Fight:Darkness and Shadow - Valentin and Kyperion spar in the Forest of Abyssal Darkness

Background information

Valentin, Thanadule of the Necromancer's guild, had promised his new Apprentice Kyperion a chance to show off his abilities.

Bein' a straightforward kind o'bloke, Valentin figured having Kyperion come at him with everything he had would be a good way t'see what the lad was capable of.

Location: Forest of Abyssal Darkness

The forest here is extremely dark, your eyes taking several moments to adjust, unless you are one of the fortunate with dark vision. The area here seems much colder than the path to your east. Spider webs seem to cover the ground, as well as some of the trees, you had best be on your guard. The forest path splits to the north, east and west The way to get out of the forest is to the south.

In which Valentin arranges an exam for his current apprentice

Kyperion flexed. He'd made all the preparations, and was confident in his ability to at least inconvinience the infamous Butcher of Cenril in a duel. Settling down in a booth, he waited for the Butcher to appear.

Valentin tromps into the tavern, muttering under his breath. "...what am I? A blimmin' daycare lady for all the precious little necromantic children Lorkain can't be arsed teachin? Utter bollocks, as if I weren't busy enough, I get half a dozen more wet-b'hind-t'ears blackrobed gits t'look after. Blimmin' wench found it amusin', I bet." The muttering lasts several steps into the Hanging Corpse before Valentin turns his gaze on Kyperion "There y'are, Novus. How go th'lessons on th'sigils an' language wi'that old cadaver Lorkain?". The butcher places a haversack on the counter, the contents tunking with the sound of glass objects gently contacting each other through gauze.

Kyperion smiled. "Beautifully. I've been focusing on Umbral arts, with a secondary concentration on Penumbrael. Oh, and I'm ready for the promised evaluation, if you are." Standing, Kyperion waited, his palms tingeling with excitement.

Valentin grunts "Not quite what Lorkain was tellin' me. But then, he hates everyone, so I 'ave t'take it with a grain o'salt I s'pose. Proof'll be in the puddin'." The butcher scratched a shaggy muttonchop, as he evaluated his own schedule. Strictly speaking, his drinking hour wasn't constructive use of his time now that he was a Thanadule, and the Novus was obviously one of those gungho up-an'-at-'em types. Ah well. Best t'get it over with afore th'lad piddled himself with excitement. "Alright lad. Meet me in th'Forest." Anybody in Vailkrin knew the Forest. 'The Forest of Abyssal Darkness' wasn't named out of any poetic hyperbole. It was everthin' it said on th'wrappin' an' then some. Valentin nods to Steadman "Keep th'sack handy, guv. It's t'do with one of Tenebrae's errands." Steadman narrowed his one eye. If Valentin hadn't pulled the Mistress card on him, he'd have told the butcher to sod off. Instead, the barman shoves the sack under the bar. Valentin nods to Kyperion. "I'll meet you there, guv." And with that, a sussuration of dissonant syllables hisses through the air, forming a cantatus of shadowbinding. Valentin sinks immediately into his own shadow, which cracks open its leering eyes, offering a silhouette-splitting and malevolent cheshire grin before the shadow streaks off to mingle with the greater darkness of Vailkrin.

Kyperion walked into the darkness, calmly. He was concerving his magics, as he didn't have that much in the way of quantity, but his quality was surpassing. Pausing a moment, he sipped from a crystal lined flask, the contents of which had cost him the price of a small house, even when he'd obtained the ingredients. Mage's blood, alchemically integrated with magic-laden minerals. It was disgusting, and made his magics, usually so restrained, feel bloated and unweildy, but this was the best path to extended magical exertions until he obtained the coveted guild seal, which Lorkain had assured him made many, many onerous cantrips and chants easier. Stopping in a clearing, Kyperion came into sight of the hulking Butcher.

Kyperion || Kyperion settled in to wait, as the hulking Butcher wasn't present, but somehow, this felt like the place.

Valentin could have tutored Kyperion in the many ways that Lorkain lied to his students, had Kyperion but asked. Half of his lessons to the Novus Morior who he 'tutored' was involved in pointing out which parts of Lorkain's lessons were designed to cause the students to experience much more discomfort than they really needed to. Lorkain's tendency to torture his students was notorious, and the canny students knew to be at their most cautious when the lich made pretense to pleasantness or, much worse, 'helpfulness'. Valentin stopped off along his way to pop out of a shadow in a distant clearing and grab a very surprised wolf by the nape of its neck. Wolf or no, it was no match for the Butcher's vampiric strength, and whimpered when Valentin bound it into shadows to carry with him to the clearing where he could sense his erstwhile apprentice. Valentin rises up out of one of the innumerable shadows, releasing several shadowbinding cantatas, a new one forming in a crackle of sinister whispers as shadows dance around the bulky form of the vampiric butcher. "Alright guv. Remember what I said last time, an' be careful not t'overextend y'self." This would be a test, not only of the Novus Morior's raw ability, but also a gauge of his temperament.

Kyperion demonstrates his skill

Kyperion sucked in his breath and began the stacatto, sharp sylibols with gutteral cadance that marked the beginning of the hybrid Old Nathali and Necromantic language he'd cobbled together. Pulling out cheap throwing knives, etched with symbols that writhed and squirmed under the eye, he threw each one to a specific location. A few buried themselves in tree trunks, a few in the ground, but all touching shadow. Switching cantrips abruptly, Kyp slid into a shadow, and vanished. He could feel the potion working; as he digest the mage's blood, and the mineral broke down, he absorbed the raw magics, for a short period of time. He doubted the duel would last that long anyway, but this was all about making an impression. Focusing, enshrined in shadow, he thrust with both long knives, each bursting from an opposite angle from where shadows crossed in the air, to stab at the Butcher.

Valentin watched impassively as Kyperion began his incantation, and with a kind of disharmony the whispers surrounding the butcher change their cadence and tempo, and a trio of shadowy eyes extend on umbral tendrils while Valentin notes the locations of the knives, and the reek of umbral magics on them. As Kyperion vanishes into shadow, one of the tenrilous eyes seems to follow his general movements - not specifically on Kyperion himself, but on the disturbances his presence made in the subtle texture of the umbra. When the knives stab out, Valentin makes his first movement, accepting one painful blade into the undead flesh of his back with a grunt, turning so as to make it more difficult to be removed from his flesh, and the other blade finds itself plunging into the flank of the wolf - not a fatal blow, yet, but its blood flows thickly. It is then that the whispering crescendo of harsh and sibilant syllables, which have been colliding in the air around the butcher up until this point, reach their crescendo. Using his own voice to spit out the final canta, a subtle red glow surrounds the wounded wolf, linked to a sorcerous and pusling crimson umbilical cord which streaks out to attach to Valentin's arms in his latest variant on Vandon LeRouge's Crimson Chains. With the dying life energy of the wolf fueling him, Valentin spits out a sequence of darkly harmonius verses mixed with greasy fricatives, and the shadows which Kyperion has wreathed himself in rapidly start to heat up as the Pyrumbral tides wax strongly to the Thanadule's chant. If Kyperion is not careful or quick, he will find himself rapidly immolated in Black Fire.

Kyperion felt the tingle of heat and withdrew his arms, hissing the Old Nathali safe word he'd assigned to a thrown knife. The knife's pommel burst into flames and the metal cracked, letting out streaks of dark fire before shattering, and causing a burst of fires. At the same time, a gossamer silk ribbon looped around the handle of another knife burst into a more mundane, earthly flame, which did not banish the darkness but silloetted it. Kyperion continued the chant, mindful that his sari was burnt through in places. The silk ribbon was his own spell. Cold shadow eluded him for some reason, so he used a principle of displacement. Move the existing heat somewhere else, and let the shaow flames lick him, robbed of their lethal potency. it was a risky gambit, but as he finished the cantrip, he realized that he'd survived. Without delay, he dived forward, thrusting with both knives, to have his arms emerge from the newly formed shadows of the wolf carcas, straight for the Achiles tendons in the monstrous Butcher.

The three eyes on umbral tendrils, which Valentin's sire had called 'Dragichnyev's umbral occuli' shift to follow the disruptions in the fabric of the umbra, and as Kyperion chanted and knives set fire to trees, so too did Valentin chant. Valentin approved of the Novus Morior' ingenuity in displacing the heat of those black flames, noting the man's prowess in the shifting of shadows. But on Valentin chanted, each verse of his cantatus causing the shadows around him to gain a sense of solidity as another knife bursts into flame. When Kyperion's diving form ripples through the umbra, Valentin caps off the first cryumbral binding, the butcher's own shadow coalescing into an angled chevron-form shield of Black Ice, and Kyperion's knives find themselves scraping along the twin facings of Valentin's improvised barricade. In that moment, as Kyperion's arms are visible to the third of Valentin's umbral Occuli, the butcher spits out a rapid hiss of sibilants, and from the cryumbral shield a spine of black ice extends like a sorcerous stalagmite, plunging through the umbral gateway Kyperion had formed to launch his attack, and thus presents Kyperion with the risk of a rather cold perforation through his torso. Valentin spares a moment to comment "Yer doin' well, Guv. Y'thinkin' an' movin' are both nice an' quick."

Kyperion smiled grimly, and slashed again. The blows had passed through him like he was a shadow himself. Not pausing to see whether his strikes landed or not, Kyperion burst from the shadows at the opposite end of the clearing, gasping. In making a hybrid language, he'd discovered that pure Old Nathali incantations, and Necromantic incantations were in fact a minute distance apart, when executed. Focusing on this Ubral Penopticalar Gap, as he called it, he was abled to once and once only escape damage as a shadow illusion, as much a shadow to Umbral arts as Ubral arts fo the mundane. It was far, far from perfect, and Kyperion could feel the rings of his blackened chain mail vest frozen together. The other weakness to this technique was the forced ejection from shadow immediately after using it. The damages may have been reduced, he thought, but that wasn't saying much. Smashing the dark ice with the pommel of one knife, Kyp sparked a tiny Pyrumbral flame to heat himself, then sipped from his flask. "How are those knife wounds?" he asked, his voice dripping with a false innocence. It should be time by now, he thought. Surely.

Valentin was a little disappointed. He had made it clear previously how little he cared about the man's obvious prowess with knives. That wasn't what was at blimmin' stake here, Valentin thought to himself as Kyperion's blades whipped above the cryumbral shield which had protected his legs and cut deeply into the undead flesh of his torso. It stung like buggery, aye, but his sire had inflicted horrors upon his flesh far worse than any knife during his own 'apprenticeship', and Valentin's overt response to the cuts is gritted teeth. The butcher rolls back his sleeves, exposing a complex array of scarified sigils cut into his flesh, ebbing and pulsing in tune with the Black Tides. As Valentin starts to gather his own magical reserves, as opposed to the energy provided by the wolf's unwilling sacrifice, he offers advice to his new 'Prentice: "Guv, I suggest y'try an' move a good hundred paces from me. This is a demonstration, rather than me tryin' t'kill you." In his left hand, the dying wolf seems to shrivel and dry up with a pitiful whine as the crimson cord drawing its life energy to Valentin pulses thickly, sucking up every last skerrick of energy available for transferral to the butcher. Valentin chants, his voice reverberating powerfully through the clearing in an ominous flow of dissonant verses, the shadows rustling on the ground. Sigils appear in the shadows, guided by Valentin's will in a process he'd practiced night after night for many moons prior to his promotion to Scleratus. Now, the ritual which had scorched Kasyr was modified for instant use rather than activation as a trap, and Kyperion would be able to tell by the sigils just how far he'd need to get away: to whit, anywhere outside of the sigil-swarmed clearing. In between Valentin's chanting, a voice would whisper behind Kyperion, counting down the time he had to make good his distance. "Five". Shadows coalesce thickly in the clearing to the rise and fall of Valentin's incantations. "Four." Even the shadows under the branches and leaves of the trees now swarm with pyrumbral activator sigils. "Three" The shadows seem to rustle almost audibly, an uncomfortable friction of sound as Valentin's energies focus on the final stanzas. "Two" A sudden rising of heat is the final reminder for anything with a sense of self-preservation to be somewhere -else-. "One" The pyrumbral tides roar throughout the circle, leaving Valentin the eye of the storm, as even the air around him swarms with heated umbral energy. There was no further whispered warning after "one", only the explosion of the dark tides to accompany Valentin's final verse. The entire clearing erupts in a twisting column of Black Fire, fuelled by the power Valentin had drained from the wolf and his own growing reserves. The effect lasts several seconds - enough to render to ashes all but the most robust of materials.

Kyperion barely managed to make it out before the roar overtook him. Damn, he thought. The knives he'd used were gone, incinerated by the blast. Kyperion hadn't learned any wards yet, but at least the marrow deep chill was gone. Surely after that, Kyperion thought. Surely after such energies had been exhausted. Kyperion lifted his twin long blades up, and flicked them outward. The outermost shell appeared to crack, and steel shown through. "Dragon's blood," Kyperion said, breathing hard. "I got it from the little feline druid, coated my blades with it in layers, and re-etched the runes in. They looked like normal blades, but dragon's blood does the trick, I hear." Stepping, forward, Kyperion drew on the last of his reserves, and dived into shadow. The Umbral tides still felt warm in the wake of the colossal blast, uncomfortably so, but they weren't a danger anymore. Rising from the shadow, Kyp executed a double slash, with tendrils of shadow pushing the knives harder, faster. He'd seen Tenebrae use the spell to torment a scullery maid, and had labored over learning it before deciding to take what he knew, and use it for something else entirely. This was it, his last effort.

Valentin did not defeat a red dragon by using up all of his reserves and hoping it was beaten. The first lesson he'd learned in his sire's monster pits all those decades ago was to -always- keep enough energy in reserve for a final shadowbinding or two. The Umbral Occuli, still present, once again warned Valentin of Kyperion's approach through the shadows. But the exam was over, and the butcher had his verdict to give. As Kyperion thrusts his daggers, Valentin steps backwards through his own shadow, letting daggers pass through air alone for the first time that evening. The butcher reappears at the other end of the scorched clearing, rising out of a shadowy cleft in the ground with a dour expression on his face. "An' you were doin' so well at th'start guv. But you're not Scleratus material yet. Next time, listen t'the advice I give you, an' stop bein' so blimmin' reckless in your approach." Valentin pulls a small flask from a pocket, and takes a swig of the foul liquid used to prevent and reduce the horrors of magical hangovers. No harm in bein' careful with that regard. "Now, y'move through shadows well, an' the trick wi'the knives was proper sharp thinkin'. But after that... well you failed part one o'the test, but here's part two of y'test. Tell me what y'think you did wrong." Valentin's grim expression somehow makes it clear he is expecting words only from the Novus Morior, and that a further attack is likely to be met with wrath rather than a teacher's calm deflection.

Aftermath

Kyperion pondered. "I was relying on the dragon blood to weaken you, but simultaniously relying on you to take it easy on me to some degree. That last charge was stupid, and heady; these two notions cannot exist side by side. I cannot be a legitimate threat and have you pull your punches." Kyp sheathed his knives and thought further. "Also, you knew I would resort to blade play from the beginning. Did you take a magical countermeasure to the dragon blood before the battle?"

Valentin shakes his head. "No Guv. The mistake was made when y'stopped using the dark arts beyond slippin' into shadows t'stab me. I made it blimmin' clear t'you that this was not about how well or quickly you could cut me. It was about how much of the dark arts you knew, an' your approach to the use o'them. The moment y'gave up on bein' innovative, an' kept comin' at me with the same. damn. attack... well, that was when y'failed." All three of the Umbral Occuli shift to direct their focus on Kyperion. "Now, the dragon's blood used in y'final attack - y'might have wanted to -start- with that guv, when I was jus' lettin' you poke holes in me while I got on with th'business o'Necromancy. That would ha'slowed me down a treat - though you'd ha'missed out on m'demonstration as a result, which would ha' been your loss, not mine" Valentin poked at the gaping slashes across his chest. "The mistake was losin' sight of what this exam was for. It weren't to try an' defeat me - it was t'show off your capabilities. Next time remember: you're in th'Necromancer's guild now. If y'want t'get promoted, y'got to focus on necromancy, an' doin' things to advance th'guild's interests." Valentin chucked away the shrivelled wolf. "There endeth th'blimmin' lesson. Any questions?"

Kyperion nodded. "Yes. This foul concoction that I have increases my magic more than tenfold, but it feels sickly and bloated. I need better...magical muscles? Better fuels? How do I go about such things?"

Valentin grunts "Tha's a damn shoddy approach, Novus. I wanted t'see your current an' -true- capabilities, so I could figure out th'best way t'teach you. An' you even managed to bollocks up -that- part o'the exam. Unless you're plannin' to drink that potion every damn time you use Necromancy, that is... which would render your life pretty damn short, I can tell you." Valentin's expression moves from dour to downright ascerbic. "I told you once, an' I'll tell you only one. more. time, guv." The Thanadule of the Necromancer's guild narrows his eyes, muttonchops bristling "Unlike th'other gits, If I say somethin', then I mean -exactly- what I blimmin' say. An' if I say I want t'see what you are capable of so's I can make you better at it, I expect you to show me exactly that. Not some doped up, potion-poppin' version of y'self. Y'want to know how to enhance your magical capacity? By usin' it until it starts to make y'head hurt. Then rest until it don't hurt. An' then start again. An' it will take -time-, guv. A stripling youth don't magically obtain th'muscles t'become a hulkin' lifter of barrels in the space of a week, an' neither does a mage. Y'got to constantly work at it, like in any profession. Only difference here is, if you bollocks it up, you will likely die." Valentin rubs his jawline. "Really, guv, what were you blimmin' thinkin'?"

Kyperion shrugged. "I was thinking 'by any means.' If I was to go head to head with you magically, I'd have no chance. None. I was treating this like another assassination." The former assassin forced a smile, clearly trying to shrug off feelings of inadiquacy. "You have to admit though, the throwing knives were clever. Displacement and disruption. Also, a skill lifted from M'lady Tenebrae? She caught me at it and told me that if I survived, the sheer ballsiness of that might amuse you."

Valentin lets out a slow exhalation of air. As a fully fledged member and inquisitor of the Assassin's guild, he certainly wouldn't have complained if it had been an application for -that- particular organisation. "You'd make a good assassin, lad. No question there. But today, you were testin' for the Necromancer's guild." A slight pause. "Ah well. I won't belabour the point no more. Y'not th'worst 'Prentice I ever had t'deal with. An' I did compliment you earlier on those bits y'just mentioned, so don't expect a blimmin' encore. I ain't lovely aunt agatha, right? Now Walk wi' me fer a bit." Valentin would begin an unhurried stroll through the forest. "Had a butcher's apprentice once. Jacob, a cartwright's son. His da didn't want nothin' t'do with him, on account o'the barmaid whose belly he dropped out of not bein' his wife. Anyway, kid was daft as a brush. Utterly useless. Ended up cutting off all the fingers on his left hand. Died o'shock an' bloodloss." Truly, some fathers had 'em, alright. "Now, I ain't no fool, despite me humble upbringin', an' I know you're in this for the same reason most folks are: to get power quickly through dark avenues. Well, it don't work like that, which is why easily a quarter of Lorkain's students die - mostly horribly, sometimes gruesomely. T'be a proper Necromancer, t'develop th'skill an' power to control the energies we do, we got t'study harder than mos' academics do. We got to be strong in the mind, t'resist the supernatural creatures and dark powers what would prey upon us even as we try t'summon or draw energy from 'em."

Kyperion walked along. "You're right. I'm not even remotely interested in Necromancy as a way of life. I want to seriously hurt the Nathali, out of spite, pragmatism and self preservation. I can't learn anything else from the ways of the assassins that won't come to me as I grow on my own, but in gear and guile, well, that's where my interests lie. If I can land a hit on you, a Nathali priest shouldn't be too big of a stretch, provided I keep my blades coated in fresh Saurian blood." Shaking his head, Kyp added "Besides. I can't sneak without my shadows, and that's Necromancy. Might as well beat them at their own game."

Valentin scratched at a shaggy muttonchop. "Well, that makes things a bit clearer, an' a bit easier. If this is jus' about you preparin' t'work off th'debt you'll incur once th'Mistress brings back th'dead bastard you wanted soulbound, well tha's an entirely different prospect t'tryin' to make you a full-fledged Necromancer. Alright Novus. Leave it with me, an' I'll think all this over. In th'meanwhile, go get some rest afore that potion o'yours wears off an' the magical hangover sets in." Valentin hands Kyperion a small flask, the one he had begrudgingly drank from earlier, which contained Tenebrae's evil mixture for the alleviation of magical migraines. "Have a swig o'this. It'll taste like the loose stool water of particularly unwell swamp monsters, but it'll prevent you from havin' y'head hurt so much that you'll want t'sever it off y'self. I'll catch you later, guv. Rest up." Valentin would touch the brim of his bowler hat then, and with a hiss of necromantic verses intruding upon the air around him, the butcher sinks into his own shadow, and is gone.

Kyperion gazed after him, having sipped at the flask and discovered the butcher to be one hundred percent correct in his assessment of the taste. Gagging, he stared off into the sky, with strange, unfamiliar constalations. Draw on every source, prepare, and defeat the real enemy. By any means necessary. Lurching a bit as he walked away, Kyperion's mind buzzed with plans and distant schemes. A perfect blend of assassination and Necromancy seemed like the way to go, and the Butcher could teach him- privately if need be. But that was for another night.