Duel:Emrith v Laezila

Part of the Surface Tension Arc

Location: House D'Artes Foyer
Duelists: Emrith (Surface Allies), Laezila (Drow Allies)
Judges: Hildegarde and Aevo
Stakes:  If Emrith wins, he successfully rescues Skylei and Maegus and captures Laezila. If Laezila wins, Emrith fails in his rescue and joins the D'Artes dungeon (or goes to D'l'sel D'issan if Laezila wishes to snag him as a personal prize).

House D'Artes Foyer

Upon being granted entrance to Trist'oth's most well guarded and impressive facility, the first sight which meets your eyes is the large crest of House D`Artes stationed high upon the wall before you. The complex of this Patriarchal House stands in upon a lofty terrace of natural formations between the newly crafted Temple of Vakmatharas and the Academies of both Combat and Arcane, an obvious sign of the First House's power and influence. A capacious cavern has been carved into the stone surroundings within the largest central stalagmite to create this lofty venue, obviously requiring a near army of skilled masons throughout years of backbreaking toil. Two large doors may be seen on the northern wall, though armed guards stand in defense of these portals; one of the doors seems to lead toward a dungeon, judging by the screams emanating from within. A set of keys may be seen hanging from the lock upon the apparent dungeon door. A number of doorways may be noted high up on various places throughout the wall, each one adorned with a gloriously crafted gargoyle, limned in pulsating faery fire. It appears these rooms are reserved for nobles with the power of levitation, as no staircase has been crafted to allow access. Large tapestries to the east and west exhibit scenes of great battle, though a striking lack of female visages will be apparent to those knowledgeable in Drow society. On the southern wall, flanking the colossal archway entrance, are portraits of various figures in House D`Artes, including those birthed by blood and others who've proven worth over years of loyal service. A veritable wall of assorted sentries line the perimeter of the room, locked in a stoic pose and seemingly unresponsive to your entrance; knowledge of exactly where you are would likely be enough to understand it unwise to test their complacence.

Entrance Posts

There is another drow in the Trist'Oth Tavern tonight. Dressed almost entirely in black, complete with spiked knee guards, a hood and faceplate, as well as a pair of leather gloves to protect his hands, the slight figure sits in a corner, nursing a drink he does not want in order to deflect unsought attention. The surly demeanour and out-of-the-way vantage point give Emrith the anonymity he seeks. He waits here, having reached the Underdark on his own and at great personal risk some time ago, to learn what he may. Perfectly disguised, he presents an unassuming figure, that of a lowborn warrior not currently on duty. He listens intently as people gossip and scheme around him, sifting the useful information from amid the sea of incomprehensible background of rumours and idle chatter. His disguise has, for now at least, granted him the ability to both speak and understand the drow language; indeed, the wood-elf might as well be a drow, thanks to Lanara's ministrations a few nights previously. Suddenly, he decides it is time for action, and rises, leaving his flagon half- finished. Emrith makes no sound at all as he moves northward, across the street and toward the D'Artes foyer. He could activate his light-bending sable cloak's enchantment, but he does not wish to call attention to himself, and perhaps give his identity away, unless it is necessary. fortunately, it is not. Having previously discerned that there is sufficient traffic in which to camouflage, the spell-blade now does so, slipping in through the adamantite doors with a couple of other drow and looking furtively around. His heart is in his throat; here is the phase of the operation which possesses the greatest possible risk for no discernible reward. quickly, the disguised elf's hands dip into pockets sewn inside his cloak, coming out with fistfuls of small vials, which he begins to toss hither and yon. Each contains a magically pressurized burst of an extremely potent nerve gas which will render any who breathe it unconscious in seconds. Guards and simple passers-by alike begin dropping like flies, rendered insensate before the alarm can be raised. Soon, Emrith appears to be the only waking occupant of the huge foyer, and he immediately makes a beeline for the great doors which appear to give on the D'Artes dungeons. He has been mindful of Laezila's threat that she might be forced to cross blades with him, but for now, the mission is simple: in the absence of any immediate peril, free the prisoners, and loose as many slaves as possible before making a speedy getaway.

Laezila D'l'Sel D'issan had suffered some long string of ordeals; her diminutive body, draped in an elegant, backless black dress that reached her ankles and was open at one side from hem to hip, had taken quite a beating and by now had healed only to subtle bruises and soreness. Any evidence of her pain was not reflected however, as between long, glittering tresses of snow-hued hair was that stark, faceless ivory mask that betrayed no visible expression or even fraction of her face aside from rare, strikingly blue eyes. The matron's gait did nothing to betray her wounds either, because it was strong and steady, with an elegant grace that could most appropriately be described as the stride of a female that wielded dangerous power. That gait brought her from the halls, whereupon was the guest chambers she was staying, to the foyer with the intention of an exit, interrupted to a halt by the sight of toppled guards and slumbering D'Artes drow at the foyer, and a lone figure speedily moving through their maze. "Halt," she commanded with authoritiy as she broke into her own quickened pace to cut the male off; her voice was both augmented louder as well as distorted by the natural contours of the mask and carried over the expanse of the decadent and large room.

Duel

Emrith knows that commanding voice all too well. Laezila has arrived, and a fateful moment is at hand. Emotionally, the elf does not wish to do the drow matron any more harm than he must, but great need now forces his hand. Instead of heeding the command to halt, Emrith spins fluidly on the balls of his feet to face Laezila at a distance of perhaps twenty feet. His hands are still in his pockets, and for a fraction of a second he is poised, motionless, red-eyed and dark-skinned, with unadorned scabbards crossed on his back and a chain belt invisible beneath his black cloak. His flesh seems to tingle, both from sheer nervous energy and from Nymh's peculiar gift. Then the spell-blade is moving, both hands whipping upward, an obsidian dagger clutched tightly in each fist. He looses the blades toward Laezila at eye height and spits a single harsh word in the drow tongue, spreading his now-empty hands palm-out. "Chath!" It is the drow word for fire, and suddenly the majority of that infuriating tingling sensation is gone as Nymh's faerie-fire boon expands from his fingertips. Amplified and warped to a slightly different purpose by his will and his own meager knowledge of the arcane, the fire does not simply outline its target as normal faerie fire would; instead, it flares so brightly that Emrith's own eyes squint reflexively half-shut, then spreads upward into a dome of scintillating radiance just above the matron's head. Emrith knows little of magic, but some gestures are both common and logical. Now he brings his hands together in one sharp clap, and the spell collapses like an umbrella toward Laezila from above. If it was ever true faerie fire, it is no longer so peculiar and so tame...and if the sudden scorch marks appearing on the floor are any indication, the temperature inside that faltering cocoon of luminous flames is skyrocketing at an alarming rate. Emrith waits, all senses keenly trained to be instantly aware of anything his foe might attempt.

Laezila had a distinctly sinking feeling forming in the pit of her stomach as her pace to close the distance between herself and Emrith after her command of the elf-in-drow-disguise to halt went momentarily unheeded; it was the feeling that something was wrong with that particular drow, not at all helping to quell that sense of dread were the unconscious drow bodies strewn across the floor. The very same bodies she had to weave around and step over in her approach. Striking blue eyes, like two temptatious sapphires behind the eye-holes of her faceless, ivory mask, narrowed to more keenly view the unfamiliar lowborn, and her sinking feeling was confirmed in its dread by the sudden action from the male. The belt around her slender waist was expertly and fluidly unhooked, and snaked across the floor with a sudden series of predatory 'clicks' and sparks that revealed it not only to be a whip, but a bladed one. Simultaneous to its unsheathing, she halted her steps and dropped into a more readied stance for battle, which unfortunately preceded the assault from Emrith. Fearie fire burst into life and burned, but the diminutive woman dropped, and with surprising strength grasped hold of a fallen guard before her to hoist his body up as a meaty (now-charred) shield against the torrent of fire. Flames licked her arms, singed her mask, and shortened her hair with blackened highlights against the otherwise clear snow-hue, but the woman was determined now. The spell domed around her, and the crackle of the fire belied the sound of snapping and grotesque wrenching, before the woman leapt through the fire toward her opponent. Her dress was caught, and she looked like a pheonix of flame and shadow, burning alive; one hand brought her whipsword around in an arch mid-air that sought to bifercate the male at the hips. The other launched at the same time the head of the guard, literally aflame and ripped from the shoulders of the burned man by the bare hands of the matron, like a fiery cannonball.

Emrith draws his swords the instant Laezila raises her impromptu shield. Heleg and Nahr do not glow, but their enchantments are soon brought into play. Reacting with the preternatural speed possessed by elf and drow alike, Emrith swats the incoming head with the flat of Heleg's blade; flame meets ice, and the missile explodes in a spray of gore which smears his faceplate and sends chunks, some frozen and some still crackling merrily, in all directions. Nahr is sent on an intercept course with Laezila's whip, striking at it from above and driving it down before it can shear him in two; the slice previously aimed for his hips now carves into the meat of his calves, where the whip momentarily catches on the spikes at his knees. Blood begins to flow from the side of Emrith's right leg and from a nick on his left ankle, and the spell-blade growls with both pain and renewed resolve. With Laezila's weapon now dangerously low, Emrith channels mana into his boots with perhaps more speed than is wise, feeling a brief burst of pain in his head as his footgear propels him across the floor to the side. Laezila may be disarmed by the sheer quickness and strength of the indirect yank upon her whip, but even if she is not, Emrith suddenly finds himself free of the impediment and once more able to move freely. Still moving as if skating at high speed, the elf makes a tight turn and drops into flame stance, sending four quicck alternating slashes with Heleg and Nahr toward various vital places on the relatively unarmoured form of his foe: throat, breast, gut, hamstrings. The spell-blade puts all of his considerable expertise and grace into each stroke, hoping for one or more to strike home and end this brutal contest before it can be drawn out much longer.

Laezila's eyes neither waned in their cunning nor widened in shock at the sudden eruption of blood-spattered ice, brains, and flesh, as they followed keenly the path of her whipsword as it wrapped and caught around the spike of her opponent's knee. Her dress was in tatters and clung to her small figure as the embers tied away on her. There was a moment of tense stillness, before the elf-in-drow-disguise violently lurched in ludicrous speed; coupled with her grip on the whipsword, the weapon shattered into fragmented pieces with a resonating crystalline cacophony and left the matron with naught but a dark handle. That handle she threw away in disdain as she stared at her opponent. The petite and short-statured matron, her chest rising and falling in the heaves telltale to her threshold of pain from the multiple burns upon her chest, was not done with this mysterious lowborn -this upstart drow! How dare he attack her! She was Matron of D'l'Sel D'issan! Lightning cracked deafeningly as it jolted visibly in electric blue, jagged lines around her free hands, and it only intensified as that clenched into a pair of fists that paled her knuckles with force. Both hands extend outward from her body to her sides, locking her elbows and opening her palms as Emrith leapt into his assault. Lightning burst from them simultaneously with a duo of long arcs of thick, solid, vivid blues in two jagged, chopped paths to crash in eruptions of sparks against the display cases of both Ilithuel and Elethial, and like sentient cords they wrapped around either hilt and flung back into the grip of the matron's hands. The Solar and the Lunar in her right and left hand, respectively, her swordplay was not as impressive as with her whip but it was enough to deflect the volley of strikes with clangs and clashes of blade against blade, parrying as her body moved backward in defense. Her body screamed in protest and agony, but the matron pressed on with the determination that accompanied the ruthlessness of Underdark ruling, and she abruptly brought the Solar down vertically to point at her opponent. A sonic wave of sound conically was thrust outward toward him from the blade in vibration to such a degree that the eardrums of the unconscious around him literally and visibly burst in 'pops' of crimson blood.

Emrith snarls behind his bloodied faceplate as blade meets blade. Laezila's sudden seizing of the elven artifacts, and her subsequennt use of them, turns Emrith's previously calculated fury into an all-consuming rage. It is this rage which fuels him as he hammers forward within Laezila's guard, dropping low and skidding on spiked knees with a hellish screech of spikes on stone. The cone of lethal sound waves tears his hood apart and flattens his dark hair to his scalp, and leaves the disguised elf with a ringing head and throbbing ears to go along with his white-hot anger. From his position kneeling at Laezila's feet, Emrith reverses his grip on Heleg as fast as he can, then shoots the blade straight upward in an attempt to disarm the drow of the more dangerous of the elven artifacts by striking it hard and fast from below. Surprisingly, he lets go of his blade as it travels upward, and drops his hand with panicky speed to his belt, where he unlimbers the whip at his waist. Doubling as both a belt and a weapon, set with studs which now all seem to gleam with an oily sheen, the implement strikes out of Emrith's gloved hand like a serpent toward both of Laezila's legs, attempting to twine around them as Emrith screams in drow. Blood runs freely from his ears and from the wound in his calf, and pain beats in his head like a giant kicking a bass drum. "Laezila! You will drive your remaining weapon through your own heart! Do it! I, Emrith Kohl, command you!" He is hoping that the command-and-compel oil smeared liberally all along the whip's length, combined with the sheer shock of suddenly understanding the identity of her tormentor, will cause the wily matron to make a single fatal slip; one mistake is all it may take, and this battle will end as Laezila impales herself upon the elven blade.

Laezila audibly grunted with feminine might as the ancient weapon was knocked upward, ripped from her grasp by the force and sent across the room. She held the Lunar tightly, and lifted it with every intent to cut this rebellious cur down. But then, her ankles were wrapped, cut by studs, slickened with oil and blood. A slip. With a undeniably painful landing and a whip of snow-white hair that was crisped black at the ends, the drow fell with a twist to her hands and knees, and the mask flung from her face seemed to echo in her mind as it bounced over the initial burnt meatshield of a drow and skipped across the floor to finally come to a rest out of her reach. Laezila, like consciousness to the strewn drow on the floor (left alive), could not continue to power through the pain of her injuries for much longer. She had to end this quickly before the exhaustion and wounds finally overtake her, already making subtly apparent their effect on her with the heaving of her breath and very slight favoring of one arm over the other, one leg over the opposite. 'Emrith Kohl.' Her eyes welled with tears. "Emrith...?" She whispered, and that same teary gaze narrowed. Her back to him, she veiled with her body as she took a single crawling movement over the body of another of the dead drow. And her free hand grasped hold of his dagger, naturally coated with poison. The flat of the blade was lifted and slid along her lips, before the weapon was dropped, and she whirled toward her opponent. Her hand drove the elven artifact into her gut, not her heart, compelled by his oil and command, distraught by his identity, and her free hand would seek to wrap around the back of his neck for her to gasp, "One last kiss." One last kiss, one last attempt; she tried to press her poisoned lips to his own.

Emrith dislodges his whip with practised ease as Laezila crawls away, then begins to make his own halting way across the bloody foyer in pursuit. He still holds Nahr in his left hand, and he scuttles crablike on his knees, his eyes attempting to track the matron's movements through the obsidian plate protecting his perspiring profile. Heleg is left forgotten on the floor behind him. When blood sprays from Laezila's belly, Emrith's face cramps into a complicated geometry of pain and satisfaction and fury in equal measure. Laezila's hand wraps around the back of his neck, but Emrith does not lower his faceplate. He simply curls both arms over the woman's bare back, weapons trailing downward and unlikely to do her any harm, and then pushes her shoulders down as hard as he can. More blood courses from his wounded ears, and his head threatens to tumble him into the void of unconsciousness with the monstrousness of the agony rolling around inside it, but as if from a distance, he hears himself speaking, with a hollow, dead voice, "No more kisses, Laezila. No more kisses. Death is what I give you, and it will be swift." He has not seen the drow's theatrics with the poisoned dagger, but the middle of a bloody battle is no time to stop and take a kiss, even if the matron possibly dying in his arms is beautiful and vulnerable and sweetly alluring. Blood splatters upon him, hot and feverish, but poison does not foul his guarded lips.

Winner: Emrith (Surface Allies)

Click here for the post-duel rp.