RP:A Wight in the Dark

Part of the Venturil's Bane Arc

Black Gates, The Underdark

Maladroit approached the Black Gates, and the drow ... fled. Mostly to fetch themselves some bigger weapons, but they did flee, which afforded the gaunt a little more trouble-free time to finish its snack and head on back to Vailkrin in hope of finally finding some kind of portal back to the Shadow Realm. The creature thus was dragging a bony, shrivelled-looking corpse via a set of suckered pseudopods extruding from its midriff, while its forelimbs were occupied with the tentacular bulk of the mind-flayer's head which reminded Maladroit of its beloved squid, albeit in a perverse, decapitated way. The encumbered aberration made slow progress toward the passage leading up to Trist'Oth.

Redhale didn't come down here for snacking much, he found the drow, and the things living deeper in the caves, made poor meals. They also tended to fight a lot harder too, which would have been fine if they had been tasty enough to justify the extra effort, but in general he stuck to plumper, more lively creatures. The spectre did, however, find himself below ground on errands fairly often, the city of the dead being so closely bound with the underdark necessitating some measure of effort on the part of their figureheads. With this in mind Redhale precipitated out of the shadows in the caverns to check Maladroit's behaviour regarding the Drow, "Mind your appetite, friend. We rely on the dark elves more than you might think."

Maladroit paused, its blank head canting like a confused dog's for a time. Unhooking its pseudopods from the now-desiccated cadaver it had been dragging, so that the body dropped to the floor with less of a thump than a body ought to, the familiar lumbered over and set the head of the mind-flayer at Redhale's feet. The tentacled horror had not been too hard to kill for one who had no brain to pillage nor synapses to scramble.. and they always went right for the head, making them easy work for a snap of the gaunt's sharp-edged wings. It settled on its haunches, then, barbed tail wrapping around its feet, cat-like. The severed head was pushed, with a rubbery fingertip, a little closer to Redhale.

Redhale passed his attention briefly over the decapitated head, the slight increase in pressure enough to make the illithid's (sue me, suckas) inky eyeballs bulge awkwardly for a moment, but the wight showed no real interest in the corpse. It wasn't because mind flayers didn't make great undead minions (although in his experience they didn't) but more because he wasn't exactly comfortable in pursuing a master-pet relationship with the familiar; he wasn't a very hands-on kind of leader, which made an undead population perfect for him. Still, he had to mind his politics when he could, "Were those drow acting violently towards you, or were they just… Troubled." It wasn't a long shot, although the dark elves had accepted the weirdness of Vailkrin's lot for a long time now, and had become even more accustomed to unsettling sights since their leader had taken to undeath himself.

Maladroit had no easy means to reply to questions put to it, and so relied primarily on mime to make any kind of quick point. Hoping to make just such a hasty job of providing Redhale an answer, it took up the tentacled head and lobbed it over the Black Gate. Shrieks and un-drowlike running away sounds ensued, slightly muffled behind that dark barrier. Maladroit pointed in the general direction of the mayhem, then to the mind-flayer's corpse.

Redhale found it hard to believe that the odd creature had been protecting the drow, but that's what he was going to go with when he remembered this occasion later, "Don't they have to deal with creatures like this on a daily basis?" The wight pondered aloud while scanning over the scene within Trist'oth, "I guess the ones who stay down here are relatively xenophobic. Oh well." He twisted about to speak directly to Maladroit again, "How has your return fared so far? Able to find a place to stay that isn't the old homestead yet?" Zing.

Maladroit lowered its ponderous cranium, wings shivering behind it. Redhale could take that as a 'no' to his latter question. Ordinarily, it would not have caused quite as much mayhem as it just had, preferring to eat in peace, but it had no other way presently of letting the Wight know about the Mind-flayers and all the recent .. issues.. that had arisen among these deepest denizens of Hollow's terrestrial abyss. Something was brewing.. but why this had caught the familiar's attention was a mystery even to Maladroit. At any rate, the Gates were opening, and dark steel slithered in metallic hisses from behind that midnight edifice. Tenebrae's lackey jerked an uncannily flexible thumb toward the upper reaches of the city, clearly indicating that now would be a good time to take an upward stroll.

Redhale cast his mind back to the drow activity and decided he agreed with Maladroit, and so his obtuse form shrunk away into the darkness again, whatever substance he was made of clambering about the underground chamber to rustle quietly along the ceiling, away from the action.

Maladroit took a second to snatch up part of the Flayer's shrivelled husk, tuck this into some space in its gullet and take off like a rubber-fingered greyhound across the cave floor, climbing the wall to pass Redhale on the ceiling with its suckered fingertips snapping and popping on and off the rock in its haste, and its barbed tail lashing behind as it shared the Wight's ascent.

Maladroit would slow down some once they reached the general vicinity of House Stavret.

Redhale spoke with a sense of absent-mindedness from wherever he was in the cave while they climbed, "Kasyr has been making plans regarding our city, clearing out the leftovers from the conflicts and making our unified governance official, apparently. I'm sure you could make yourself useful with the local work machine. Might help you take your mind off things. Of course, if you wanted to tackle your problems head on, and if you have the capacity to… There are many who could help you with research in the library."

Maladroit understood the Wight's suggestions - but moreso, it understood Redhale's motive for making them. In truth, it had never held the same allegiance to the Dark Lands as had done its Mistress, but Maladroit was at a loose end until such time as a rift was born that would take it home again. As they passed the Stavret residence, Maladroit wrangled a memory out of its spongy awareness. The Mistress. Something she’d said about wanting a certain Patron dropped from a very great height. Maladroit stopped, peering in its eyeless manner toward the building, unsure if that had been an order, or merely an idle whimsy on Tenebrae's part... Drawing its attention back to more solid choices, it turned toward Redhale and shrugged to express its profound apathy regarding Kasyr and the Government and all the doings thereof.

Redhale took careful note of the familiar's inspection of the Stavret residence. There was unfinished business to be had there, for sure, but the wight had so far decided to leave Kuzial well enough alone, considering the drow's uncanny ability for murder and destruction. One day the dark city might be able to get hands on the offender, but to attempt a capture rashly would incur multiple wraths upon the dark man, and he had no desire to deal with such bothers at this point in time, "Better to focus on your own issues, yes. I hate to sound as though I urge caution in all things, but it seems you are very quickly looking to tread on some very big toes, with very big claws." Not that Redhale would stop the beast, if it came to outright violence. Still, he had made something greater of himself in Jolie's absence, and he wouldn't necessarily rush to the aide of her familiar either.

Maladroit couldn't smirk, and would not have done so openly even if it could have, but there was an air of that sentiment lingering about it as it trod the stony path toward the surface by the Wight's side. Without a direct order, the familiar was rarely motivated to do anything other than follow its own bizarre and (mostly) politically-untroublesome pastimes. This spot of reassurance was in no way communicated to Redhale, however. Instead it halted long enough to reach into its central cavity and tug out a marrowless Mind-flayer bone. This it handed to the Wight with a palpable sense of gravity, before trundling the passage that led to open air, among the blighted trees of Vailkrin's Dark Forest.

Redhale took the bone absently and tucked it away within his own form, not really thinking about what he would do with it and not really caring. While one would have thought the cold and bloodless being would have been comfortable in silence it turned out that not being able to converse while in the presence of another made him a might tetchy, probably some holdover from his childhood, whenever that was. Still, the outcome was moot as his mood left him treating the familiar similarly, making the rest of the journey up and outwards without another word. The goblinoid had probably gotten the picture by now anyway.

Maladroit had. But it seemed Redhale had not... Another shrug rustled the creature's wings - it had done its duty, as it saw things. Now the threads of time and fate were free to make whatever weavings they would, and Maladroit could not be blamed for it.