RP:A Crown of Great and Terrible Price, Pt 4

Part of the Venturil's Bane Arc

This is a Necromancer's Guild RP.

Background

Having successfully passed the Gate of Innocents, Eboric and Tene are compelled to continue a centuries-old battle between two powerful and long-dead men.

Deep Below the Hazy Barrows, Venturil

Eboric pulls his hands away from the skull at last, and rises to his feet, leaving the body of Ine lying, slumped still, where it had been for so many centuries. Eboric had intended to simply speak silently to the ancient king, but the might within his bloodline, combined with Tenebrae's summoning spells, and the sheer fact that Baelthorn has himself arisen, all work together to bring Ine's soul out from where it had been drifting, and into the living body of his relative, already open to the possibility due to the presence of Alimer's soul. So, it is not as Eboric that the warlord's body acts, but as the dead king Ine, who at once seizes the seaxe from his enemy's chest, and swings it down in one swift motion, instinctively continuing the battle where he had left it off so long ago.

The skeletal frame of the Cultist shattered like chalk under the seaxe’s blow, reduced to so much detritus instantly. But whatever swell of victory the spirit of Ine might have experienced in that moment would suffer a deadly blow of its own, when Tenebrae backed away from the ruined corpses and Eboric all, laughing – a cruel sound, much deeper than the necromancer’s own voice. For indeed, Eboric’s meddling had thrown the Summoning awry, and his ancestor’s leap from death to living body had been twinned in the sly transfer of Baelthorn’s dark essence into the next animate form available. Tenebrae, more than a little stunned by the brunt of the Cultist’s sudden occupation of her body, not to mention the might of his dire will, sat in the back of her own head reeling. Baelthorn, named Killgaze for his signature means of murder, clawed one of Tene’s hands palm up, barked a half-laughed string of words that made the cavern’s musty confines crackle with static, and with his dead blue gaze peering out from green eyes every bit as pale, the Death Mage thrust that handful of gathered arcane might out toward the possessed were-bear. White fingers bent like crooked forks of lightning as they forced a bolt of ruinous entropic magics through the space between them, seeking to shrink Ine’s flesh – as it were – from his borrowed bones.

Eboric 's mouth opens to chant words foreign to him, verses of power which the werebear himself would never have thought to utter, imbued with the defensive magic of a long-dead runester. The lancing power of the cultist crackles as it strikes those wards, sending shots of pain running through the warlord's limbs, Spurred by this, Eboric makes an attempt to regain control, but Ine swats him down irritably, and launches his newly found body at his old enemy, drawing Eboric's seaxe as he moves, meaning to thrust the newer blade through Baelthorn's eye, not caring if the action ends Tenebrae's life as well as the Mage's.

Ah, the joys of a limber body! Baelthorn arced the Necromancer’s lithe frame back and away from the path of that oncoming seaxe. Metal nevertheless sheared off dense-plated Empusai armour, offering her left shoulder a glancing, bloodless blow. Swift to recover balance, the Death Mage sent Tene’s heels crunching over brittle bone debris, achieving hasty distance from the larger, heavier body Ine wore. Tenebrae was raging like a wildcat in a sack in frantic effort to expel the intruding spirit, but this did not faze Baelthorn, who used his victim’s rage to boost the spell already flowing over Tenebrae’s lips. Vile syllables set ancient bones rattling in long-rusted plate and chainmail. The Death-mage, possessing a master Necromancer here in this pit of death, commandeered the bones of former minions and enemies alike. Skeletons rose from their unhallowed deathbeds and lurched toward Eboric. Some held weapons which slashed and jabbed toward the warrior, others merely sought to entangle and slow him down while Baelthorn used the distraction provided to draw yet more vitality from his unwilling host. While skeletal chaos reigned in that confined space, Killgaze prepared his next, more deadly strike.

Tenebrae’s left eye bulged from its socket, soon becoming a frightful, bloodshot orb through which the phantasmal Death Mage planned to funnel his most powerful and deadly curse. But the Necromancer seized this moment to wrest control - several of the risen dead tumbled back to earth when Tenebrae broke Baelthorn’s hold on her long enough to shout, “Eboric! For our lives, for the sake of your son, make them stop!”

Ine turns in a swift circle, blades whirring to meet those of his undead foes. Some slip through, ringing off his armor, jarring and bruising the flesh beneath. At Tenebrae's shout, however, Eboric makes another attempt at taking control, this time aided by Alimer who, perhaps out of envy or spite, works together with the werebear's soul to force Ine down and away, and, although Alimer then makes a play himself for control, Eboric seizes it firmly, forcing the other two into momentary silence. The focus that this takes, however, results in the warlord's body crashing to the floor, tripping over a fallen weapon. When he rises again, though, it is Eboric, and him alone, that faces the Cultist, blades at the ready.

Tenebrae was fighting hard - the Death Mage was stronger and more wily than even she had expected, and her outrage only grew as he gathered magical momentum for the curse that would literally curdle blood. Her eye was a travesty, swollen and extruding from its socket, the pressure intensely painful. By the time Eboric has mastered his innermost ancestors and fended off the resurrected corpses of other kinsmen, Baelthorn was well-prepared to drain Tenebrae of all she had, in the name of destroying Ine yet again. Tenebrae, caged in her own psyche, howled within, and with every inch of feral anger, Baelthorn's power grew. But, ill-tempered as she was, Tenebrae was no fool. She surmised that wrath was Killgaze's fuel, and immediately sought to redirect that ire into a cooler, less volatile emotion. Baelthorn snarled with Tenebrae's lips and discharged the curse anyway - though its perilously intent focus on Eboric would go awry thanks to the Necromancer's increasing interference, so the warrior would hopefully escape the full brunt of it and with it, the hardening of every drop of vitae. Corpses ceased their motion utterly, Baelthorn drained of power and struggling to keep his grip on his host. Recognising this moment of weakness, Tenebrae gained ground, forcing further words from her own throat, “Strike me, Bearshirt! Now!” And with a bit of luck, she wouldn’t get a seaxe through her skull for the effort.

Eboric charges across the bone-strewn floor, even before Tenebrae shouts, faking left and then darting right in hopes of throwing off the path of the spell. Whether that worked, or whether it was all Tenebrae's interference, he avoids the deadly magic and, moments after Tenebrae's 'Now!' he launches himself, bodily, at her, meaning to slam her backward and down to the stone floor, a vicious tackle liable to knock the woman unconscious, if she is not careful or at the very least lucky.

Tenebrae was thankful for several things, in the split second before Eboric tackled her. First, for the fact that the filthy old Cultist had not wrested control of her armour, for whatever reason. Second, that she was seasoned enough in death-magic herself to diffuse that curse, which indeed failed to strike Eboric at all, instead venting itself harmlessly on bloodless bone and rocky walls. But while she was gaining ascendance over Killgaze, to that spirit's vast chagrin, he still had enough grip on her to make her feet stumble backward in hope of a fatal blow once the were-bear was down. The Necromancer foiled him yet again, though, slowing the motion of her strides so Eboric would slam into her lower half - mission accomplished - and her upper half fell back onto the pile of osseous rubble that was once Baelthorn's own body. Shards of bone sliced her unarmoured head and fingers where she fell, grappling the ground for purchase. Blood swelled from a deep slice to her cheek, from digits spiked with ancient rib-shards. Baelthorn spat a conventional curse, but Tene had his number now, forcing the ghost into abeyance within, a mental prison with bars of cold intent. "Bastard," gasped the Necromancer, shoving at Eboric to get off of her with one hand while the other pressed against the wall behind in her struggle to rise. Blood smeared stone, and abruptly trickled in unnatural directions from that point - upward and outward in thin, red lines that formed not runes but words in some more ancient and eloquent magical language.

Eboric is quick to rise, readying his blades once more, in the event that the cultist is yet in control of the woman's body. His attention is pulled, however, by the strange behavior of the blood, and he watches in fascination as it travels through the once invisible lines in the stone. "Look at that," he exclaims, forgetting for the moment that the Cultist may yet be working toward his demise.

"At what?" said Tenebrae in a snappish tone, rubbing her head where it had knocked on stone, her mind still fuzzy from Baelthorn's unchecked rampage through her synapses. As red blood trickled to black fluid upon her cheek, and then ceased dripping to draw itself back into the wound, Tenebrae rose picking bone fragments from her injured hands. A cranky gaze was offered the wall, "Great, more gibberish." Within her, the Death Mage chuckled and was mentally strangled for his trouble. Once he was quelled, she squinted - her left eye was still bloodshot and sore as hell - at the script. "I wonder how many times they've done that," was the thought she offered Eboric, while peering at the wall. "I get the feeling we were not the first. And this says, if I'm not wrong - 'Blood of the Damned' and under that, something about ... " she frowned, "... Eboric. This isn't good. I think I know why the Burrower wouldn't come here."

Eboric eyes the script, unable to make any sense of it. "I could ask Ine, but I worry that the other will return if I do." He shakes his head, and glances around at the newly-disturbed battleground. "Why won't it come here," he asks, bemused.

Tenebrae nodded at the wisdom of leaving Ine where the heck he was, and returned to her scrutiny of the wall. “Because what lies beyond this wall is its antithesis. Look,” she pointed to the impossibly complex script that somehow employed a good deal more bloody fluid than she had shed to illuminate itself on the blank, grey rock. “I can barely make out every other word, but it seems to say this is a prison.. or vault.. for something that once belonged to a god. And here again, the symbol of the Eye. This word indicates war.. long ago.. between two.. eyes? That doesn’t make sense. Two factions, possibly, each in possession of an Eye - whatever that means. Knowledge.. and Power.. those are not written as mere words, though. More like names. Each has its Guardians, and I have to wonder if the Burrower was such a thing, once.. Under that, lies the name of the god himself.” She stopped speaking, her lips a thinly compressed line.

Eboric frowns at that. "Ine's men...I do not think they were involved in this, although he may in fact have laid claim to whatever it is." He falls silent a moment as Ine again struggles to surface, but is pushed back. "What god?"

Tenebrae shook her head. "This script predates your ancestors by millennia. They, and others also, may have come seeking to control this power, but ..." she shrugged, throwing a glance at the strewn bones, ".. without luck. Obviously." Locked in the deepest pits of her mind, Baelthorn was nevertheless a tangible cloud of spite, as she spoke of that failure. Tene continued, perhaps with a little spite of her own, "Not even the god's own priests could find a way past this Gate. And the god's name - I will not speak its sound aloud, not here. But he is the primal God of death. And this was one of two temples, in ages nearly forgotten, in which he would now and then manifest. In the days, Eboric, when the gods still walked Lithrydel in the guise of men." Tene frowned. "Whatever lies beyond this wall is powerful, and represents power that -could- help me control the Burrower." If it didn't turn them both to a couple of handfuls of ash, she didn't add. "The last line speaks of.. " another frown. "The horsemen. Beware the horsemen. Which is.. odd. Hardly the place you'd expect to find a cavalry."

Eboric smiles at that. "Ine had a horse," he says, as if to himself. "He was always proud of it, and of his skills at riding." He shakes his head. "But as you said, these lines are much older, and I have no thought as to what it might mean."

Tenebrae slapped the unmoving wall beside the archaic lettering, "Blood of the Damned, eh... " she offered Eboric a wry smile, "Perhaps I’m just not damned enough." But as she turned back to the unrelenting stone, she spied a crack, into which the liquid red was slowly seeping. It was at face height, and she wondered with a wince if she was meant to bleed from her nose or something... "Pity you're not my type, bearshirt. I might need to commit a few more sins to get us in here...." the joke ended abruptly. Tene craned about to look at Eboric, her gaze wide, her voice almost a whisper. "You know.. it's almost as if this was all planned, far in advance. But how.. how could anyone possibly.." None of which would likely make much sense to Eboric, but Tene gave him a somewhat triumphant grin and turned to the wall again. "Watch this." And pressed her mouth to the rockface's tiny gap, bloodying her lips. Within her, the darkness of Eboric's hatreds and lusts churned uneasily, rising up her throat as if summoned by whatever lay beyond the gate. The necromancer drew back a little then, and Eboric might glimpse writhing thread of blackness meandering out of her mouth, to vanish into the hole in the wall. And the like its predecessor, the Gate of the Damned abruptly crumbled, sending Tene sprawling into yet another dark bit of tunnel.

The Gate of the Damned

Eboric raises an eyebrow as Tenebrae speaks, but says nothing. When the gate opens, he grabs the torch before moving to help the woman back to her feet. "Well," he remarks, "that certainly seemed to work. He glances around, as if looking for that vile shadow that had emerged from the necromancer's mouth. "Let us hope that there are no more of these gates...I don't know that I have much else to give."

Tenebrae stared at the helping hand he offered her. If she wasn't the one responsible for Eboric's sudden foray into good manners, she might've been more shocked at the gesture, though. Allowing him to help her to her feet, Tene said, "Well. We still have our lives..." meant as a dry joke, even if it was also true. "I also hope there’s no more Gates." The tunnel was inky with a dark so thick one could almost taste it. "Where'd that torch go, Eboric?" Tene shivered, not from cold. "I won't blame you if you wish to turn back now. Can you feel it? There's something .. very old.. and very evil.." her gaze turned toward that midnight corridor, and the necromancer fell into reverent silence.

Eboric gestures with the torch in his hand in answer to her question, then shrugs his shoulders. "I feel something, but I do not know how to place it. But I have never turned away once starting something, and I do not intend to do so now. Whatever is down here, we will overcome."

The necromancer nodded, but didn’t look terribly convinced. “Let’s go then.” She led the way this time, hardly needing the stinking brand’s smoky glow to see by, and not only for her preternatural night vision’s sake – the dark itself was drawing her along like a toy on a string. The tunnel was wide here, with the same height of ceiling all the passages before had owned. Her steady trudging was soon interrupted, though, by a distant rumbling, like that of thunder or a tremor below the ground. Or the hooves of a thousand horses… She halted as the sound grew louder, causing the tunnel itself to shiver and shed spumes of rock dust. “Tell me about this Ine, now,” she demanded, needing something, anything, to help her quell the chill of fear – a shameful emotion to her kind – and the nasty mirth of the necromantic spirit trapped inside her.

Eboric frowns at the sound, as well as at Tenebrae's words. "For me to know more about him, I would need time to speak to him. All I know is what Alimer remembers, which is a considerable amount. He is the middle of the three brothers, older than Alimer, but younger than Aethelred. He was ever one to dabble in the rune magic, although he was good enough with sword and spear. As I said before, he was fond of horses, and was the best at breaking them and training them for war. He would always ride white horses, without exception. The last time I saw him, he was riding westward through the mountains on just such a horse, with his followers in tow."

Tenebrae whispered, "More coincidences.. " and didn't sound particularly happy about it. Her steps were slow here, the footing uneven and treacherous, particularly where cold blasts of air gushing from the tunnel floor here and there indicated that the cracks in the stone underfoot may stem from endless chasms under the rock they trod. The air was beyond oppressive, and yet crackled dully with a thrumming sort of power that felt like a cold fist squeezing up and down her spine. They were nearing .. whatever it was.. now. Painted in what must be old blood, thick and black with age, was that same symbol of the Eye on several facing-stones the pair passed by. And now and then, the horrendous thundering, sometimes a shrill, inhuman scream.

Eboric 's story ceases abruptly at the first scream, and he plods onward resolutely, his jaw clenched tight, his hands gripping the torch and Ine's seaxe so tightly that the knuckles are white. He looks behind from time to time, as if expecting to see someone or something sneaking after them, but each time the passageway is empty, and he presses ever onward, visibly on edge.

And he was not the only one. Tenebrae's armour, new and still adjusting to its strange existence, porcupined with spikes and barbs at every new shriek, every rumble of stone, until she gruffly promised to turn it into an ashtray if it didn't stop. Of course it did, aside from occasionally causing unbidden knives to extend from her fingers, where its plates backed her knuckles. The ground descended sharply, yet again, and the darkness would swallow all but the dimmest little glow from that simple oil torch. Tenebrae felt as if she carried the weight of the world, her boots scraping the rock underfoot as if she could not bear it much longer. Dark even against that oppressive gloom, shadows flitted and lingered about the travelling pair, brushing against them like damp, black sheets. On they walked, and on, in a gloomy silence unbroken until the tunnel opened into another cavern-mouth. In the pitch dark that lay beyond could be heard the clank of metal, the scrape of horse-shoes on stone. And there, somewhere in the darkness, lay a thing that called to the Necromancer as a master calls to a hound... "Eboric.." her voice was barely audible, "It's here. The Eye... of Vakmatharas." The name, the great name of death's awful god crawled over her tongue, and she she hadn't meant it to. And at the sound of that name the cavern's darkness bled out to a swirling, red mist, the source of that dim and horrible glow somewhere beyond where they stood.

Eboric comes to a quick halt as the woman utters the name of the dark god. "Him? I am not a religious man, Tenebrae, but even I know of him. We should not meddle here. No power of yours or even of mine is anywhere near to the might of a god."

Tenebrae opened her mouth to speak - perhaps to sneer at the warrior for such a display of cowardice, the corruptive influence of the unholy relic already gaining sway upon her. But before any word had a chance to cross her lips, great shadows loomed from the swirling red fog, silhouettes that thundered closer - the shadows of four armoured men atop what horrendous beasts even Tenebrae herself could not imagine. "The horsemen," she managed to squeak. "They're coming for us." And she knew, as Eboric no doubt knew by now, that they had no chance of outrunning the relic's ancient, evil guard. To make things worse, if that were possible, the lesser minions of Vakmatharas swarmed about their feet - semi-solid phantoms, wormlike or ratlike, some with shapes that defied the mind to categorise them at all.. plucking at their garb, laying clammy fingers of blackness boldly on their limbs. And all the while, growing more solid, more...physical. Tene looked to Eboric, and her gaze told him she believed they'd come to their doom. Unless... "Ine," she said. "Have him call his horse, Eboric. And.. hurry!"

Eboric feels something that he has never felt before: true fear. No mere unease, or worry, but cold, abject fear. In that moment of fear, and spurred by Tenebrae's plea, he allows the new soul within him control once more, and that ancient being puts two fingers to his lips and whistles, the sound sharply splitting the darkness and echoing from the stone that surrounds them. At once, the horse appears, whiter than any mortal creature could be, saddled with its master's ornate trappings. Runes glow red from its body, enchantments placed upon it when, in life, its master rode it to war. Ine swings up onto its back and, reaching down, moves to pull Tenebrae up as well, meaning to seat her behind him as the horse settles into a wild gallop, back the way they had come.

One would think Tenebrae might be glad of a chance to be rescued from their plight and spirited away on a ghost-horse presently rendered as solid as any of the Death-god's phantoms.. Yet, the Necromancer let out a cry of dismay and reached around Eboric's broad waist to grapple at the ancient war-mount's reins, dragging on the steed's mouth until it was forced into a tight turn, "We can't leave it, you fool!" she spat, kicking the horse's flanks hard to send it galloping back into that red mist, "We've freed the Eye from its prison - do you really want someone else gaining control of it?" If he couldn't see reason, they'd likely end up in another brawl, right there on the back of that long-dead stallion.

Eboric allows the woman to lead the horse, and, at her words, takes the reigns himself, leading the horse again into the thick of the mist. As they gallop along, he asks, "What exactly do you think that we can do about it now?"

Tenebrae did not instantly reply - for the first of those terrible Guardians was upon them, its helmet set with metal horns, its lance a wicked barb of bloodied iron. The thing it rode resembled a horse only in shape - the holes where eyes should be were filled with blood, its great hooves shod with twisted spikes, its maw filled with teeth too sharp for any equine. The creature shrieked, its rider howled a battle-cry, and Tene clung to Eboric's back for .. well, grim death. "We must take it...." she gasped, though whether she meant the unholy existence of this imminent threat or the Eye itself, or both, was not clear.

Eboric mouth settles into a firm line of determination, and he spurs the horse onward directly for the Guardian. Feeling Tenebrae's grip and knowing that she'll be forced to move as he moves, he waits until the last possible moment before leaning away from the impending blow, letting the lance pass through the air where his chest had been. His hand flashes out, tossing the torch at the rider's face and, in the same motion, grabbing the lance just past the tip. He gives a hard yank, which pulls the creature off balance. It tumbles to the stone beneath, its ghastly horse galloping on without it. Eboric wheels his own steed and, with a whispered command, causes it to rear up, iron-shod hooves crashing back down to stomp on the Guardian's head, staving in the side of the old iron helmet. Leaning over and down, the warlord slips his seaxe in through the Guardian's visor, and, satisfied, snatches up the lance before straightening. The demonic steed turns now, coming back for its master, and the werebear plants the lance through where its throat should be, ripping it out again with a savage wrench of his arm. The fear he had felt seems to be gone now, replaced by grim determination, and he spurs his horse once more into the mist.

Tenebrae held on tenaciously through the half-ghostly battle, and perhaps Eboric would have a hard time explaining those nail-marks gouged on either side of his hips later.. But that first threat .. or test... was passed, and while the other Guardians wheeled in the mist to give the white stallion chase, they had at least a slim chance to beat the remaining three to the source of that red glow. For the moment all seemed in their favour and the path to their goal free and clear, but then came the sound of iron-shod hooves behind them - the throatless steed of the fallen Guardian thundered behind, its eyes of blood weeping red tears, its limp rag of a tongue flopping from its fanged maw, its hide foaming and flecked with grue. "Let it come," Tene cried, knowing its purpose was null, now the thing was masterless. If Eboric allowed it to gallop alongside, she'd make a daring leap to the creature's back, leaning down to gather up reins made of what felt like living, ebon skin to gain control of the beast. Thus the two adventurers, mounted on dead steeds, were soon charging toward the central point of the mists which thickened as they went, with the Guardians on their heels now at every stride. "There!" Tene did not need to point - for ahead of them stood a plinth of time-darkened bone carven from the remains of some ancient, unfeasible monster. And atop it rested a simple crown, a diadem of gold set with a single large and gelid, red stone from which emanated the blood-red light illuminating the surrounding mists. They might even have a chance at grabbing the prize, if those horsemen from Hell didn't catch the pair first.

Eboric , once Tenebrae has jumped free, and the crown is in sight, wastes no time in grabbing at the item, but instead wheels off to the right. The three Guardians swerve to chase him, not noticing or perhaps not caring about what their fallen fellow's steed carries. The warlord leads the three on a merry chase, hoping to buy time for Tenebrae to take hold of their protected relic.