RP:Alithyk Caluss Castle

From HollowWiki

Part of the Agitation Arc


Summary: Gevurah leaves House D'Artes disguised as a shadow and alone to investigate a matter she believes could be related to the Order of the Shade. House D'l'sel D'issan's spies notice her exit and inform their patron, Lanlan, who takes it upon himself to follow Gevurah. After a near battle, Gevurah decides to enlist Lanlan in her investigation.

In the cavern, they notice a portal swallow a basilisk corpse whole, and jump through that portal themselves. They are teleported to the chaos realm, just outside a castle. An army of undead shambles around the castle grounds. Inside, a cult of necromancers worship Alithyk Caluss, the very same creature that was summoned in Xalious months ago. Lanlan and Gevurah infiltrate the castle and steal some important intelligence items.

It seems that Caluss has portals installed in dark places around Hollow to capture corpses which he then turns undead and adds to him army.

The drow get caught by Caluss itself and flee. The army, cultists, and Caluss attack the two drow who barely escape by the grace of Vakmatharas and Lanlan's quirky style of magic.

Trist'oth, Dead Caves

Gevurah ‘s attention has been divided in recent months between the rule of House D’Artes and Trist’oth, and a secret side project so secret that only Izzerin, Chamberlain of House D’Artes, and the almost-confidante to Gevurah, knows about it. The chamberlain finds the High Priestess in her quarters alone and waits to be acknowledged before saying in drow, “Rumors that may be useful to you have reached your servant’s ears, mistress. The estate’s scavengers, those assigned to the dead caves, they whisper about a peculiar phenomenon down there. They speak of a cavern known by scavengers as a site where the mindflayers dump bodies. The bodies have been disappearing. A few hid and watched to see if they could spot the thief, but saw nothing, only a misting darkness. One reports feeling a great power, claimed he is sensitive to such things.” “A cavern. Where, exactly?” Izzerin nods once. “They have not whispered the location, but all speak of it as if they know it well. I have not asked for details as I did not want to arouse their suspicions. I hope that was correct, mistress. Forgive me if I failed to anticipate your needs.” Gevurah shakes her head dismissively. “You did as bidden, chose wisely, and served me well. That is all.” Izzerin bows low then sees himself out. Some hours later, Gevurah takes all the necessary precautions to leave the estate unseen, including cating a spell on herself to detect watchful eyes. However, good spies have counterspells and enchanted gear that can evade such tactics. One of these spies, loyal to House D’l’sel D’issan, watches Gevurah now and promptly ferries the information to his Patron, Lanlan. Gevurah rides astride a giant spider named Halbyrn. Her usual entourage of bodyguards do not flank her on this expedition, for she rides alone. Her piwafwi has been enchanted to provide partial camouflage. She appears as shadow that is only detectable to those on the look out for her movement. She takes a circuitous route to the dead caves entrance then descends, her spider gripping the cavern walls at 90 degrees, then even upside down, while Gevurah clings on be the strength of her thighs.


Lanlan often watches people, especially important people. What kind of gait moves them, do they flail when they talk, how long are their limbs compared to the rest of them...? It all serves a purpose. So when someone especially imperial lives just down the street, it's harder to think of an excuse not to observe them. If Gevurah wore clothes instead of insulation, Lanlan would've determined her measurements when he met her. A particular spy, one of the few in his house that he trusts, watches her now. So it is that when she leaves, he notices, and takes precautions to observe her direction from afar. Lanlan learns via quiet discourse when and where he's needed, and doesn't finish the page he reads like he normally would, or perhaps even the chapter. He closes it with a *fump*, and bids his abomination farewell. "Thank you, Xundus, now let's do something about that scar shall we?" Lanlan pulled the hood down from his dark-skinned spy's face revealing a dementing scar dragging the corner of his mouth towards his cheekbone. After waving his hand across the mutilated countenance, it grew several shades lighter, and the scar vanished. A new man, or...the old one. Lanlan dresses himself in several layers of illusion, to appear at interval as a mellow gust of wind, a moth, and a scurrying vermin. Once he draped mundanity over his aura, he left in a hurry. He hoped he might be downwind of her, that he could try to place once more the components that made up her perfume, or whatever made her smell so delicious. The flicker of darkness that should be her shadow crossed where he was expecting, and he was on her trail. Every so often, he'd lose track, and find it again. There was always the possibility that he was imagining it, or creating it without his will, but it shouldn't happen this time. Sometimes it's difficult not to narrate someone and shatter his spells, but he manages. Delicately, he pulls a grappling hook from a pouch, and hooks it securely in a crevice. Instead of him clambering down and jostling pebbles loose, there is only a young monitor, in over his head and soon to perish. If Gevurah's strength in this endeavor comes from her thighs, then Lanlan's comes from his frail constitution, because it hardly matters how weak he is when he weighs so little. And maybe is still levitating. He floats to the ground and catches his breath at the same time he catches a bead of sweat before it splashes against stone.


Gevurah is being pursued by batman, mothman, or both, but doesn't realize it until she hears the very faint zzzzzzzzip of rope sliding against flesh in the descending tunnel. She pretends not to hear it to not give away her awareness. Instead she directs Halbyrn to weave behind a series of stalactites, rider and mount hanging upside down on the ceiling; they quicken the pace. Lanlan would see the same shadow he's been following flickering in and out of movement, disappearing and emerging from behind hanging rock formations. If he follows Halbyrn, he'll get a nasty surprise from behind as Gevurah herself is levitating alongside the very first stalactite she ducked behind while the spider mount continued without her. Now (if Lanlan pursued the spider) he is standing in front of Gevurah with his back to her. And the spell she was preparing is an offensivve attack, to be launched at whoever had the audacity to follow her. She shoots a black ball of energy at Lanlan's back (or front if he didn't follow, she'll still use his distracted attention on the spider to her advantage). The energy is powerful enough to stun the common drow and afflict a crippling amount of damage (possibly even kill those with underlying heart conditions, like a taser). Gevurah comes from the school of shoot first.


Lanlan went to a much more prestigious school than Gevurah. And he didn't have to pay through the nose like Gevurah might eventually. When he gets to the bottom of his rope, he doesn't appear, neither does he when he floats lazily down to the cavernous ground. A moth does flutter stupidly about his location however. Still tracking the shadow, he sees it dip in and out of various rock formations...in avoidance, or as a simple precaution he couldn't be sure. So he follows the spider. It goes behind another stalactite and as Lanlan waits for it to appear from behind it, he hears the subtle hum of the deathball coming from behind him. With hardly a jiffy before catching a wallop, he grips a crystal in his pocket and infuses it with the appropriate amount of mana. In an instant, he's transformed into silk worm and the blob of doom passes over him without harming him. Halbryn might be in harm's way, especially if not even one of his eight eyes was watching from behind the rock. Having avoided catastrophe and landing himself in what might be a completely separate one, he obeys his wormy instincts and inches frantically into a groove.


Gevurah drops quickly on the silk worm to stomp it under her expensive, elf-hide boots, dyed fashionably black. "Show yourself!" After missing on the initial stomp she runs the edge of her heel along the groove hoping to squish the worm, its faint heat a pale red against the stone like a faint bullseye. She's mutters a spell to discover the truth via her all knowing god, curiosity starting to edge out over her bloodlust. If the spell succeeds, she won't undo the shapeshifting, but she will know this is Lanlan, the bastard. As for Halbyrn, she's fine. The deathball runs in a straight line, and the spider does not.


Since he can't do much magic as a worm (no fingers), he just has to survive until the magic wears off. This will be a decent test to see how his copy measures up to the one he discovered. Since he's a worm, the main component of its success is assured. But after her initial stomp, he clings to the bottom of her shoe and proceeds to cling and inch up the back of her leg. With the casting of a great loogie upon this shapely leg, he casts himself to the wind like a kite and a strand of silk is his tether. She may find out its him through the voice of her smelly god, or while in flight his stubby antennae elongate into massive ones, that also look like antennae but are in fact eye-stashes. Having only the need of these to cast a simple spell, the worm blooms into a fountain propagating dozens of nasty bugs into the air, onto the witch, and the ground. The real one scurries away and awaits his return to elfdom behind a rock.


Gevurah discovers it is Lanlan just as he unleashes a swarm of basic, skittish bugs. Gevurah isn't scared of bugs, though she does lift an arm to swat them away. They obey, naturally. "Lanlan, you fool! What are you doing?" She hisses and snatches at the worm, this time without the intent to kill, just to capture. As annoyed as she may be, Lanlan is still a useful ally to House D'artes, as far as she knows. Best for Lanlan's sake she not discover an error in her judgment there. "Dispel this foolish illusion. Tell me why you follow me." Aside from the obvious, she thinks to herself, which to her is simply nobles spy on nobles. She remains oblivious to his personal intentions, darkly romantic and twisted as they may be.


A purple haze fluffs out from the bug, disguising the exquisite machinations that turn a caterpillar into a man. When Lanlan's good and ready, he appears in place of the smog. Brushing it away and taking an interval to account for all of his limbs and flatten his clothes, he says, "Oh hey, Gevurah, are you going down here just to get away from it all? Same as me? How serendipitous!" Obviously that wasn't going to take, but maybe it'll straighten out her frown a smidge. "I'm following you, yes, because you decided to go off on your own and that is an unusual thing. Good thing I found you before anyone else. Now you're not alone and stand a much bigger chance of living through any assassination attempts." A dry joke, but he wasn't here to kill her, probably. "Why are you taking such pains to escape into this pit?"


Gevurah's lips purse at his first joke, which is sort of like a straightened out frown. Partial success. She grunts femininely in reluctant acceptance of his de-escalation tactics. Sure, pal. The second joke twists her lips back into a scowl. "If the assassins are as capable as you, then I have nothing to worry about." Burn. All in all, by drow standards, this still is a rather pleasant encounter between the leaders of rival noble houses, suggesting that on some level she trusts he isn't interested in her death right now. Yet. "Why should I tell you of my affairs?" Halbyrn circles back long the walls, her body perpendicular to the floor. Gevurah eyes Lanlan and decides to reveal her hand a little. "What do you know of The Order of the Shade?"


Lanlan isn't oblivious to his success. The fact that she stopped trying to kill him when she found out who it was is a clear indicator of the unspoken connection. " I assure you there are none more capable, " said he reassuringly. When Lanlan noticed the spider shifting positions, he cast a simple spell to illuminate it's position with a white light. His eyebrows twisted and bent gracefully to fulfill the somatic component. "Please don't try to set that thing against me.. You should tell me. Maybe I can help you." He shifted his gaze away to better think without her face distracting him. "I think they were a cult worshipping death. Before the priestesses of the spider goddess squished them. If they died out back then, what makes you think they'd be more powerful now? Do you know why they had to be extinguished?" If he was right about the priestesses, then it must have been something even gods fear.


Gevurah grins darkly at Lanlan's boast. "Then I'll be fine." She shakes her head dismissively at Lanlan's concern abou yet another attack via Halbyrn. The Gevurah threat has been neutralized, for now. No more attacks planned, within the next few minutes at least. When he talks about helping her then averts his gaze, she feels the as-of-yet unexamined thrill of holding power over someone for reasons that have nothing to do with her nobility, her lineage, or her lethality. "Necromancers, yes. But not followers of Vakmatharas. Legend has it that they sought to summon a new god, a false god that would have betrayed them and killed the drow along with all other races, and so the matriarchy slaughtered them in the name of the spider goddess. I always thought that was a story told to keep the underclass in line." She lifts a brow conspiratorially as Lanlan, another noble, knows exactly what she means about stories spun as propaganda. "The truth being that the necromancers were males working in secret to overthrow the matriarchy during the matrons' height of power. No one had ever succeeded, that is until my first patron and father." [Got to get the drow-cred in at every turn, or else you're not drowing right.] She continues, "However, my spies on the surface claim that recent followers--elves--" her top lip curls in distate, "succeeded in summoning the false god. I cannot prove that the creature summoned on the surface is the same creature of legend, but it matters little. Something powerful was summoned. I know not what it is, where it is, or its motives. Rumor has it it will ressurect the old sect, find the lost headquarters. I want to find it first, claim it for the drow. It is our race's legacy. And who knows what power is hidden there. Loathe if it would find itself in the hands of elves." Unmentioned perk: Claim that power for House D'Artes, and herself.


Of course Gevie will be fine as long as Lanlan's on her side! And even though Halbryn will probably always be dangerous, and he shouldn't just take her word for it, he does. She trusted him enough, so he'll trust her (and his lightning fast reflexes). "I'm not sure the elves could've come up with the means to do something like that," he said, drawing on his once-intimate familiarity with them. "Such power is out of their realm of comprehension, and their cowardice limits their daring to understand. Lying, however, is something they can be surprisingly adept at," says he, warning that perhaps they could be embarking on a propaganda campaign. But in lieu of suggesting she could be wrong in her estimation of them, he adds, "But you put them in such a position that they may be desperate enough to form a compact with something they don't quite appreciate. I'm more comfortable in suspecting that this entity may never have been truly eradicated (intelligent powers do often see the need for contingencies), and has simply been biding its time. The elves would be the perfect target to test one's might against. Because they're weak." But the elves were in Sage, and these two were in the Underdark. "So you must suspect some remnant of this faction to be underground. The foundations of their art must be arcane, I think, and I can dedicate a mass of resources to deciphering whatever kind of puzzle we can't on our own--with your complete oversight of course." His curiosity leads to eagerness, and perhaps before she can even agree, he asks, "Then we should go confirm your suspicions! Halbryn's big enough to carry two isn't he?!"


Gevurah eyes Lanlan as he launches into a very helpful monologue. She doesn't seem dissatisfied, disgusted, or insulted, which is always something to brag about when dealing with her. Lips part as if to answer his points individually, but she thinks better of it. "I'll have my answers soon enough. If you wish to be useful to me, I see no reason to stop you." Her hand signals and Halbyrn comes closer to be mounted. "The spider is a she. You sit in front of me." It's not the arrangement the patron likely had in mind, but Lanlan's crazy if he thinks Gevurah will give him her backside. Lanlan first, then Gevurah climbs aboard behind him leaving enough room for Vakmatharas between them. "It would be beneficial if you cast a spell to detect illusions and other trace magic. I'm casting a spell to detect corpses," she explains so he doesn't worry when she starts whispering a spell. "We're looking for a chamber where the mindflayers dump corpses." Is it the first time she used the word 'we' to refer to the two of them? Possibly. She would normally be more careful with wordchoice, but she's chasing a bone and Lanlan is helping her. Her speech relaxes a little. "I have reports that the bodies are disappearing. I want to see if it is related to the Order." Halbyrn scuttles through the tunnel seemingly aimlessly. Gevurah hasn't the faintest clue where to start. "I only it's in these dead caves," she explains further.


Lanlan has no one to brag about not bothering someone, though it is quite a thing. "What an interesting way to say 'thank you'! And I didn't think this had need for a gender." He awkardly uses one of Halbryn's limbs to help him up onto her abdomen, and wobbles unsteadily once aboard. He scoots back a little for stability or whatever excuse he can think of at the time. "I can figure where magic is being drawn from, but only if Halbryn moves slowly." He spreads his hands and fingers out in front of them and his eyebrows above them(or under if they climb on the ceiling), feeling out for what mana might be available in a wide range. Occasionally, he'd have to quickly slap a hand down in front of him to regain balance. After meandering for a while, Lanlan was beginning to enjoy this leisurely ride. Then with uncertain urgency, he whispered, "Stop! Look at what I spy..." He placed two fingers on her arm slowly so she would see it coming, and cast something to show her the abstract sensation he was feeling ahead of them. A slow blue torrent of what she should assume was mana funneling from the all around into one particular spot in a crag, where apparently there was nothing. "See? Only I don't think it's hiding from us. Actually I would try not to think anything from here on out."


Gevurah can't recall if she's ever said 'thank you' to anyone of peer or lower power. It's a kiss-up phrase for the few who outrank her. In response to Lanlan's taunt she says coolly, "It's good you think so." She tenses involuntarily when he touches her arm, but observing no adverse effect, lets the touch stand. House D'l'sel D'issan seem to be touchy-feely Laezila also insisted on contact. Having allowed his two-finger-to-the-forearm contact she feels a swell of pride at her adaptability and progressiveness. (Few others, even other drows, would agree with her self-evaluation, but this is D'Artes spawn at its most stereotypical. The First House is myopic in its rigidity, paranoia, and hate.) She follows his brow's gesture to the crag, parks Halbyrn near the blue outline, and dismounts. "Useful," she says to Lanlan. The closest he'll get to a 'well done' but her tone is appreciative. "Do you detect any traps?" Of the magical variety, she means. There should be none, though there is an illusion which Lanlan can dispel more easily than Gevurah in terms of energy needed to execute the counterspell. Once the illusion is lifted, they'll find a small crawl space. "After you." She waves him through the hole. On the otherside is a cavern filled with a few corpses, a shadow gnome, a handful of bugbears, several goblins.


Lanlan isn't peer or lower power by Lanlan's standards. He's actually much more powerful if you take away Gevurah's Godly gifts and burgaled firepower. "I suppose I don't detect any traps," he said, " but there's something in our way." While examining the abrupt deadend before them, he noticed two of the exact same stalagmites several feet apart. A simple shortcut to make a believable illusion if you're in a rush. But it would fall to discerning eyes. His eyes, which glowed blue for a jiffy as he pulled a crystal wrapped in leather from a pouch. With a gyrating motion from his fingers and arm, he channeled the magic fueling the illusion into the gem, and wrapped it back up with the leather strip, winding it up like a bandage over the gem. But there was more than just the illusion, he knew, and it would be on the other side of the crawlspace the stalagmite concealed. "Something else is over there you know. It possibly knows that we stole its magic." He habitually said we while doing dangerous things, to spread the blame if something bad happened! So, he dropped to his hands and knees and slithered into the hole, because he was simply more curious and not because she told him to. As they crawled on, the hole grew tighter and tighter. "Give me some space," he said, as he lowered onto his belly. As they crawled on, he had to turn his head sideways because his chin started scraping the ground. "Whatever's over there better be worth it, this place stinks!" And that was the last time he spoke. Not because of the seriousness, or anticipation, but because to go any further he had to squish all the air out of his chest. 'Be the caterpillar' he told himself, but he didn't turn into one this time. He just channeled the figurative belly-crawling prowess and forced himself forward. The tunnel started inclining, and he started having to push moistened bits of gore out of the way, maybe some teeth or other things. At this point it was too dark for him to see, and he stopped. Even if their locomotion was sluggish, the tiny breaths he was allowed forced him to rest consistently. 'Nerves,' he told himself. He stopped, wondering if Gevurah was faring any better. Probably not; he thought about her breasts and how they would probably get in the way of this kind of thing. But maybe not because she had such a lithe body already. Can't talk, can't ask. Better this way anyways. A few feet more, and that makes the tunnel as long as one of Kyl'oriel's lectures. Unbearably long to be exact. He shoved an arm forward and out of the hole, and it flopped and tumbled before getting lodged in a goblin's eviscerated abdomen. Lanlan finally came out of the place and was a little disappointed by what he saw, which was another room too dark to see. So he rested a bit on the soft remains of several sad creatures who probably got what they deserved.


Gevurah watches as Lanlan, master of his craft, deals with illusions. She nods or bares her teeth in something akin to a smile whenever he looks to her as he speaks and works. She isn't annoyed, simply impatient. She crawls in after him, grumbling as she lowers into her belly like a commoner. The underdark has no respect for rank, she tells herself. When they reach the entrails and corpse bits, she switches to mouth breathing. It crosses her mind that they may get stuck here, but she doesn't panic. Years of meditative training as a priest, as well as a lifetime spent in tunnels and caves, makes her impervious to claustrophobia. Finally she exits the tunnel and chooses to levitate rather than sit on the dead. She summons faerie light to illuminate their situation. Several tunnels empty into this one, and blood seeps from the mouth of each tunnel suggesting they feed the corpses to this dump site, not unlike how laundry chutes feed clothes to a wash room. However, there are fewer corpses than Gevurah expected. Dirt on the ground has been disturbed, suggesting there were more corpses here recently, but now they are gone. "Necromancers?" she guesses, more to herself than to Lanlan. She whispers a quick spell to trace any lingering effects of magic. There's a black-blue arcane circle in the center of the floor that moments ago was invisible to the naked eye. The magic is currently inert. "Lanlan, I think there was a portal here. Have you any experience with portals." Back to speaking her questions like statements. Suddenly, from one of the larger chutes near the ceiling of the chamber, the corpse of a basilisk comes tumbling down. If Lanlan doesn't move, he'll be squished.


Lanlan looks over the room carefully after its been illuminated. He would've cast the faerie fire and levitated too, but he was saving his energy for something important. Priorities. He maneuvers between corpses and bones carefully to always have a foot on the ground instead of something unsteady. Eventually he stands before the sigil. "No, I don't," he says as he copies the exact detail of it into a pad of parchment, tracing the diagram with illusion magic and stamping a shrunken version right on the paper. It'll stay there until he can properly trace it. "I agree with your conclusion however." The ground the sigil was inscribed on was bare, but everywhere else was littered with broken bodies. It would be so tedious to go all the way back to the Mage's Guild to find someone who did know anything about this, so he stood in the middle of it and waited. "If only I was dead, I bet I'd be somewhere else right now," he says with longing to Gevurah. "Quick, tell me why I'm your favorite Patron." At this time Gevurah indubitably gave him one of her killing looks, but Lanlan's invincible so it didn't work. Shame. Still, when he heard the massive thing flopping through the corpse funnel above him, he stepped to the edge of the circle and waited for it to flop before him with a crunch and a squirt. A basilisk, he'd never seen one in person. As expected, the deadness of the basilisk triggers the dormant mana in the sigil to awaken and spread through the lines that create it. Satisfied, he stretches out a hand to Gevurah, "Coming?"

Chaos Realm, Lotus Castle

Lanlan's taunt doesn't quite earn him Gevurah's death glare. As she grows accustomed to his needling, his ability to get under her skin dulls. Instead, she quips back, "Because you constantly seek my approval." Whiplash sound--twice. Having delivered that little burn, she feels more comfortable taking his hand to jump through the portal, for practical reasons of course. Jumping into an unknown portal is not her first choice, but if Lanlan is brave enough to do it, so can she. Perhaps they are both over confident in their ability to emerge through the other side unscathed. Interplanar portals are near impossible to affix without a constant and powerful mana source, so she is somewhat reassured by the fact they'll end up somewhere of this earthly realm. As for holding hands, it would suck to be separated, from a purely logistical point of view, when jumping through an unknown portal. They quickly disappear and reemerge in a place dark and disorienting. An unseen force assaults them from all angles in an effort to seep through their pores and drive them mad. Gevurah's head shakes slowly from side to side as she tries to figure out what this could be. Lanlan may recognize it to be chaos magic. She whispers a prayer, a rather lengthy one the booms and echoes around them, beating back the madness by force. Soon both she and Lanlan should feel a calming effect as Vakmatharas shields his servant and her ally from whatever assaults them. His blessing isn't exactly soothing, however. It brings about the peaceful surrender one would expect to experience in death. They feel dead, or close to it. The alternative was struggling to keep from going insane. She gives Lanlan an opportunity to get used to feeling her god's power. As he does so, she scans their surroundings. It feels neither like a surface place, or a cavern in the underdark, but something in between. Above them is blackness, an abyss, no ceiling but also no sense of sky. Around them, mountains are lit red as if by fire, but there is no fire. In the distance, the gray silhouette of a castle stands alone. Around the castle, a small army mills without order. There is no rank and file, but their size cannot be confused for anything but a war force. Gevurah and Lanlan are too far away to make out individual shapes. Gevurah nods towards the castle. "Curious."


"I'm a people-pleaser," he says, and waits to appear somewhere else. Maybe it was bravery, it would've been much safer to go all the way back to Xalious and study the circle, yes, but would've took longer. So he does appear somewhere else, and before he can even realize his new location, insidious magic pervades his body and eventually his mind. An army of voices whisper madness into his subconscious but with just enough plausibility...Then they all but die away, leaving him wanting for understanding, like a dream he could almost remember. All the voices die but two. Gevurah's prayers tethered him to reality with the brisk and grave sense of her God, and the softer voice, that hissed quietly, so he became ready to embrace eternity, but not oblivion. Then it was the only voice that affected him. Now in the twilight place he rejoins Gevurah. Noticing her first, with shrewd evaluation, then the plane. "Are we above or below? Looks like Old Vak's house." He knew it wasn't. So, he did notice that there was no sign of a circle. One way trip, it seems. To the castle then. Something had to be done about the army, and there would be no smiting them. "I guess it's my turn again," he says, as he prepares a spell, or three. First he drapes a curtain between them and the shambling horde so they can change in private. It looks exactly like where they're standing, but minus them standing there. Next he decorates his face, dabbing decay into his cheeks, rubbing in some rot under his eyes, and soon he's convincingly playing dead. Maybe she wants some treatment too. "You'd be such a pretty Queen of the Damned," he says, hoping to get the chance for some reason she probably wouldn't get. Last, he suppresses all signs of his signature magic, trimming away traces and replacing them with deathly aura, for people who looked for that kind of thing. He started walking towards the Horde, confident in his disguise (and hers if she didn't do something else), and then stopped abruptly to tell her something of dire importance. "I know you'd want to hold my hand again, but zombies don't do that. Sorry." Then he continued walking and anticipating her smart mouth at the same time.


Gevurah's gaze flickers from the castle to Lanlan as he guesses at their location, his guesses couched in humor. She doesn't mind his jokes as much anymore. "No, I don't know who dwells there but this place feels like the descriptions I have read of the chaos realm. I confess I am guessing from a place of book knowledge, but not experience. I have never been." She waves a hand permissively for him to disguise her. When he colors their aura with deathly energy, she asks--scratch that--tells him to make some tweaks according to her nuanced view of death. "Your death aura is a mortal death, a spirit death. Not quite accurate." She suggests a few changes until it looks more undead. "Good." She nods once satisfied with the change, which turns out to be the difference in degree between slate gray and gunmetal gray. Hardly anyone but high priests of Vakmatharas could tell the difference, but she can be fussy with details. Her eyes level at the back of his head, chasing his final quip."Only to keep you from fleeing." She walks with her normal gait, very much unlike a zombie. Prideful and near humorless, she refuses to shamble or playact like some pink-skinned surface dweller in primary colored clothing. Please, spare her the mental image, she'll retch. Hopefully Lanlan's illusion gives her the appearance of shambling, or else her stiff poise and regal stride will give the whole gambit away. The army, in contrast, does shamble. Undead hobgoblins, bugbears, a dozen gnomes, about as many duergars, several more dwarves, a score of ogres, half as many trolls, countless fermin, a couple basilisks, and one umberhulk mill about aimlessly, brainlessly. Strong necromancy and illusion magic hums around the castle. From the outside, it appears as though the castle is empty. If Lanlan were to look through the illusion, he'd find candle light glowing in a couple windows. Gevurah whispers in a steady, curious tone, "Do you hear that..." Lanlan may not. It's unholy chanting, audible only to those of a religious bent, both for good or evil. "Prayer. No idol I've ever heard of before. They pray to Athiyk Caluss. Spirit Eater." She shakes her head. "Must be a false god." The necromancy magic appears more like a concentration of power than an actual spell. Whatever dwell inside the castle commands powerful necromancy. "I don't see anything in the castle." Suddenly a portal opens half a kilometer away from the castle and dumps several goblins. A massive, black, skeletal creature crawls from the castle to the goblins and absorbs them into its body, then scurries back into the illusion of the castle and disappears. Its shape, even from this distance, resembles nothing the high priestess knows to exist on this planet. "What was that?" For once, she asks a question.


Lanlan was a little dumbfounded and completely intriqued. "Th-This is the chaos realm?" It was the smartest thing he could say. Any annoying quip or smarmy compliment he could come up with while transforming her was replaced by fast ideas in flux. He takes her directions absently. After several steps he sits and appraises his work for flaws, and then just stares. "Flawless," he says. A moment after she talks to his head, "Oh but I'm right where I want to be..." He doesn't shamble either, thinking these soldiers too dumb to notice. "Just...try not to look purposeful." That should cover them. Lanlan's not interested in the mass of creatures, but notes the variety and therefore the apparent range of the poachers. With prudent glances about the castle, Lanlan makes a deduction, "There's another illusion here, grander, and I'm wary about dispelling it before I know who cast it...And no, I don't hear a thing louder than these freaks. But I do feel something," referring to the massive coagulation of energy inside. A portal opens and a shiver runs down his spine. A familiar dread beckons. "I've never seen anything like that, could be a false god. For now at least." Ominous. Instinctually, Lanlan realizes this might be there way out when it comes to that. "I hope we can find a way to predict those portals." But not yet, otherwise they came here for nothing, the dead were coming from Hollow, and if there was anybody alive (in some form), they came from Hollow too. So he thinks. "We need to at least see inside the castle," he said, and pulled out a bandana to tie diagonal across his face covering an eye. The covered one manifested itself outside the socket and hovered around, traveling faster and more stealthily than he could encumbered by gravity and such. His body slumped on the ground by Gevurah, but continued the functions that always kept it alive. His vision flies with the illusionar eyeball, circling around and under the portcullis, same as the monster. Immediately he's affected by the swirling miasma being channeled in the hall. One humanoid stands robed on a podium, guiding a choir of black-covered cultists in prayer, waving his commanding hands with seemingly complete power over them. The crowd beneath him flails and writhes like a dying beast according to the interpreter's whims. All around and above them, a dark force swims through the air with a swarm-like buzz. There wasn't much Lanlan could see without getting closer than he was willing to, but his body by Gevurah reported in words what he was seeing in exquisite detail, clearly in awe. Suddenly his purpose for following her at all was questionable. "Is this what you expected to find, Gevurah?"


Gevurah reiterates when Lanlan expresses dumbstruck surprise that they're in the chaos realm: "That's my best guess. I am not certain." Gevurah's attempt at not looking purposeful somehow only makes her look even more regal and keen. When Lanlan talks about using the monster-dump portals as a means of escape Gevurah lifts a white brow in appreciation of his plan. He's not the fool he plays. His eye-removal stunt yields a more disgusted approval. Neat trick, but gross. "Surely there must be a more elegent spell to the same effect..." She nods occassionally as he reports what he sees, and asks questions of her own. What language are they chanting in? Drow. What are they saying? It's the same as the prayer she heard earlier. She pulls out of her enchanted satchel a handful of tiny wax balls. She rolls them in her fist and repeats the prayer into her hand. The wax superheats and melts, but does not burn her, then forms into one thumb sized blob. Once the spell is complete she asks Lanlan to leave the main chamber and look at the other rooms. He'll find that most of the castle is empty, not only of bodies but also of things. However, the library has one bookshelf. On it are three books, a scroll, and several ritualistic instruments. "Can you steal them?" she asks. She puts the glob of wax in Lanlan's hear so he can hear her recording of the chant. "My own tricks," she explains. "More elegant."


In a mocking acquiescence, Lanlan bestows wings on his flying eye, little moth wings from a regal moth. For extra elegance, they dispersed little golden sparkles everywhere they went that dissipated after a second. While his eye's in the library, "With what my eyelid? We'll have to get inside another way." The eye flutters about the halls until it finds a window large enough to fit an ogre's sofa through. Through here, he finds his way back to himself and the grump, zipping between creatures of the night until it slips under the blindfold and appears back in his socket. "There's another way in, follow me." They awkwardly maneuver behind and between shuffling zombies until they're under a giant window. Lanlan activates his insignia and weaves a spell with his hands and eyebrows to suppress his magic. They'd have to be really close to know he was a wizard. He hides hers too, only because if they get caught she'll need to fight them off while he escapes, otherwise she could stay down there. He leads them through various hallways until they make it to the library. "Okay," he says unfurling the scroll first. They'd need this more often, that's why they have it on a distinct page. It has various runes on it used by a different kind of mage than he, still they were familiar. "I don't know what it means, but I can pronounce the letters. Hold on." The wax in his ear stopped making noise, the chanters were silent. But only long enough for the composer to change his tune. The new direction of the chorus reminded him of Gevurah's calming dirge. Anxiously he listened for meaning, and looked to Gevurah to interpret. A clump of something aqueous fell of the ceiling and plopped between them. Looking up, Lanlan realized what had fallen didn't come from the ceiling, it was the ceiling. "The castle's melting. Because they know we're here..?" Maybe. They had to get out now, or be trapped. He shoved a book into his satchel and rolled the scroll back up, holding it tenderly in his gloved hand just in case. The window they came through was closed essentially, with a pane of goop. Perhaps Gevurah could create a new way out with some sort of force of magic, otherwise they'd have to run straight past the cultists and the creature to get out.


Gevurah purses her lips in mild amusement at the regal eye with golden sparkles. When it returns and Lanlan announces there's another way in, she feels an unexpected thrill at taking the risk. She wants those items, and follows the second patron. In the library, Gevurah looks over the runes in the scroll. They're strange to her too, but she identifies enough calligraphy strokes and gathers enough context clues to guess. "This is the spell to create the portals. But..." She sucks in a low breath audibly, like a snarl just beneath her fine nose, and shakes her head. "I need more time with it to understand the full details. Come," she takes the books off the shelf too, "Let us--" She's cut off by a drop of black goop falling on her pale hair. She dabs at it with her finger, inspects it, sniffs it, and pulls a face. "This is... it," she says vaguely. What she means soon becomes clear. The metling gives way to a shape -- a rib cage, an arm. Upon closer inspection, the entire castle isn't melting at all, but something else is in their immediate surroundings. It's the creature passing its large, dripping, viscous body through the ceiling to congeal around them like a caul, to absorb Gevurah and Lanlan into its body and turn them undead--just like they witnessed earlier when it absorbed the goblins into its body and turned them. Gevurah wastes no time in summoning the power of Vakmatharas. A massive black, sizzling ball of energy forms between her palms and twitching fingers and she blasts it at the ribcage that's coming down around them. The force punts the creature upwards, and the goop on the window lifts briefly, just enough for Gevurah and Lanlan to escape. Without thinking (for surely leaving the second patron for dead would be the wise political choice here), she grabs Lanlan's wrist and yanks him through the small opening in an un-elegent, insectoid crawl over the sill. Knees bang on stone, feet find balance awkwardly. Levitation is too slow; they need to get out, now, no matter how it looks. The creature whips around on the ceiling and chases them out the window. Its four limbs slap on the ground, leaving behind trails of goop. It shrieks like a vulture, and the entire army turns on Gevurah and Lanlan. Gevurah blasts a second ball of death energy into a grouping of undead bugbears to clear a path for the disguised drow. The bugbears fall shuddering, their rotten skin growing ashen as slowly true death comes to them. Notably, the death energy's blast, while it did send the creature back a few paces, was utterly powerless to inflict true death effects on it. It's power and command over death outranks Gevurah, and this knowledge tolls a bell of fear in the high priestess's chest. The cultists soon spill out of the castle and cast necromantic spells to stop the intruders. A lesser wraith is summoned and chases Lanlan to leech him of life, and, from Gevurah's left, a blood-vein whip snaps out to wrap around her neck. It's unclear if she'll dodge it in time.


"Not so elegant," says Lanlan when a poser-god drops blobs of concentrated evil on her. Notably it only annoys her, concentrated though it is. Lanlan begins to demonstrate appropriate panic and slips between a black chitinous rib behind Gevurah. Having the wits not to say anything smart, he follows her out the window in gracious silence. The first thing he does when out of impending danger is search for any sign of death-pudding, and eradicated the blemish, pinching it out of his clothing. Clean enough, he decides, and realizes the danger is at least imminent, if not still impending. Following her once more, they wade into a shrinking glade with death on all sides. They have only the briefest moment to ponder thanks to Gevurah's prayer laying those cretins to rest, and Lanlan knows there's really only one thing they can do: escape. He unfurls the scroll and realizes the runes are too small and numerous to just sit and read.

Within an instant, he projects the image of the scroll in gigantic form against the red sky. "You'll have to read it with me," he says as a wraith ensnares him in an incorporeal vigor-sucking tether. He thrusts his hands at the line finding that he can't touch it; not with his hands. After some panting and the threat of panic, he entreats Gevurah with eyes that belied his dismay. "Might you assist me with this?" But his skin was possibly even grayer and paler than usual. As a provisionary compensation, he thrusts his hand out toward the nasty whip threatening her. Out pops a clear glass wand, and from this, a smart little firebolt. It darts into the line and snaps it, sending the vessel writhing and sputtering. Relatively safe once more, he rubbernecks towards the sky where his projection was plastered, and emphatically pronounces the first few syllables. Gevurah should take over and pronounce a few. Then back towards the encroaching undead horde. The first thing he does is rhythmically wave his hands toward a front line of baddies, giving several the illusion of being Gevurah (with notable attention to detail), and several others the elegant illusion of being Lanlan (with certain exaggerated details). They turn on each other. Something about watching Lanlan and Gevurah eat each other's mouths stalls him from regularly reciting the portal summoning verse. There was also an instance of Lanlans devouring each other. And a Gevurah eating a Gevurah. "Would you look at that..."

In time with both of them fighting and reciting, they finish the verse, and as expected, the portal opens. They can't immediately see where, but they do hear the sloppy thunks of a variety of corpses, and then the godlike horror flinging its appendages purposefully at a surprising velocity. Lanlan curses with that span and diversity of a polished man. They could be fighting there indefinitely, but clearly the creature was driven more by its ambition than concern. A pressable advantage.


Once again Gevurah is presented with the perfect opportunity to leave Lanlan for dead. The wraith at his neck will sap him of life quickly. One can flee twice as fast without thee, Lanlan. But Gevurah doesn't have the time to think politically, to Lanlan's advantage, as her instinct is to intervene to save his life. (Notably, in the past when Kuzial's life was on the line, Gevurah's instinct was to leave him for dead. Not all Patrons are created equal, it would seem.) Doing so exposes her to the blood-vein whip, which Lanlan so deftly snaps as the priestess chants an incantation. The threat to her neck doesn't break her focus. Decades of training make sure of that. A hand smooths over the other as if she dons an invisible glove. An elbow-length glove soon materializes in a translucent marble pattern of red and silver. She thrusts her hand into the wraith, and Lanlan's, body, clear through his chest and out the other side. He will feel an uncomfortable chill along her gloved arm. She grips the wraith's invisible heart behind Lanlan's shoulder blades and grips it tight, then rips the heart back through Lanlan's chest. The wraith's body collapses like an octopus's and folds into the hole in Lanlan's body, yanked clear out the other side by Gevurah who then stuffs the wraith into the glove, folds the glove in on itself and contains the beast. It isn't dead, it's just stashed in her magical glove-cum-take-out-bag. If she had the time, she would reverse the affliction on Lanlan's vitality, but there is no time. She reads the portal-summoning spell as best she can. It isn't in any of their native arcane tongues. In some places, Lanlan knows the word better than she for he is better trained in the arcane arts. Finally, the portal appears in the distance, and to escape they would have to compete with the interplanar death-pudding creature. Is it worth it? Gevurah turns her attention back to Lanlan in time to see a lightning bolt thrown his way. She waves a hand in a wide arc and summons a sphere of magical protection around them. It can only sustain so much damage, but buys them precious seconds in a battlefield that is increasingly cluttered with missile spells aimed at all non-cultists, that is to say, all the Gevurah's, Lanlan's, and the real, disguised Gevurah and Lanlan as well. Gevurah notices Lanlan's temporary distraction with the mouth-on-mouth Gevurah-Lanlan attacks and snaps a finger before his eyes. "Focus. Can you make us small? If it sees us escape the portal, it will claim us for its army." A hint of fear darkens her glowing stare. She admits, "We cannot defeat it. Not just the two of us." One of the false-Lanlans claws at Gevurah's chest, which she defly dodges in the nick of time. They need to move. She makes for the portal, and hopes Lanlan has a way to get them past the creature, right under his nose. The magical sphere of protection moves with them, but it already starting to wear down, becoming increasingly transparent and flickering in and out of place with each missile spell it sustains.


Lanlan had no doubt she would help him, she needed him! It doesn't stop him from feeling an appreciation for her begrudging reliability. Does he have to appreciate her invasive procedure in and out of his chest? He's unprepared for her ghastly groping, and he tells her with a shudder and a slight shove. "Warn me next time you use me as a prop." Even though he would argue that he's a way better focuser than she is, she catches him staring at his voracious doppleganger and manages to attract his attention away from it--somehow. "I was focused," he says. And even though Gevurah would say that she dodged the claws of the dead humanoid in the nick of time, it's actually Lanlan who grabbed it by its unkempt hair and pulled it away from her, then he let it go like a wild dog, but its feet weren't as fast as its eyes, and it stumbled. Lanlan slaps his hands together to rid them of the sludgy debris that came off the creature.

The rallying cultists remind him that there victory was still far off, and he finds ways to assist with them too. His expert command of ambient magic allows him to interrupt the other mages. He thrusts a hand forward directly towards one of them who was casting a spell. Cupping a hand over his fist, he sharply pulls his hands a part like he was playing cat's cradle. The mage he targets sees his spell fizzle as nothing but sparks poof out of his wand. Finding this success to come easy, he aims for grandeur. Another group are pooling their forces, stirring the pot of weird magic with annoying chanting. Lanlan lunges with arms forward, near enough to the biting jowls of the deceased, before lurching back and pulling a vast coagulation of magic back as they were ready to turn it into something deadly, that's what they get for being so conspicuous. Several puzzle over their sudden impotence, but their spell goes off a bit dampened. An artillery strike; a blob of energy dense and aqueous arcs towards their bubble. There's hardly a chance for them to react, the thing splashes against their shield and instantly begins eating away at it. A moat of it goes around the bubble and drowns the ankles of the shamblers. It doesn't seem to bother them being dead, but living cells and most things would instantly be dissolved. The bubble pops, seeing no other option, Lanlan jumps into the air as the waves of dead and slime fill his spot. He taps Gevurah and channels his insignia's power into her so she can float too.

In retaliation of their attempt to murder him, he uses the magic he stole from their big spell to fuel one of his own in the waning seconds the cultists took to recover and restart. Gathering that this demigod might know by now Lanlan is an illusionist, he prepares a trigger with a series of rapid, precises movements with his hands, and even feet since they were free. Some sort of invisible origami practice, I guess. Then with the hurling of an invisible lasso, he rips the aura from the portal, shouting some gibberish at it like it was a bad portal. So the aura moped over to him as he commanded, and then he directed it somewhere else. The exact spot where another portal opened on top of a chaotic hill, and then countless carcasses tumbled out of it. Especially noticeable was the giant ogre that came a-tumbling down, plowing a somewhat feasible path toward the choir. So many cultists got out of the way, that Lanlan and Gevurah could walk right into the portal without being bothered a bit. But it would take long since they were still levitating and it was slow swimming even in chaos-air. So Lanlan grabbed and twirled a magical shower curtain around them and they vanished, reappaering in the middle of the cleared path. Instantly they started sprinting towards the portal. The demigods hurls its limbs ahead of itself, flinging its torso with cracks and sputters. Its strange godlike locomotion has it between the regular realmers and their escape in seconds. They're doomed. It eats them, but not before Lanlan and Gevurah face it bravely and undauntingly, flipping it off and making other obscene gestures. The god wins but has no form of self-esteem left, being reminded that it's a false god who's minions are mooks and almost got beat by two drow.

But Lanlan when did you get the ability to teleport and coerce agreeable Gevie to go along and trust you without even wondering what the plan was? And teleport? ITS ANOTHER ILLUSION, THE WHOLE THING. Impossible to guess. So while it's distracted, Gevurah and Lanlan should probably make their way to the real portal. "After you my liege." This way, Lanlan can cover her retreat and hopefully stop her from tripping him and feeding him to zombies. She did save him twice but three times? Come on.


Gevurah always found mages to be queer folk. Lanlan fits the bill, with his wiggling toes and fictional performance of mid-air curtain teleportation followed by an uncharacteristic (for her) telling off of a false god. Not that she has the surplus brain space to think him queer now. She's too focused on survival to care which body part he twirls to cast spells (giggity), or what sort of theater he performs for nercomancers and the creature they worship. As Lanlan deals with the mob-magic of a group of cultists, Gevurah throws a life-sapping spider net over a dozen undead shamblers to keep them from advancing. The paranoid noble would normally not turn her back to Lanlan, but given present circumstances, she makes an educated gamble on the fact he's too busy saving his tush to worry about the political cost-benefit of killing her. Also, he said 'my liege' and she likes that. She darts for the portal then floats up into it. If Lanlan follows suit, they'll teleport to the center of the dark forest east of Vailkrin. Gevurah lands in a tree, untangles herself quickly, and hisses, "Lanlan?"


Lanlan is very proud of the ordeal they've escaped, and only hesitates to steal one last look at the landscape. A god was tricked here today, in his own house. He would squash the notion that he was only a false god. Essentially he was a god, or going to be eventually. That's the important part when telling himself the story later again. Then he turns and flutters away on a cloud, not thinking of anything but himself. Out of chaos and into darkness he lands next to Gevurah, flipping over a branch and landing on his back did a lot to dispel his euphoria. But he lay there, becoming comfortable, tempting it to return. But he still stares up at the lingering green glyphs suspended in the air that created the circumference of the portal. "I didn't think to wonder at what time that would close after we went through it." He stood up and stepped quickly to the nearest tree pressing his hand against his bark, "I know this forest at least. Look how the trees twist in anguish. Somewhere close-by is Vailkrin." He helped her out of the tree if she needed it, because he probably needed her again. "Maybe your master can lead us back to his house? If we just find the path..." Gods are so proud, they must hate when yuppies like Caluss try to intrude on his domain.


Gevurah is too shaken by what she saw to share in Lanlan's euphoria. Yes, they survived, but the D'Artes family temperament rarely celebrate triumphs. Instead they tend to focus on the negative, the next obstacle, the next problem. Athiyk Caluss outpowers her. If she could convince Patron Lanlan to combine the powers of House D'Artes and House D'l'sel D'issan, would that be enough? Doubtful. She shakes her head as she ignores Lanlan's outstretched hand. Even as she realizes she needs his alliance she fails to show what surfacers would call courtesy. Surely as a drow he would not begrudge her this. "Athiyk Caluss serves Vakmatharas too," she replies. Lanlan is left to infer her meaning on his own: who knows who the God of Death will back in this fight. For a lesser disciple, this doubt would lead to a crisis of faith, but not so for Gevurah. At least not yet. Gevurah can't help but notice a black spider with a red patch on its back shuffle across the tree bark. She takes a deep breath and regards Lanlan again. "I would prefer if you told no one of this. We need to discuss what we witnessed privately." She lowers herself onto the ground and tries to get her bearings. She cannot use the stars, for drow are poor star navigators for obvious reasons. Eventually she hears a stream, follows the sound, and knows it flows from east to west. She moves east towards the entrance to the underdark. "I need to know your thoughts. But first, I must consult the oracle." She looks anxious. "Meet me tomorrow at House D'Artes at two hours past the midday."


"What a fun game! Which of his two best disciples will replace his old best? I hope it's you." Honestly, it would be inconvenient to have to find a new ally, it was much easier making enemies. Once he notices the little arachnid crawl across, he points it out, "Oh I was just moving my hand away from that little devil, no need to feel discourteous..." he watched as it scurried, then he caught up to Gevurah when it vanished around the trunk. "I agree Gevurah," he said with a barely stifled grin. When the abomination emerges, he (and she) will be the leader the others fall in behind. They might also get thrown to the wolves. "We'll meet tomorrow, and I'll press my surface resources for other signs of his cult. He'll want to emerge in a safe place. See you tomorrow."