.
"Oh, we try," Kakhe says quietly. "We always try."
"The elf witch was…strong…," Valdir mutters.
"Determination to keep the secrets of the Old Ones strong. Manipulatory capabilities through magic and concoctions of elven entity Screamtaker were…considerable," Kkha adds.
…well then.
Seen from above, the vast crater that surrounds Talabheim is truly astonishing, even for you, who have spent years flying about the Middle Mountains. Or at least the eastern portions. Octaine has never been out this way before, but the lessons of his mother and others have kept his discipline strong. Even if he never has flown out this far without his mother nearby. The thought of that, of Oskana, makes your fists tighten around the reins and chains as you command him to descend onto the path in the road a reasonable distance away from the meeting party, the fortress High Watch in the far distance watching over the sole passage in and out of the great crater. The glorious, and frankly beautiful sight of the expanse of the crater's innards is something you will never forget, but the memory of it is already soured by what is to come. You would never have dared to simply impose upon Talabheim yourself, not with the relations between your provinces being the way they are, but nevertheless, some meetings must be had. Including this one, between yourself and your effective peer, as heirs to your respective provinces.
Duke Krugar Fuerbach stares at you, hard, seemingly unafraid of Octaine who decides to puff out his feathers just a bit in threat display.
Not, you think, entirely unwarranted given that you are considerably outnumbered here, being alone save for a gryphon. Could you fight your way out if necessary? Hopefully. But the archers and crossbowmen that have accompanied the Duke alongside his detachment of halberdiers and Greatswords might make a good go of it. Sunweaver says that she feels your father and mother are still alive, but Oskana was not part of that strange ritual. Whatever happened to her, to the rest of them, to the enormous runic breastplate fitted for a gryphon, you simply can't know. But you do not draw the hammer chained to your back, nor the sword at your waist, or the blastgun at the small of your back. The flag of Ostland is what you bring with you instead, fluttering in the wind itself as you make your way towards the Talabeclanders on your lonesome. Surrounded as you are on all sides, if you think about it. Talagaad is all about you, the port city which functions effectively as Talabheim's with the tunnel connecting the two. Thankfully, this small square appears to have been pre-emptively cleared, though you can spy quite a few twitching shades in a number of windows.
It does not escape your notice that not a single motion from their party has been towards meeting you halfway.
Even now, given the chaos that is beginning to envelop the Empire, even now after they asked you for aid.
It's enough to make you grit your teeth behind the passive expression you work to keep on your face.
You are not your father, but never let it be said that Magnus von Hohenzollern does not have a dangerous temper of his own!
"Duke Fuerbach," you call out respectively, neither the tone nor words the one you wished to be using right now were it not for the circumstances.
"Prince Hohenzollern," Krugar says with a stiff-necked nod. "I see you received our message."
"Aye, we did," you nod yourself, planting the flag into the road next to you, uncaring how one of the Talabeclander Greatsword's eyelids twitch as the stone is disturbed by the act. "Sent one back, even. As mentioned in it, I came ahead to ensure that our promise is being kept no matter what, that our aid is able to reach you without issue."
"You-," the twitchier Greatsword spits, his white mustache jiggling as he snarls.
"Peace, Florin," Krugar says sternly, one hand cutting out to the side. "Given the relations between our provinces, it would not do to react incorrectly should a significant force…," he pauses, glancing up at you, waiting for your nod of confirmation, and only upon receiving it continues, "Of Ostlanders crossing into the province. Speaking of which," he snaps his fingers, and two of his men on horses shift to attention. "Send out the messages to the outposts and forts. The Ostlanders are not to be waylaid by any true son or daughter of Talabecland."
"Yes, Duke Fuerbach!" They both salute before wheeling their horses about and galloping back down the path.
Only then does Krugar dismount from his horse, and rather pointedly pushes past his guards and motions to keep them back as he approaches you. The red hair of his sister, Johanna, that your father spoke of in the past, is just as present here, though the Duke keeps his hair cut so short that it borders just above shaving it completely. Even that cannot stop you from seeing a small line here and there of grey, though whether that is recent to the man or not is unknown. He also has a full beard and mustache of red, though that too is trimmed neatly. He might not be as tall or wide as you, but the man is clearly a well-experienced warrior. Unlike yourself, Krugar appears to favor the longsword, with no shield to him, perhaps preparing himself for the day that he would take up the Runefang of his station. He wears his plate armor well, comfortably, which fits for the tales and rumors that have spread of his martial prowess. Still, though you never took to it like your sister or father did, you know a little more than most about smithing and metals, and you'd swear that there has been some recent repair to the man's breastplate.
"As you may suspect, the situation is dire indeed, given that we have called for aid from all corners," Krugar begins unceremoniously.
"Regardless of the relations between our provinces, Ostland would never stand by to allow any part of the Empire from being assaulted by abominations of Chaos without recompense, if allowed to aid them," you say back with a small shrug. "There are innocents under threat. If you allow us to aid them, we will."
"…we shall have to hope so," he says with a small frown. "I do not know if you could see it in the air as you were, but already, the Taalbaston has been tainted by the presence of the enemy."
You can't help it when your eyebrows raise up in surprise. The crater is one of the most fortified locations in the Empire, the natural walls created by the crater have been supplemented by the nobility of Talabecland with additional reinforcements, towers, guns, cannons, and more since before the beginning of the Empire. It is not impassible, not unscalable, but still an impressive defense that few others in the Old World could boast to match in sheer breadth at least. At the same time, your mind seizes upon that sheer vast size. It is much easier to see your enemies in all directions from, say, Middenheim, as you are atop a mountain and control all the paths upwards. It is another for this place, with the walls of the crater so high that they block off the surrounding world. Were the world outside of the Taalbaston aflame, it would only be the smoke that made it visible.
"Truly?"
"We've had skirmishes with at least three smaller warherds, just in their hundreds, skirting near the north, east, and south."
"Not through the tunnel, surely," you point out, and he nods grimly.
"Oh, I suspect tunneling is involved, aye, one way or another. Either that, or one of their damned Beast-Paths has managed to form in Taal's most holy grounds. An ill omen, regardless."
"I don't disagree," you agree, pausing as he looks askance at you, eyes narrowed. "A great deal of our province is forested, and not so blessed as yours. Taal is well welcomed and thought of amongst many of my people," you grunt, trying to fight the affront of the suspicion down. "Regardless, as it is, I have brought forth my cavalry, light and heavy, as swiftly and ably as I could. Infantry are assembling and rearming, but by their nature will be slower. Especially with the other warherds causing trouble in the province. The barges are already on their way with our horse first."
"…I see," he frowns again, but this time it at least seems somewhat aimed towards your mutual enemies. "Our own armies are attempting to return, but they are in too many divisions to move in great strength now. If your forces could relieve them, we could return them home, see to these enemies."
"You'd rather us not even enter the crater then?" You raise an eyebrow, glancing past him towards High Watch and its walls, walls that are certainly well staffed, but going by the men you can see on it, not by the best of the best at the moment.
Gods above, he's clearly leaning hard upon hasty recruitments and militia to try and make up the difference.
"I would…not be opposed," he says through grit teeth, looking to the side.
"But someone else would," you guess, looking meaningfully at his longsword, which is most conspicuously not the fabled Runefang of Talabecland.
"…yes," he grunts.
"Say no more of it then," you shake your head, "As I said, I am not here to cause issues, but to aid your people. If you can give me locations, detachment lists, we can begin seeking them out, try and smash the beastmen aside so they can return and reassemble here."
"That would be most appreciated, Prince Hohenzollern. Though I must confess, I don't…," he pauses, pursing his lips. "I was expecting…,"
"My father is not available," you reply stiffly, and his face pales.
"Gods be with him," he mutters, "The tales are true then? He is-,"
"Not dead, not by the auguries of some of the mightiest wielders of magic I know," you interrupt quickly, gruffly, clearing your throat. "The disciples of the God of Dreams do not see his death either. But as it stands…I rule in his place. Until his return," you say as strongly as possible.
Krugar works his jaw and makes to shake his head before stopping.
"Very well. Until his return, then," he nods and then to your surprise salutes you. "As it happens, I already prepared a listing for just such an idea as yours, hoping you would send your mobile elements ahead."
With that said, he unfurls a rather hefty looking scroll of vellum he'd kept in a case on his belt and presents it to you.
"If you can bring word back to your barges – I'll provide my seal and permissions – we can dock them in Talagaad as swiftly as possible and send them right back out," he mention while offering said permission notes at the same time, each stamped with his wax seal.
"Agreed, better than trying to deploy them piecemeal along the riverside at smaller ports. Easier to organize as well," you say absentmindedly while you glance over the scroll of listed out portions of Talabecland's forces. "The Reiksmarshal…I do not see your brother on this list," you say while glancing up at Krugar, who grimaces at your words. "He proceeded south to the Everpeak alongside the Emperor, did he not?"
"He did, bless him. Unfortunately, my cousin, General Albrecht Baden headed towards the Drakwald the moment he heard the beastmen were rising up," he rubs at his temple with one hand, his grimace intensifying. "For years, he's been saying that the beastmen would return and that the Drakwald has been left to them for far too long. As it is, I have received no word of him since before Middenheim was put to siege. He is a reclusive sort, but family nonetheless...and I have no idea if he even lives."
One of your hands lands on his shoulder, making him glance back up at you.
"You have my sympathies, Krugar. To know one of your blood is in danger, uncertain…when I nearly lost my sister in Karak Ungor, it nearly drove me mad."
Krugar purses his lips as he nods, eyes drifting back down to the ground.
"My cousin is canny, and mighty, albeit reclusive. I just hope he's canny and mighty enough," he sighs, patting your hand on his shoulder once before you return your arms to your sides. "Still, these are the forces we at least have had some kind of contact with."
"Artillery with guards to the east, smaller dual groups of halberds and crossbows to the southeast, most of your cavalry went west with your cousin…but some remain, sent out towards the south outright," you read out over the basic lists.
The heir of Talabecland huffs as you read it out.
"I am a fool," he chastises himself with a growl. "To have stripped the province so severely was madness."
"It is not madness to wish to aid your fellow men, your fellow Imperials," you shake your head slowly. "Not at all. We could not have predicted the beastmen rising up like this, not across the length of the Empire. We can only do what we can, we are not the Gods, after all," you sniff. "Now then, as to the deployment of my forces…,"
"I would not presume to instruct you as to what to do with them, all of our troops are valuable for what is to come, and better some be aided than none at all," Krugar nods, looking up at you with stern eyes. "Where do you think you will lead them first?"
"Splitting them up could be dangerous with the wilds given over to the beastmen at the moment," you note.
"Especially given the few reports we've gotten, our detachments are too spread out, and are suffering for it. You could split your troops up, to save more, but if they are too split up to actually win the fight then it would merely be aiding the enemy."
"Precisely," you cluck your tongue, and then reach for a flask at your waist full of Bugman's to drink dry, ignoring the faintly disgusted look on Krugar's face. "It's too risky. I'll have to move as a single mailed fist, and hope we are swift and deadly enough to rescue enough of your forces."
"May Taal grant you all swift passage through the forests, then," Krugar salutes you. "I must try as best I can to see to the innards of the crater with what meager free companies I have been able to gather up."
"God's guide you, Duke Fuerbach," you salute the man back before going back to the list, walking back to Octaine as you do so.
Choice 1:
The main detachments are as follows:
Group A – Artillery, Engineers, Halberdiers, Crossbowmen [Eastern Detachments]
Group B – Halberdiers, Crossbowmen, Pikes, Spearmen, Handgunners [Southeastern Detachments]
Group C – Cavalry, Spearmen, Crossbowmen [Southernmost Detachments]
Vote Is For Priority Weight
[] Write-In (EX: C, B, A or B, A, C, for different combinations)
With one vicious movement, the blindfold is torn from your face.
Alyssa Voidreaper, sans one eye and the left half of her face a bloody ruin she hasn't even bothered seeing to magically, glares down at you.
The Supreme Sorceress is soaked in blood from head to toe, and bears a great many scars across her body. Some of them are clearly just freshly healed, still angry and red, others better seen to. Her raiment has been torn and shredded, and there is a clear hitch in her left leg where something's gone wrong somewhere below the knee and above the foot. She heaves her breaths, hard but slow, a forge bellows attended to by a cripple. Her staff burns with the dark power of Slaanesh, but there is a crackle in it, a fracture, some oddity about the workings of its magic that gives off the sense of a mechanism that is damaged yet still functions. But really, apart from the absolutely monstrous rage you can see in her eye, you are far more focused on the other person on the slab right next to you, as well as the first time you can properly see of your surroundings.
All around you, chained to the walls, are your fellow captives. An elderly Norscan Vitki, beard white and filthy. A living corpse of a Liche Priest, stripped of all his holy vestments to reveal a living mummy who's lungs barely shift with each slow breath. A horrifically skinny ogre, one who's gut sags down past his knees with his droopy exterior giving Grunk the appearance of a well-melted wax figurine. A silent skaven with grey fur, naked, who's eyes burn with outrage and fury. A skink priest, the Lizardman's scales having lost most of their luster, hangs limply in its own chains, covered head to toe in scars, a clear frond atop its head having been torn off at some point. Finally, and much to your immediate horror, is a hideous green-grey fleshed vampire who looks more akin to a woods witch from a tale meant to frighten children, not a Lahmian at all like you'd expected by a Necrarch. There are other manacles and chains about the walls, spots that were meant to be occupied, but for now are empty. Perhaps one of those spaces is meant for you, though you doubt it.
None of it, none of it at all, however, draws your attention more than the woman on the slab next to you.
Blonde hair is caked with blood and sticks to her face, her body as stripped as you to show wounds and scars aplenty. But even like this, perhaps especially like this, you would never mistake Eldyra for anyone else. She is conscious, you can tell, but there is a wild and unrestrained fear in her bulging eyes as she looks around the room, looks to you, looks to Alyssa, and then you see something you dearly wish you hadn't. You can see the light in the Asur's eyes literally begin to drain out and die and something past despair and sorrow replace it. This is what she'd already barely escaped once, in her mind and soul, and here she is now again. And this time, you have come to join her in it. If she breaks again, so soon, in such similar circumstances, she will never come back. You know this truth with every fiber of your being.
"I have come to learn…much," Alyssa begins with each word bitten out through grinding teeth. "The grand prize of Dreadbringer restored to form, to act as a defense of all things…and the most insultingly arrogant and foolish human I have ever laid eyes upon."
Alyssa glances over you, head tilting back and forth.
"But she gave you into her confidences…you and my daughter," she hisses. "You know her plans, her thoughts, better than I, it seems. And you will share this with me," she says with a hard sniff that ends with her hocking out a glob of blood onto the ground. "One way. Or another."
Then she turns and runs a hand along Eldyra's face, making the Asur shudder in unrestrained terror.
"This one…yes, my foolish little sister rescued this one, on your order I suspect. There were rumors that you two might be associated. Friendly, even!" She scoffs in utter disgust. "Tell me, Frederick von Hohenzollern, how much shall I hurt her to make you talk?"
Alyssa slowly turns to face you instead.
"Then again, the insults levied by you are many. Worse, even, than hers."
A small croak of a laugh forces its way out of you, making Alyssa's currently sole eye narrow in anger.
"You didn't get her, did you," you laugh quietly. "Either of them…or any of them!"
"Do you want to listen to your wife's screams as she is torn asunder?" She snarls at you, coming close enough that if you were willing to decapitate yourself with the collar, you could probably bite her throat out.
Your smile in response seems to only infuriate her further.
But how could she know that, this very moment, you can feel a cold and growing fury far and away below? Something of seething hatred, of monstrous spite, and overwhelming love, bound through souls on a level in depths and completeness that you suspect Alyssa Voidreaper could not, will not, ever fathom. Because you can see and feel flashes of imagery, of broken wings and a snarling hiss as bones crack and flesh bubbles in restoration. You can feel the impression of quiet, stoic singing, and the confusion over what should be an endless babbling tirade turned to something cold and deadly and quiet. There is sorrow, there is anger, but there is not nothing. No sign of wary fear, or wife's anger, for one who disappeared. There are conclusions enough to draw through the soul bond.
"If you can get her, I dare you to try," you say hoarsely to her, not having had a drop of water since the descent from the Tor the first time around.
"You think provoking me is wise…?" Alyssa draws back from you for just a moment, your audacity shocking her before it turns to rage. "I know mysteries and secrets of holy pain that you cannot fathom! I shall grind your very mind to dust in my palm, and you will not even be able to beg for mercy, so utterly destroyed you shall be!"
You sniff and look the Druchii straight in the eye.
"You think you can do better than your sister?"
For a moment, she is utterly still save for opening and closing her mouth in stunned silence repeatedly before stalking out of your field of view for a few moments and then returning in an angry rush.
"Your pride, filthy little Ylvathoi, shall be all the sweeter to see shatter," she hisses before revealing a strange glass cylinder, one with a sharp looking needle at the end.
The cylinder itself glows an ominous purple and green.
"You think my sister's poisons potent? This," she waggles it for emphasis, "Are the fluids collected from the coupling of a Great Unclean One and a Keeper of Secrets…and through it? Everything, everything you feel from this moment forward will be pain. And it will linger," she chortles heavily, "Oh it will linger. A single second of pain shall stretch out for hours, days, even! The slightest touch of breath shall be a hurricane, a tap of a nail an earthquake!"
"Fancy," you growl, though you can't hide at least some apprehension at the stuff.
"You're worth it, I think. Your pain? Shall be sweeter than anything that broken thing might offer me," she gestures at Eldyra, who is staring directly at you, a terrible awareness in her eyes.
Silently, the Tiranoci Princess is mouthing the word no at you over and over again.
"Suffer, suffer, and suffer again. Suffer forever!" Alyssa cackles before she forces the needle into you, and does something to the cylinder which causes it to force to liquid into you.
Unfortunately, the effect is immediate.
"…nnngh…"
The slightest puff of air emerges from Alyssa's lips, but worse than that, you can see it coming.
It takes what feels like literal hours for her lips to part.
And then the pain hits.
The pain from everywhere hits.
Every thump of your own heart. The aches from before. All of it, magnified.
All of it, slowed.
The transferal of a single signal of pain from one nerve slows to molasses, and then more, burning in the brain the entire while.
"…agh….AGGGH….AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
And Frederick von Hohenzollern starts to scream a scream that feels like it will last for years.
Your husband is in pain.
Horrific pain.
Strange pain.
He clings to you, to your bond, like a lifeline, and for all you know, that is exactly what it is. The sheer level of it blows any other pain you've ever suffered before out of the water. No birth can compare. The death of your father cannot compare. Not even the Ancient Widow itself channeled through you can compare. None of it. So it is all you can do to grit your teeth and continue to stand, to continue to organize the new prisoners that have come to your small little enclave prepared by the damned sorceress beforehand that fucking abandoned your husband at the most important moment. You have back a great deal more elves than you did before, so that's something, and they all seem quite enamored by Sadrina's presence, save for the Asrai who is off in the corner muttering quietly to herself and steadily sharpening her stolen blades. Johanna, the vampire, the supposed friend, the one who failed to save your husband, sulks in her own corner as well, hideous regeneration restoring her to fighting standard now that she is no longer bound in a web of purifying light and sent crashing to earth.
"My lady," Roland, the old dependable Bretonnian says, having left behind the two weeping little lilies who could barely hold a sword now that their third was a dead and trampled pile of meat somewhere on the Ark with their erstwhile leader Jaqueline trying to console them. "…what do you plan to do now?"
You are a daughter of Kislev. Your blood is of ice, but it feels as if it should be boiling out of your veins at this very moment. The pain your husband is suffering is staggering, mind-bending, and just shy of breaking were the two of you not able to share the burden. You have been beaten, but not all is lost. Not while there is air in your lungs and magic that you can wield. The Ark itself is damaged, apparently, one of the major Dhar stones was compromised and exploded. The Slaaneshi daemons keep spreading out from the former Temple of Khaine, and resistance against the rule of Alyssa is already starting to falter. But it is not gone just yet, even with the entire Ark once more starting to move. South, this time, towards the coastlines of Norsca you think, if only to gain more support from fellow worshippers of their precious Dark God.
Your armor carries with it a most terrible glacial chill, darkening and sharpening with your emotions and your magic.
"I think I'm going to kill a lot of Druchii, Sir Roland," you inform him, your voice as frozen as it has ever been. "And then I'm going to rescue my husband. Maybe find that bitch who abandoned him, good cause for it or not, and get her to help."
"I had thought so," he nods gravely. "Some of the slaves we rescued during the anarchy have been here for a while, some of them are generational. They know much of the tunnels meant solely for slave use. The Druchii never use them…,"
"And so we shall," you nod curtly. "This place belonged to Hultressa, she purchased it, they'll come for it sooner rather than later. Get everyone ready to move."
"We could try and aim for a larger slave uprising, though…with the daemons as they are…,"
"No," you say coldly. "There was a chance for that, in the past. No longer. Now, we will bide our time, and strike as we can, where we can. Perhaps aid the other resisting Druchii elements, even. What slaves we can free, perhaps," you admit as you glance over to him, then back towards the wisps of the Winds that fill this place, and almost laugh at the nearly paradoxical clinging of Aqshy trying to swirl around you, befitting your sheer anger. "But we are not challenging an entire daemon legion out in the open, not right now. And we still need to figure out where Hultressa went."
"If she thought she could escape without-,"
"No point," you interrupt the knight by pointing at the Handmaiden. "Without her? She'll never even get close enough to beg the Everqueen for anything. No. I don't think Hultressa is gone, nor dead, just yet. In the meantime?"
You draw your blade, and the eyes of many others around you, and run a finger along the length of the flat, letting the ice crack and grow and spread.
"We have other matters to attend to."
Choice:
[] Focus On Freeing Other Slaves, Combat Capable Ones
[] Focus On Aiding Anti-Alyssan Druchii On the Ark, though how they would react to freed slaves and otherwise is not certain to be anything positive.
[] Focus on purely attacking Alyssan loyalists and daemons
[] Focus Purely on Biding Time, refusing combat and attacks, to try and wait for more opportune moments
Moratorium 4 Hours
Note Note: Can't always beat the odds. I apologize if some of you disagree with the direction this ended up taking, but for the moment we are going to be a doing a bit of perspective shifting, as Frederick is currently severely indiposed. There are options here. The Ark has fallen into near total anarchy as Alyssa attempts to reassert control from a major breakdown, someone did significant damage to one of their food production centers, as well as one of their main propulsion and control centers. All is not lost. Things are bad, are dark, but not utterly lost. I promise you that. If death does end up getting a Hohenzollern, well, it had to happen eventually. Will it be now? Guess we'll see. I appreciate you all very much, even if you don't end up liking this very much at the moment. If any of you still feel like voting for the Voter's Choice thing, I'd still be honored. Whether or not you feel like it...well. Either way, Happy Thanksgiving, and Happy Upcoming Holidays. Hopefully we'll be getting to more rapid updates for the time being. Hopefully.
Spikes, Horns, and Stone 29
The Temple of Khaine has descended into complete bloody anarchy. If it were in many other circumstances you are sure that it would have pleased the God of Murder quite a bit. However, given the disgusting malforming of the God's sworn priestesses and servants into a writhing screaming ball of flesh and limbs upon his altar, and the furious flaring of red light throughout the air that is visibly starting to be contested with a too-sweetly scented pink and purple mist, you're relatively certain that there is only one deity getting pleasure out of this. The sound of stone cracking and snapping is growing louder from up above, but despite your original expectations you aren't seeing chunks the size of wagons crashing down anywhere. That you aren't is no reassurance either, especially when it comes to Gods and their doings. Especially Chaos Gods. There are cultists of multiple Cytharai still in the fight, but some of those same cultists now show their true colors, as is the perfidious ways of their true masters. Other Druchii nobility turn on each other, on commoners, on the lower levels and the high. Only some facsimile of the class stratification is visible at this point, and even that is beginning to become subsumed.
Because why make an infiltrating Cult and work on it for decades to centuries if you're only going to focus on one level of the ladder.
"If we can get her without fighting Alyssa for it," you stress. "Get out of here, let her deal with all of this, we could go, go now. You said we can't beat Alyssa right now. Could you beat those three other sorceresses near the docks?"
Hultressa's nose flares as a dark light flashes in her eyes before she pointedly cracks her neck from side to side.
"Those three? In my sleep," she sneers as she strides past you, inhaling deeply and then planting her staff firmly onto the ground.
A bright light, without heat or sound, appears at the top of Hultressa's staff, an unmissable sign that gets a more than a few eyes even as the fighting goes on from the finely attuned senses of the Druchii. Shortly afterwards, the light winks out with a particularly targeted clap of sound like a distant peal of thunder. It is oddly muffled by the helmet and extra layers disguising you, but then everything is. It is further confused in terms of direction before you realize that she somehow directed the actual path of the sound itself so that it very obviously reaches the crown of the altar where Alyssa still hunches while spitting and snarling fury. The Supreme Sorceress has, if you do not mistake it, quite simply cracked. How much she has, however, and how much sense remains to her, is what remains to be seen at the moment. She's certainly still cognizant enough to whip around with a rictus of hate on her face, zeroing in on Hultress and the rest of your group instantly.
"Twenty percent," Hultressa announce, her voice a loud booming thing which causes her newly purchased slaves to wince and clap hands to their ears and would have made you wince if not for all the layers around your head.
Alyssa is far, far away.
It says something that you can see how blown out her pupils have become even from here.
Though it is mostly because they shrink back down to pinpricks as the words register.
Alyssa is, quite obviously, not the only one who hears. The rest of her sorceresses similarly whip around, though they are also quite clearly focused on the growing fighting all around them. The distraction costs a great many other Druchii as well, but in the end, elves are elves. What might have ended up killing a human soldier in a moment of weakness of confusion causes only wounds instead, as inhuman grace and dexterity work to keep them alive. Blades scrape and tear against armor, fists and fingernails pound and dig into skin and flesh. A few Druchii stagger about outside of the terror-created perimeter, clutching at themselves, red splattered around their mouths and elf-meat in their teeth. But a great many heads crane, a great many ears perk, even amidst the fighting that would overwhelm your average human swordsman. None dare actually outright stop what they're doing, those that would, would die. Some slaves have fallen to the ground, whimpering, others are being used as shields, and much to your disgust some of them are actually trying to defend their masters. It is those you pity more than any others, that they have the will and wherewithal to fight, but have been so broken in mind and spirit to do so in defense of the Druchii.
(Temple of Carnage: 55-Morathian Foundations(35)-Supreme Seductions(20)+Rival Goddesses(20)+Outrage(15)-Promises Kept(15)+Druchii Prides(20)+The Unswayed(10)+Aquafarms and Deaths(15)-Opportunism and Confusion(10)=55/100)
(A Mind On Knife's Edge: 81-Supreme Strain(20)-Shell Crack(10)+Knowledge of Wealth(10)+Distracted Focus(10)-Incomplete Triumph(10)+The Sheer Audacity(15)+Wanton Greed(5)+Lack of Violence(5)-Stymied Fighting(10)=76/100)
"Excuse me?" Alyssa whispers, her voice a too-sinuous thing against your ears, a sort of lingering echo and sensation that you find singularly unpleasant.
"You heard me, Alyssa," Hultressa affects a bored tone, sniffing slightly.
A single gesture from her, and the terrors not-so-gently shove out an even larger perimeter than before.
"What are you trying to…you think…," Alyssa's chest heaves a bit with each harsh word before she breaks off into a maddened cackle.
"That," Hultressa stabs a finger at a now thoroughly panicked Sadrina, "Is a Handmaiden of the Everqueen. The Winds have literally been woven into her by the Everqueen herself. I want to tear her apart to see what makes that work."
Alyssa blinks a great many times in too rapid succession before with a mighty inhale she visibly reaches out and grasps the reins of her own mind hard. Her lips peel apart in a grin that could have been carved open with a knife as she does a strange little half-slink and slouch.
"You have done such to Asur before," is her rejoinder, one eye still subtly twitching, her head swishing to the side every now and then to keep an eye on the fight that is still ongoing. "A great many, even."
Sadrina, who cannot possibly know anything about Hultressa at this point that you do, does not look particularly pleased to hear that information amidst the rise of a particularly entrenched Cult of Pleasure.
"And?" Hultressa says archly. "None of them has been a Handmaiden. Not one. Not ever."
The terror-maker raises up one hand, making to examine her articulated gauntlet and metallic claws there as if inspecting the polish that is not there. About fifteen feet away, a devotee of Slaanesh guts a fellow Druchii with one of her blade-heeled shoes. , reaches into their opened abdomen, and tears out their still beating heart and thrusts it towards the sky. The Slaaneshi cultist is then tackled from behind by another Druchii who utilizes the spikes and blades across their helmet to eviscerate their skull with a vigorous swirling of their neck that makes your own ache just to watch.
"I'm sorry, I thought this was an auction," Hultressa continues, putting her hand back down and looking meaningfully to Sadrina. "That, there, is an item up for sale. I want it."
(Temple of Carnage: 67-35-20+20+15-15+20+10+15-10+Distracted Alyssa(10)=77/100)
(A Mind On Knife's Edge: 70-20-10+10+10-10+15+5+5-10+Pride's Demands(10)=75/100)
"And yet as you so intelligently caught, this is a Handmaiden," Alyssa sneers, stamping her staff down.
Black coils of electrical energy appear to bloom into visibility that writhe around like living creatures around the cage. Sadrina looks ready to scream, but doesn't with what must be incredible self-control. She cannot avoid doubling over in the cage, clutching at herself, but she does not dare let herself fall to her hands and knees. Pinpricks of sweat appear on the Asur's body, her entire body shaking with the pain that has just been forced upon her, but you can see even from the bottom of the pyramid that she slowly forces herself to straighten as Alyssa dismisses the Handmaiden once more. Sadrina is breathing hard now, but with clear effort she once more forces her arms down to her sides and raises her chin high, starting to slow and regulate her breathing as you watch.
"One I would prefer is as undamaged as possible!" Hultressa stresses, eyes narrowing, the power of her voice and stature transforming what could have been written off as whining as more of a dangerous warning instead. "The point is to tear apart as pristine a product of the Everqueen's workings as possible, not some damaged broken thing."
Alyssa gives a haughty laugh and rolls her eyes.
"Obviously," she drawls. "And yet, you offer such a paltry price."
"Paltry?!" Hultressa rejoins with outrage.
"You would pay barely more than you did for those wretches," Alyssa gestures with her staff towards the Whitewings and a wide-eyed Kerillian who is busy staring at the carnage unfurling across the temple grounds. "That's an insult!"
"You know damn well how much wealth I offer," Hultressa snarls. "How much that is!"
A bolt of dark amber energies, energies that you still remember coursing over Asrai in their thousands, slams against one of the other Coven sorceresses, who lets out a screaming yelp as it manages to get past her shielding spells. It is not a fatal blow, or at least not an immediate one, but the spectral spear is quite well lodged into and through the meat of her left thigh. Screaming, the sorceress wraps her hands around the unholy energies of Anath Raema and crushes it out of existence with motes of Dhar and pink-purple energies pouring from her. Summoning forth a series of black spheres around her head, the sorceress unleashes a salvo of doombolts down into the fighting to try and kill the servant of the Savage Huntress that managed to strike at her. Alyssa's scowls at the sight of it before she turns, glaring, back to an unamused Hultressa.
"You know, dear terror-maker, do you not think that your contributions might be more immediate?" Alyssa points out with a warning tone.
Hultressa's rejoinder is immediate.
"The usage of my terrors has, is, and will always be a transactional affair," Hultressa sniffs before shaking her head. "Even Screamtaker accepted that."
"For one, Screamtaker is dead, and secondly, tokens of appreciation and miniscule fees were all that was given to you, as Supreme Sorceress to subordinate," Alyssa's dark aura flares larger as she speaks.
(Temple of Carnage: 52-35-20+20+15-15+20+10+15-10+10=62/100)
(A Mind On Knife's Edge: 69-20-10+10+10-10+15+5+5-10+10+A Dangerous Prize(20)=92/100)
Hultressa shrugs and shakes her head, a smirk on her lips.
"What I can say? It's a seller's market. Speaking of," she points towards Sadrina again. "If twenty is so insulting, then thirty? What, do you want an artifact? Or…," Hultressa's mouth hangs open for a brief moment as she apes the appearance of revelation itself. "Ah…perhaps…"
Your sorceress ally holds her free hand, palm upright, before clutching it closed and then releasing it while conjuring an illusion above it. Immediately, Alyssa's gaze locks onto it, as do her sorceresses though their attention is far briefer as they return to the fight. Other Cult of Pleasure members nearby are distracted by the sight of it, if only so briefly, before returning to the fight. Around you the more 'normal' Druchii seem to surge in that momentary lapse, but the overall combat is still far from over. Not that you would be confused as to why. You feel yourself almost shudder, almost, at the sight of what is being projected over Hultressa's palm. The Druchii lets the screaming head of a daemon float in her hand, a mere representation of the trophy that she still has locked up in her chambers. The one that you only felt somewhat secure being nearby to thanks to the sheer depth and power of the defenses surrounding it.
It is not just a head, or at least the real one isn't.
"You would release the Exalted Herald?" Alyssa says with naked want in her voice. "Into my custody?"
"I would expect you to keep it from bothering me again, but yes," Hultressa says, sounding bored before her gaze sharpens. "Even if you plot to shield yourself beneath Morathi's shadow after the decree of the Witch King, I doubt she would deign to do so if you let it raise up the Legion of Rapturous Agony to attack the Ark again."
Alyssa flaps her hand as if the concept of one of the most terrifying things you've ever heard of is barely a concern.
"There would be no reason for it to do so, none at all, especially if it were aligned properly," she says, breathing hard. "To add its Legion to service of the Undeniable would be…,"
"Traitorous whore!" A starvation-thin Druchii emerges from the scrum and throws himself at Hultressa with arms outstretched – each phalange grossly extended out of his skin and flesh by a foot to form gleaming claws of bon – while his stomach has become a gaping mouth ringed by teeth.
Kerillian and the Whitewings, well two of them, swirl about in fear but before they can do more than that the terrors act. Where once there was a leaping Druchii servant of the Cytharai God of Famine, there is now several pieces of meat and gristle that plops onto the ground and rolls from previous momentum. A bloodshot eyeball covered in cranial fluids bounces against the ground and bumps up against your foot before splitting apart into several halves that rapidly deflate and flatten against the stone. You didn't know that cultists of Estreuth could do something like that, but then, the intricacies of what the Cytharai offer their believers is something you've never much wanted to learn too intimately. Either way, the blessings didn't seem able to stand up to the masterworks of Hultressa's chosen practice. The fact that such horrific transformations could have been utterly mistaken as mutations brought about by Chaos, or very well could have been, does little well for the image of the Cytharai in your mind. Verena's Wisdom, it is difficult to imagine just why in the world the Asrai and Eonir might worship Cadai and Cytharai equally.
"Alyssa!" Hultressa says loudly, clenching her fist and dismissing the illusion. "Do we have an accord…or not? I would rather we complete our business now, so you may go about yours, sooner rather than later!"
Alyssa's breaths are sharp and fast, eyes darting from the cage to Hultressa and back again, then finally looking out at the fighting. Or, rather, at something which draws Hultressa's attention as well, and therefore the rest of your little group. The fighting has gone on long enough, it seems, that more Druchii have arrived from the rest of the Ark, and have begun rushing in through the gates with weapons drawn. The Cult of Pleasure that has infested this Ark has clearly been doing so for a long time, and quite thoroughly, but if it could have ruled openly before this point without being challenged it would have done so. So you are not particularly surprised to see a good number of the Druchii arriving falling upon those who appear to be most openly Slaaneshi, the increasingly thick and too-sweet fog of the Prince of Excess' power strongest near some of them. But, at the same time, as if waiting for just the right moment, there are just as many other Druchii who follow right behind their comrades only to plunge blades right into their backs.
"I will want visitation and examination reports regularly," Alyssa finally hisses. "And you will-,"
"I am going home, Alyssa," Hultressa flourishes her hand dramatically in the air and huffs. "You and I both know that you do not require my aid to win out here. My position, as ever," she stresses the word sardonically, "Is one of neutrality amidst the Cults and nobility. Besides, I was there right alongside you at the top of the Tor where Screamtaker failed. As for the visitations and examination reports, sure, fine, but I won't be giving much of such without a proper subject!" She finishes with a pointed look towards Sadrina.
The Supreme Sorceress of the Claw of Dominion gestures out at the carnage with a curt gesture.
"And you think not fighting will ease your passage?! To refuse to show your loyalty in the here and now?"
Hultressa's sneer becomes an acidic grin.
"Are you offering me payment for my services, sister?" She asks sweetly, making Alyssa's nose flare with a reflexive angry inhale.
"Fine!" Alyssa spits, and then with an angry gesture, levitates Sadrina's cage with her magic before none too gently throwing it towards Hultressa who has to stop it from crashing into the stone with her own telekinetic efforts. "Get out of here, then!"
Sadrina does not seem particularly pleased by these developments either, of course, especially because the violence of her travel down from the altar causes her to bang into the bars. Which, in turn, results in the kinds of painful effects that you witnessed previously in the side temple. She lets out a pained wail as she clutches at her head and drops to the bottom of the cage the moment she makes the lightest contact with the bars, and writhes in pain even after Hultressa carefully floats it down to the ground. You can't quite tell if the murderous scowl on Hultressa's face at the ill-treatment of her prize is acting or not. If it were simply Hultressa the Druchii, she could just as much be angry that the slave she purchased is literally no longer in pristine condition thanks to a tantrum of the auctioneer. As a woman desperate to offer up a rescue of the Handmaiden to the Everqueen for the salvation of her daughter's soul, any damage to said Handmaiden at all could also prove a massive detriment to her efforts. Either way, she quickly begins waving her staff in small circles while speaking in the tongue of magic itself standing next to the cage. Up above, the Supreme Sorceress turns her back entirely on everyone else and begins focusing upon the screaming ball of melted together limbs and mouths that used to be most of the remaining Brides of Khaine. She raises her staff, and a truly sickening amount of corrupting power begins to flow from her staff as she begins to chant in a foul tongue loudly enough for you to hear. Immediately, the other sorceresses move to cover her, adding their own chanting and power to whatever the hell is going on up there.
"I should be demanding a discount for not deactivating the cage properly," Hultressa growls under her breath before with a final grunt of effort, the dark red glow surrounding the cage begins to dissipate. "Finally," she sighs heavily before grimacing at the sight at the top of the altar, where even more sounds of strange cracking and groaning, like bones the size of trees being cracked and ground down, is filling the air. "We must leave. Now. Grab the cage, I dare not open it here and now."
Tears of blood forced out of her by the cage's spellwork have driven two small trails down Sadrina's cheeks but the Handmaiden stubbornly drags herself upright with aid of the bars now that they are no longer causing her pain for simply touching them. Her eyes shift around rapidly, scrutinizing everyone, lingering for a moment on the Whitewings and Kerillian before narrowing suspiciously at Johanna and Hultressa. Though even that does not last too long before she stares at the shortest and widest of the terrors present, which is to say, the terror that you are pretending to be. She does not look at your face, guarded by the helmet and more layers within and without, but rather at the rather recognizable blade of Brain Wounder which for all intents and purposes appears to have been magically fused with your hand. Another affectation by Hultressa, of course, to further mock the husk you pretend to have been transformed into, and a dominance display that a masterwork of dwarf craftsmanship is hers to do with as she wishes. Wounded horror and rage fill the Handmaiden's face, and you can see her well-tanned skin take on a darker amber flush across the whole of her naked body.
"Monstrous…abominable…," she hisses at Hultressa, doing her level best to kill her with her eyes alone. "May Drakira Herself-,"
"I'm fine, actually," you interrupt quietly, and Sadrina practically chokes for a moment on her own acidic hate and baleful thoughts. "This is a rescue attempt."
The normally gregarious Asur is speechless.
"Brace yourself, Handmaiden," Johanna grunts before she outright picks up the entire damn cage without even slightly bending her knees, making you boggle inside your armor before she flips her grip and produces some chains to loop around the bars so that she can strap Sadrina literally to her back like a traveling pack.
A traveling pack made up of a taller than usual elven warrior and a dense and heavy stone and steel cage that could kill a man by gently falling on and subsequently crushing them.
"We go. Now!" Hultressa commands urgently, pointing with one finger, and immediately the terrors begin to silently force a path forward, regardless of which faction the Druchii around you might be.
(Time To Go: 2+Terror Guard(20)+Imperious Presence(10)-Uncertain Allegiances(5)-Anarchic Violence(10)+20-15+10-10-New Arrivals(15)-Increasing Desecration(10)+Urgency(5)=2/100)
(Depths of Depravity: 15-Well Prepared Sabotage(15)-35+Absolute Desecration(10)-Bled White Numbers(10)+Rage of Khaine(35)-Sacrifices Aplenty(10)=-10/100)
But before you can get more than a few steps, there is a resonate cracking sound. Not of stone, or at least not entirely, but of reality itself being partially flayed open. Deep, insane laughter from Alyssa fills the air before it is joined by a number of sensual throaty voices that drift in tone, masculinity, femininity, and elsewhere altogether. The tingling, rage-inducing red air throughout the Temple of Khaine is suddenly awash in a new wave of pink-purple fog that smells of too many things for your brain to even begin trying to properly process. It is such an excess of sources as to be almost maddening. There is a gravimetric draw to the source of it all, one that makes even Hultressa and the near mindless terrors to turn their heads. The fighting throughout the temple stills in a way that even the incredible audacity of the sorceress did not, and for many it is not by choice. The humongous ball of writhing living bodies that had once been more than a dozen Witch Elves has split down the middle, like an egg hatching, and yet within there is not blood and viscera, but instead a swirling portal to madness and monstrosity. To the Realm of Chaos itself. Long fingers with deadly long nails have already wrapped around the edges of that slit in reality, and from it, daemonettes of Slaanesh have begun to pull themselves through out into the temple grounds. The very stone around them, splashed with blood from so many sacrifices as to be dyed a dark red, begins to wobble and throb like something living, changing in hue to something altogether unlike that of Khaine. The bottom of the vast statue itself is beginning to be affected, the stone and metal making it up wrapped with ropey tentacles of pink-purple flesh that begins to extend itself like a living carpet.
More than a dozen daemons emerge in a near instant, and then more still, until finally a trio of them are quite literally squashed aside with squeals of pain and delight by a much larger daemonette with a waterfall of pink flame as hair tied off with a bow made of interlinked babies' hands. A vast single horn sprouts from one side of the head, yet it is notched and trammeled as to appear like a twisted flute or pipe from an organ, while a splendorous dress – no, not splendorous, damn the daemon's power – a horrific dress made of supple skin with artful tattoos of devotion inked upon them covers a surprising amount of its daemonic body from sight. A digitigrade foot with sharp talons is briefly revealed beneath the dress as it pushes itself to the forefront dragging with it an absolutely enormous harp. One that seems to writhe, pulse, breathe as she sets it up, and for that matter is fully connected to a rapturously happy looking man who's arms make up the bottom half and from whom the strings sprout up from within his own body. As if his very veins and intestines have been braided together for each string. The daemonette looks upon the temple and sneers proudly as other daemonettes start to pour out of the abruptly larger portal before tossing its hair of flame before dragging one hand across the strings and producing a sound like a dozen children screaming in song that washes out across the temple. Devotees of Slaanesh cry out in ecstasy, their foes in pain.
The sounds are almost exactly the same.
"No," Hultressa grinds her teeth, and raises a hand before a shimmering half-sphere shield appears around your party.
(Discordant Harmony: 47-Infernal Rapturess(20)+Hultressa's Defiance(20)+Prepared Defensive Enchantments(10)=57/100)
For the first time so far you get to see a terror fall, much to Hultressa's alarm. Three of her terrors were not within the shield she hastily cast, and blood liberally pours out from their helmets as they stagger to their knees. One of them does not get up at all, while the other two stagger badly and require rough aid from the other terrors to help them upright one more. The terror that fell on its face is not dead, you don't think, but its writhing and strange muffled grunting is not a good sign either. Hultressa gestures at it, first once and then a second more furtive time before grinding her teeth before shaking her head and marshalling your party to keep moving without it, simply abandoning her abomination as a lost cause. But that single discordant note is not the end, because of course it isn't. The daemonette leader, for that is the only thing you can assume it to be, has a great many strings strung into its harp, and looks to be ready to play more. The only thing that stops it, however, is it reaching out with one hand with seven fingers to reach out and draw the attention of Alyssa who draws close without nearly the kinds of deference that a lesser cultist would show to a servant of their chosen God you might have expected. But then Alyssa is not some Slaanesh-blinded idiot fop with a single chamber of depravity beneath their manor, as the Witch Hunters have confronted before. This is a many centuries old elf with an immensely powerful and well-developed cult, who at least based on some of your conversations with Hultressa has outright contested and overcome powerful daemons before.
"Damnation," Hultressa growls, "A Herald, already?!"
"Powerful, too," Johanna grunts as you keep trying to push your way through the fighting. "Maybe Exalted."
Kerillian whispers a few curses in Fan-Eltharin, while the stumbling Whitewings swear in guttural Bretonnian.
"Come on, Breonna, come on," one of bastard daughters says frantically to their companion, even now still having to mostly drag her and keep her upright. "Please!"
"She's broken," Johanna shakes her head after giving the mute Bretonnian the barest of side-glances. "Too broken. Might as well save her the trouble and send her on."
Two of three Bretonnians whip their heads about at her with angry snarls on their faces.
"How dare you," one Whitewing whisper-cries at the vampire, "How dare-,"
"She's not even moving her feet on her own," Johanna says coldly, and though you cannot see her expression with the mask and hood and magic, you doubt you'd recognize it regardless on the face of the one you once upon a time called friend.
What's worse is that she's right.
The Whitewing, Breonna, hasn't even lifted her head up after getting out of the cage, and is practically a living sack that her two friends have to carry between them, her toes and nails smacking badly against the stones as their grip on her keeps slipping.
"She'll live, she'll survive," the Whitewing replies stubbornly, but Johanna just shakes her head and makes to keep moving while glancing over at you.
"You know as well as I do that sometimes, the mind leaves if the body won't," Johanna says to you.
"Eldyra came back," you reply weakly, Sadrina's neck almost snapping with how fast and hard she turns to look at you.
"Oh, sure, sure. But that took longer than we've got," Johanna snorts. "Based on the stories I got, at least."
(Daemonic Perception, Daemonic Desires: 27-20+10-Tired Hultressa(10)-Cracked Strain(10)+Anarchic Grounds(10)-Increasing Reinforcements(5)-Sisterly Sadism(10)+Appearance of Authority(10)+Promises Almost Always Kept(10)-Powerful Herald of Slaanesh(15)+Careful Protections(10)-Consecration Desecration Growth(10)-Suggested Scrutiny(10)=-13/100)
(Trying To Leave: 82+20+10-5-10+20-15+10-10-15-10+5-Dead Eyed Weight(5)+The Newest Servant [Frederick Martial](19)=96/100)
"To Erith Khial's Cunt with this!" Hultressa snarls and snaps her fingers. "Anyone in our way dies!"
In an instant, the terrors cease just pushing their way, and with low inhuman growls unfurl their weapons. A pointed look from Hultressa has you pushing your way forward as well, and you'd swear that Brain Wounder's runes had been dimmer but moments before the terrors smoothly open up a gap for you. Sadrina's eyes on your back are like two burning suns, but you can't pay too much attention to that, and instead finally, finally, get to turn your weapon on some damned Druchii. The slaughter that begins is incredible in its scope and swiftness as the many-feet long blades, thick spiked maces, and a Runefang start to hack and slash and bludgeon to death Druchii in the scrum keeping your party from advancing. It doesn't matter if they're Slaaneshi or not, though you try to kill at least somewhat more of the former than the latter simply out of hatred for Chaos, but blood splashes across you and new pained screams fill the air as you get to extract some small measure of vengeance for all that the Druchii have done to the world. The sea is not parted so much as hacked through, your passage one of torn off limbs, shrieking dying trampled beneath the feet of others, and elven bone exposed to open air while awash in their own blood.
Where before it seemed you were nearly doomed to be trapped in an inescapable quagmire of religious infighting, you find yourself more than halfway across the temple grounds towards the doors and some possible form of freedom. From here, all you have to do is get past the doors, force your way past anyone coming to investigate, and get back to the Tor. With Hultressa with you, and the remaining terrors, her authority and threat should hopefully be enough to manage that at least. Once you get back Eldyra and Gwendolyn then your wife and the others, just one of the repaired ships in the harbor could be enough to escape with. Even if that fails, with a brewing civil war, the flying beasts, distracted sorceresses, something can be done to actually escape. Not to mention whatever the hell happened with that quake earlier that shook the entire Black Ark. You made plenty of bombs, but it would take you literal years of production with far higher-grade materials to even come close to a fraction of whatever in the hells that was.
"Keep going, keep going!" Hultressa shouts.
Another Druchii dies, then another, as you continue forcing your way out alongside the other terrors. More daemons are pouring out of the rift, and more of Khaine's statue is beginning to become tarnished and transformed. There are less and less Druchii directly in front of you, less fighting each other, a steady wave of Slaaneshi dominance beginning to overtake the fight. A sinking feeling pierces the rising hope in your heart, and starts to drag it right back down as you see all of it, hear all of it, feel it in your soul. By the time that a translucent wall of sickly lilac energies splashes out of the sky like an overturned bucket directly in front of your party, you're hardly even surprised. Even less so as an ominous purple-pink glow falls over your entire party.
"OH SISTER!" Alyssa says with enough brightness in her voice to scald the eyeballs as she strides across the air atop what looks like musical notes made of layered together lips and tongues that briefly fade into and out of existence. "One last question before you leave, hmm?"
As she comes closer, you can see one of her eyes twitching uncontrollably.
"We are bargained and done, Alyssa," Hultressa shoots back, even as she grabs her staff with both hands and holds it just shy of threateningly. "Besides, as I told you, you have things here well in hand."
"Of course, of course," Alyssa nods, a wide smile on her face baring all of her teeth obvious as she walks atop the disgusting organic sigils. "Yet, I just…do have one last question?"
She then points directly at you with her staff, her face a rictus tableau of fury.
"Four hundred years of seeing terrors made of all races across this world…and never have you left one of them with a soul intact after the process was complete, not after your apprenticeship with Fal-Naiana was complete."
The remaining non-Slaaneshi Druchii continue to fight but they are being overwhelmed, forced into shrinking islands of defiance centering around the remaining Cytharai Cults. As far as you've come, however, your group is forced to come to a stumbling, frozen halt with the barrier in front of you. It is not so long, so wide, so tall as to be utterly impassible, but you won't be leaping over it anytime soon let alone trying to run around the farther sides. None of which concerns you nearly as much as seeing the sadistic grin on Alyssa's face as she stares down at you. Hultressa is too well-practiced to simply freeze up in shock or surprise. Instead, she takes a slow breath and sets her shoulders while looking up at her sister, her grip on her staff firm and jaw set. Johanna looks from Hultressa, to her sister, and then sighs and lets her head hang a little, while Sadrina in her cage has adjusted remarkably quickly and now simply largely focused on her former captor.
"And you know all about the intricacies of my work, then, Alyssa?" Hultressa sniffs, cocking her head. "Or, no, wait," she taps a finger against her lips. "You never had the talent for it."
Alyssa's snarl is a clogged, choking thing as she hunches forward slightly with the left eye still twitching.
"I know what I can sense, Hultressa!" She spits. "As does the Muse of Agony!"
At her mention of the daemon, her eyes briefly glow with the power of Chaos.
"Flayed, torn, shredded, fragmented, sold, devoured, and more!" She flings her arm to the side before it once more points accusingly towards you. "But intact? No. No…no. It would not suit your professional pride, sister! Kerrmieryon, for six hundred years?! No. So there is more at work!" Alyssa declares triumphantly, an absolutely insane gleam in her eye now.
To all of this, Hultressa is quiet for a moment.
"…are you denying my purchases and our bargained exchanges-," she begins calmly before Alyssa laughs her into silence once more.
"Why bargain and scrape for some of your resources when I can possess all of them?" She asks with a sudden calm utterly at odds with her twitching and snarling prior. "You give me no loyalty, your cause your own even against Screamtaker. You forego swearing new oaths to me, speaking of your precious work! You leave the soul of a Ylvathoi, one who dared defy the Druchii and placed one filthy step onto our Ark uncollared, intact! No, sister," Alyssa places a hand against her chest and her voice becomes a sickly woebegone thing, "I tire of your secrets, your distance!" Her expression then becomes something altogether more twisted as she smiles. "I will remove both between us. What is yours shall be mine, as it always should have been by all rights."
"Shit," Johanna mumbles quietly, barely audible even with how close you are to her.
"If you wished to rekindle our bonds, you could have picked a better time," Hultressa says even as she lifts her staff from the ground and places both hands on it, a dark black glow beginning to emanate from the head of it. "And 'by right'? Really? By right of what, falsely perceived superiority? By right of being a few years older?"
Alyssa doesn't blink.
"By right of conquest and blood, sister."
Behind you, more daemonettes are breaking through and past the few remaining knots of resistance, giggling and skipping joyously as they come with blood and viscera splattered across their bodies.
"Starting with you. Then I will reclaim rest of my property. Then I think I shall have to see what you have been keeping from the rest of us. Screamtaker let you live with far too lose a hand. I intend to rule differently."
"Is. That. So," Hultressa inhales slowly. "Terrible standard to set for future business practices and auction etiquette, Alyssa, but I suppose I hardly should have expected better of you."
The Hohenzollern Dynasty is at its strongest and most numerous in generations. You yourself are a patriarch to a great many children, who themselves have many children, a handful of which are old enough to start considering marriage and children of their own at this point. Not that you would say they must act to do so, it is just that you are aware of it. Perhaps it is that, the experience as father and grandfather, that informs your mind as to what is to come. Or perhaps it is being a child with many siblings yourself, even if you were thrown from Wulfenburg early on in your life. You certainly observed plenty of interactions maturing in Jegow between those bonded by blood and otherwise. The knowledge of what is most vulnerable about another, and the willingness to use it. Or perhaps it is from some other sense or knowledge or experience entirely.
"Your insults pile ever higher, Hultressa," Alyssa sniffs, cracking her neck from side to side with dull pops, baring her teeth. "But do not worry. You can, and will, pay for them. After all, as all the Coven swore to you upon her birth, we shall never give Gwendolyn to the Cult of Khaine."
The Supreme Sorceress runs her tongue along her teeth without blinking.
"But your sins may be forgiven after she is given to Slaanesh-,"
(A Refutation: 71+Mother's Rage(15)-Slaaneshi Empowerment(15)+Hultressa Horrorheart(20)-Alyssa Voidreaper(20)=71/100)
A solid column of Dhar spikes upwards directly at Alyssa to smash into a suddenly appearing violet and blue shield of magic, before the column begins to splinter apart and form dozens of smaller bending tentacles that sharpen into spikes that plunge towards the Supreme Sorceress at different angles. Different bending half spheres flicker into existence, bubbling atop bubbles like churned soap to form interlocking layers as a defense, but even with all of that Alyssa is quite visibly and quickly forced upwards and to the side. Meanwhile, a good third of the Dhar pouring forth from Hultressa peels off and slams down like an unruly child's fist to shatter the barrier that had been blocking your way, while another third spills outwards and then fizzles into a gaseous wall that causes the delighted giggles of the daemonettes to turn into delighted yelps of pain and ecstasy as their unnatural bodies begin to melt and burn.
"Okay, so we're doing this now," you mumble as the terrors let out inhuman gurgling roars and start rushing forward against the daemonettes that had begun to try and surround you.
"Come on, then!" Johanna bellows with an amount of volume that is actually somewhat shocking before her entire body is wracked with hideous sounds of cracking bone and grinding wet flesh, bulging from some internal well of mass and meat within her now spilling out from within like filling sausage casings and force her size another foot higher and wider at the shoulders.
With a loud clang, the cage is placed back down roughly onto the ground before she grabs the haft of her Cathayan halberd near the very bottom with one hand.
Both sorceresses are too busy screaming wordlessly at each other while throwing about their magic to do much else.
"Well then," you grunt before turning over to the cage and its quite obviously concerned occupant. "Watch it, don't know how strong these bars really are."
As it turns out, Brain Wounder hacks through the no-longer-so-enchanted cage with relative ease. Not to say that there isn't any resistance at all, which is disturbing in its own way given that you've sliced through plate armor and boulders alike with less strain, but it's not like it was entirely unexpected either. This was clearly one of the more special cages that the Druchii have made, but it still doesn't stop the cutting power possessed by a masterwork of Alaric the Mad. The moment she is no longer so utterly confined, Sadrina is out, uncaring of her nakedness as she sweeps you up in a brief hug before leaning down into the bodies of the slain Druchii cut down in your group's effort to escape that cover the ground. An acceptable enough shield is scooped up and straps tightened over one arm with two swift movements while a wicked curved blade finds itself in her hand. The Handmaiden takes a short breath before glancing over to your other rescued compatriots.
"What are you waiting for? Arm yourselves!" She barks, melodious voice sharpened to a razor's edge.
"Dance with us!" A daemonette cries out coquettishly before spinning around on one hoof and accelerating faster and faster like a deathspinner while still coming towards you.
(Fighting Forward: 47+Remaining Terror Guard(15)+Dangerous Assembly(35)-Dancers of the Wailing Waltz(20)-Broken Sister(10)=67/100)
(Vying Sisters: 66+15-15+20-20-Hultressa's Exaustion(5)=61/100)
Johanna hops upwards and then sweeps out with her Cathayan weapon, and leaves behind a burning trail in the air where the blade passes, strange and foreign runes blazing to life along the blade's edge. Brain Wounder beheads one daemonette, who's bouncing head laughs and coos affectionatly at you even as it bounces along the ground, the body continuing to fight before you split it down the middle and finally force its metaphysical integrity beyond maintenance. The terrors carve and cut and smash, but sustain wounds themselves in turn that you really wish they wouldn't. Sadrina, apparently truly kept as pristine as possible in her imprisonment before her presumed torture and mutilation later after the Auction, leaps into action as well while darting in and out from the far better armored to cut and stab where she can. Kerillian has no bow to fire with, but she's found a Druchii sword and knife and is using them with almost excessive speed to cut and stab what she can. The only ones who fail to contribute nearly as much are the Whitewings, both Bretonnian warriors grimacing and keeping back to try and guard their barely moving third, who will not take up arms even now that you are all under direct threat no matter how much her peers plead with her. Meanwhile, a spectral wave of spikes and blades and hooks comes flying through the air to smash into a deep sparking azure barrier hastily conjured by Hultressa, who grits her teeth at the effort required, her arms trembling with the effort while she keeps moving within the center of your group.
Every step forward towards the gates of the temple and the rest of the Ark is one hard fought.
(Fighting Forward: 81+Struggling Terror Guard(10)+35-20-10=96/100)
(Vying Sisters: 38+15-15+20-20-Hultressa's Exhaustion(10)=28/100)
"Back…OFF!" Johanna bellows gutturally, and then leaps directly into the masses of daemonettes coming from behind and momentarily disappears in the mass of bodies before great sweeping flame-trailing strikes start killing groups of them at a time.
The Handmaiden, on the other hand, pushes forward with Kerillian behind her, the two of them throwing all of their elven prowess and dexterity on display. There is, despite everything, a strange grace to the movements of Sadrina's shield bashes and bladework, while Kerillian practically appears to have gone feral like a beast in her frenzied stabbing all while a flat-out incomprehensible tirade in Fan-Eltharin escapes her mouth. Her imprisonment does not appear to have done wonders for her temperament, but at least she's actually fighting, unlike the one Whitewing who's still being haplessly dragged along by the other two, who are barely contributing at all with the terrors still standing and fighting. In the end, you end up being the one forced to guard the rear for those daemonettes able to get past Johanna, and also to protect the damned Bretonnians, who are by this point outright screaming for Breonna to do something. You'd settle for her standing on her own two feet at this point, her grip is water and oil anytime they try to press the hilt of a weapon into her hands.
Even with the Whitewings practically useless, you finally make it to the gates of the falling temple.
The expanse of the Claw of Dominion stretches out before you, though you cannot miss the plumes of smoke elsewhere on the Ark and the sounds of fighting that are going on around you aside from the temple proper.
But then comes a terrific concussive force that nearly bowls you over, and you turn just in time to nearly be bowled over yet again. Hultressa lets out a pained scream while you watch as a lightning bolt strikes her in the side and sends her to the ground, a feeble raising of her staff able to shield her from a second with a barrier that then shatters as a living serpent of black flame wraps around her right leg and begins burning her through the armor, superheating it and beginning to melt it. An especially large and powerful doombolt is conjured by Alyssa to crash directly atop Hultressa, who momentarily disappears beneath the magical missile with another scream as the very ground is cratered around her. It also outright sends the Whitewings bouncing and screaming themselves, the sheer malefic and unholy heat and power of it burning their naked skin and flesh beneath. Breonna simply flops to the ground while the other two try and stand once more, but two of the terrors are definitely gone. You aren't even done blinking the afterimages from your eyes before the daemons are on you once again.
(On The Cusp: 39+Remaining Terror Guard(5)+35-20-10-Alyssa's Attentions(20)=29/100)
"And as for the rest of you! You will worship me as your mistress and savior!" Alyssa screams with glee before she reaches out with a hand and then wrenches it backwards.
A swirling mist of purple and pink appears with her gesture, steadily solidifying into what looks like chains with spikes sprouting from them, a great mass of the stuff that begins to shoot out individual lengths from the greater bundle like gunshots.
"The hell we will!" Johanna shouts from amidst a dogpile of daemonettes.
(Jet Sphere Spell Negation Attempt! 1d6=3! Success!)
(Emergency Restorative Internal Cache Activated!)
An object, small, black, and thrown at near blurring speeds impacts the spell's epicenter and then erupts into a shower of glittering black dust. Then, to your uncomprehending eyes, the magic quite literally appears to fizzle out. Or rather, no, fizzle into the glittering black which is now sweeping away in the wind of the air. Like a lighting bolt being grounded, the magic itself is being grounded away into whatever the hell it was that was thrown, and the spell simply ceases to be in a manner that you normally would only ever imagine possible with the work of a runesmith. Or, perhaps, a wielder of magic that working specifically to dispel another's workings. Regardless, the result is the same. The magic is banished, even if momentarily, while a still breathing Hultressa is revealed in the small crater, badly burned but still clearly living. Then a burst of pure cleansing Hysh appears to erupt from somewhere inside of her, and Hultressa lets out a gasp as her wounds begin to heal as she pushes herself somewhat with one arm, a deep grimace on her face.
She makes to snarl out something before the blood drains from her face as she looks to one of the skulls on her belt.
Or rather, one of the skulls which is now crumbling away.
"No…!" She wheezes out with naked horror in her voice before it turns to fury as she glares at Alyssa. "You can't have-!"
"Can't have? Why not?" Alyssa tosses her hair and snorts. "Did you really think your wards so powerful, so mighty? You might have endeavored to strengthen them before, but hells, little sister. I've broken them before!" She laughs triumphantly and then with an idle move of one hand seems to command the daemonettes to actually draw back a bit, leaving a fierce-looking Johanna with glowing green eyes with tears and rips carved through her disguise.
Even through the armor, you can see Hultressa's eyes narrow to slits.
"…it was you," she says flatly.
"Indeed," Alyssa smirks.
"…why?" Hultressa strains out even as she slowly stands once again, the terrors and Johanna momentarily keeping the daemons back. "I knew it was either you or Screamtaker…,"
"Oh, she helped," Alyssa shrugs one shoulder, that cruel smirk only intensifying. "The rivalries of the Cytharai are myriad, little sister. Did you never think, for one moment," she taps a finger against her forehead, "That to steal from Khaine's table and strengthen Hekarti might be a powerful gift?"
"You did all of that, to me," Hultressa seethes, her exhaustion and wounds seeming to drift away beneath fury, "Stole my will, my choice, my body, all so that you could CUCKOLD KHAINE!?"
Alyssa just laughs like a rainstorm of glass shards at the utter violation and anger in her sister's voice.
"You played your part well, nurturing her, but if you think about it, preparing you as I did, and her father," Alyssa splays her arms wide with a wicked smirk on her face. "Why, I am the originator of her creation. I am as much her mother as you! Even now," she lazily glances up at the Tor of Dominance. "My servants will be retrieving her so that she can be properly raised…at my side," she smiles indulgently as she looks back to Hultressa, who is almost vibrating with her barely leashed emotions. "Thank you for keeping my daughter safe, but your services in that regard are no longer required."
Hultressa is breathing, hard, head whipping back and forth from the Tor and Alyssa.
"Unless you really think you can save her," she smirks. "You can certainly try, but given your state, I doubt you'll get far even if you can get to her."
Everything that you know about Hultressa, all that she's said, all that she has shown whether intended or not, tells you what her choice will be. She has lived for over a thousand years. Has struggled with the levers and pressures of the society that the Witch King, his bitch of a mother, and others have built and kept in place. The things she's done, the monstrosities she's unleashed and enacted across the world, most likely outweigh the good that she's been able to secretly manage. On the one hand, she did all of this in the hopes of gaining the aid of one who would vouch for her to the Everqueen, on the off chance that you were able to escape at all. But all of it, or perhaps none of it, matters as much to her as her daughter's life. She has been wounded and healed, she is tired before and now even more so after. But you know as well as anyone the sheer lengths that a parent might go to for their children, the limits that can be temporarily broken.
"Choose, sister. Your daughter, maybe, or those you sought to…I don't even know, save somehow?" Alyssa turns her nose up as she looks down at the rest of you, scoffing loudly. "As if you could run from me on my Ark."
Then a clarion clear voice, like the tone of a perfectly wrought silver bell, chimes in.
"There are those who resist you, even now," Sadrina says, drawing herself up with stern serenity and unabashed dignity even with her nakedness splashed with the blood of the Druchii. "Across the whole of the Ark. You may think that your Cult of Pleasure can claim victory, but it will not be so swift, nor so complete, as you may desire."
The confident ease disappears from Alyssa's face as she regards the Handmaiden.
"Do not think to dictate the workings and intricacies of the Cytharai to me, prancing wretch of Isha! Once our conflict is done, the Cults shall return to function and form as desired! The joining of the Undenied has carved free an opening anew in the depths, from which a new wellspring of strength shall add to the power of the Druchii!" Alyssa proclaims, one hand curling into a claw that wrenches at the air and drags it closer to her.
The gaze of many dance between Alyssa and Hultressa, the latter's breathing gone ragged, eyes squeezing shut as she gathers up the crumbing remains of the skull on her belt as whatever sympathetic links it held to her own wards continues to dissolve along with – presumably – the wards themselves. How long has Alyssa been planning this, you wonder? Was it because of your actions on this day, and that of others, which caused her to disdain waiting any longer? How swiftly was she able to communicate her own signals to the Tor of Dominance? How many other sorceresses remain in the Tor even now, the Coven spread throughout the Ark and maintaining its capacity to float and move beyond those who attended the Auction? However and whenever she set it in motion, it had to have been fast, done sometime after she'd decided to openly reveal the Cult of Pleasure. But in the end, that doesn't matter nearly as much as what comes next, because one way or another, you were only at the gates of the Temple of Khaine and not further out into the urban landscape of the Ark proper.
(Mother's Choice: 17+Burgeoning Genuine Friendship(10)+The Grand Plan(20)+Handmaiden Present(25)-Shattered Wards(15)-Exhaustion(10)+Lingering Ishan Compassion(15)+Reached The Gates(5)-Knowledge of Alyssa's Capabilities(20)-Threatened Daughter(35)+Protected By Terrors(10)+Armed Eldyra(15)=37/100)
You are a husband to a wonderful wife, father to a number of children, and have presided over family gatherings including a great many grandchildren. You have attended many meetings with family friends of two different provinces who have their own families. It is no idle boast to say that you are, perhaps, exceedingly well experienced and practiced in many such matters, though there is no such thing as perfect parenting for all children are destined to be their own people even if some pain is withstood in the course of it. But you aren't entirely sure you would need any of that to know what choice is going to be made in the next few seconds. You can see it in the bunching, the tensing of the body beneath armor and layers visible in its intensity, the grinding of metal caps and plates against each other as fists clench. Smell it in the air as Dhar does not simply waft but simply pours outwards from Hultressa to the point that it rapidly ceases to be discernable solely to those uniquely cursed and blessed with Witch Sight and outright becomes physically palpable and present in a scouring black event horizon, a corona, a halo, of pure crushed together Winds of Magic with a will and strength unknown to those without a certain sort of love in their hearts.
Hultressa raises her head, and deliberately looks away from Alyssa, which causes the Supreme Sorceress to tilt her head and scowl, and looks towards you.
Not Sadrina, who you suspect realizes what is about to happen.
Not Kerillian, who is still looking about so quickly around her that you think her neck is about to snap clean off.
To you.
She meets your gaze, and you meet hers, and you know. She knows you know.
You are a man of not inconsiderable intelligence. You are capable of multitudes, of complexities, of holding contradictory information and emotions within yourself simultaneously. So it is that you rage, you rage like you almost never have before, at what is to come. So close, now so far, denied with a goal in sight. You would spit fury, scream, curse, and more. But so too do you give the slightest of nods, and the most helpless of smiles beneath your helmet and armor. Because you know, and you understand on the most base and primal level, and on that level, you cannot help but approve. How could you not? After all that you've done, that members of your family have done, and friends as well? And so you rage, you laugh, and you can do nothing more than watch as that almost catastrophic upswell of power grows stronger and stronger until the stone around her begins to crack apart and even somewhat dissolve. Two more of the skulls on her face begins to crumble away into dissolving dust, but the clouds of particulate sparkle and shine before visibly flowing into Hultressa's body, absorbed at rapid pace.
"You will never have her."
It is a whisper that reaches far and wide.
(A Departure: 86+15-15+20-20+Daughter Under Threat(25)+Skull Storage(10)+Skull Storage 2(10)+Dual Directions(10)=141/100)
A black sun rises on the Claw of Dominion, that great edifice and chunk of primordial continental shelf which has sailed the seas of the world since the Great Sundering.
It grows, and grows, and consumes light inwards with a gravity that beggars belief.
Color itself is drained from the world around it, sucked inwards into depths that do not exist on a plane that cannot be fathomed, your feet dragging forward unbidden by that strange power, everyone around you doing the same even as they try to resist.
Then the black sun blooms like a flower with petals that spins like a rotating sawblade, and each petal extends out dozens of feet in less than a blink of an eye. You are grasped by it, and it burns you like lye scrubbing you raw even through two layers of armor, but you cannot resist as you are dragged. As all of your companions are grabbed and spun and wrenched with bone-creaking speeds and strength forwards and through the gates of the Temple of Khaine. More petals extend outwards, and what they touch does not burn, but simply ceases, disintegrated on contact. An entire swathe of daemonettes do not even get time to let out one more ecstatic moan or groan of pleasure at their pain before they are gone. The gates themselves cease to bar your path before you would have struck them and are instead flung far onto the streets in a tumbling roll. A roll accompanied by many other coughs and exclamations of pain and surprise as the rest of your party is unceremoniously deposited onto the streets, surrounded by Druchii in combat with one another. Some of whom were bowled over by your violent transportation and arrival, but many more are even now fighting one another. The speed of it all, the violence of it, meant that you couldn't even see where or what happened to Alyssa, but you can certainly hear an absolutely piercing howl of pain and hate which goes beyond mere inhumanity. Or, in this case perhaps, inelven? For what you can hear is a guttural, raging sound that to your ears sounds nothing more and nothing less than outright daemonic.
"HULTRESSAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!"
"Up and at 'em!" Johanna calls out, already back on her feet, before with a wide sweep of her Cathayan halberd she clears the immediate area around you all before with a gruff and uncaringly rough gesture outright yanks Breonna the Whitewing out of the arms of her fellows. "You two were absolutely fucking useless back there trying to help this one. Get your shit together!" The vampire barks angrily at the Bretonnians.
"That was…what…," Sadrina says slowly, shaking her head even as she parries a frothing made Druchii's strike with her acquired shield and lashes out with a kick to the side of his head that sends him to the ground.
"That was my friend Hultressa," you inform her with a grunt as you shake out your stinging aches and pains. "Stolen from Tiranoc at one point. Wants to go home, been trying, hasn't been able to, tried to make a gamble of it. Daughter's cursed by Khaine, wants the Everqueen's help to uncurse her."
The Handmaiden of the Everqueen's eyes lock onto you, as in fact does the pure dark spheres of Kerillian and the confused looks of the Whitewings. Johanna, at least, is focused on helping you begin to push forward through the crowds you've found yourselves in. A welcome thing considering that there is a loud explosion back towards the Temple of Khaine, and a few plumes of sickly purple-pink smoke that are rising in the air as well as wordless yelling that even from the rather considerable distance that whatever the hell that last burst of magic was you can tell comes from Alyssa. The Supreme Sorceress seems to be rather expectedly furious. But then comes other groans and whimpers, and all of you look down to find, much to your surprise, a number of others that appear to have been caught up in the spell. Given their general states of undress, the clear signs of abuse on all of them, some with clipped ears, a missing eye or fingers, all of them are clearly slaves. All of them, also, are clearly elven. They, just like the rest of you, were not particularly gently moved, with red raw lengths pressed across their bodies where solidified Dhar had wrapped around them like spiked chains and rope, but they are in fact here before you. They are but some of those you saw out in the Auction, likely just those that were close enough. Still, it's something.
"W-what-," one mumbles with a hand pressed against her forehead, a hand with all the fingers reduced by one joint length.
"Mistress?" Another cries out plaintively, his entire torso a ruined wasteland of scar tissue.
"I am…alive?"
There is a crackle of…something…before Sadrina stands amongst them and with incredible gentleness helps one rise to their feet. Despite her nakedness, despite the blood covering her, there is something otherworldly to her countenance as they look upon her. In so many broken gazes, places that have gone utterly dull and empty of light for who knows how long, there appears the tiniest visible spark as some small measure of that something that Sadrina carried within her passes to them. Within seconds, all of the slaves are looking at her with absolute awe, rising to their feet and unconsciously helping others do the same.
"Stand tall, Asur," she says to them sternly, "Stand proud."
"W-who are you?" One, a one-eyed Asur man who visibly looks weathered and withered, asks her with one trembling hand reaching out to her.
No one in her state should be capable of presenting with such majesty, and yet she does it all the same. Despite it all, a heady sense of calm and comfort emanates from her as she reaches out and clasps the man's hand and hold it tightly.
"I am Sadrina, some call me the Goldenquill," she says with a fierce smile. "Handmaiden of the Everqueen. And you have never been forgotten."
Tears begin to pour from the face of every single one of the Asur slaves as they sob while crowding her.
"Touching," Kerillian says snidely and making them jump and turn to her in shock, "But mayhaps we can bask in Isha's love in a place of safety?"
Only then do the other Asur start to notice the rest of you, shying away from you particularly. Not surprising, given what you look like. Though you do note that none of the other terrors appear to have been transported out with you. Hopefully they'll cause at least a modicum more damage back there if they really were left behind.
"Johanna!" You say, looking to the vampire who glances your way past the unmoving Whitewing on her shoulder. "Where in the name of the Gods is my wife?"
"I can try and lead us there, but who knows if we'll make it," she huffs grimly before nevertheless taking the lead.
"Stay close, stay safe!" Sadrina commands the Asur with you.
Given how deprived many of them appear to be, you have the unfortunate realization that they're more likely to be liabilities than assets in the fighting to come.
(Chased Through the Ark of Madness: 27+Significant Depopluation(20)+Cytharai Leanings(10)-Morathian Foundations(35)+Two Armies One Ark(10)+Grudges and Vendettas(10)+Band of Heroes(35)-Supremely Pissed(20)-Pleasurable Preparations(10)-Exalted Herald's Call(15)-Asur Slaves(5)=27/100)
The Claw of Dominion has gone insane.
How swiftly did madness and anarchy seem to spread here!
The Cult of Pleasure has been infesting this Ark for a long time, from top to bottom. It's the only reason that you can think of for how many of the Druchii are already fighting in the name of Slaanesh. The statue of Khaine was so large that it was practically visible from anywhere on it, you suppose that watching as it literally began to melt and twist into something more appropriate towards the Prince of Excess was a good a sign as any for them to bring out their knives. At the same time, you see just as many Druchii who are not visibly aligned with anyone but themselves, their houses, their own causes. Your rudimentary knowledge of Eltharin falters here like it has before, but you know the terms for vengeance, for hatred, for revenge, recompense, and so on, though the sheer scale and complexity of what certain Druchii are ranting at each other as they fight goes past that limited comprehension. Fires spread, smoke rises, and there appears to be no better time for grudges that have been building for likely longer than your lifetime to be finally dealt with. So focused on each other, they can hardly defend themselves easily from your small party trying to get by. But there are a number of them, even if they are not all purely military combatants but instead angry Druchii civilian equivalents.
All of which, frustratingly, makes it difficult for you to actually move quickly through the streets.
"This is definitely the most Druchii I've ever killed personally!" You rant as you ram Brain Wounder right through a brilliant defensive guard maneuver and into the heart of the Druchii facing you, "And almost the slowest I've ever moved across a battlefield!"
"Get out of our way!" Kerillian spits before descending into rapid-fire Fan-Eltharin curses as her blades dance and flicker into every bit of exposed skin and flesh she can find.
"That way, down that street!" Johanna points before lashing out with her halberd's blunt end and crushing the chest of another Druchii inwards with sheer bludgeoning trauma.
(Chased Through The Ark of Madness: 40+20+10-35+10+10+35-20-10-15-5-Emergent Legion(5)=35/100)
"Daemonettes are coming from up behind!" Kerillian shouts from nearby, popping up onto a pile of fallen crates while dual wielding repeating crossbows that she's scavenged from who knows what dead body on the ground. "Lots of 'em!"
"They found us already?!" You can't help but shout in frustration as a Druchii with a glowing brand of Slaanesh just above his navel tries to gut you, only to find that whatever meager blessings of his chosen God could convey to his sword isn't enough to stop Brain Wounder from carving through metal, skin, flesh, and bone.
"Don't seem focused entirely on us," she answers back before firing a few more times with each repeater, "More just spreading out into the Ark!"
"She is sending them forth to aid her followers in securing control over the Ark!" Sadrina shouts as she beheads a Druchii, then kicks the head into the head of another charging Druchii to keep them just off balance enough for her to disembowel them. "So long as that Herald plays their song, the portal remains open, and she has reinforcements aplenty to shore up her strength!"
"How can she possibly think this is going to go well for her!?" Johanna snarls as she slices and stabs with her halberd one-handedly with monstrous strength.
"They were saying something about an Undenied, some sort of…decree? Something!" Is your helpless answer.
"The Witch-King has made alliances with the forces of Chaos before, there is nothing and no one they will not stoop to utilizing if they think it is to their benefit!" Sadrina says as she blocks one blow with her stolen shield and sweeps the leg of her attacker out with one of her powerful legs, "If something has changed in the court of Naggarond regarding the Cults of Pleasure, I have not heard about it!"
Her blade skitters into one throat, and then another, before she turns back to you with a deep frown on her face.
"But I am not the Shadow King, nor am I of his Shadow Warriors," she shakes her head. "If there is information to be shared, then I have not benefitted from it as of yet."
"Let's proceed with the idea that Alyssa isn't suicidal in doing this," you grunt as you keep fighting.
"Oh sure, nothing like fighting while depressed!" Johanna says with a harsh laugh.
(Chased Through The Ark of Madness: 54+20+10-35+10+10+35-20-10-15-5-The Chorus of Ecstatic Agony(10)=44/100)
"Bad news," Kerillian whispers to you as her shoulder thumps against yours, the two of you momentarily fighting side by side as you try to cut a way through a rampaging mob of Druchii chaotically tearing each other apart.
"Say it," you growl as you block a strike with Bokdrungni, the outer shell of terror armor well savaged enough at this point that the gleaming Ledstahli within is more than visible.
"Remember the daemons from before?"
"Aye!"
You both duck in unison from a vicious two-handed sweep with a heavy cleaving blade before cutting the offending Druchii's legs off before killing him.
"Well, I think that now they're heading for us specifically."
Spinning on your heel, you look and find a tide of giggling, laughing, screaming, singing daemonettes coming down the street. Some of the Druchii are spared their attentions, some even outright helped to their feet and slapped on the ass to get moving again. Others are only able to put up some small amount of resistance as they are torn apart. By teeth, hoof, claw, finger, whip, or otherwise, the daemonettes kill. At their head, however, is a larger daemonette than the others, not quite to the point of the Exalted Herald and her harp, but a third arm protrudes from the small of their back that ends in an even larger claw than the others, while their hand with actual digits on the end is busy fondling its grotesquely exaggerated genitals as they are literally sprinting forward.
With seven eyes locked squarely on you.
An involuntary shudder runs through you as you watch as its mouth produces seven separated tentacles instead of tongues that lap and rub themselves all over the daemonette's face.
"Come on, come on!" You snarl as you turn back to the Druchii in your damned way.
(Chased Through The Ark of Madness: 33+20+10-35+10+10+35-20-10-15-5-Growing Chorus(15)=18/100)
One more street.
One more corner.
There are bloody Druchii everywhere.
You step over the dead, master and slave alike.
You fight through the living, loyal and corrupted both.
Still, it is not enough.
Not enough to get away from the tide of daemons behind you.
"His soul! Oooo~!"
"So delicious, so handsome, so ugly! It stinks, let me eat it, let me?!"
"Scream! Scream louder and hard and fast!"
"Let me show you, let me feel you, and feel me!"
A cavalcade of some of the filthiest things you've ever imagined, and plenty more you never have, spills forth in a babbling tide from creatures for whom lungs and air capacity are largely just suggestions. The most laviscious prostitutes in the Old World would be as innocent babbling children compared to what the daemonettes are screaming outwards. They both plead and offer up delights and experiences laced with the taint of the Realm of Chaos itself filtering through the air. The more there are behind you, forcing you, Kerillian, and Sadrina to fight in the rear guard as Johanna keeps leading the group onwards, the worse it gets. The air that was previously full of the scent of blood and smoke and fire is beginning to find itself supplanted. Not replaced, not entirely, but rather the smell of reality itself seems to leave all bounds of normalcy. A hundred different incense scents, concoctions of perfumes that are outright revolting and impossibly enticing, the stink of sweat and spice and sugar mixes with rotten meat and salt and spoiled things. An excess in the extreme that has your eyes watering, tongue feeling slightly swollen in your mouth, nose suffering from so much that ought to have rendered it blind to all scents is seemingly not being allowed to do so.
Then they are on you.
"GET OFF OF ME!" You roar, tearing them apart with Brain Wounder, but every single one that falls back is replaced two-fold.
(Predator Pointed: 47+Creeping Exhaustion(5)+Frederick Martial(19)-20-Song of Scintillating Delight(10)=41/100)
(Master Rune of Skella Valayadottir Activates! 6! Success!)
The runes on Bokdrungni flare brightly enough to temporarily blind, and this time the shrieks of the daemonettes show no pleasure or satisfaction at all as they recoil backwards. It is just in time as well, as the masterwork of Kragg the Grim once more shows its worth as it wrenches itself into position as a screaming doombolt of impressive size slams directly into you. Or rather, it would have, quite possibly obliterating you outright or at least tearing apart your armor, were all of that tainted magical energy not swallowed up by the gauntlet itself. The sudden openings in daemonettes around you lets you see your attacker, who flies atop a Dark Pegasus now, but the sneering furious face of Alyssa Voidreaper is unmistakable. Though that fury turns into shock and frustration as you through a purified bolt of magic right back at her, all the hideous strength she'd pumped into it refined and returned through dwarfen artifice.
"Guess it was too much to hope you died back there," you mumble as the Dark Pegasus lets out a scream of pain as she throws up a shield just a second too late to fully deflect it.
"You will suffer a thousand years before you are allowed to die, wretch!" Alyssa screams. "You and all the rest of your pathetic band!"
Then two more sorceresses arrive, following their mistress, their staffs alight with terrible magics upon their own steeds.
"Take them!" Alyssa screams before pointing her staff once more.
Glowing spectral chains and oily black tentacles spew outwards from those staves right down towards you all.
(Jet Sphere Spell Negation Attempt! 1d6=5! Success!)
(Master Rune of Skella Valayadottir Activates! 4! Failure!)
(Master Rune of Skella Valayadottir Activates! 3! Failure!)
(Minor Wound Sustained! Light of Summer Activates! 66! Success!)
There is a muted thump and pop similar to the last time that Johanna threw whatever it is to dissipate a spell, but unfortunately there are three sorceresses rather than one. You also appear to have, whether because of your clearly closer assosciation with Hultressa, the fact that you were part of the group first, are in fact yourself and rather openly so with Brain Wounder out and soul intact, targeted a bit more heavily. The air is driven out of your lungs as a solid wave of seemingly solidified air slams you into the ground onto your back, your armor taking most of the damage quite handily, but scraping you against the ground, nonetheless. But you don't get much time to even contemplate that before you are touched by a spell you'd really wished not to ever experience again, one that in fact the last time you suffered it came from the touch of Hultressa, in a darkly ironic way. Bars of pure white-hot flame insert themselves around your body before connecting into a painful cage that prevents you from moving, forcing a scream from your mouth. The only thing keeping you from almost passing out from the pain is the fact that your armor is Ledstahli, and is holding up incredibly well against the pure flames of Aqshy surrounding you. Your eyes, unfortunately, are not so well guarded, and you can feel your vision being literally burnt out of your sockets from the bar almost directly pressed against your forehead. Even through your forced shut eyes, it is quite literally actively blinding you. Some of the pain fades as you feel the Light of Summer activate, but it can only do so much when you are still actively being burned.
"Frederick!" Sadrina calls out in horror.
"I have the brute caged, mistress!"
"The hell you do!" Johanna roars before there is the sound of stone crumpling and crackling.
(Surrounded By the Chorus: 94+20+10-35+10+10+Reduced Band Strength(25)-20-10-15-5-Hymn of Pain and Pleasure(20)=64/100)
(Alight, Midflight: 65+Johanna Martial(20)-Band of Tired Sorceresses(25)+Surprise(5)+Stored Celestial Flames(10)=75/100)
You can't see, not with the blazing bar of light in your face. But you can hear. Quite well, in fact. You can hear as the sorceresses let out shouts of surprise and the beating of a fourth pair of wings, as well as the tearing of flesh and splattering of blood. You can hear and smell, all too well, the daemonettes as they press in, some of them leaving lingering touches on your body that is not covered by the burning bars of Aqshy, and each one enrages you with how your flesh is prickled by gooseflesh. By pleasure, much to your hatred, your body forced to betray you by daemons. By pain, something you would seize on more readily to keep your head about you, only you know that this is as unnatural to your senses as the opposite being placed upon you. Kerillian is still talking, still shouting, still fighting, but desperation grows in her voice all the same. Sadrina is similar, her rallying shouts and sounds of effort growing more harried, more exhausted. At the very least, you can hear the Whitewings fighting, you think, Bretonnian is a very recognizable language. But then you hear the Whitewings screaming for their ally, for Breonna, to get up and do something, anything, and once more you realize that their comrade's broken mind has formed an anchor around their necks. Their love, their bonds, are what has helped them survive in an often harsh and cruel world, but right now it is anything but helpful.
"Disgusting beast!" A sorceress cries out.
A wordless screech akin to that of a bat rings out in response.
"Someone…aaaarrgh…get me out of this!" You scream out, straining to try and do just that, even though every single one of the solid bars of fire burns at you harder and harder through the Ledstahli.
Metal slams and scrapes and hisses as it is superheated against the bars as someone tries to do just that.
"Damn it! Druchii forge-priests can't make anything for shite! Glaikit bastard suckling grubs at Ereth Khial's teats!" Kerillian screams out above you, an audible tremble in her voice. "I can't – it's not working!" She punctuates each syllable with another smash and clang, superheated miniscule fragments of the blades in her hands scattering across your Ledstahli like hissing rain.
"Kerillian! The daemons- ah!" Sadrina screams out as you hear the distinct sound of skin and flesh being hacked into.
"Breonna! For the love of the Lady, get up and fight!"
(Surrounded By the Chorus: 84+20+10-35+10+10+(Bleeding Band of Heroes)20-20-10-15-5-20=49/100)
(Alight, Midflight: 72+20-Bleeding Sorceresses(20)+10=82/100)
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I can't-," Kerillian is muttering over you as she tries again and again to cut at the magical bars now thoroughly melting through the Ledstahli.
"I get it, I get it!" You shout back, grinding your teeth through the pain. "Don't let yourself die!"
"Damn you all!" The Asrai screams as she throws herself away from you and towards the daemonettes instead.
Another scream fills the air amidst everything else, but this one is high above. Difficult to hear amidst the dozens of daemonette throats uluating as they like with moans and groans and whispers, but audible enough. Hot blood sizzles and pops like fat on the bars of solid fire locking you in place, falling down from the sky, before what is definitely an arm comes flying down to smack you across the face, still twitching fingers dragging sharp nails across your face before becoming trapped between two of the bars of fire. Your nose immediately becomes suffused with the stink of burning skin and flesh, of scorched and burnt bone, and you are relatively sure you know what just happened in the sky. A conclusion that becomes much more certain as you hear vicious curses in Druhir and a cruel monstrous laugh that sounds vaguely like that of Johanna.
A hand trails alongside one of your thighs where the Ledstahli has almost completely burnt away despite attempting to reform, setting your skin aflame in an entirely different way.
"Look. At. You," a throaty voice, fluctuating between that of a man and a woman with each syllable, murmurs in your ear with an unnatural echo. "So…violent. Such a brute. But oh…," more hands appear, clutching around your head and poking fingers through the slit for your vision, "A brilliant little gem of a mind as well!"
"Get the fuck away from me, daemon," you hiss at what you know has ensnared you now.
"Fuck? I'd love to!" It chortles, a new sizzling sound accompanying the most mouthwatering roast pork you've ever smelled as you feel a slight pressure near one of your arms against the flames. "Ooh! Nice and hot, these," it titters as it apparently burns itself on purpose. "But your soul? Now that is interesting. Shot through with gold, but so roughed up, so many hands!" It laughs in a way that makes something flutter in your stomach despite yourself, your conscious mind warring angrily with the physiological responses that the creature of damnation solidified is forcing upon you. "Passed around like a party favor! So many others have touched you, had you…,"
A mouth full of humongous triangular teeth literally bites through the Ledstahli helm before a tongue covered in barbs laps gently against your cheek – and even with that gentleness you feel skin scraped raw and bloody.
"It makes me jealous!" It whines like a child. "It makes us all jealous!" It huffs like a young woman. "Why did they have you before us? It should be us first, us second, us forever!" It growls like a jealous lover. "We want it all, WE WANT IT ALL!" A monster demands as you feel hot breath against your bleeding cheek and hear a thick tongue slithering out between teeth.
A series of whistling precedes multiple crossbow bolts presumably striking the daemon in the head, splattering you with its blood though you can't see for shit outside of the flames in front of your eyes.
"ENOUGH OF THIS!"
(Master Rune of Skella Valayadottir Activates! 2! Failure!)
(Major Wound Sustained! Light of Summer Activates! 29! Failure!)
(Jet Sphere Spell Negation Attempt! 1d6=1! Failure!)
The only other time you have felt like this, it was when you were being keelhauled in the waters outside the Cathedral of Manann in Marienburg. This time, however, you are in the air. The wind does not merely whistle, it screams at your sheer velocity. The burning bars of flame are essentially welded to your skin now, and so come with you much to your screaming pain. The world passes by around you, your senses only able to tell you so much without that vital thing called sight. There is the beating of wings, the flapping of feathers and something more leather, and hard breathing. Down below there is still fighting. In fact, you can't miss one pair of wings coming to an abrupt halt while accompanied with a fizzling pop and whoosh of magic being cast out into the world one more.
"Shit!" Johanna curses from shockingly close by before you realize that she was flying.
Then, you realize that all of a sudden she is falling, down and away, another string of curses becoming more and more faint.
"Take him, take him now!" Alyssa snarls from nearby. "He'll know what my sister has been up to, or close enough to it. Put him in the chambers!"
"B-but Mistress, what about the Handmaiden? We-," another sorceress begins to say before there is a keening guttural snarl so thick and wet you suspect that rivulets of spit would be coming out of Alyssa's mouth right about now.
(Sensible Slaaneshi: 88-Supreme Sorceress(20)-Significant Prize(10)+Elven Arrogance(10)+Sisterly Sadism(15)+Legion Arrival(10)+Already Cracked(10)-Gluttony(10)=93/100)
There is a certain way that some people talk, you've come to realize, when the bounds of sanity start to fray a certain amount. When the line between the mind and emotion start to blur, something you've experienced yourself. You've heard it amongst flagellants aplenty, as well as some of the Slayers of the dawi, those who have gone fully zaki in their desperation for death. You've heard it in some Shallyans who refuse to believe that some of their patients have gone into Morr's embrace, of siblings on the battlefield after a battle is over finding the bodies of their siblings. Of mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, of family in all its ways attempting to refute death itself. To put it simply, you know the sound of someone just cresting over the hill of sanity reasonably well.
Alyssa appears to be stretching right across that line, if her words and the tone behind them are anything to go by.
"You think I cannot take her myself!?" Alyssa shrieks loudly. "We have daemons aplenty! I am mighty enough without either of you! Go! Now! Return for the rest of the prisoners that I will take, and then we must set about restoring MY ark to rights!!!!!"
"Just kill me now, if you think you can!" You spit, but the bite of your words is lost with the air being pushed clean out of your lungs as your current captor, whoever they are, goads their mount into furious flight.
(Jet Sphere Spell Negation Attempt! 1d6=1! Failure!)
The wind whistles by as you are dragged across the skies, the sounds of widespread combat coming from all there is below you, without anything approaching from behind or below.
"This is not what we were promised," a sorceress hisses under her breath.
"You shouldn't believe the lies of the Chaos Gods, any of them," you growl at her, but she scoffs in turn.
"You know nothing of the mysteries of Slaanesh, Ylvathoi," she spits at you, the gobbet splattering right against your currently skinless cheek.
"Stuff the filth's mouth shut, do not let it speak unless it is to tell us of Hultressa's treachery!" Another sorceress speaks up, though this one's voice is clearly pained.
The source of the arm, you would suspect.
"How about I tell you how you can die!"
Despite your best provocations, however, they refuse to respond to you again before you feel their Dark Pegasi land on stone with clattering ironshod hooves and huffing whinnies. Chains upon chains are looped around you, heavy ones that snap closed and shut with quiet thrums and remain too-cold to the touch even after they are placed against your skin, Bokdrungni torn off of your arm in the meantime. The moment the chains lock properly, it feels like your strength drains out like water, leaving you like a limp kitten. There is tearing, much of it violent and angry, which rips your Ledstahli armor apart until finally they find the strongest portions from which it might regenerate itself continually, and those are cast from you as well. A blindfold replaces the blinding bar of fire as the chains replaced the others pinning you in place, and you are dragged violently across the ground with muttering Druhir all around you, just quiet enough that you cannot catch it. Enough so that the Light of Summer would have gone to work healing it if it were not stripped from your neck and thrown aside as well.
Finally, you reach a room, and with a vicious shove are forced onto a slab, your limbs locked in place with further chains and cuffs with razor sharp blades and spikes formed within them that cut deeply and severely with the slightest pulling against them.
There you are left, growling and angry and truly imprisoned for the first time upon the Claw of Dominion, heart pounding in your chest, in darkness.
Utterly alone.
Or at least that is your thought until you hear a hefty bit of wet sniffing and snuffling from somewhere nearby.
"Hnngh…fresh meat…," an inhumanly deep voice rumbles quietly, the sheer basso behind it instantly recognizable to you, though there is a strange strain to it you can't recall ever hearing before. "Nice and bloody, too."
"An ogre," you growl, heart still pounding angrily in your chest. "Is this her plan, then? Chain me down like a meat on a hook?"
A new voice enters your awareness next from somewhere else.
"Hah! He wishes!" A gruff man scoffs in thickly Norscan accented Reikspiel. "Old Witherskinny over there'll eat rocks if they give it to him!"
"And who are you then?" you ask, having to restrain yourself from rolling your head about to try and find the source more quickly.
"ME? Hah," the Norscan scoffs and sniffs loudly. "I am the master of sight and sound, shepherd of flesh and bone, blessed of sight beyond sight, guide and destroyer-,"
"A Vitki, then," you cut him off with a groaning sigh. "Wonderful. A Chaos worshipper. Unless you aren't?" You ask with a bit of hope.
"Wh-you- no!" The Vitki, the shaman-sorcerer of the Norscans, sputters. "I serve the great Tchar, and soon enough, I shall be free of this place!"
"Hah, small meat's said that one before," the ogre growls, droplets of what you hope is just drool splattering onto the ground in the distance after he speaks. "Name is not Witherskinny, gonna eat you first for dat!"
"And what is your name then?" You ask with a sigh.
"Hah! I," there is the sound of chains clinking, straining, and if you really focus on your hearing, the sound of flesh tearing slightly, "Is Grunk! Mighty Slaughtermaster of der Manglefists!"
"Not that there are any Manglefists left, is there, Witherskinny!?" The Vikti chuckles lowly, getting a loud snarl from Grunk.
"Not anymore your tribe either," Grunk says with dark satisfaction, making the Norscan snarl in turn.
"…wonderful," you sigh to yourself as the two start arguing with each other about how lowly the other is.
Chains clink and clatter all the while in the distance, enough so that you are coming to realize that the chamber you are in must be somewhat circular, at least to accommodate all of this different sources of sound.
"Tell me…boy…," a rasping voice that almost sounds as old as time itself makes itself known, each word thready and almost forced just to get out, "What…primitive…discipline…do you…claim mastery of...?"
"He is touched by Ghyran most of all," the Vitki immediately says, "Drenched in it, time and again."
"Cold, like the higher peaks of the mountains," Grunk disagrees, "In his marrow, crack it open, suck it down, you'll see."
From somewhere in the room you hear something growl-hissing, a snapping of teeth and lips that you quite simply cannot make sense of.
"Speak plain, scaled meat!" Grunk complains.
"Instability stabilized, intact without functional internal access," hisses the whatever the hell it is with.
"Stupid-foolish lizard-thing speaks true," a chittering voice speaks, making your growl and your anger burn brighter once again.
A fucking skaven of all things is here!? And what does it mean lizard thing?
"No magic, none, nothing! This one has nothing to call upon, no, no…it must-keep secrets that it still wants, yes-yes!"
"Much as it disgusts me to do so, I must agree," a woman speaks up from elsewhere, though her Reikspiel is strangely rusty, the accent behind it strange. "This is no wizard, sorcerer, warlock, or otherwise. He has simply been…affected by more magic than most mortals alive. In the Empire at least."
"God's save me from this insanity," you mumble.
"Oh, no, no, no. No Gods here, sweet thing," the woman chuckles. "Save for Atharti. Or, perhaps, with Screamtaker dead, and her daughter replacing her, Slaanesh."
"And who are you all, then?" You ask helplessly, even as you feel the rivulets of blood starting to trickle out of you from the many manacles.
A deep, throaty chuckle answers you first.
"Why, we are the secret to Screamtaker's success. The reason for her vast magical knowledge, her overwhelming dominance that has allowed her until recently to stave of all challengers and stymie even the thought of doing so. I suppose…," chains clink for a moment. "You could call us the Supreme Sorceress' Living Library."
"Aye, southling," the Vitki laughs with all the joy of the gallows. "Each of us has been here for a long, long time. Many years."
"And none of you tried to escape?" You ask even though you have a feeling you know the answer.
"Of course!" The woman says with a light laugh, "But each of us has been…," her voice become a much uglier thing for a moment, "Humbled. By Screamtaker's enchantments."
"Cannot access magic, cannot call upon Old Ones," the hissing voice speaks up. "Elven chains and draining difficult to find workaround."
"In that…there is…not…one," the almost eldritch-ly old one speaks up again.
"I don't believe that," you growl, only to hear an absolute chorus of chortles and demeaning laughter.
"Screamtaker's masterwork, my sweet new meat," the woman says, loathing and laughter in her tone. "You can tear yourself apart aplenty on those chains, but you won't escape. Not even if you fully degloved your whole limb of skin, flesh, and muscle down to the bone."
"Pinned to soul, to-to bone, damned elf-thing, heal-restores after pain, yes-yes!" The skaven chitters angrily. "Abominable, Moulder-kin secrets, assuredly!"
"Blood feeds it, new meat," Grunk grunts, "Pain feeds it. Feeds you, keeps you bleed-able. Long as she likes. But doesn't feed right!" He manages a weak roar, the chains rattling hard, and this time you do hear the sound of some flesh tearing, as well as him snuffling and slobbering all over himself with open desperation.
You have a dawning sense of what the Vitki's insult of 'Witherskinny' really entails.
"Must you, Grunk?" The woman sneers, but her superior tone wobbles just a bit at the same time, a deep hunger in her voice as well.
"So that makes you a vampire, then," you say, almost shaking your head before the collar around your throat starts to do more than prick the skin.
"Aye, sweet blood, Kakhe herself is here, chained," the vampire sneers again, teeth gnashing as she confesses to it. "Chained as Kakhe has been for too many years. Eldest of all the prisoners of Screamtaker, save for the Liche Priest over there, Soya."
"Do not…speak…mine name…abomination…of Nagash…!" The 'Liche Priest' spits with desert dry lips.
"Nagash this, Nagash that, bah!" Kakhe scoffs, "The First Necromancer was not so great as to not fall, and to the sweet blood's own God-King! Regardless!" She says with a new clattering of chains, "Propriety must be maintained as a guest to mine realm-,"
"Your realm-place?! Hah, dead-thing is foolish!"
"Interrogation and experimentation chamber is domain of captor," the 'lizard' adds tonelessly, voice as unemotive as Anna herself.
"How dare you!" Kakhe shrieks.
"Hey, lizard, would that make you a Lizardman, then? From Lustria?" You call out, trying to ignore the argument starting up between the Vitki and Grunk, as well as the skaven and the vampire now.
"The warm-blood perceives correctly despite its deficiencies," the Lizardman says flatly.
Shit.
They really can talk.
Hultressa wasn't lying about them.
"Lizardman, then, you oppose Chaos, then?" You ask, bereft of little else to do at the moment. "And what's your name, anyhow?"
"Correct. Purpose is to guide troops, divine signs, fulfill the Great Plan of the Old Ones," it admits, and for the first time so far it shows emotion in the sheer reverence it seems to have for the 'Old Ones'. "Identifier divined as Kkha'rdluk'li'fe."
"…right," you mutter. "And Screamtaker captured you?"
"Failure," Kkha…just Kkha, you think, notes emotionlessly. "Ambush not divined. Saurus decimated, magically overwhelmed by elves. Not according to plan."
"Same wiv us," Grunk inserts himself flatulently into the conversation. "Spikey skinnies came outta nowhere, right when we wuz about ter claim the Challenge Stone and smush Valdir's little tribe to mush!"
"By Tchar you were not!" The Vitki – Valdir, apparently – snarls, "We were about to slaughter the lot of you, and emblazon the monolith with the symbols of the mightiest of the Gods!"
"Treachery brought low the rat-man, in case you are wondering," Kakhe adds sardonically, "As if it could have been anything else."
"Lying-treacherous Paskritto!" The skaven screams aloud angrily, "Will search-find you one day, yes-yes, will pay back a thousand fold your betrayal, hrnngh!"
"As for myself, they came and found my tower – how Screamtaker never deigned to tell me, the bitch," the vampire huffs, "Though I believe they simply raided the coastline of Nehekhara and stole Soya right out from the Tomb King's retinue."
"All so she could interrogate you all about your magical secrets? You didn't try to keep her out?"
At that, the conversation in the chamber seems to die off quite rapidly.
"Oh, we try," Kakhe says quietly. "We always try."
"The elf witch was…strong…," Valdir mutters.
"Determination to keep the secrets of the Old Ones strong. Manipulatory capabilities through magic and concoctions of elven entity Screamtaker were…considerable," Kkha adds.
…well then.
==============================================================
The flag of Talabecland waves freely in the winds of a winter finally allowing itself to be pushed back.
Seen from above, the vast crater that surrounds Talabheim is truly astonishing, even for you, who have spent years flying about the Middle Mountains. Or at least the eastern portions. Octaine has never been out this way before, but the lessons of his mother and others have kept his discipline strong. Even if he never has flown out this far without his mother nearby. The thought of that, of Oskana, makes your fists tighten around the reins and chains as you command him to descend onto the path in the road a reasonable distance away from the meeting party, the fortress High Watch in the far distance watching over the sole passage in and out of the great crater. The glorious, and frankly beautiful sight of the expanse of the crater's innards is something you will never forget, but the memory of it is already soured by what is to come. You would never have dared to simply impose upon Talabheim yourself, not with the relations between your provinces being the way they are, but nevertheless, some meetings must be had. Including this one, between yourself and your effective peer, as heirs to your respective provinces.
Duke Krugar Fuerbach stares at you, hard, seemingly unafraid of Octaine who decides to puff out his feathers just a bit in threat display.
Not, you think, entirely unwarranted given that you are considerably outnumbered here, being alone save for a gryphon. Could you fight your way out if necessary? Hopefully. But the archers and crossbowmen that have accompanied the Duke alongside his detachment of halberdiers and Greatswords might make a good go of it. Sunweaver says that she feels your father and mother are still alive, but Oskana was not part of that strange ritual. Whatever happened to her, to the rest of them, to the enormous runic breastplate fitted for a gryphon, you simply can't know. But you do not draw the hammer chained to your back, nor the sword at your waist, or the blastgun at the small of your back. The flag of Ostland is what you bring with you instead, fluttering in the wind itself as you make your way towards the Talabeclanders on your lonesome. Surrounded as you are on all sides, if you think about it. Talagaad is all about you, the port city which functions effectively as Talabheim's with the tunnel connecting the two. Thankfully, this small square appears to have been pre-emptively cleared, though you can spy quite a few twitching shades in a number of windows.
It does not escape your notice that not a single motion from their party has been towards meeting you halfway.
Even now, given the chaos that is beginning to envelop the Empire, even now after they asked you for aid.
It's enough to make you grit your teeth behind the passive expression you work to keep on your face.
You are not your father, but never let it be said that Magnus von Hohenzollern does not have a dangerous temper of his own!
"Duke Fuerbach," you call out respectively, neither the tone nor words the one you wished to be using right now were it not for the circumstances.
"Prince Hohenzollern," Krugar says with a stiff-necked nod. "I see you received our message."
"Aye, we did," you nod yourself, planting the flag into the road next to you, uncaring how one of the Talabeclander Greatsword's eyelids twitch as the stone is disturbed by the act. "Sent one back, even. As mentioned in it, I came ahead to ensure that our promise is being kept no matter what, that our aid is able to reach you without issue."
"You-," the twitchier Greatsword spits, his white mustache jiggling as he snarls.
"Peace, Florin," Krugar says sternly, one hand cutting out to the side. "Given the relations between our provinces, it would not do to react incorrectly should a significant force…," he pauses, glancing up at you, waiting for your nod of confirmation, and only upon receiving it continues, "Of Ostlanders crossing into the province. Speaking of which," he snaps his fingers, and two of his men on horses shift to attention. "Send out the messages to the outposts and forts. The Ostlanders are not to be waylaid by any true son or daughter of Talabecland."
"Yes, Duke Fuerbach!" They both salute before wheeling their horses about and galloping back down the path.
Only then does Krugar dismount from his horse, and rather pointedly pushes past his guards and motions to keep them back as he approaches you. The red hair of his sister, Johanna, that your father spoke of in the past, is just as present here, though the Duke keeps his hair cut so short that it borders just above shaving it completely. Even that cannot stop you from seeing a small line here and there of grey, though whether that is recent to the man or not is unknown. He also has a full beard and mustache of red, though that too is trimmed neatly. He might not be as tall or wide as you, but the man is clearly a well-experienced warrior. Unlike yourself, Krugar appears to favor the longsword, with no shield to him, perhaps preparing himself for the day that he would take up the Runefang of his station. He wears his plate armor well, comfortably, which fits for the tales and rumors that have spread of his martial prowess. Still, though you never took to it like your sister or father did, you know a little more than most about smithing and metals, and you'd swear that there has been some recent repair to the man's breastplate.
"As you may suspect, the situation is dire indeed, given that we have called for aid from all corners," Krugar begins unceremoniously.
"Regardless of the relations between our provinces, Ostland would never stand by to allow any part of the Empire from being assaulted by abominations of Chaos without recompense, if allowed to aid them," you say back with a small shrug. "There are innocents under threat. If you allow us to aid them, we will."
"…we shall have to hope so," he says with a small frown. "I do not know if you could see it in the air as you were, but already, the Taalbaston has been tainted by the presence of the enemy."
You can't help it when your eyebrows raise up in surprise. The crater is one of the most fortified locations in the Empire, the natural walls created by the crater have been supplemented by the nobility of Talabecland with additional reinforcements, towers, guns, cannons, and more since before the beginning of the Empire. It is not impassible, not unscalable, but still an impressive defense that few others in the Old World could boast to match in sheer breadth at least. At the same time, your mind seizes upon that sheer vast size. It is much easier to see your enemies in all directions from, say, Middenheim, as you are atop a mountain and control all the paths upwards. It is another for this place, with the walls of the crater so high that they block off the surrounding world. Were the world outside of the Taalbaston aflame, it would only be the smoke that made it visible.
"Truly?"
"We've had skirmishes with at least three smaller warherds, just in their hundreds, skirting near the north, east, and south."
"Not through the tunnel, surely," you point out, and he nods grimly.
"Oh, I suspect tunneling is involved, aye, one way or another. Either that, or one of their damned Beast-Paths has managed to form in Taal's most holy grounds. An ill omen, regardless."
"I don't disagree," you agree, pausing as he looks askance at you, eyes narrowed. "A great deal of our province is forested, and not so blessed as yours. Taal is well welcomed and thought of amongst many of my people," you grunt, trying to fight the affront of the suspicion down. "Regardless, as it is, I have brought forth my cavalry, light and heavy, as swiftly and ably as I could. Infantry are assembling and rearming, but by their nature will be slower. Especially with the other warherds causing trouble in the province. The barges are already on their way with our horse first."
"…I see," he frowns again, but this time it at least seems somewhat aimed towards your mutual enemies. "Our own armies are attempting to return, but they are in too many divisions to move in great strength now. If your forces could relieve them, we could return them home, see to these enemies."
"You'd rather us not even enter the crater then?" You raise an eyebrow, glancing past him towards High Watch and its walls, walls that are certainly well staffed, but going by the men you can see on it, not by the best of the best at the moment.
Gods above, he's clearly leaning hard upon hasty recruitments and militia to try and make up the difference.
"I would…not be opposed," he says through grit teeth, looking to the side.
"But someone else would," you guess, looking meaningfully at his longsword, which is most conspicuously not the fabled Runefang of Talabecland.
"…yes," he grunts.
"Say no more of it then," you shake your head, "As I said, I am not here to cause issues, but to aid your people. If you can give me locations, detachment lists, we can begin seeking them out, try and smash the beastmen aside so they can return and reassemble here."
"That would be most appreciated, Prince Hohenzollern. Though I must confess, I don't…," he pauses, pursing his lips. "I was expecting…,"
"My father is not available," you reply stiffly, and his face pales.
"Gods be with him," he mutters, "The tales are true then? He is-,"
"Not dead, not by the auguries of some of the mightiest wielders of magic I know," you interrupt quickly, gruffly, clearing your throat. "The disciples of the God of Dreams do not see his death either. But as it stands…I rule in his place. Until his return," you say as strongly as possible.
Krugar works his jaw and makes to shake his head before stopping.
"Very well. Until his return, then," he nods and then to your surprise salutes you. "As it happens, I already prepared a listing for just such an idea as yours, hoping you would send your mobile elements ahead."
With that said, he unfurls a rather hefty looking scroll of vellum he'd kept in a case on his belt and presents it to you.
"If you can bring word back to your barges – I'll provide my seal and permissions – we can dock them in Talagaad as swiftly as possible and send them right back out," he mention while offering said permission notes at the same time, each stamped with his wax seal.
"Agreed, better than trying to deploy them piecemeal along the riverside at smaller ports. Easier to organize as well," you say absentmindedly while you glance over the scroll of listed out portions of Talabecland's forces. "The Reiksmarshal…I do not see your brother on this list," you say while glancing up at Krugar, who grimaces at your words. "He proceeded south to the Everpeak alongside the Emperor, did he not?"
"He did, bless him. Unfortunately, my cousin, General Albrecht Baden headed towards the Drakwald the moment he heard the beastmen were rising up," he rubs at his temple with one hand, his grimace intensifying. "For years, he's been saying that the beastmen would return and that the Drakwald has been left to them for far too long. As it is, I have received no word of him since before Middenheim was put to siege. He is a reclusive sort, but family nonetheless...and I have no idea if he even lives."
One of your hands lands on his shoulder, making him glance back up at you.
"You have my sympathies, Krugar. To know one of your blood is in danger, uncertain…when I nearly lost my sister in Karak Ungor, it nearly drove me mad."
Krugar purses his lips as he nods, eyes drifting back down to the ground.
"My cousin is canny, and mighty, albeit reclusive. I just hope he's canny and mighty enough," he sighs, patting your hand on his shoulder once before you return your arms to your sides. "Still, these are the forces we at least have had some kind of contact with."
"Artillery with guards to the east, smaller dual groups of halberds and crossbows to the southeast, most of your cavalry went west with your cousin…but some remain, sent out towards the south outright," you read out over the basic lists.
The heir of Talabecland huffs as you read it out.
"I am a fool," he chastises himself with a growl. "To have stripped the province so severely was madness."
"It is not madness to wish to aid your fellow men, your fellow Imperials," you shake your head slowly. "Not at all. We could not have predicted the beastmen rising up like this, not across the length of the Empire. We can only do what we can, we are not the Gods, after all," you sniff. "Now then, as to the deployment of my forces…,"
"I would not presume to instruct you as to what to do with them, all of our troops are valuable for what is to come, and better some be aided than none at all," Krugar nods, looking up at you with stern eyes. "Where do you think you will lead them first?"
"Splitting them up could be dangerous with the wilds given over to the beastmen at the moment," you note.
"Especially given the few reports we've gotten, our detachments are too spread out, and are suffering for it. You could split your troops up, to save more, but if they are too split up to actually win the fight then it would merely be aiding the enemy."
"Precisely," you cluck your tongue, and then reach for a flask at your waist full of Bugman's to drink dry, ignoring the faintly disgusted look on Krugar's face. "It's too risky. I'll have to move as a single mailed fist, and hope we are swift and deadly enough to rescue enough of your forces."
"May Taal grant you all swift passage through the forests, then," Krugar salutes you. "I must try as best I can to see to the innards of the crater with what meager free companies I have been able to gather up."
"God's guide you, Duke Fuerbach," you salute the man back before going back to the list, walking back to Octaine as you do so.
Choice 1:
The main detachments are as follows:
Group A – Artillery, Engineers, Halberdiers, Crossbowmen [Eastern Detachments]
Group B – Halberdiers, Crossbowmen, Pikes, Spearmen, Handgunners [Southeastern Detachments]
Group C – Cavalry, Spearmen, Crossbowmen [Southernmost Detachments]
Vote Is For Priority Weight
[] Write-In (EX: C, B, A or B, A, C, for different combinations)
==================================================================
In time, the doors open once more, there is a sizzling crackling pop of magic in the air, and silence fills the room. Or at least, mostly, with none of your fellow prisoners audible whether in voice or in chains. Instead, what you hear are heels clacking angrily across stone, as well as a rather ominous buzz as well. The sound being so thoroughly reduced lets you hear droplets of blood dripping down onto the floor, getting closer in accompaniment to the heels. There is no muttering, no grunting, nothing but angry hot breaths as the new arrival comes closer and closer. Another snap of fingers and something – someone – thumps down onto stone nearby, followed by the clinking and clanking of rapidly moving chains and snapping of closing manacles. For a few short moments, all you can hear is hard breathing, with just the cusp of wheezing on the end of it, the kind that comes after such extreme and continual exertion that exhaustion has quite comfortably set in.
With one vicious movement, the blindfold is torn from your face.
Alyssa Voidreaper, sans one eye and the left half of her face a bloody ruin she hasn't even bothered seeing to magically, glares down at you.
The Supreme Sorceress is soaked in blood from head to toe, and bears a great many scars across her body. Some of them are clearly just freshly healed, still angry and red, others better seen to. Her raiment has been torn and shredded, and there is a clear hitch in her left leg where something's gone wrong somewhere below the knee and above the foot. She heaves her breaths, hard but slow, a forge bellows attended to by a cripple. Her staff burns with the dark power of Slaanesh, but there is a crackle in it, a fracture, some oddity about the workings of its magic that gives off the sense of a mechanism that is damaged yet still functions. But really, apart from the absolutely monstrous rage you can see in her eye, you are far more focused on the other person on the slab right next to you, as well as the first time you can properly see of your surroundings.
All around you, chained to the walls, are your fellow captives. An elderly Norscan Vitki, beard white and filthy. A living corpse of a Liche Priest, stripped of all his holy vestments to reveal a living mummy who's lungs barely shift with each slow breath. A horrifically skinny ogre, one who's gut sags down past his knees with his droopy exterior giving Grunk the appearance of a well-melted wax figurine. A silent skaven with grey fur, naked, who's eyes burn with outrage and fury. A skink priest, the Lizardman's scales having lost most of their luster, hangs limply in its own chains, covered head to toe in scars, a clear frond atop its head having been torn off at some point. Finally, and much to your immediate horror, is a hideous green-grey fleshed vampire who looks more akin to a woods witch from a tale meant to frighten children, not a Lahmian at all like you'd expected by a Necrarch. There are other manacles and chains about the walls, spots that were meant to be occupied, but for now are empty. Perhaps one of those spaces is meant for you, though you doubt it.
None of it, none of it at all, however, draws your attention more than the woman on the slab next to you.
Blonde hair is caked with blood and sticks to her face, her body as stripped as you to show wounds and scars aplenty. But even like this, perhaps especially like this, you would never mistake Eldyra for anyone else. She is conscious, you can tell, but there is a wild and unrestrained fear in her bulging eyes as she looks around the room, looks to you, looks to Alyssa, and then you see something you dearly wish you hadn't. You can see the light in the Asur's eyes literally begin to drain out and die and something past despair and sorrow replace it. This is what she'd already barely escaped once, in her mind and soul, and here she is now again. And this time, you have come to join her in it. If she breaks again, so soon, in such similar circumstances, she will never come back. You know this truth with every fiber of your being.
"I have come to learn…much," Alyssa begins with each word bitten out through grinding teeth. "The grand prize of Dreadbringer restored to form, to act as a defense of all things…and the most insultingly arrogant and foolish human I have ever laid eyes upon."
Alyssa glances over you, head tilting back and forth.
"But she gave you into her confidences…you and my daughter," she hisses. "You know her plans, her thoughts, better than I, it seems. And you will share this with me," she says with a hard sniff that ends with her hocking out a glob of blood onto the ground. "One way. Or another."
Then she turns and runs a hand along Eldyra's face, making the Asur shudder in unrestrained terror.
"This one…yes, my foolish little sister rescued this one, on your order I suspect. There were rumors that you two might be associated. Friendly, even!" She scoffs in utter disgust. "Tell me, Frederick von Hohenzollern, how much shall I hurt her to make you talk?"
Alyssa slowly turns to face you instead.
"Then again, the insults levied by you are many. Worse, even, than hers."
A small croak of a laugh forces its way out of you, making Alyssa's currently sole eye narrow in anger.
"You didn't get her, did you," you laugh quietly. "Either of them…or any of them!"
"Do you want to listen to your wife's screams as she is torn asunder?" She snarls at you, coming close enough that if you were willing to decapitate yourself with the collar, you could probably bite her throat out.
Your smile in response seems to only infuriate her further.
But how could she know that, this very moment, you can feel a cold and growing fury far and away below? Something of seething hatred, of monstrous spite, and overwhelming love, bound through souls on a level in depths and completeness that you suspect Alyssa Voidreaper could not, will not, ever fathom. Because you can see and feel flashes of imagery, of broken wings and a snarling hiss as bones crack and flesh bubbles in restoration. You can feel the impression of quiet, stoic singing, and the confusion over what should be an endless babbling tirade turned to something cold and deadly and quiet. There is sorrow, there is anger, but there is not nothing. No sign of wary fear, or wife's anger, for one who disappeared. There are conclusions enough to draw through the soul bond.
"If you can get her, I dare you to try," you say hoarsely to her, not having had a drop of water since the descent from the Tor the first time around.
"You think provoking me is wise…?" Alyssa draws back from you for just a moment, your audacity shocking her before it turns to rage. "I know mysteries and secrets of holy pain that you cannot fathom! I shall grind your very mind to dust in my palm, and you will not even be able to beg for mercy, so utterly destroyed you shall be!"
You sniff and look the Druchii straight in the eye.
"You think you can do better than your sister?"
For a moment, she is utterly still save for opening and closing her mouth in stunned silence repeatedly before stalking out of your field of view for a few moments and then returning in an angry rush.
"Your pride, filthy little Ylvathoi, shall be all the sweeter to see shatter," she hisses before revealing a strange glass cylinder, one with a sharp looking needle at the end.
The cylinder itself glows an ominous purple and green.
"You think my sister's poisons potent? This," she waggles it for emphasis, "Are the fluids collected from the coupling of a Great Unclean One and a Keeper of Secrets…and through it? Everything, everything you feel from this moment forward will be pain. And it will linger," she chortles heavily, "Oh it will linger. A single second of pain shall stretch out for hours, days, even! The slightest touch of breath shall be a hurricane, a tap of a nail an earthquake!"
"Fancy," you growl, though you can't hide at least some apprehension at the stuff.
"You're worth it, I think. Your pain? Shall be sweeter than anything that broken thing might offer me," she gestures at Eldyra, who is staring directly at you, a terrible awareness in her eyes.
Silently, the Tiranoci Princess is mouthing the word no at you over and over again.
"Suffer, suffer, and suffer again. Suffer forever!" Alyssa cackles before she forces the needle into you, and does something to the cylinder which causes it to force to liquid into you.
Unfortunately, the effect is immediate.
"…nnngh…"
The slightest puff of air emerges from Alyssa's lips, but worse than that, you can see it coming.
It takes what feels like literal hours for her lips to part.
And then the pain hits.
The pain from everywhere hits.
Every thump of your own heart. The aches from before. All of it, magnified.
All of it, slowed.
The transferal of a single signal of pain from one nerve slows to molasses, and then more, burning in the brain the entire while.
"…agh….AGGGH….AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
And Frederick von Hohenzollern starts to scream a scream that feels like it will last for years.
=====================================================================
You are Natasha von Hohenzollern.
Your husband is in pain.
Horrific pain.
Strange pain.
He clings to you, to your bond, like a lifeline, and for all you know, that is exactly what it is. The sheer level of it blows any other pain you've ever suffered before out of the water. No birth can compare. The death of your father cannot compare. Not even the Ancient Widow itself channeled through you can compare. None of it. So it is all you can do to grit your teeth and continue to stand, to continue to organize the new prisoners that have come to your small little enclave prepared by the damned sorceress beforehand that fucking abandoned your husband at the most important moment. You have back a great deal more elves than you did before, so that's something, and they all seem quite enamored by Sadrina's presence, save for the Asrai who is off in the corner muttering quietly to herself and steadily sharpening her stolen blades. Johanna, the vampire, the supposed friend, the one who failed to save your husband, sulks in her own corner as well, hideous regeneration restoring her to fighting standard now that she is no longer bound in a web of purifying light and sent crashing to earth.
"My lady," Roland, the old dependable Bretonnian says, having left behind the two weeping little lilies who could barely hold a sword now that their third was a dead and trampled pile of meat somewhere on the Ark with their erstwhile leader Jaqueline trying to console them. "…what do you plan to do now?"
You are a daughter of Kislev. Your blood is of ice, but it feels as if it should be boiling out of your veins at this very moment. The pain your husband is suffering is staggering, mind-bending, and just shy of breaking were the two of you not able to share the burden. You have been beaten, but not all is lost. Not while there is air in your lungs and magic that you can wield. The Ark itself is damaged, apparently, one of the major Dhar stones was compromised and exploded. The Slaaneshi daemons keep spreading out from the former Temple of Khaine, and resistance against the rule of Alyssa is already starting to falter. But it is not gone just yet, even with the entire Ark once more starting to move. South, this time, towards the coastlines of Norsca you think, if only to gain more support from fellow worshippers of their precious Dark God.
Your armor carries with it a most terrible glacial chill, darkening and sharpening with your emotions and your magic.
"I think I'm going to kill a lot of Druchii, Sir Roland," you inform him, your voice as frozen as it has ever been. "And then I'm going to rescue my husband. Maybe find that bitch who abandoned him, good cause for it or not, and get her to help."
"I had thought so," he nods gravely. "Some of the slaves we rescued during the anarchy have been here for a while, some of them are generational. They know much of the tunnels meant solely for slave use. The Druchii never use them…,"
"And so we shall," you nod curtly. "This place belonged to Hultressa, she purchased it, they'll come for it sooner rather than later. Get everyone ready to move."
"We could try and aim for a larger slave uprising, though…with the daemons as they are…,"
"No," you say coldly. "There was a chance for that, in the past. No longer. Now, we will bide our time, and strike as we can, where we can. Perhaps aid the other resisting Druchii elements, even. What slaves we can free, perhaps," you admit as you glance over to him, then back towards the wisps of the Winds that fill this place, and almost laugh at the nearly paradoxical clinging of Aqshy trying to swirl around you, befitting your sheer anger. "But we are not challenging an entire daemon legion out in the open, not right now. And we still need to figure out where Hultressa went."
"If she thought she could escape without-,"
"No point," you interrupt the knight by pointing at the Handmaiden. "Without her? She'll never even get close enough to beg the Everqueen for anything. No. I don't think Hultressa is gone, nor dead, just yet. In the meantime?"
You draw your blade, and the eyes of many others around you, and run a finger along the length of the flat, letting the ice crack and grow and spread.
"We have other matters to attend to."
Choice:
[] Focus On Freeing Other Slaves, Combat Capable Ones
[] Focus On Aiding Anti-Alyssan Druchii On the Ark, though how they would react to freed slaves and otherwise is not certain to be anything positive.
[] Focus on purely attacking Alyssan loyalists and daemons
[] Focus Purely on Biding Time, refusing combat and attacks, to try and wait for more opportune moments
Moratorium 4 Hours
Note Note: Can't always beat the odds. I apologize if some of you disagree with the direction this ended up taking, but for the moment we are going to be a doing a bit of perspective shifting, as Frederick is currently severely indiposed. There are options here. The Ark has fallen into near total anarchy as Alyssa attempts to reassert control from a major breakdown, someone did significant damage to one of their food production centers, as well as one of their main propulsion and control centers. All is not lost. Things are bad, are dark, but not utterly lost. I promise you that. If death does end up getting a Hohenzollern, well, it had to happen eventually. Will it be now? Guess we'll see. I appreciate you all very much, even if you don't end up liking this very much at the moment. If any of you still feel like voting for the Voter's Choice thing, I'd still be honored. Whether or not you feel like it...well. Either way, Happy Thanksgiving, and Happy Upcoming Holidays. Hopefully we'll be getting to more rapid updates for the time being. Hopefully.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
- Pronouns
- He
22k!!!
THAT WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT
THAT WHY HE THE GOAT!
THE GOAT!!!!!
THAT WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT
THAT WHY HE THE GOAT!
THE GOAT!!!!!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
This, this was insanity… AND I LOVED EVERY SECOND OF IT! TORROAR IS THE BEST QM EVERRRRRRRRR!!!!! 😁
- Location
- Australia
Damn it. Just fucking damn it. So close.
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Are we fighting a chaos elf now
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I'm thinking focus on attacking daemons and loyalists.
